Supersapientia: Berthold of Moosburg and the Divine Science of the Platonists

History of Metaphysics:
Ancient, Medieval, Modern

Edited by

Olivier Boulnois (École Pratique des Hautes Etudes)

Dragos Calma (University College Dublin)
Wouter Goris (Rheinische Friedrich-​Wilhelms-​Universität)
Pasquale Porro (Università di Torino)

volume 1

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​hmtp

Supersapientia
Berthold of Moosburg and the Divine
Science of the Platonists

By

Evan King

LEIDEN | BOSTON
 This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license,
which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited.
Further information and the complete license text can be found at
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources
(indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further
permission from the respective copyright holder.

The publication of this volume has received the generous support of the European Research Council
(ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme through the ERC
Consolidator Grant NeoplAT: A Comparative Analysis of the Middle East, Byzantium and the Latin West
(9th-​16th Centuries), grant agreement No 771640 (www.neoplat.eu).

The Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data is available online at http://​catalog.loc.gov

lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2021019204​

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface.

issn 2666-​9 307

isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 6490-​2 (hardback)
isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 6548-​0 (e-​book)

Copyright 2021 by Evan King. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink,
Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress.
Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for
re-​use and/​or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com.

This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

ἀγαθὸς ἦν, ἀγαθῷ δὲ οὐδεὶς περὶ οὐδενὸς οὐδέποτε ἐγγίγνεται φθόνος.
plato, Timaeus, 29e

∵
Contents


Preface ix

List of Figures and Tables xii


Introduction 1
1  Life and Contexts 1
2  Toward a Reconstruction of Berthold’s Library 14
3  The Commentary on Proclus: Background, Purpose, and Exegetical
Methods 40

part 1
Non secundum nos. Platonism as Philosophical Revelation

1 
Prologus 68
1  Hermes Trismegistus and Thomas of York 70
2  Hermes Trismegistus and Albert the Great 81
3  Approaching and Entering the House of God 94

Expositio tituli 103

2 
1  Plato’s Theorems 104
2  The Three Motions of the Soul 108
3  The Two Orders of Providence 133

Praeambulum libri 159

3 
1  Theology as a Science 161
2  “Our Divinising Theology” 176

part 2
Providere cum diis. The Philosophical Principles of the Expositio

4 
Exstasis divini amoris
The Macrocosm 193
1  Plato and Aristotle on the One and the Good 194
2  Creation 203
3  The Trinity and the Gods 214
4  Limit and the Unlimited 238
5  Determination, Generation, and Light 248
viii Contents

5 
Epulatio entis
The Microcosm 268
1  Human Nature and the Spiritual Body 272
2  Between Being and Becoming 288
3  The Goodness of Silence: Deification and Providential
Cognition 297


Conclusion 323
1  Legacy 323
2  Lady Philosophy’s Vesture 346

Translation


Prologue 362

Exposition of the Title 399

Preamble of the Book 417


Bibliography 437

Index of Manuscripts 469

Index of Authors (Ancient) 470

Index of Authors (Modern) 474
Preface

The study that follows is a revised and expanded version of a doctoral disser-
tation completed in 2016 at Clare College, Cambridge, devoted to the aims and
argument of Berthold of Moosburg’s Expositio on the Elementatio theologica of
Proclus (“Supersapientia. A Study of the Expositio super Elementationem theo-
logicam Procli of Berthold von Moosburg”). The final stages of this work were
accomplished within the framework of the erc Grant NeoplAT CoG 771640.
I beg the reader’s pardon that such an unrelenting grip on the text, perhaps
more excusable for a dissertation, has been retained here. The understanding
of Berthold’s thought in its complexity is still under construction. To contrib-
ute something to this ongoing inquiry, it seemed safest to proceed by keeping
close attention on Berthold’s arguments as well as to his modifications of his
sources, in order to begin to appreciate the uniqueness and coherence of his
project.
Like the dissertation, this book’s division in two parts is intended to reflect
the distinct methodological traits of Berthold of Moosburg’s commentary on
Proclus. It seemed to me that a phrase from Dionysius the Areopagite often
cited by Berthold, that theology must proceed “not according to ourselves”
(non secundum nos), had at once an exegetical and a philosophical significance
for his commentary on Proclus. These words encapsulate, to my mind, his atti-
tude toward the history of philosophy and his views about the place of his own
project within it: the study of the beatifying wisdom of the Platonists would be
undertaken in the form of a commentary that distilled an entire tradition –​a
work Berthold himself described as a “compilation”. Dionysius’ phrase was also
used by Berthold to underscore the necessity for a Platonic understanding of
universals when reasoning about the divine: God and the separate substances
are to be understood not according to our abstractions but by attending to
what is causally operative independently of our thinking.
The Introduction gathers the extant information about Berthold’s life,
library, and intellectual contexts, attempting to produce a coherent account
of his career where this is permissible, while also acknowledging the gaps in
the record. Part 1 takes its inspiration from the two-​sidedness of Berthold’s
commentary project, as exegesis and as philosophy. It is structured as a guided
tour through Berthold’s three prefaces to the commentary (Prologus, Expositio
tituli, Praeambulum). This sequential reading pauses at various stages to allow
us to tunnel into the decisive instances of Berthold’s synthesis and transfor-
mation of his sources as they occur. This will allow us to glimpse the unwitting
x Preface

originality of the Platonism he articulated in his attempt to revive the divin-

ising philosophy he glimpsed in the distant golden age of antiquity. Special
attention is given in these chapters to the relationship between paganism and
Christianity in Berthold’s thought. Along with the translation of the three pref-
aces at the back of the volume, it is hoped that this portion of the book will
introduce the reader to the spirit animating the Expositio.
Part 2 ranges more freely through the commentary to provide a more sys-
tematic and doctrinal picture of Berthold’s Platonism. Its two chapters are
structured around Berthold’s Hermetic motif of the macrocosm and micro-
cosm, which provides a natural framework for ordering the major themes of
Berthold’s cosmology and anthropology. After setting out his understanding
of the discord between Plato and Aristotle in terms of their philosophical
approaches to first principles, it examines how an ecstatic and realist reason-
ing about universality has its objective correlate in every level of Berthold’s
cosmology, from the spontaneously creative activity of the Good, through the
essential order of separate substances, to the physical laws of the diffusion of
light. The discussion of Berthold’s anthropology in the final chapter focuses
on the relation of the individual to the ideal human nature (the imago Dei)
that subsists at the lower limit of the essential order of causes. Here we under-
stand how, for Berthold, the awakening of “the one of the soul” (unum animae),
which is the goal of Platonic philosophy and the Expositio, can bring the indi-
vidual into harmony with human nature and, through it, with the providential
Good, and so be raised to an operative union with God.
This study can only see the light of day thanks to the guidance of several
teachers, colleagues, and friends. To my supervisor at Clare College, Douglas
Hedley, for his ready council and unconditional support, and to my doctoral
examiners, Stephen Gersh and Loris Sturlese, for their precious insights
and inspiration, I give my sincere thanks. For his loyalty and patience, I am
profoundly grateful to Dragos Calma, without whom this work would have
remained doubly undone. Along the way I have received crucial assistance from
Alessandra Beccarisi, Hjördis Becker-​Lindenthal, Álvaro Campillo Bo, the cet-
efil team in Lecce, Luke DeWeese, Jonathan Greig, Alexander Hampton, Paul
Hellmeier op, Ezequiel Ludueña, John Marenbon, the NeoplAT team in Dublin,
Fiorella Retucci, Joshua Robinson, Iulia Székely, Caterina Tarlazzi, Matthew
Vanderkwaak, and Daniel Watson. What faults remain are entirely my own.
To my teachers and friends at the schola Haligoniensis, and especially Wayne
Hankey, I shall always be grateful. For the means of undertaking this project at
all, it is a pleasure to acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Cambridge Commonwealth,
Preface xi

European, and International Trust, and the European Research Council (erc
Grant NeoplAT).

To Elizabeth, Silas, and Anna –​dedicated with affection.

Rosemount, Nova Scotia
9 October 2020
The Feast of St. Denis
newgenprepdf

Figures and Tables

Figures

1 
Glosses on Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis (i.14.6-​7). ms Basel,
Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, f. 17r 41
2 
Gloss on Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis (i.17.5). ms Basel,
Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, f. 20r 41
3 
Marginalia on Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam (q. 10, §64).
ms Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, f. 59ra 41
4 
Marginalia on Proclus, De providentia et fato (c. 8, §32). ms Basel,
Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, f. 64rb 41

Tables

1 
Berthold of Moosburg's Proclean Glosses on Macrobius, In Somnium
Scipionis 16
Berthold of Moosburg's Proclean Glosses on Proclus, Tria opuscula 25
2 
Berthold of Moosburg's Marginalia to the Clavis physicae 34
3 
Introduction

1 Life and Contexts

The fundamental documentation for establishing the trajectory of the life of

Berthold of Moosburg (c. 1290 –​c. 1361/​1363) has changed little from what is
gathered in Loris Sturlese’s introduction to his critical edition of Propositions
184–​211 of the Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli, published in
1974.1 These documents trace the outlines of the career of a successful teacher
and pastor in the Dominican order, who was involved with some of the most
active centres of learning and literature in 14th-​century Europe. The biogra-
phy of Berthold of Moosburg that follows attempts to bring this portrait into a
slightly higher resolution by making use of more recent scholarly discoveries
that shed light on the contexts in which he lived and worked.
The first and most essential documentary addition to our knowledge of
Berthold’s life came as a fragment, published by Thomas Kaeppeli in 1978, of
the proceedings of a Dominican chapter meeting in Friesach, informing us
that in 1315 Berthold was to be sent to Oxford for his studies.2 This gives us
some clues about the date of Berthold’s birth. Typically, after a two-​or three-​
year novitiate, with teenagers no younger than 15 allowed to enter, Dominican
friars in the German-​speaking provinces would have progressed through three
years of study in the schools of logical arts (studia logicalium) and two to three
years in the schools of natural philosophy (studia naturarum).3 Those selected
for advanced studies in the schools of general theology (studia generalia) may

1 See L. Sturlese, “Introduzione” in Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem the-

ologicam Procli. 184–​211. De animabus, ed. L. Sturlese (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura,
1974), p. xv–​xxii; and H. Boese, Wilhelm von Moerbeke als Übersetzer der Stoicheiosis the-
ologike des Proclus. Untersuchungen und Texte zur Überlieferung der Elementatio theolog-
ica (Birkenau: Bitsch, 1985), p. 69–​83. See also W. Eckert, “Berthold von Moosburg O.P. Ein
Vertreter der Einheitsmetaphysik im Spätmittelalter”, in Philosophisches Jahrbuch 65(1957),
p. 120–​133, at p. 122–​124.
2 Th. Kaeppeli, “Ein Fragment der Akten des in Friesach 1315 gefeierten Kapitels der Provinz
Teutonia”, in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 48(1978), p. 71–​75, at p. 72: […] guerrarum
strepitum, quibus quasi tota ian<vensis> provincia affligitur et gravatur. Hoc anno intermisi-
mus studia artium et philosophiae, volumus <tamen> et inponimus prioribus universis qui in
suis conventibus habent aliquos juvenes ap<tos et> habiles ad profectum, quod ipsis aliquem
fratrem preficiant qui eis aliquid de naturis <…>bus legere teneatur, quos etiam volumus a dis-
cursibus suportari. […] Mictimus <in Ang>liam fr. Berchtoldum de Mospurg.
3 W. Senner, “Dominican Education”, in J. Hackett (ed.), A Companion to Meister Eckhart
(Leiden: Brill, 2013), p. 711–​723, at p. 712–​714.

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_002

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
2 Introduction

have been asked first to lecture on logic for two to three years. As Oxford housed
one of the Dominican order’s schools of general theology, counting back from
1315 we may infer that Berthold was likely born around or before 1290. Since he
was sent to Oxford by a chapter meeting in Friesach, we can be quite certain
that his birthplace was the town of Moosburg located on the Isar river before
Landshut, northeast of Munich, and that he was educated within that region
of the Dominican province of Teutonia. The character of his early education
is unknown; the formative influences on his thinking can only be guessed.
We shall see that Berthold was more familiar with the works of Dietrich of
Freiberg, his elder confrere, than any other medieval author known to date.
The last extant record of Dietrich’s activities indicates that he served as pro-
vincial vicar to Teutonia in 1310–​1311,4 and scholars surmise that Dietrich may
have lived until 1318 or 1320.5 But whether Berthold had any personal contact
with his most esteemed contemporary master remains a matter of speculation.
The impact of the intellectual life in Oxford in the mid-​1310s on Berthold’s
formation is also a matter of conjecture. The most significant recent develop-
ment in our understanding of Berthold’s thought came as a result of Fiorella
Retucci’s advance on the discovery made by Françoise Hudry, who indicated
that Berthold made use of a rare commentary on the Hermetic Liber xxiv phi-
losophorum, which was also known to the English Franciscan, Thomas of York
(c. 1220 –​d. before 1269).6 Retucci then went on to demonstrate the enormous
extent of the Dominican’s debt to Thomas’ magnum opus, the Sapientiale
(written sometime before 1256), which has been called the first summa of met-
aphysics in the 13th century.7 Thomas was given a controversial exemption to
bypass the standard requirement for an degree in arts before advancing to the-
ological studies, and this is no surprise, for the Sapientiale is an ample demon-
stration of his staggering command of ancient and medieval philosophical

4 L. Sturlese, Dokumente und Forschungen zu Leben und Werke Dietrichs von Freiberg (Hamburg:
Meiner, 1984), p. 58–​63.
5 L. Sturlese, “Alle origini della mistica speculativa tedesca. Antichi testi su Teodorico di
Freiberg”, in Medioevo 3(1977), p. 21–​87, at p. 41–​43; K. Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg. Philosophie,
Theologie, Naturforschung um 1300 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2007), p. 31.
6 Françoise Hudry first signalled the influence of Thomas on Berthold in Hermes Latinus, Liber
viginti quattuor philosophorum, ed. F. Hudry (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997). On the 12th-​century
origins of the Liber, see Z. Kaluza, “Comme une branche d’amandier en fleurs. Dieu dans
le Liber viginti quattuor philosophorum”, in P. Lucentini, I. Parri, V. Perrone Compagni (eds),
Hermetism from Late Antiquity to Humanism. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Napoli,
20-​24 Novembre 2001 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), p. 93–​123.
7 E. Longpré, “Fr. Thomas d’York, O.F.M. La première somme métaphysique du XIIIe siècle”, in
Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 19(1926), p. 875–​930. On Thomas’ life, see p. 876–​881.
Introduction 3

theology. It is natural to suppose that Berthold first encountered the Sapientiale

in Oxford.8 Certainly, when he began writing the Expositio almost a decade or
more later, Thomas of York remained ever near at hand.9 Berthold not only
used the Sapientiale as his direct source for many of the classical and medie-
val authorities cited in the Expositio, but looked to it for inspiration when he
announced the dignity and goal of philosophical wisdom itself. We will see in
more detail how completely Berthold adopted Thomas’ maximal endorsement
of the attainments of the non-​Christian sages of antiquity in their knowledge
of God and how he incorporated it into a model relating theology and philos-
ophy that came from his German Dominican predecessors (Albert the Great,
Ulrich of Strassburg, and Dietrich of Freiberg).
Further research may reveal the extent to which the Sapientiale circulated
in 14th-​century England. One factor leading to Berthold’s encounter with the
text may have been the association of Thomas’ name with the political ten-
sions that began in 1303 between the mendicants and secular clergy in Oxford
as to whether, among other things, a dispensation from the University was
required in every case for a student to proceed directly to the theology doctor-
ate after studying arts outside the University.10 This conflict significantly dest-
abilised the Dominican studium in Oxford. Between 1312 and 1320 the fallout
between the friars and the University had so escalated that the regular stream
of Dominican friars to the studium was often substantially interrupted.11 In
1314, the English Dominicans appealed to King Edward ii, and again in 1317 to

8 Retucci, F., Goering, J., “The Sapientiale of Thomas of York, OFM. The Fortunes and
Misfortunes of a Critical Edition”, in Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 52(2010), p. 133–​155,
at p. 150.
9 F. Retucci, “Magister Thomas Anglicus minor. Eine neue Quelle der Expositio super
Elementationem theologicam Procli Bertholds von Moosburg –​das ungedruckte
Sapientiale des Franziskaners Thomas von York”, in Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super
Elementationem theologicam Procli. Propositiones 136-​159 (Hamburg: Meiner, 2007), p. xxii-​
xxxix; ead., “Tommaso di York, Eustrazio e la dottrina delle idee di Platone”, in A. Beccarisi,
R. Imbach, P. Porro (eds), Per perscrutationem philosophicam. Neue Perspektiven der mit-
telalterlichen Forschung. Loris Sturlese zum 60. Geburtstag gewidmet (Hamburg: Meiner,
2008), p. 79–​111; ead., “Magister Thomas Anglicus Minor. Tommaso di York fonte dell’Ex-
positio di Bertoldo di Moosburg”, in F. Amerini, S. Fellina, A. Strazzoni (eds), Tra anti-
chità e modernità. Studi di storia della filosofia medievale e rinascimentale (E-​THECA: On
Line Open Access Edizioni, 2019), p. 1-​41; ead., “Between Cologne and Oxford. Berthold of
Moosburg and Thomas of York’s Sapientiale”, forthcoming.
10 See the synthesis in H.G. Gelber, It Could Have Been Otherwise. Contingency and Necessity
in Dominican Theology at Oxford, 1300–​1350 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 39–​43.
11 A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, 3 vols
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957–​59), p. 95 and p. 987.
4 Introduction

Pope John xxii, requesting the repeal of the Statute of 1253 which resolved “the
affair of Thomas of York”, whose exceptional case had set the precedent for the
contested arrangement.12 There would be no lasting resolution to the conflict
until 1320, by which time Berthold was probably no longer in Oxford.
By the mid-​1310s, Oxford witnessed the emergence of thinkers whom schol-
ars have come to identify as “the classicising friars”.13 Among the precursors of
this group was the Dominican Nicholas Trevet (1257/​65 –​c. 1334), one of the
English province’s most distinguished scholars.14 In 1314 Nicholas was called
back to Oxford to preside as master of theology of the Dominican convent. He
appointment was likely meant to bring some degree of stability to the troubled
situation. By this time, among other writings, Nicholas had composed a com-
mentary on Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, using the glosses of William
of Conches, and a commentary on Seneca’s tragedies. Between 1317 and 1320
he produced a commentary on the Psalter. Another Dominican member of the
“classicising” group was Thomas Waleys, who began lecturing on the Sentences
in Oxford in 1314, which itself represented a relative return to normality for
the Preachers.15 Waleys later would make use of Proclus’ Tria opuscula in his

12 See the literature cited in Retucci, Goering, “The Sapientiale of Thomas of York, OFM”.
13 B. Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell,
1960); J.B. Allen, The Friar as Critic. Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages
(Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971).
14 F. Ehrle, “Nikolaus Trevet. Sein Leben, seine Quodlibet und Quaestiones Ordinariae”, in
Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters. Festgabe Clemens Baeumker
(Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1923), p. 1–​63; Emden, A Biographical Register of the University
of Oxford to A.D. 1500, p. 1902–​1903; R.J. Dean, “Cultural Relations in the Middle Ages.
Nicholas Trevet and Nicholas of Prato”, in Studies in Philology 45(1948), p. 541–​564; ead.,
“The Dedication of Nicholas Trevet’s Commentary on Boethius”, in Studies in Philology
63(1966), p. 593–​603; Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, p. 58–​65; J. Catto, “Theology
and Theologians 1220–​1320”, in J. Catto (ed.), The Early Oxford Schools (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1984), p. 471–​517, at p. 513–​517; Minnis, A.J., Nauta, L., “More Platonico
loquitur. What Nicholas Trevet really did to William of Conches”, in A.J. Minnis (ed.),
Chaucer’s Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1993), p. 1–​
33; L. Nauta, “The Scholastic Context of the Boethius Commentary by Nicholas Trevet”,
in M.J.F.M. Hoenen, L. Nauta (eds), Boethius in the Middle Ages. Latin and Vernacular
Traditions of the Consolatio philosophiae (Leiden: Brill, 1997), p. 41–​67; J.G. Clark,
“Trevet, Nicholas (b. 1257x65, d. in or after 1334)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 349–​351; Gelber, It Could Have Been Otherwise,
p. 62–​64.
15 S. Tugwell, “Waleys [Wallensis], Thomas”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 800–​801. See B. Smalley, “Thomas Waleys O.P.”,
in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 24(1954), p. 50–​107, at p. 86–​98, on his connections
with Trevet.
Introduction 5

own commentary on the Psalter, written in 1326–​1327 in Bologna.16 Berthold’s

arrival to the studium generale in Oxford around or after 1315 would certainly
have brought him into contact with these leading figures of the early classicis-
ing movement.
The next record of Berthold’s activity indicates that, after Oxford, he was
occupied with teaching natural philosophy and was already making use of
Dietrich of Freiberg’s works in this domain. A friar tasked with teaching nat-
ural philosophy three years after studying theology would be following the
typical pattern. Without the expectation that they would obtain a degree,
especially in Oxford during these unsettled years for the Dominicans, most
friars spent only two years in advanced theological studies before they would
begin serving as lector in one of the order’s conventual schools.17 Berthold’s
teaching of natural philosophy is attested in two glosses now preserved in
ms Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.30, f. 56v-​57r, which appear alongside
the text of Dietrich’s De iride et radialibus impressionibus, and have been pub-
lished by Loris Sturlese.18 They report a commentary given by Berthold in 1318
on Aristotle’s Meteorology iii.5, 375b16–​377a28, in which the friar provided
a geometrical analysis of Aristotle’s discussion of the pole of the rainbow.
Sturlese has observed that the geometrical figures that accompany the glosses
were probably not the work of Berthold. The explanation of the figures, which
is ascribed to Berthold in the glosses, demonstrates a degree of geometrical
proficiency to elucidate Aristotle’s argument (although Berthold relied on
Dietrich’s calculations).19 The next chronological witness of Berthold’s activ-
ity comes in the form of glosses on the Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis by
Macrobius, which can be dated to before 1323. These are studied more closely

16 Commenting on Psalm 2:12, Waleys cited q. 8 of De decem dubitationibus circa providen-

tiam three times, for examples of philosophers who restrained their anger; on Psalm
9:25 he cited the same question on the way divine justice metes out punishment. See
Averroes, La béatitude de l’âme, eds M. Geoffroy, C. Steel (Paris: Vrin, 2001), p. 85 and 87.
According to Marc Geoffroy and Carlos Steel, these citations indicate that Waleys used a
text deriving from another branch of the manuscript tradition than Berthold’s copy. See
also Smalley, “Thomas Waleys O.P.”, p. 80–​81.
17 M.M. Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study …”. Dominican Education Before 1350
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998), p. 130 and 383–​4.
18 L. Sturlese, “Note su Bertoldo di Moosburg O.P., scienziato e filosofo”, in Freiburger
Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 32(1985), p. 249–​259, at p. 250: Descriptio figurae,
in qua explicatur intentio Philosophi in III Meteororum, cum textus expositione inventa a
fratre Bertoldo de Mosburch ordinis praedicatorum anno Christi 1318. This is followed by
the gloss that gives the geometrical explanation of the figures. On the manuscript, see
Sturlese, Dokumente und Forschungen, p. 69–​72.
19 Sturlese, “Note su Bertholdo di Moosburg O.P.”, p. 252–​253.
6 Introduction

in section 2, below, but can be noted here as further confirmation of Berthold’s

engagements with natural philosophy at this period.
A document from April 1327 names Berthold as a lector at the Dominican
convent in Regensburg, which was one of the larger schools in his native region
of Bavaria.20 We cannot know for certain which subjects he taught there. In the
1280s, before the Dominicans divided their province of Teutonia in 1303 into
Teutonia and Saxony, Regensburg housed one of its nine schools of the logical
arts. By the mid-​14th century, it served as a school of particular theology (studium
particularis theologiae), which typically had the Sentences of Peter Lombard as
its focus, and was subordinate to the more elite studium generale, in which the
Sentences and Scriptural exegesis were taught.21 By that time, as David Sheffler
has noted, the library holdings of the Dominican convent would have been ill-​
suited to support the teaching of natural philosophy.22 Thus it appears likely that
Berthold taught theology in Regensburg, having previously served as a lector in a
studium naturarum, which would again follow a typical pattern.
At least one of Berthold’s confreres in Regensburg shared his philosophical
interests. In the same document that attests to Berthold’s lectorship, we have
mention of another Dominican, Henry of Ekkewint, who served as prior of
the convent between 1321 and 1326.23 The sample of Henry’s preaching pre-
served in his four (perhaps five) extant sermons shows him appealing to the
authorities of Augustine, Dionysius, the Liber de causis, Gregory the Great,
Origen, Avicebron, and Jerome.24 Henry employed the broadly Neoplatonic

20 See the references in Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xvi–​xvii, n. 6-​7.

21 Mulchahey, First the Bow is Bent in Study, p. 336–​340.
22 D. Sheffler, Schools and Schooling in Late Medieval Germany. Regensburg, 1250–​1500
(Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 60–​67.
23 L. Sturlese, Homo divinus. Philosophische Projekte in Deutschland zwischen Meister Eckhart
und Heinrich Seuse (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2007), p. 138. See also K. Ruh, “Heinrich von
Ekkewint (Eckbuint, Egwint, Egwin)”, in K. Ruh et al. (eds), Die deutsche Literatur des
Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, vol. 3 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1980), p. 718–​720; id., Geschichte
der abendländischen Mystik, Band III. Die Mystik des deutschen Predigerordens und ihre
Grundlegung durch die Hochscholastik (München: Beck, 1996), p. 408–​410.
24 Four sermons are edited in F. Pfeiffer, “Predigten und Sprüche deutscher Mystiker”, in
Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 8(1851), p. 209–​258, at p. 223–​234. A fifth sermon attributed
to der von Egwin, of uncertain authenticity, is found in ms Basel, Universitätsbibliothek,
B.xi.10, f. 129v-​145r. A divergent version of the same sermon is attributed to Eckhart
in A. Jundt, Histoire du panthéisme populaire au Moyen Âge et au seizième siècle
(Strasbourg: Fischbach, 1875), p. 270–​274, but has not been incorporated into the criti-
cal edition of Eckhart’s works. For literature on this question, see Meyer, G., Burckhardt,
M., Die mittelalterlichen Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Basel. Beschreibendes
Verzeichnis. Abteilung B: Theologische Pergamenthandschriften. Bd. 2: Signaturen B VIII
11 –​B XI 26 (Basel: Verlag der Universitätsbibliothek, 1966), p. 937; D. Gottschall, “Eckhart
Introduction 7

doctrines of procession and return and of the soul’s natural yearning for God,
which finds satisfaction only by turning inward and looking beyond itself,
away from transient goods and its own will.25 Since like can be known only
by like, Henry insisted, so the soul can only know God by being conformed
to God. At one point he cited several lines from the Fons vitae of Avicebron
on the means by which the soul can “avoid death” and reach “the fount of
life”, that is, by turning away from the instability of the sensible world and
by rising, with its highest part, toward things that are changeless and beyond
time.26 In Henry’s sermons one can also find reflections on the Trinity and
the divine essence or groundless abyss (grundelôse abgründe) reminiscent of
Meister Eckhart.27 Perhaps most striking, in anticipation of what we will see
with Berthold of Moosburg, is Henry’s anthropology. For both Dominicans,
the soul is in some sense all things, which corresponds to its location at the
middle of the universe.28 According to Henry, the highest principle in the
soul is a tiny spark (der funke oder der glanster der sêle), whose activity is
experienced as a kind of ethical counsel that implies a metaphysics of human
nature: the spark constantly advises a person that “you should let go of each
man”, that is, one’s proper will and attachment, “so that you may be free of
him, as if all of human nature was enclosed within you and your nature was
the essence of all people, and as if you could see yourself in every man and
every man in you”.29 This, Henry continued, amounts to seeing Christ in “his
pure humanity”. We will see that Berthold’s synthesis of the Proclean notion
of the one of the soul (unum animae) and the exemplarist doctrine of human
nature transmitted in the Eriugenian Clavis physicae would amount to a very
similar position.
The next recorded appearance of Berthold connects him to the Dominican
convent of Heilig Kreuz in Cologne and sheds some light on his pastoral

and the Vernacular Tradition. Pseudo-​Eckhart and Eckhart Legends”, in J. Hackett (ed.), A
Companion to Meister Eckhart, p. 509–​551, at p. 514.
25 Henry of Ekkewint, Predigt 1, p. 223–​224.
26 Henry of Ekkewint, Predigt 4, p. 232. This paraphrases the conclusion of the text: Avicebron,
Fons vitae, ex Arabico in Latinum translatus ab Johanne Hispano et Dominico Gundissalino,
ed. C. Baeumker, 2 vols (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1892), vol. 1, lib. v, c. 43, p. 338, l. 8-​27.
27 Henry of Ekkewint, Predigt 2, p. 227.
28 Henry of Ekkewint, Predigt 3, p. 230: dâ von sprichet der meister des buoches von der êrsten
sache, das diu sêle geschaffen sî in dem orte zwischen zît und êwikeit.
29 Henry of Ekkewint, Predigt 2, p. 227: das ist der funke oder der glanster der sêle, der uns alle
zît râtet das dû einem ieglîchen menschen erlâssest des dû von ime wilt vrî sîn, als ob aller
mensche nâtiure in dir begriffen sî unde dîn nâtiure aller liuten wesen si unde dû dich selber
ansehest an ieklîchem menschen und einem ieklîchen menschen in dir.
8 Introduction

responsibilities. After 7 April 1335, when he was nominated as a co-​executor

of the will of Bela Hardevust, a beguine from a prominent family in the city,
his name appears sporadically in the city’s records over the subsequent dec-
ades (1343, 1353 and 1361) in matters relating to her last will and testament.30
There was at least one hiatus in Berthold’s residency in Cologne over these
years, when a conflict between the Dominicans and the secular authorities led
to the expulsion of the friars from the city from 1346 to 1351 owing to a dis-
pute regarding lands held by the order in perpetuity or “mortmain”. During
this time, in 1348, Berthold is identified as vicar in Nuremberg, but the begin-
ning and duration of his post is unknown.31 It has been widely assumed by
scholars that Berthold served as lector in Cologne for many years in these dec-
ades, and perhaps even directed the studium generale.32 This seems to infer
too much from the evidence. The only document associating him with the
domus Coloniensis is the first mention of his executorship of Hardevust’s will
in 1335. His lectorship is attested in the colophon of the Vatican manuscript of
the Expositio. Without further information, we can only conclude that, at some
point between 1335 and 1361, and perhaps nearer to 1335, Berthold served as a
lector at the Cologne studium.33
It is an altogether separate question whether his commentary on the
Elementatio theologica was undertaken in Heilig Kreuz while Berthold served
there in another capacity. We know very little about the nature of Berthold’s
connection with the community after 1335 that is not the result of inference
from the pedagogical norms of the order and the fact that, as we shall see,
much of his library remained there after his death. His lectorship, whatever
its duration, would have certainly followed the standard requirements. At the
time, Heilig Kreuz was the major studium generale of Teutonia, where as many

30 The texts are included in Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xvi-​xvii. On the beguines of Cologne
in this period, see L. Böhringer, “Kölner Beginen im Spätmittelalter –​Leben zwischen
Kloster und Welt”, in Geschichte in Köln 53(2006), p. 7–​34.
31 Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xviii.
32 Th. Kaeppeli, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi, 4 vols (Roma: Santa Sabina,
1970–​1993), vol. 1, p. 240; E. Meuthen, Kölner Universitätsgeschichte, Band I. Die alte
Universität (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 1988), p. 44–​45; I. Zavattero, “Berthold of Moosburg”,
in H. Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Philosophy Between 500 and
1500 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), p. 163–​165, at p. 163; A. Saccon, Intelletto e beatitudine.
La cultura filosofica tedesca del XIV secolo (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2012),
p. 353.
33 This point was first emphasised by W. Senner, Johannes von Sterngassen OP und sein
Sentenzen-​Kommentar, 2 vols (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), vol. 1, p. 137–​138. See
Introduction, section 3, n. 179, below.
Introduction 9

as 56 students were sent to study theology.34 The curriculum of these schools

throughout the order was highly regulated and under the constant supervi-
sion of the general chapter.35 Daily lessons had the Bible and Peter Lombard’s
Sentences as their subjects. The lector would give detailed “ordinary” lectures
on Scripture, after which the cursor Sententiarum would lecture on the whole
of Peter Lombard’s text. This pattern would carry on over the course of the
year. By the first quarter of the 14th century, the structure and personnel of
these studia had become codified. The titular lector at the school denoted the
friar who gave the ordinary lectures on the Bible and presided over disputa-
tiones.36 Thus, if any of the works we find attributed to Berthold in the 16th-​
century catalogue of Albert de Castello relate to this lectorship, which include
the Expositio and several other texts, it would be the Summa theologiae, whose
existence, however, like several others listed in the catalogue entry, has been
questioned by scholars.37
In any event, it seems unlikely that the Expositio was directly related to
Berthold’s lectorship in Cologne. Although the Expositio touches upon top-
ics that also belong to the domain of Christian theology (i.e., the Trinity, the
Resurrection), these are treated in the text because Berthold believed that they
fall within the purview of philosophical reason as such. As we see below, the
order of “natural providence” presupposes and articulates a form of causality
based on the principle that “the good is diffusive of itself and being” (bonum
est diffusivum sui et esse) –​in Berthold’s view this principle necessarily requires
a Trinitarian form of causality. Natural providence, moreover, extends so far as
to include a notion of a natural, universal Resurrection that Berthold found
propounded in the Clavis physicae, the 12th-​century abridgement of John
Scotus Eriugena’s Periphyseon. Considerations of the authority of Scripture,
the Incarnation, the sacraments, merit and punishment, all belong to a meth-
odologically distinct domain identified as the order of “voluntary providence”.
Following Dietrich of Freiberg, in a significant phrase, Berthold stated that the
latter was “the completion and consummation” of natural providence.38 The

34 G. Löhr, Die Kölner Dominikanerschule vom 14. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert (Köln: Kölner
Universitätsverlag Balduin Pick, 1948), p. 15.
35 Mulchahey, First the Bow is Bent in Study, p. 352–​384.
36 Senner, Johannes von Sterngassen, vol. 1, p. 128.
37 See Introduction, section 2, n. 109–111, below.
38 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli, ed. F. Retucci,
129F, p. 182, l. 299–​302. The Expositio is cited according to the eight-​volume critical edi-
tion in the Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi (cptma): Berthold of
Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Prologus, Propositiones
1-​13, eds M.R. Pagnoni-​Sturlese, L. Sturlese (Hamburg: Meiner, 1984); id., Expositio super
10 Introduction

Expositio, then, if it fit anywhere into the curriculum of studies, would have
been be more suited to establish the foundational and preparatory science for
the study of Christian theology, insofar as it articulates the divinely-​infused
nature that voluntary providence would presuppose. If there was a pedagogi-
cal purpose and intended audience for Berthold’s Expositio, it would not have
been students of general theology, but those progressing in the study of natural
philosophy (studium naturarum).39
The four dates (1335, 1343, 1353, and 1361) relating to the executorship of Bela
Hardevust’s will introduce us to the pastoral dimension of Berthold’s life and
vocation. As Humbert of Romans had put it, the care of souls was understood
to be the goal of study itself: study is ordered to preaching, and preaching to
the salvation of souls, which is the ultimate end (studium enim est ordinatum
ad praedicationem; praedicatio, ad animarum salutem, quae est ultimus finis).40
Berthold certainly remained occupied with these ultimate matters while the
Dominicans were expelled from Cologne between 1346 and 1351, as we see in
his identification as vicar to Bavaria in Nuremberg in 1348. Appointed by the
provincial of Teutonia, a vicar was expected to travel widely and visit the prio-
ries and convents of the region.
Within this area was the famous community of Dominican nuns in
Engelthal, which was a prolific centre of spiritual literature in its day.41 Traces

Elementationem theologicam Procli. Propositiones 14-​34, eds L. Sturlese, M.R. Pagnoni-​

Sturlese, B. Mojsisch (Hamburg: Meiner, 1986); id., Expositio super Elementationem theo-
logicam Procli. Propositiones 35-​65, ed. A. Sannino (Hamburg: Meiner, 2001); id., Expositio
super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Propositiones 66-​107, ed. I. Zavattero (Hamburg:
Meiner, 2003), id., Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Propositiones 108-​
135, ed. F. Retucci (Hamburg: Meiner, 2011); id., Expositio super Elementationem theologi-
cam Procli. Propositiones 136–​159, ed. F. Retucci (Hamburg: Meiner, 2007); id., Expositio
super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Propositiones 160-​183, eds U.R. Jeck, I.J. Tautz
(Hamburg: Meiner, 2003); id., Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli.
Propositiones 184-​211, ed. L. Sturlese (Hamburg: Meiner, 2014).
39 In this respect, Berthold’s project would hearken back to the efforts of the founder of
Cologne’s studium generale, Albert the Great. Albert’s even more ambitious aim of com-
menting on the entire Aristotelian corpus, and supplying original treatises when any part
was lacking from that purported whole, was undertaken in Cologne. Mulchahey (First the
Bow is Bent in Study, p. 261–​262) has made the compelling suggestion that the pedagogical
purpose of these commentaries was to support the nascent curriculum in natural philos-
ophy that was being encouraged by the Master General, Humbert of Romans.
40 Humbert of Romans, Expositio magistri Humberti super constitutiones fratrum
Praedicatorum, ed. J.J. Berthier, Opera de vita regulari, 2 vols (Roma: Befani, 1888), vol.
2, p. 28.
41 See S. Ringler, Viten-​und Offenbarungsliteratur in Frauenklöstern des Mittelalters (München
/​Zürich: Artemis-​Verlag, 1980); L.P. Hindsley, The Mystics of Engelthal. Writings from a
Medieval Monastery (London: Macmillan, 1998); S. Bürkle, Literatur im Kloster. Historische
Introduction 11

of Berthold’s pastoral activities can be found, even if the historical details can-
not be so easily discerned, in three writings from this monastery that appear to
describe related, or even the same, pastoral visit(s). First, there is the Engelthal
sister-​book attributed Christina Ebner (b. 1277 –​d. 1356), which relates, through
the lens of “the overburden of grace”, the history of the monastery and the
exemplary lives and deaths of many holy women and men who belonged to
the community, and which was written sometime between 1328 and 1346.42
Next are the so-​called Revelations (Offenbarungen) of Adelheid Langmann (c.
1305 –​1375), which were written approximately between 1330 and 1350, and
likely underwent further redaction.43 Finally, there is the hagiographical biog-
raphy or so-​called Gnadenvita of Christina Ebner, a work that is still unpub-
lished and whose intricate layers of composition and authorship are objects of
ongoing research.44
Philipp Strauch was the first to note the resemblance between the sister-​
book and Offenbarungen regarding the episode in question.45 Amid a series of
events datable to 1344 in the narrative, Adelheid recounted a mass celebrated
by “brother Berthold of Moosburg”, during which she had a vision “with her
bodily eye” of Christ standing “above the altar in his person” while the cele-
brant received the sacrament, but Christ did not see him and gave the final
blessing himself.46 In the Engelthal sister-​book, Strauch observed, there is

Funktion und rhetorische Legitimation frauenmystischer Texte des 14. Jahrhunderts

(Tübingen: Francke, 1999); J. Thali, Beten –​Schreiben –​Lesen. Literarisches Leben und
Marienspiritualität im Kloster Engelthal (Tübingen: Francke, 2003).
42 Christina Ebner, Der Nonne von Engelthal Büchlein von der Gnaden Überlast, ed.
K. Schröder (Tübingen: Laupp, 1871).
43 Adelheid Langmann, Die Offenbarungen der Adelheid Langmann, Klosterfrau zu Engelthal,
ed. P. Strauch (Strassburg: Trübner, 1878).
44 See U. Peters, Religiöse Erfahrung als literarisches Faktum. Zur Vorgeschichte und Genese
frauenmysticher Texte des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1988), p. 155–​176;
S. Bürkle, “Ebner, Christine”, in W. Kühlmann (ed.), Killy Literaturlexikon, vol. 3 (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2008), p. 163b-​165b.
45 Adelheid Langmann, Die Offenbarungen, ed. P. Strauch, p. 110. Willehad Eckert argued
that the two passages were written independently of one another and dated them
to approximately 1350. See Eckert, “Berthold von Moosburg O.P. Ein Vertreter der
Einheitsmetaphysik”, p. 124; id., “Berthold von Moosburg”, in K. Ruh et al. (eds), Die
deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, vol. 1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978), p.
816–​817, at p. 816.
46 Adelheid Langmann, Die Offenbarungen, p. 73, l. 13–​17: Ains mols do sprach ein prister mess,
der hiez prueder Perhtolt von Mosburk. do sah si mit leiplichen augen do er undern herren
enpfink, daz under herre stunt ob dem altar in seiner person, und sah des pristers niht und
er gab dem convent den segen. Bürkle, Literatur im Kloster, p. 119, interprets the text to say
that Adelheid saw Christ standing before the altar, and that it was the celebrant himself
who appeared to her in persona Christi.
12 Introduction

also mention of a mass celebrated by one from Moosburg (dez Mosburgers

messe), but here it was recorded as an event in the life of Anna of Weitersdorf,
who has a vision of Christ as a 30-​year-​old man as she went on her way to
the liturgy, for at that time “there was such abundant grace here”.47 Siegfried
Ringler then noticed striking similarities between this passage in the sister-​
book with another from the Gnadenvita of Christina Ebner and, most recently,
Susanne Bürkle has made a thorough comparison of all three passages.48 The
Gnadenvita narrative recounts a mass celebrated by an anonymous master
of learning (lesmeyster) in the octave after Epiphany, which was assisted by
a large crowd, which included Anna of Weiterstorf. Several details in the nar-
rative resemble those found in the Engelthal sister-​book’s account of Anna’s
life, but in the Gnadenvita her vision of the 30-​year-​old Christ was received
during the liturgy, where he appeared standing at or upon the altar, and not
while she made her way to the chapel. The account of the mass itself in the
Gnadenvita is also more elaborate: the lesmeyster was so overcome that, during
the Confiteor, instead of asking for the prayers of “you, sisters”, he referred to
the sisters as “you, innocents”, implying that he presumed the efficacy of their
prayers. Grace abounded, the narrator recalled, for everyone who heard that
mass. The celebrant’s admiration for the sanctity he encountered in Engelthal
carried over into a sermon preached in the early hours of the following morn-
ing, in which he announced that all sins had been forgiven, that all those
present were regenerated as children of God, and that all lost time had been
restored. Several months later, the same lesmeyster would visit Engelthal once
again, this time for ten days during Ascensiontide. This stay brought such joy to
the convent that the sisters composed a song in remembrance of the occasion
that, when recited, brought its singers into an ecstasy.
The relationship between these three narratives is difficult to establish.
Following the internal chronologies of the narratives themselves, Adelheid’s
vision of Christ during the mass celebrated by Berthold would have occurred
in the year 1344. Susanne Bürkle has indicated that, in terms of the sister-​book’s
account of events, the narrative context of dez Mosburgers messe would date it
either to 1313/​1318 or shortly before 1340. Bürkle has argued that the latter is the
more likely.49 The remarkable events recounted in the Gnadenvita, however,
again according to Bürkle, must recall a much earlier time, probably in 1325,

47 Christina Ebner, Büchlein von der Gnaden Überlast, ed. K. Schröder, p. 28, l. 17–​18.
48 Ringler, Viten-​und Offenbarungsliteratur, p. 89; Bürkle, Literatur im Kloster, p. 121–​122;
J. Theben, Die mystische Lyrik des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Untersuchungen –​Texte –​
Repertorium (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), p. 91–​92.
49 For what follows, see Bürkle, Literatur im Kloster, p. 123–​127.
Introduction 13

for they are recounted amid a series of episodes that can be dated between
1324 and 1328. As historical evidence these internal chronologies cannot count
for much, since one must yet take into account complicated questions con-
cerning the literary character of these works: the order in which the narratives
themselves were written, their interdependence, and the presence of later
embellishments (Legendarisierung) that are typically found in such literature.
Siegfried Ringler, following the narrative chronology more closely, maintained
the priority of the Gnadenvita relative to the other two texts, with the sister-​
book and Adelheid’s Offenbarungen following each other in close succession.
In this view, the later texts would have distilled the Gnadenvita’s lengthier nar-
rative of the events to focus on their impact on individual sisters in the convent
and to name the lesmeyster. According to Susanne Bürkle, this is “not implau-
sible” as far as the variants surrounding dez Mosburgers messe are concerned.
However, having taken a broader and comparative approach to other passages
from the prologue of the Gnadenvita, where she observes that the prologue
used materials already circulating in Engelthal as its foils, Bürkle argues that
the sister-​book narrative was likely the earliest composition. If so, the lesmey-
ster episode could be regarded as an elaboration of this earlier event, and as
such would exhibit literary techniques typical of the writings from Engelthal
and other communities of religious women in the 14th century, in which a his-
torical figure (such as Berthold of Moosburg) is reduced to his office (lesmey-
ster) as the event is creatively transformed into legend. Despite their divergent
views about the ordering of these narratives, Ringler and Bürkle concur that
all three passages stem from a single historical event: sometime in the 1320s or
1340s, Berthold of Moosburg visited Engelthal, celebrated mass, and preached.
For our purposes, it is enough to include these narratives and the ques-
tions raised by them without deciding in favour of one scholarly hypothesis or
another. Even if these narratives relate to separate visits, which has not been
ruled out,50 what they tell us is that Berthold’s pastoral responsibilities associ-
ated him with this important centre of mystical literature in his native region,
and that his relationship with the convent made a remarkable impression in
the communal memory of Engelthal and finally was assimilated to an extraor-
dinary period treasured from its history. The dating of these events also sug-
gests that Berthold’s association with the monastery preceded the mention of
his vicariate in 1348. Perhaps his relations with the community began around
the time of his lectorship in Regensburg attested in 1327, or even earlier. We may
note in passing that Henry of Ekkewint, the prior of the Regensburg convent

50 Thali, Beten –​Schreiben –​Lesen, p. 83.

14 Introduction

from 1321 to 1326, was also known to the community at Engelthal, where his
sermons were being read.51
After Berthold’s resignation of his executorship of Hardevust’s will in 1361
in Cologne, likely due to his age, we have no further documentation about his
activity. Not long after this, in 1363, some of his library, which seems to have
been bequeathed to Heilig Kreuz, began to disperse. And so, from the forma-
tion and the pedagogical and pastoral activities of this son of Dominic, we turn
now to reconstruct what we can of Berthold’s library, following, as far as we are
able, the chronology of his life and career.

2 Toward a Reconstruction of Berthold’s Library

A manuscript used by Berthold early in his career, as can be established with a

high degree of certainty, was his copy of Macrobius’ Commentarii in Somnium
Scipionis, preserved now in ms Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31 (hence-
forth B), f. 1r-​44r.52 The text of Macrobius is accompanied by numerous glosses
written in different inks. Among the vast majority that was written in a darker
ink is a gloss that refers to frater Thomas Aquinas, which would date the glosses
prior to 1323, the year of Aquinas’ canonisation.53 We will see that several other
manuscripts used by Berthold can be dated to the same period, insofar as they
either seem to have been used for the composition of these glosses or were

51 Bürkle, Literatur im Kloster, p. 105–​118; Thali, Beten –​Schreiben –​Lesen, p. 43. Henry of
Ekkewint is named in the Gnadenvita of Christina Ebner and a document from Engelthal
in 1323.
52 This section presupposes what remains the indispensable study of Berthold’s library in
Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xxiii-​lix. It will provide more details about some of Berthold’s
marginalia, take into account more recent scholarship, and propose different conclusions
about what Berthold’s library tells us about the dating of the Expositio. On ms Basel,
Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, see Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xxiv-​xlii; id., Dokumente und
Forschungen, p. 73–​76; Boese, Wilhelm von Moerbeke, p. 76–​77. The ex libris of Berthold,
whose name is visible after erasure, appears on the final folio of Macrobius’ In Somnium
Scipionis (f. 44r): Iste liber est fratis ｢Berhtoldi de Mosburch｣ ordinis Praedicatorum provin-
ciae Theutoniae.
53 In Somn. Scip., I.21.6, f. 25v: constat enim nvllam inter eas celerivs ceteris
tardivsqve procedere. Nota omnes planetas esse eiusdem velocitatis, secundum auc-
torem. Idem videtur sentire Boethius in Musica, libro I, cap. 2, ubi dicit: ‘Namque alii excel-
siores, alii inferiores feruntur atque in omnes aequali incitatione volvuntur, ut per dispares
inaequalitates ratus cursuum ordo ducatur.’ Sed frater Thomas super II De caelo et mundo
arguit oppositum. Quod expresse concluditur de sole, Venere et Mercurio, quorum idem est
tempus medium.
Introduction 15

copied by the same scribe responsible for the text of Macrobius. As for the con-
tent of glosses, Irene Caiazzo has shown that many of them are copied from a
commentary on Macrobius that circulated anonymously, but which scholars
have attributed to William of Conches.54 Berthold sometimes modified these
glosses, as in the case of the accessus (see table, below), and added many more
of his own.
After the Elementatio theologica, which was cited ten times in the glosses,
the text cited most frequently was the De musica of Boethius, in glosses clus-
tered at beginning of Book ii of Macrobius’ Commentary (27v, 28r, 28v, 29r,
30v, 31r, 31v, 32v). Other authorities mentioned include Albert the Great (De
caelo: 22r; De natura loci: 32r, 33r; Meteora: 35r), Al-​Farghani (19r, 19v, 25r, 32r),
Apuleius (12v), Aquinas (De caelo: 25v), Aristotle (22r, 39r, 40v, 41r), Averroes
(13v), Avicenna (17r), Boethius (5r, 6v, 13r, 17v), Cicero (3r, 4r, 18r, 32r), Geber
(32r), “Gregory of Nyssa” or Nemesius (40v), Homer (5v), Isidore (30v), the
Liber de causis (17r), Moses Maimonides (27v), Ovid (15r), Plato (3r, 4v, 18r),
Plotinus (38r), Porphyry (5v), Ptolemy (25r, 32r), Pythagoras (6r, 6v, 9r), Robert
Grosseteste (De sphera: 32r), Thabit ibn Qurra (19v, 25r, 30v, 32r), Valerius
Maximus (3v), and Virgil (5v, 6r, 11v, 13v, 32r). Berthold also referred to Dietrich
of Freiberg’s De entium universitate, a treatise that is no longer extant but is
attested in the early catalogues.55
The following table contains all of Berthold’s glosses that mention Proclus
or the Elementatio theologica. Its columns indicate the text from Macrobius
being commented upon, then Berthold’s gloss, and finally any passages in the
Expositio where the same passage from Macrobius was cited.
Most of these glosses cluster around In Somn. Scip., i.14.6-​9, where Macrobius
explained what Cicero meant when he wrote that “minds [animi] have been
given to human beings from those eternal fires”, and thus in what sense human
beings have mind in common with the stars. To do this, Macrobius set out an

54 See I. Caiazzo, “Mains célèbres dans les marges des Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis
de Macrobe”, in D. Jacquart, C. Burnett (eds), Scientia in margine. Études sur les margi-
nalia dans les manuscrits scientifiques du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance (Genève: Librarie
Droz, 2005), p. 171–​189, who observes (p. 179) that Berthold used what is known today as
the versio longior of the glosses, and either had access to a better witness of it than any
extant copy or corrected the text himself. A partial edition of the glosses can be found in
H. Rodnite, The Doctrine of the Trinity in William of Conches’ Glosses on Macrobius. Texts
and Studies, PhD diss. (Columbia University, 1972).
55 In Somn. Scip., i.17.5, f. 20r: qvod qvidem to pan, id est omne, dixervnt. Pan enim
non est aliud quam mundus ipse; nota de ratione universitatis ex tractatu magistri Theoderici
qui intitulatur De entium universitate. For the catalogues, see Sturlese, Dokumente und
Forschungen, p. 130–​134. For this gloss, see ­figure 2, below.
16 Introduction

table 1 Berthold of Moosburg's Proclean glosses on Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis

Macrobius, In Gloss Expositio

Somnium Scipionis

Accessus (f. 3r) Titulus talis est: Macrobii Cf. 176C,

Ambrosii oriniocensis In Sompnium p. 163, l. 206 –​
Scipionis commentum incipit. p. 164, l. 218a
Macrobius dictus est quasi longa via
[sic], utpote quia a celo incipiens
usque ad terram extendit, et de ea
etiam tractavit; sic vocatus est a
macros, quod est longum, et bios,
quod est via. Ambrosius autem
nuncupatus est quasi deorum cibus,
quia ambrosia est quedam herba, que
in sacrificiis deorum apponi solebat,
quasi cibus deorum sic appellata.
Contraxit autem hoc nomen ab
eventu, quia de immortalitate deorum
et animarum, quod est quasi cibus
eorumdem tractavit; quilibet enim
spiritus ab antiquis, et maxime
causalia entium principia, ut patet in
Elementatione theologica, appellati
sunt dii. […]
(i.9.1) Animarum (f. 13r) Proclus in Elementatione 206F, p. 223,
originem manare de theologica 206 propositione et usque l. 245
celo ad finem prosequitur istam materiam.
(i.12.6) Et hec est (f. 15v) Quia secundum 190 elementum 193E, p. 103,
essentia quam Elementationis theologice omnis anima l. 121–​123
individuam eandem media est impartibilium et specierum
que dividuam Plato circa corpus partitarum.
in Thimeo
(i.14.6) Deus, qui (f. 17r) Per 11 Procli. Cf. 22C,
primus causa est et p. 103, l. 190-​
vocatur 193; 157B,
p. 178, l. 41-​47
Introduction17

table 1 Berthold of Moosburg’s Proclean glosses on Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis (cont.)

Macrobius, In Gloss Expositio

Somnium Scipionis

(i.14.6) Qua (f. 17r) Nota processum Cf. 20A,

parte Patrem intelligentiarum et animarum p. 67, l. 99
inspicit, plenam celorum et orbium ex Avicenna,
similitudinem* servat que positio tamen rudis est in
auctoris, animam comparatione dictis Procli in sua
vero de se creat Elementatione theologica.
posteriora respiciens *De hoc Avicenna sup. lin. manu
Bertholdi
(i.14.7) Habet ergo (f. 17r) Omnis enim, secundum 207E, p. 229,
et purissimam ex Proclum, anima ab intellectu proxime
l. 151 –​p. 230,
mente, de qua nata subsistit. l. 188
est, rationem
(i.14.7) Quod logycon (f. 17r) Quia anima est divina,
vocatur intellectualis et animalis ex Proclo et 3
propositione De causis.
(i.14.7) Sed ex his (f. 17r) Nota ex Proclo et De causis tria
primum […] sunt esse genera animarum: quedam enim
caducis sunt divine et intellectuales, quedam
intellectuales non divine, quedam
animales tantum.
(i.14.8) Sapientes de (f. 17v) Nota de hoc Proclum 180
Deo hwyh nominant propositione.
ex illo mero ac
purissimo fonte
mentis
(i.14.9) Immo (f. 17v) Et ideo anima humana in
partem eius vix solis Proclo vocatur partialis (partialia cod.)
humanis corporibus circa finem libri.
convenire

a Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 27–​30.

18 Introduction

account of procession, describing how the hypostases of Intellect, Soul, and

Body arise sequentially from God.56
According to Macrobius, God, the first cause (here Berthold noted Proposition
11 of the Elementatio), produces Intellect from himself with the overflowing
fecundity of his power. This Intellect retains a perfect likeness of its cause or
father as long as it contemplates him (here Berthold compared Avicenna and
Proclus) but produces Soul when it turns to what comes after it. Soul in turn is
filled by its own father as long as it contemplates him (Berthold commented [f.
17r]: as long as “it is noble”), but degenerates to produce bodies when it turns
away. Therefore, the rational part of Soul (logikon) derives from Intellect (here
Berthold noted Proposition 193 of the Elementatio), but its sensitive (aisthetikon)
and nutritive (phytikon) parts come from itself (Berthold noted Proposition 201
of Proclus and Proposition 3 of the Liber de causis). The rational part of the
soul is joined with the divine, but the lower parts are bound to mortality (here
Berthold noted Proposition 184 of the Elementatio and the Liber de causis on the
three kinds of soul, perhaps thinking again of Proposition 3). When Soul creates
bodies, it begins from the purest contemplation of Intellect it had from its birth,
and thus produces the heavenly bodies and endows them with mind (here
Berthold cited Proposition 180, where Proclus explained how every intellect is a
whole but each in a different way: the unparticipated Intellect is an unqualified
whole, while every partial intellect is a whole-​in-​parts). For Macrobius, Soul’s
power degenerates as it inclines further toward the earth and finds that the
mortal realm is incapable of bearing the pure divinity of Intellect. Ultimately,
only the human body can receive the rational power. Here Berthold focused on
the word “part” and associated it with the propositions “around the end of the
book” of the Elementatio, where Proclus called the human soul a “partial” soul.
These glosses offer some precious hints about Berthold’s attitude toward the
relation between Christianity and pagan philosophy at this stage of his career.
He scorned the attempts of certain interpreters to identify the hypostases of
God, Intellect, and Soul with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, when he felt it was
clear that the philosophers –​not just Macrobius –​were referring to God and a
plurality of separate intelligences and heavenly souls.57 In this he was almost

56 For a translation and analysis of this passage, see S. Gersh, Middle Platonism and
Neoplatonism. The Latin Tradition, 2 vols (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1986), vol. 2, p. 526–​527. For some of the marginalia, see ­figure 1, below.
57 See In Somn. Scip., i.14.6, f. 17r: hec mens qvod noys vocatvr. Nota quidam (quosdam
cod.) mentem apud philosophos a Deo creatam dicunt esse Filium seu Verbum Dei a Patre
genitum, et anima<m> ab utroque manantem esse omne [?]‌ Spiritum Sanctum, quod tamen
derisorium est, sicut ex intentione eorum in libris suis theologicis patet, loquebantur enim de
Deo, de intelligentiis, de animabus celorum.
Introduction 19

certainly inspired by William of Conches’ criticism, found in the Chartrian’s

glosses on the same passage (In Somn. Scip. i.14.6), of those interpreters who
draw the parallel so directly that they endorse the heresy of subordinationism.
Berthold’s judgement, however, made no exception even for William’s own pro-
posal, which was to substitute genuit and mittit for Macrobius’ creavit and creat
to make the analogy more acceptable.58 Now, it is true that in the Expositio
Berthold will appeal to the Hermetica (Asclepius, the Liber xxiv philosopho-
rum) and to Patristic testimony (Augustine, ps.-​Augustine or Quodvultdeus)
for evidence of Trinitarian doctrine among the ancient pagan theologians and
Platonists.59 But such intimations and achievements were not his concern
here. His criticism in the glosses was not intended to define the boundaries
of paganism and Christianity, but to safeguard the existence of the plurality
of intelligences and heavenly souls as they were posited by the philosophers
(loquebantur enim de Deo, de intelligentiis, de animabus celorum) and, thus, the
integrity of what he will come to call natural providence (providentia natura-
lis). The assimilation of the three hypostases of the philosophers to the persons
of the Trinity would undermine the entire edifice of mediation that Berthold
regarded as essential to philosophical cosmology. Berthold’s Trinitarianism
in the Expositio was guided by precisely the same concern: God, the gods (or
primordial causes), the intelligences, and heavenly souls must be Trinitarian
principles, because this interior dynamism (of persons in God and of activi-
ties in the separate substances) is what accounts both for their causal fecun-
dity and, accordingly, the continuity of procession. Rather than resolving all
ranks of creatures into their Trinitarian principle, Berthold would identify
each separate substance as an expressed image of the Trinity. These principles,

58 ms Vaticano (Città del), Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb. lat. 1140, f. 80r-​v: hic, id est
Deus, creavit ex se mentem. Si dixisset ‘genuit’, bene dixisset, sed hoc verbum ‘creavit’
hereticum est. Forsitan autem ‘creavit’ posuit pro ‘genuit’. Mens [causa] Dei et Filius ab ipso
genitus est. Mentem enim divinam in hoc loco vocat Dei Filium qui est secunda persona in
Trinitate, ut iam apparebit in sequentibus in ipsis verbis. […] animam vero. Sic habemus
de creatore ipso qui Pater est nec creatus nec genitus. Ergo subiungit de anima mundi que
secundum quosdam est Spiritus Sanctus ex utroque procedens, qui omnia in mundo movet
et vivificat […]. de se creat. <Si> (secundum cod.) hoc dicatur de Spiritu Sancto, hereti-
cum est quod creat. Non enim ex se creat Spiritum Sanctum, sed mittit. Sed forsitan ponit
‘creare’ pro ‘mittere’. This manuscript contains a 15th-​century copy of the versio longior
of William’s Macrobius glosses. See É. Jeauneau, “Gloses de Guillaume de Conches sur
Macrobe. Note sur les manuscrits”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen
Âge 27(1960), p. 17–​28; I. Caiazzo, Lectures médiévales de Macrobe. Les Glosae Colonienses
super Macrobium (Paris: Vrin, 2002), p. 65–​67.
59 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40C, p. 39, l. 127 –​p. 42, l. 234; 131B, p. 191, l. 46 –​p. 194,
l. 117. See 1.1 and 4.3, below.
20 Introduction

in his view, can be most accurately understood only once one has read “the the-
ological books” of the philosophers and interpreted them on their own terms.
These glosses on Macrobius exhibit Berthold’s facility with the Elementatio
theologica and the Liber de causis. They also display a certain concordism in
his approach to philosophical cosmology, as when he noted basic agreements
between the philosophers –​Macrobius, Avicenna, Proclus, and the Liber de
causis –​concerning the four major genera of the universe (God, Intellect, Soul,
Body). By the time we reach the Expositio, however, we will see a very different
account of the history of philosophy that would have us separate this group
into two camps. We may note that this outlook is anticipated here in one gloss,
where Berthold unfavourably compared Avicenna’s account of procession
with that of Proclus (rudis est in comparatione dictis Procli).60
The content of these glosses exerted a limited influence on the Proclus com-
mentary. Looking to the right column of the table we find only one reference
to the Elementatio theologica in the glosses (i.9.1-​3) that matches a citation
of the same passage of Macrobius in the Expositio (206F). Three additional
non-​Proclean parallels may be noted: (1) a citation of the In Somn. Scip., i.12.6,
in 193E that is followed by a reference to Proposition 190 of the Elementatio,
which was also cited in the gloss to that passage in Macrobius (15v);61 (2) a
quotation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses is included in 206E as part of a lengthy
series of citations from Macrobius (i.12.1-​8) and appears next to the same pas-
sage in the manuscript (f. 15r), but in the Expositio the quotation is longer;62
(3) a description of mundus attributed to Apuleius in a gloss on In Somn. Scip.,
i.8.4 (the world is “the ordered collection of elements with their adornment”),
which does not correspond precisely to any passage from that writer, matches
a citation of Apuleius in 164D of the Expositio, included in a list of various

60 This remark looks ahead to Berthold’s comparison of “Peripatetic” and “Platonic” accounts
of procession in his commentary on Proposition 5 of the Elementatio theologica. On this,
see 4.2, below. Berthold may also have had in mind Proclus’ elaborate account of media-
tion between cosmic series in Propositions 108-​112 of the Elements.
61 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 193E, p. 103, l. 121–​123: Unde et Macrobius loquens de
anima sic dicit: ‘Et hoc est essentia, quam individuam eandemque dividuam –​Plato in
Timaeo’ ‘expressit’, unde et media est impartibilium et partibilium per 190.
62 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206E, p. 221, l. 178–​183. The gloss (In Somn. Scip., i.12.1,
f. 15r): descensvs vero ipsivs, qvo anima de celo in hvivs vite inferna
delabitvr, sic ordo digeritvr. zodiacvm ita lactevs circvlvs obliqve
circvmflexionis occvrsv ambiendo complectitvr, vt evm qva dvo trop-
ica signa capricornvs et cancer fervntvr intersecet. has solis portas
physici vocavervnt. Ovidius, ii Methamorphoseos dicit quod ‘biformes valve cingebant
regiam solis’, volens per illas valvas significare Cancrum et Capricornum.
Introduction 21

meanings of the word mundus;63 in this case, the definition and attribution in
fact derived from William of Conches’ glosses on Macrobius.64
It is nevertheless reasonable to suppose that Berthold continued to use
this copy of Macrobius or one very similar to it while writing the Expositio,
though this does not mean that every citation of Macrobius in the commen-
tary must be corrected against the text of the Basel manuscript, as it has been
in the critical edition, since many of Berthold’s citations in fact depended on
Thomas of York’s Sapientiale.65 After we set aside the citations deriving from
Thomas, those that remain reflect the corrections or interlinear glosses we
find in Berthold’s hand in the manuscript.66 Sometimes the text of Macrobius
quoted in the Expositio differs from Basel, with no changes indicated in the
manuscript, but none of these instances is so drastic that it could not reflect an
ad hoc correction, elaboration, or scribal error.67 This suggests either that the

63 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 164E, p. 34, l. 91–​92: dicitur mundus secundum Apuleium
ordinata collectio elementorum cum ornatu eorundem. The gloss (In Somn. Scip., i.8.4,
f. 12v): prvdentie vero mvndvm istvm et omnia qve mvndo insvnt divinorvm
contemplatione despicere. Apuleius: mundus <est> ordinata elementorum collec-
tio cum ornatu eorundem. Cf. Apuleius, De mundo, ed. C. Moreschini, Apulei opera quae
supersunt. Vol. III. De philosophia libri (Leipzig: Teubner, 1991), p. 148, l. 5-​6: mundus est
ornata ordinatio dei munere, deorum recta custodia.
64 See William of Conches, Glosae super Platonem, ed. É. Jeauneau (Paris: Vrin, 1965), p. 103,
n. A. Here Jeauneau refers to ms Vaticano (Città del), Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb.
lat. 1140, f. 59v.
65 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 6B (Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 3 and lib. vii, c. 2); 9B (i.6);
10A (v.21); 12C (v.21); 18A (i.6); 23E (i.20); 23I (v.16); 136A (i.6); 146L (v.21); 151A (i.14); 166G
(vii.12); 176B (i.27); 176C (i.28); 184A (vii.15); 190B (vii.18); 199B (vii.6).
66 Corrections in B match citations in the Expositio: Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 14I (p.
12, l. 340=41r: nisi] in B); 17A (p. 33, l. 17=38v: nec] ne B); 17A (p. 34, l. 55=43v: occasumque]
occasuque B); 17B (p. 35, l. 65=40r: movet] movetur B); 17B (p. 35, l. 71=40r: non] nec B); 17B
(p. 35, l. 94=40r: exercet] exiret B); 17B (p. 36, l. 108=40v: audere] audire B); 179A /​190A (p.
201, l. 61 /​p. 79, l. 93=29v: deinde] de B); 179A /​190A (p. 202, l. 63 /​p. 79, l. 94=29v: mundo]
modo B); 206E (p. 221, l. 193=15v: enim). One exception: the correction at f. 42r (actore]
auctore corr. sup. lin. manu Bertholdi) was not carried over in 17B (p. 36, l. 124).
Interlinear glosses in B also found in Expositio: 100I (p. 208, l. 169–​171=4v: togathon,
id est summus. protopanton, id est primus sive princeps omnium); in 151A, where Berthold
used the Sapientiale for the same passage from Macrobius, he did not include this gloss.
A gloss added by Berthold in the manuscript (f. 17r: estheticon, id est sensualitas) is found
in his citation of Macrobius at 207E; however, just two words later, the Expositio has phyt-
icon, id est generatio, which differs from the gloss (vegetatio).
Transliterations of Greek words in B also found in Expositio: 14I (p. 12, l. 311=40v:
antokineton); 14I (p. 12, l. 325=41r: antokineti); 190A (p. 78, l. 61=9r: thetrasim); 206E (p. 221,
l. 187=15r: tirocinia).
67 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 17A (p. 33, l. 23–​24: moveant] moveat B); 17A (p. 34, l. 29:
de] ex B); 179A (p. 201, l. 56: sequitur] sequeretur B); 190A (p. 78, l. 63: etiam] et B); 190A
22 Introduction

Basel manuscript was Berthold’s personal copy of Macrobius, which he cor-

rected when a better text was at hand, or that he eventually stopped using the
Basel copy when a better text came into his possession. Evidence in favour of
the first possibility includes the parallels in Basel and the Expositio that diverge
from variants in the apparatus of James Willis’ edition.68 Furthermore, some
citations of Macrobius in the Expositio were introduced with a remark resem-
bling a corresponding marginal note in the Basel manuscript.69 Finally, there
are Berthold’s other interventions in the manuscript, such as the enumera-
tions of arguments in the margins, trefoils, and interlinear divisions of the text,
which sometimes correspond to citations in the Expositio.70
The same Basel manuscript also contains Berthold’s copies of Proclus’
Tria opuscula (f. 46r-​59r: De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam; f. 59v-​
68v: De providentia et fato; f. 70r-​82va: De malorum subsistentia) and Proclus’

(p. 78, l. 66: epyneticon] epymeticon B); 190A (p. 78, l. 80: hoc] hos B); 206D (p. 220, l. 155:
rationem] ratiocinationem B). In 206E, the critical edition follows B, although the Oxford
and Vatican manuscripts share the same readings (p. 221, l. 173: dirigitur] digeritur B); (p.
221, l. 195: materiae] modo B); (p. 221, l. 198: vocavit] notavit B). The citation at 207E differs
from B (p. 230, l. 185: credique] crescendique B), but Berthold then paraphrases the passage
with crescendi instead of credi (p. 230, l. 193).
68 Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, ed. J. Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1970). Cf.
Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 132E (p. 203, l. 115–​119: ad unum meando] ad imum
meandi Willis), however (expressius] pressius B); 190A (p. 78, l. 71: creata] generata Willis);
190A (p. 79, l. 93–​94: competentiam] concordiam Willis), but cf. 179A (p. 202, l. 63: con-
cordiam); 190A (p. 79, l. 97: hoc] quo Willis); 190A (p. 79, l. 98: quem] hoc quod Willis);
206D (p. 220, l. 156: theoricon] theoreticon Willis); 206D (p. 220, l. 163: animal] animalis
Willis); 206D (p. 220, l. 165: arcae sita] arcessita Willis); 206D (p. 220, l. 166: hoc] haec
Willis). When the word order in B varies from the manuscripts considered by Willis, the
Expositio follows B: e.g., 17B (p. 35, l. 100), 179A (p. 201, l. 48; p. 203, l. 124); 190A (p. 79, l. 100);
206D (p. 220, l. 162–​163); 206E (p. 221, l. 185). Some variants are identical in both manu-
scripts of the Expositio and in B, but do not appear in the critical edition: 179A (p. 203,
l. 120–​121: Diocles] et add. O V B); 179A (p. 203, l. 121: septem] septimos O V B); 179A (p. 203,
l. 124: quiddam] quoddam O V B).
69 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 17A, p. 33, l. 13–​16: sicut recitat Macrobius Super Somnium
Scipionis libro II circa finem et colligitur ex verbis Tullii Ciceronis I libro Tusculanarum
quaestionum extractis ex Phaedrone Platonis, ubi disputant de animae immortalitate; cf.
In Somn. Scip., ii.13.1, f. 38v: nam qvod semper movetvr. Hic incipit loqui de anima
et eius immortalitate. See also Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 199E, p. 159, l. 250–​
253: Macrobius enim libro II inducens Plotinum sic inquit […]; cf. In Somn. Scip., ii.12.8,
f. 38r: in hoc ergo libro plotinvs. Nota commendationem Plotini cum titulo libri sui.
70 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 17B (p. 34, l. 57–​62: 39r); 17B (p. 34, l. 63 –​p. 35, l. 99: 40r).
Beside the passage quoted at 132E (see n. 68, above), Berthold wrote in B (In Somn. Scip.,
i.14.15, f. 17v): Nota de chathena aurea. Similarly, he cited Macrobius on the world soul at
190A (p. 78, l. 68–​78), and in B (In Somn. Scip., i.6.45-​46, f. 9v): Nota de anima mundi.
Introduction 23

Elementatio physica (f. 82vb-​ 84ra).71 The corrections and glosses to the
Opuscula were made by Berthold, as was the copy of the Elementatio physica,
at least up to Proposition 5. Even though Berthold’s ex libris appears only after
Macrobius (44r), and we know that that manuscript itself was probably bound
in its current form only in the late 14th century, it has been argued convinc-
ingly by Loris Sturlese that the texts of Macrobius and the Opuscula were in
fact copied at approximately the same time: a fragment of the beginning of De
decem dubitationibus, found at the end of the manuscript (85r-​v), which is part
of the same quire beginning at 80r, appears to have been copied by the same
scribe responsible for the Macrobius text and for the anonymous fragment on
optics at 45r-​v.72
There are some clues about the chronology of Berthold’s use of these texts.
Throughout this copy of the Tria opuscula, we find Berthold using sequences
of dots and Arabic numerals, written above the line, that clarify the word
order and sense of William of Moerbeke’s verbum de verbo translation from
the Greek. One would hardly expect this of a reader already familiar with its
contents. When Berthold was reading these texts, he was studying them seri-
ously for the first time. These interventions therefore offer us a precious win-
dow onto Berthold’s process of discovery as he made his way through this new
Proclean material. Given the importance of Proclus’ De malorum subsistentia
for Berthold’s Expositio on Proposition 206 (on the doctrine of the soul’s cycli-
cal descent and re-​ascent), where he will combine Proclus’ doctrine with pas-
sages from Macrobius on several points, it is intriguing that the Tria opuscula
were never mentioned in the glosses on the In Somnium Scipionis, even though
the Elementatio and Proposition 206 are. This suggests that Berthold studied
the Tria opuscula sometime after completing the glosses on Macrobius.
In the manuscript of the Opuscula, compared to In Somnium Scipionis,
one finds more corrections and interventions in the text but far fewer mar-
ginal glosses or references to other authorities. Apart from the Elementatio

71 Proclus, Tria opuscula (De providentia, libertate, malo). Latine Guilelmo de Moerbeke vert-
ente et Graece ex Isaacii Sebastocratoris aliorumque scriptis collecta, ed. H. Boese (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 1960); Proclus, Elementatio physica, ed. H. Boese, Die mittelalterliche Übersetzung
der Stoicheiosis physike des Proclus (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1958). Also in the manuscript
are four remedies written in Berthold’s hand (44v), an anonymous fragment on optics
(45r-​b), and the fragment identified by Loris Sturlese as Dietrich of Freiberg’s De subiecto
theologiae, copied by Berthold (69v). The fragment on optics is edited in Sturlese, “Note
su Bertoldo di Moosburg O.P.”, p. 254–​256. The fragment De subiecto theologiae is edited by
Loris Sturlese in Dietrich of Freiberg, Opera omnia, vol. 3. Schriften zur Naturphilosophie
und Metaphysik, eds J.-​D. Cavigioli et al. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1983), p. 277–​282.
72 Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xxxiv–​xxxv and xxxviii–​xl.
24 Introduction

theologica, which Berthold cited 17 times and with the same proficiency we find
in the Macrobius glosses, only Plato (52v), Pythagoras (58r), Aristotle (60r), and
the Manichaeans (78v) are mentioned in the Opuscula manuscript. Berthold’s
glosses that mention the Elementatio are listed in the following table (asterisks
indicate interlinear references to the text in Berthold’s hand). The third col-
umn does not list all citations of the relevant passage from the Opuscula in the
Expositio, which are often numerous, but only those cases where the specific
proposition noted in the gloss and the proposition containing the citation of
the Opuscula in the later commentary correspond.
Four of these 17 references to the Elementatio theologica directly correspond
to citations of the Opuscula in the Expositio, with one additional, though more
distant, parallel (120H). Apart from these, there are many trefoils,73 manicules,74
and other notabilia75 corresponding to passages cited in the Expositio. These
correspondences range throughout the Expositio but are, of course, clustered
around the propositions where one would expect to find them, on the gods
and their providence. They cannot, therefore, readily provide clues as to the
order in which Berthold wrote his Expositio. They do, however, suggest that
he continued to use this copy when composing his commentary. The variants
in the manuscript, as well as Berthold’s corrections, match what we find in

73 E.g., Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prologus 17 (p. 26, l. 702 –​p. 27, l. 719) and 197G
(p. 136, l. 139 –​p. 137, l. 172=64ra-​b); 1F (p. 79, l. 283–​293=48ra); 13C (p. 214, l. 174–​176=70vb);
48A (p. 95, l. 41–​48=61vb); 62A (p. 181, l. 17-​27=49va); 63E (p. 189, l. 102 –​p. 190, l. 119=71rb);
88A (p. 147, l. 43-​48) and 124B (p. 141, l. 86-​90=46vb); 102H (p. 221, l. 137-​155), 121K (p. 109,
l. 148 –​p. 110, l. 170), 170G (p. 101, l. 223-​237), and 197H (p. 138, l. 188–​206=47ra); 102I (p. 221,
l. 170 –​p. 222, l. 171=49rb); 120G (p. 102, l. 363–​372=46va); 121H (p. 108, l. 121-​125=48ra); 122B
(p. 116, l. 72-​81=48vb); 122D (p. 117, l. 116-​121=49rb); 122E (p. 118, l. 127 –​p. 119, l. 161=49rb-​vb);
124E (p. 114, l. 191-​198=47rb); 124F (p. 144, l. 207 –​p. 145, l. 220=47rb); 141E (p. 50, l. 165-​
178=49rb); 142C (p. 56, l. 120-​127=49ra); 143F (p. 64, l. 146-​161=79vb-​80ra); 143F (p. 65, l. 185-​
199=81vb); 143F (p. 65, l. 200 –​p. 66, l. 207=82va); 164A (p. 31, l. 16-​19) and 186G (p. 38,
l. 293 –​p. 39, l. 201=61vb); 206C (p. 218, l. 78-​89=74va).
74 E.g., Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 6 (p. 13, l. 268-​277), 26H (p. 158, l. 202 –​p. 159,
l. 213), and 161C (p. 12, l. 46-​52=72vb-​73ra); Prol. 15 (p. 23, l. 584-​587), 20H (p. 71, l. 245 –​p. 72,
l. 249), 120H (p. 102, l. 383 –​p. 103, l. 396), 188E (p. 65, l. 227-​230), and 193E (p. 103, l. 130 –​
p. 104, l. 132=59ra); Prol. 18 (p. 27, l. 719-​726), 114B (p. 44, l. 135-​140), 121M (p. 111, l. 209-​215),
and 129B (p. 178, l. 167-​177=64rb).
75 E.g., Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expositio tituli B (p. 38, l. 49 –​p. 39, l. 67), 44C
(p. 75, l. 80 –​p. 76, l. 111), and 185L (p. 26, l. 413 –​p. 27, l. 435=62ra-​b); 93B (p. 168, l. 57-​
67=47vb); 122F (p. 119, l. 163-​190=50rb); 124D (p. 143, l. 138-​150) and 127B (p. 162, l. 58 –​p. 163,
l. 62=46rb); 143C (p. 61, l. 45-​58=80va); 143C (p. 62, l. 79-​109=81va-​b); 143F (p. 66, l. 209-​
214=72ra); 164D (p. 32, l. 58-​59=79rb); 170M (p. 105, l. 363-​374) and 180O (p. 219, l. 257 –​
p. 220, l. 266=46rb); 185H (p. 24, l. 350-​355) and 206F (p. 223, l. 254-​260=75ra); 185L (p. 27,
l. 436 –​p. 28, l. 455=62rb-​62va); 206D (p. 220, l. 132-​139=74rb).
Introduction25

table 2 Berthold of Moosburg's Proclean glosses on Proclus, Tria opuscula

Proclus, Tria opuscula Gloss Expositio

(De decem dub., 1.3) Hec (f. 46rb) De hoc habemus 170M, p. 105,
quidem simul omnium et in Elementatione l. 363-​374
simpliciter theologica 170
propositione.
(De decem dub., 3.9) (f. 47va) Eodem
Quomodo discerneret in 176 propositione in
cognitione commento.
(De decem dub., 3.11) Que ante (f. 47vb) 93D, p. 169,
ipsum* finitum *Per 93 l. 98-​102
(De decem dub., 5.27) Que (f. 51ra) Per 56.
enim ex hiis que ab ipsa, et
ab ipsa
(De decem dub., 10.62) Quod (f. 58va) Cf. 120H, p. 102,
utique diis existentiam *Per 120 l. 374-​381
characterizare dicimus*
(De decem dub., 10.63) Omnis (f. 58va-​b)
equidem deus, ut dictum *114
est a me etiam prius,* **114
secundum le unum habet** ***Per 115
esse deus, quod utique ante
intellectum*** dicimus
existere
(De decem dub., 10.63) (f. 58vb) 64F, p. 197,
Duplicibus autem unitatibus* *Per 64 l. 155-​161.
entibus sive etiam
bonitatibus
(De mal. subs., 1.2) Quia* (f. 70rb)
omnia […] bonum appetunt. *Per 7
(De mal. subs., 1.5) Propter (f. 70vb) Per 8.
quod et appetitus boni
omnibus
(De mal. subs., 2.13) Omnibus (f. 72va) Hoc valet 6F, p. 135, l. 294–​
procedentibus […] per ad intellectionem 6 303; cf. 21F, p. 87,
similitudinem est theologicis Procli. l. 417-​420; 64C,
p. 194, l. 66 –​
p. 195, l. 73
26 Introduction

table 2 Berthold of Moosburg’s Proclean Glosses on Proclus, Tria opuscula (cont.)

Proclus, Tria opuscula Gloss Expositio

(De mal. subs., 3.14) Oportet (f. 72vb-​73ra) Per 28.

enim utique processus
totorum continuum facere
(De mal. subs., 10.31) Neque (f. 76va)
enim duo* prima: unde enim *Per 22
totaliter, monade** non ente? **Per 21
(De mal. subs., 10.31) Ubique (f. 76va)
gentium assimilari amat ad* *Per 28
generans
(De mal. subs., 11.37) Quid (f. 77vb)
enim ultra naturam boni?* *Per 8

the Expositio. What readings differ between Basel and the extant copies of
the Expositio could be explained either as an editorial decision on Berthold’s
part or a scribal error. In light of the foregoing, we may conclude that Berthold
began using this copy of the Tria opuscula around 1323, probably after he had
annotated Macrobius, and continued to use it throughout the period in which
he wrote the Expositio.76
Two, perhaps three, other manuscripts used by Berthold could be associ-
ated with this period of his career, since they may have been the source of
certain citations found in the Macrobius glosses that are securely datable to
1323. The strongest connection of the three relates to the autographs of Albert
the Great now in ms Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Vindob.
273.77 As Loris Sturlese first observed, a citation of Albert’s De natura loci in
the Macrobius glosses (32r) matches a trefoil and manicule next to the same

76 As Helmut Boese observed, Berthold corrected this copy against an exemplar related to
the best extant witness of the Tria opuscula (ms Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, lat. 473),
which belonged to the library of the Augustinians in Paris. This is not, however, sufficient
evidence to assert that Berthold made these corrections during an otherwise unattested
“stay in Paris”. See C. Steel, “William of Moerbeke, translator of Proclus”, in S. Gersh (ed.),
Interpreting Proclus. From Antiquity to the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014), p. 247–​263, at p. 252.
77 On the manuscript, see Sturlese, Dokumente und Forschungen, p. 120–​126, and on its trans-
mission, see n. 112, below.
Introduction 27

passage in the Vienna manuscript (145v).78 As Berthold would have known it,
the manuscript contained the autographs of Albert’s commentaries on the
Physics (from lib. viii, tr. 3, c. 1 to the end), on the De caelo, and his De natura
loci, and De causis proprietatum elementorum (ending at lib. ii, tr. 2, c. 6), which
the younger Dominican annotated sparingly.79 These texts probably belonged
to the Dominican library in Cologne, where Albert originally wrote them in
close succession, approximately between 1251 and 1254, as he began his com-
mentaries on the entire Aristotelian corpus.
Another manuscript used by Berthold (though leaving no trace in the
Expositio) and linked to the library in Cologne is now ms Dresden, Sächsische
Landesbibliothek, Db. 87.80 On its final folio we find an ex libris and a table
of contents in Berthold’s hand (268v), and in three places (1r, 103r, 268v)
the ex libris of the Dominican convent in Cologne. This suggests that the
works originally belonged to the library and were only bound together after
they came into Berthold’s possession. The manuscript contains the only
extant witness of Ptolemy’s Almagest in the translation of ‘Abd al-​Masīḥ of
Winchester (1r-​71r);81 the Liber introductorius Ptolomei of Geminus of Rhodes
(listed in the table of contents as Introductiones Ptholomaei in Almagesti),
which is Gerard of Cremona’s translation of Geminus’ Elementa astronomiae
(72r-​102v);82 an anonymous fragment on geometry (102v-​103r; not listed in
the table of contents); the Almagesti minor, which is a summary of Books i-​v i
of the Almagest but reorganised on a Euclidean model, which is attributed to
Campanus of Novara in the table of contents but in fact it is by Walter of Lille

78 Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. lv and Table vi. The gloss at In Somn. Scip., ii.5.12, f. 32r: inter
extremos vero et medivm dvo maiores vltimis, medio minores, ex vtrivsqve
vicinitatis intemperie temperantvr, in hisqve tantvm vitales avras nat-
vra dedit incolis carpere. Nota de hoc in Spera Lynconiensis qui ostendit versus
Austrum non esse habitationem. Sed Albertus libro De natura locorum, d. 1, cap. 7, concedit
ipsam habitabilem et habitari.
79 Some of Berthold’s annotations on Albert’s De caelo are transcribed in Sturlese, Dokumente
und Forschungen, p. 124. At the time of writing, I have not compared the few citations of
Albert’s Physica and De caelo in the Expositio with the Vienna manuscript.
80 Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xlvii-​xlix and Table iv.2.
81 D. Grupe, The Latin Reception of Arabic Astronomy and Cosmology in Mid-​Twelfth-​Century
Antioch. The Liber Mamonis and the Dresden Almagest, PhD diss. (The Warburg Institute,
2013), p. 77–​78.
82 For the Greek text and a short transcription from the Dresden manuscript, see Geminus,
Elementa astronomiae, ed. K. Manitius (Leipzig: Teubner, 1898). For an English transla-
tion from the Greek, see J. Evans, J.L. Berggren, Geminos’ Introduction to the Phenomena.
A Translation and Study of a Hellenistic Survey of Astronomy (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2007).
28 Introduction

(104r-​161v);83 and, finally, the Liber super Almagesti of Geber (Jābir ibn Aflāḥ)
in Gerard of Cremona’s translation, which is listed in the table of contents
as Flores ex Almagesto (162r-​268r).84 Berthold’s hand is discernible clearly in
one gloss (184r) and possibly in another (196v), both accompanying the text
of Geber.85 Berthold’s two references to Ptolemy in the Macrobius glosses
(ms Basel, ub, F.iv.31, f. 25r, 32r) or his single reference to Geber (32r) might
reflect his study of these texts. We cannot, however, be certain of this, since
he may have relied on other direct sources, such as Albert the Great’s and
Thomas Aquinas’ commentaries on the De caelo, which are cited elsewhere
in the Macrobius glosses. At any rate, this manuscript is further evidence of
Berthold’s interest in astronomy, even if his expertise in the subject cannot
be gleaned from the sparse traces of his reading left in these rare and tech-
nical works.
In the same Macrobius gloss that mentions Albert’s De natura loci (32r), we
find Berthold’s sole reference to the De sphaera of Robert Grosseteste in the
Basel manuscript. Loris Sturlese has made the interesting proposal that ms
München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14448, shows signs of Berthold’s
use, particularly in its table of contents (100r), whose hand seems to match the
ex libris and table of contents from the Dresden manuscript, and in two notes
indicating prices of sale (28v, 50r), and in at least one interlinear gloss (70r).86 In
the table of contents, we find listed the De sphaera of Robert Grosseteste,87 the
Compotus of Grosseteste,88 and the Elements of Euclid, while the prices of sale
are found at the end of the commentary on Ludolphus of Luco’s Flores gram-
maticae (2r-​28v) and the beginning of the De sphaera (50r). Sometime before
1347, the manuscript eventually was bound in its current form in Regensburg,
where it was conserved at the Benedictine abbey of St. Emmeram. It could
therefore shed more light on Berthold’s activity in Regensburg. However, on
the basis of the handwriting alone, without the ex libris we find in Dresden or

83 H. Zepeda, The First Latin Treatise on Ptolemy’s Astronomy. The Almagesti minor (c. 1200)
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2018).
84 D. Juste, “Geber, Liber super Almagesti” (update: 29.01.2018), Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus.
Works, url = http://​ptolemaeus.badw.de/​work/​70.
85 The first gloss is transcribed in Sturlese, “Note su Bertoldo di Moosburg O.P.”, p. 254,
n. 31. Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xlix, also attributed the second gloss to Berthold, but the
resemblance is not as clear.
86 Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. lvi-​lix.
87 Robert Grosseteste, De sphaera, ed. L. Baur, Die philosophischen Werke des Robert
Grosseteste (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1912), p. 10–​32.
88 Robert Grosseteste, Compotus, eds A. Lohr, P.E. Nothaft (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2019).
Introduction 29

the parallel gloss and marginalia found in the Vienna autographs, I am hesitant
to affirm that the interventions mentioned by Sturlese are Berthold’s without
further analysis. Be that as it may, all the evidence of Berthold’s activity at this
stage –​the glosses on Dietrich’s De iride from 1318, the glosses on Macrobius
with the authors cited in them before 1323, the autographs of Albert’s works
on natural philosophy, and possibly the treatises in the Dresden and Munich
manuscripts –​suggests that he was engaged in teaching natural philosophy
after his theological studies in Oxford, and had procured manuscripts to this
end, probably in Cologne, and possibly in Regensburg.
Another text of Albert the Great that certainly came from Cologne and was
used by Berthold, although we do not know when, is ms Köln, Historisches
Archiv, W 258a, which is entirely made up of Albert’s autograph of the De ani-
malibus that he wrote between 1258 and 1262/​1263, and included the treatises
De natura et origine animae and De principiis motus processivi.89 In it we find
Berthold’s ex libris (f. <I>r) and numerous interventions (notabilia, trefoils, and
crosses) that have been convincingly attributed to him, which demonstrate
the friar’s extensive and careful study of the text. This reading of De animal-
ibus was clearly undertaken independently of the commentary on Proclus,
although a trefoil does appear beside the only unambiguous citation of the De
animalibus in the Expositio.90 Of course, the subject matter of De animalibus is
quite remote from “the invisible things of God” considered in the Elementatio
theologica. Even so, for a more relevant treatise like the De natura et origine
animae, which was cited slightly more often in the Expositio in clusters around
Propositions 17–​18, 41, and 205–​206, we find that only one of these citations
corresponds to the marginalia in the Cologne manuscript.91
A far more important text for Berthold’s Expositio was the Clavis physicae
of Honorius Augustodunensis. Scholars have tended to assume that Berthold

89 Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xlvi-​xlvii and Table iv.1; id., “Note su Bertoldo di Moosburg
O.P.”, p. 257–​259.
90 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 18B, p. 48, l. 139–​150 = f. 335v.
91 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 41C, p. 49, l. 103 –​p. 50, l. 109 = f. 310r-​v. No markings
correspond to the series of citations at 17E (f. 314v-​315v) or the citation at 206B (f. 320v).
There are trefoils beside the passages from De natura et origine animae, tr. 1, c. 2–​6, which
are paraphrased at 205A-​C (f. 308v-​313r), but they do not correspond to the precise
expressions that Berthold copied from Albert.
Another manuscript of Albert (not an autograph) that Berthold may have used is ms
Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.i.21, which contains Albert the Great’s Ethica (his second
commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, from around 1262–​1263) and his De causis et pro-
cessu universitatis a prima causa, and was copied in the 14th century. Two trefoils align
with the only citations of Albert’s Ethica in the Expositio: 13B (p. 210, l. 48 –​p. 212, l. 100 =
f. 5rb) and 13B (p. 212, l. 119 –​p. 213, l. 143 = f. 8va).
30 Introduction

discovered the Clavis sometime around 1327, when his lectorship was attested
in Regensburg, since we know that the text circulated in two manuscripts in
the city by 1347.92 This view was largely influenced by Marie-​Thérèse d’Al-
verny’s study of the manuscript used and lightly annotated by Berthold (ms
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 6734), which traced its origins
to the abbey of St. Emmeram on the outskirts of the city, where Honorius
may have once resided.93 From this it seemed natural to conclude that one
of these two manuscripts was in fact the text used by Berthold, which would
account for his consequential misattribution of the Clavis to a Greek abbot,
Theodorus (even though the Clavis is listed anonymously in the library cata-
logues in question). However, in a review of Paolo Lucentini’s Platonismo medi-
evale published nearly 30 years later, d’Alverny announced that, after more a
careful inspection of the manuscript and in consultation with other experts,
she had revised her hypothesis about the manuscript’s Bavarian origins: the
scribal hand would rather locate the text in the region around Cologne, while
the extraordinary frontispieces and illustrations adorning the manuscript that
provoked Berthold’s misattribution follow a style more characteristic of the
Mosel valley.94
This has important consequences for the dating of the Expositio, since the
most convincing terminus post quem had been proposed by Loris Sturlese in
1974 on the assumption that Berthold’s Clavis came from Regensburg. If this
were the case, and by 1327 Berthold already had at his disposal the texts that
would become the foundations of his commentary (the Elementatio theolog-
ica, the Tria opuscula, at least some of Dietrich’s works, and the Clavis physicae
and, we would now add, the Sapientiale of Thomas of York), then all the condi-
tions would be in place to begin the Expositio as we know it.95 Now, however,
we must share d’Alverny’s reservations, and ask with her why Berthold could
not have found the Clavis in “Cologne or its environs”.96 This in turn revises
the dating of the Expositio, since we have seen that by 1323 Berthold probably
already had access to at least one very valuable manuscript from Cologne (the
autograph treatises on natural philosophy by Albert the Great) and possibly

92 Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xxi-​xxii, xliii-​xlv; P. Lucentini, “Introduzione”, in Honorius

Augustodunensis, Clavis physicae, ed. P. Lucentini (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura,
1974), p. ix–​xv.
93 M.-​Th. D’Alverny, “Le cosmos symbolique du XIIe siècle”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et
littéraire du Moyen Âge 20(1953), p. 31–​81, at p. 34, n. 1 and 36, n. 1.
94 M.-​Th. D’Alverny, “Paolo Lucentini, Platonismo medievale. Contribua per la storia dell’Eri-
ugenismo”, in Scriptorium 36/​2(1982), p. 348–​351, at p. 349.
95 Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xxii.
96 D’Alverny, “Platonismo medievale”, p. 350.
Introduction 31

the astronomical works now in Dresden. It is conceivable that he had also

encountered the Clavis at that time.
It is undeniable that the Eriugenian contents of the Clavis physicae would
play a pivotal role in the execution of Berthold’s commentary on the Elementatio
theologica. Eriugena’s thought came to Berthold from four sources: (1) the Clavis
physicae, which was by far its most important conduit, which Berthold attrib-
uted to a Theodorus, “the abbot of Constantinople”;97 (2) the glosses appended
to the famous Parisian Corpus Dionysiacum (ms Paris, Bibliothèque nationale
de France, lat. 17341) which derived from Eriugena but, by the mid-​13th century,
were indiscriminately attributed to Maximus –​all of which Berthold knew only
second-​hand through Albert the Great, Ulrich of Strassburg, and Thomas of
York;98 (3) the Liber de causis primis et secundis et fluxu quod ad ea consequitur,
which Berthold called De causa causarum and attributed to Al-​Farabi;99 and
(4) Eriugena’s Homily on the Gospel of John, which like many other medieval
authors Berthold attributed to Origen.100 The doctrinal and verbal correspond-
ences between these texts did not escape Berthold’s notice. In a more detailed
analysis of Berthold’s use of these sources, I have argued that he proceeded as
if texts 1 and 2, written by Theodorus the abbot and “Maximus the monk”, as he
was named in the Clavis, belonged to the same Greek tradition of commentary
on Dionysius the Areopagite.101

97 Honorius Augustodunensis, Clavis physicae, ed. P. Lucentini (Roma: Edizioni di Storia et

Letteratura, 1974); Honorius Augustodunensis, La Clavis physicae (316–​529) di Honorius
Augustodunensis, ed. P. Arfé (Napoli: Liguori Editore, 2012).
98 On this manuscript and its influence, see H.-​F. Dondaine, Le Corpus dionysien de l’univer-
sité de Paris au XIIIe siècle (Roma: Edizioni di Storia et Letteratura, 1953), p. 69–​71, 88–​89,
101, and 118.
99 R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l’avicennisme latin aux confins des XIIe-​XIIIe siècles
(Paris: Vrin, 1934), p. 83–​140. See also M.-​Th. D’Alverny, “Une rencontre symbolique de
Jean Scot Érigène et d’Avicenne. Notes sur le De causis primis et secundis et fluxu qui
consequitur eas”, in J.J. O’Meara, L. Bieler (eds), The Mind of Eriugena (Dublin: Irish
University Press for the Royal Irish Academy, 1973), p. 170–​181. Berthold used no chap-
ter divisions for this text, and sometimes referred to it only by its incipit (Principium
principiorum Deus est gloriosus, at 56D and 99B) or cited it only with the attribution to
Al-​Farabi (170H).
100 See John Scotus Eriugena, L’Homélie sur le prologue de Jean, ed. É. Jeauneau (Paris: Cerf,
1969), p. 53–​54.
101 E. King, “Eriugenism in Berthold of Moosburg’s Expositio super Elementationem theo-
logicam Procli”, in D. Calma (ed.), Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes. Vol. 1. Western
Scholarly Networks and Debates (Leiden: Brill, 2019), p. 394–​437, at 395–​414. On Berthold’s
reception of Eriugena’s doctrine of the primordial causes, see the extensive and funda-
mental study of E. Ludueña, La recepción de Eriúgena en Bertoldo de Moosburg. Un aporte
sobre la Escuela de Colonia (Saarbrücken: Publicia, 2013).
32 Introduction

It was under the banner of Dionysius, then, that Berthold received two cru-
cial doctrines that enabled him to navigate the most difficult passages of the
Elementatio theologica for a Christian to accept. The notion of the primordial
causes (causae primordiales) made by God the Father in the Word became the
key to Berthold’s interpretation of the gods, unities, or goodnesses (unitates,
bonitates) located between the One and beings, which could be assimilated to
the divine processions of Dionysius and the divine ideas of Augustine. Similarly,
the Eriugenian doctrine of the spiritual body, which belongs to the human
as the image of God (imago Dei) in Paradise, along with Eriugena’s concom-
itant teaching about the resurrected body, became Berthold’s only Christian
guides for interpreting Proclus’ notion in Proposition 196 of the indestructible
spiritual body or “vehicle” (ὄχημα, susceptaculum) that is always united to the
soul. Notwithstanding his initial hesitations, as we will see, Berthold included
the doctrine of the spiritual body transmitted in the Clavis partly because it
came to him with the Patristic authority of Dionysius, Gregory (=Gregory of
Nyssa), and Maximus,102 and also because it could be explained using the
ontology of individuation he inherited from Dietrich of Freiberg.
In the Expositio, Berthold cited passages from 93 different chapters of the
Clavis (out of 529) for a total of 132 citations.103 In his lengthier citations, he
identified the speakers in the dialogue, the Magister or Discipulus, who were
depicted on one of his manuscript’s frontispieces as Theodorus the abbot of
Constantinople and John the Monk. As was his custom with older sources,
Berthold’s citations of the Clavis were almost always explicit, although he
sometimes copied the text without attribution for teachings from even earlier
authorities like Dionysius or Maximus (e.g. 119E).
In light of the distribution of citations in the Expositio, one can note that
Berthold looked to the Clavis physicae principally in relation to the two chal-
lenging topics just mentioned: the gods and the spiritual body. The most exten-
sive and sustained concentration of citations (25) falls between Propositions
120–​129, on the gods and their providence. The most intensive concentrations

102 See 5.1, n. 30, below.

103 I follow the enumeration of the chapters of the Clavis in the critical editions of Paolo
Lucentini and Pasquale Arfé, but it must be noted that the subject headings in the margins
of the manuscript used by Berthold do not always correspond to them. Berthold referred
to the Clavis physicae as a continuous whole. He used the same relative references for
citations that are clustered close together (e.g., 2A: parum supra, aliqualiter infra), and
passages which were far apart (in 196F, bene infra signals a leap from c­ hapters 105 to 272,
but in 3A only from 137 to 142). Sometimes (e.g., 80G) he referred both to the approxi-
mate location in the manuscript (circa medium) and gives a vague reference to the subject
heading in the margin.
Introduction 33

are found in Propositions 196 (seven) and 210 (12), with other citations clus-
tered nearby, which are the central passages in the Elementatio on the doctrine
of the soul’s imperishable, immaterial body or vehicle.
The following table, in the first column, indicates the marginal crosses and
notabilia written by Berthold in his manuscript (with any brief glosses in his
hand). The second column includes references to the critical editions of Paolo
Lucentini and Pasquale Arfé. Finally, in the third column are any passages in
the Expositio where these texts from the Clavis were used.104
Unlike the Macrobius and Proclus glosses in the Basel manuscript, here there
are only the briefest of notabilia and no references to any other authorities.
Nevertheless, there is a clear correspondence between roughly half of the mar-
ginal trefoils and the citations from the Clavis in the Expositio. As Berthold stud-
ied the Clavis, it seems from his marginalia that certain ideas especially caught
his attention, all of which would feature later in his commentary on Proclus: the
theory of the invisible “universal” elements mediating between what is entirely
spiritual and what is entirely corporeal (Clavis, c. 43, 76, 83, 221, 273, 440, 442);
the doctrine of the spiritual body (Clavis, c. 102, 103, 105, 272, 273, 486, 487); the
primordial causes (Clavis, c. 16, 86, 91, 170); the return of all things to their causes
(Clavis, c. 308, 441, 459); human nature as imago Dei (Clavis, c. 94, 242); the good-
ness of creation and its substantiality (Clavis, c. 361, 451); and theophany (Clavis,
c. 13). Now, it is true that the Eriugenian doctrine of the primordial causes also
came to Berthold in the glosses on Dionysius and the De causis primis et secundis.
But what the Clavis had that these texts lacked were its considerations of bodies
that are invisible (the pure elements) and spiritual (the Paradisal body). The
Clavis thus provided doctrines that could relate the highest (primordial causes)
and lowest (invisible and spiritual bodies) cosmological realities studied in the
Elementatio theologica to other disciplines, whether to Christian theology or to
the disciplines of natural philosophy that seem to have especially interested
Berthold (optics, astronomy, the theory of the four elements, meteorology).
The Expositio, it must be said, represents the most extensive reception of
Eriugena’s thought known to date. Nevertheless, it is worth bearing in mind that,
unlike most of the medieval authors influenced by the Irishman,105 Berthold

104 A conferre indicates that a citation occurs in the Expositio that is closely related to, but
not identical with, the text marked in the manuscript. This table omits the corrections to
the text and the transliterations written in the margins by Berthold, which are listed by
Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xliv-​xlv.
105 P. Lucentini, Platonismo medievale. Contributi per la storia dell’eriugenismo (Firenze: La
Nuova Italia, 1980); J. Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre. Logic,
Theology and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981); É. Jeauneau, Études érigéniennes (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1987).
34 Introduction

table 3 Berthold of Moosburg’s marginalia to the Clavis physicae

Paris, BnF, lat. 6734 Clavis physicae Expositio

f. 7v 13 (p. 10, l. 4-​7) -​-​-​-​-​

f. 9r 16 (p. 12, l. 6-​10) -​-​-​-​-​
f. 16v 43 (p. 27, l. 14-​17) -​-​-​-​-​
f. 31r 76 (p. 54, l. 8) 129A, 210E, 210I
f. 35r 83 (p. 60, l. 18) -​-​-​-​-​
f. 35v 86 (p. 61, l. 1-​2) Cf. Prol. 4
f. 38v 91 (p. 66, l. 30-​31) 126B
f. 38v 91 (p. 66, l. 39-​40) 126B
f. 39v 94 (p. 68, l. 21-​22) 196F
f. 42v 102 (p. 74, l. 28-​29) 196F
f. 42v-​43r 102 (p. 74, l. 37) 196F
f. 43r 103 (p. 75, l. 10-​11) 196F
f. 43v 105 (p. 76, l. 4-​6) 196F
f. 78r 170 (p. 135, l. 9-​10) Cf. 140D
f. 97v 221 (p. 172, l. 2-​3) -​-​-​-​-​
f. 106v 242 (p. 191, l. 8-​9) -​-​-​-​-​
f. 120v 272 (p. 219, l. 2-​4) 196F, 210E
[de corpore spirituali]
f. 121r 273 (p. 221, l. 18-​19) Cf. 196F, 210C, 210M
f. 140v 308 (p. 261, l. 17-​18) -​-​-​-​-​
f. 158v 360 (p. 94, l. 1000-​1002) 18C
f. 159r 361 (p. 95, l. 1039-​1040) 18C
f. 200v 440 (p. 168, l. 3507-​3509) -​-​-​-​-​
[catholica elementa]
f. 200v 441 (p. 168, l. 3522-​3528) -​-​-​-​-​
f. 201v 442 (p. 170, l. 3591-​3598) -​-​-​-​-​
[prima materies]
f. 202r 442 (p. 170, l. 3599-​3601) -​-​-​-​-​
[secunda materies]
f. 208v 451 (p. 181, l. 3991-​3993) -​-​-​-​-​
f. 212r 459 (p. 188, l. 4206-​4207) -​-​-​-​-​
f. 228v 486 (p. 215, l. 5162-​5163) -​-​-​-​-​
f. 229v 487 (p. 216, l. 5223-​5224) -​-​-​-​-​
Introduction35

seemed to be unaware that these ideas we would classify as Eriugenian derived

from one author. To this rule there is only one exception, and it is related to
the fact that the name Ioannes Scotus appears in the list of Doctors of the
Church, “from whose books and teachings the commentary of the Elementatio
theologica that follows was compiled”.106 In fact, the name Ioannes Scotus is
found in the table of only one of the two extant manuscripts of the Expositio,
having been inadvertently or deliberately omitted from ms Vaticano (Città
del), Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2192. Whatever the reasons for
this omission may have been, it is very unlikely that Berthold regarded John
Scotus as the author behind the doctrines transmitted in the Clavis physicae
or as the source behind his other three Eriugenian texts. The only explicit
mention of Ioannes Scotus in the Expositio appears in a passage taken from
Albert the Great’s Summa theologiae on God’s condescension to the created
intellect in veils and theophanies that are required at the beginning of the
intellect’s ascent. Here, John the Scot is mentioned alongside John the Saracen
(Ioannes Saracenus) as commentators on the Areopagite.107 Since both figures
are mentioned together in the table of Doctors of the Church, it could be that
Berthold included them in that list simply because he believed they belonged
to a tradition of commentary on Dionysius; since for Berthold the authority of
Dionysius was upheld by “infallible reason”, this fact alone could make both
commentators worthy of membership.108
In the 16th-​century chronicle of Albert de Castello, the Brevis et compendi-
osa cronica de magistris generalibus et viris illustribus ordinis praedicatorum, at
least five works are attributed to Berthold of Moosburg:

Father Berthold of Moosburg wrote a large volume on the philosophy

of Plato, a commentary on the Elements of Proclus, another on the pole
of the rainbow that explains Aristotle’s obscure meaning in the third

106 See Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Prologus,
Propositiones 1-​13, p. 3, l. 21. Since there is no evidence to the contrary, I assume two tables
of authors were written by Berthold himself and appended to the Expositio.
107 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 16, p. 25, l. 665–​671. See Albert the Great, Summa
theologiae sive de mirabili scientia Dei. Libri I, pars I. Quaestiones 1-​50A, ed. D. Siedler
(Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1978), pars i, tr. 3, q. 13, c. 1, p. 40, l. 3-​11: Quod verbum Ioannes
Scotus et Ioannes Saracenus in Commentis […].
108 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 159C, p. 193, l. 142–​143: cum secundum Dionysium, cuius
auctoritas praevalet, cum innitatur infallibili rationi, angeli sint immateriales. A notable
exception to this, however, would be Thomas Gallus, who was cited at Expositio, Prol. 4
(secundum Vercellensem), but was not included among the Doctors of the Church.
36 Introduction

book of the Meteorology, a Summa theologiae, and many things on

astronomy.109

Apart from the Expositio, the other four works are otherwise unattested. It is
interesting to observe, with Helmut Boese, that the works listed by Albert de
Castello correspond quite closely to the materials we know independently to
have been related to Berthold’s library and teaching.110 It is indeed difficult to
imagine that Albert de Castello was writing with direct knowledge of Berthold’s
works, and that there existed a “large volume” on Platonic philosophy greater
than the Dominican’s vast commentary on the Elementatio theologica. The
“large volume on the philosophy of Plato” might, therefore, refer to a collection
of Neoplatonic works that could have included Macrobius, the Tria opuscula,
and the Elementatio physica, that are now bound in ms Basel, ub, F.iv.31. The
commentary on the pole of the rainbow could be a conjecture based on the
glosses to Dietrich of Freiberg’s De iride in ms Basel, ub, F.iv.30. The existence
of Berthold’s Summa theologiae, which if anything would have been the prod-
uct of his undated lectorship at Heilig Kreuz, has been questioned by Boese.
Loris Sturlese has shown that Berthold had access to a manuscript of the
Summa theologiae of Albert the Great superior to any other known witness
and made use of both of its major parts.111 Since, of all the works of Albert used
in the Expositio, the Summa theologiae was cited most, we might assume that
this lost manuscript of the Summa also bore Berthold’s ex libris. Finally, the
“many works on astronomy” could refer to the treatises in the Dresden manu-
script bearing Berthold’s ex libris.

109 Albert’s chronicle appeared in three editions (1504, 1506, 1516), the last of which is pub-
lished in R. Creytens, “Les écrivains dominicains dans la chronique d’Albert de Castello
(1516)”, in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 30(1960), p. 227–​313, at p. 283, and Kaeppeli,
Scriptores, vol. 1, p. 240: Fr. Bertoldus de Moysborch scripsit magnum volumen in philoso-
phia Platonis. Item super librum elementationem Procli. Item de polo yridis, exponens
intentionem Aristotelis obscuram in tertia methaurorum. Item summam theologie. Item
in astronomia plura. Berthold’s name, listed among other German friars under the year
1355, was added in the edition of 1516, when the number of authors included by Albert
increased from 75 to 275.
110 Boese, Wilhelm von Moerbeke, p. 73–​74.
111 L. Sturlese, “Super Dionysii Mysticam theologiam et Epistulas, ed. P. Simon (Alberti Magni
Opera omnia, t. xxxvii, pars 2) and Summa theologiae sive de mirabilia scientia Dei, Libri
I pars 1, Quaestiones 1-​50A, ed. D. Siedler (Alberti Magni Opera omnia, t. xxxiv, 1)”, in
Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, Series iii, 10/​
4(1980), p. 1691–​1698, at p. 1692–​1697. On this evidence, we can only surmise that it is pos-
sible that the Summa attributed to Berthold was in fact Albert’s, but not “certain” as Boese
(Wilhelm von Moerbeke, p. 74) claims.
Introduction 37

Sometime around the end of Berthold’s life, or perhaps following his death,
his library began to disperse from Heilig Kreuz in Cologne. In 1363, a Dominican
from the Viennese convent, Jodocus of Gorizia, copied Dietrich of Freiberg’s
De origine rerum praedicamentalium and Proclus’ De decem dubitationibus
circa providentiam (the text ends abruptly before the treatise’s tenth and final
question) and took these from Cologne, along with the Albert autographs now
in ms Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Vindob. 273. Jodocus
brought the texts either directly to Vienna or to the convent in Krems, whence
they made their way to Vienna in 1395.112 Helmut Boese has indicated that this
copy of Proclus, clearly written by Jodocus himself, appears to depend directly
on Berthold’s personal text of the Opuscula that later came to Basel. He also
surmises that the inexplicably abrupt ending of the De decem dubitationibus
and Jodocus’ premature departure from Cologne (assuming he had intended
to copy all the Opuscula) may have been related to the disturbance caused by
Berthold’s death. According to Boese, then, since the colophon dates the copy
of Dietrich’s De origine to the eve of Pentecost 1363 (20 May), and since there
would not have been much scribal work undertaken in Whitsuntide, Berthold’s
passing might have occurred sometime in late May or early June 1363.113 What
is clear, in any case, is that Berthold’s copy of the Tria opuscula remained in
Cologne until the turn of the 15th century, perhaps as late as 1407, approxi-
mately when a copy of it was made there for the library of Amplonius Rating
in Erfurt, and when the treatises were finally bound in their current form and
made their way from Cologne to Basel.114
The two extant manuscripts of the Expositio, both made roughly a cen-
tury after its composition, were copied in Cologne. The Vatican manuscript
(ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2192) was made in 1437 by the
Dominican Conrad Keller, who served as prior of the Rottweil convent.115 The

112 On this transmission, see I. Frank, “Zum Albertus-​Autograph in der Österreichischen

Nationalbibliothek und zum ‘Albertinismus’ der Wiener Dominikaner im Spätmittelalter”,
in G. Meyer, A. Zimmermann (eds), Albertus Magnus –​Doctor Universalis 1280–​1980
(Mainz: Matthias-​Grünewald-​Verlag, 1980), p. 89–​117. The explicit of Jodocus’ copy of
Dietrich and a summary of Frank’s article can be found in Sturlese, Dokumente und
Forschungen, p. 120–​126.
113 Boese, Wilhelm von Moerbeke, p. 72–​73.
114 Boese, Wilhelm von Moerbeke, p. 76–​79. Loris Sturlese’s suggestion (“Introduzione”,
p. lix, n. 54) that Berthold’s interventions can be detected in a manuscript of Dietrich
of Freiberg’s works now in ms Erfurt, Universitätsbibliothek, Dep. Erf, ca. F 72, is stated
more cautiously in Sturlese, Dokumente und Forschungen, p. 94: “ob diese Korrekturen von
der Hand Bertholds von Moosburg stammen, läßt sich nicht mit Sicherheit endscheiden”.
115 Boese, Wilhelm von Moerbeke, p. 74, n. 19.
38 Introduction

Oxford manuscript (ms Balliol College Library, Cod. 224B) was written by order
of William Gray in Cologne in 1444, before he embarked to Padua on the next
stage of his European tour.116 Having served as chancellor of the University of
Oxford from 1440–​1442, William had matriculated at the University of Cologne
on 1 December 1442 along with his two assistants, masters Richard Bole and
Nicholas Saxton.117 These two witnesses, and the obscure but significant refer-
ence to the Expositio in Nicholas of Cusa’s Apologia doctae ignorantiae, written
in 1449, suggest that Berthold’s work was receiving greater attention in the sec-
ond quarter of the 15th century.118
Surveying the traces of Berthold’s library, we may conclude that the only
manuscripts whose use can be dated with any certainty are those of Macrobius
and Proclus (ms Basel, ub, F.iv.31), with their glosses and annotations, and the
Vienna autographs of Albert (ms önb, Cod. Vindob. 273). These, and proba-
bly the astronomical works in the Dresden manuscript (ms slb, Db. 87) and
possibly the scientific treatises in Munich (ms bsb, Clm 14448), were known
to Berthold around 1323. The Vienna autographs, the Dresden astronomical
treatises, and the Cologne autograph of Albert’s De animalibus (ms ha, W
258a), show that much of Berthold’s extant library, which seems to have been
particularly focused on natural philosophy, was closely related to and depend-
ent upon the convent of Heilig Kreuz in Cologne. With the date of 1323 as our
only anchor, we may suppose that Berthold’s connection with Heilig Kreuz
preceded his appearances in the city’s records that began in 1335. As we can no
longer associate his manuscript of the Clavis physicae directly with Regensburg
and his lectorship there in 1327, and since we do not know whether Berthold
discovered it in the region of Cologne, where it seems to have originated, or
elsewhere, we must revise the most convincing terminus post quem for the
Expositio in 1327 –​not to mention the terminus post quem of 1335, which has
been asserted on the assumption that Berthold’s lectorship in Cologne would
have had something to do with the commentary and the internal politics of
the order as it responded to the trial of Meister Eckhart (d. 1328). In our study
of the Expositio, we will indeed find some striking echoes of Eckhart’s thought
at crucial junctures of the commentary, but our survey of Berthold’s career and
library gives us no reason to connect his lectorship, whose character was prob-
ably traditional and whose dating is unknown, with the Expositio. While we

116 R.M. Haines, “Grey, William (c.1414–​1478)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford University Press, 2004), online edition, May 2011.
117 H. Keussen, Die Matrikel der Universität Köln. Erster Band: 1389–​1475 (Bonn: Hanstein,
1928), p. 457.
118 See Conclusion, section 1, below.
Introduction 39

may more strongly affirm that the commentary project was likely undertaken
while Berthold made use of the resources of the Dominican library in Cologne,
but we must admit now that it could have begun any time after 1323.
If the content of Berthold’s marginal annotations reveals anything about
the formation of his commentary project, it suggests that the Tria opuscula
was, so to speak, the major and perhaps last piece of the puzzle to fall into
place. If the texts of Macrobius and the Opuscula were copied roughly at the
same time, and if the glosses on Macrobius were mostly written before 1323,
and if we find that Berthold was only beginning to master the contents of the
Opuscula at that time (as his system of dots and numerals to parse the trans-
lation would suggest), then it is conceivable that it was with the latter that a
new perspective on Proclus and his achievements came into full view. In the
Macrobius glosses, we find the Elementatio theologica, the Liber de causis, and
Avicenna cited as if Berthold held them to be basically in agreement on cen-
tral doctrines of cosmology, even if Proclus was the most sophisticated of the
group. No special emphasis there was placed on the Good or any principles
“beyond being” in Proclus or Dionysius. In the Expositio it was very much oth-
erwise. We will see that Berthold’s subordination of the Liber de causis and
the entire Aristotelian tradition of the metaphysics to the Platonic science of
the One and Good was only possible on the basis of the Tria opuscula, which
showed Berthold a Proclus whose anthropology and account of the modes of
knowledge and ignorance was in a deeper agreement with the De mystica theo-
logia of Dionysius than his predecessors and contemporaries had realised. This
gave an entirely new significance and even urgency to the correct understand-
ing of the principles or “thearchy” that the best of the pagan and Christian
Platonists located beyond thought and being. For this Proclean and Dionysian
anthropology implied a fundamentally different approach to the divine that
seeks union with God through supra-​intellectual ignorance and through the
awareness of a principle in the soul that is prior to intellect. In the Macrobius
glosses, we see a Proclus of the Elementatio theologica whose doctrinal author-
ity, even if Berthold cited it more than any other text, was approximately level
with the Peripatetic metaphysical tradition; in the Expositio, we have a Proclus
of a soteriological science of the Good, who has left us the Elementatio theo-
logica as the rational and discursive ladder to the non-​discursive apprehension
of the divine and, within and beyond even that contemplative beatitude, to
deification.119 As Proclus had described it in two of passages of the Opuscula,
such was the goal of Platonic philosophy: a state of cooperative union with the

119 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. L, p. 49, l. 408–​414 and p. 51, 475–​483.
40 Introduction

divine providence in generative silence, in which the soul “lives the divine life”
to the extent it is able.120 Berthold drew attention to both passages in his man-
uscript of Proclus with manicules (see ­figures 3 and 4, below).121 It is perhaps
in Berthold’s first encounter with these ideas that we discern the dawn of the
Expositio.

3 The Commentary on Proclus: Background, Purpose, and Exegetical

Methods

The features of the Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli that

first strike the reader are its length (amounting to eight volumes and approxi-
mately 1,900 pages in the critical edition of commentary on a text of less than
100 pages in length), its methodical composition and repetitive style of exe-
gesis, and its critical attitude toward the Metaphysics of Aristotle and, espe-
cially, the Liber de causis. These characteristics suggest that the Expositio was
intended to serve a pedagogical purpose within the Dominican order. In terms
of its content, at the very least, Berthold leaves his reader with the impres-
sion that Aristotle’s Metaphysics has value exclusively as a logical considera-
tion of being and its properties. This unusual but consistent portrayal of the
Metaphysics would entail that, while its importance would be reassessed and
relativised by the divine science of the Platonists, it would not be abolished
or supplanted. Berthold’s attitude in the Expositio toward the Liber de causis,
however, was entirely negative: he presented it both as an incomparably infe-
rior realisation of the propositional or theorematic method in theology and as
a baleful extrapolation of the logical consideration of being into the domain
of the separate substances, as when it stated in Proposition 4 that the first of

120 Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §64, p. 106, l. 9-​12; id. De provi-
dentia et fato, c. 8, §32, p. 140, l. 1-​9.
121 The other passages marked in this way in ms Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, are: f.
60rb (De providentia, c. 3, §5, p. 112, l. 11–​12: “the demonic Aristotle”, demonius Aristotiles);
f. 63rb (De providentia, c. 7, §24, p. 134, l. 10–​11: Plato on virtue as a “voluntary slavery” to
the gods that is the greatest freedom); f. 65rb (De providentia, c. 10, §38, p. 146, l. 3-​5: the
futility of prayer if human freedom is denied); f. 67rb (De providentia, c. 13, §52, p. 162,
l. 12–​15: souls desire to leave the body in order to enjoy deifying intelligence, deificam
intelligentiam, superior to intellect, and hope to gain a supernatural and divine compre-
hension of all things, supernaturali hac et divinali entium comprehensione); f. 70va-​b (De
malorum subsistentia, c. 1, §4, p. 178, l. 23–​25: the oppositions of good and evil found in the
world first take root hiddenly in the soul when the higher and rational part of the soul is
overcome by passions); f. 73ra (De malorum subsistentia, c. 3, §14, p. 194, l. 8-​18: angels are
revealers of the divine silence).
Introduction41

­f igure 1 
Glosses on Macrobius, In ­f igure 2 
Gloss on Macrobius, In
Somnium Scipionis (i.14.6-​7). ms Somnium Scipionis (i.17.5). ms
Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, Basel, Universitätsbibliothek,
F.iv.31, f. 17r F.iv.31, f. 20r

­f igure 3 
Marginalia on Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam (q. 10, §64). ms
Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, f. 59ra

­f igure 4 
Marginalia on Proclus, De providentia et fato (c. 8, §32). ms Basel,
Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, f. 64rb
42 Introduction

created things is “being” rather than “good”. If the Liber de causis was still being
taught in the schools –​and even this must remain hypothetical given our lack
of documentation from the German provinces of this period –​then we would
assume that Berthold set out to enshrine the Elementatio theologica in its
place. Since the Expositio is, however, silent about its pedagogical motives or
intended audience, we can only surmise the ends this commentary could have
served by looking to some thematically comparable projects among Berthold’s
Dominican predecessors from the point of view, first, of content (exegeses of
the Liber de causis) and then of form (philosophical compilations). Since the
most striking parallels in both instances appear mostly, though not exclusively,
among his German Dominican contemporaries and precursors, we must say a
word about developments in the scholarly understanding of this context.
Following the path opened by Martin Grabmann in his studies on Ulrich of
Strassburg in the 1920s, scholars have elaborated, criticised, and refined the his-
toriographical notion of a “German Dominican school” that is thought to have
spanned from the founding of the studium generale in Cologne in 1245 to the
mid-​14th century. When these paths were being charted, historians focused on
the common authorities, questions, and debates that engaged many of the phi-
losophers whose texts, for the most part, are now critically edited in the Corpus
Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi (Ulrich of Strassburg, Dietrich of
Freiberg, John Picardi of Lichtenberg, Henry of Lübeck, Nicholas of Strassburg,
and Berthold of Moosburg), with other figures like Meister Eckhart, John and
Gerard of Sterngassen, Henry Suso, and John Tauler emerging out of this intel-
lectual culture.122 When Albert the Great was held to be the founding figure in
this current, “the German Dominican school” at times became synonymous
with the notion of an Albertschule.123 Gradually, the closer scrutiny of the texts

122 Sturlese, “Alle origini della mistica speculativa tedesca”; id., “Gottebenbildlichkeit und
Beseelung des Himmels in den Quodlibeta Heinrichs von Lübeck OP”, in Freiburger
Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 24(1977), p. 191–​233; id., “Albert der Große und die
deutsche philosophische Kultur des Mittelalters”, in Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie
und Theologie 28(1981), p. 133–​147; id., “Proclo ed Ermete in Germania da Alberto Magno
a Bertoldo di Moosburg. Per una prospettiva di ricerca sulla cultura filosofica tedesca nel
secolo delle sue origini (1250–​1350)”, in K. Flasch (ed.), Von Meister Dietrich zu Meister
Eckhart (Hamburg: Meiner, 1984), p. 22–​33; id., “Il dibattito sul Proclo latino nel medioevo
fra l’università di Parigi e lo studium di Colonia”, in G. Boss, G. Seel (eds), Proclos et son
influence. Actes du colloque de Neuchâtel, juin 1985 (Zürich: Éditions du Grand Midi, 1987),
p. 261–​285; A. Beccarisi, “Le Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi (CPTMA)”,
in Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 57(2010), p. 425–​430.
123 See the discussion in A. de Libera, “Albert le Grand et la mystique allemande”, in M.J.F.M.
Hoenen, J.H.J. Schneider, G. Wieland (eds), Philosophy and Learning. Universities in the
Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1995), p. 29–​42.
Introduction 43

gave way to a sense of greater diversity among these figures, as Ruedi Imbach
spoke of “three models of mystical theology” in the Dominican school associ-
ated with Henry Suso, Dietrich of Freiberg, and Berthold of Moosburg.124 The
opposed attitudes of these German authors to the thought of Thomas Aquinas
has sometimes been used as a standard of further classification.125 But even
Dietrich of Freiberg, one of the most outspoken critics of Thomism in the late
13th century, differed from Albert on major doctrinal questions, as Kurt Flasch
has shown.126 Niklaus Largier has gone furthest to question the utility of the
notion of a German Dominican “school” altogether, given that we often lack
solid evidence of any direct institutional links between these generations of
thinkers and, as had become increasingly clear, such a term can obscure impor-
tant divergences among those authors.127 If the notion of a “school” implies
too much uniformity, it seems that some heuristic tool is still needed that is
flexible enough to underline the similarities between these authors. Perhaps
the more pliable “regional” approach, proposed by Loris Sturlese in another
context, with its attentiveness to common sources, questions, and debates, can
retain the heuristic value of a “school” without assuming or imposing doctrinal
continuities.128 But even here we must remain sensitive to the fact that, for

124 R. Imbach, “Die deutsche Dominikanerschule. Drei Modelle einer Theologia mystica”,
in M. Schmidt, D.R. Bauer (eds), Grundfragen christlicher Mystik. Wissenschaftliche
Studientagung Theologia mystica in Weingarten vom 7.-​10. November 1985 (Stuttgart-​Bad
Cannstatt: Frommann-​Holzboog, 1987), p. 157–​172.
125 L. Sturlese, “Eckhart, Teodorico e Picardi nella Summa philosophiae di Nicola di
Strasburgo. Documenti per una storia della filosofia medievale tedesca”, in Giornale
critico della filosofia italiana 61(1982), p. 183–​206; P. Porro, “Essere e essenza in Giovanni
Picardi di Lichtenberg. Note sulla prima ricezione del tomismo a Colonia”, in M. Pickavé
(ed.), Die Logik des Transzendentalen. Festschrift für Jan. A. Aertsen zum 65. Geburtstag
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), p. 226–​245. See also the special issue of the Freiburger
Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 57(2010).
126 K. Flasch, “Von Dietrich zu Albert”, in Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie
32(1985), p. 7–​28; id., Dietrich von Freiberg, 407–​409; id., “Dietrich von Freiberg und Siger
von Brabant. Eine Studie zur ‘Schule’ Alberts des Großen”, in A. Beccarisi, R. Imbach,
P. Porro (eds), Per perscrutationem philosophicam, p. 127–​141. See also A. Beccarisi, “Ex
Germano in rebus divinis. ‘Spekulative’ und ‘deutsche’ Mystik im Kontext”, in Quaestio
15(2015), p. 169–​182.
127 N. Largier, “Die ‘deutsche Dominikanerschule’. Zur Problematik eines historiographis-
chen Konzepts”, in J. Aertsen, A. Speer (eds), Geistesleben im 13. Jahrhundert (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2000), p. 202–​213.
128 L. Sturlese, “Universality of Reason and Plurality of Philosophies in the Middle Ages.
Geography of Readers and Isograph of Text Diffusion before the Invention of Printing”,
in A. Musco et al. (eds), Universality of Reason, Plurality of Philosophies in the Middle
Ages. XII Congresso internazionale di filosofia medievale. Palermo, 17–​ 22 September
2007 (Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali, 2012), p. 1–​22.
44 Introduction

example, Dietrich of Freiberg was deeply influenced by his lengthy sojourns

at the University of Paris, just as Berthold was by his more limited exposure to
texts and ideas in Oxford.
We will see that the philosophical motivations for Berthold’s valorisation
of Proclus arose within the thematics and debates of his German Dominican
milieu, above all in his inheritance of the thought of Dietrich of Freiberg, and
that this reception also led Berthold to look outside his immediate context
for resources and inspiration. His use of Thomas of York’s Sapientiale, likely
acquired in Oxford, is the most important in this regard. Another example is
Berthold’s acknowledged debt to Thomas Aquinas, whom he placed before
Albert, Ulrich, and Dietrich in the list of Doctors of the Church affixed to the
Expositio (sanctus Thomas de Aquino). We should not underestimate Aquinas’
importance for any later medieval commentator on the Liber de causis or
the Elementatio theologica, let alone a Dominican. Aquinas’ erudite compar-
ison of the Liber de causis with the Elementatio theologica and the writings
of Dionysius, and his identification of the Liber de causis as in some sense a
Platonic text because of its reliance on the Elementatio, was a watershed in
this history.129 The most comprehensive survey of the medieval commentary
traditions on the Elementatio and Liber de causis, which are still being uncov-
ered, tells us that “the Latin legacy of the Elements of Theology is bound up
with Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on the Book of Causes”.130 Berthold was
undoubtedly a witness to this trend.131 Aquinas’ methodical discussions of the
Elementatio in the course of his commentary on the Liber de causis would have
been one of the very few precedents Berthold could look to for insights into
Proclus’ text, apart from some scattered citations in Albert’s Summa theolo-
giae and Dietrich of Freiberg. To appreciate the novelty of Berthold’s project
when viewed from this angle, it is important that we have in the background
the complex and ambiguous position Aquinas adopted throughout his career

129 Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum de causis Expositio, ed. H.D. Saffrey (Paris: Vrin, 2002),
prooemium, p. 3, l. 7-​10: unde videtur ab aliquo philosophorum arabum ex praedicto libro
Procli excerptus, praesertim quia omnia quae in hoc libro continentur, multo plenius et diffu-
sius continentur in illo.
130 D. Calma, “The Exegetical Tradition of Medieval Neoplatonism. Considerations of a
Recently Discovered Corpus of Texts”, in D. Calma (ed.), Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages,
I. New Commentaries on Liber de causis (ca. 1250–​1350) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), p. 11–​
52, at p. 11 and 27–​40. On Aquinas’ commentary, see A. de Libera, “Albert le Grand et
Thomas d’Aquin interprètes du Liber de Causis”, in Revue des sciences philosophiques et
théologiques 74(1990), p. 347–​378; C. D’Ancona, “Saint Thomas lecteur du Liber de causis”,
in Revue thomiste 92(1992), p. 785–​817.
131 See E. Ludueña, “The Gods and Causality. On Aquinas’ Presence in Berthold’s Expositio”,
forthcoming.
Introduction 45

concerning the interrelation of the authorities of Plato, Aristotle, Dionysius,

Proclus, and the Liber de causis.
Central to that question was the status of the separate substances. When he
read Proclus, Aquinas re-​enacted Aristotle’s critique of Plato’s doctrine of ideas
in the Metaphysics, directing it against Proclus’ notion of “gods” beneath the One
by interpreting these gods as “intelligibles” subsisting outside the separate intel-
lects. According to Aquinas, the Liber de causis avoided this error, which brought
it closer to Dionysius, Aristotle, and the truth of things.132 Albert the Great had
underscored the importance of the Liber de causis as the completion of the sci-
ence pursued in the Metaphysics.133 As Thomas stated in the prologue to his own
commentary, citing Aristotle and John’s Gospel, the Liber de causis complements
the Metaphysics with a philosophical science of God and the separate substances.
The contemplation of these realities amounts to the attainment of felicity in this
life.134 Thus the Liber de causis was understood to play no small role in mediating
between the divine science of the philosophers and sacred doctrine.

132 Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum de causis Expositio, lect. 3, p. 19, l. 28 –​p. 20, l. 8: Et, quia
deos appellabant primas formas separatas in quantum sunt secundum se universales, con-
sequenter et intellectus divinos et animas divinas et corpora divina dicebant secundum
quod habent quamdam universalem influentiam et causalitatem super subsequentia sui
generis et inferiorum generum. Hanc autem positionem corrigit Dionysius quantum ad hoc
quod ponebant ordinatim diversas formas separatas quas deos dicebant, ut scilicet aliud
esset per se bonitas et aliud per se esse et aliud per se vita et sic de aliis. See also Thomas
Aquinas, De substantiis separatis, ed. Leonina, vol. 40/​D (Roma: Santa Sabina, 1968), c. 1,
p. 42, l. 112 –​p. 43, l. 133: Id autem quod primo est in intellectu, est unum et bonum: nihil
enim intelligit qui non intelligit unum; unum autem et bonum se consequuntur: unde ipsam
primam ideam unius, quod nominabat secundum se unum et secundum se bonum, primum
rerum principium esse ponebat, et hunc summum Deum esse dicebat. Sub hoc autem uno
diversos ordines participantium et participatorum instituebat in substantiis a materia sep-
aratis: quos quidem ordines deos secundos esse dicebat, quasi quasdam unitates secundas
post primam simplicem unitatem. Rursus, quia sicut omnes aliae species participant uno, ita
etiam oportet quod intellectus, ad hoc quod intelligat, participet entium speciebus. Ideo sicut
sub summo Deo, qui est unitas prima, simplex et imparticipata, sunt aliae rerum species
quasi unitates secundae et dii secundi; ita sub ordine harum specierum sive unitatum pone-
bat ordinem intellectuum separatorum, qui participant supradictas species ad hoc quod sint
intelligentes in actu.
133 Cf. Albert the Great, De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa, ed. W. Fauser
(Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1993), lib. ii, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 60, l. 3-​5: Propter quod et iste liber
Philosophiae primae coniungendus est, ut finale ex isto recipiat perfectionem; lib. ii, tr. 5,
c. 24, p. 191, l. 17–​23: In hoc ergo libro ad finem intentionis pervenimus. Ostendimus enim
causam primam et causarum secundarum ordinem et qualiter primum universi esse est
principium et qualiter omnium esse fluit a primo secundum opiniones Peripateticorum.
Et haec quidem quando adiuncta fuerint xi Primae philosophiae, tunc primo opus perfec-
tum est.
134 Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum de causis Expositio, prooemium, p. 2, l. 5-​13.
46 Introduction

The development in Aquinas’ thinking that culminated in the perspective

adopted in his late commentary on the Liber de causis has been charted by
Wayne Hankey.135 Central to this development was Aquinas’ understanding
of the authority of Dionysius, which was second only to Scripture, and the
character of his agreement with Aristotle. This concord became for Thomas
the authoritative basis for his doctrine of God as ipsum esse subsistens and his
anthropology of the rational soul as the substantial form of the body. In this
respect, Aquinas was profoundly influenced by the reconciliation of Dionysius
and Aristotle that he encountered as a student of Albert the Great at the
studium generale in Cologne between 1248 and 1252.136 But a significant dif-
ference between the two authors appears when we consider how they under-
stood the writings of Dionysius, whom Aquinas gradually identified more
and more as a Platonist. In his prologue to his De divinis nominibus Expositio,
written after 1266, Aquinas acknowledged that one of the major difficulties for
interpreters of Dionysius is that his “way of speaking” follows the Platonists,
insofar as he seems to speak of the divine names (e.g., per se bonum) as if they
were separate from God, who is superbonum, which is not consonant with the
faith.137 Ultimately, however, Aquinas insisted, Dionysius held that they are not
diverse and separate principles. For Thomas this meant that Dionysius shared
the Aristotelian position that the intelligibles are not outside the intellect.138
Nevertheless, Aquinas also came to believe that the Platonic approach to the
first principles contributed something essential that corrected a shortcoming
in Aristotle. In the Quaestiones disputatae de malo, written in 1272, Aquinas
explicitly stated that Dionysius “was in many respects a follower of Platonic
doctrine”, which took a correct view about the existence and number of
demons.139 The Platonic tendency to proliferate separate principles received
a positive interpretation in Aquinas insofar as their approach to the invisible
world, when it is balanced by the Aristotelian corrective, makes this domain of
reality more intelligible because the Platonists do not subject it to the strictures
of the sublunary realm. In the final reckoning, in the late treatise De substantiis

135 For what follows, see W. Hankey, “The Concord of Aristotle, Proclus, the Liber de Causis
& Blessed Dionysius in Thomas Aquinas, Student of Albertus Magnus”, in Dionysius
34(2016), p. 137–​209, at p. 143–​203.
136 Hankey, “The Concord”, p. 204, gives a list of passages in Albert’s commentaries on
Dionysius where the Liber de causis is discussed.
137 Thomas Aquinas, In librum beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus Expositio, ed. C. Pera
(Torino: Marietti, 1950), prooemium, p. 1–​2.
138 Thomas Aquinas, In librum beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus Expositio, c. 5, lect. 1, §634,
p. 235.
139 Hankey, “The Concord”, p. 209.
Introduction 47

separatis, which in many respects resembles the commentary on the Liber de

causis,140 Aquinas presented Dionysius as the Christian correlative and con-
summation of the authoritative and comprehensive philosophical agreement
achieved through the mutual corrections of Plato and Aristotle precisely on
this question of the status and number of separate substances.141
Albert’s “Dionysian Peripateticism” also exerted a profound influence on
Ulrich of Strassburg (b. 1220/​1225 –​d. 1277), who studied alongside Aquinas
at Heilig Kreuz from approximately 1248 to 1254.142 It is intriguing to see that,
almost exactly in step with Aquinas, Ulrich wrote a summa of theology (the
De summo bono), that was also structured on explicitly Dionysian princi-
ples, and which also may have been intended for the nascent studia particu-
laris theologiae in the Dominican order.143 It seems there were movements
afoot to develop pedagogical alternatives to the Sentences of Peter Lombard
for theological study, which may have been inspired by Albert’s focus on the
Areopagite in his lectures in Cologne.144 Like Aquinas, Ulrich had an innova-
tive understanding of the relation between Plato and Aristotle on the question

140 H.D. Saffrey, “Introduction”, in Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum de causis Expositio, p. xxxv.
141 Thomas Aquinas, De substantiis separatis, c. 18, p. 71, l. 3-​12: Quia igitur ostensum est quid
de substantiis spiritualibus praecipui philosophi Plato et Aristotiles senserunt quantum ad
earum originem, conditionem naturae, distinctionem et gubernationis ordinem, et in quo ab
eis alii errantes dissenserunt: restat ostendere quid de singulis habeat christianae religionis
assertio. Ad quod utemur praecipue Dionysii documentis, qui super alios ea quae ad spirit-
uales substantias pertinent excellentius tradidit.
142 On Ulrich, see most recently A. Palazzo, “Ulrich of Strasbourg’s Philosophical Theology.
Textual and Doctrinal Remarks on De summo bono”, in A. Speer, Th. Jeschke (eds), Schüler
und Meister (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), p. 205–​242. On Albert’s “Dionysian Peripateticism”,
see A. de Libera, Métaphysique et noétique. Albert le Grand (Paris: Vrin, 2005), p. 177–​209,
239–​244.
143 On the Dionysian structure of the De deo of Aquinas’ Summa theologiae, see W. Hankey,
God in Himself. Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in the Summa Theologiae
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). On the Dionysian structure of the De summo bono,
see G. Théry, “Originalité du plan de la Summa de bono d’Ulrich de Strasbourg”, in Revue
thomiste 27(1922), p. 376–​397; on its institutional context, see A. Palazzo, “Philosophy and
Theology in the German Dominican Scholae in the Late Middle Ages. The Cases of Ulrich
of Strasbourg and Berthold of Wimpfen”, in K. Emery, Jr., W. Courtenay, S. Metzger (eds),
Philosophy and Theology in the Studia of the Religious Orders and at Papal and Royal Courts.
Acts of the XVth International Colloquium of the Socitété internationale pour l’étude de la
philosophie médiévale, University of Notre Dame, 8–​10 October 2008 (Turnhout: Brepols,
2012), p. 75–​105, at p. 75–​90. On the studium particularis theologiae, see Mulchahey, First
the Bow is Bent in Study, p. 277–​321.
144 L. Sturlese, Storia della filosofia tedesca nel Medioevo. Il secolo XIII (Firenze: Olschki, 1996),
p. 162; A. de Libera, Raison et foi. Archéologie d’une crise d’Albert le Grand à Jean-​Paul II
(Paris: Seuil, 2003), p. 277–​278.
48 Introduction

of first principles that was inspired by Albert, according to whom Aristotle

reasoned about the separate substances using necessary arguments, while
the Platonists proceeded by probabilities and conjecture.145 However, as
Alessandra Beccarisi has shown, Ulrich reversed the connotations of Albert’s
judgement: whereas Albert immediately followed this remark by delimiting
the procedurally distinct domains of theology and philosophy for the student
of natural philosophy, Ulrich maintained that, on the question of the separate
substances, reasoning by conjecture must begin where necessary arguments
end.146 This resembles Aquinas’ own departure from Albert, as well as the har-
mony of Plato and Aristotle expounded in his De substantiis separatis.
In the commentary tradition on the Liber de causis, then, it seems that
Albert (via Ulrich) and Thomas Aquinas would have been Berthold’s two major
interlocutors. Their influence on Berthold has only begun to be adequately rec-
ognised. Ulrich’s De summo bono has been established as a major source for
Berthold’s doctrine of providence.147 We may also note that Ulrich was often,
but not always, the direct source for the many references to Albert’s commen-
tary on the Liber de causis that populate the apparatus fontium of the critical
edition of the Expositio. And if, by the time we get to Berthold, it was simply
taken for granted that Dionysius was a Platonist (Dionysius Platonicus), then
this is because Berthold followed in the footsteps of Aquinas and, in light of
new ideas available to him in Proclus’ Tria opuscula that William of Moerbeke
translated in 1280 (six years after Aquinas’ death), took them to a radical con-
clusion.148 Chief among these new ideas was the anthropology of the one of
the soul (unum animae). Proclus introduced this principle by passing beyond
Aristotle’s doctrine of intellectus to a Platonic and pre-​Platonic tradition that
was aware of a more hidden union or divine frenzy (divina mania) beyond
intellectual reflexivity.149 A connection between the pagan Platonic tradition

145 Albert the Great, Metaphysica, ed. B. Geyer (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1960), lib. xi, tr. 3,
c. 7, l. 19–​23: aut via Platonis aut via Aristotelis oportet nos incedere in materia ista de qua
loquimur. Platonis autem via fundatur super propositiones probabiles, non necessarias.
146 A. Beccarisi, “La scientia divina dei filosofi nel De summo bono di Ulrico di Strasburgo”, in
Rivista di storia della filosofia 61(2006), p. 137–​163, citing Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo
bono. Liber 2, Tractatus 1–​4, ed. A. de Libera (Hamburg: Meiner, 1987), lib. ii, tr. 2, c. 2 (2),
p. 31, l. 37 –​p. 32, l. 49: Sed quando coniecturando de divinis loquuntur, secundum quod
ratio probabilius dictat, tunc bene ponunt primam causam efficientem sine motu, sicut et
Platonici posuerunt.
147 T. Ferro, “Berthold of Moosburg, Reader of Ulrich of Strassburg. On Natural Providence”,
forthcoming.
148 See, for example, Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40C, p. 42, l. 214–​223, where Proclus’
gods are described as images of the Trinity.
149 Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §31–​32, p. 139, l. 1 –​p. 140, l. 9.
Introduction 49

and the De mystica theologia of Dionysius, not to mention other passages in

De divinis nominibus concerning the cognition “above the nature of the mind”,
was thus revealed. This new accord lay at the basis of Berthold’s reassessment
of Dionysius’ supposed agreement with the Peripatetic tradition and espe-
cially the Liber de causis, which called into question its status as the treatise
devoted to the science whose study leads to philosophical felicity. Nowhere is
this clearer than when he used the De mystica theologia to single out the Liber
de causis for criticism, along with all the other “unlearned” who are “sealed off
in beings”, having made the mistaken assumption that, since being is the first
thing made by God, being must also be God’s primary name.150
The problem these successors of Albert faced was to explicate the single
truth that they assumed must exist beyond the apparent discord of natural
philosophy and theology, and thus to secure the deeper continuity between
the study of nature and the beatifying contemplation of the divine. Berthold
took a stand in this lineage of interpreting Dionysius and the Liber de causis
when he moved the Elementatio theologica and Dionysius on one side, and
the Metaphysics and the Liber de causis on the other. In the divine science of
the Platonists, Berthold found a conception of nature that is not “sealed off in
beings” but grounded by and forever open to the exstasis of self-​communicative
Goodness. This was motivated at once by Berthold’s diagnosis of the human
condition (“we who sit, as it were, in darkness and the shadow of death”) and
by his philosophy of nature: God, for Berthold, was chiefly to be invoked by
the name of Light, most blessed and most simple (beatissima […] simplicis-
sima lux).151 His analysis of the nature and laws of physical light, as scholars
have noted, was the centrepiece of his understanding of the entire process of
procession and conversion. In the Expositio’s metaphysics of light, as it is fair
to call it, we have a new basis for the meditation of the microcosm, the mac-
rocosm, and the divine, and thus for establishing the bridge between natural
philosophy and revealed theology.152 Once this Platonic anthropology and phi-
losophy of nature had been retrieved (for Berthold, by going all the way back
to Hermes Trismegistus), whatever differences remained between pagan and
Christian Platonists had only secondary importance. From the standpoint of

150 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 71D, p. 35, l. 123–​127: Quem quidem firmati in existenti-
bus et non opinantibus aliquid esse super entia dicunt fore esse, sicut dicit auctor De cau-
sis: ‘Prima rerum creatarum est esse’. Esse autem est actus entis. Sed tales vocat Dionysius
indoctos, in 1 cap. De mystica theologia, ubi dicit sic: ‘Istos autem dico (subaudi: indoctos),
qui in existentibus sunt firmati nihil super existentia supersubstantialiter esse opinantes’.
151 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 21, p. 34, l. 975 –​p. 35, l. 977. For Berthold’s echo of
Luke 1:79 (qui in tenebris et in umbra mortis sedent), see 4.5, n. 291, below.
152 See 4.5, below.
50 Introduction

its content, then, the Expositio is best viewed as part of a Dominican exegetical
tradition on the Liber de causis that held Dionysius in the highest authority,
which Berthold emerged out of and attempted to reform.153
The broader commentary tradition on the Liber de causis antedated Albert
and Thomas, and continued well beyond the 14th century in the universities
and in the studia of the mendicant orders.154 Unfortunately, we know noth-
ing about its use among Dominicans in 14th-​century Germany since all rele-
vant documentation from provincial chapter meetings has been lost.155 Little
information even survives from the other provinces of the order. In 1305, the
Dominican general chapter in Genoa decreed that schools of natural philos-
ophy (studia naturarum), the first of which was attested in the province of
Provence in 1262, were to be instated in all provinces throughout the order.156
The rationale behind the establishment and development of these schools in
Provence at that time is not clear. Since Albert’s commentaries on Aristotle
were largely completed by 1262 and certainly all finished by 1271, the same
year Provence ratified the program in natural philosophy for the province,
it is tempting to ponder whether there was any link between the emergence
of these schools and the progress of Albert’s project “to make all these parts
[of philosophy] intelligible to the Latins”.157 Outside of Provence, the estab-
lishment of these schools happened more gradually. The Roman province,
for instance, after their initial hostility and then indifference to the teaching
natural philosophy, only created its first eleven schools of natural philosophy
in 1288.
According to the decree of the central authority in 1305, the studia natu-
rarum had a two-​year curriculum. By 1307 in the Roman province and by 1327 in

153 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. K, p. 48, l. 401 –​p. 49, l. 407: Ex praemissis
summatim colligitur et forma seu modus procedendi in hoc libro et ratio nominis ipsius,
quod a forma imponitur, scilicet elementationis theologicae, et quare non vocatur ‘prima
philosophia’ seu ‘metaphysica’ aut ‘de pura bonitate’ aut ‘de lumine luminum’ vel ‘de causis
causarum’ aut ‘de floribus divinorum’, sicut quidam alii consimilem tractantes materiam,
sed in excelsum dissimiliter a praesenti auctore suas editiones vocare curarunt. This list of
titles derives from Albert the Great, De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa, lib.
ii, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 59, l. 19 –​p. 61, l. 68.
154 D. Calma, “Du néoplatonisme au réalisme et retour. Parcours latins du Liber de causis aux
XIIIe –​ XVIe siècles”, in Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 54(2012), p. 217–​276, at p. 227–​238;
id., “The Exegetical Tradition of Medieval Neoplatonism”, p. 13–​26.
155 Palazzo, “Philosophy and Theology”, p. 75–​79.
156 For what follows in this paragraph and the next, see Mulchahey, First the Bow is Bent in
Study, p. 252–​277; Calma, “Du néoplatonisme au réalisme et retour”, p. 229–​233.
157 Albert the Great, Physica, ed. P. Hossfeld (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1987–​1993), lib. i, tr.
1, c. 1, p. 1, l. 43–​49.
Introduction 51

the province of Toulouse (which the province of Provence became after 1303),
it had been expanded to three years. In the Italian schools, one year was spent
with the Metaphysics, the De anima, “and related texts”, perhaps the Parva
naturalia, and another year with the Physics, On Generation and Corruption,
“and certain works following these”, perhaps the De caelo and the Meteorology.
Marian Michèle Mulchahey conjectures that, following the loose correlation
that can be discerned between the Dominican curricula and the more exten-
sive programme in arts at the University of Paris, the Liber de causis might have
been taught alongside Aristotle’s biological treatises in the third year of study,
but we have no direct evidence for this.158 In Toulouse, we know that the Liber
de causis was taught by William of Leus, but this occurred in its school of the-
ology sometime between 1290/​1291 and 1308.159 As for its schools of natural
philosophy, later records from Toulouse in 1327 placed Aristotle’s Ethics at the
centre of their annual curriculum with a three-​year rotation of his works on
natural philosophy. This seems not to have included the Liber de causis, which
was mentioned only as part of the curriculum of two newly founded studia
moralis philosophiae in 1330, where it appeared alongside Aristotle’s Ethics,
Economica, and the Magna moralia. So while we can be quite certain that the
studia naturarum were established in Teutonia in the early 14th century, and
definitely by the time Berthold began teaching there in the late 1310s, we can-
not know whether the Liber de causis was part of the standard curriculum.
The Summa of Nicholas of Strassburg, written between 1315 and 1321 and pre-
served in only one manuscript (ms Vaticano [Città del], Biblioteca Apostolica
Vaticana, Vat. lat. 3091), offers some clues about the situation in the German
Dominican schools of natural philosophy.160 This encyclopaedic compilation
was to be divided into four books, corresponding to the four causes (Book
i: efficient cause; ii: material cause; iii: formal cause; iv: final cause), but it
ends partway through the third book.161 In its prologue, Nicholas stated that

158 Mulchahey, First the Bow is Bent in Study, p. 271–​272.

159 D. Carron, “A Theological Reading of the Liber de causis at the Turn of the Fourteenth
Century. The Example of William of Leus”, in D. Calma (ed.), Neoplatonism in the Middle
Ages, i, p. 467–​550.
160 See Nicholas of Strassburg, Summa. Liber 2, tract. 1–​2, ed. G. Pellegrino (Hamburg: Meiner,
2009); id., Summa. Liber 2, tract. 3–​7, ed. G. Pellegrino (Hamburg: Meiner, 2009); id.,
Summa. Liber 2, tract. 8–​14, ed. T. Suarez-​Nani (Hamburg: Meiner, 1990). The critical edi-
tions of Books i and iii are in preparation.
161 For an edition of the prologue of the Summa and a detailed table of contents, see Imbach,
R., Lindblad, U., “Compilatio rudis ac puerilis. Hinweise und Materialien zu Nikolaus von
Strassburg OP und seiner Summa”, in Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie
32(1985), p. 155–​233, at p. 198–​223.
52 Introduction

one of his aims was to assist students who had been hindered by the lack of
books (defectus librorum) in the conventual libraries of the provinces. As Ruedi
Imbach and Ulrika Lindblad have observed, this resonated with concerns
raised at Dominican general chapter meetings in 1308, 1315, and 1323 about the
state of the friars’ education in the provinces.162 Nicholas explained that his
intention was to compile a work from the resources of the Dominican tradi-
tion, singling out Albert and Aquinas (doctorum ordinis et specialiter venerabil-
ium doctorum fratris Thomae de Aquino et domini Alberti), though the Summa
also demonstrates his familiarity with the writings of Dietrich of Freiberg, John
Picardi of Lichtenberg, and Hervaeus Natalis.163 In light of these declarations,
and Nicholas’ self-​deprecating characterisation of the Summa as “an unskilled
and childish compilation” (compilatio rudis ac puerilis), Imbach and Lindblad
have insisted that the work should not be judged according to its innovations,
but as “an encyclopaedic manual of philosophy”.164
Gianfranco Pellegrino has made an important qualification of this verdict
by pointing out that the Summa was intended to be much more than a florile-
gium of juxtaposed sources: Nicholas sought to produce a coherent argument
about the nature of wisdom itself.165 Pellegrino draws attention to Nicholas’
use of the commentary of William of Conches on Boethius’ Consolatio phi-
losophiae and, specifically, to his interpretation of the allegorical meaning of
the garment worn by Lady Philosophy. The prisoner in the Consolatio learns
that Philosophy sewed this garment for herself after it was torn apart in the
sectarian divides that arose after the time of Plato. Pellegrino argues that this
image must have resonated with the Dominican friar, who was confronted
not only with the lack of books in the provincial studia, but also with the
disaggregation of philosophical wisdom in the abundance of compendia,
florilegia, tables, abbreviations, and concordances. What was needed for the
reunification of wisdom was not another work in the style of pro et contra

162 See Imbach, Lindblad, “Compilatio rudis ac puerilis”, p. 177–​180, who argue that Nicholas
likely had the studia naturarum in mind.
163 Sturlese, “Eckhart, Teodorico e Picardi”; Imbach, Lindblad, “Compilatio rudis ac puerilis”,
p. 180–​187.
164 Imbach, Lindblad, “Compilatio rudis ac puerilis”, p. 182.
165 G. Pellegrino, “La Summa di Nicola di Strasburgo (1315–​1320). Compilatio rudis ac puerilis
o novus libellus?”, in A. Beccarisi, R. Imbach, P. Porro (eds), Per perscrutationem philosophi-
cam, p. 204–​215; id., “Novus ex veteribus libellus. Guglielmo di Conches nella Summa di
Nicola di Strasburgo”, in C. Martello, C. Militello, A. Vella (eds), Cosmogonie e cosmologie
nel medioevo. Atti del Convegno della Società italiana per lo studio del pensiero medievale
(S.I.S.P.M.), Catania, 22–​24 settembre 2006 (Louvain-​la-​Neuve: Fédération Internationale
des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2008), p. 339–​349.
Introduction 53

Thomam, but a new book (novum libellum) that looked to the past as a source
of renewal.166
Berthold was educated within the order as it acknowledged and responded
to the need for a reform of studies. In 1315, when Nicholas began composing
his Summa, Berthold was dispatched to Oxford. Like Nicholas, Berthold would
aim to consolidate a Dominican tradition of philosophical theology. Nicholas
was engaged, sometimes critically, with the thought of Dietrich of Freiberg, but
generally he opted for more concordist attitude.167 Berthold, who was more
influenced by Dietrich than any other contemporary author, shared more of
Dietrich’s combative spirit, and in fact redoubled and redirected Dietrich’s
criticisms beyond their original scope.168 Both Nicholas and Berthold endeav-
oured to follow Albert’s methodological principle that philosophy should pro-
ceed in the light of its own principles without theological intervention.169 Both
Dominicans referred to their works as “compilations”.170

166 Pellegrino, “La Summa di Nicola di Strasburgo”, p. 205: “Secondo Nicola il rinnovamento
culturale è possibile solo in continuità con il passato perchè gli aurea tempora sono pas-
sati, ma non per sempre”.
167 On Dietrich in Nicholas, see Sturlese, “Eckhart, Teodorico e Picardi”; Imbach, Lindblad,
“Compilatio rudis ac puerilis”, p. 182–​189; T. Suarez-​Nani, Tempo ed essere nell’autunno del
medioevo. Il De tempore di Nicola di Strasburgo e il dibattito sulla natura ed il senso del tempo
agli inizi del XIV secolo (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1989); U.R. Jeck, Aristoteles contra Augustinum.
Zur Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Zeit und Seele bei den antiken Aristoteleskommentatoren
im arabischen Aristotelismus und im 13. Jahrhundert (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1994); N. Largier,
“Time and Temporality in the ‘German Dominican School’. Outlines of a Philosophical
Debate Between Nicolaus of Strasbourg, Dietrich of Freiberg, Eckhart of Hoheim, and
Ioannes Tauler”, in P. Porro (ed.), The Medieval Concept of Time. Studies on the Scholastic
Debate and Its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 221–​253.
168 E. King, “Sapiens modernus. The Reception of Dietrich of Freiberg in Berthold of
Moosburg”, forthcoming.
169 Berthold effectively refers to his text as a compilatio in the two tabulae auctorum (compi-
lata est). For Nicholas and Albert’s methodology, see Imbach, Lindblad, “Compilatio rudis
ac puerilis”, p. 189: “Nikolaus bedient sich bei der Redaktion seiner compilatio rudis ac
puerilis des albertschen Methodenprinzips einer scharfen Trennung von Philosophie und
Theologie, um mit Hilfe von Texten aus dem Umkreis des Pariser Schulthomismus die
Autonomie und Eigenart der deutschen Philosophie zu unterwandern und sie mit alter-
nativen Denkmodellen zu konfrontieren.”
170 With the Expositio Berthold included a table of authorities (tabula auctorum) comprised
of two lists, “the doctors of the Church” and “the renown philosophers”. Each list is pref-
aced with the heading, “from whose books and teachings the following Exposition of the
Theological Elementation is compiled” (de quorum libris et sententiis infra scripta expositio
Elementationis theologicae compilata est). In both extant manuscripts, the lists appear
after the index. However, both lists in the Vatican manuscript read “infra scripta”, while
the Oxford manuscript has “infra” for the doctores, and “supra” for the philosophi. See
the “Prolegomena” to Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam
Procli. Prologus, Propositiones 1–​13, p. xlii.
54 Introduction

Of Berthold it has been said that his “originality […] often consists in the
cutting and mixing of his sources so as to make them say what they originally
did not”.171 In one sense, this is a profoundly accurate judgement that under-
scores the need to read Berthold intertextually, by making constant compari-
sons with his sources. Leaving things there, however, one would miss the for-
est for the trees. To discover the deeper coherence of Berthold’s philosophical
vision, one must attend to the patterns of his modifications and juxtapositions
in his commentary-​as-​compilation, for there was in his view a point where all
these lines must converge. Like Nicholas, Berthold used Boethius’ ekphrasis of
Lady Philosophy’s garment to describe the character of his project. Berthold,
however, did not opt for a model derived from Aristotle (the four causes) to
preserve it intact. The most important detail in the ekphrasis, in his view, was
the image of the ladder emblazoned on her robe, which he used as a simile for
the individual propositions of the Elementatio theologica, which, he believed,
revived the pristine philosophy that Plato had once articulated in theorems
(theoremata), and which would lead not only to bliss in this life, but even deifi-
cation (omnis beatus deus).172 This was a Boethian amplification of the praises
that Aquinas and others had bestowed upon the Liber de causis, as a science
of the realities whose contemplation leads to felicity in this life. In terms of its
form, practical utility, and its audience, the Summa of Nicholas of Strassburg
is probably the closest parallel we have to the Expositio. For Berthold, however,
the integrity and intricacy of Lady Philosophy’s garment was appreciated only
by looking much further back than the aurea tempora of 13th-​century achieve-
ments, but to the accord of her most ancient devotees.
After the loftier and exhortative prefaces to the Expositio, which are freer
and more creative in their execution of traditional medieval literary forms, a
reader of the commentary cannot help but notice, if not suffer, the repetitive
style of Berthold’s exegesis of the Elementatio itself. He commented on each
proposition using a basic and uniform structure. First, he always began by cop-
ying the proposition from the Elementatio, without Proclus’ proof. If the prop-
osition in question is the first of what Berthold regarded as a thematic group,
he would signal the subsequent stages of the argument (e.g., Proposition 1;
Proposition 14). Most of the time, however, Berthold would briefly state how
the proposition in question logically followed the preceding one. He would

171 C. Steel, “The Neoplatonic Doctrine of Time and Eternity and its Influence on Medieval
Philosophy”, in P. Porro (ed.), The Medieval Concept of Time. Studies on the Scholastic
Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 3–​32, at p. 29.
172 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. A, p. 37, l. 14–​29; Expos. tit. L, p. 49, l. 408 –​p. 51,
l. 479.
Introduction 55

then announce the division of his own commentary, which almost always fell
in two parts, which he called the suppositum and the propositum, “what is sup-
posed” and “what is proposed”. The suppositum and propositum almost always
have tripartite subdivisions corresponding to distinct arguments. These two
principal parts are comprised mostly of tacit and explicit citations, and they
take up most of the Expositio. Finally, Berthold copied Proclus’ own commen-
tum or demonstration, which he analysed by distilling the argument to syllo-
gisms, with frequent cross-​references to earlier propositions, and rarely made
any appeal to external authority.
Berthold’s procedure in these three parts (suppositum, propositum, commen-
tum) thus wove together two exegetical methods. Both can be said to reflect
specifically on the literal sense of the Elementatio theologica and, accordingly,
of the entire philosophical tradition that Berthold compiled upon its frame.173
The first tendency was based more on tradition and authority. Berthold evi-
dently wrote the suppositum with the individual terms and concepts of the
proposition itself in view and sought to introduce the reader to the broader
philosophical history presupposed by these terms and by Proclus’ argument
in the proposition. Whether those sources were later than the Elementatio
was of no significance. A typical example is the suppositum of Proposition
2 (“Everything, that participates one, is one and not one”):174 first, Berthold
offered one or more general definitions or descriptions of the notion of “par-
ticipation” (in generali), which he synthesised explicitly from older sources
(Clavis physicae, Augustine, Boethius, and Gilbert of Poitiers) and tacitly from
contemporary ones (Dietrich of Freiberg); secondly, he enumerated the pos-
sible modalities of “participation” in particular (in speciali), which amounted
to a kind of index of the orders of invisible substances; thirdly, he presented a
synthesis of the general and particular that applied the background directly to
the subject of proposition, by relating the particular modalities of participa-
tion to their common source in the One. The reader thus would be brought to
see how succinctly this rich doctrinal background is presupposed and recapit-
ulated in Proclus’ proposition. The second principal part or propositum often
proceeded in a similar fashion but looked ahead to the terms and arguments

173 On Berthold’s concern to establish the literal sense of the Elementatio and his compari-
son of manuscripts to establish the correct text, see L. Sturlese, “Einleitung”, in Berthold
of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Propositiones 66–​107,
p. xi–​xii.
174 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, translata a Guillelmo de Morbecca, ed. H. Boese
(Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1987), prop. 2, p. 3, l. 1: Omne quod participat uno et
unum est et non unum.
56 Introduction

found in Proclus’ own demonstration of the proposition in the commentum.

Finally, in the commentum, we find a second exegetical method, which was
based on syllogistic analysis. Here, Berthold examined Proclus’ demonstration,
line by line, in order to elucidate its argumentative rigour and its conformity
to the requirements of scientific procedure. Thus, with the propositum acting
as a bridge, these three parts comprised a seamless process of commentary
whose emphasis shifted from authority to reason, but never indulged in any
flights of speculation or allegorisation that could not be immediately justified
by the specificity of Proclus’ technical language. Berthold’s attitude here was
clearly one of subordination and fidelity to the Elementatio and the tradition
it allowed him to recapitulate: his task was to bring the reader to share in his
vision of its luminosity.
As we know it today from the two extant manuscripts, the Expositio is a
work that can be easily consulted and mined for arguments and authorities,
without needing to be read from cover to cover. Even if its assumptions and
conclusions would rarely satisfy contemporary scholars who have many more
texts from Proclus and his contemporaries at their disposal, its literalism and
attentiveness to philosophical terminology means that the Expositio can still
serve quite well as a reference work for the entire Latin medieval Platonic tra-
dition. Berthold noticed connections between authors that modern scholar-
ship only gradually came to acknowledge (e.g., Boethius and Proclus on provi-
dence; Bernard of Clairvaux and the Eriugenian Clavis physicae on deification).
The functionalisation of the commentary as a reference work is facilitated to
a large extent by an alphabetical index of subjects and authors that amounts
to over 160 pages in the critical edition.175 This index presupposes a system of
marginal pagination that divides the commentary on each proposition into
sections that are designated with letters. For example, under the lengthy index
entry for Anima, one finds a list of theses (e.g., “the soul is immortal because it
is self-​moved”) with references to a particular proposition and, sometimes, to a
particular section (e.g., 17A) of the suppositum or propositum.
The index as we have it is incomplete. There are several empty entries,
which appear more frequently beginning with the letter “I”.176 Sometimes
two entries for an identical term are separated by several other entries, with
one left redundant and empty (e.g., Operatio; Principium). Most references do
not take the alphabetical subdivisions of each commentary into account and

175 Berthold of Moosburg, Tabula contentorum in Expositione super Elementationem theologi-

cam Procli, ed. A. Beccarisi (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2000).
176 Empty entries by letter: C (1); i (7); M (2); N (2); O (6); P (7); Q (2); R (1); S (9); T (2); v (2);
Y (1); Z (1).
Introduction 57

refer only to the proposition number or to the title of the relevant preface (in
prologo; in titulo; in praeambulo). The more precise references that do provide
both the proposition number and the subsection letter are distributed evenly
throughout the index.
We should therefore entertain the possibility that the index and this sys-
tem of subdivisions, with the functionalisation of the commentary that it
would reflect, was either a later addition by Berthold, and was left unfinished
at his death, or was the result of a later intervention. One indication that it
was not part of the original plan is the fact that the internal references in the
Expositio never make use of the alphanumeric system and are either vague (ut
supra /​ infra ostensum est) or mention only the proposition number, where it
would have been possible to give more precise information.177 The first known
explicit reference to the Expositio (from mid-​to late 14th-​century Regensburg)
would seem to suggest that the commentary circulated at one stage without
its index and the subdivisions of the text it presupposed.178 This anonymous
Dominican writer from Regensburg, commenting on Peter Lombard, referred
to “theorem 8, the second principal article” (theoremate 8, articulo secundo
principali), which, as is clear from the context, was a citation of 8D. The sup-
positum, from 8A-​C, was regarded as a first principal article, and the proposi-
tum from 8D-​F the second. What this suggests is that these “articles” –​the
­suppositum, propositum, and possibly the commentum –​were conceived as the
primary building-​blocks of the commentary, with their distinctive scholarly
methods, and that the text was only eventually adapted to its use as a reference
work. At any rate, by the time the extant manuscripts of the Expositio were
copied, both the Expositio and the index were attributed to Berthold.179 With
these basic elements (its repetitive method, its ordering of knowledge on the
frame of the Elementatio, its comprehensive treatment of the separate sub-
stances, its utility), the Expositio came to imitate the genre of medieval philo-
sophical “encyclopaedism”.180

177 See, for example, Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 3D, p. 97, l. 197–​198: in principio supra
praemissa; 11A, p. 187, l. 67: ut supra 8 circa finem signatum est.
178 See Conclusion, section 1, below.
179 ms Vaticano (Città del), Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2192, f. 362vb: Explicit
expositio cum tabula fratris Bertholdi de Mosburch ordinis fratrum predicatorum quondam
lectoris Coloniensis province Theotonie super Elementatione theologica Procli completa etc.
180 On this genre, see G. Guldentops, “Henry Bate’s Encyclopaedism”, in P. Binkley (ed.), Pre-​
Modern Encyclopaedic Texts. Proceedings of the Second COMERS Congress, Groningen,
1–​4 July 1996 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), p. 227–​237; I. Draelants, “Le ‘siècle de l’encyclopédisme’.
Conditions et critères de définition d’un genre”, in A. Zucker (ed.), Encyclopédire. Formes
de l’ambition encyclopédique dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013),
58 Introduction

Throughout the commentary, by far the most frequently occurring first-​

person verb is declarabo, which is found in Berthold’s introductory remarks to
each proposition, usually with the direct objects suppositum and propositum.
Declarare and exponere are practically synonymous terms in medieval pedagog-
ical vocabulary.181 Inasmuch as declarare connotes the active intervention and
understanding of the interpreter, it can be contrasted with recitare, the reten-
tion or rehearsal of opinions.182 This reflects precisely the kind of compilatio
that Berthold undertook. For him, this intervention in the philosophical tradi-
tion amounted to demonstrating (ostendam) and positing (ponam) certain the-
ses in triadic patterns –​not to doctrinal innovation or novelty or, in almost every
case except the doctrine of reincarnation, to sitting in judgement over Proclus.
As with Nicholas’ Summa, one need not regard the compilation as a lit-
erary form as inherently antithetical to a coherent, if unwittingly original,
philosophical vision. This is certainly the case for Berthold of Moosburg. For
Berthold, it was clear that this scholarly and exegetical activity, which sought
to reconstruct and revive the ancient wisdom of Plato and his predecessors,
was intrinsically related to the fulfilment of human desire. Apart from his use
technical pedagogical vocabulary, the only moment we glimpse something
more of Berthold’s self-​understanding is at the conclusion of his Prologus, in
his description of himself as a lowly contemplator (humilis theoricus), who
“with Plato and Boethius”, and Lady Philosophy, acknowledges that, since the

p. 81–​106; I. Ventura, “On Philosophical Encyclopaedism in the Fourteenth Century. The

Catena aurea entium of Henry of Herford”, in G. de Callataÿ, B. Van den Abeele (eds), Une
lumière venue d’ailleurs. Héritages et ouvertures dans les encyclopédies d’Orient et d’Occi-
dent au Moyen Âge. Actes du colloque de Louvain-​la-​Neuve, 19–​21 mai 2005 (Louvain-​la-​
Neuve: Centre de recherche en histoire des sciences, 2008), p. 199–​245; ead., “Encyclopédie
et culture philosophique au Moyen Âge. Quelques considérations”, in A. Zucker (ed.),
Encyclopédire. Formes de l’ambition encyclopédique dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), p. 107–​123. On philosophical florilegia, see J. Hamesse, “Les flo-
rilèges philosophiques. Instruments de travail des intellectuels à la fin du moyen âge et à la
Renaissance”, in L. Bianchi (ed.), Filosofia e teologia nel trecento. Studi in ricordo di Eugenio
Randi (Louvain-​la-​Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales,
1994), p. 479–​508; L. Sturlese, “Philosophische Florilegien im mittelalterlichen Deutschland”,
in K. Elm (ed.), Literarische Formen des Mittelalters. Florilegien, Kompilationen, Kollektionen
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000), p. 39–​72, reprinted in id., Homo divinus, p. 155–​167.
181 M. Teeuwen, The Vocabulary of Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols,
2003), p. 245–​246.
182 J. Hamesse, “Approche terminologique de certaines méthodes d’enseignement et de
recherche à la fin du moyen âge. Declarare, Recitare, Conclusio”, in O. Weijers (ed.),
Vocabulary of Teaching and Research between Middle Ages and Renaissance. Proceedings
of the Colloquium, London, Warburg Institute, 11–​12 March 1994 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995),
p. 8–​28, at p. 16–​17.
Introduction 59

divided cannot unify itself, when seeking to know things above itself, it is most
appropriate to supplicate the most divine light with prayer if the seeker is to
attain unto the paternal fount of light that is at once “the principle, convey-
ance, guide, path, and boundary”:

And therefore, with Plato and Boethius, I deem it good that the lowly
contemplator should resolutely implore the most divine light with sup-
plicant prayers, saying: O most blessed, most excellent, most revered,
most honourable, most complete, most omnipotent, most free, most sov-
ereign, most virtuous, most simple Light; remove from those who seek
you the innate restriction of nature, the crooked habitual ways, the indo-
lent discipline, the ignorance of the measure of intellectual capacity, the
aversion to the light of intelligible lucidity, the dread of such subtlety,
the degree of remoteness, the presumption of familiar intelligibility, the
search for too much provability and demonstrability!
‘And grant, Father, that our minds may climb to your august throne,
Grant the sight of the Fount of good, and grant light to fix upon you the
mind’s unblinded eye! Disperse the clouds and weight of this earthly con-
cretion; shine in the splendour that is yours! For you are serenity, you are
untroubled rest for worshippers, to see you is the end, you, the principle,
conveyance, guide, path, and boundary –​the same.’183

It was not with innovations that Berthold intended to dazzle his reader but
by redirecting their vision to the same light that Plato and Boethius had once
implored and beheld by its condescension. For the humilis theoricus, then,
the philosophical apprehension of that light, and the exegetical search for the
truth of the luminous ancient tradition that was its familiar, had to proceed by
the only method that awakens the one of the soul (unum animae): by coming
to know divine things “not according to ourselves”.
183 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 21, p. 34, l. 974 –​p. 35, l. 989: Igitur cum Platone et
Boethio bonum esse reor humilem theoricum obnixe lucem divinissimam votis supplicibus
invocare dicendo: O beatissima, excellentissima, reverendissima, honorabilissima, totalis-
sima, omnipotentissima, liberalissima, dominantissima, virtuosissima, simplicissima lux,
aufer a te quaerentibus innatam naturae deminutionem, pravam assuefactionem et pigram
exercitationem, ignorantiam mensurae intellectualis capacitatis, aversionem a luce intelli-
gibilis claritatis, horrorem tantae subtilitatis, distantiam longinquitatis, praesumptionem
propriae cognoscibilitatis, inquisitionem nimiae probabilitatis et demonstrabilitatis! ‘Et da,
Pater, augustam menti conscendere sedem, /​da fontem lustrare boni, da luce reperta /​in
te conspicuos animi defigere visus! /​Dissice terrenae nebulas et pondera molis /​atque tuo
splendore mica! Tu namque serenum, /​tu requies tranquilla piis, te cernere finis, /​princip-
ium, vector, dux, semita, terminus idem.’
 pa rt 1
Non secundum nos. Platonism
as Philosophical Revelation

∵
 Ah, beloved, that a pagan has understood this and arrived there,
while we remain so far from it and so unlike it, is to us a disgrace and
a great shame. Our Lord attests to it when he says, “The kingdom of
God is within you”.1

∵
In a sermon preached on the Gospel for Trinity Sunday, the Dominican John
Tauler (c. 1300 –​1361) began by introducing the feast as the end and goal of all
celebrations in the liturgical year, just as Trinity is for the rational creature. It
is impossible, he admitted, to speak of its dignity in adequate terms, for the
feast receives its meaning entirely from the Trinity it celebrates, and no created
intellect can comprehend the dynamic equality and distinction of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, and the joy that is theirs. For this reason, Tauler told his
hearers, it is better for us leave the finer points of doctrine to the clerics who
must defend the faith –​better for us to experience or feel it (ze bevindende)
than to speak about it, to have Trinity “come to birth in the ground” not in a
rational way, but “essentially”, not in speech, but in reality.2
Notwithstanding these cautionary remarks, the preacher did not shy away
from offering rational and self-​critical guidance along the path.3 Continuing
to develop the parallelism of celebration and celebrant, Tauler insisted that
our approach toward the Trinitarian mystery must be through the image of
God (imago Dei) in the soul. Just as the feast celebrating the Trinity is inef-
fable because of what it celebrates, so too for Tauler the image of God was
not a way of making God manifest; it was rather the principle of an apo-
phatic anthropology, according to which the ground of the soul is drawn
up into the same darkness in which the Trinity dwells: “no one can speak in
appropriate terms about the nobility of this image”. With this as his meas-
ure, Tauler invited his audience to consider three different descriptions of

1 John Tauler, Predigt 60d (Trinity Sunday), in Die Predigten Taulers. Aus der Engelberger
und der Freiburger Handschrift sowie aus Schmidts Abschriften der ehemaligen Strassburger
Handschriften, ed. F. Vetter (Berlin: Weidmann, 1910), p. 301, l. 1-​3: Kinder, das ein heiden dis
verstunt und darzuo kam, das wir dem also verre und also ungelich sint, das ist uns laster und
grosse schande. Dis bezúgete unser herre do er sprach: ‘das rich Gottes ist in úch’.
2 John Tauler, Predigt 60d (Trinity Sunday), p. 298, l. 10 –​p. 299, l. 34.
3 John Tauler, Predigt 60d (Trinity Sunday), p. 300, l. 5-​27.

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_003

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
64  Part 1

the imago Dei. The first, not attributed to any authority, claims the image
consists in the powers of memory, intellect, and will, by which the soul is
capable of receiving the Trinity. This is inadequate, argued Tauler, because
it simply reiterates what is apparent to everyday experience. Such potenti-
ality and transience are inadequate expressions of God. The second view,
attributed to Thomas Aquinas, improved upon this, insofar as he stated that
the image is only perfect when the powers are in act (wúrklich). But Tauler
was not satisfied with this either, apparently for the same reasons. Finally,
he continued, there are other masters whose opinion is “unspeakably supe-
rior”. They hold that in the soul’s deepest ground (grunde), the soul has the
Trinity “essentially, actually, and subsistently” (wesentlichen und wúrklich
und isteklich). According to their view, God has an eternal covenant (ewigen
ordenunge) with this ground, and he can no more be separated from it than
he can be from himself. Grace arises in the soul in the extent to which a
person abandons oneself to this ground and turns toward it, and so, Tauler
concluded, that is what we must do.
Now, the preacher asked, how is one to approach this ceaseless activ-
ity? Even if it is beyond speech, by what tokens can it be recognised? At
this point, on Trinity Sunday of all days, Tauler introduced the authority
of Proclus. He paraphrased one of the Tria opusucla, the De providentia et
fato (8.30–​32), as follows: as long as we are occupied with images below
us, we are incredulous that there is such a ground within us; if you want
to experience this (daz bevinden), leave all multiplicity and cultivate the
singular focus of intellect, and then abandon even this and “become one
with the One” (wurt eins mit dem einen). In other words, follow the guidance
of Proclus, who called this ground and its activity “a still, silent, dormant,
divine, and frenzied darkness” (eine stille swigende sloffende goetteliche
unsinnige dúnsternisse).4
This was not an aberrant turn in Tauler’s preaching. There are five refer-
ences to Proclus in Tauler’s sermons (Predigten 60d, 61, twice in 64, and 65). All
of them, as Loris Sturlese has shown, provide clear evidence of his acquaint-
ance with Berthold’s interpretation of the Tria opuscula.5 Indeed, Tauler’s val-
orisation of Proclus, and his placement of him ambiguously alongside the best
of the Christian teachings about the imago Dei (that is, Dietrich of Freiberg’s

4 John Tauler, Predigt 60d (Trinity Sunday), p. 300, l. 27 –​p. 301, l. 1.

5 L. Sturlese, “Tauler im Kontext. Die philosophischen Voraussetzungen des ‘Seelengrundes’ in
der Lehre des deutschen Neuplatonikers Berthold von Moosburg”, in Beiträge zur Geschichte
der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 109(1987), p. 390–​426, at p. 415–​421, reprinted in id.,
Homo divinus, p. 169–​197.
Non secundum nos. Platonism as Philosophical Revelation 65

interpretation of Augustine) corresponds closely to the tensions we will

find in Berthold’s anthropology. Beyond these doctrinal convergences noted
by Sturlese, one may also say that Tauler’s sense of the ramifications of the
acknowledgement that Proclus has achieved what he did, as “a disgrace and a
great shame” to Christians of his time, was also in profound continuity with the
spirit of Berthold’s Expositio.6 In Berthold as in Tauler we find something much
more volatile than the domestication of a pagan philosopher for a Christian
audience or, for that matter, an argument about pagan philosophy as a praep-
aratio Evangelii. Instead, both Dominicans presented Proclus’ achievement as
a challenge for Christian self-​understanding. The dignity of the soul that was
known to Proclus and had been forgotten since the time of the ancient sages
was regarded by these preachers as a more adequate expression of the truth of
Christianity than what they saw around them in their own day. In other words,
they used Proclean description of God’s hidden and abiding presence in the
soul, his “eternal ordinance”, in an operation of reform directed at the Christian
understanding of the human as imago Dei.7

6 See the parallel verdict in John Tauler, Predigt 61 (Nativity of John the Baptist), ed. F. Vetter,
p. 332, l. 21 –​p. 333, l. 2: Aber do kamen die grossen meister als Proculus und Plato und gab-
ent des ein klor underscheit den die dis underscheit als verre nút vinden enkonden. Sant
Augustinus sprach das Plato das ewangelium In principio al zemole hette vor gesprochen bis
an das wort: ‘fuit homo missus a Deo’, und das was doch mit verborgen bedekten worten, und
dise fundent underscheit von der heiligen drivaltikeit. Kinder, dis kam alles us disem inwendigen
grunde: dem lebtent si und wartent des. Das ist ein gros laster und schande das wir armen ver-
bliben volk, die cristen sint und als grosse helfe hant, die gnade Gotz und den heiligen glouben
und das heilig sacrament und als manig grosse helfe, und gont recht umbe als blinde huenr und
erkennent unser selbes nút das in uns ist, und enwissent dannan ab ze mole nút: das machet
unser grosse manigvaltikeit und uswendikeit, und das wir als vil mit den sinnen wúrken […].
(“But there came the great masters like Proclus and Plato, and they gave a clear discernment
to those who were not able to discern it so well on their own. Saint Augustine says that Plato
had plainly explained the Gospel, In principio, as far as the phrase, fuit homo missus a Deo,
which was however written there in hidden words. They also discovered the distinction in
the Holy Trinity. Ah, beloved, all of this came from the inner ground, for whose sake they
lived and which they waited upon. It is a disgrace and a great shame that we, humble suc-
cessors that we are, who are Christians and have such great aids at our disposal, the grace of
God, the sacred faith, the holy sacrament, and so many other great aids –​that we go around
in circles like blind hens, without knowing ourselves nor what is within us, and never know
anything about it. This is the result of our great manifoldness and outwardness, and that we
are much too occupied with the works of the senses […]”.).
7 Cf. K. Flasch, Meister Eckhart. Philosoph des Christentums (München: Beck, 2011), p. 190, 227,
249–​250. English translation: K. Flasch, Meister Eckhart. Philosopher of Christianity, trans.
A. Schindel, A. Vanides (New Haven /​London: Yale University Press, 2015), p. 158: “[Eckhart]
possessed the typical education in philosophy and theology of any Dominican of his time;
he took up the intellectual certainties and methods of his contemporaries, reshaped them,
and, equipped with his philosophical reform, set out to redefine the main concepts of the
66  Part 1

The spirit of Berthold of Moosburg’s own scholarly attitude to ancient wis-

dom and his views about the content of the Platonic philosophy which was the
crowning achievement of that wisdom, can be summarised in a phrase from
Dionysius he often cited:

one must see that our mind has a certain power for knowing, through
which it examines things intelligible, but a union exceeding the nature
of the mind (the other translation says: ‘a unity superexalted beyond
the nature of the mind’), through which the mind is conjoined to those
things that are above it. Therefore, it is necessary to think divine things
according to this, not according to ourselves [non secundum nos], but our
whole selves placed outside our whole selves and deified wholly. For it is
better to be God’s and not our own; thus, divine things will be given to
those made to be with God.8

For Berthold, the teaching that united the greatest philosophers and theolo-
gians (Plato, Paul, Dionysius, Augustine, Boethius) was that theology must
proceed “intellectually”, by turning away from multiplicity and images, and by
gazing upon the simple Form or Good forming all things. This intellectual pro-
gression was understood to culminate, only after great labour and even then
not automatically, in a “divine frenzy” beyond the mind and in a union with the
divine providence. At the same time, since the golden age of philosophy that
had perfectly articulated the relation of the human to the divine world above

Christian doctrine of faith and life for his contemporaries and to make them comprehensible
to academics and laypeople alike”; p. 191: “while the commentary on John is primarily focused
on a reform of metaphysics and the consequent reform of Christianity, as well as on a new
philosophy of nature, it contains reflections on ethics that make it easier for the reader to
understand Eckhart’s German sermons. […] The grounds of reason, Eckhart writes, convince
us that the good man, the homo divinus, is not an isolated individual but rather exists in a
community. Eckhart’s theory of sociality presupposes his philosophical theory of wholeness.
According to this, every member of the community simultaneously serves itself and others.
Everything that Christians do or suffer pertains to all of them. Everything belongs to them
in common, omnibus sanctis aut bonis sunt omnia omnium bona communia (lw 3, n. 386,
329.6–​7). This social aspect lies in the idea of the Good itself: someone who loves the Good
loves the good in all others”; see also p. 211.
8 See, for example, Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeambulum C, p. 64, l. 408–​413: oportet –​
inquit –​videre mentem nostram habere quidem virtutem ad intelligendum, per quam intelli-
gibilia inspicit, unitionem autem excedentem mentis naturam (alia translatio dicit: ‘unitatem
autem superexaltatam super mentis naturam’), per quam coniungitur ad ea, quae sunt supra
ipsam. Secundum hanc igitur divina oportet intelligere, non secundum nos, sed totos nos ipsos
extra totos nos ipsos statutos et totos deificatos. Melius est enim esse Dei et non nostri ipsorum;
ita enim erunt divina data cum Deo factis. Cf. Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.1, 865C-​868A.
Non secundum nos. Platonism as Philosophical Revelation 67

it was entirely in the past, “not according to ourselves” became an exegetical

principle. Philosophy and exegesis were deeply intertwined in Berthold’s pro-
ject of reform.
In the three prefaces to the commentary (Prologus, Expositio tituli,
Praeambulum), Berthold used literary forms that gave him more freedom to
articulate the larger aims of his project. In what follows, we will consider each
preface in turn. We will find that, when they are interpreted in light of their
sources, the same pattern appears in all of them. Berthold took concepts, argu-
ments, and praises traditionally associated only with Christian theology and
extended them into the domain of Platonism as such. But this was no revolu-
tionary overthrow or demotion of Christian doctrine. Rather, it was a contri-
bution to a reform of Christian philosophical theology through the recovery of
an understanding of nature (the macrocosm) and humanity (the microcosm)
that was held in common by the ancient pagan and Christian inheritors of
Plato. Platonism was for Berthold in the fullest sense a natural or “philosoph-
ical revelation”,9 guiding the human toward something in its nature that it is
naturally disposed to ignore. We recall the words of Proclus, cited approvingly
by Tauler: as long as we are occupied with images below us, we are incredu-
lous that there is such a ground within us. Turning then to the first preface,
the Prologus, we will find nature presented as the outward manifestation of
the inner, “supersubtantial world” or “house of God”. At its conclusion, we will
find the contemplator (theoricus) seeking to enter this abode, first by turning
inward, and then by going above himself, through the imago or trace of the
One in the soul.
9 The expression is that of L. Sturlese, “Homo divinus. Der Prokloskommentar Bertholds von
Moosburg und die Probleme der nacheckhartschen Zeit”, in K. Ruh (ed.), Abendländische
Mystik im Mittelalter. Symposion Kloster Engelberg 1984 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986), p. 145–​161,
reprinted in id., Homo divinus, p. 145.
 ­c hapter 1

Prologus

The first of the three prefaces to the Expositio is an academic sermon on

Romans 1:20: “The invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are
beheld, being understood through the things that are made”.1 The academic
sermon was a widely used exegetical introduction (accessus) first developed
by theologians in the 12th century, and is known by scholars also as a “ser-
mon type” prologue that displays the standard techniques of the preaching
arts (artes praedicandi).2 In these introductions, a Scriptural passage would be
applied to the contents of the text under discussion, even a profane one, just
as a preacher uses a pericope at the beginning of a sermon.3 Berthold followed
this pattern closely, and even concluded the Prologus with the prayer found at
the centre of Boethius’ Consolatio philosophiae.
Just as a medieval preacher would ruminate over each line or each word
of their pericope, so Berthold divided the verse from Romans into three parts
(Invisibilia Dei /​ a creatura mundi /​ per ea, quae facta sunt, intellecta conspi-
ciutur). Each part begins with an analysis of the phrase or lemma, and first
unfolds several possible interpretations of its grammar: for instance, the gen-
itive in invisiblilia Dei can either be taken “intransitively”, such that it refers
to the divine essence as Trinity and the divine ideas in the Word,4 or “tran-
sitively”, such that it denotes the procession of all things into being through
those primordial causes.5 The second phrase, a creatura mundi, can mean that

1 This identification of its literary form was first made by Boese, Wilhelm von Moerbeke,
p. 69–​70.
2 B. Smalley, “Peter Comestor on the Gospels and his Sources”, in Recherches de théologie
ancienne et médiévale 46(1979), p. 84–​129, at p. 109–​110; G. Dahan, “Les prologues des com-
mentaires bibliques (XIIe-​XIVe siècle)”, in J. Hamesse (ed.), Les prologues médiévaux. Actes
du Colloque international organisé par l’Academia Belgica et l’École française de Rome avec le
concours de la F.I.D.E.M. (Rome, 26–​28 mars 1998) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), p. 427–​470, at
p. 438–​443.
3 One could compare Berthold’s intricate accessus with the prologues of Nicholas Trevet, a
Dominican master in the Faculty of Theology in Oxford whose regency, as noted above, coin-
cided with Berthold’s studies there. On Trevet’s prologues, see M.L. Lord, “Virgil’s Eclogues,
Nicholas Trevet, and the Harmony of the Spheres”, in Mediaeval Studies 54(1992), p. 186–​273,
at p. 193–​205. Like Trevet’s accessus to his commentary on Virgil, Berthold followed his ser-
mon prologue with an Expositio tituli modelled on the Aristotelian four causes.
4 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 3, p. 7, l. 77 –​p. 9, l. 133.
5 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4-​6, p. 9, l. 134 –​p. 14, l. 286. This grammatical distinc-
tion had its roots in Trinitarian theology, where it was used to explain relations of identity

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_004

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
Prologus 69

“from which” the invisible things are seen, meaning the macrocosm, or that “in
which” they are seen, which is the microcosm or subject who contemplates
the invisible world.6 Finally, per ea, quae facta sunt, intellecta conspiciuntur, is
taken to refer to the diverse means through which the invisible things are con-
templated by philosophical reasoning.7
What makes the Prologus remarkable from a stylistic and cultural point
of view is that, at the heart of the sermon, on the phrase a creatura mundi,
Berthold included two citations of the Asclepius attributed to the pre-​Platonic
sage, Hermes Trismegistus. Berthold treated both passages as “descriptions”
(that is, definitions that do not exhaust their subject), which he glossed by
lemmata, using the same method he had adopted for Romans 1:20.8 The gloss
on the Hermetic text applied to the macrocosm takes up 282 lines of the pref-
ace (Prol. 8-​13),9 and that on the microcosm 310 lines (Prol. 14-​19). Hence, over
half of this academic sermon on Romans (989 lines) is devoted to interpret-
ing Hermes Trismegistus. Berthold was evidently making a bold statement,
especially when one recalls that, in Romans 1:22-​31, Paul went on to reproach

(intransitive) and distinction (transitive). Cf. Alan of Lille, Summa ‘Quoniam homines’, ed.
P. Glorieux, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 20(1953), p. 113–​364, at
p. 253, l. 35–​38: Hoc autem quod dicitur Pater esse sapiens sapientia Patris, dupliciter potest
intelligi: vel transitive vel intransitive. Intransitive ut sit sensus: sapientia Patris id est que est
Pater; vel transitive sapientia Patris, id est que procedit a Patre. Si ergo intransitive signatur,
verum est Patrem esse sapientem sapientia que est Pater. Si vero transitive, falsum. See also
the Summa fratris Alexandri, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae, vol. 1 (Quaracchi: Collegium
S. Bonaventurae, 1924), lib. i, pars 1, inq. 2, tr. unicus, q. 1, tit. 2, c. 3, a. 2, p. 445: Ad octavum
dicendum quod spiritus intelligentiae potest dici dupliciter: transitive et intransitive. Intransitive,
ut dicatur spiritus intelligentiae spiritus qui est intelligentia, et hoc modo accipitur ibi; vel transi-
tive, et sic supponit vel pro persona Filii, cuius est Spiritus Sanctus tamquam ab ipso procedens,
vel pro effectu in creatura, quia intelligentia in nobis est a Spiritu Sancto. Intelligentia etiam,
secundum quod ponitur intransitive, potest accipi essentialiter et personaliter: essentialiter,
convenit toti Trinitati, et etiam potest dici 'Spiritus Sanctus est intelligentia'; personaliter, sic
appropriatur Filio.
6 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 7, p. 14, l. 287–​292. Furthermore, if the genitive in a
creatura mundi is taken intransitively, then it refers to the entire universe of things; if taken
transitively, it denotes only the created existence of certain things.
7 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 20, p. 32, l. 881–​883: sciendum, quod diversi sapientes et
theologi et philosophi diversis viis in ista materia processerunt.
8 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 8-​9, p. 14, l. 296–​300: Macrocosmus, scilicet maior
mundus, sic describitur per Trismegistum […]. Circa istam descriptionem considerandum […];
Prol. 14-​15, p. 23, l. 570–​578: Verum circa microcosmum, id est hominem, sciendum, quod per
Trismegistum ubi supra sic describitur […]. Circa istam descriptionem primo occurit scire […].
9 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 8, p. 14, l. 296–​299: Mundus est opus Dei immutabile,
gloriosa constructio, bonum multiformi imaginum varietate compositum, machina voluntatis
Dei suo operi absque invidia suffragantis.
70  Chapter 1

the gentiles who turned away from the creator and became idolators, and
who were thus “without excuse” because the invisible things had been made
known to them. As we will see, Berthold did not ignore the passages in Hermes
describing the manipulation of divine power and the animation of man-​
made statues. He addressed these much later in the commentary, where he
did his utmost to present these doctrines as Hermes’ failure to live up to own
philosophical principles. The overall impression Berthold makes on his audi-
ence here is somewhat different. If one were to read Paul after reading only
Berthold’s Prologus, one could be forgiven for assuming that the Apostle’s
judgement in fact bears on those who turn away from the Platonic consensus
about the invisibilia Dei: if this is what God has revealed nature to be capable
of, then those who turn away from it are indeed without excuse.

1 Hermes Trismegistus and Thomas of York

The centrality of Hermes Trismegistus in Berthold’s thought has been the

subject or starting point for several studies on the Expositio.10 What has not
received sufficient attention is how Berthold’s portrait of Hermes was in fact
drawn from various direct and indirect sources. Before Françoise Hudry and

10 On Berthold’s reception of Hermes, see U.R. Jeck, “Die hermetische Theorie des
Mikrokosmos in der Metaphysik Alberts des Grossen und im Prokloskommentar des
Berthold von Moosburg”, in Patristica et Mediaevalia 20(1999), p. 3–​18; A. Sannino,
“Berthold of Moosburg’s Hermetic Sources”, in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 63(2000), p. 243–​258; ead., “Il concetto ermetico di natura in Bertoldo di
Moosburg”, in P. Lucentini, I. Parri, V. Perrone Compagni (eds), Hermeticism from Late
Antiquity to Humanism, p. 203–​221; ead., “Il Liber viginti quattuor philosophorum nella
metafisica di Bertoldo di Moosburg”, in A. Beccarisi, R. Imbach, P. Porro (eds), Per per-
scrutationem philosophicam, p. 252–​272; A. Palazzo, “La ricezione di un passo ermetico
(Asclepius 8) nel tardo medioevo. Ulrico di Strasburgo, Pietro di Tarantasia, Riccardo di
Mediavilla, Bertoldo di Moosburg e Dionigi il Certosino”, in T. Iremadze, T. Tskhadadze,
G. Kheoschvili (eds), Philosophy, Theology, Culture. Problems and Perspectives. Jubilee
Volume Dedicated to the 75th Anniversary of Guram Tevzadze (Tbilisi: Nekeri /​Arche,
2007), p. 104–​25. For Hermes as an entry-​point into studies on Berthold’s theory of
intellect, see B. Mojsisch, “Die Theorie des Intellekts bei Berthold von Moosburg. Zur
Proklosrezeption im Mittelalter”, in Th. Kobusch, B. Mojsisch, O. Summerell (eds),
Selbst –​Singularität –​Subjektivität. Vom Neuplatonismus zum Deutschen Idealismus
(Amsterdam: Grüner, 2002), p. 175–​184; I.J. Tautz, Erst-​Eines, Intellekte, Intellektualität.
Eine Studie zu Berthold von Moosburg (Hamburg: Kovač, 2002); T. Iremadze, Konzeptionen
des Denkens im Neuplatonismus. Zur Rezeption der Proklischen Philosophie im deutschen
und georgischen Mittelalter. Dietrich von Freiberg –​Berthold von Moosburg –​Joane Petrizi
(Amsterdam: Grüner, 2004).
Prologus 71

Fiorella Retucci demonstrated the extent of Berthold’s reliance on Thomas of

York,11 whom the Dominican innocuously placed at the bottom of the list of
Doctors of the Church as frater Thomas anglicus minor, it was believed that
Berthold was thoroughly familiar with all three of the major philosophical-​
religious Hermetic texts available at the time: the Asclepius, the Liber de vi
rerum principiis, and the Liber xxiv philosophorum.12 Now, however, it is pos-
sible to demonstrate that Berthold relied entirely on intermediary sources for
his citations of the Asclepius and the De vi rerum principiis, but made direct
use of the Liber xxiv philosophorum. We begin with Thomas of York, because
it was his Sapientiale that exerted the greatest influence on Berthold’s attitude
toward pagan and Christian antiquity in general, and probably inspired his
decision to interpret Romans 1:20 through Hermes.13
Thomas of York cited the Asclepius extensively in the Sapientiale (193 times).
By way of comparison, there are 87 citations of the text in Albert the Great’s
entire oeuvre.14 Thomas also cited the 12th-​century De vi rerum principiis,
which he attributes to Hermes, 28 times.15 Berthold cited the Asclepius 79 times
(67 from Thomas; 6 from William of Auvergne; 4 from Albert;16 1 from Ulrich; 1

11 See F. Hudry’s edition of Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 18, which was a commentary on the Liber
xxiv philosophorum that Thomas abandoned after the third maxim, in Hermes Latinus,
Liber viginti quattuor philosophorum, p. 87–​96. For Fiorella Retucci’s publications on
Thomas, see Introduction, section 1, n. 9, above.
12 Sannino, “Berthold of Moosburg’s Hermetic Sources”, p. 247. On the medieval reception of
these three texts, see P. Lucentini, “Hermes Trismegistus II. Middle Ages” in W. Hanegraaff
(ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), p. 479–​483,
and Lucentini, P., Perrone Compagni, V., “Hermetic Literature II. Latin Middle Ages”, in
W. Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, vol. 1, p. 499–​529. On
the Asclepius in particular, see P. Lucentini, Platonismo, ermetismo, eresia nel medioevo
(Louvain-​la-​Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2007),
p. 71–​105.
13 Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 1 (ms Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,
Conv. Soppr. A.vi.437, f. 212va). I am very grateful to Fiorella Retucci for sharing these
unpublished materials from the Archivum fratris Thomae Eboracensis (Thomas-​Institut,
Cologne). For the identification of Berthold’s tacit borrowings from Thomas, I have also
benefitted immensely from Retucci, “Between Cologne and Oxford”. The first portion of
the critical edition of the Sapientiale has been published. See Thomas of York, Sapientiale.
Liber III, cap. 1-​20, ed. A. Punzi (Firenze: sismel –​Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2020).
14 D. Porreca, “Hermes Trismegistus in Thomas of York. A 13th-​Century Witness to the
Prominence of an Ancient Sage”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge
72(2005), p. 147–​275, at p. 149. This study has been invaluable for what follows.
15 Porreca, “Hermes Trismegistus in Thomas of York”, p. 151–​152.
16 From Albert, Berthold used two unusual titles: De natura deorum (73A, p. 44, l. 28–​29, apud
Albert the Great, De caelo et mundo, ed. P. Hossfeld [Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1971], lib.
72  Chapter 1

untraced17) and the De vi rerum principiis 35 times (all from Thomas).18

For Berthold, it was paramount that the Liber xxiv philosophorum be
included alongside these texts in the Hermetic corpus.19 Medieval think-
ers, however, were not unanimous on this attribution. Despite the fact that
Thomas was the first author known to have quoted more than its first two
maxims, and to have used the commentaries accompanying the maxims at
all,20 David Porreca regards Thomas’ sole explicit attribution of the text to
Hermes as a sign of hesitation,21 which anticipated Albert the Great’s rejection
of the attribution.22 Berthold, however, consistently maintained its Hermetic
authorship, and cited the Liber xxiv philosophorum 52 times.23 Although two
or three of these citations are clearly connected to passages copied from the
Sapientiale, Berthold was undoubtedly directly familiar with the text and its
second commentary. Citing its prologue, he maintained that Hermes compiled
the text and gave it its title, De regulis theologiae, and announced that he would
insert passages from the text into the Expositio where the doctrines of Hermes
and Proclus agree.24 While he almost always referred to the text as Hermes’

i, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 4, l. 85-​90) and De causis (52A, p. 119, l. 72, apud Albert the Great, Summa the-
ologiae, pars i, tr. 5, q. 23, c. 1, a. 1, p. 122, l. 30–​33: Hermes Trismegistus in Libro de causis).
17 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 13, p. 22, l. 540–​541; 199A, p. 152, l. 34–​35: mundus est
‘quasi organum vel machina summa Dei voluntati subiectus’.
18 Sannino, “Berthold of Moosburg’s Hermetic Sources”, p. 253–​258, lists the citations of
Hermes in the Expositio. One may now easily compare these with the citations from
Thomas identified in Retucci, “Between Cologne and Oxford”.
19 On this text, see P. Dronke, Hermes and the Sibyls. Continuations and Creations
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), reprinted in id., Intellectuals and Poets
in Medieval Europe (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1992); Z. Kaluza, “Comme une
branche d’amandier en fleurs”.
20 Lucentini, Perrone Compagni, “Hermetic Literature ii. Latin Middle Ages”, p. 511.
21 Porreca, “Hermes Trismegistus in Thomas of York”, p. 152; F. Hudry, “Introduction”, in
Hermes Latinus, Liber viginti quattuor philosophorum, p. xxvi. I interpret Thomas differ-
ently, both in light of a second citation in Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 27, which Porreca (p. 216,
n. 304) related to Asclepius 36 but which seems closer to maxim 22 of the Liber (as Berthold
observed, see below, n. 28), and because of the importance of the explicit reference to the
Liber in Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 14, which established that the Trinity was known to Hermes.
22 L. Sturlese, “Saints et magiciens. Albert le Grand en face d’Hermès Trismégiste”, in Archives
de Philosophie 43(1980), p. 615–​634, at p. 620–​621.
23 This figure includes his use of a rare second commentary appended to the 24 maxims of
the Liber, on which see Hudry, “Introduction”, p. xxxvii-​xlviii.
24 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 116A, p. 59, l. 9-​16: tempore Hermetis Trismegisti, ‘con-
gregatis viginti quattuor philosophis […]’. Quas descriptiones ipse Trismegistus in unum
compingens intitulavit ipsum libellum De regulis theologiae, ex quibus cogitavi quasdam
huic operi inserendas, ubi maxime congruere videbatur.
Prologus 73

regulae or De regulis theologiae (e.g., 12E; 131B; 188B),25 he also called it De xxiv
descriptionibus (137A), a title which likely derived from Sapientiale, i.18.26 But
his independence from Thomas is clear when, for instance, after copying out
Sapientiale, i.14, which contained Thomas’ only explicit attribution of the text
to Hermes, Berthold changed the title he read there, from Viginti quattuor prop-
ositiones to De regulis theologiae, and then embellished the maxim with its cor-
responding commentum.27 Elsewhere we find Berthold specifying an imprecise
reference to the Liber xxiv philosophorum that he found in the Sapientiale.28
At first glance it is puzzling that Berthold appeared to use De Deo deorum as
a title for the Liber xxiv philosophorum, since he would have known that this
was a secondary title for the Asclepius used three times by Thomas of York.29
In one instance, while citing Thomas, Berthold referred to the Asclepius by
that title,30 and elsewhere he repeated the attribution independently.31 One

25 This attribution is found in manuscripts P and V in Hudry’s stemma, which belong to the
group transmitting the second commentary used by Berthold (see Hudry, “Introduction”,
p. xxvii and xxix).
26 Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 18, ed. F. Hudry, p. 87, l. 5: Post haec ponam descrip-
tiones uiginti quattuor […].
27 See Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 131B, p. 193, l. 85–​88. This was Berthold’s consistent
practice with the Sapientiale, which he relied on principally as a thesaurus of ancient
texts. For example, after copying portions of Sapientiale, lib. iii, c. 25, in Expositio, 12E,
p. 202, l. 172 –​p. 203, l. 209, Berthold added passages from Dionysius, the Liber de causis,
and the regulae of Hermes.
28 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 178E, p. 196, l. 258–​260: apparet idem »per tres praeposi-
tiones, quas ponit Trismegistus« de prime Deo in Regulis suis. Nam secundum ipsum ‘Deus
est, in quo, per quem et ex quo omnia […]’. Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 27 and
Liber xxiv philosophorum, ed. F. Hudry, maxim 22, p. 29, l. 1-​3: Deus est ex quo est quicquid
est non partitione, per quem est non variatione, in quo est quod est non commixtione.
29 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 117A, p. 68, l. 10–​11: quod vii regula Trismegisti De Deo
deorum talis est: ‘Deus est principium sine principio, processus sine variatione, finis sine fine’.
30 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. K, p. 47, l. 368–​369: sicut dicit Trismegistus
ad Asclepium De hellera (hellera] hedera V), id est De Deo deorum. Cf. Sapientiale, lib. i,
c. 5 (ms Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Soppr. A.vi.437, f. 5va): sicut dicit
Trismegistus Ad Asclepium. Vocat sermonem De edera, hoc est Deo deorum, omnium ser-
monum. Porreca, “Hermes Trismegistus in Thomas of York”, p. 189, attributes Thomas’ use
of this title to the influence of William of Auvergne (p. 150–​151). The text from William (De
legibus, c. 23) was cited independently by Berthold at 115B (p. 52, l. 65–​66): Hanc, inquam,
adventionem extollit Mercurius Trismegistus dicens in libro, quem scripsit De hellera, hoc
est De Deo deorum […].
31 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 114A, p. 40, l. 25 –​p. 41, l. 29: »Positio vero deorum non
superstitiosa nisi nomine solum erat Platonis et Platonicam philosophiam veraciter sectan-
tium, quippe secundum Hermetem multi dicti sunt dii participatione eius, qui omnium
est maximus, scilicet deus deorum.« Unde et liber suus vocatur De Deo deorum, hoc est
‘Deus magnus dominus et rex magnus super omnes deos’ [Ps. 95:3]. Cf. Thomas of York,
74  Chapter 1

should not, however, conclude from these instances that Berthold read the
Asclepius first-​hand, or that he conflated the Liber and the quotations from
the Asclepius he read indirectly and assumed that both belonged to a larger
work, the De Deo deorum. Instead, it seems more likely that Berthold knew
that the Ad Asclepium, the De hellera and De Deo deorum referred to the same
work. In 117A he was not citing De Deo deorum as the title for the Liber, as the
italics in the critical edition suggest, but rather was providing a description of
its contents. Indeed, Berthold’s custom with the Liber xxiv philosophorum was
to take a maxim about God (prime Deus) and extend its application to the gods
or primordial causes (omnis deus).32 Berthold’s portrait of Hermes relied pri-
marily on materials he found in Thomas of York and was elaborated by his own
admiring use of the propositional theology of the Liber xxiv philosophorum.
Whether or not Thomas or Albert regarded the Liber as an authentic work of
Hermes, for Berthold this text served as a high-​water mark in the development
of ancient paganism. In 116A, as we saw, he stated that the De regulis as a com-
pilation made by Hermes of an earlier tradition. Its philosophical achievement
for Berthold consisted in both its traditional content and its rarefied theore-
matic form.
This portrait of the Hermetic corpus in the Expositio was held together
by internal tensions that shed light on Berthold’s understanding of pagan
antiquity: tensions between the philosophical religion of the Asclepius, not-
withstanding some objectionable passages, and the more austere Liber xxiv
philosophorum, on the basis of which he was able to argue that the pagans
themselves had arrived to a philosophically sound henotheism. Berthold’s
opening commentaries on the propositions on the gods in the Elementatio
theologica, which are the subject of Propositions 113 to 165, contain a high
concentration of citations of the Asclepius and the Liber xxiv philosophorum.
Especially instructive are Berthold’s commentaries on Propositions 114–​115, 120,
and 131, where the Asclepius played a major role (17 citations from Sapientiale
i.10 and i.14, and from William of Auvergne) and Propositions 116–​117, 119, 123,
126 and 131, which include nearly half of Berthold’s citations of the Liber xxiv
philosophorum (27 citations).

Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 10 (ms Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Soppr. A.vi.437,
f. 10rb), which had just cited Hermes’ Ad Asclepium explicitly.
32 See, for example, Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 116A-​B, p. 59, l. 9-​28; 117C, p. 69, l. 54–​56;
119C, p. 84, l. 59–​62; 126C, p. 157, l. 99–​101, each beginning with Omnis deus. Cf. Berthold of
Moosburg, Expositio, 178E, p. 196, l. 258–​259: Secundo apparet idem per tres praepositiones,
quas point Trismegistus de prime Deo in Regulis suis.
Prologus 75

Berthold inherited from Thomas of York a view of Hermes which placed him
on both sides of the condemnation of idolatry.33 Both Berthold and Thomas
confronted Hermes’ discussion in the Asclepius, c. 23-​24, of man-​made statues
that were intended to channel divine influence. Berthold included additional
and lengthy passages from William of Auvergne condemning Hermes, “a most
prudent man”, for holding that “gods are made by human artifice and power”
and that they are endowed with “wonderous powers”. Hermes, “though wise
in many things”, was on this matter foolish beyond measure.34 His idolatry
stemmed from a failure to recognise that “the powers of God diffused in the
world” participate in one God, and that if the human has any strength from
itself, then even it must be greater than the work of its hands.35 Both of these
principles, according to Berthold, make the animation of statues unintelligible.
These criticisms, however, come immediately after Berthold, following
Thomas, placed Hermes on the side of Plato and “the true philosophisers” as
advocates of a rigorous henotheism.36 In Proposition 114, the first to begin with
Omnis deus, Berthold agreed with Thomas about the false assumptions that
led the ancients to mistaken beliefs about the gods.37 He used arguments from
Ulrich of Strassburg that associate the name Deus with providence to explain
how this name can be extended participatively (participative) to the primordial

33 Cf. Porreca, “Hermes Trismegistus in Thomas of York”, p. 154–​160; Sannino, “Berthold of

Moosburg’s Hermetic Sources”, p. 249–​251. On the principal divisions in the Latin recep-
tion of the Asclepius, between Lactantius’ favourable reception, Augustine’s denuncia-
tion in De civitate Dei (vii.23–​24, 26; xviii.29) and Quodvultdeus’ more positive portrayal
(which, because his text was transmitted with Augustine’s sermons, was subsequently
attributed to the bishop of Hippo), see Lucentini, “Hermes Trismegistus ii. Middle Ages”.
34 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 115B, p. 52, l. 82–​88: Sed mirum est de errore istius pruden-
tissimi viri, quo posuit statuas cum illis exsecrationibus, quas ipse vocat consecrationes, deos
factitios esse et humano artificio atque potentia deos effici, attribuens illis virtutes divinas
mirificas. […] ut ipse dicit in multis sapiens, sed in hoc desipiens supra modum. Cf. William
of Auvergne, De legibus, ed. F. Hotot, Opera omnia, vol. 1 (Paris: Thierry, 1674), c. 26, p. 85aA
and c. 23, p. 67aB.
35 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 115B, p. 53, l. 89–​91: Non enim advertit vel advertere voluit,
quia ‘omne datum naturaliter et magis est apud datorem et maius, et omne causatum natu-
raliter et magis et maius apud causantem […]’.
36 See Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 114A, quoted at n. 31, above, and 115A, p. 50, l. 10–​
14: deorum quidam est Deus deorum, sicut dicitur in ii parte Timaeus Platonis, qui ‘opifex
et pater’ esset aliorum, et illum omnes vere philosophantes singulare posuerunt eo, quod ille
per naturam superessentialiter et principaliformiter Deus est, de quo Plato et Trismegistus
dicunt, quod vix attingitur ab homine, cum maxime a carne avertitur.
37 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 114A, p. 41, l. 30–​39, citing Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 10.
76  Chapter 1

causes and, through them, to creatures.38 Plato and Hermes were in agreement
with this doctrine, which found a consummate expression in Dionysius, as the
arguments from Ulrich demonstrated.
Similarly, in Proposition 115, before presenting William’s critique of Hermes
the worshipper of graven images, Berthold appealed to the De deo Socratis of
Apuleius as a witness to Plato’s account of “the kinds of gods”: from the inef-
fable God, who is scarcely comprehended even by the few wise who separate
themselves from the body, through the threefold division of “highest, middle,
and lowest” gods. According to Apuleius, Plato called the highest gods “incor-
poreal and living natures, without end or beginning”, “oriented to supreme
beatitude through a perfect natural endowment [ingenio]”, and “good through
themselves without participation in any outside good”, which Berthold evi-
dently understood to be an explication of Plato’s doctrine of the “lesser gods”
in the Timaeus.39 Therefore, by the time we come to William of Auvergne’s crit-
icism of Hermes, we are disposed to read it as an internal critique that exposes
the sage’s betrayal of his own philosophical insight (in multis sapiens, sed in hoc
desipiens supra modum). Berthold’s interpretation of Proclus on reincarnation
will adopt the same strategy, by framing the objectionable texts as failures to
penetrate beyond mythical coverings to the philosophical truth that acknowl-
edged the unknown God as the source of all things.
In these two very rare critical moments in the Expositio, we glimpse what
Berthold held to be the true standard of Platonism beyond even what he read
in Proclus. In general, however, he was most interested in illustrating the
agreement between the pagan and Christian sages. The Hermes of the Liber
xxiv philosophorum, who followed the theorematic mode most suited to the-
ology, produced statements that for Berthold were entirely in agreement with
Dionysius’ strongest and most important declarations about divine ineffability,
which echoed what Berthold read in Apuleius about Plato’s own views: “God
is known by the mind only through ignorance”, and “God is the darkness that
remains in the soul after every light”.40 For Berthold, this was the highest truth

38 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 114B, p. 41, l. 41 –​p. 43, l. 109. For a comparison of this
passage with Ulrich’s De summo bono, see Ferro, “Berthold of Moosburg, Reader of Ulrich
of Strassburg”, forthcoming.
39 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 115A, p. 50, l. 10 –​p. 51, l. 56. Cf. Apuleius, De deo Socratis,
ed. C. Moreschini, Apulei opera quae supersunt. Vol. iii. De philosophia libri (Leipzig:
Teubner, 1991), c. 3, p. 11, l. 3-​10; c. 1, p. 7, l. 1-​9; and p. 10, l. 12 –​p. 11, l. 2.
40 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 123M, p. 135, l. 347–​348: Huic alludit Trismegistus xxiii
regula, cum dicit: ‘Deus est, qui sola ignorantia mente cognoscitur’; 123M, p. 137, l. 393–​
394: Huic alludit Trismegistus xxi regula dicens: ‘Deus est tenebra in anima post omnem
lucem relicta’. Berthold summarised every argument about divine ineffability in this
Prologus 77

about God that united the greatest philosophers of antiquity, and Hermes had
stated it with perfect clarity.
Berthold adopted from Thomas one further motif regarding the concord
of Hermes and Plato, which undergirded the Dominican’s Christian henothe-
istic interpretation of Proclus: the notion that the Liber xxiv philosophorum
and the Asclepius attest to the Hermes’ knowledge of God as Trinity.41 The
Trinitarian interpretation of the Liber’s first maxim (monas monadem gign-
ens, in se unum reflectens ardorem), which was frequently transmitted alone
or alongside the second maxim on God as “the infinite sphere, whose centre
is everywhere and circumference nowhere”, began in the 12th century with
Alan of Lille, who attributed the first maxim to Cicero, and with Alexander
Neckam, who ascribed it to Hermes.42 Berthold’s source in 131B, on the pagan
knowledge of the Son and Holy Spirit, was Sapientiale i.14, where Thomas
developed Augustine’s judgement about the fundamental agreement between
the books of the Platonists (libri Platonicorum) and the first verses of John’s
Gospel using ps.-​Augustine (Quodvultdeus) on the Sibylline oracles, as well
as the Asclepius on the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. Thomas
then expanded this dossier of materials, which resembles what we find
first in Peter Abelard, to argue that the pagans (Hermes, Seneca, Porphyry,
and Macrobius) also had genuine knowledge of the Holy Spirit.43 Berthold
adopted all of this but innovated from Thomas in two ways: first, by offer-
ing Trinitarian exegeses of other maxims in the Liber xxiv philosophorum;44
and secondly, and more importantly, by interpreting this history through the
philosophy of Dietrich of Freiberg, whom he followed for the remainder of
his comments on Proposition 131. For Dietrich, the abundant causal overflow

proposition with maxims from the Liber xxiv philosophorum: the eminence of the super­
unifical first principle (123K: maxim 16), how it is known through ignorance (123L: maxim
23), and the divine nothingness (123L: maxim 21). This alone is clear evidence of Berthold’s
commitment to the view that Hermes anticipated the Platonic theology of Proclus and
Dionysius and showed his perfect apprehension of these mysteries by expressing his the-
ology in a theorematic form. Maxim 21, incidentally, seems also to have been known to
John Tauler, who referred to its author as a saint. See John Tauler, Predigt 56 (Nineteenth
Sunday after Trinity), ed. F. Vetter, p. 263, l. 31 –​p. 264, l. 1: ein heilig schribet: ‘Got ist ein
vinsternisse nach allem liechte, sunder dem vinsternisse siner unbekantheit’.
41 F. Retucci, “Einleitung”, in Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theo-
logicam Procli. Propositiones 108–​135, p. xiv–​xviii.
42 Hudry, “Introduction”, p. xxv-​xxvi.
43 On Abelard’s originality in combining these sources, see J. Marenbon, Pagans and
Philosophers. The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2015), p. 74–​78.
44 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 131B, p. 193, l. 89–​91. Cf. 117A-​B, p. 68, l. 10–​28.
78  Chapter 1

of God and the separate intelligences (their ebullitio) is understood to be a

result of an internal Trinitarian dynamism (quaedam interioris respectiva
transfusio).45
On this second point, one should note that the lengthiest consideration of
pagan knowledge of the Trinity in the Expositio is found here, in Proposition
131 (“Every god begins its proper operation from itself”).46 Berthold’s basic
assumption was that unless the best of the pagans already knew that the
fecundity of the divine nature requires such an “interior transfusion”, and
that this is most fully realised in the Trinity and mirrored in lower principles,
they could not have articulated the theology he found traced in Hermes and
the Timaeus, and restored in the Elementatio. Hermes and Plato understood
that there is a relation of subordination between God or the One and the
gods that participate the divine providence. But it was Proclus who articu-
lated the logic of proportionality that took what is said of God in Hermes’
maxims and applied it analogously to the secondary principles. Thomas of
York’s account of the pagan knowledge of God in antiquity was thus put
in the service of a theory of causality that, although it was only explicated
by Berthold’s German Dominican predecessors, was now presented in the
Expositio as the truth known to these ancient philosophers. Berthold never
alluded to any contemporary authorities for this theory; his central concern
was to recover the ancient consensus and present it as such. He therefore
concluded his commentary on Proposition 131 by suggesting that this had
been Plato’s intention all along: “Therefore, in this way, every god is a ‘crafts-
man and begetter of its own universe’, as Plato says of the primarily God in
the Timaeus.”47
Returning now to the Prologus, we notice that Berthold’s lengthy glosses on
the Hermetic description of the macrocosm were also thoroughly indebted to
Thomas of York, especially Sapientiale vii.1. For each lemma of the Hermetic
text, Berthold copied from Thomas citations of authors including Hermes,
Plato, Cicero, and Pliny, but added numerous texts of his own from Scripture,
Dionysius, Proclus, the Clavis physicae. In Berthold’s sermon, this cloud of wit-
nesses praises the world as a perfectly crafted, immutable, and variegated work
that is filled with divine glory.

45 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 131D-​F, p. 195, l. 128 –​p. 198, l. 237.

46 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 131, p. 66, l. 1: Omnis deus a se ipso propriam opera-
tionem orditur.
47 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 131F, p. 198, l. 236–​237: Sic ergo omnis deus est ‘opifex et
genitor propriae universitatis’, sicut de prime Deo dicit Plato in Timaeo.
Prologus 79

Thomas of York thus provided the basic components for this section of
the Prologus, with its reverential and awestruck attitude toward nature. But
Berthold’s modifications of the Sapientiale show that he was keen to empha-
sise how the visible world’s splendour is a consequence of its rootedness in the
intelligible and supersubstantial worlds. For example, early in his remarks on
the macrocosm, Berthold stated that Hermes called the entire world a work
(opus) rather than a creation (creatura), as Paul did, “perhaps because of the
primordial causes” that precede the creation of the world, as Dionysius and
his commentator, Maximus, agreed.48 Plato and Boethius also concur that the
visible world was drawn out of the invisible world.49 The invisible world, for its
part, is “immutable”. The contemplator may ponder how immutability is com-
municated to the visible world when as the world is viewed as a whole, which
is presided over by the world soul (anima totalis).50 From this standpoint, the
entire order is understood to be a glorious edifice (gloriosa constructio) that, as
Cicero wrote, is the common abode and domicile of gods and human beings.
Then, focusing on the terms “abode” and “domicile”, Berthold proceeded to give
an elaborate description of this house that “wisdom, the infinite sphere, whose
centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, has built for itself”. This, he
explained, is house that the Father has made first in the divine Word.51 The
seven columns of wisdom’s abode referred to in Scripture (Proverbs 9:1), con-
tinued Berthold, are in fact the seven intentions that comprise the primordial
causes: goodness, infinity, being, life, intellectuality, animateness, and physi-
cality. The final picture, then, is tripartite. These columns or primordial causes
comprise are the “supersubstantial” foundations of the “substantial” invisible
world, from which this visible world takes its origin.52
At the end of each explanation of a syntagm from Hermes’ description of
the macrocosm, Berthold invited his audience to share in the philosophers’
vision (Ecce!) of the splendour of this world and its archetype, each time using
the words of Scripture to voice his praise.53 Two instances of these Scriptural
conclusions are especially illustrative of Berthold’s attitude to pagan wisdom.
The first, which we simply note in passing, is the final phrase of the section
devoted to the macrocosm, where Berthold combined Psalm 92, the Timaeus,

48 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 9, p. 14, l. 300 –​p. 15, l. 320.

49 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 9, p. 15, l. 328–​337.
50 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 10, p. 16, l. 364 –​p. 17, l. 385.
51 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 11, p. 17, l. 404 –​p. 20, l. 476.
52 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 10, p. 16, l. 364–​365.
53 On the role of Scripture in the Expositio, see also P. Hellmeier, “The Meaning of the
Biblical Citations in the Expositio of Berthold of Moosburg”, forthcoming.
80  Chapter 1

and the Asclepius into one sentence.54 But a more daring combination, and
more typical of Berthold’s procedure in the Prologus as a whole, was when he
exclaimed with the Psalmist:

Oh, what “glorious things of you are spoken, city of God”! For your entire
edifice rises up into a holy and wonderful temple, into which you too, pri-
mordial causes, have been built together for a habitation of God through
the Holy Spirit.55

The echo of Ephesians 2:20-​22 is remarkable in its connotation.56 Whereas

the epistle referred to the Church as “the household of God”, founded on
Christ as its cornerstone, in whom the redeemed are built up and are made
“fellow-​citizens with the saints”, Berthold addressed the same words directly
to the primordial causes (vos primordiales causae coaedificamini), the foun-
dations of the invisible and visible world that are in the divine Word. For
Berthold, these divine principles were the means of deification for those
seeking God. The Word remained the cornerstone, but the power of deifica-
tion Berthold found refracted in the principles that inhabit it. For the soul to
become God’s temple, it must enter and conform itself to God’s habitation.
By extending the scope of Ephesians 2:20-​22 from Christ, the saints, and the
Church, to the Word and the primordial causes as the house or temple of God,
Berthold moved within the exegetical possibilities opened by the motif of the
macrocosm and microcosm: what is true of human nature (the saints) has
its universal correlative in the cosmos (the primordial causes). Once again,
we should assume that this interpretative extension was not intended as a
denigration of the Church or an evacuation of its value, but rather as a tes-
tament to the splendour of these natural realities as the philosophers had
apprehended them. Only such words sufficed to express that glory. The con-
sequence of this extension, however, was to admit that the best of the pagans
found the way to God’s abode, simultaneously through nature and through
the soul’s own ground.

54 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 13, p. 22, l. 566–​568: ‘In operibus manuum tua-
rum exultabo’, quia tu Deus, a quo omnis ‘invidia longe relegata est’, ‘operi tui sine invidia
suffragaris’.
55 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 11, p. 19, l. 473 –​p. 20, l. 476: O quam ‘gloriosa dicta
sunt de te, civitas Dei!’: omnis enim tui aedificatio crescit in templum sanctum et mirabile, in
quo et vos primordiales causae coaedificamini in habitaculum Dei in Spiritum sanctum.
56 Cf. Ephesians 2:20–​22: ipso summo angulari lapide Christo Jesu: in quo omnis aedificatio
constructa crescit in templum sanctum in Domino, in quo et vos coaedificamini in habitacu-
lum Dei in Spiritu.
Prologus 81

2 Hermes Trismegistus and Albert the Great

Hermes Trismegistus still held the central position of authority in Berthold’s

presentation of the microcosm (Prol. 14-​19). Here again his remarks were
structured as a lemmatic commentary on a passage from the Asclepius. This
time, however, Berthold’s direct source for Hermes was not Thomas of York,
but Albert the Great. At the beginning of his commentary on Aristotle’s
Metaphysics, Albert assembled the following lines from the Asclepius, which
for Berthold became a description of the microcosm:

The human is the nexus of God and the world [homo est nexus Dei et
mundi], existing beyond the world through two kinds of scientific inquiry
[per duplicem indagationem], namely, the physical and the quadrivial.
Both are perfected through human reason. In this way the human is prop-
erly called the governor of the world [mundi gubernator]. He is, however,
subjoined to God, receiving his beauties that are not immersed in the
world, in extension and time, through a divine likeness, which is the light
of the simple intellect, which he participates from the God of gods.57

If Thomas provided the key to recovering the ancient pagan attitude toward
the world as the manifestation of the hidden and Triune God, then Albert was
equally instrumental in providing Berthold with an anthropology and a theory
of intellectual, scientific progress that could explain how those philosophers
achieved their discovery, and what the consequences of this realisation were
for their activity within the world.
This anthropology located the Expositio firmly within the intellectual cul-
ture of Berthold’s German Dominican predecessors, Albert the Great, Ulrich
of Strassburg, Dietrich of Freiberg, and Meister Eckhart, and his contempo-
raries Henry Suso and John Tauler. Loris Sturlese has convincingly argued that

57 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 14, p. 23, l. 570–​577: Homo est nexus Dei et mundi
super mundum per duplicem indagationem existens, physicam videlicet et doctrinalem,
quorum utrumque virtute rationis humanae perficitur, et hoc modo mundi gubernator pro-
prie vocatur. Subnexus autem Deo, pulchritudines eius non immersas mundo, hoc est con-
tinuo et tempori, accipiens per similitudinem divinam, quae est lumen simplices intellectus,
quod a Deo deorum participat. Cf. Albert the Great, Metaphysica, lib. i, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 2, l. 5-​15.
Albert used the Hermetic notion of man as the nexus Dei et mundi in three other works.
See Albert the Great, De animalibus, ed. H. Stadler, 2 vols (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff,
1916–​1920), vol. 2, lib. xxii, tr. 1, c. 5, §9, p. 1353, l. 16–​20; id., De intellectu et intelligibili, ed.
A. Borgnet, Opera omnia, vol. 9 (Paris: Vivès, 1890), lib. ii, tr. unicus, c. 9, p. 517b; id., Ethica,
ed. A. Borgnet, Opera omnia, vol. 7 (Paris: Vivès, 1891), lib. x, tr. 2, c. 3, p. 627b.
82  Chapter 1

a characteristic trait of all these authors was the urgency they felt to demon-
strate the hidden, abiding dignity that belongs to the human as an intellectual
creature or imago Dei.58 At the origin of this tradition was Albert’s synthesis of
Hermes with the noetic doctrines of Al-​Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, in his
theories of human nature, intellectual progress, and perfection, which can be
summarised in the philosopheme taken from the Asclepius, homo est nexus Dei
et mundi.59
To the more familiar notion that the human being exists at the boundary
of the eternal and the temporal, the immortal and the mortal, this image of a
nexus added the further, dynamic connotation relating both to the ascent and
descent of human activity to and from the divine. As the paean in c­ hapters 6-​
11 of the Asclepius declared, to live in accordance with its twofold condition,
humanity is called “to adore the heavens” through the sciences, the arts, eth-
ical discipline, and above all, wonder, praise, and reverence for the immortal,
and “to govern the earth”.60 As Albert put it, the divinisation of the intellect
attained through long study (studium longum) enables the human to realise its
rightful dignity as governor (gubernator) of the world.61 Albert described the
precise nature of this governance in different ways, sometimes emphasising
its operative or magical aspects, such as the participated capacity to produce

58 L. Sturlese, “Intelletto acquisito e divino. La dottrina filosofica di Alberto il Grande sulla

perfezione della ragione umana”, in Giornale critico della filosofia italiana 82/​2(2003),
p. 161–​189, at p. 189; id., Vernunft und Glück. Die Lehre vom intellectus adeptus und die
mentale Glückseligkeit bei Albert dem Grossen (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 2005), p. 28–​31;
id., Homo divinus, p. 1–​13.
59 Sturlese, “Saints et magiciens”; id., “Intelletto acquisito e divino”, p. 186–​187. The phrase
is described as a philosopheme by A. Palazzo, “Le fonti ermetiche nel De summo bono di
Ulrico di Strasburgo”, in P. Lucentini, I. Parri, V. Perrone Compagni (eds), Hermetism from
Late Antiquity to Humanism, p. 189–​202, p. 196. Following Stephen Gersh, I understand
“philosopheme” to mean a basic unit of philosophical discourse that differs from a “doc-
trine” in that it does not have to be employed entirely consciously by an author who uses
it, and it does not, in principle, need to be capable of demonstrative formulation. See
S. Gersh, “The First Principles of Latin Neoplatonism. Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius”, in
Vivarium 50(2012), p. 113–​138, at p. 116–​117.
60 Asclepius, ed. C. Moreschini, Apulei opera quae supersunt. Vol. iii. De philosophia libri
(Leipzig: Teubner, 1991), c. 8, p. 47, l. 4-​7: Itaque hominem conformat ex animi et corporis,
id est ex aeterna atque mortali natura, ut animal ita conformatum utraeque origini suae
satisfacere possit, et mirari atque <ad>orare caelestia et incolere atque gubernare terrena.
Cf. Genesis 1:28.
61 Albert the Great, De somno et vigilia, ed. A. Borgnet, Opera omnia, vol. 9 (Paris: Vivès,
1890), lib. iii, tr. 1, c. 12, p. 195a-​196b; id., De intellectu et intelligibili, lib. ii, tr. unicus, c. 8–​9,
p. 514b-​517b.
Prologus 83

fascinations or to transform matter,62 while at other times he spoke of a kind of

intellectual prophecy that follows upon perfection in the sciences.63 Berthold
will take up this second side of Albert.
Berthold’s main concern in his exegesis of the Hermetic description of the
microcosm was to establish the agreement between the anthropologies of
Dionysius and Proclus, and especially relative to their notion of a “unity” or a
“one of the soul” (unum animae) beyond intellect. To explain the structure and
dynamics of this Platonic anthropology, Berthold constantly and tacitly made
recourse to the works of his German Dominican forebears. As we proceed
in our reading of his Prologus and Expositio tituli, we will see that Berthold
united two distinct anthropological currents coming from his predecessors.
With Albert the Great and Ulrich of Strassburg, he conceived of intellectual
perfection in terms of an arduous scientific effort, which concurred with what
he found in Proclus’ De providentia et fato about the ascending modes of cogni-
tion from sense-​perception and opinion to divine union beyond intellect. With
Dietrich of Freiberg and Meister Eckhart, and like his contemporaries Henry
Suso and John Tauler, he presented the restoration of the imago Dei alongside
a critique of a lower form of rationality which cannot do justice to the inher-
ent dignity of the spirit. Berthold’s interpretation of the De mystica theologia
tended to accentuate this element, although he found it in the De providentia
et fato as well.
Both currents were already in play as Berthold began his lemmatic com-
mentary on Albert’s assembly of lines from the Asclepius describing the micro-
cosm. He started by focusing on the hierarchical connotation of the term
nexus, which implies relations to the lower and to the higher, and asserted that
all conjunction occurs through likeness.64 If the human is the nexus of God
and the world, then it must resemble both terms. Accordingly, the human has
four principal parts. The first three parts –​body, soul, and intellect –​are treated
as self-​evident (tria manifesta sunt) to everyday awareness. However, there is
also a “one or unity” (unum sive unitas) in the soul that, as Proclus stated, is a
“hidden vestige of the One” (secretum unius vestigium), which is more divine

62 Albert the Great, De animalibus, lib. xxii, tr. 1, c. 5, §9, p. 1353, l. 16–​25; id., De intellectu
et intelligibili, lib. ii, tr. unicus, c. 11, p. 519b. On Albert’s complex and developing views
about these magical and operative abilities, see A. Palazzo, “Albert the Great’s Doctrine
of Fascination in the Context of his Philosophical System”, in L. Honnefelder, H. Möhle,
S. Bullido del Barrio (eds), Via Alberti. Texte –​Quellen –​Interpretationen (Münster
i.W.: Aschendorff, 2009), p. 135–​215.
63 This was the interpretation of Albert favoured also by Ulrich of Strassburg. See Palazzo,
“Le fonti ermetiche”, p. 195–​196.
64 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 15, p. 23, l. 578–​603.
84  Chapter 1

than intellect. Berthold then cited Dionysius to add that this union (unitio) or
unity (unitas) is lifted high above the nature of mind and is that through which
the nature of mind is conjoined (coniungitur) to what is above it. Humanity
resembles the macrocosmic realities below it through the body and soul, and
those above it through the intellect and the unum animae.
In Berthold’s treatment of the next lemma (duplex indagatio), Albert the
Great’s anthropology and noetics were his principal inspiration (Prol. 16).
Berthold’s remarks on the notion of scientific progression were mostly a tacit
copy from Albert’s Metaphysica i.1.1, which is summarised in what follows,
though Berthold made three important modifications to his source that will be
noted as we proceed. Albert began his Metaphysica by observing that the natu-
ral and quadrivial sciences had now been treated in other commentaries, and
that each science has perfected the intellect in its own way: natural science
perfected intellect insofar as it is related to time; quadrivial science perfected
it in its relation to space.65 Furthermore, the sciences can be arranged in a cer-
tain order. Natural sciences, because of their mutable objects, cannot achieve
certainty and are inherently mixed with opinion. The quadrivial sciences pro-
duce stable knowledge because of the way they consider their objects, even
though their objects are not in themselves separate from matter. With the lat-
ter sciences, Albert stated, one has reached the level of stable forms (formae
stantes) and the threshold of metaphysics. Albert’s main authority here had
been the prologue of Ptolemy’s Almagest. Berthold, however, at this point in
his tacit paraphrase, moved from the Metaphysica to Albert’s Summa theolo-
giae, where Albert offered a similar argument about opinion and the physical
sciences but attributed it to Plato’s Phaedo. The reasons for this first modifi-
cation, not to mention the facility with Albert’s works it demonstrates, are
obvious.
Before concluding his analysis of the duplex indagatio that prepares for the
study of the divine science, Berthold touched on the term governor (guber-
nator) that he found in the description of the microcosm from the Asclepius.
Albert had offered no explanation of this term in the Metaphysica, so once
again Berthold had to depart from his principal source:

It is clear now that, through these sciences, and especially through

astronomy and astrology, the human being is properly called ‘the gover-
nor’ of the sensible world. Among all who philosophise, to the astrologers
alone it is granted by divine obligation to be inquirers of the celestial

65 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 16, p. 23, l. 604 –​p. 24, l. 635.
Prologus 85

decrees from the consideration of causes that are primary, natural, per se,
essential, and sempiternal, and to be aware of things to come. For these
thinkers never depart from the principles of nature and natural science,
just as Haly in his Commentary on the Quadripartitus commends [us] to
follow Ptolemy, and moreover because, according to Al-​Farabi in On the
Origin of the Sciences, the wise man is the measure of all things, dwelling
among the elements and parts of the world, gaining the highest delights.
And thus, according to Proclus in question 10 of On Providence, he rules
the world with the gods.66

At the summit of the duplex indagatio and at threshold of the divine science,
then, is the science of the stars, whose practice is exemplified in Ptolemy.
As the author of the mathematical Almagest and juridical Tetrabiblos
(Quadripartitus), Ptolemy both had achieved perfection in the quadrivial
sciences and had used this knowledge for action in the world –​this is why for
Berthold, following Ptolemy’s commentator Haly (‘Alī ibn Riḍwān, d. 1061), he
was worthy of imitation. In Ptolemy, the two sides of the nexus Dei et mundi
were brought together, demonstrating the intrinsic connection between the
duplex indagatio and humanity’s rightful role as gubernator. As Berthold
explained, it is because the astrologer is familiar with essential and eter-
nal causes that he can act in the world as its governor. This was high praise,
but most remarkable was how Berthold described the practical activity of
the astrologer by invoking one of the loftiest passages in the Tria opuscula,
where Proclus, following Plato’s Phaedrus, stated that a soul who travels with
the gods through the heavenly circuit governs the world with them (dispensat
mundum cum diis).67 In our attempts to imagine how such a notion in Proclus
would be understood by a 14th-​century Dominican scholar, its presence in this

66 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 16, p. 24, l. 636 –​p. 25, l. 646: Ex praemissis satis
patet, quomodo et physica et doctrinalia perficiantur virtute rationis humanae. Quod autem
per eas et specialiter astronomiam et astrologiam homo mundi sensibilis vocetur proprie
gubernator, apparet. Tum quia astrologis solis inter omnes philosophantes divino munere
communicatum est decretorum caelestium ex consideratione causarum naturalium pri-
marum per se et essentialium ac sempiternarum in futurorum eventibus scrutatores esse et
conscios: Nequaquam enim a principiis naturae et naturalis scientiae discedunt, quemad-
modum Haly in Commento Quadripartiti commendat procedere Ptolemaeum. Tum etiam
quia secundum Alfarabium libro De ortu scientiarum sapiens est mensura omnium rerum,
elementa et partes mundi inhabitans, summas delectationes acquirens. Haec ille. Et sic
secundum Proclum 10 quaest. De providentia dispensat mundum cum dis.
67 The source was not De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, as Berthold recalled, but
rather Proclus, De malorum subsistentia, c. 7, §23, p. 201, l. 7 –​p. 202, l. 10.
86  Chapter 1

context is highly instructive. Throughout the Expositio, the phrase dispensat

mundum cum diis will be associated with the providential cognition of the
unum animae, the highest principle in human nature, which is to be awakened
in the study of the subject matter treated in the Elementatio theologica. If this
is somehow synonymous with the practice of the science of the stars, in both
its mathematical and juridical aspects, then we must always keep this associa-
tion in mind as we make our way through the commentary. In other words, the
divine science of Proclus and the mystical theology of Dionysius do not lose
their connection with the study of natural philosophy. This continuity must be
preserved if the human is to be a nexus Dei et mundi.
These remarks on the gubernator signal that Berthold did not interpret the
ecstatic cognition of the unum animae as a rejection of rational activity, but as
identical to, or at least fundamentally continuous with, a kind of intellectual
or natural prophecy.68 Some clarity on this matter can be gained by looking
to Berthold’s source in Albert. Here he did not look to the Metaphysica, which
did not gloss the term gubernator. Nor was it Albert’s De animalibus xxii.1.5
(a text which Berthold knew in its autograph copy), which had discussed the
Hermetic nexus and the term gubernator, since Berthold’s notion of govern-
ance included none of the operative-​magical abilities mentioned by Albert
in that text. Berthold’s source was very likely a passage occurring immedi-
ately prior to Albert’s mention of the Hermetic nexus Dei et mundi in the De
intellectu et intelligibili.69 In this chapter, Albert presented his notion of the

68 On the notion of natural prophecy in Avicenna, who was a major source for Albert
the Great on this question, see D.N. Hasse, Avicenna’s De anima in the Latin West. The
Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of the Soul 1160–​1300 (London /​Torino: The Warburg
Institute /​Nino Aragno Editore, 2000), p. 154–​174. For a less positive verdict on the human
capacity for certain prognostication, which is difficult to reconcile with Prol. 16, see
Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 120A, p. 91, l. 36–​41: futura contingentia nusquam habere
possunt immobilem veritatem nisi in isto, qui est immobilis et simpliciter immutabilis, qui est
Deus, sicut dicit Cicero De divinatione libro I cap. 23, quod ‘futurae res in causis’ primordi-
alibus ‘sunt conditae’ sicut res ‘in seminibus’; et ideo, qui tenet causas futuorum, tenet omnia
futura; homo autem per signa potest scire futura, non per causas, et talis scientia dicitur
potius coniectura.
69 Albert the Great, De intellectu et intelligibili, lib. ii, tr. unicus, c. 9, p. 517a: Anima igitur
humana concipiendo lumen cui applicatur intellectus agens in ipsa illustratus, applicatur
lumen intelligentiarum, et amplius clarescit in illo: et sicut dicit Alfarabius, in ipso efficitur
sicut stellae coeli, et intellectus huic lumini beate et pure permixtus, peritissimus efficitur
astrorum, et prognosticationum quae sunt in astris. Et ideo dicit Ptolemaeus, quod ‘scientia
astrorum facit hominem pulchritudinem coelestem amare’. In illo autem lumine conforta-
tus consurgit intellectus in lumen divinum, quod nomen non habet et inenarrabile est: quia
proprio nomine non innotescit: sed ut recipitur, innotescit: et primum in quo recipitur, est
intelligentia quae est primum causatum: et cum enarratur, nomine illius enarratur et non
Prologus 87

assimilative intellect (intellectus assimilativus), which is the level of scientific

perfection that follows after the already exalted state of the acquired intel-
lect (intellectus adeptus).70 The latter denotes the stage at which, after long
study, one attains or “acquires” their own intellect, inasmuch as one possesses
the totality of intelligibles that the possible intellect is naturally disposed to
receive through the unified light of the agent intellect. Since, for Albert, the
human, insofar as it is human, is intellect itself, the acquired intellect corre-
sponds to self-​knowledge.71 The assimilative intellect signifies the next stage,
in which the human ascends gradually, to the extent permitted to it, to the
divine intellect through the simpler lights of the separate intellects.72 Here it
becomes united with the ever simpler and more comprehensive forms of the

nomine proprio, sed nomine sui causati. Et ideo dixit Hermes ‘Deum deorum non proprie
percipi nomine proprio, sed vix mente attingitur ab his qui a corpore per longum studium
separantur’: iungitur igitur illi ultimo et lumini suo, et mixtus illi lumini aliquid participat
divinitatis. Propter quod dicit Avicenna, quod aliquando illi lumini vere permixtus intellectus
futura praeordinat et praedicit, et quasi Deus quidem esse perhibetur. Iste igitur est intellec-
tus assimilativus.
70 On the acquired intellect, see also Albert the Great, De anima, ed. C. Stroick (Münster
i.W.: Aschendorff, 1968), lib. iii, tr. 3, c. 11, p. 221, l. 6 –​p. 223, l. 38. On the development of
Albert’s doctrine of the acquired intellect, see C. Steel, “Medieval Philosophy: an Impossible
Project? Thomas Aquinas and the ‘Averroistic’ Ideal of Happiness”, in J. Aertsen, A. Speer
(eds), Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter? (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998), p. 152–​174; id., Die
Adler und die Nachteule. Thomas und Albert über die Möglichkeit der Metaphysik (Münster
i.W.: Aschendorff, 2001); H. Anzulewicz, “Entwicklung und Stellung der Intellekttheorie
im System des Albertus Magnus”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen
Âge 70(2003), p. 165–​218, at p. 188–​198; De Libera, Métaphysique et noétique, p. 196–​
200 and 300–​344; Sturlese, Vernunft und Glück; J. Müller, “Der Einfluß der arabischen
Intellektspekulation auf die Ethik des Albertus Magnus”, in A. Speer, L. Wegener (eds),
Wissen über Grenzen. Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2006), p. 545–​568.
71 Albert the Great, De intellectu et intelligibili, lib. ii, tr. unicus, c. 8, p. 514b-​515b: Adeptus
igitur intellectus est, quando per studium aliquis verum et proprium suum adipiscitur intel-
lectum, quasi totius laboris utilitatem et fructum. […] Et ideo dixit Plato, quod verissima phi-
losophiae definitio est suiipsius cognitio. […] in illis maxime intellectus invenit se secundum
naturam propriam, eo quod homo in quantum homo solus est intellectus. On Albert’s use of
the formula homo inquantum homo solus est intellectus, see H. Anzulewicz, “Anthropology.
The Concept of Man in Albert the Great”, in I.M. Resnick (ed.), A Companion to Albert the
Great. Theology, Philosophy, and the Sciences (Leiden: Brill, 2013), p. 325–​346, at p. 340–​344.
72 Albert the Great, De intellectu et intelligibili, lib. ii, tr. unicus, c. 9, p. 516a: Est autem intel-
lectus assimilativus, in quo homo quantum possibile sive fas est proportionabiliter surgit ad
intellectum divinum, qui est lumen et causa omnium. Fit autem hoc cum per omnia in effectu
factus intellectus perfecte adeptus est seipsum et lumen agentis, et ex omnium luminibus
et notitia sui extendit se in luminibus intelligentiarum ascendens gradatim ad intellectum
simplicem divinum.
88  Chapter 1

world (formae mundi), which have been compared to laws of nature,73 until
it eventually reaches union with God (intellectus divinus). That this passage
was Berthold’s inspiration for his comments on the microcosm as guberna-
tor is clear from a comparison from the authorities used by both Dominicans.
Whereas Albert had cited Al-​Farabi, Ptolemy, Hermes, and Avicenna on the
assimilative intellect, Berthold described the astrologer’s scientific and opera-
tive knowledge using Al-​Farabi, Ptolemy, and Proclus, with Hermes of course
in the background.
Before considering the significance of Berthold’s substitution of the unum
animae for Albert’s intellectus assimilativus, we should briefly note Berthold’s
third and final transformation of Albert’s Metaphysica in Prologus 16. In his
prologue to the Metaphysica, Albert had spoken of the divine science pur-
sued by Aristotle using a phrase from Ethica Nicomachea x.7, that the life of
contemplation, the activity that has no further goal beyond itself, belongs to
the human, not as human, but insofar as something divine exists in him.74
Berthold, however, consistent with his central claim that the human resembles
the world above it by virtue of the intellect and the “one” that is hidden from
everyday awareness, made the distinction between the human and “the divine
in him” hinge on the difference between intellect and the unum animae:

These two kinds of scientific inquiry form the steps and conveyances to
divinising wisdom [sapientiam divinalem], which belongs to the human,
not as human, but as divine. For, according to Proclus in the text men-
tioned above, the human is divine through the one that is more divine
than intellect: “the soul, attaining this and settling itself within it, is
divine and lives by divine life, to the extent permitted to it”.75

The same pattern appears in all three of Berthold’s modifications of Albert.

Wherever possible, he sought Platonic alternatives for the authorities used
by Albert in his account of the order and progression of the sciences (the
Phaedo for the Almagest; Proclus for Avicenna on intellectual prophecy;
Proclus for Aristotle on “the divine in us”). This comparison of Prol. 16 with its
sources illustrates both the aims and limitations of Berthold’s criticism of the
Peripatetic divine science: Berthold approached Proclus through an Albertist

73 On the notion of forma mundi, see Sturlese, Vernunft und Glück, p. 18–​23.
74 Albert the Great, Metaphysica, lib. i, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 1, l. 57 –​p. 2, l. 4.
75 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 16, p. 25, l. 647–​649. The “text mentioned above”
refers to the incorrect citation of De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam for the
phrase dispensat mundum cum diis. See n. 67, above.
Prologus 89

lens and understood the novel concept of the unum animae in such a way that
it could be made to substitute fairly seamlessly for and improve upon Albert’s
doctrine of the stages of intellectual perfection (intellectus adeptus, intellectus
assimilativus).
In one sense, it is not difficult to appreciate the resemblance Berthold saw
there, especially if we compare the Proclean dispensat mundum cum diis with
Albert’s Avicennian view of natural prophecy: both describe the capacity for
prognostication and action in the world achieved by a person whose intel-
lect is conjoined with the immutable laws or principles of the cosmic order.
But if we were to reduce Berthold entirely to his tacit sources or dismiss the
result as a garbled pastiche, we would miss the point of his substitution. For
Berthold, at least, it could not be that Avicenna’s and Proclus’ teachings were
simply identical. This is clear already from Berthold’s insistence that “the
divine in us” is precisely not the intellect that can be raised to higher stages
of actualisation or perfection, but the unum animae that is already some-
how “more divine than intellect”. Now, a complete account this modification
must await Berthold’s elaborate theory of “the three motions of the soul” in
the Expositio tituli A-​D. There we will find the resources to explain what is still
only implicit here: namely, that the exalted stage of self-​knowledge (intellec-
tus adeptus) must pass into a more fundamental, non-​reflexive cognition, as
the soul becomes established more and more in the cognition that is already
underway in its own ground. The non-​reflexive cognition of the unum animae
is ultimately what will replace the Albertist intellectus assimilativus.
What immediately followed in Prol. 17, which is Berthold’s commentary on
the lemma “subjoined to God” (subnexus autem Deo), anticipated this larger
shift. There he introduced the reader to the compatible doctrines of divine
union he discerned in the De mystica theologia and the De providentia et fato
by citing both texts at length.76 The agreement of Proclus and Dionysius was
predicated on the notion of the unum animae defined as a non-​reflexive cog-
nition above the mind. In the De mystica theologia, Dionysius advised Timothy
to abandon all sense-​perception and intellective activity, for in this way “the
divine man rises up in ignorance” (divinus homo ignote consurgat) to union
“with him, who is beyond all substance and knowing”. This realises the peace of
God that passes all understanding (intellectus) –​the understanding, Berthold
added, citing the Timaeus (51e), that is itself “only proper to God and a few cho-
sen people”. It is through the one or unity (unitas) that exceeds the nature of
the mind that the soul “enters the divine darkness” (intrat divinam caliginem)

76 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 17, p. 26, l. 675 –​p. 27, l. 727.
90  Chapter 1

or “the supersubstantial world” that is the primordial causes,77 in which God

is seen “by not seeing him” (per ipsum non videre). Berthold then cited Proclus’
account of the fives modes of cognition, which culminates in a cognition
higher that anything Aristotle ever insinuated, though it was known to Plato
and the theologians before him, who called it a truly “divine frenzy” (divina
mania). At the height of the intellectual ascent, Proclus wrote, the soul has one
state in which it knows itself and its object through a kind of immediacy or
contact, which is intellectual intuition (intellectus); it has another state where,
“thinking, the soul is ignorant of itself and other things” (et se ipsam et illa igno-
rat) and, “because of that, casting forth its one, it loves to be at peace, enclosing
itself from cognitions, having been made silent”.78 Juxtaposing Dionysius and
Proclus in this way, Berthold brought out their common teaching of an ascent
from senses to the intellect, and finally to the abandonment of intellectual
activity in an ignorance, peace, or silence that partakes of the divine knowing
(cognoscet solummodo, qualiter di omnia indicibiliter cognoscunt singuli).
These modalities of self-​knowledge and self-​forgetting that “knows as the
gods know” and thus becomes capable of a kind of natural prophecy were
latent in Albert’s De intellectu et intelligibili. As noted already, Albert had
described the intellectus adeptus as self-​knowledge (suiipsius cognitio) and the
intellectus assimilativus as an extension of the intellect out from all lights and
self-​knowledge (ex omnium luminibus et notitia sui extendit se). Berthold accen-
tuated the difference between these two stages by drawing out the Dionysian
resonances of Albert’s language.79

77 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 19, p. 31, l. 845–​46: Suo enim uno ingreditur homo
mundum supersubstantialem.
78 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 17, p. 27, l. 713–​719, citing Proclus, De providentia
et fato, c. 8, §31, p. 140, l. 9-​16: Intelligens quidem anima et se ipsam cognoscit et quae-
cumque intelligit contingentia, sicut diximus; similiter intelligens [superintelligens Boese]
autem et se ipsam et illa ignorat, quo adiacens le unum quietem amat clausa cognitionibus,
muta facta. Et enim quomodo utique adiaciet indicibilissimo omnium aliter quam sopo-
rans, quae in ipsa garrulamina? Fiat igitur unum, ut videat le unum, magis autem ut non
videat: videns enim intellectuale videbit et non supra intellectum et quoddam unum intel-
liget et non le autounum. The abbreviation in Berthold’s copy of the Tria opuscula (ms
Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, f. 64rb: sr) could be read either similiter intelligens
or superintelligens, but from the manuscripts of the Expositio, it is clear Berthold read
similiter.
79 Albert’s allusions to Dionysius became even stronger later in De intellectu et intelligi-
bili, lib. ii, tr. unicus, c. 10, p. 518a-​b: Haec autem puritas [intellectus] ex quatuor efficitur,
quorum unum est studium pulchritudinis. Secundum est acquisitio multae illuminationis.
Tertium autem excessus separationis a continuo et tempore. Et quartum, applicatio cum
lumine superioris ordinis. […] Inter autem quatuor ista primum est purgatio ab impedimen-
tis, et secundum illuminatio in his quae inferiora sunt homini proportionata. Tertium autem
Prologus 91

Albert: Est autem intellectus assimilativus, in quo homo quantum possibile

sive fas est proportionabiliter surgit ad intellectum divinum, qui est lumen
et causa omnium.
Berthold: Divinus homo ignote consurgit, sicut est possibile, ad eius uni-
tionem, qui est super omnem substantiam et cognitionem.

Whereas Albert was clearly describing two different states of intellectual per-
fection, Berthold’s theory contained an additional layer of complexity in that
he understood the unum animae as a principle in the soul that is deeper than
intellect itself. To a large extent, this was a hallmark of Dietrich of Freiberg’s
influence, for whom the agent intellect was to be regarded as a substance and
as the essential cause of the soul. The tension between these two models in
Berthold’s thought is nowhere clearer than in his choice in Prol. 17, which
became his custom in the Expositio, to cite both the “new” and “old” translations
of De divinis nominibus 7.1 on the union (unitio) or unity (unitas) –​in Greek,
ἕνωσις –​beyond the nature of the mind. The unitive cognition that Berthold
found in Dionysius and Proclus was both a state to be achieved only by the
few (unitio), following Albert, and a fact about human nature as such (unitas),
following Dietrich. But as we will see fully in Chapter 2, these two threads also
crossed. Berthold will ultimately accept Dietrich’s account of the conditions
under which that union is achieved by the few (raptus). But insofar as he mod-
ified Dietrich’s theory of God’s abiding presence in the soul by construing the
unum animae as a phase of intellect that is higher than self-​knowledge, which
Proclus called “the flower of the intellect”, Berthold’s unum resembled Albert’s
intellectus assimilativus more than anything we find in Dietrich.80
By way of comparison with Berthold, we may note how Ulrich of Strassburg
developed his own synthesis of the Dionysian and Peripatetic strands within
Albert’s theories of the intellectual ascent to God in Book i of De summo bono.
There Ulrich outlined five ways by which the natural knowledge of God is
attained: (1) by natural instinct; (2) by negation of the divine attributes known
through philosophy or by negation of God’s revealed names in Scripture;
(3) by causality, when God’s perfections are known through the creatures of
the world;81 (4) by eminence, when the imperfect mode of these perfections

est purgatio ab impedimento quarto: quia nisi quis excedat mente continuum et tempus, non
consurgit ad concipienda divina. Quartum est summa perfectio quae in hac vita contingere
potest homini.
80 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 17, p. 27, l. 721.
81 Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono. Liber I, ed. B. Mojsisch (Hamburg: Meiner, 1989),
lib. i, tr. 1, c. 5, p. 14, l. 9-​11, anticipated Berthold’s Prologus when he interpreted the lemma
from Romans 1:20, a creatura mundi, through the notion of the mundus minor.
92  Chapter 1

as they are found and named in creatures is negated of God; (5) by the stages
of intellectual ascent outlined in Albert’s De intellectu et intelligibili, which
we have found in the background of Berthold’s lemmatic commentary on the
Hermetic microcosm. For Ulrich, the second, third, and fourth ways directly
corresponded to the theologies pursued in three treatises by Dionysius: the De
symbolica theologia (not extant), the De divinis nominibus, and the De mystica
theologia, respectively.82
It is clear that the first four ways, and possibly even the fifth, are related
for Ulrich according to the interplay of affirmation and negation.83 Ulrich lik-
ened the first, the way of instinct, to the innate but indeterminate or inchoate
presence of the principles of scientific knowledge in the possible intellect.
This confused knowledge (notitia confusa) is awakened by experience and
becomes determinate. For Ulrich, the mere experience of causality is enough
to arouse this instinctual knowledge of God. From this affirmative knowl-
edge comes the second way, by negation, which goes further to determine, for
example, that God is not a body but a spirit, not an accident, but a substance.
Then, beginning from this negative standpoint, the third way affirms all the
perfections of God that it is better to be than not (good, living, knowing, one,
etc.). In the fourth way the imperfect mode by which these are known and
named in creatures is negated of God who, for example, is not “substantial”
but “super-​substantial”. Following Albert’s commentary on the De mystica the-
ologia, Ulrich held that this fourth way moves from the more evident to the
more hidden, negating these perfections of God until our intellect is left “in
a certain confused state” (in quodam confuso). This ignorance is the inverse
of the notitia confusa with which a person began, in that one arrives to an
indeterminacy and darkness that is beyond and not beneath thought. Ulrich
described the fourth way in terms that evoked the beginning of the De mys-
tica theologia: “in negations one must leave behind sense and intellect, inso-
far as all things are known to it in created things, and one must go beyond all
beings, not only material but even intellectual beings. And thus by exceeding

82 On De summo bono, lib. i, tr. 1, see A. de Libera, La mystique rhénane. D’Albert le Grand à
Maître Eckhart (Paris: Seuil, 1994), p. 104–​114; A. Palazzo, “La sapientia nel De summo bono
di Ulrico di Strasburgo”, in Quaestio 5(2005), p. 495–​512; Beccarisi, “La scientia divina dei
filosofi”; I. Zavattero, “Bonum beatitudinis. Felicità e beatitudine nel De summo bono di
Ulrico di Strasburgo”, in Memorie Domenicane 42(2011), p. 283–​313.
83 Cf. Hankey, God in Himself, p. 54–​56, which finds another kind of progression from the
indeterminate to the determinate in the quinque viae of Thomas Aquinas, Summa theolo-
giae, Ia, q. 2, a. 3.
Prologus 93

oneself, the intellect must be united to God, just as intellect and intellected
are one”.84
But how does the fifth way, the way of intellectual progression modelled
on Albert’s De intellectu et intelligibili, relate to these four? The fifth way could
be read as a summary of the entire process of affirmation and negation, since
it begins with the actualisation of the possible intellect (as in the first way)
and ends in union with God (as in the fourth way). Another, more plausible,
interpretation would regard the fifth way as a continuation of the dialectic
of affirmation and negation. For Ulrich, at the summit of the fifth way, God
is known affirmatively by his likeness. This likeness is a light composed from
three sources: the light of the human intellect, the light of the separate intel-
ligences, and the divine light. In this knowledge through likeness (per simili-
tudinem), one knows not only that God exists (quia est Deus) but something
of his quiddity (quiditas), which Ulrich distinguished from the knowledge of
God per essentiam that depends on grace. Here a person seems to have gone
beyond the culmination of the fourth way, where the human intellect was left
in quodam confuso, for it follows that if God’s quiddity is somehow known in
the likeness of intellectual light, then God is in himself an intellectual light
beyond all negations.85

84 Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono, lib. i, tr. 1, c. 6, p. 17, l. 52–​56: sed in negationibus
oportet dimittere sensum et intellectum quantum ad omnia sibi in rebus creatis nota et
oportet transcendere omnia entia, non solum materialia, sed etiam intellectualia, et sic exce-
dendo se ipsum oportet intellectum uniri Deo, sicut intellectus et intellectum sunt unum.
85 That the name “intellect” would be carried across the threshold of the negations of the
De mystica theologia is consistent with a motif we find in the generation of German
Dominican philosophers inspired by Meister Eckhart, who were willing to deny (determi-
nate) being of God and affirm that he is pure intellect or intellectuality. Henry Suso stated
this view succinctly in his Little Book of Truth, in which he set out to defend Eckhart’s
orthodoxy. In Suso’s description of the divine nature near the beginning of the treatise,
which explicitly appealed to the authority of Dionysius, the highest negative name for
God, “an eternal nothing” (ein ewiges niht), passes over to the most satisfactory affirma-
tion: God is “a living intellectuality” (ein lebendú […] vernúnftikeit). See Henry Suso, Daz
buechli der warheit, ed. K. Bihlmeyer, Deutsche Schriften (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1907),
c. 1, p. 329, l. 4-​12: wan waz man ime des in soelicher wise zuo leit, daz ist alles in etlicher
wise falsch, und ire loeggenunge ist war. Und us dem so moehte man ime sprechen ein ewiges
niht; aber doch, so man von eime dinge reden sol, wie úbertreffenlich ald úbermerklich es
ist, so muoz man im etwaz namen schepfen. Diser stiller einveltikeit wesen ist ir leben und
ir leben ist ir wesen. Es ist ein lebendú, wesendú, istigú vernúnftikeit, daz sich selber ver-
stat, und ist und lebt selber in im selber und ist daz selb. (“Whatever one can attribute to
[God] in this [creaturely] manner is, in a sense, all incorrect, and its negation is true.
Consequently one could call him an eternal nothing. And yet, if one is to speak of how
unsurpassable or above comprehension something is, one still has to create names for it.
The being of this calm simplicity is its life, and its life is its being. It is a living, existing,
94  Chapter 1

Whereas Ulrich held that the positive knowledge of God through his intel-
lectual likeness is the culmination of the mind’s ascent, Berthold shifted the
balance back toward Dionysius and the De mystica theologia, with its account
of the soul’s ascent to God in ignorance. Ultimately, in Berthold’s view, as one
passes beyond intellectual activity, one is left with no positive knowledge of
God apart from his existence. Nor was this cognition of God attainable with-
out some kind of divine condescension or grace. For this was a state of silence
known to the philosophers that, Berthold argued, even the theologians should
honour.86

3 Approaching and Entering the House of God

Berthold’s treatment of the third lemma of Romans 1:20 (per ea, quae facta sunt,
intellecta conspiciuntur) that concluded the Prologus described “the diverse
ways” by which “the diverse wise ones, both theologians and philosophers”
ascended to the invisibilia Dei.87 Within this proliferation of paths, Berthold’s
accounts of the diverse ways of knowing God reveal a common pattern: the
movement from the senses to discursive reason, from reason to non-​discursive
intellect, and finally from intellect to non-​reflexive union.
The first way mentioned by Berthold came from the De mystica theologia,
where Dionysius taught Timothy the way of leaving behind sense and cogni-
tion and, as far as possible, approaching union with God through ignorance,
and gave the example of Moses: when “the deiform soul arrives to the summit
of contemplation” (ad verticem contemplationis), it “contemplates the place
where God is” (contemplatur locum, ubi Deus est) and “enters into the darkness
of ignorance”. Berthold then turned to Augustine’s report of the three ways, as

subsisting intellectuality, which understands itself, exists and lives in itself and is this
self.”) English translation: Henry Suso, The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons, trans.
F. Tobin (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1989), p. 309, modified.
86 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 68, l. 555–​556: haec honorabilissima prin-
cipia, per quae ascenditur in prime unius et prime boni anitatem, ne dicam quiditatem;
123K, p. 133, l. 271-​276: Si ergo nemo sapientium inquirit generaliter de omni superessen-
tiali principio, quid sit, quoniam definiri non potest, sed ex proprietatibus suis, inter quas
veluti terminos a sibi cognatis cognoscitur, ut supra dictum est, non quid sit, quis theologus
interrogare praesumat de prime unius superuniali superessentia, quid sit, cum purissime
intelligat ipsum exsuperare quasi in infinitum etiam indicibilia et incognoscibilia propter
supersubstantialem unionem?
87 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 20, p. 32, l. 880 –​p. 34, l. 967.
Prologus 95

it were (quasi tribus viis), by which “Plato and his followers arrived at knowl-
edge of the invisible things of God”. These were ethics, natural philosophy, and
logic. With an important qualification, Berthold noted that these were not
really distinct ways at all; for Socrates, the Pythagoreans, and Plato, these were
in fact three parts (tres partes) of perfect philosophy. This clarification cued
Berthold’s lengthy citation of Augustine’s famous question De ideis, which
merged the three paths into one. For Augustine, the turn away from the senses
and the passions (ethics) belongs intrinsically to the mind’s laborious ascent
to the vision of the divine ideas in the Word. These ideas are the principles
of being (natural philosophy) and knowing (logic). Once it has become pure
(pura), the soul beholds these ideas through its highest power, intelligence
(intelligentia), and adheres to God in charity (caritate cohaeserit). This loving
vision of the ideas, Augustine concluded, makes the soul most blessed (qua-
rum visione fit beatissima).
In the extraordinary conclusion to the Prologus, Berthold doubled back to
integrate these three parts of perfect philosophy with the path of the De mys-
tica theologia. Here Augustine’s notion of a beatifying vision of the divine ideas
by the pure soul in love was located in a more stratified account of the ascent to
God. In this progression, the ocular metaphors of the De ideis are almost iden-
tified with, but ultimately subordinated to, a higher cognition characterised
by the spiritual senses of hearing, touch, and taste. Here Berthold was likely
inspired by the Dionysian account of the entry into “the darkness of ignorance”
as the abandonment of sights and seers (ab ipsis absolvitur visis et videntibus).
Augustine had concluded his De ideis by noting that, while many have named
the ideas in various ways (formae, species, rationes, etc.), to very few has it been
given to see them as they are in truth. Indeed, added Berthold, but among their
number was the one who sang in Psalm 42:

Like as the hart desires the water-​brooks, so longs my soul after you, O
God. My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God: when shall
I come to appear before the presence of God? My tears have been my
meat day and night, while they daily say unto me, Where is now your
God? These things I remembered, and I poured out my soul within
me: for I shall pass over into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even
to the house of God: with the voice of praise and thanksgiving, the sound
of one who feasts.88

88 The Coverdale translation is here modified after the Vulgate.

96  Chapter 1

Berthold’s focused on the final two verses, which he explained using the gloss
of Peter Lombard, who had turned these verses into a miniature odyssey of
the soul as it journeys from the exterior to the interior world, and from there
finally to superior realities in its search of God. Berthold tacitly interpolated
into this narrative the structure of “the six degrees of contemplation” from
Richard of St. Victor’s Beniamin maior i.6, which Berthold partially modified
using Boethius and Proclus.89
Following Peter Lombard, Berthold explained the phrase “I remembered”
(recordatus sum) or, alternatively, “I meditated upon” (meditatus sum) from
Psalm 42 in terms of the search for the invisible things of God through the vis-
ible things of the world and then, when this proves unsuccessful, in the lower
powers of the soul. Leaving the exterior instruments of the bodily senses, the
mind begins to contemplate its powers and tries to see (videret) God within
itself. This, Berthold added, is to seek God by the first two kinds of contem-
plation mentioned by Richard of St. Victor (in imagination according to imag-
ination; in imagination according to reason). The mind then turns to reason-
ing (noverit) to seek God within itself. This corresponds to Richard’s third and
fourth degrees of contemplation (in reason according to imagination; in rea-
son according to reason). This is what the psalmist meant by “I poured out, that
is, I enlarged my soul within me” (effudi, id est dilatavi, in me animam meam).
But still God is not found. Therefore, the soul must “pass over” and go “above
itself” to think what is beyond it:

But because my mind finds God neither in exterior things nor within the
soul, I shall pass over, that is, ‘I shall go beyond myself’, to things intellec-
tual, as it were, in this sense: ‘I have dilated my soul to know those things
that are above it’ (so that it might seek God in intelligence according to
reason). For if the soul remains in itself, and does not go beyond itself, it
will not see God, who is beyond. But why have I done this? Because in this
way (that is, through intelligence, that eye, which according to Boethius,
is higher than imagination and reason –​‘for surpassing the boundary of

89 Richard of St. Victor, De contemplatione (Beniamin maior), ed. J. Grosfillier (Turnhout:

Brepols, 2013), lib. i, c. 6, 70B, p. 102, l. 5 –​p. 104, l. 10. The way Berthold marked off the
beginning and end of citations from the rest of gloss at Prol. 20, p. 34, l. 948–​951, and his
proficiency with the technical language Richard’s treatise displayed at Expositio, 202A-​
B, p. 182, l. 55 –​p. 184, l. 95, suggest to me that he added the sixfold model himself and
did not find it in his source material from Peter Lombard. His citation of Bonaventure’s
Itinerarium that immediately follows the narrative also implies that he recognised the
parallel structure between the Itinerarium and the Beniamin maior, which was one of
Bonaventure’s major sources.
Prologus 97

the universe it views that simple Form by the pure apex of the mind’ –​in
this way, I think,) I shall pass over or I shall enter (by the one of the soul)
into the place of the wonderful tabernacle (that is, into light inaccessible,
which is the primordial causes), even to the abode of God: ‘with the voice
of praise and of thanksgiving is the sound of one who feasts’. I know not
what hymns or songs, sweet to one’s heart, are resounding in that eternal
festival. Here, one is taken up [rapitur] like a hart to the water-​brooks
and is soothed with the voice of exultation and eternal praise; here, there
resounds to the mind the wondrous sweetness of the shouts of those who
feast, of the banqueters calling out.90

The first things to note about this passage are Berthold’s modifications of
Richard of St. Victor, who provided the basic structure of the ascent. Prior to
the passage cited here, Berthold had directly incorporated the first four kinds
of contemplation from Richard of St. Victor’s treatise, but he modified the fifth
and sixth by using more overtly Platonic alternatives. Richard identified the
fifth kind of contemplation with what is above reason but not beyond reason
(supra rationem sed non praeter rationem), while the sixth concerns what is
above reason and apparently beyond reason (supra rationem et videtur esse
praeter rationem). In the same passage from Beniamin maior i.6, Richard had
also stated that the six kinds can be arranged into three pairs (in imagination,
in reason, and in intelligence). Berthold effectively merged the sixfold and
threefold models when he identified the fifth kind of contemplation as intel-
ligentia, but he departed from Richard by citing Boethius’ Consolatio (intel-
ligentiae […] celsior oculus). Richard’s sixth kind, moreover, has clearly been
replaced by the Dionysian and Proclean unum animae. The basic threefold and
sixfold structures of the contemplative ascent, therefore, remained unchanged

90 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 20, p. 34, l. 953–​67: Sed quia nec in exterioribus nec
in anima Deum invenit, transibo, id est super me ibo, scilicet ad intellectualia, quasi: dilatavi
animam meam ad intelligendum supra se ipsam, (ut quaereret Deum intelligentia secun-
dum rationem). Si enim anima in se maneret, se non excedens Deum non videret, qui ultra
est. Sed quare hoc feci? Quoniam hoc modo, (scilicet per intelligentiam, cui celsior secundum
Boethium oculus existit, quam imaginationis et rationis –​‘superegressa namque universi-
tatis ambitum illam simplicem formam pura mentis acie contuetur’ –​, hoc, inquam, modo)
transibo vel ingrediar (per unum animae) in locum tabernaculi admirabilis (scilicet lucem
inaccessibilem, hoc est primordiales causas) usque ad domum Dei in voce exultationis et
confessionis sonus epulantis. De aeterna enim festivitate sonat, nescio, quid canorum
vel sonorum et dulce cordi eius, unde rapitur sicut cervus ad fontes aquarum et mulcetur
voce exultationis et laudis aeterna. Unde sonat ei mira suavitas … sonus epulantium, id est
sonantium epulantium.
98  Chapter 1

by Berthold. This will take on more significance later when we consider how
the relation between nature and grace in Richard’s contemplative doctrine
influenced Berthold’s understanding of Boethian intelligentia and the higher
unum animae.
The transition between the fourth and fifth kinds of contemplation in
Berthold’s narrative occurs at the moment the mind passes from seeking God
at its own level (in reason according to reason) to the apprehension of realities
above reason. At the summit of the fourth degree, Berthold wrote, the mind
has enlarged or dilated itself with the desire to ascend higher (ad intelligendum
supra se ipsam, ut quaereret Deum intelligentia secundum rationem). In the
fifth mode, intelligence alone is active. Its object, according to Boethius, is “the
simple Form beyond the boundary of the universe”. Strikingly, in Berthold’s
account, this fifth kind passes seamlessly into the sixth (per intelligentiam […]
transibo vel ingrediar per unum animae). We may nevertheless note some clear
differences in Berthold’s descriptions of their activities: one is ocular (celsior
oculus existit), and the other is a state of ignorance better described using
metaphors of sound, touch, and taste that merge synesthetically (nescio, quid
canorum vel sonorum et dulce cordi eius […] mulcetur voce exultationis; sonat ei
mira suavitas); one is the beginning of self-​transcendence, which still beholds
the simple Form as something extrinsic to itself, while the other marks the
entry into the house of God (in lucem inaccessibilem), and the partaking of the
exuberance of the banquet celebrated there. This subtle but clear distinction
between two phases of the soul’s highest power (intelligentia) will be consist-
ent throughout the Expositio, although different passages in the commentary
will contribute new features to this basic structure. Finally, one should note
that the verb rapitur, appearing at the conclusion of the narrative, would apply
to both phases of intelligentia, since the mind cannot ascend above its own sta-
tion of reason (the fourth degree) by its own power. Thus “the blessed vision”
achieved by pure intelligentia in Augustine’s De ideis was unfolded by Berthold
into a more detailed recital of the soul’s ascent that finds in that vision a higher
element of excess or ignorance, perhaps already anticipated by Augustine’s
phrase caritate cohaeserit, which marks the approach and entry to the house
of God.
Comparing this passage from the Prologus with the original gloss on Psalm
42 by Peter Lombard, we find that Berthold has made the same modification
as that noted already with the habitaculum Dei of Ephesians 2:21-​22, where
he extended a passage that originally referred to the saints and the Church
founded on Christ the cornerstone and applied it to the primordial causes in
the Word. Here, similarly, Peter Lombard had glossed the verses from Psalm 42:5
(transibo in locum tabernaculi admirabilis, usque ad domum Dei), relative to the
Prologus 99

Church, the image of the heavenly Jerusalem.91 Berthold, however, looked to

two other verses to offer a different portrayal of God’s habitation: God dwells in
light inaccessible (1 Timothy 6:16) and has made the shadows his hiding place
(Psalm 18:12).92 These “shadows” are the supersubstantial unities. They are the
place of God (locus Dei), which Moses contemplated, according to Dionysius,
before he ascended into the darkness of ignorance (ad caliginem ignorantiae
intrat).93 This model of ascent, cited shortly before the gloss on Psalm 42,
no doubt informed Berthold’s modifications of Richard of St. Victor: Moses,
in other words, proceeded from an extrinsic apprehension of the primordial
causes as a group, which itself is achieved only with great difficulty, to an active
union with them, which would occur following the cessation of intellectual
activity.94
The Prologus thus returned at its end to its beginning, with the invisibilia
Dei that Paul, after his rapture into the third heaven (in tertium caelum rap-
tus), declared the best of the pagans knew through a natural revelation.95 The
vivid impression left by the whole Prologus is that any difference between
the pagans referred to by Paul and the greatest Christian theologians like
Augustine, Boethius, and Dionysius, is relativised by the dignity of the lofty
principles they pursued and reached: the invisibilia Dei. Berthold’s goal in this

91 Peter Lombard, Commentaria in Psalmos, In Ps. 41:4, pl 191, 417B: ‘In locum tabernaculi
admirabilis’, id est in praesentem Ecclesiam, quae est quaedam imago et species futurae
Jerusalem, quae, dum videtur, amplius illa desideratur, et amplius in ista gemit. Ideo digit
ingrediar in locum tabernaculi, quia extra locum tabernaculi huius aliquis quarens Deum,
errat.
92 These two verses are discussed in Albert the Great, Super Dionysii Mysticam theologiam et
Epistulas, ed. P. Simon (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1978), Epistula v, p. 493, l. 21–​26.
93 Berthold regularly used these verses to identify the primordial causes as God’s abode. See,
for example, Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 9, 16, 17, and 19. See also 115E, 123L,
and 162F.
94 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 20, p. 32, l. 888–​893: Item per sui ipsius excessum et
ab omnibus absolutionem et sursum actionem, et ponit exemplum de Mose. Et tunc, scilicet
quando deiformis anima ad verticem contemplationis pervenerit, contemplatur locum, ubi
Deus est, ‘et tunc ab ipsis absolvitur visis et videntibus et ad caliginem ignorantiae intrat’;
Prol. 21, p. 34, l. 968–​969: cum quanta difficultate anima etiam deiformis effecta in hac vita
ascendat ad conspectum fontis paternae lucis, cuius splendor gloriae est Verbum.
95 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 1, p. 5, l. 5-​8: Summus divinalis sapientiae theologus
Paulus secretorum Dei conscius utpote in tertium caelum raptus loquens de mundanae phi-
losophiae sapientibus, postquam dixerat: ‘Quod notum est Dei, manifestum est illis: Deus
enim illis revelavit’, subiungit: ‘Invisibilia Dei’ etc. Cf. 2 Corinthians 12:4: quoniam raptus est
in paradisum: et audivit arcana verba, quæ non licet homini loqui. It may be that Berthold
understood the threefold movement (exterior, interior, superior; imagination, reason,
intelligence) through Psalm 42 as a figure of Paul’s ascent.
100  Chapter 1

academic sermon was to direct his audience’s attention to principles that are
by definition hidden from everyday awareness and rationality. These are the
primordial causes at the level of the macrocosm, and the unum animae in
the microcosm. For the soul to become a temple of God, to fulfil its nature the
nexus Dei et mundi, it must be raised to enter that “place” where God always
dwells. In the language of the invisibilia Dei “transitively understood”, this was
simply another way of saying that the soul is to be conformed to the Word. As
Berthold presented it in the Prologus, that was the common enterprise of the
best ancient philosophers.
Berthold’s method in the Prologus was deliberately more rhetorical than
demonstrative, marshalling a tide of pagan and Christian authorities, whose
words he interwove with Scripture and used to explicate the inspired utter-
ances of the ancient sage Hermes. Behind its complex form, the real novelty
for his audience, as Berthold surely would have realised, would have been
the Tria opuscula of Proclus, which were almost as unknown to his contem-
poraries as the principles they divulged. The most important passages in the
Prologus, therefore, were those in which Berthold showed how Proclus’ texts
explicated and revived the authoritative doctrines of Paul’s disciple Dionysius.
Berthold made it abundantly clear that the final goal of their common philos-
ophy, which he called divinalis sapientia, was beatitude and deification. This,
of course, was not something the rhetoric of the Prologus could bring about.
But the sheer impact of these combined authorities would at least make the
audience aware that these hidden principles in themselves and in the cosmos
were real, even if forgotten.
God’s abiding and actual presence in the soul’s ground, as Tauler put it, was
his “eternal ordinance”. But as one learns in his sermon on Trinity Sunday, of
the theologians, only an unnamed master (Dietrich of Freiberg) and Proclus
properly understood this –​even Thomas Aquinas was found wanting on this
question. Berthold and Tauler followed Proclus and Dionysius when they
insisted that, even though this dignity belongs to human nature in itself (and
the macrocosm, Berthold would add), it is forgotten and concealed as indi-
viduals busy themselves with the rabble of multiplicity.96 Neither Tauler nor
Berthold denied the need for some form of divine assistance to raise the soul
to its full realisation. Paradoxically, humankind intrinsically stood in need of a

96 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 17, p. 27, l. 724–​728: Donec autem circa ea, quae deor-
sum, volvimur, increduliter habemus circa haec omnia divino cognoscente impartibiliter et
superaeternaliter’. Haec ille. Ad idem consentit Dionysius 1 et 2 cap. Mysticae theologiae.
Cf. Prol. 21, p. 34, l. 968–​973: […] a qua longe est mens hominis sollicitudinibus distracta,
phantasmatibus obnubilata, taceo autem de carnalibus voluptatibus implicata.
Prologus 101

revelation, but what was revealed to it was its own nature. As Tauler declared
immediately before citing Proclus, grace arises in the soul to the extent it aban-
dons itself to its own ground. Like Berthold, as we will see, Tauler was fully
aware that the ancient Platonists had a doctrine of grace. Berthold ended the
Prologus by acknowledging, “with Plato and Boethius”, that since the divided
cannot unify itself, prayer was required if the mind was to be raised by the
simplest Light (simplicissima lux) to see that Light, which is at once “the prin-
ciple, conveyance, guide, path, and boundary”.97 The common prayer of the
Platonists supplicates the Good to accomplish its own action in and through
the soul, which amounts to raising it from reason to intelligence (intelligentia):

Remove from those who seek you the innate restriction of nature, the
crooked habitual ways, the indolent discipline, ignorance of the meas-
ure of intellectual capacity, the aversion to the light of intelligible lucid-
ity, the dread of such subtlety, the degree of remoteness, the presump-
tion of familiar intelligibility, the search for too much provability and
demonstrability.98

The innate restrictions of nature must be removed so that one may come to a
truer sense of the limits of one’s own intellectual capacity. The prayer implies
that the tendency of human thinking, when it proceeds “according to itself”, is
to seek after what is familiar, and to assume that discursive reason can resolve
every question beginning from familiar principles (“the search for too much
provability and demonstrability”). The Prologus has attempted to orient the
mind toward more hidden principles by turning back to the consensus of the
ancient theology, by acknowledging the difficulty of the endeavour, and by
admitting the soul’s present condition of distraction and weakness. After this

97 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 21, p. 34, l. 974 –​p. 35, l. 989, following Boethius,
Consolatio philosophiae, ed. C. Moreschini (München /​Leipzig: Saur, 20052), lib. iii, prosa
9, p. 79, l. 94–​97. Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 114B, p. 44, l. 120–​140: Per gratiam,
secundum quod dicit Dionysius 12 cap. Angelicae hierarchiae […]. Ad idem facit auctor De
fato et providentia 8 cap. circa finem […]. While discussing the intellectus assimilativus,
Albert the Great had stated that the philosophers ordered their supplications and prayers
toward the illumination from the higher intelligences. See Albert the Great, De intellectu
et intelligibili, lib. ii, tr. unicus, c. 9, p. 516b: et haec est irradiatio de qua multum locuti sunt
Philosophi, et ordinaverunt propter illam supplicationes et orationes.
98 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 21, p. 35, l. 977–​982: aufer a te quaerentibus inna-
tam naturae deminutionem, pravam assuefactionem et pigram exercitationem, ignoran-
tiam mensurae intellectualis capacitatis, aversionem a luce intelligibilis claritatis, horrorem
tantae subtilitatis, distantiam longinquitatis, praesumptionem propriae cognoscibilitatis,
inquistionem nimiae probabilitatis et demonstrabilitatis!
102  Chapter 1

diagnosis, the Expositio tituli will show that Proclus is the supreme philosoph-
ical guide into divinalis sapientia, with the Elementatio theologica serving as
the ladder for discursive reason that leads the mind toward that most simple
Light. The Elementatio can do this, Berthold will argue, precisely because it
functions as a kind of intellectual exercise that assists the soul that has now
started to reverse its habitual ways of reasoning about itself and the world.
Only by this reversal can the mind be raised from its dividedness and begin
to apprehend the Light that is at once “the principle, conveyance, guide, path,
and boundary”.
 ­c hapter 2

Expositio tituli

Only to these worthy people should the dignity of wisdom con-

tained in this Theological Elementation be uncovered. And so are
they led into these theorems as into a certain byway that is beyond
the common path of reasonings.1

∵
Berthold’s Expositio tituli is an analysis of the incipit of the Elementatio theolog-
ica according to the four causes (efficient, material, formal, and final). Like the
Prologus, it is a sophisticated example of a traditional literary form, in this case
the accessus ad auctorem.2 Berthold’s accessus can be categorised, following
the taxonomy of Richard Hunt, as a “type C” introduction, which treats some
combination of a text’s intentio, materia, finis, modus agendi (ordo), nomen
auctoris, titulus, or utilitas.3 By the mid-​12th century this kind of introduction
was commonly employed.4 The Aristotelianised version modelled on the four
causes and adopted here by Berthold developed from it.5 Berthold would have
encountered several examples of this, probably in the work of Nicholas Trevet
in Oxford and certainly in Albert the Great’s commentaries on Scripture and

1 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. K, p. 48, l. 390–​393: Hi soli digni sunt, ut eis
sapientiae, quae in ista Elementatione theologica continetur, dignitas exeratur; et ideo in
quoddam quasi diversorium extra publicam rationem viam in ista theoremata perducuntur.
Cf. Gilbert of Poitiers, Expositio in Boecii librum de bonorum ebdomade, ed. N. Häring, The
Commentaries on Boethius by Gilbert of Poitiers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval
Studies, 1966), prol., §7, p. 184, l. 32–​38. The literal rendering of Elementatio theologica in
my translations of Berthold follows from his speculations about the meaning of the title in
Expos. tit. I-​K.
2 See A.J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship. Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later
Middle Ages (Aldershot: Wildwood, 19882), p. 40–​58, and Dahan, “Les prologues”, p. 433–​438.
3 R. Hunt, “The Introductions to the Artes in the Twelfth Century”, in Studia mediaevalia in
honorem R.J. Martin (Brugge: De Tempel, 1948), p. 84–​112.
4 N. Häring, “Commentary and Hermeneutics”, in R. Benson, G. Constable (eds), Renaissance
and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 173–​200, at p. 185–​190.
5 Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, p. 9–​39 and 76.

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_005

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
104  Chapter 2

on the Dionysian corpus.6 Like Albert and Nicholas, Berthold placed his acces-
sus ad auctorem after a “sermon-​type” prologue.
The Expositio tituli took the broader discussion of the Hermetic macro-
cosm and microcosm from the Prologus, and the diagnosis of the human con-
dition it implied, and presented Proclus as the exemplary divine man whose
texts can lead the desirous soul to the vision of God. In this second preface,
Thomas of York and his discussion of pagan knowledge of the universe and
God continued to be a major source for Berthold, especially in his analyses of
the text’s efficient cause (Proclus himself and the ways by which he came to
know God) and the final cause (the goal of the Elementatio is to bring to frui-
tion the innate desire for beatifying wisdom). As for the material cause of the
Elementatio theologica, Berthold now looked to another German Dominican
source, Dietrich of Freiberg, and his version of the distinction of natural and
voluntary providence, which Ulrich of Strassburg had first developed from
Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram. Dietrich’s doctrine of the intellectus adep-
tus will also be taken up by Berthold as he articulated the precise stages of
the contemplative life that Proclus fully realised. Finally, regarding the formal
cause or structural principle of the Elementatio, Berthold drew upon Boethius
and the 12th-​century commentary tradition on his De Trinitate and De hebdo-
madibus, for their account of why theology should proceed according to a the-
orematic form.

1 Plato’s Theorems

The seeds for Berthold’s discussions of the efficient and formal causes were
sown in the miniature history of the Platonic tradition that opened the
Expositio tituli:

Proclus exceeded by far [procul excellebat] all the followers of Plato

and thus surpassed everyone in ability [praepollebat], such that there
emanated forth from him most of all, as it once had from Plotinus, ‘the
very voice of Plato,’ which, as Augustine attests in Book 3 of Against the
Academicians, ‘is the purest and most lucid in all of philosophy, after the
clouds of error have been cleared away’ and all the coverings [integumen-
tis], with which the first Platonists and especially the Academicians had

6 On Nicholas, see Lord, “Virgil’s Eclogues”, p. 198 and 204. On Albert, see Dahan, “Les pro-
logues”, p. 437–​439.
Expositio tituli 105

concealed Plato’s wisdom. For it was customary among them, as Cicero

says and Augustine recounts in the same work, ‘to conceal his doctrine
and not reveal it to anyone, except to those who had lived with them up
to old age’. And thus Proclus, like Plotinus, as is recounted in the same
text, ‘was deemed to be so similar’ to Plato ‘that one would have supposed
that they lived at the same time; but since so many centuries had elapsed,
one had to suppose that Plato was reborn in him’.7

In this brief history, Berthold combined two separate passages in Augustine’s

Contra Academicos and, in so doing, drastically altered their original meaning,
because he associated Cicero’s report about concealment within the Academy
(for Augustine this concerned the avowed skepticism of the Academy which,
in his view, hid a more positive form of knowledge) with Augustine’s own ver-
dict about the errors that accrued to Plato’s doctrines over the centuries, until
Philo and, finally, Plotinus regained their pristine origin.8 In Berthold’s ren-
dering, any interpretation of Plato that would take the myths literally has not
reached the esoteric truth of Plato’s teaching.
Berthold’s reasons for reading Augustine in this way have to do with his
more fundamental assumptions about the ideal method and goal of theology.
These assumptions only become apparent over the course of the Expositio

7 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. A, p. 37, l. 14–​24: Ipse enim omnes Platonis secta-
tores procul excellebat et in philosophia sic omnibus praepollebat, ut emicaret maxime in eo sicut
et in Plotino ‘os illud Platonis, quod –​sicut testatur Augustinus iii libro Contra Academicos –​in
philosophia purgatissimum est et lucidissimum demotis nubibus erroris’ et integumentis omni-
bus, quibus Platonici primi et maxime Academici suam sapientiam obvolvebant. Mos enim fuit
eis, ut dicit Cicero, prout recitat Augustinus ubi supra, ‘occultandi sententiam suam nec eam
cuiquam, nisi qui secum ad senectutem usque vixisset, aperire consueverunt’. Ita enim ipse
Proclus sicut et Plotinus, prout recitatur ibidem, Platonis ‘similis iudicatus est, ut simul eos vix-
isse, tantum autem interest temporis, ut in hoc ille revixisse putandus sit’. Cf. Augustine, Contra
Academicos, iii.18.41 and iii.20.43. For a complete picture of Berthold’s understanding of the
Platonic tradition, see also Expos. tit. G-​H, p. 43, l. 212 –​p. 45, l. 275.
8 As we will see later in Berthold’s criticism of Macrobius and Proclus on reincarnation,
Berthold seems to have thought of these coverings (integumenta) in terms of mythical fables.
In his glosses on Macrobius, he copied William’s statement that pagan myths were integu-
menta which concealed philosophical truth. In ms Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, In
Somn. Scip., i.2.17, f. 4v: sed qvia scivnt inimicam esse natvrae apertam nvdam-
qve expositionem svi. Si quis enim diceret rusticis quid re vera sit Ceres et alia que de ea
sub integumentis figurantur, scilicet quod Ceres non est aliud quam naturalis vis terre produ-
cendi segetes. Item quod non alia de causa nec aliter vannus ei adtribuitur nisi quod pertinet
ad purgationem frumenti nullum incuteret eis terrorem. On the theory of integumenta, see
É. Jeauneau, “L’usage de la notion d’integumentum à travers les gloses de Guillaume de
Conches”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 24(1957), p. 35–​100.
106  Chapter 2

tituli. We glimpse them already in Berthold’s description of the two causes of

Proclus’ excellence or, in other words, the two ways in which the voice of Plato
spoke through him. First was the fact that “he gave order to Plato’s very own
theorems in the present book”. The notion that Plato originally transmitted
his philosophy in theorems (theoremata) seems to have been, in part, based
on Berthold’s extrapolation of a remark made by Eustratius that “Plato passed
on theorems concerning the first Good that are above contempt”.9 In his revi-
sion of Augustine’s history, then, Berthold wanted us to understand that Plato’s
originally theorematic philosophy was transmitted secretively in the Academy,
concealed with mythical coverings, and was eventually restored in its defini-
tive form, first by Plotinus, and then by Proclus in the Elementatio theologica.10
This achievement is directly related to the second cause of Proclus’ excellence,
which is discussed at length momentarily. This consisted in the fact that, as the
Tria opuscula attest, Proclus exhaustively traversed the three spiritual motions
of the soul described by Dionysius. The Elementatio theologica represented
only one of these motions.11
In addition to Eustratius’ passing remark, in his account of the first cause
of Proclus’ excellence Berthold evidently had in mind a tradition of theology
that associated the theorematic method with secrecy. This tradition went back
to Boethius’ De hebdomadibus and was invoked later in the Expositio tituli.12
The De hebdomadibus was structured with a prologue followed by seven prop-
ositions, which served as the rules (regulae) for the remainder of Boethius’
argument explaining how created substances are good in virtue of their very
existence without being substantial goods. In his prologue, Boethius men-
tioned two kinds of “common conceptions of the mind”: the truth of some
common conceptions is self-​evident and is acknowledged immediately by
whoever understands the terms, while the truth of other common conceptions

9 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. A, p. 37, l. 26–​29. See S. Gersh, “Berthold of
Moosburg, Nicholas of Cusa, and Marsilio Ficino as Historians of Philosophy”, forthcoming.
10 Berthold held that Augustine was familiar with this esoteric tradition. In Thomas of York
(Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 16), he would have found some of Augustine’s descriptions of God
distilled into a theorematic form. Thomas made the same reduction with descriptions of
God coming from the pagan sapientes mundi (lib. i, c. 17), before beginning a commentary
on the Liber xxiv philosophorum (lib. i, c. 18). This was anticipated at Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 1,
cited by Berthold at Expos. tit. E (p. 41, l. 163–​166), where Thomas stated that Augustine
recited Plato’s propositions (propositiones Platonis, quas recitat Augustinus), and gave
examples of the theorems (Deus est lumen omnium; Deus est veritatis illustrator, etc.) that
would reappear in Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 16.
11 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. A-​D, p. 37, l. 30 –​p. 41, l. 147.
12 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. K, p. 47, l. 343 –​p. 49, l. 407.
Expositio tituli 107

is recognised only by those who have received prior training. The seven regu-
lae would belong to this second category. As Boethius explained, the theore-
matic method is useful both as a personal aid to memorisation and private
contemplation, and as a way of warding off ridicule or misunderstanding by
the unlearned. Since the obscurity of brevity is itself “the faithful guardian of a
secret”, the theorems will speak only to those who are worthy to receive them.13
The commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers on the prologue of De hebdomadibus,
also cited by Berthold, described this secrecy in terms of veiling and unveil-
ing: these theorems of Boethius’ treatise, or for Berthold the propositions of
the Elementatio theologica, should be revealed only to those who “are less car-
ried away by the fickleness of praise than attracted by the most longed-​for,
unveiled image of truth itself” (veritatis ipsius revelata desiderantissimaque
imagine). Only to the worthy (digni) should the worthiness (dignitas) of the
theorems be uncovered (exeratur).14 Boethius therefore belonged to the same
Platonic tradition described by Augustine, with its use of coverings and its
custom of secrecy. Here, however, the propositional form was the veil, not the
mythical integumenta. Berthold evidently judged that the difficulty of proposi-
tional theology was enough to deter any who do not resolutely desire the truth.
Berthold’s interpretations of Augustine and Gilbert were finally brought
together using Boethius’ programmatic remark in the De Trinitate: “In physics
one must apply oneself rationally, in mathematics scientifically, and in theol-
ogy intellectually, not being led astray by imaginings, but rather by looking into
the Form itself, which is a true form and not an image”.15 One must turn away
from the multiplicity of images, to which our thinking inclines, and look to
the single Form or unified image of the truth. The truth of intellect, so we are
to understand, is expressed in propositions, whose apprehension requires the
abandonment of images. It was this Boethian tradition, projected back onto
Augustine’s history of Platonism that was corroborated by Eustratius, that led
Berthold to regard the Elementatio theologica as a kind of spiritual exercise that
leads the mind along “a certain byway beyond the common path of reasonings

13 Boethius, Quomodo substantiae in eo, quod sint, bonae sint, cum non sint substantialia
bona, ed. C. Moreschini, p. 186, l. 11 –​p. 187, l. 14: Prohinc tu ne sis obscuritatibus brevitatis
adversus, quae cum sint arcani fida custodia tum id habent commodi, quod cum his solis qui
digni sunt conloquuntur. See also J.-​L. Solère, “L’ordre axiomatique comme modèle d’écri-
ture philosophique dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge”, in Revue d’histoire des sciences 56/​
2(2003), p. 323–​345, at p. 328–​334.
14 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. K, p. 48, l. 388–​391.
15 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. K, p. 48, l. 394–​398. The compatibility of such
a view with that of Moses Maimonides was not lost on Berthold, who cited the parable of
the king (Dux neutrorum, lib. iii, c. 52) at precisely this point.
108  Chapter 2

[extra publicam rationum viam]”.16 Along with Hermes Trismegistus (of the
Liber xxiv philosophorum), Plato, and Boethius, then, the Elementatio theolog-
ica stood as the greatest representative of a venerable tradition of theorematic
theology.17 The Liber de causis, however, along with other treatises purported
to have discussed similar material, was relegated by Berthold to a rank defini-
tively inferior to the Elementatio theologica.18

2 The Three Motions of the Soul

For Berthold of Moosburg, Proclus’ achievement in the tradition of theoremat-

ics perfected only one of the three possible paths or “motions” by which the
soul could come to know God. Berthold would have us view the Elementatio
theologica as a kind of philosophical rite of passage, by recalling us to the fact
that Proclus, as the Tria opuscula show, had gone even further. The discursive
knowledge of God attained in the Elementatio was not seen by him as an end
in itself but as a ladder to a higher goal.
In De divinis nominibus 4.8-​9 (704D-​705B), Dionysius spoke of three motions
exercised both by souls (circular, direct, spiral), as they ascend to God, and
by angels, in their knowledge of God and their providential operations. In
Thomas of York’s Sapientiale (lib. i, c. 6), this remark was unfolded into a gen-
eralised theory about the three ways the pagans ascended to a knowledge of
God. Inspired by Thomas, Berthold then applied this model directly to Proclus
and the three ways he ascended to the knowledge of the highest Good by the

16 See also D. O’Meara, “La science métaphysique (ou théologie) de Proclus comme exer-
cise spirituel”, in A.-​P. Segonds, C. Steel (eds), Proclus et la théologie platonicienne. Actes
du Colloque International de Louvain (13-​16 mai 1998) en l’honneur de H.D. Saffrey et L.G.
Westerink (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2000), p. 279–​290.
17 Berthold used other theorematic works in the Expositio. He was directly familiar with
Alan of Lille’s Regulae caelestis iuris (Expos. tit. K, Praeamb. A, 21D, 21F, 176 commentum).
He seems to have known Nicholas of Amiens’ De arte catholicae fidei through Thomas
of York (7E, 9B, 11F, 12E, 18D, 20A, 35B, 137E, 150B, 150D, 162D, 168B). Berthold also knew
first-​hand the Liber de intelligentiis of Adam Pulchrae Mulieris (Prol. 19, 21E, 36C, 36E,
143K, 143L, 183A), which he sometimes attributed to Alan (Prol. 19, 143K), but elsewhere
he expressed his uncertainty about the attribution he found in the manuscript (183A,
p. 236, l. 80-​81: libellus De intelligentiis intitulatus, nescio, cuius auctoris, libet ascribatur
Alano), perhaps because the Liber cited Alan by name. See the Liber de intelligentiis, ed.
C. Baeumker, Witelo. Ein Philosoph und Naturforscher des xiii. Jahrhunderts (Münster
i.W.: Aschendorff, 1908), prop. 20, p. 26, l. 15–​17.
18 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. K, p. 48, l. 401 –​p. 49, l. 407, cited at
Introduction, section 3, n. 153, above.
Expositio tituli 109

natural light of intellect (Expos. tit. B-​D): the circular motion is introspective;
the direct motion is an immediate ascent from creatures to “the direct vision of
God”; the oblique motion uses “common notions” and discursive reasoning.19
To have a complete picture of Berthold’s position on the modalities of the
soul’s knowledge of God, one needs to combine these central passages from
Expos. tit. B-​D with other texts from the Expositio. Read on their own, these
passages in the Expositio tituli, which speak of the Proclus ascending to the
knowledge of God “by the guidance of the natural light of the intellect” (ductu
luminis naturalis intellectus), and then summarise each motion without imply-
ing any order between them, could easily give the impression that all three
motions are equally and immediately available to the soul and can be perfectly
achieved by a person’s natural powers, independently of divine assistance.
But this was not Berthold’s view, as will become clear when Expos. tit. B-​D is
supplemented with other passages that either treat the three motions explic-
itly (131A, 185G-​M), which show there is an order among the three motions,
or those that discuss the Proclean proof-​texts Berthold associated with those
motions in greater detail (123D, 202A-​F), which show how divine grace is oper-
ative in the ordered ascent through the motions.20 Since Berthold’s aim in the
Expositio tituli was to demonstrate that Proclus had in fact exercised all three
motions, these nuances were not necessary. But they are required for a full
account of his understanding of Platonism. Already before Proclus, according
to Berthold, “Plato pursued the cognition of God and the highest craftsman
by all of these ways”, such that in Proclus we find nothing that is not a restora-
tion of Plato’s philosophy to its complete and original form.21 As we will see,
Berthold’s commitment to Dietrich of Freiberg’s noetics led him to depart from
Thomas of York. In sum, we may say that, according to Berthold, the circular
motion belongs approximately to the same level as the direct motion, and each

19 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. A, p. 37, l. 30 –​p. 38, l. 34: in hoc apparet excel-
lentia eius, quod per triplicem motum, quos ascribit divinus Dionysius 4 cap. De divinis
nominibus K […] ascendendo pervenit, quantum fuit possibile homini mortali ductu lumi-
nis naturalis intellectus, in notitiam summi boni. Cf. 131A, p. 190, l. 11-​13: qualiter sapientes
mundi per triplicem motum […] ascenderunt, ut cognoscerent Deum esse. On Berthold’s
modifications of Dionysius, see L. Sturlese, “Berthold of Moosburg, the unum animae, and
Deification”, forthcoming. Later, in Expos. tit. E-​F, we find that Berthold even borrowed
Thomas’ praises of wisdom itself (Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 1 and 3) and applied them directly
to Proclus!
20 See also I. Zavattero, “La figura e il pensiero di Proclo in Bertoldo di Moosburg”, in arkete.
Rivista di studi filosofici 1(2005), p. 51–​67, at p. 60, who has rightly emphasised that, in the
Expositio tituli, Berthold treats Proclus as a pagan enlightened by grace (“un ‘infedele’ toc-
cato dalla ‘grazia’ ”).
21 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. D, p. 40, l. 134-​135.
110  Chapter 2

of these higher motions either follows from a special grace or following the
perfection of the oblique motion, which makes the mind more receptive to
that divine gift.
In the Expositio tituli (unlike the more faithful reproduction of Thomas’
doctrine of the three motions we will see in 131A), the circular motion begins
not with the senses but by seeking God through introspection and by directly
beholding the soul’s innate content. Here Berthold cited Proclus on how, qui-
eting its lower activities, the soul beholds “the harmonic reasons” from which
it is constituted, the “many lives of which it is the completion”, and “recollects
that it is itself a rational world” and an image of that from which it has come.
Then, returning to its highest intelligence (summa intelligentia), the soul gazes
upon its “sister souls” in the world, the intellectual substances above them
and, prior to these, the unities of the gods.22 According to Berthold, Boethius’
definition of intelligentia, which we encountered already in his gloss on Psalm
42, expressed the same doctrine in a summary form: “there exists a higher eye
of intelligence, for surpassing the bounds of the universe it views that simple
Form by the pure apex of the mind [pura acies mentis]”.23 The principal distinc-
tion here, therefore, is between ratio and intelligentia, the former conceived as
proper to the soul, while the latter is the higher mode by which it looks beyond
itself to the simple Form flowing through the universe.
In the Expositio tituli, the difference between the circular motion on the
one hand, and the direct and oblique on the other, was that the direct and
oblique begin from the senses. On this question Berthold followed Thomas
closely.24 The oblique motion begins from creatures regarded as “vestiges”. By a
process of laborious inquiry (per laboriosam investigationem), the soul divides,
defines, uses common principles, passes from known to unknown, from things
sensible to things intelligible, until it comes to the highest Good. This is the

22 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. B, p. 38, l. 49 –​p. 39, l. 71, using Proclus, De prov-
identia, c. 6, §18-​19. In Thomas’ account, followed more closely in 131A, the self-​conversion
in the circular motion is related to the soul’s inherent need for self-​sufficiency that it finds
only in God.
23 It is not necessary to modify the texts of the Oxford and Vatican manuscripts (intellecti-
vam | intellectivae) after Basel (intelligentiam | intelligentiae). Berthold used both terms
synonymously for a mode of knowing beyond intellectus. See Berthold of Moosburg,
Expositio, 44C, p. 75, l. 100 –​p. 76, l. 116: where intelligentialem is used interchangeably
with intelligentialis and intellectivalis (p. 76, l. 112-​116). Cf. 185L, p. 27, l. 436: intelligentiae;
186H, p. 39, l. 312 and p. 40, l. 337: intelligentialis; 202D, p. 186, l. 152: intelligentiam.
24 See also Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 131A, p. 191, l. 28-​30: Motus autem animi praeter
istum circularem est duplex, scilicet obliquus et rectus, quia potest inspicere ipsum creatum
bonum tanquam vestigium aut tanquam exemplum. Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib.
i, c. 6.
Expositio tituli 111

path of discursive reason (per ratiocinationem). The Elementatio theologica

itself, Berthold claimed, is proof that Proclus has ascended by this motion. He
then gave Proclean proof-​texts for each of the oblique motion’s three starting-​
points (these starting-​points were directly taken from the Sapientiale): Proclus
ascended from “the condition of [God’s] works”, in the first 12 propositions of
the Elementatio; from “the governance of what is created”, in Proposition 120
and thereafter, as well as in De decem dubitationibus; and from “the reconcilia-
tion of contraries”, as in Proposition 20 on the four genera (maneries) of being
(Nature, Soul, Intellect, One), which are arranged insofar as the divided and
lower presupposes the unified and higher, and in De malorum existentia.25 The
De providentia et fato was not mentioned here because, it seems, at least some
of this treatise was more exemplary of the direct and circular motions.
In the Sapientiale, followed closely by Berthold in 131A, Thomas had
explained the relation between the oblique and the direct motion as follows.
He described how the few pagans (infidelis) capable of completing the oblique
motion then commenced the direct motion (motus directus), which he intrigu-
ingly identified with a “direct vision of God” (directa visio ipsius).26 The direct
motion begins also with the senses, but sets out from creatures regarded as
“tokens, images, and signs” rather than vestiges, ascending to God “intellectu-
ally” rather than “intelligibly”, “unitively” rather than “digressively”. One could
say that the excellence of the direct motion is a function of the lucidity of the
contemplator’s vision, in which the creature has become semiotically trans-
parent to its divine exemplar. In Berthold’s terms, this would be identical to
“the perspicacity of the mind” (perspicacitas animi) that the Elementatio theo-
logica aimed to cultivate.27
For his Proclean proof-​text of the direct motion in the Expositio tituli,
Berthold gave Proclus’ summary of Platonic dialectic that is above scien-
tific knowledge (scientia). Practicing dialectic, a person skilfully gathers and
divides species, and ascends from the many to the One. At the summit of dia-
lectic is the intuition (intellectus, epibole) of simple beings and the primary
terms of demonstrations, beyond which, Proclus declared, Aristotle did not
ascend. Scientia belongs properly to the soul as discursive and temporal in its
activity, while intellectus belongs to it insofar as soul is an image of its prior

25 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. D, p. 40, l. 110 –​p. 41, l. 145. Cf. Thomas of York,
Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 7. As was his custom, Berthold specified and expanded Thomas’ refer-
ences, this time to Boethius’ Consolatio.
26 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 131A, p. 191, l. 28-​44; Expos. tit. C-​D, p. 39, l. 73 –​p. 40, l. 118.
See note 29, below.
27 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 7, p. 14, l. 291-​292: exercendum est animi perspicacitas.
112  Chapter 2

principle. Then there is the cognition above intellect, “which the theologians
before Plato also divulged, calling it a truly divine madness”, and which Proclus
identified as the activity of the one of the soul (unum animae). There, the
soul “loves to be at peace, enclosing itself from cognitions, having been made
silent, and keeping quiet with inward silence”. As Berthold showed more exten-
sively in Prol. 17, Dionysius’ teaching about the union (unitio) or unity (unitas)
above mind, agrees (concordat) with this doctrine.28 Therefore, whereas the
oblique motion culminates with the knowledge of the highest Good, which
is very much distinct from its discursive beginning-​points, the direct motion
for Berthold seems to be a more rapid progression through the same steps. It
is possible that the means and the end in the direct motion are also more inti-
mately related: perhaps the movement is so rapid precisely because the soul
is firmly established in this hidden and unitary principle. Berthold’s notion of
the perspicacitas animi would imply something like this unity of content and
method. Certainly, the unitive cognition of the unum animae is integrated into
the direct motion in a way it is not present in the oblique.
Both Thomas and Berthold maintained that the direct motion was
“given” to the philosophers (paucis datus est infidelibus), who fell into two
groups: those who were given it in its fulness by a special grace (per gratiam
specialem) and those who received it after perfecting the arduous oblique
motion of discursive reason.29 How did Berthold understand this in terms

28 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. C, p. 39, l. 73 –​p. 40, l. 108.

29 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 131A, p. 191, l. 40-​44, citing Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 6 (ms
Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Soppr. A.vi.437, f. 6vb): Primus istorum duo-
rum motuum [= motus obliquus] fuit in philosophis: Quod enim notum est Dei, manifestum
est illis. Secundus autem motus [= motus rectus] paucis datus est infidelibus et, si quibus
datus, hoc tenuiter propter hoc, quod iste motus non est datus multis in sua excellentia nisi
per gratiam specialem aut non nisi propter praecedentem obliquam animi motionem et hoc
perfectam, quod paucissimis datum est. In Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 6, not cited by Berthold,
Thomas went on to speak of a lesser “vestige” of the direct motion among those who,
“by a simple reflection [simplici speculatione], rise from creatures to the creator through
the contemplation of creatures” (Attamen huiusmodi motus, qualecumque vestigium fuit
in quibusdam, qui simplici speculatione surrexerunt a creaturis in creatorem per ipsarum
creaturarum considerationem). Thomas explained this vestige using passages from Cicero
(De natura deorum ii.37) transmitting the parable from Aristotle’s De philosophia about
the inhabitants of an ornate cave, who know of the gods only by report (fama). Suddenly,
an earthquake splits its entrance, and they gaze upon an immense world of beauty, order,
and power. Without any disputation (remota omni disputandi facultate) or discursive rea-
soning they recognize the existence of an intelligence that has made all things. Perhaps
Thomas referred to this as a “vestige” of the direct motion as a way of separating this
momentary intuition (simplex speculatio) from the more perfect exercise of the direct
motion that is enabled either by a special grace (we might think of St. Paul) or after a
habitus has been gained by laborious investigation.
Expositio tituli 113

of his own doctrine of the perfection of the oblique motion and the begin-
ning of the direct motion? A glance at 131A has clarified that Berthold, like
Thomas, maintained that the three motions fell into a certain order, despite
the impression given by Expos. tit. B-​D. The status of the circular motion,
however, will require further explanation. To determine their precise order
for Berthold, we must look to Berthold’s reception of Dietrich of Freiberg’s
notion of the acquired intellect (intellectus adeptus). Dietrich’s intellectus
adeptus differed in several respects from Albert’s, not least by placing the
emphasis squarely on the necessity of grace for its attainment, for deferring
its realisation until the beatific vision, and for describing its temporary enjoy-
ment as a rapture (raptus). Berthold will incorporate Dietrich’s intellectus
adeptus into the Expositio relative to the culmination of the oblique motion
and to the exercise of the circular and direct motions. However, as was noted
already, Berthold’s notion of the unum animae will also retain some features
of Albert’s higher stage of the intellectus assimilativus that cannot be derived
from Dietrich’s writings.
The central passage for this synthesis is 123D, where Berthold produced the
most extensively glossed and schematised version of the proof-​text (De provi-
dentia et fato 8.28-​31) for Proclus’ exercise of the direct motion used in Expos.
tit. C.30 Berthold arranged the modes of cognition presented by Proclus into
five levels, and subdivided most of them into higher, lower, and medial oper-
ations. First and lowest is the exterior sense, whose objects are the extrinsic
qualities of beings immediately present to it. The second, called the interior
sense or imaginative power, is more intrinsic and spiritual because its objects
are quantities and common sensibles that can be apprehended in the absence
of the being in which they inhere. The third mode is the discursive or “particu-
lar” reason (ratio particularis). Its lowest function is related to the imagination
and to the unstable objects of the physical world: through many “probable
reasons” this lower function gives rise to “belief” and thus becomes opinion.
In the superior function of the particular reason, when it is conjoined with
the universal reason (ratio universalis), it is “scientific”, and applies itself to
pure mathematicals. These provide the stability required for necessary knowl-
edge. These stable principles are used by the particular reason in its medial
operation, where it deals with mathematical objects applied to the physical
world (res mathematicas applicatas ad physicum), for instance in the quadriv-
ial arts and in sciences like optics. All of this recalls Berthold’s adaptation of
Albert’s Metaphysica in the Prologus on the twofold inquiry (duplex indagatio)

30 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 123D, p. 127, l. 94 –​p. 129, l. 155.

114  Chapter 2

that human reason has brought to perfection before it begins the study of
metaphysics.
The fourth mode of cognition is exercised by the ratio universalis, which
constitutes the quidditative being of a thing by apprehending its essential
parts in definitional knowledge.31 This was effectively Dietrich of Freiberg’s
notion of the intellectus possibilis. Berthold elaborated this theory by giving
the possible intellect three hierarchically ordered operations.32 Its lower func-
tion, which is related to the particular reason, deals with “logical intentions”,
which are presumably second intentions like “genus”, “species”, and so on. With
its medial function it is occupied with “metaphysical intentions”, which can
perhaps be identified with extra-​mental intentions like “human” or “horse”. In
the context of Berthold’s citation of Proclus’ De providentia et fato, these two
operations of Dietrich’s ratio universalis were associated with the composing
and dividing activities of dialectic, and with the apprehension of the relation-
ship of the principles of the quadrivial sciences to one another until it arrives
to the unhypothetical first principle.33 Finally, the higher operation of the uni-
versal reason no longer proceeds by analyses, divisions, demonstrations, but
as “the intelligence of simple beings” it contemplates simple beings by simple
intuitions (epybolis simplicibus) and with immediate visions (antopticis).34 In
Berthold’s synthesis, the science of metaphysics as Aristotle pursued it was
thus confined to the level of the possible intellect –​the consequences of this
will be felt when we consider his criticism of the doctrine of the transcenden-
tals in Chapter 4, below.
Finally, with the fifth mode of cognition we have the first mention of the
agent intellect and the culmination of the entire ascent, as far as human cog-
nition is concerned:

31 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 123D, p. 129, l. 129-​131; Praeamb. C, p. 64, l. 389-​390: rationi
universali, quam intellectum possibilem vocamus.
32 Dietrich spoke of the cooperation of the particular and the universal reason in the
formation of demonstrations. See Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ed.
B. Mojsisch, Opera omnia, vol. 1. Schriften zur Intellekttheorie (Hamburg: Meiner, 1977), lib.
iii.27.1 –​ iii.28.1, p. 200, l. 24 –​p. 201, l. 59.
33 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 123D, p. 129, l. 133-​134: Quoad ista duo ascendit ad unum
primum principium et usque ad insuppositum.
34 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 123D, p. 129, l. 144-​147: Quoad sui autem superius non
adhuc utimur methodibus et resolutionibus aut compositionibus aut divisionibus aut
demonstrationibus, sed epybolis, id est adiectionibus, simplicibus et velut antopticis, id est
per se visivis, entia speculantem, et vocatur simplicium intelligentia, quae etiam in nobis est
melior omni scientia.
Expositio tituli 115

The fifth level is the agent intellect, having become the form of this uni-
versal reason according to its higher part. This is called the acquired
intellect [intellectus adeptus] and ‘the one’ of this part of our intellectual
power, ‘no longer operating intellectually and joined to the One. For all
things are known by like: the sensible by sense, scientific objects by sci-
ence, the intelligibles by intellect, and the One by the unifical’. This is
‘the most divine cognition of God, which is known through ignorance
according to the cognition above mind, when the mind, having departed
from everything else, and then also sending itself away, is united with the
super-​resplendent rays, and is illuminated hither and yon by the inscru-
table depth of wisdom’.35

Berthold’s apparently straightforward identification here of the acquired

intellect and unum animae is singular in the Expositio, and has led to some
divergent recent interpretations of his thought on this important issue. In an
earlier study, I made this passage from 123D central to an interpretation of
Berthold’s thought that placed him fundamentally in continuity with Dietrich
of Freiberg’s theory of the soul’s return to and intellectual union with God. The
similarities between Dietrich’s intellectus adeptus and Berthold’s unum ani-
mae, and their agreement that a rapture is required for wayfarer to enjoy this
highest form of cognition, seemed so strong that the the divergence between
the two authors was reduced there to a merely verbal difference: for Berthold,
once a person has the acquired intellect, the cognition of the unum animae
follows spontaneously.36 In a more extensive consideration of this question
in Berthold, Paul Hellmeier has argued that this apparent identification of the
intellectus adeptus and unum in 123D should in fact be understood merely as a
mistake on Berthold’s part. For Hellmeier, 123D is inconsistent with the clear

35 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 123D, p. 129, l. 148-​155: Quintus gradus est intellectus
agens factus forma praedictae rationis universalis secundum sui ipsius rationis superius, et
vocatur intellectus adeptus et ‘unum’ ipsius partis nostrae intellectualis, ‘non adhuc intellec-
tuale excitantem et hoc coaptantem uni. Omnia enim simili cognoscuntur: sensibile sensu,
intelligibile intellectu, unum uniali’. Haec est ‘divinissima Dei cognitio, quae est per ignoran-
tiam cognita secundum cognitionem super mentem, quando mens ab aliis omnibus rece-
dens, postea et se ipsam dimittens unita est supersplendentibus radiis divinorum, inde et ibi
non scrutabili profundo sapientiae illuminata’. Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §31,
p. 140, l. 6-​9, and Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.3, 872A-​B.
36 E. King, “Berthold of Moosburg on Intellect and the One of the Soul”, in Dionysius 36(2018),
p. 184–​199.
116  Chapter 2

subordination of intellect to the unum animae outlined in several other pas-

sages in the Expositio.37
I would now maintain that the truth is somewhere in the middle of these
interpretations. I continue to hold that 123D is crucial for understanding
Berthold’s intentions, not least because I do not believe that Berthold would
make a mistake in the most elaborate discussion of the modes of cognition in
the Expositio. Hellmeier is right to propose that there is a clear and consistent
subordination of intellect to the unum animae in Berthold. But the ambiguity
in 123D can be explained in another way without dismissing it as an error. If
there is any problem with 123D, it was rather that Berthold was not being pre-
cise enough.
Berthold was consistent in maintaining that the intellectus adeptus and unum
animae belong to the same mode or level of cognition –​the attainment of the
latter follows on the former. However, what Berthold did not make sufficiently
clear was that he continued to apply a pattern of higher and lower subdivisions
within this fifth mode. In other words, the acquired intellect should be under-
stood as the lower phase and the unum animae the upper phase of the same
level (intelligentia). Perhaps he did not separate them into distinct “operations”
because, strictly speaking, one cannot exercise the unum animae independently
of the intellectus adeptus and, again, as soon as the acquired intellect is reached,
it passes spontaneously into the unum animae. If we entertain the possibility
that the acquired intellect and the unum are related in this way, we can see
that Berthold has not only synthesised the Albertine distinction of acquired
and assimilated intellects with the theory of the acquired intellect derived fun-
damentally from Dietrich of Freiberg: as we shall see, by rendering the differ-
ence between Dietrich’s adeptus and Albert’s assimilativus in the language of
Dionysius and Proclus, Berthold has produced a doctrine that in fact closely
resembled a position on the nature of beatitude taken by Meister Eckhart.
The relationship between the agent intellect and the unum animae is some-
times presented very ambiguously in the Expositio. In two passages discuss-
ing the soul’s most intrinsic and essential principle, which were inspired by
Dietrich,38 one has the impression that for Berthold the unum animae was
nothing else than the facies of Augustine or the intellectus agens of Aristotle:

37 P. Hellmeier, “Der Intellekt ist nicht genug. Das proklische unum in nobis bei Berthold von
Moosburg”, in Philosophisches Jahrbuch 126/​2(2019), p. 202–​226, at p. 219–​221. Hellmeier
very insightfully emphasises the influence of Albert on Berthold’s theory, although
I do not share the opinion that Albert was more important than Dietrich for Berthold’s
synthesis.
38 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.2.1 –​ ii.12.1, p. 147, l. 50 –​p. 155, l. 81.
Expositio tituli 117

The rational soul not only lives animately, but also intellectually, and con-
sequently has in itself the principle of its motion, namely ‘the one of the
soul itself’, which some call ‘the deiform unity’, others ‘the hidden recess
of the mind’ or ‘face’, but others call it ‘the agent intellect’.39

However, this intellective power is the higher, essential part of the soul,
which Aristotle calls ‘the agent intellect’, Augustine ‘the hidden recess of
the mind’, and Dionysius ‘the union’ or ‘the unity’ (as the other transla-
tion says) ‘exceeding the nature of the mind’ […] but the author calls it
‘the one of the soul’.40

Like 123D, these passages show that Berthold did not want to posit a sharp
divide between the agent intellect and the unum animae. Nevertheless, given
his commitment to the subordination of Aristotle to Plato on this central
question of anthropology, it is difficult to imagine that he would not want to
establish some difference between the two, and this makes his apparent equiv-
ocations here rather perplexing. In isolation, these passages give us very little
explanation. Fortunately, the ambiguity can be resolved by context. In both
cases, Berthold was discussing the immediate and essential principle of the
soul, and so we must be sensitive to the fact that, according to the law of medi-
ation, the intellect and not the unum animae would be the proximate princi-
ple of its essence.41 By including the Proclean and Dionysian unum alongside
the intellectus agens Berthold was in fact consistent in his view that for the
Platonists the more universal cause is more active than the secondary cause.
Although the two principles are placed at the same level, for Berthold the agent
intellect is the immediate and essential principle of the soul only in virtue of
the more causally efficacious unum animae.42
Berthold’s lemmatic commentary in the Prologus on the phrase “light of the
simple intellect” (lumen simplicis intellectus), from the Hermetic description

39 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 188E, p. 65, l. 204–​207: quae non solum vivit animealiter,
sed etiam intellectualiter, et per consequens habet in se principium sui motus, scilicet ‘unum
ipsius animae’, quod quidem vocant ‘deiformem unitatem’, alii vero ‘abditum mentis’ sive
‘faciem’, quidem autem ‘intellectum agentem’.
40 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 193E, p. 103, l. 123 –​p. 104, l. 134: tale autem intellectivum
existens pars animae essentialis superior, quod Aristoteles vocat ‘intellectum agentem’,
Augustinus ‘abditum mentis’, Dionysius vero ‘unitionem’ sive ‘unitatem’ (ut dicit alia transla-
tio) ‘excedentem mentis naturam’, […] sed auctor vocat ‘unum animae’.
41 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 68E, p. 17, l. 93-​95: Similiter intellectus agens cum uno
sui, qui etiam est totum in parte et pars totius potestativi ex partibus, quod est anima, conti-
net in se virtute totam residuam substantiam animae, in qua convenit cum corde.
42 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 24B, p. 130, l. 189-​198; 162B, p. 17, l. 51 –​p. 18, l. 60.
118  Chapter 2

of the microcosm, presented the same doctrine.43 Berthold had just explained
how the human receives “through the imago Dei” the “beauties not immersed in
the world”, which are the three levels of gods or separate substances (according
to cause: God; according to essence: the gods; according to participation: their
orders).44 There is, he noted, a twofold similarity in the imago. In one respect,
the human is an image of the primordial cause of intellect (prime intellectus)
and is similar to intelligible beauties, and thus it is called “the simple intellect”.
As an image of the One, however, the human resembles the first principle and
the primordial causes themselves, and as such the imago is the unum animae
or “the light of the simple intellect”.
Through the unum animae, the mind enters the supersubstantial world
where, as Dionysius wrote, “the simple, absolute, and unchanging theological
mysteries lie hidden away in the super-​resplendent darkness of the silence
teaching hiddenly, the darkness […] that fills to excess with beyond-​beautiful
lucidities minds that are dispossessed of eyes [non habentes oculos mentes]”.45
Berthold’s comments on this passage specified that the oculus mentalis is the
agent or the simple intellect, “which is also light, as Aristotle says”. But the
unum is more luciform (luciformius) than the simple intellect and, therefore,
is more truly the imago Dei. However, following the semantic register of Psalm
4:7 (Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, Domine), Berthold’s vocabulary
immediately became Augustinian, when he added that the unum animae can
be identified with the soul’s face (facies sive vultus), the hidden depth of the
mind (abditum mentis), and the superior reason (ratio superior) that is always
turned to the divine light. As with 123D, 188E, and 193E, we find that the agent
intellect and the unum animae are brought closely together, though Berthold
nevertheless maintained a decisive but subtle distinction between them: the
agent intellect must be acquired and then “dispossessed”.
A similar distinction can be found in Propositions 185 and 202, which con-
tain Berthold’s analyses of the same Dionysian and Proclean texts used already
to describe the three motions of the soul. These passages are the most illus-
trative of the doctrine of the intellectus adeptus that was presupposed in 123D.
In Propositions 185 and 202, William of Moerbeke’s intriguing translation of
ψυχαὶ ὀπαδοί (the souls participating intellect who are always “attendant” upon

43 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 19, p. 30, l. 838 –​p. 32, l. 878.
44 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 18-​19, p. 27, l. 729 –​p. 30, l. 837. The phrasing at Prol.
17, p. 26, l. 691-​693, indicates that Dietrich’s theory of the agent intellect as the imago Dei
was a primary inspiration for this portion of the Prologus.
45 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 19, p. 31, l. 851-​857. Cf. Dionysius, De mystica theolo-
gia, 1.1, 997A-​B.
Expositio tituli 119

the gods) as animae contemplatrices provoked Berthold to set out a theory

of contemplation.46 At the basis of this theory was Dietrich’s doctrine of the
acquired intellect, which Berthold adjusted to fit the demands of Proclus’ dis-
tinction between the perpetual “attendance” or contemplation of divine and
intellectual souls and the episodic “attendance” of human souls.
In the De visione beatifica, Dietrich had addressed certain arguments of “the
philosophers”, whose views on the relation of the agent and possible intellects
seemed to resemble his own. He stated that they raised “the same, or at least
a similar, question” as he had regarding the possibility of intellectual beati-
tude, although their answers will differ in a crucial respect.47 The philosophers
maintain that the agent intellect is sometimes (aliquando) united to the possi-
ble intellect or the essence of the soul as a formal cause in this life (in hac vita),
since the agent intellect is both the primary efficient cause of cognition, mak-
ing the possible intellect to know in act, and is the form or light of the possible
intellect’s intelligible objects, which are the secondary cause of its knowing.48
Dietrich then summarised the philosophers’ views about the determinate ratio
that descends from the agent intellect and provides the possible intellect with
its content. It is the principle by which the possible intellect is actualised and
constitutes its quidditative knowledge of a thing. These rationes flow imme-
diately from the eternal reasons in God into the agent intellect, where they
are in some way determined or limited, and thence proceed into the possi-
ble intellect. According to Dietrich, the philosophers’ position, if left here,
would have the unacceptable consequence of making God the formal cause
of every act of intellection.49 Dietrich responded to this by underscoring the
difference between thinking a thing by its ratio and thinking it essentially (per
essentiam). Only the latter cognition, which belongs to the agent intellect, is
a “likeness of the universe of being” and embraces all things in its essential
activity. Therefore, the possible intellect does not enjoy the beatific vision
whenever it knows any determinate ratio –​it does not know God directly –​but
only when it receives a ratio that amplifies the scope of its cognition to this
universal or “essential” extent, that makes it adequate to the cognition of the

46 In Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §65, cited at Berthold of

Moosburg, Expositio, 134F, p. 218, l. 140, William transliterated the term and offered a more
prosaic translation: opadoy, id est assequentes.
47 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 4.2.1 (1), p. 106, l. 40-​43.
48 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 4.2.1 (2-​7), p. 106, l. 44 –​p. 107, l. 83. Dietrich
shared the view he attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias, Al-​Farabi, and Averroes that
the actualised possible intellect is identical to the intelligible species.
49 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 4.2.1 (8-​10), p. 108, l. 84-​111.
120  Chapter 2

agent intellect. Now, the possible intellect always uses a ratio to express the
formal parts of a thing, which are the principles of a thing’s being and its being-​
known. Since the human intellect always knows by these determinate rationes,
it is incapable of knowing the simpler quiddities of the separate intellects, “if
they exist”.50 All the more, then, must the possibility of beatitude through the
intellectus adeptus, when the possible intellect will be united to the agent intel-
lect by the amplitude of such a ratio, be understood as a Scriptural promise
and not a natural fact.51
For Dietrich, therefore, the acquired intellect is attained only in heaven (in
patria), when the blessed think by the divine mode of cognition that is perpet-
ually active in the individuated agent intellects that are the grounding prin-
ciples of their souls.52 Importantly for Berthold, Dietrich also acknowledged
the possibility of a transitory enjoyment of this cognition, giving the example
of St. Benedict who, according to Gregory the Great (Dialogues ii.35) “saw the
whole universe in a certain elevation of the mind” or rapture.53 Dietrich likely
found in this report a verification of his view that the ratio that beatifies the
intellect comes directly from God and includes in its simplicity the ambit of
the entire universe. It elevates or expands the possible intellect to the essential
cognition of the agent intellect. But it is also clear from his passing reference
to Benedict’s vision (sed qualiter hoc contigerit, Deo committendum iudico), that
this kind of transitory experience was not his primary concern in the De visione
beatifica. Dietrich was more interested in articulating the necessary conditions
of intellectual activity and beatitude than in verifying its exceptional historical
realisations.

50 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 4.2.1 (13-​14), p. 109, l. 131-​145.

51 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 4.3 (1), p. 111, l. 29-​31: Aliter igitur procedendum
ad propositum supposito hoc, quod per scripturam veritatis nobis promittitur, eo, quod per
rationem solam hoc concludi non potest, videlicet quod in beata vita visuri simus Deum in
claritate suae essentiae.
52 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 4.2.1 (4), p. 107, l. 56-​59: Ex hoc enim nunc secun-
dum statum huius vitae non intelligimus ea intellectione, qua ipse intelligit, quia secundum
hunc statum non est nobis unitus ut forma, sed solum ut principium intellectorum in nobis.
53 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 1.1.4 (5), p. 29, l. 27-​33: Et ex hoc arguit
Commentator Super iii De anima, quod, si intellectus agens, qui est intellectus per essen-
tiam et semper in actu, aliquando uniatur nobis ut forma, per ipsum intelligemus omnia
entia. Quod videtur aliqualiter concordare cum eo, quod legitur de sancto Benedicto, vide-
licet quod in quadam mentis elevatione vidit totum universum. Sed qualiter hoc contigerit,
Deo committendum iudico. On the interpretation of Benedict’s vision in medieval thought
and art, see M. Kupfer, “The Cosmic Vision of Saint Benedict, e specula and in speculo”, in
N. Bouloux, A. Dan, G. Tolias (eds), Orbis disciplinae. Hommages en l’honneur de Patrick
Gautier Dalché (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), p. 139–​165.
Expositio tituli 121

Berthold understood the details of Dietrich’s theory very well, and repeated
his view that the acquired intellect is not a natural fact but must fall within the
order of voluntary providence, “the completion and consummation of natural
providence”, for it pertains “only to God’s grace and good merits”.54 This con-
cluding passage from his commentary Proposition 202 most fully displays his
agreement with Dietrich on this matter:

Now, although intellectual souls are below divine souls, yet they are
expanded above partial [=human] souls. For these, although they par-
ticipate intellect by intellectual activity, are unable to participate [their]
proximate intellect or intellectual essence, the acquisition of which
[cuius adeptione], such that it would be their form, they lack as long as
they are in becoming; otherwise, they would not have inclined away from
intellectual activity. For what acts essentially acts always, and souls who
have acquired their essential intellect [animae intellectum essentialem
adeptae] do exactly this. For this reason, [human souls] are more fittingly
called “rational” than “intellectual”. However, by a gift of God, at some
moment [aliquando] even in this mortal life, they are elevated not only
by their intellectual power, but even by their unifical power or one [suo
uniali seu uno] to the height of contemplation, to a vision, not only of the
gods, whom God has established as his dwelling-​place, but even of him,
the Lord God almighty and the great King above all gods.
But after this life, meritorious and well-​pleasing souls by the grace of
God (that is, by the light of glory), will have their own intellects formally
united to themselves, and thus their blessed vision will be fulfilled insofar
as they shall see God, Lord of gods, face to face –​[having become] mir-
rors throughout all eternity. But intellectual souls do not lack this; indeed,
they always have it by a gift of the primarily God.55

54 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 129F, p. 182, l. 288–​302. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione
beatifica, 4.3.2 (2-​4), p. 114, l. 3-​20.
55 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 202F, p. 187, l. 217 –​p. 188, l. 233: Verum licet [animae
intellectuales] sint inferiores divinis animabus, tamen superexpansae sunt partialibus,
quae, licet participent intellectu per intellectualem operationem, non potentes intellectu
proxime participare seu intellectuali essentia, cuius adeptione ita, quod sit eis forma, car-
ent, quamdiu sunt in generatione, quia alias non deciderent ab intellectuali operatione –​
operans enim per essentiam semper operatur, sicut faciunt animae intellectum essentialem
adeptae, propter quod et magis vocantur rationales quam intellectuales –​, tamen dono
Dei aliquando etiam in hac mortali vita, non iam suo intellectuali, sed etiam suo uniali
seu uno altitudine contemplationis elevantur in visionem non solum deorum, quos posuit
prime Deus suum latibulum, sed etiam eius, qui est Deus magnus dominus et rex magnus
super omnes deos. Sed post hanc vitam bene meritae animae Dei gratia (scilicet lumine
122  Chapter 2

While the relation of the intellectus adeptus and grace described here is per-
fectly consistent with Dietrich’s teaching, Berthold has made the relation
less hypothetical by transposing it into the cosmological framework of the
Elementatio. For Berthold, heavenly or “intellectual” souls must already enjoy
the same cognition that will belong to the blessed in patria. At the same time,
and even more forcefully than Dietrich, Berthold emphasised the necessity
of grace for the acquired intellect, and even reintroduced the notion of “the
light of glory” (lumen gloriae) that had been explicitly rejected by Dietrich.56
However, one should not rush to characterise this as a misreading of or radical
departure from Dietrich; it was rather an attempt to reintroduce the lumen
gloriae after Dietrich’s criticisms. The intelligible species or ratio descending
from God in which (rather than under which) the possible intellect knows the
divine essence in its amplitude could easily be regarded as a gift enabling it to
approximate the intrinsic vision of God that belongs inherently to the agent
intellect as an intellectus in actu per essentiam. In this sense, Berthold would be
attempting to safeguard Dietrich’s theory from naturalistic misinterpretations
by putting the emphasis squarely on the necessity of grace.
Berthold’s reception of Dietrich on this score can be compared with the
nearly identical conclusions drawn in the vernacular treatise Ler von der
selikeyt (The Doctrine of Beatitude), written sometime between 1302 and 1323.57

gloriae) habebunt sibi proprios intellectus formaliter unitos, et sic complebitur eorum visio
beata, inquantum videbunt Deum deorum dominum facie ad faciem specula in aeterna.
Tali autem unione non carent intellectuales animae, verum semper habent eam dono prime
Dei. There are three options for interpreting the phrase specula in aeterna: (1) specula, the
nominative plural of speculum, is in apposition to animae (as translated above); (2) spec-
ula is the ablative singular of “watchtower” (“from a watchtower”); (3) as a poetic word
order, in specula aeterna (“in eternal mirrors”). In aeterna itself could signify either a
temporal designation (“through all eternity”) or, less likely, a multiplicity of objects seen
(looking “in things eternal”). The sense of the passage is clearly that the beatific vision
presupposes the intellectus adeptus, when the agent intellect, which could be described
as a “mirror” of God’s light in the rest of the soul, is now united with the soul in a new way
(as thoroughly as form is united to matter). Since blessed souls could therefore be called
“mirrors”, I have translated following the first option. If this was Berthold’s intent, he was
likely evoking 2 Cor. 3:18 (Nos vero omnes, revelata facie gloriam Domini speculantes, in
eamdem imaginem transformamur a claritate in claritatem, tamquam a Domini Spiritu)
in addition to 1 Cor. 13:12 (facie ad faciem). It cannot be excluded that Berthold was also
alluding to the Boethian notion of “the watchtower of providence”, given that the intellec-
tus adeptus is so closely related in the Expositio to cognitio providentialis. See Conclusion,
section 2, n. 96. For his patient discussion of this passage with me, I am very grateful to
Paul Hellmeier op.
56 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 3.2.3, p. 72, l. 39 –​p. 73, l. 79.
57 The text is edited with a commentary in N. Winkler, Von der wirkenden und möglichen
Vernunft. Philosophie in der volkssprachigen Predigt nach Meister Eckhart (Berlin: De
Expositio tituli 123

This treatise addressed the question of the primacy of the agent or possible
intellect in the beatific vision. Its author advocated Dietrich’s views above
those of Thomas Aquinas and even above the doctrine of emptiness or passiv-
ity ascribed to Meister Eckhart (daz saelicheit lige an got lîden). The text also
went beyond anything we find in Dietrich to explore some of the ethical con-
sequences of his noetics.
The anonymous author’s central argument was that an intellectual sub-
stance like the agent intellect cannot be deprived of its natural operation.
Following Dietrich’s arguments about the agent intellect as an imago Dei that is
always actually thinking God, itself, and the universe of beings, the author goes
further than any declaration we have in Dietrich to state that the imago or scin-
tilla animae is “blessed by nature” (saelec sî von nâtûren).58 Such expressions
come rather close to the fifth thesis attributed to the beguines and beghards
censured at the Council of Vienne in 1311–​1312: “that any intellectual nature in
itself is naturally blessed, and that the soul does not need the light of glory to
elevate it to see God and enjoy him blissfully”.59 For the anonymous author,
however, this theory of natural beatitude was not inconsistent with the tenet
that the possible intellect still requires divine grace in order to be transformed
by the agent intellect.60 Nevertheless, his position about the natural beatitude
of the agent intellect led the author to develop certain original ethical the-
ories, including a presentist understanding of hell as each mortal sin, which
thereby becomes an “eternal middle” standing between the soul and the enjoy-
ment of this immediate vision of God already underway but “hidden” in the

Gruyter, 2013). See also Sturlese, “Alle origini della mistica speculativa tedesca”, p. 48–​87;
id., “Traktat von der Seligkeit”, in K. Ruh et al. (eds), Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters.
Verfasserlexikon, vol. 9 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995), p. 998–​1002; N. Largier, “Das Glück des
Menschen. Diskussionen über beatitudo und Vernunft in volkssprachlichen Texten des 14.
Jahrhunderts”, in J. Aertsen, K. Emery, Jr., A. Speer (eds), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277.
Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), p. 827–​855; A. Beccarisi, “Dietrich in the Netherlands. A New
Document in the Lower Rhenish Vernacular”, in J. Biard, D. Calma, R. Imbach (eds),
Recherches sur Dietrich de Freiberg (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), p. 221–​237; Saccon, Intelletto
e beatitudine, p. 161–​173.
58 Ler von der selikeyt, ed. N. Winkler, p. 42, l. 16 –​p. 43, l. 2; p. 44, l. 9; and p. 45, l. 14.
59 Constitution Ad nostrum qui, in H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, ed. P.
Hünermann (Freiberg /​Basel /​Wien: Herder, 200946), §895: Quinto quod quaelibet intel-
lectualis natura in se ipsa naturaliter est beata quod que anima non indiget lumine gloriae
ipsam elevante ad deum videndum et eo beate fruendum. See also R. Lerner, The Heresy of
the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), p.
61–​84.
60 Ler von der selikeyt, p. 41, l. 18 –​p. 42, l. 7.
124  Chapter 2

intellect.61 Although the anonymous author explicitly ascribed his doctrine of

the natural beatitude of the imago Dei to Dietrich,62 it is important to bear in
mind that he has made no recourse to the distinction of the orders of natural
and voluntary providence, of nature and grace, that Dietrich was so careful
to observe.63 All the same, here and in the position censured by the Council
of Vienne, one may discern the explosive potential in Dietrich’s theory for a
reform of Christian self-​understanding through a philosophical account of the
dignity of the intellectual creature. This potential was creatively harnessed by
the anonymous author and, more carefully, by Berthold of Moosburg and John
Tauler. For Dietrich, Berthold, and Tauler, this path of “natural beatitude” was
definitively the road not taken. For Dietrich and for Berthold, beatitude for
human beings is only beatitude when it is communicated to the entire person;
it makes no sense to say a “part” of the soul is always blessed because it always
gazes upon God or the divine ideas. What matters is how this cognition can be
participated by the entire soul, and this necessarily depends on grace. The Ler
von der selikeyt did not observe this intrinsic connection between beatitude
and grace.
Berthold’s integration of Dietrich’s theory into a Proclean and Dionysian
framework intensified both sides of this relationship, that is, the actuality of
beatitude as well as the need for divine grace. Like the Ler, Berthold placed
greater emphasis than Dietrich on the possibility of the soul’s foretaste of beat-
itude in this life, rather than deferring it to the eschatological future. His doc-
trine of contemplation in Propositions 185 and 202 consistently maintained
that a transitory enjoyment of divine union is in fact granted by a gift of God
sometimes (aliquando) to human souls and always (incessanter) to heavenly
souls. Berthold’s focalisation of Thomas of York’s interpretation Dionysius’
three motions on the historical figure of Proclus demanded that it be so. In

61 Ler von der selikeyt, p. 44, l. 19 –​p. 45, l. 11. These coincide with the author’s use of an
Eckhartian motif: to dispose oneself to receive divine grace, one’s possible intellect must
rid itself of all images. See Ler von der selikeyt, p. 45, l. 15 –​p. 46, l. 7.
62 Ler von der selikeyt, p. 41, l. 8-​11; p. 42, l. 8-​15.
63 Sturlese, “Alle origini della mistica speculativa tedesca”, p. 64–​68. In his history of debates
on the beatific vision, Christian Trottmann correctly emphasised the importance of
Dietrich’s view about the intelligible species, derived from his reading of Alexander,
Al-​Farabi, and Averroes, for his rejection of the Thomistic lumen gloriae. However, his
conclusion (La vision béatifique. Des disputes scholastiques à sa définition par Benoît xii
[Paris: École française de Rome, 1995], p. 335) that “la thèse de Dietrich de Freiberg ne per-
met pas de penser la caractère surnaturel de la vision béatifique puisqu’elle ne procède
pas d’une grâce” is an even less balanced account of Dietrich’s own theory than what we
have in the Ler von der selikeyt.
Expositio tituli 125

turn, the text of the Elementatio shaped the doctrine Berthold presented: con-
templation must be an activity exercised equally by human and heavenly
souls. With this came a stronger focus on the circular motion, which Berthold
to be the contemplation characteristic of heavenly souls, than anything in
Thomas of York.64 Here we see once again how closely Berthold associated the
highest level of intellect and the unum animae: in Proposition 185, he applied
Dionysius’ words (“it is granted [conceditur] to few souls to be admitted [admit-
tantur] to such heights of contemplation”) relative both to the intelligentia at
the summit of the circular motion,65 and to the union or unity above mind.66
In Proposition 202, Berthold classified a series of passages from Bernard of
Clairvaux, Richard of St. Victor, Dionysius, and Proclus, according to whether
they pertain to contemplation in this life (in via), in heaven (in patria), or to
both. As with Proposition 185, he made it clear that the difference between
contemplation in via and in patria concerns not the quality but the stability of
contemplation, when the aliquando changes to incessanter.67 Even now, that
is, the souls moving the heavens exercise steadfastly and unswervingly (firme
et indeclinabiliter) the highest intelligence (intelligentia), which Berthold
described with the same text used for the circular motion in Expos. tit. B, in
which the soul looked within itself and above itself, to its “sister souls”, the
intelligences, and the divine unities. This in turn gives way to the cognition
above mind of the unum animae that is the basis for their providential cooper-
ation with God.68 Thus, for Berthold, there is a certain beatitude in nature, but
it belongs to these heavenly “contemplative” souls, which are already in patria
through a divine gift.
In all these passages –​the proximate essential cause of the soul (188E,
193E), the two dimensions of the imago Dei (Prol. 19), the modes of cognition
(123D), the kinds of contemplation (185G-​M, 202A-​F), and also the figure of the

64 For intelligentia of the circular motion as the highest kind of cognition, see also Berthold
of Moosburg, Expositio, 44C, p. 75, l. 100 –​p. 76, l. 120 (operatio intelligentialis is above,
supra, the operatio intellectualis); 63C, p. 188, l. 62-​66; 185L, p. 26, l. 412 –​p. 28, l. 455 (intel-
ligentia as the highest mode of cognition).
65 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 185M, p. 28, l. 457–​471: quia anima non semper movetur
motu circulari, ut fiat informis uniens se unitis virtutibus, nec semper est statuta se tota extra
se totam et supra se totam in unitionem excedentis mentis, per quam coniungitur diis per
recursum sui ad summam intelligentiam, […] ideo non semper contemplatur deos, licet ali-
quando. Quod tamen paucis conceditur animabus, ut ad tantam contemplationis eminen-
tiam admittantur, iuxta illud, quod dicit Dionysius.
66 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 185I, p. 25, l. 369-​379.
67 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 202C, p. 185, l. 147 –​p. 186, l. 172.
68 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 202B, p. 184, l. 105–​111.
126  Chapter 2

astronomer (Prol. 16) –​have shown how closely Berthold associated the agent
intellect, or its state of formal union with the possible intellect, and the unum
animae. The comparison of the model of the three motions of the soul in Expos.
tit. B-​D and 131A with Berthold’s analysis of their Proclean proof-​texts in 123D,
185G-​M, and 202A-​F lead us to conclude that Berthold remained fundamen-
tally in agreement Dietrich in his understanding of the conditions of possibil-
ity for this beatifying cognition to occur. However, he accentuated Dietrich’s
marginal reference of Benedict’s rapture because of the need to account for
the historical attainment of this cognition in its perfection in Proclus himself
and, consequently, following the letter of the Elementatio, in heavenly or “con-
templative” souls. Berthold’s modifications of Albert the Great’s De intellectu
et intelligibili in Prol. 16 must, therefore, be interpreted in this light, so that the
state of the intellectus adeptus, the summit of self-​knowledge and the capac-
ity for a kind of natural prophecy, would itself be understood as a transitory
state.69 If Berthold also intended to replace Albert’s intellectus assimilativus
with the unum animae, then this too should be interpreted through the lens
of 123D and Berthold’s adaptation of Dietrich: once the soul is unified with its
own agent intellect (intellectus adeptus), permanently or temporarily, it is then
sent forth into the divine light in ignorance (intellectus assimilativus /​ unum
animae). It was in this sense, then, that Berthold presented the unum animae
and its cognition through ignorance as the higher operation or phase of the
fifth mode in 123D, while the intellectus adeptus is that same mode as directed
toward the possible intellect below it. This is consistent with every case exam-
ined so far: the two always go together, whether they are enjoyed by a transi-
tory raptus in this life, either by a special grace or after the accomplished habit
of the oblique motion, or permanently in patria.
Berthold’s transformation of Dietrich’s doctrine of beatitude is also consist-
ent what we saw in 188E and 193E, where the agent intellect was still held to
be the soul’s proximate essential cause, with the unum animae added as its
deeper phase. In one sense, there is very little difference between the intellec-
tus adeptus and the unum animae: once a person has the cognition of the intel-
lectus adeptus, they have the cognition of the unum. But by adding a deeper
or higher modality to this cognition, directly under the inspiration of Proclus

69 Most scholars would see this as a significant departure from Albert, although M. Führer,
“The Agent Intellect in the Writings of Meister Dietrich of Freiberg and its Influence
on the Cologne School”, in K.-​H. Kandler, B. Mojsisch, B. Stammkötter (eds), Dietrich
von Freiberg. Neue Perspektiven seiner Philosophie, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft
(Amsterdam: Grüner, 1999), p. 69–​88, has argued that Dietrich was a true follower of
Albert when he in located the attainment of the acquired intellect only in patria.
Expositio tituli 127

and Dionysius, and perhaps also in line with Albert, Berthold definitively sub-
ordinated the reflexive character of the acquired intellect and its identifica-
tion with self-​knowledge to the non-​reflexive knowledge through ignorance
of the unum. Overall, however, the closest contemporary parallel one can find
for the notion of a simultaneous identity and difference of reflexivity and non-​
reflexivity is not found in Albert or Dietrich, but in a passage from Meister
Eckhart’s sermon Von dem edeln Menschen (On the Nobleman):

I say that as man, the soul, the spirit, contemplates God, he also knows
and perceives himself perceiving; that is, he perceives that he is contem-
plating and perceiving God. Now some people have thought, and it seems
quite plausible, that the flower and core of blessedness consists in knowl-
edge, when the spirit knows that it knows God. For if I possessed all joy,
and I did not know it, how could that help me and what joy would that
be to me? Yet I say certainly that this is not so. It is only true that with-
out that the soul would not be blessed; but blessedness does not consist
in this, for the first thing in which blessedness consists is when the soul
contemplates God directly. From there, out of God’s ground, it takes all
its being and its life and makes everything that it is, and it knows noth-
ing about knowing or about love or about anything at all. It comes to
rest completely and only in the being of God, and it knows nothing there
except being and God. But when the soul knows and perceives that it
contemplates, perceives and loves God, this is in the natural order a going
out and a return to the starting point.70

70 Meister Eckhart, Liber “Benedictus”. Von dem edeln Menschen, in Die deutschen Werke, ed.
J. Quint, vol. 5 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1963), p. 116, l. 21 –​p. 117, l. 4: Ich spriche: sô der
mensche, diu sêle, der geist schouwet got, sô weiz er ouch und bekennet sich bekennende, daz
ist: er bekennet, daz er schouwet und bekennet got. Nû hât gedunket etlîche liute und schînet
gar gelouplich, daz bluome und kerne der saelicheit lige in bekantnisse, dâ der geist beken-
net, daz er got bekennet; wan, daz ich alle wunne haete und ich des niht enwiste, waz hülfe
mich daz und waz wunne waere mir daz? Doch enspriche ich sicherlîche des niht. Aleine
ist daz wâr, daz diu sêle âne daz doch niht saelic waere, doch enliget diu saelicheit dar ane
niht; wan daz êrste, dâ saelicheit ane geliget, daz ist, sô diu sêle schouwet got blôz. Dâ nimet
si allez ir wesen und ir leben und schepfet allez, daz si ist, von dem grunde gotes und enweiz
von wizzenne niht noch von minne noch von nihte alzemâle. Si gestillet ganze und aleine
in dem wesene gotes, si enweiz niht dan wesen dâ und got. Sô si aber weiz und bekennet,
daz si got schouwet, bekennet und minnet, daz ist ein ûzslac und ein widerslac ûf daz êrste
nâch natiurlîcher ordenunge. English translation: Meister Eckhart, The Essential Sermons,
Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans. E. Colledge, B. McGinn (Mahwah: Paulist
Press, 1981), p. 245.
128  Chapter 2

Eckhart did not deny that reflexivity is a necessary aspect of beatitude. Rather,
he took issue with the argument that beatitude consists primarily in the reflex-
ive knowledge whereby one knows that one knows God. In some sense, as
Eckhart acknowledged, one can understand why a person would suppose that
reflexivity alone is both necessary and sufficient for beatitude –​if I had all
the joy or riches in the world and was not aware of it, what good would that
be to me? In other words, as we saw for Dietrich and Berthold in contrast to
the Ler von der selikeyt, beatitude is only beatitude when it is communicated
to the entire soul. But what Eckhart was arguing was that there is in beatitude
a kernel of non-​reflexivity in which the soul, in all of its powers, is completely
oriented toward God and not to itself; this is the root of beatitude and the prior
moment, so to speak, that makes possible the appropriation of that bliss to the
self in reflexivity.
Eckhart made a similar argument and the same criticism in his commentary
on the Gospel of John, where he referred to a fuller discussion of the issue in
the Opus quaestionum, which is no longer extant.71 In his commentary on John
1:12 (“As many as received him, he gave power to become sons of God”), Eckhart
began by noting that anything that “receives” or participates something else,
insofar as it is receptive, is in itself empty and in a passive potency. The exist-
ence of this passive power is completely derived from and dependent upon
its object. This is because a potency exists entirely in relation to its activity,
and in this case the potency in act has the same act of existence as the object
in act. Following Aristotle (De anima iii.2, 425b26), Eckhart gave the example
of a sense faculty and sense object: both the eye and the object seen become
entirely identical in act.72 The disproportion in the analogy, which Eckhart
thought applied more perfectly to intellectual realities, is that the object seen
does not give existence to the eye insofar as it is an eye or a being. Nevertheless,
the seeing-​eye and the seen-​object are intrinsically related to one another in
this way. If you take away the seeing-​eye, then there is no seen-​object, and vice
versa. “To see and to be seen” in act “are one and the same thing”. Their active
union is logically prior to their distinction. The ethical consequences of the

71 Meister Eckhart, Expositio sancti evangelii secundum Iohannem, in Die lateinischen Werke,
eds A. Zimmermann, L. Sturlese, vol. 3 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1994), §106–​108 (John
1:12-​13), p. 90, l. 9 –​p. 93, l. 8, and §679 (John 17:3), p. 593, l. 1 –​p. 594, l. 2. These pas-
sages clarify the target of Eckhart’s criticism. For a discussion of Eckhart in the context
of other responses to John of Paris’ argument about reflexivity in the beatific vision, see
Th. Jeschke, Deus ut tentus vel visus. Die Debatte um die Seligkeit im reflexiven Akt (ca.
1293–​1320) (Leiden: Brill, 2011), p. 260–​274.
72 Cf. K. Flasch, Meister Eckhart. Philosopher of Christianity, p. 37–​44, 184–​188, 210–​213.
Expositio tituli 129

Gospel’s natural philosophical truth, as Eckhart presented it, are captured in

John 17:3 (“This is eternal life, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom you have sent”). That is, to “receive” the Word, a person become entirely
like a potency related to its act or, in other words, one must be pure existence
for God (deo esse). This is nothing else than to be ignorant of oneself and all
else besides God himself and what exists in God that is God himself. This is
effectively to participate in the life of the Incarnate Word and, as Eckhart indi-
cated in his opening comments on John 1:12, to be conformed to “the same
image”. This, he concluded, is what Augustine meant in the Confessiones, when
he exclaimed that, “Unfortunate is the person who knows everything else, but
does not know you; blessed is the person who knows you, even if he is ignorant
of all these things”.
The same argument appeared again in a briefer form in Eckhart’s commen-
tary on John 17:3, where the two portions of the verse (haec est vita aeterna /​
ut cognoscant te verum deum solum, etc.) prompted him to discuss the kind of
“eternal life” that is proper to the intellectual nature in beatitude.73 Here we
find one of Eckhart’s rare references to the hidden depth of the mind (abdi-
tum mentis) of Augustine’s De Trinitate, in which the mind always remembers,
thinks, and loves God. Immediately after this, Eckhart reiterated the point that
beatitude does not consist primarily in a reflexive act, since blessedness con-
sists in being oriented to nothing apart from God.
Interestingly, in Eckhart’s summary of his commentary on John’s prologue,
when he came to the same verse from John 1:12 (“As many as received him”, etc.),
which first prompted the criticism about reflexivity, he made the only mention
in his entire corpus of the doctrine of the intellectus adeptus. He attributed this
notion to “the philosophers”, as example of how a lower intellectual principle
is gradually conformed to a higher intellectual principle –​that is, how a person
comes to share in the complete relatedness to the Father that is characteristic
of the Word: the light of agent intellect penetrates more and more into the
imaginative power through a process of extrinsic efficient causality (“altera-
tion”), until the lower is related to it as matter is to form, and the proper opera-
tion of the higher is communicated to the lower (“generation”), which has now
been transformed “into the same image”.74
There are of course significant differences in the means by which Eckhart
and Berthold arrived at their similar conclusions about non-​reflexivity and

73 Meister Eckhart, Expositio sancti evangelii secundum Iohannem, §679 (John 17:3), p. 593,
l. 1 –​p. 594, l. 2.
74 Meister Eckhart, Expositio sancti evangelii secundum Iohannem, §155 (John 1:12), p. 128,
l. 1-​10.
130  Chapter 2

beatitude. In Eckhart, the soul is oriented non-​reflexively to God as being,

whereas for Berthold the highest principle in the soul is an image of what is
prior to being. For Eckhart, the soul’s emptiness or receptivity corresponds to
its complete directedness towards God, but for Berthold the unum animae is
in each soul as a ceaselessly active principle. While Eckhart did not ignore the
mediations or “alterations” that precede birth or “generation”, his emphasis fell
on their dialectical interrelation –​one is temporal and finite, the other is eter-
nal and infinite –​which corresponded to his greater stress on the immediacy
of the birth, even if it is almost infinitely distant from everyday experience.
In the Expositio, however, Berthold located the De mystica theologia and the
hidden cognition of the unum animae at the summit of a long and arduous
progression of scientific understanding, that eventually reaches the compre-
hensive vision of the intellectus adeptus and finally moves beyond this into the
divine darkness.
What the example of Eckhart does suggest, at least, is that some discussion
about reflexivity in the beatific vision was underway in the German Dominican
milieu in the mid-​1310s and early 1320s, when Eckhart wrote the commentary
on John and the Liber “Benedictus”.75 Similar though their conclusions are,
before we hurry to posit any influence, we must acknowledge that a sufficient
explanation of Berthold’s doctrine and his synthesis of Albert and Dietrich,
who were clearly his direct sources, was provided simply by the texts of Proclus
(De providentia et fato 8.31-​32) and Dionysius (De mystica theologia 1 and 3; De
divinis nominibus 7.1). As we proceed further into the Expositio, we will see how
this distinction of reflexivity and non-​reflexivity was integrated into Berthold’s
cosmology and theory of deification. Berthold understood Goodness and “the
ecstasy of divine love” to be at the root of God’s own Trinitarian life and cre-
ative will; likewise, an intellectual creature actively exercises providence with
the gods in a state that is prior to reflexive understanding, which participates
in that same spontaneous action.
As for the three motions of the soul, moreover, the passages on contempla-
tion from 185K-​M and 202C show us that the unum animae is a feature not only
of the direct motion, but also of the circular motion, which in its perfection is
also “immovably fixed on one and the same object” through “the highest intel-
ligence”.76 Therefore, whenever Berthold used the term intelligentia, which he

75 On the dating of both works, see Meister Eckhart, Das Buch der göttlichen Tröstung, trans.
K. Flasch (München: Beck, 2007), p. 120–​121.
76 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 185K-​M, p. 25, l. 384 –​p. 28, l. 471, especially p. 28, l. 457–​
460: anima [partialis] non semper movetur motu circulari, ut fiat informis uniens se uni-
tis virtutibus, nec semper est statuta se tota extra se totam et supra se totam in unitionem
excedentis mentis, per quam coniungitur diis per recursum sui ad summam intelligentiam;
Expositio tituli 131

found in Proclus and Boethius, we should understand by it the combination

of the intellectus adeptus and the unum animae or, in other words, the intel-
lect in its providential operation. Notwithstanding his use of Thomas of York’s
description of the circular motion at 131A, where it was identified as the rest-
less heart’s search for God, Berthold seems have preferred the account he dis-
cerned in Proclus and Boethius, which made the circular motion identical in
content to the direct motion, except for the fact that it does not begin from the
senses. This interiority what makes it most appropriate for the heavenly souls.
A human soul partakes of the circular motion to the extent that it can sepa-
rate itself from the body, quieting itself and beholding its innate content that
has been recollected through prior learning (the oblique motion). The direct
motion then amounts to the rapid or possibly instantaneous progression along
the same path charted arduously by the oblique motion, from creatures to
their source in the supersubstantial world. The unum animae is more closely
associated with the direct motion in the Expositio tituli and 131A because, when
creatures have become transparent to their source, it is a sign that the unum
animae has been awakened.
While for Berthold it is indisputable that Proclus exercised all three motions
through “the guidance of the natural light of the intellect” (as is said the
Expositio tituli), from 131A it has become clear that there is an order among
these motions, and that the oblique almost always precedes the direct motion.
Following 185 and 202, we may infer further that the circular motion, under-
stood through Proclus rather than Thomas’ account given in 131A, is not imme-
diately accessible to the soul. We cannot deny that for Berthold Platonic phi-
losophy was meant to be argumentatively defended and made available to the
rational creature as such, rather than merely being founded on an inscrutable
experience –​for Berthold, that was the entire point of the Elementatio theo-
logica and the oblique motion. But we should not conclude from 131A that the

202C, p. 186, l. 152–​170: Hae [animae totales] enim non recurrunt aliquando ad ipsam
summam ipsarum intelligentiam, sed firme et indeclinabiliter secundum statum suum per-
petuum in ipsa stant, per quam, ut dicit auctor loquens de una et singulari anima libro De
fato et providentia, cap. 6 in fine, ‘videt quidem sorores ipsius […].’ Haec auctor, qui licet
loquatur de contemplatione possibili animae in vita praesenti, tamen nihilominus verum
est de contemplatione aeternali, prout talis contemplatio stat fixa immobiliter et secundum
unum et idem obiectum. Talis enim anima simplicem et beatum adepta intellectum sive in
sui in esse constitutione, sicut omnis anima totalis se habet, sive sui ab hoc ergastulo libera-
tione operans contemplatione divinissima, qualis est anima humana beata, omnis, inquam,
talis anima non est quietans se ipsam ab exterioribus motibus vel interioribus, qui nulli ibi
sunt, sed deus facta, ut animae possibile, cognoscet solum, qualiter dii omnia indicibiliter
cognoscunt singuli secundum le unum, quod sui ipsorum.
132  Chapter 2

providential cognition of the unum animae in the direct or circular motion

automatically follows from the perfection of the oblique motion. Berthold’s
stronger affirmation about the possibility of contemplation in this life, building
on Dietrich’s passing reference to Benedict’s vision of the cosmos in a single ray
of light, was conceived in terms of a raptus that coincided with the Dionysian
and Proclean instructions about silencing every intellectual operation in order
to be made receptive for God’s activity in the soul.77 While souls animating the
heavens “possesses [adepta] a simple and blessed intellect” by nature through
a gift of God, this possession comes to human souls only “by liberation from
this prison-​house”, when the soul will achieve a stillness beyond striving.78
Berthold read Dietrich and Thomas in light of each other: from Thomas he
took the view that the philosophers had in fact arrived to a direct vision of God;
following Dietrich, he understood this in terms of the transitory enjoyment in
this life of the acquired intellect and, going beyond Dietrich to the Platonists,
of its non-​reflexive ground. Whether by a “special grace” to one who was
seemly unprepared, like Paul on the road to Damascus, or to one how has per-
fected the oblique motion, like Proclus, this transitory vision was given (datus).
The difference, therefore, must consist in the fact that the perfected oblique
motion, the work of laborious study and investigation into divine realities, bet-
ter disposes the soul to receive that gift. But if we construe the transition from
the oblique motion to the higher and deifying motions as only an automatic
process, we risk obscuring the centrality of raptus in Berthold’s contempla-
tive theory. As we saw in Chapter 1, rapture so integral to his understanding
of contemplative union that it featured at the beginning of the Prologus, with
Paul (summus divinalis sapientiae theologus Paulus […] raptus), and at its con-
clusion, with the final stage of the restless and arduous ascent to God found
in Psalm 42, when the soul is lifted beyond itself to intelligentia and the unum
animae as the hart is drawn up to the water-​brooks (rapitur sicut cervus).79
This relation of reason and grace can be clarified further if we consider the
fundamentally Boethian character of Berthold’s treatment of the goal or final
cause of the Elementatio theologica in the Expositio tituli.80 Using the Consolatio
philosophiae, Berthold compared Proclus’ propositions to the ladder depicted
on Lady Philosophy’s garment, by which the “contemplator” ascends from “the

77 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 202B, p. 185, l. 132-​144; 211E, p. 264, l. 222-​228.

78 See n. 76, above.
79 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 1, p. 5, l. 5-​6; Prol. 20, p. 34, l. 964-​965. Cf. 211E, p. 263,
l. 215-​218: non fit secundum habitum permanentem in hac vita, licet raptim et secundum
quendam transitum fiat aliquibus.
80 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. L, p. 49, l. 408 –​p 51, l. 491.
Expositio tituli 133

divine by participation” to “the divine by essence” (the gods) and from there to
“the divine as cause” (God). As Lady Philosophy taught, the contemplation of
the fount of all goods, where all things are held together at once (cuncta simul),
makes a person not only blessed (beatus), “but even god” (sed etiam deus) by
participation. Berthold went on to relate the Π and Θ depicted on her garment,
representing the practical and theoretical lives, to Augustine’s report that Plato’s
philosophy strove both for moral and rational perfection (opus et scientia).
Finally, citing Avicebron, Berthold declared that the “final cause of humankind”
is “the striving to the higher world”, achieved through “knowledge and activity”
(scientia et operatio), which “liberate the soul from the captivity of nature, [and]
cleanse it from its darkness and obscurity”. This emphasis on intellectual and
moral ascesis culminated with a brief prayer: “that we may ascend through this
[the vision of the primordial causes] to contemplate the highest Good, the pri-
marily Good, may we be carried across with his support, who is the mediator of
God and humanity, Jesus Christ”. If we are to interpret these passages as some-
thing more than rhetorical ornamentation, which we certainly must do in view
of Berthold’s allegiance to Dietrich of Freiberg’s conception of beatitude and
the role of grace, then we must conclude that, for the passage from the divided-
ness of reason (the oblique motion) to the unified vision of the acquired intel-
lect and the unum animae –​the vision of the divine light as at once beginning,
middle, and end of all things at the end of the Prologus; or the deifying vision
of all goods cuncta simul here at the conclusion of the Expositio tituli –​divine
assistance is required for the natural light of reason to realise its hidden and nat-
ural operation. Just as, “with Plato and Boethius”, he understood that the divided
cannot unify itself, and so too he could acknowledge that for Proclus deification
occurs through grace.81 As Berthold saw it, then, the purpose of the Elementatio
theologica, was to help the soul build the speculative habit, the discursive aware-
ness and science of the primordial causes and the hidden depth in the soul’s
own ground, that will dispose it to receive the vision of all goods cuncta simul.

3 The Two Orders of Providence

Berthold’s conception of a doctrine of grace that was internal to ancient

Platonism is consistent with his transformation of the doctrine of double
providence that he inherited from his German Dominican predecessors. The
central text introducing this notion is Expos. tit. i, but once again we must sup-
plement Berthold’s preface with other passages from his commentary for a

81 See 1.3, n. 97, above.

134  Chapter 2

complete account. Berthold explicitly referred to either providentia naturalis

or providentia voluntaria in 41 subsections of his commentary, and in all but
ten he treated them as a pair. The brief entries for providentia and providentia
naturalis in the Tabula contentorum (there is no entry for providentia volun-
taria) helpfully point the reader to Proposition 120, where the theme of provi-
dence is first introduced by Proclus, and to Proposition 141 where, according to
his commentator, Proclus “shows that providence is twofold”.
Berthold generally acknowledged that the origin of the distinction was
found in Augustine (De Genesi ad litteram viii.9.17). Only in 141A, however, did
he provide a full quotation of the relevant text. Commenting on Genesis 2:15
(“And the Lord God took man, and placed him in the Paradise Eden, to work
upon it and maintain it [ut operaretur et custodiret illum]”), and casting the
mind’s eye upon the universe likened to a great tree of beings (quamdam mag-
nam arborem rerum), Augustine distinguished between God’s “hidden govern-
ance” that “gives growth to trees and plants”, and that which governs voluntary
agents, such as angels and humans.82 The heavens and the earth are ordered
by the first, which extends to “anything that is borne by an interior natural
motion”. The second pertains to agriculture, to the arts, and the ordering of
societies both angelic and human. Berthold paraphrased the first as “the order
and connexion of essential and substantial causes” (ordo et conexio causarum
essentialium et substantialium).
This phrase shows the influence on Berthold of Dietrich of Freiberg (causa
essentialis) and Ulrich of Strassburg who, following Albert the Great, used
the Hermetic definition of fate as a conexio causarum.83 The importance of
Ulrich as the originator of this formative interpretation of Augustine in the
German Dominican context has recently started to receive due attention from
scholars.84 This was not lost on Berthold, who began Proposition 120, the cen-
tral passage signalled by the index, with a citation from Ulrich:

82 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 141A, p. 45, l. 11-​26.

83 The principal text in Albert the Great is Physica, lib. ii, tr. 2, c. 19, p. 126, l. 25-​40. See also
Albert the Great, De fato, ed. P. Simon (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1975), a. 2, p. 68, l. 1-​4.
On these texts, see A. Palazzo, “The Scientific Significance of Fate and Celestial Influences
in Some Mature Works by Albert the Great. De fato, De somno et vigilia, De intellectu et
intelligibili, Mineralia”, in A. Beccarisi, R. Imbach, P. Porro (eds), Per perscrutationem phil-
osophicam, p. 55–​78; id., “Albert the Great’s Doctrine of Fate”, in L. Sturlese (ed.), Mantik,
Schicksal und Freiheit im Mittelalter (Köln: Böhlau, 2011), p. 65–​95; id, “Regna duo duorum.
Berthold of Moosburg’s Theory of Providence and Fate”, forthcoming.
84 Beccarisi, “La scientia divina dei filosofi”; ead., “Einleitung”, in Ulrich of Strassburg, De
summo bono. Liber 2, Tractatus 5-​6, ed. A. Beccarisi (Hamburg: Meiner, 2007), p. xvi-​xx;
Ferro, “Berthold of Moosburg, Reader of Ulrich of Strassburg”, forthcoming.
Expositio tituli 135

Although the primarily Good, the God who is beyond-​blessed beyond

all things, makes all things primarily through himself and governs them
through providence, nevertheless, in order that the dignity of causality
and divine cooperation, which is the most divine of all works, be not
absent from the universe (to which all levels of divine goodness that can
possibly exist are communicated), God also works through causes that
are second to himself, that is, through the primordial causes. And these
are ordered in two ways according to the double mode of providence,
which Augustine distinguishes in Book 8 of his Hexaemeron, saying that
‘the twin activity of providence is found to be partly natural, and partly
voluntary’.85

Berthold then juxtaposed Augustine’s vertical distinction with the horizon-

tal subordination of fate to providence in Boethius and Proclus.86 Boethius
identified providentia with the order of causes as they are beheld in the
simplicity and stability of the divine mind, and fatum with the explicated,
manifold, and temporal disposition of causes in the sensible world. As Lady
Philosophy instructed the prisoner in the Consolatio, to the extent that a per-
son seeks satisfaction in inherently divided and transitory goods, they will
remain subjected to fate. For Boethius and Proclus, entities nearer to the One
are embraced only by providence, and are exempt from the fated, variegated
connection of causes. A person will be free only to the extent that he draws
nearer to the divine origin and mode of cognition that constitutes provi-
dence. Yet for Ulrich and Berthold, there is a sense in which the highest sec-
ondary causes, the primordial causes, are both fated, as explicated from the
divine mind, and providential, in that they participate and cooperate directly

85 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 120E, p. 100, l. 295-​302. Cf. Ulrich of Strassburg, De

summo bono, ed. A. Beccarisi, lib. ii, tr. 5, c. 18 (9), p. 145, l. 258 –​p. 146, l. 265: Licet prime
bonum super omnia superbenedictus Deus per se principaliter omnia efficiat et per provi-
dentiam gubernet, tamen, ut dignitas causalitatis et divinae cooperationis, quae est divin-
issimum operum, non deesset universo, cui communicati sunt omnes gradus divinae boni-
tatis possibiles existere, operatur etiam per secundas causas a se, scilicet per primordiales.
Et istae sunt ordinatae dupliciter secundum duplicem modum providentiae, quae distinguit
Augustinus viii Hexaemeron sui dicens, quod ‘gemina operatio providentiae invenitur, par-
tim naturalis, partim voluntaria’.
86 Gersh, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism, vol. 2, p. 701–​705, argues that while the extent
of Proclus’ influence on Boethius has been debated, on the question of providence and
fate that influence is effectively beyond dispute. Berthold was perhaps the first scholar
to note the connection at Expositio, 141B, p. 46, l. 42 –​p. 48, l. 109. On this passage, see
A. Palazzo, “Regna duo duorum”.
136  Chapter 2

in God’s power.87 One way to resolve this ambiguity between the two models
would be to say that, for Berthold, fate and providence are only distinct where
the operation of a thing differs from its essence –​that is, either in the sensible
world or among accidental and volitional agents like angels and human indi-
viduals. In this way, we may assume that Berthold intended to superimpose
both the Augustinian and Boethian models of providence: the human being
is subject to fate in becoming, but begins to exercise providence with the gods
when it is capable of raising its contemplation to the stable order of being.
The other major source for Berthold’s interpretation of gemina providentia
was a fragment (ms Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, f. 69va-​vb), which
Berthold himself copied. Loris Sturlese has identified it as a portion of a lost
treatise by Dietrich of Freiberg, the De subiecto theologiae listed in the early
catalogues of Dietrich’s works, and there are no solid reasons to doubt this
attribution.88
The fragment appears to contain Dietrich’s determination of a question
concerning the unity of theological science.89 Its references to “partial books”
and “treatises” suggest that the fragment derived from a prologue to a larger
theological work, perhaps a Sentences commentary.90 It begins by using the
example of the physical sciences in order to outline the different kinds of
unity that a science may possess.91 Following “hearsay and probability”
rather than “properties of the things themselves and the manifold truth of
reflection”, some have held “by a logical reflection” that things as diverse as
the incorporeal and the corporeal can be treated under a single, univocal
genus (i.e., substance). Dietrich rejected this approach and argued that the
structural unity of a science must conform to the realities themselves. For,

87 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 114B, p. 43, l. 92–​94: Inquantum tamen prime bonum
explet providentiam suam per primordiales causas, sic actus providentiae primitus est in
diis […] et per consequens nomen Dei. Cf. Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono, lib. ii, tr.
5, c. 16 (5), p. 110, l. 60-​61: Inquantum tamen providentiam suam Deus explet per fatum, sic
actus providentiae participantur a creaturis, et per consequens nomen Dei.
88 Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xvi-​xxxiv; Dietrich of Freiberg, Opera omnia, vol. 3, p. 277;
Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 502.
89 Dietrich of Freiberg, De subiecto theologiae, ed. L. Sturlese, 2.2, p. 279, l. 10: in proposito
circa subiectum naturalis scientiae considerandum; 3.1, p. 280, l. 33-​34: tertio sumendum in
proposita quaestione.
90 Dietrich of Freiberg, De subiecto theologiae, 3.3, p. 280, l. 44-​58.
91 Dietrich of Freiberg, De subiecto theologiae, 2.2, p. 279, l. 10: Sic in proposito circa subiec-
tum naturalis scientiae considerandum; 3.1-​2, p. 280, l. 33-​36: Tertio sumendum in proposita
quaestione proprium subiectum et ipsius unitatem, quo etiam ipsa scientia theologica uni-
tatem habet. Ubi considerandum, quod sicut in his, quae gratia exempli seu manuductionis
praemissa sunt in rebus naturae […].
Expositio tituli 137

as Aristotle showed, physics cannot have a univocal and logical unity since
one cannot subsume heavenly and sublunary beings univocally under one
genus; as Averroes clarified, their properties stand in a completely equivocal
relation to one another. Instead of a univocal and logical unity, then, Dietrich
proposed a unity of proportionality (proportionalitas), where A:B :: C:D. That
is, just as sublunary bodies are composed of their principles, so analogously
heavenly bodies are composed of theirs. Motion and other natural properties
are comparable only according to the notions of their respective principles
within each genus.
Dietrich then made the distinction that Berthold would follow in the
Expositio tituli between a science’s subject (subiectum) and its matter (mate-
ria). Dietrich first discussed natural substance, and then reasoned about how
the structure of the science should follow from this.92 Among natural beings,
any one of the principles or components from which a substance is consti-
tuted may be considered by itself, such that it is understood to relate to its
unifying substance as a kind of “matter”. Alternatively, the aggregate of prin-
ciples may be considered under the aspect of the whole, and thus as “some-
thing complete, existing in act according to one formal reason”, which “is sub-
ject [subicitur] to an agent and the properties bestowed by the agent”. Failing
to observe this distinction between subject and matter in theology, Dietrich
continued, the less circumspect (minus considerantes) have supposed its sub-
ject must be something particular like totus Christus, res et signa, “the works
of creation and restoration”, or even “God himself”. For Dietrich, these are in
fact the particular “matters” which are integrated into a more comprehen-
sive whole or “subject” by virtue of “a notion common to all”. These different
“matters” are related by proportionality so that, as in the physical sciences,
they must be reduced to the unity of proportion or attribution to some single
term (ad aliquod unum). For example, just as rewards are due to the just, so
penalties are to the wicked; just as God will judge the good, so he will judge
the wicked. These proportionalities must be reduced to a common unity that
is the basis for the analogy. As an example of this correct procedure, Dietrich
cited Proposition 21 of the Elementatio theologica, on the four genera or
maneries of nature, soul, intellect, and the One, and Proclus’ reduction of all
agreement to some one that is the primary analogate or root and principle
(radix et ratio) of the order.93

92 Dietrich of Freiberg, De subiecto theologiae, 3.1-​4, p. 280, l. 33 –​p. 281, l. 68.

93 See also Dietrich of Freiberg, De cognitione entium separatorum, ed. H. Steffan, in R. Imbach
et al. (eds), Opera omnia, vol. 2. Schriften zur Metaphysik und Theologie (Hamburg: Meiner,
1980), 74.2-​3, p. 237, l. 99-​110.
138  Chapter 2

In this science (in hac scientia), Dietrich continued, “the whole universe
of beings” is treated, either according to the order of natural providence or
voluntary providence.94 The subject that unifies its various “matters” is divine
being (ens divinum), which primarily, simply, and essentially belongs to God.
Other things are and are said to be divine by analogical attribution. Examples
of this kind of attribution come from Averroes (In Metaphysicam iv, comm. 2),
who used the familiar example of health: plants and medicine are the efficient
causes of health by attribution, that is, by virtue of their relation, to the art of
medicine; exercise is called “healthy” because health is its final cause; finally,
accidents are attributed to a substance as to a subject, as something “more
formal” that properly has the notion of “being”, while the accidents themselves
are “dispositions of being”. Thus, “beings are attributed to God” as their prin-
ciple (efficient cause), as their end (final cause) and even in the third sense as
accidents are to their subject, insofar as sacramental actions are performed in
persona Christi with regard to the works of salvation and redemption.
Dietrich then introduced the two orders of providence to distinguish
between two kinds of theology, the theology of the philosophers and “our the-
ology of the saints”.95 The philosophers, he observed, use precisely this kind
of analogical consideration in their first philosophy, which they call “divine
science or theology” rather than “metaphysics” because ens divinum belongs
first to what is “divine by essence” and secondarily to the ordered universe in
relation to it. Nevertheless, “our science, which truly and simply we call the-
ology, is distinguished from the divine science of the philosophers”. For the
philosophers’ divine science considers the universe only relative to “natural
providence”, according to which the first cause governs things by their innate
modes and natural properties. In this perspective, beings are not understood
relate to an end beyond the order of nature. “Our divine science of the saints”,
however, views beings under the order of “voluntary providence”, in which are
found the notions of merit and reward, as well as matters bearing on a good
and holy life and the attainment of eternal bliss. This divine science looks to
an end beyond the limits of this world, “when the divine science of the wise of
this world is destroyed”.96

94 Dietrich of Freiberg, De subiecto theologiae, 3.5-​7, p. 281, l. 69-​91. See n. 122, below.
95 Dietrich of Freiberg, De subiecto theologiae, 3.8-​10, p. 281, l. 92 –​p. 282, l. 112.
96 Dietrich of Freiberg, De subiecto theologiae, 3.9, p. 281, l. 100 –​p. 282, l. 109: Scientia enim
divina philosophorum considerat universitatem entium secundum ordinem providentiae
naturalis, quo videlicet res stant in sui natura et secundum suos modos et proprietates nat-
urales gubernantur per principem universitatis, nec ultra hunc naturae ordinem aliquem
ulteriorem finem attendit. Nostra autem divina sanctorum scientia attenditur in entibus,
secundum quod stant et disponuntur sub ordine voluntariae providentiae, in quo attenditur
Expositio tituli 139

Because of this final argument, the fragment has come to occupy an uneasy
place in Dietrich’s corpus. Without directly denying its authenticity, Kurt Flasch
has argued that the short text displays internal and external inconsistencies.97
The internal ones, “which the writer of the fragment did not notice”,98 appear
relative to the unity of theology itself –​a potentially devasting criticism, as this
was ostensibly the text’s primary concern. Flasch is right to note that Dietrich
presented us simultaneously with a unified picture of theology (in hac scien-
tia) embracing both orders of providence grounded in an analogical model
culminating in ens divinum, alongside his claim that “our divine science of the
saints” differs from pagan divine science. But this apparent inconsistency can
be addressed, for we have seen already that Dietrich argue that several physi-
cal sciences (in physicis) can be placed under the singular heading of natural
philosophy (philosophia naturalis) which, just as in the consideration of the-
ology, is referred to using the phrase in hac scientia.99 The fragment uses this
formal model applied to both natural philosophy and theology, based on the
distinction between matter and subject, in the rationalistic and combative way
we would expect of Dietrich.100 That is, it prefers a pagan philosopher’s under-
standing of the formal structure theology to the models of “the less circum-
spect”, who would include no lesser authorities than Augustine, Cassiodorus,
Hugh of St. Victor, and Thomas Aquinas! While Proclus’ model of proportional-
ity, in which various matters are analogically united by a common subject (ens
divinum), is the most adequately conformed to the nature of things, the limi-
tation of the content of his theology, according to the fragment, is that it does
not see that human freedom and the ethical life relates to an order beyond the
confines of natural necessity.
The concern about the apparent internal and external doctrinal inconsist-
encies in the De subiecto theologiae is, however, related to a larger question
about its relation to the methodology of natural and voluntary providence
in Dietrich’s works as a whole.101 It is often assumed that the precedent for

ratio meriti et praemii et ea, quae attenduntur circa bonam et sanctam vitam et adeptionem
aeternae beatitudinis et perventionem ad finem ulteriorem sive in bono sive in malo etiam
post terminum huius mundi, quando scientia divina sapientium huius mundi destruetur, i
Cor., 13.
97 Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 502–​512. See also C. König-​Pralong, Le bon usage des
savoirs. Scolastique, philosophie et politique culturelle (Paris: Vrin, 2011), p. 250–​252.
98 Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 509.
99 Dietrich of Freiberg, De subiecto theologiae, 2.2-​3, p. 279, l. 10-​29.
100 Cf. Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 563; König-​Pralong, Le bon usage des savoirs, p. 248.
101 Sturlese, “Introduzione”, p. xxvi-​xxxiv; id., “Il De animatione caeli di Teodorico di Freiberg”,
in R. Creytens, P. Künzle (eds), Xenia Medii Aevi historiam illustrantia, oblata Thomae
Kaeppeli O.P., 2 vols (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1978), vol. 1, p. 175–​247, at
140  Chapter 2

Dietrich’s methodology should be sought primarily in Albert’s philosophical

commentaries.102 As for the De subiecto theologiae itself, most scholars gener-
ally minimise its importance for Dietrich’s thought, or use it only as a confir-
mation of Dietrich’s commitment to the methodological autonomy of natural
philosophy. Others have pushed in the opposite direction, and argued that
Dietrich’s philosophical works should rather be understood as preparatory and
provisional in relation to his theology oeuvre which, alas!, is largely no longer
extant. Dietrich’s position, as I understand it, was somewhere in the middle of
these two options. In my view, it is largely thanks to the De subiecto theologiae
that we can appreciate one of the most fascinating aspects of Dietrich’s meth-
odology throughout his works: his hypothetical approach to the philosophy of
the separate substances.

p. 183–​197; R. Imbach, “Metaphysik, Theologie und Politik. Zur Diskussion zwischen

Nikolaus von Strassburg und Dietrich von Freiberg über die Atrennbarkeit der Akzidentien”,
in Theologie und Philosophie 61(1986), p. 359–​395; A. de Libera, “Philosophie et théologie
chez Albert le Grand et dans l’école dominicaine Allemande”, in A. Zimmermann (ed.),
Die Kölner Universität im Mittelalter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989), p. 49–​67; Sturlese, Storia
della filosofia tedesca nel Medioevo, p. 204–​213; C. Trottmann, “La théologie des théolo-
giens et celle des philosophes”, in Revue thomiste 98(1998), p. 531–​561; K.-​H. Kandler,
“Theologie und Philosophie nach Dietrich von Freibergs Traktat De subiecto theologiae”, in
J. Aertsen, A. Speer (eds), Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter?, p. 642–​647; id., “Theologische
Implikationen der Philosophie Dietrichs von Freiberg”, in K.-​H. Kandler, B. Mojsisch,
B. Stammkötter (eds), Dietrich von Freiberg. Neue Perspektiven, p. 121–​134; T. Suarez-​Nani,
“Substances séparées, intelligences et anges chez Thierry de Freiberg”, in K.-​H. Kandler,
B. Mojsisch, B. Stammkötter (eds), Dietrich von Freiberg. Neue Perspektiven, p. 49–​67; K.-​
H. Kandler, “Anima beata vel homo glorificatus possit progredi in aliquam naturalem cog-
nitionem. Bemerkungen zu eschatologischen Gedanken des Dietrich von Freiberg, vor
allem zu seinem Traktat De dotibus corporum gloriosorum”, in J. Aertsen, M. Pickavé (eds),
Ende und Vollendung. Eschatologische Perspektiven im Mittelalter (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2002), p. 434–​447; T. Suarez-​Nani, Les anges et la philosophie. Subjectivité et fonction cos-
mologique des substances séparées à la fin du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 2002); De Libera,
Métaphysique et noétique, p. 344–​349; Beccarisi, “La scientia divina dei filosofi”; Flasch,
Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 191–​193, 512–​514, 573–​584; C. König-​Pralong, “Dietrich de Freiberg,
métaphysicien allemand antithomiste”, Revue thomiste 108(2008), p. 57–​79; Führer, M.,
Gersh, S., “Dietrich of Freiberg and Berthold of Moosburg”, in S. Gersh (ed.), Interpreting
Proclus. From Antiquity to the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014),
p. 299–​317, at p. 308–​309.
102 Cf. Albert the Great, De generatione et corruptione, ed. P. Hossfeld (Münster
i.W.: Aschendorff, 1980), lib. i, tr. 1, c. 22, p. 129, l. 13-​16: Si autem quis dicat, quod cessabit
voluntate dei aliquando generatio, sicut aliquando non fuerit et post hoc coepit, dico, quod
nihil ad me de dei miraculis, cum ego de naturalibus disseram; id., Metaphysica, lib. xi, tr.
3, c. 7, p. 542, l. 25-​28: Theologica autem non conveniunt cum philosophicis in principiis,
quia fundantur super revelationem et inspirationem et non super rationem, et ideo de illis in
philosophia non possumus disputare.
Expositio tituli 141

The polemical agenda of the most relevant of Dietrich’s writings on this

question should be kept in mind.103 In the triptych of treatises De tribus diffi-
cilibus quaestionibus, Dietrich mounted an assault on an anonymous group of
communiter loquentes (“run-​of-​the-​mill babblers”) for their failure to observe
the methodological distinction between natural and revealed theology: in De
animatione caeli, he rejected the widespread claim that angels rather than
souls move the heavenly bodies; in De visione beatifica, he targeted the thesis
that the beatific vision occurs through the possible intellect; and in De acci-
dentibus, he ridiculed the notion that an accident could subsist apart from its
subject.104 In each case, Dietrich implied that the promotion of a certain phil-
osophical position out of theological scruples (the Scriptures do not mention
heavenly souls, therefore angels must move the heavens; in the beatific vision,
God stands in for the agent intellect, the noblest part of the soul; extended
quantity serves as a surrogate substance for other accidents in the Eucharistic
transformation) has detrimental consequences for reason itself. Dietrich held
that if exceptions were made haphazardly to the assumption that the uni-
verse has a rational order, with intelligible rules and patterns, then the entire
philosophical edifice would be compromised. Dietrich’s rationalism was cap-
tured by the motto he ascribed to Augustine at pivotal points in his works,
either at their outset or when fictive interlocutors challenged him for stray-
ing far beyond what is permitted by the letter of Scripture: “Whatever is to
be posited by right reason, God should be said to have done” (quidquid recta
ratione ponendum est, Deum fecisse fatendum est).105 By allowing theologi-
cal scruples to influence metaphysical argumentation, these thinkers effec-
tively undermine the coherence and certitude of theological science. As Kurt
Flasch has put it, Dietrich developed Augustine’s notion of gemina providentia
into a methodology that insulated “immanent-​philosophical inquiries against

103 König-​Pralong, Le bon usage des savoirs, p. 228–​231.

104 Dietrich of Freiberg, Tractatus de tribus difficilibus quaestionibus. Prologus generalis, ed.
L. Sturlese, in Opera omnia, vol. 3, p. 9, l. 4-​6: De tribus articulis de numero difficilium quaes-
tionum importunitate requirentium cogor scribere, a quo supersedere debui propter commu-
niter loquentes.
105 Dietrich of Freiberg, De animatione caeli, ed. L. Sturlese, in Opera omnia, vol. 3, 1.2, p. 13,
l. 7-​9; id., De cognitione entium separatorum, 9.3, p. 176, l. 82-​85; id., De intellectu et intelligi-
bili, ii.20.2, p. 160, l. 4-​8; id., De substantiis spiritualibus et corporibus futurae resurrectionis,
ed. M.R. Pagnoni-​Sturlese, in Opera omnia, vol. 2, 28.10, p. 329, l. 85-​86. Cf. Augustine, De
libero arbitrio, lib. iii, c. 5, §13: Quicquid enim tibi vera ratione melius occurrerit scias fecisse
deum tamquam bonorum omnium conditorem. Dietrich’s phrasing has a precise parallel in
Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet iv, eds G. Wilson, G. Etzkorn (Leuven: Leuven University Press,
2011), q. 10, p. 82, l. 186–​187.
142  Chapter 2

theological intervention”.106 Rather than isolating the two disciplines, this

became an instrument of critique, “a metaphysical sublimation of revealed
theology”, in which metaphysics could correct theological doctrine.107
These points are undeniable. But they must be balanced by another impor-
tant aspect of Dietrich’s methodology, namely, his self-​critical approach to the
use of these rules as he repeatedly noted the hypothetical character of reason-
ing according to necessary relations.108 In over 40 different passages concern-
ing the existence of the separate intelligences or the heavenly souls posited by
the philosophers, Dietrich added some version of the caveat “if they exist”.109
Using a similar turn of phrase, Dietrich stated repeatedly that we “rationally
conjecture” about such things as the existence of heavenly souls.110 In other
words, following the dictates of reason and the principles of mediation and
proportionality, their existence is necessary.111 However, as Dietrich routinely

106 K. Flasch, “Einleitung”, in Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologi-

cam Procli. Prologus, Propositiones 1-​13, p. xi–​xxxviii, at p. xxxi; id., Dietrich von Freiberg,
p. 191–​193, 342, 506, 512–​514.
107 Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 563; König-​Pralong, Le bon usage des savoirs, p. 248.
108 This aspect has been noted by Sturlese, “Il De animatione caeli”, p. 220–​221, as well as
Suarez-​Nani, Les anges et la philosophie, p. 64; Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 204–​206,
284, 299–​300, 310; König-​Pralong, Le bon usage des savoirs, p. 247–​248.
109 Dietrich of Freiberg, De cognitione entium separatorum, 1.3-​4, 2.3, 3.1, 5.2-​3, 14.1, 27.2-​3,
36.2, 37.1, 37.8, 39.2, 39.4, 44.9, 86.6; id., De substantiis spiritualibus et corporibus futurae
resurrectionis, 1.1, 1.3, 1.5, 2.2, 6.2, 9.1, 16.1, 18.2, 19.3, 23.4, 28.4; id., De animatione caeli, 7.5,
9.1, 11.4, 15.1; id., De visione beatifica, 3.2.9.2 (4), 3.2.9.8 (1), 4.2.1 (14); id., De intellectu et
intelligibili, ii.34.1, iii.25.1, iii.30.2; id., De mensuris, ed. R. Rehn, in Opera omnia, vol. 3,
2.11, 2.43, 8.3; id., De origine rerum praedicamentalium, ed. L. Sturlese, in Opera omnia, vol.
3, 1.14, 3.37; id., Quaestio utrum in Deo sit aliqua vis cognitiva inferior intellectu, ed. M.R.
Pagnoni-​Sturlese, in Opera omnia, vol. 3, 1.1.4, 1.3.4; id., De dotibus corporum gloriosorum,
ed. L. Sturlese, in Opera omnia, vol. 2, 24.5; id., De accidentibus, ed. M.R. Pagnoni-​Sturlese,
in Opera omnia, vol. 3, 8.2.
110 Dietrich of Freiberg, De animatione caeli, 5.3, p. 16, l. 20: rationabiliter conicimus; 20.1,
p. 30, l. 78: rationi, qua conicimus; id., De cognitione entium separatorum, 44.9, p. 210,
l. 101: rationabiliter conicitur; 81.4, p. 243, l. 97: rationabiliter conicitur; id., De dotibus cor-
porum gloriosorum, 13.3, p. 279, l. 30: rationabiliter conicitur; id., De magis et minus, eds
R. Imbach, H. Steffan, in Opera omnia, vol. 2, 14.3, p. 58, l. 75: rationabiliter conicitur; id., De
substantiis spiritualibus et corporibus futurae resurrectionis, 11.1, p. 311, l. 76–​77: possumus et
de eis conicere tamquam a simili ex tertia manerie entium conceptionalium; 14.1, p. 313, l. 13–​
14: aliqualiter conicere possumus de locis dictorum entium realium; id., De visione beatifica,
4.1 (6), p. 106, l. 33–​34: tamen circa hoc probabiliter ex ratione conicere.
111 On the law of mediation (lex divinitatis), see Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica,
prooem. (2), p. 13, l. 14-​27. Cf. Albert the Great, Super Dionysium De caelesti hierarchia, eds
P. Simon, W. Kübel (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1993), p. 2, l. 19: Haec enim est lex divinita-
tis, ut per prima media, et ultima per media reducantur.
Expositio tituli 143

acknowledged, even though the existence of these separate principles was

regarded by reason as necessary, it cannot not be asserted with certainty.
We should give these claims their full weight when attempting to situate
the De subiecto theologiae within Dietrich’s larger corpus.112 The hypothetical
character of Dietrich’s thought on these matters explains why he would use
metaphysics to critique certain theologians while simultaneously subordi-
nating the theology of the philosophers to “our theology of the saints”, and
even go so far to speak of the eschatological destruction of worldly wisdom.
Prioritising the concluding Pauline passage of the De subiecto theologiae, Karl-​
Hermann Kandler has responded to Kurt Flasch’s interpretation by arguing
that Dietrich’s philosophical treatises should be understood as preparations
for his lost theological works.113 The major difficulty here is that we cannot
assess a theological corpus that barely exists. Kandler’s emphasis would do jus-
tice to the hypothetical nature of Dietrich’s philosophical theology, but it does
not sufficiently capture the critical edge of the rational necessity it wielded
against the communiter loquentes. Dietrich was very willing, for instance, to
promote several theses that were censured in 1277 (e.g., in the numbering of
Denifle and Chatelain, articles 30, 43, 44, 54, 64, 70, 73, 84, 85, 92, 94, 95, 102, 115,
and 138–​141).114 But this does not mean was he using the Augustinian model of
providence for purely naturalistic ends. Dietrich found support for his ration-
alism in Augustine and Aristotle together. For him, it is necessary to suppose
that God acts according to reason, and to grasp the essentially ordered totality
of the universe by beginning with the Aristotelian principle that each thing
exists for the sake of its proper operation.115 In sum, while advocating for an
integral and coherent pursuit of natural divine science according to its own
lights, which can even challenge theological theses, Dietrich retained a scepti-
cism that acknowledged the provisionality of its conclusions; they are neces-
sary from our standpoint, they are the best the wayfarer has at their disposal,
but there will come a time when this reasoning by conjecture will pass away.
As his citation of 1 Corinthians 13:8 at the end of the De subiecto theologiae

112 According to Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 205, the contradiction involved in positing
necessary beings as hypotheses did not occur to Dietrich. I would instead propose that we
regard it as one of Dietrich’s most provocative methodological innovations.
113 Kandler, “Theologie und Philosophie”; id., “Theologische Implikationen”.
114 K. Flasch, D’Averroès à Maître Eckhart. Les sources arabes de la ‘mystique’ allemande
(Paris: Vrin, 2008), p. 96–​97; D. Calma, “La connaissance réflexive de l’intellect agent.
Le ‘premier averroïsme’ et Dietrich de Freiberg”, in J. Biard, D. Calma, R. Imbach (eds),
Recherches sur Dietrich de Freiberg, p. 63–​105, at p. 76.
115 E.g., Dietrich of Freiberg, De animatione caeli, 1.2, p. 13, l. 10–​14; 5.3, p. 16, l. 19 –​p. 17, l. 30;
20.1, p. 30, l. 78–​86; id., De intellectu et intelligibili, i.1.1, p. 137, l. 3-​10.
144  Chapter 2

implies (“Charity never fails; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail;
whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there is knowledge, it will
be destroyed [scientia destruetur]”), it is in ethical life that a person is in direct
contact with the reality that abides. In this respect, it is unfortunate that more
attention has not been given to the influence of Albert’s theological works on
the De subiecto theologiae, for these seem to offer closer parallels to Dietrich’s
argument than Albert’s commentaries on Aristotle.116
The uncompromising rhetoric of this Pauline conclusion was consistent
with milder remarks made elsewhere in Dietrich’s corpus, even though on
first glance it might seem otherwise. Kurt Flasch has noted a tension between
the De subiecto theologiae and a passage in the De cognitione entium separa-
torum, where Dietrich stated that separated souls retain some of the knowl-
edge they acquired during their embodiment, in addition to their innate
knowledge.117 Furthermore, as Dietrich made clear in De visione beatifica,

116 An exception to this is Trottmann, “La théologie des théologiens et celle des philoso-
phes”, p. 542–​544, who has argued the De subiecto was also in agreement with Albert’s
account of the relation of metaphysics and theology in his theological works, accord-
ing to which the reasoning about God as the first cause gives way to the free movement
toward God and eschatological beatitude: “[Dietrich] est en cela fidèle à l’essentiel de
l’enseignement de son maître”. If this fragment indeed was related to Dietrich’s lectures
on the Sentences, then he may have been influenced by Albert’s verdict that Aristotle did
not pursue divine science in relation to a beatifying end beyond creatures. See Albert the
Great, In I Sententiarum, ed. A. Borgnet, Opera omnia, vol. 25 (Paris: Vivès, 1893), d. 1, a. 4,
p. 18b. In Albert’s discussion of the transcendentals in the same commentary, he argued
that Aristotle understood ens only as the final conception reached by an intellectual reso-
lution and bonum only as a property of moving being, whereas the saints (sancti) treated
being and the other transcendentals insofar as they flow from the first cause. See Albert
the Great, In I Sententiarum, ed. A. Borgnet, Opera omnia, vol. 26 (Paris: Vivès, 1893),
d. 46, a. 14, p. 450a, and the analysis of J. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental
Thought. From Philip the Chancellor (ca. 1225) to Francisco Suárez (Leiden: Brill, 2012),
p. 183–​186.
117 Dietrich of Freiberg, De cognitione entium separatorum, 95.2–​3, p. 259, l. 73 –​p. 260,
l. 86: Habitum est enim supra, quod anima separata habet eorum memoriam, quae experta
est in vita. Sunt autem quidam habitus scientiales, in quibus adipiscendis indigetur expe-
rientia sensuali, ut sunt multae medicinae et perspectiva et aliae quaedam scientiae nat-
urales. Hae scientiae seu habitus earum manent in anima separata virtute experientiae
praecedentis, eadem ratione saltem, qua notitia aliarum rerum, quas expertae sunt, manent
in eis, immo multo fortius ex eo, quod adiuncta ratione scientiali cum experientia fortifica-
tur talis notitia in eis. De his autem scientiarum habitibus, qui sunt pure intellectuales, ut
sunt scientiae arithmeticae et geometriae vel similes, sive habuerint eas in hac vita sive non
habuerint, dicendum, quod huiusmodi habitus ex integro habent animae separatae secun-
dum statum naturae suae non solum quoad talium artium principia, sicut aliquis possest
dicere, verum etiam quoad ipsarum artium conclusiones. See Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg,
p. 511.
Expositio tituli 145

voluntary providence is “the completion and consummation” of natural prov-

idence,118 and not its destruction. Here, as Flasch rightly observes, voluntary
providence plays “a secondary role” in relation to the affirmations of natural
providence.119
If we foreground Dietrich’s hypothetical approach to the natural divine sci-
ence of the philosophers, these apparent tensions can be resolved. We may
begin by recalling a passage from the De dotibus corporum gloriosorum that
echoed the argument about voluntary providence from the De visione beatifica
and clarified its meaning:

As to what pertains to the beatific vision of those who have glorified bod-
ies, something must now be said that presupposes what has been said
elsewhere and perhaps in more detail. Here one must first consider how
the blessed soul or the glorified human being, with their beatific vision
intact and unhindered, could progress toward some new natural cogni-
tion. The response to this is plain and clear because that blessed vision
exceeds every natural cognition and differs from it generically. But those
things that differ generically can exist together in the same thing, because
they are not opposed to one another as contraries, just like quantity and
quality that exist in the same subject.120

118 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 4.3.2 (3–​4), p. 114, l. 8-​21, cited in Berthold of
Moosburg, Expositio, 129F, p. 182, l. 288–​302: Et ad hoc, quod talis ordo causalis salvetur
ex integro, quo formalitas causaliter determinetur ab una in aliam, rationabile est totam
huius ordinis dispositionem inveniri in uno aliquo, et hoc est ens, quod participat intellectu,
quo apprehendit quiditates rerum in suis propriis rationibus, quo intellectu secundum
genus nihil est superius nisi intellectus separatus, qui intelligit per suam essentiam. Et in
hoc attenditur quaedam immediatio inter hunc intellectum et illum. Unde possibile, immo
rationabile est hunc superiorem fieri formam huius inferioris. Et dico rationabile esse hoc et
non dico necessarium esse, quia huiusmodi non fit ex necessitate ordinis, qui attenditur in
providentia naturali, sed contingit ex sola Dei gratia et bonis meritis, quod pertinet ad ordi-
nem voluntariae providentiae, qui est complementum et consummatio ordinis providentiae
naturalis, quem duplicem ordinem in universo distinguit Augustinus viii Super Genesim.
119 Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 574, n. 30.
120 Dietrich of Freiberg, De dotibus corporum gloriosorum, 23.1–​3, p. 286, l. 66–​74: De eo autem,
quod pertinet ad beatam eorum [hominum habentium corpora gloriosa] visionem, nunc
ultimo aliquid dicendum, salvis his, quae alibi dicta sunt, fortassis magis exquisite. Et primo
hic considerandum, quomodo salva et non intercepta illa beata visione anima beata vel
homo glorificatus possit progredi in aliquam novam naturalem cognitionem. Ad hoc patet
responsio et est in promptu, quia illa beata visio excedit omnem naturalem cognitionem
et differt etiam genere. Sed ea, quae differunt genere, compatiuntur se in eodem, quia sibi
invicem non opponuntur contrarie, ut quantitas et qualitas, quae sunt in eodem subiecto.
146  Chapter 2

This plainly affirms that natural knowledge will persist and even progress for
the saints after the Resurrection and will not interfere with their enjoyment of
the beatific vision –​an even stronger affirmation of the preservation of natural
knowledge than what we saw in De cognitione entium separatorum.
This text also helps us reconcile the other two passages with the De subiecto
theologiae because it shows that it is necessary to make distinction in Dietrich’s
views about natural knowledge, between the divine science of the philoso-
phers (the target of the De subiecto) and natural knowledge in general (the
subject of the passages from De cognitione and De dotibus). As the latter two
passages show, the stable knowledge that the soul acquires while in its mortal
frame will abide after death, as will its innate content that is recollected in its
embodiment. What passes away is only the soul’s imperfect and conjectural
knowledge about the realities that are above its ken. For Dietrich, the soul’s
knowledge of the simple substances is imperfect because they do not have a
quiddity or a definition,121 and thus cannot be known with the certainty of a
demonstrative syllogism. The De subiecto is arguing that charity is more impor-
tant for the wayfarer in this life than this partial knowledge, important though
it is and even necessary within its own domain. Dietrich, in other words, was
pleading for the deferral of the authority that the theologians would prefer to
exert imminently on the divine science of the philosophers by suspending the
laws and patterns of reason. His habitual caveats about the existence of sep-
arate intelligences and heavenly souls (“if they exist”) are not a contradiction
Dietrich failed to notice, but rather are a sign of his self-​critical awareness of
the greater framework within which natural and necessary reasoning about
the separate substances occurs.
Berthold used the De subiecto theologiae fragment only once in the Expositio.
He modified its terminology to describe the subject of Proclus’ science and
replaced some of the authorities cited by Dietrich with others.122 The universe

121 Dietrich of Freiberg, De quiditatibus entium, eds R. Imbach, J.-​D. Cavigioli, in Opera omnia,
vol. 3, 3.1–​4, p. 101, l. 3 –​p. 103, l. 64.
122 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. i, p. 46, l. 319 –​p. 47, l. 341 Cf. Dietrich of
Freiberg, De subiecto theologiae, 3.5–​6, p. 281, l. 69–​87: Et quia totus iste liber tractat de
rerum divinarum universitate secundum processum eius a summo bono et regressum in
ipsum, et hoc secundum dispositionem et proprios modos earum inditos ipsis rebus divinis
ab eo, quod est divinum principaliformiter sive secundum causam, et hoc secundum ordi-
nem providentiae naturalis, non iam proprie voluntariae, iuxta distinctionem Augustini viii
Super Genesim ad litteram, necesse est omnia convenire, de quibus hic tractatur, in una
ratione subiecti, propter quam etiam ista philosophia est una scientia. Quod subiectum voce-
tur, sicut et vere est, bonum divinum, quod simpliciter et absolute causaliter seu principali-
formiter convenit omnium primo principio, reliquis autem bonis, puta divinis per essentiam
et per participationem, in attributione ad ipsum, et hoc quantum ad modos attributionis,
Expositio tituli 147

of divine things (Dietrich had written: “the universe of beings”) proceeds from
and returns to God according to the orders of natural and voluntary provi-
dence. For Berthold, the Elementatio theologica concerns the domain of nat-
ural providence (as Dietrich himself implied) and, therefore, treats ens divi-
num according to the three modes of an essential order: God (bonum absolute
causaliter seu principaliformiter), the gods (bonitates per essentiam), and their
subordinate participants (bonitates per participationem). Instead of Dietrich’s
examples relating to health to explain the analogy of attribution (efficient,
final, substantial) between creatures and God as ens divinum, Berthold cited
two “rules” (regulae) of Hermes and two chapters from Avicebron’s Fons vitae,
which establish that God is the true foundation or ratio subiecti, for he is a
“principle without principle”, and “in comparison to him all substances are like
accidents, and every accident is as nothing”.123 This modification was not only
doxographical. As we will recall, Dietrich gave only the examples of sacramen-
tal actions in persona Christi for the analogical relation of accidents to sub-
stance, forcing Berthold to give an argument from the natural order to explain
the substantial dependency of created goods on the Good itself.
At first glance, it seems that Berthold has merely transposed Dietrich’s argu-
ment into a Proclean context. Behind these more superficial modifications,
however, was a more profound departure from his source. Berthold construed
the difference of natural and voluntary providence in terms that he derived
entirely from his reading of the Elementatio theologica and Dionysius, rather
than follow Dietrich’s elegant separation of pagan philosophy and revealed
theology. In the Praeambulum especially we will see how Dietrich’s mark of
ownership (theologia nostra) in Berthold passed from Christian theology to
the divine science of the Platonists. For Berthold, the ambitions of Dietrich’s

quos distinguit Averroes super principium iv Metaphysicae, scilicet ut ad efficiens primum

et finem ultimum nec non ut accidentia ad subiecti, cum Deus, qui est summum bonum,
non solum sit ‘principium sine principio, processus sine variatione, finis sine fine’, ut dicitur 7
regula Trismegisti, verum etiam ‘Deus est, cuius comparatione substantia est accidens, acci-
dens vero nihil’ per 6 ibidem. Dicit autem substantiam quamcumque esse accidens ratione
dependentiae eius ad primum, cui soli competit ratio subiecti, non ut existentis in potentia
passiva, sed activa, qua sustentat, qui efficit universa, et de tali accidentis ratione loquitur
Avencebrol libro iii Fontis vitae cap. 36 et 54. Ex praedictis apparet, quod bonum divinum
secundum ordinem providentiae naturalis est subiectum huius libri.
123 The same pairing of Hermes (Liber xxiv philosophorum, maxim 6) and Avicebron (Fons
vitae, lib. iii, c. 36 and c. 54) appears elsewhere: Expositio, 2B (p. 84, l. 74–​77), with
the regulae of Boethius, and 150G (p. 127, l. 250–​52). The agreement of Avicebron and
Boethius in 2B might have reinforced Berthold’s strange stipulation that the De unitate et
uno of “Boethius” (actually Gundissalinus) was completely excerpted from the Fons vitae
(1D; 137B).
148  Chapter 2

philosophical theology could only be realised when it was translated back into
the ancient Platonic science of the One and the Good. The influence of Thomas
of York, who showed Berthold that the pagans had achieved a robust knowledge
of God, meant that this focalisation of Dietrich’s thought on Proclus necessarily
entailed the abandonment of Dietrich’s sceptical and hypothetical approach
to reasoning about ens divinum within natural providence. If this Platonism
demanded that we reason about the separate substances “not according to
ourselves”, then its rational conclusions had to receive the mind’s assent if the
exercise was to have its effect of liberating the soul from its captivity to its own
abstractions. Berthold, in other words, sought not to elaborate a hypothetical
cosmology, but to recover its perfect realisation in the distant past. This more
fundamental shift was presupposed when, as we will see, Berthold rebranded
Augustine’s two orders of providence with Platonic equivalents: antarkia for
natural providence and hierarchia for voluntary providence.
At the first mention of the twin orders of providence (gemina providentia)
in the Expositio, without explaining the sources or meaning of the distinction,
Berthold signalled that the familiar boundaries of nature and grace, of natural
and voluntary providence, were breaking down:

These are the invisible things of God taken transitively, which are dis-
cussed most subtly in this Theological Elementation within the domain
of natural providence. For there are also the invisible things of God of
voluntary providence, such as the angels, which, as Proclus says in On
the Existence of Evils, ­chapter 3, are ‘the class that is the interpreter of the
gods, existing in continuity with the gods. This class knows the mind of
the gods and brings the divine will to light […]’.124

Where a reader of Ulrich or Dietrich would expect to find a Scriptural or

Christian authority invoked to explain the nature of the entities in the order
of voluntary providence, Berthold went directly to Proclus, who not only
spoke about angels but identified them explicitly as those who reveal the
divine will (elucidat divinam voluntatem), uttering forth the silence of the gods
(pronuntians illorum silentium). For Berthold, what Dionysius and Proclus

124 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 5-​6, p. 13, l. 264–​270: Ista sunt invisibilia Dei transi-
tive accepta, de quibus in ista elementatione theologica subtilissime pertractatur, quantum
pertinet ad providentiam naturalem. Sunt praeterea invisibilia Dei providentiae voluntariae,
puta angeli, qui, ut dicit Proclus De malorum existentia 3 cap., sunt ‘genus interpretativum
deorum continuum existens dis. Et intellectum novit deorum et elucidat divinam voluntatem
[…]’. Cf. Proclus, De malorum subsistentia, c. 3, §14, p. 194, l. 8-​18.
Expositio tituli 149

taught about the angels was effectively identical.125 In two other passages
(Propositions 26 and 161), Berthold in fact clarified Dionysius using Proclus,
to say that the angels, which are highest in the order of voluntary providence,
immediately follow upon the primordial causes or “gods” rather than God him-
self. According to natural providence, wrote Berthold, the order of infinities
(infinitates) immediately follows the gods, while in voluntary providence “the
order of angels and especially the first and highest [the order of seraphim] is
immediately conjoined outside the gods”, as Proclus made clear and Dionysius
implies (huic alludit Dionysius).126 An argument in 26H explains why Berthold
used this verb alludit. Here he gave a number of references to passages in
Dionysius that place the seraphim directly beneath the thearchy (thearchia);
however (autem), he remarked, “If I cast the eye of consideration to natural
providence, then the angels are continuous with the gods and not God himself,
according to Proclus’ intent in De malorum existentia”.127 For Berthold, there-
fore, the seraphim are of course the highest in the order of voluntary provi-
dence. But these remarks also suggest he understood this order to be ontologi-
cally embedded within the order of natural providence.128 What this means is
that, within the perspective of voluntary providence, the gods are regarded as
effectively one with the Trinity. Dionysius could be said to “imply” this doctrine
since, in Berthold’s view, the term “thearchy” designates God and the primordial
causes collectively.129 From the standpoint of natural providence, however, the
gods are regarded as a separate phase of an essential order –​they are the divine
“according to essence”, subordinate to God “according to cause” –​and in this

125 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 16E, p. 28, l. 168–​170.

126 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 161C, p. 12, l. 34 –​p. 13, l. 62: Verum quoad voluntariam
providentiam ordo angelorum et specialiter primus et supremus immediate iungitur extra
diis, sicut dicit auctor libro De malorum existentia […]. Huic alludit Dionysius […]. In the
passage cited, however, Dionysius described the angelic order as circa Dei substantiam
semper, et attente ipsi et ante alios sine medio unitum (De caelesti hierarchia, 6.2, 200D).
127 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 26H, p. 158, l. 192 –​p. 159, l. 213: Si autem ad providentiam
naturalem oculum considerationis coniecero, tunc angeli sunt continui dis, non iam prime
Deo secundum intentionem auctoris 3 cap. De malorum existentia […]. The phrase is rem-
iniscent of Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram viii.9.17 (oculus cogitationis attollitur), and is
echoed elsewhere (e.g., Expositio, 9F, p. 175, l. 307–​310).
128 On the ambiguous place of the angels in Dietrich’s doctrine of gemina providentia, see
Suarez-​Nani, Les anges et la philosophie, p. 146.
129 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4, p. 11, l. 201 –​p. 12, l. 217; 10A, p. 178, l. 61–​66: Quem
etiam ordinem Dionysius ii Epistula ad Gaium vocat ‘thearchiam’ et ‘boni principatum’,
super quem est prime Deus, qui et prime bonum; 113A-​B, p. 34, l. 45–​52 and p. 35, l. 82–​
83: Ista deitas thearchiae secundum Platonicos inexistit divinis per essentiam. […] Unde
etiam talis ordo sive numerus divinus a Dionysio vocatur thearchia.
150  Chapter 2

more discursive standpoint the seraphim would immediately follow “the gods”,
and God only mediately.
We have already noted the second and more striking example of Berthold’s
use of Proclus as an authority in the domain of voluntary providence. This is
found in Proposition 114, the first subsection of which (114A) was discussed
above relative to the philosophically acceptable and non-​superstitious doc-
trine of polytheism shared by Hermes and the true followers of Plato. In 114B,
Berthold turned to Ulrich’s doctrine of divine providence to account for the
different senses of the words deus and deitas: the Good unfolds its providence
through the primordial causes (Ulrich: per fatum), and thereby shares “the dig-
nity of causality and of divine cooperation” with secondary causes.130 Berthold
then brings us immediately to the two domains of providence, since deus is said
of participants “either by nature or by grace, according to the order of twofold
providence”.131 Discussing the order of grace or voluntary providence, Berthold
first provided a lengthy citation of Dionysius (De caelesti hierarchia 12.3, 293B),
on the saints who become participants of the divine by seeking to imitate God
as much as possible. Immediately following this, Berthold argued that Proclus
“makes the same point” (ad idem facit auctor) when he spoke about the cogni-
tion beyond intellect in De providentia et fato 8.32.132 Both passages on Proclus

130 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 114B, p. 43, l. 92–​100.

131 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 114B, p. 44, l. 117–​119: Dicitur tamen hoc nomen ‘deus’ esse
de participantibus aliquam proprietatem divinam, et hoc sive per naturam sive per gratiam,
secundum ordinem duplicis providentiae, naturalis videlicet et voluntariae. The first two
clauses come from Albert the Great, Summa theologiae, lib. i, tr. 6, q. 29, c. 1, a. 1, p. 216,
l. 61–​64. In this passage, Albert discussed acceptable meanings of participated divinity in
Scripture, “the poets, and certain philosophers”, namely, in Apuleius, the Liber de causis,
Hermes, and the Timaeus. It is noteworthy that Berthold interpolated the distinction of
natural and voluntary providence into Albert’s mention of nature and grace.
132 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 114B, p. 44, l. 117–​128 and 135–​140: Per gratiam, secundum
quod dicit Dionysius 12 cap. Angelicae hierarchiae: ‘Invenies autem, quod et deos theologia
vocat et caelestes et super nos substantias, et apud nos Dei amicissimos mirabiles et sanctos
viros (alia translatio: et quidem divinum secretum superessentialiter simul omnibus et remo-
tum et supercollocatum et nullum ab eorum, quae sunt, simile nominari proprie et omn-
ino valet. Verumtamen quaecumque et intellectualium et rationalium ad unitatem eius et
qualiscumque virtus universaliter convertitur et ad divinas ipsius illuminationes, quantum
possibile, incessabiliter extenditur secundum virtutem, si iustem dicere, divina imitatione
et divina univocatione digna facta est) […]’. Ad idem facit auctor De fato et providentia 8
cap. […] ubi loquitur de cognitione animae super intellectum: ‘Hanc, o amice, divinissimam
enter operationem animae aliquis operans, soli credens sibi ipsi, scilicet flori intellectus, et
quietans se ipsum non ab exterioribus motibus, sed ab interioribus, deus factus ut animae
possibile, cognoscet solummodo, qualiter dii omnia indicibiliter cognoscunt singuli secun-
dum li unum’.
Expositio tituli 151

as a theologian of voluntary providence (on angels and deification), we may

note, were among the few singled out by Berthold with manicules in his copy
of the Tria opuscula.133
Berthold’s textual basis for bringing the pagan and Christian Platonists
together on the doctrine of grace and deification was their common appeal
to the notion of ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν, likeness to God as far as pos-
sible (Dionysius: convertitur ad divinas illuminationes quantum possibile […]
divina imitatione et divina univocatione digna facta est; Proclus: deus factus
ut animae possibile).134 Berthold would have found this caveat (ut animae
possibile) in each of the Tria opuscula.135 Along with this verbal agreement
we may recall their shared doctrine of contemplation Berthold presented
in Proposition 202, which was defined in terms of the ceaseless striving for
the divine, the unification of the self, and conjunction with God through the
unum animae:136

Contemplation is the steadfast and unswerving extension of an intel-

lectual substance, exceeding itself and all beings and non-​beings unre-
strainably, into the supersubstantial ray of divine shadows, as is meet and
right.137

Loris Sturlese has observed that the standard ways of conveying the mediation
of grace, in the Church and the sacraments, were not emphasised, let alone
even mentioned by Berthold, and that the Dominican’s stress in the Expositio
fell rather on the difficulty of the philosophical effort involved in the ascent to
God through the oblique motion.138 Berthold’s passing references to the order
of voluntary providence did not touch on these themes of sacramental grace.
But in light of the foregoing considerations of the three motions of the soul
and the two orders of providence, it seems we must admit yet again that for
Berthold the philosophical effort itself, if it was to pass from discursivity of the

133 See Introduction, section 2, n. 74, above.

134 Plato, Theaetetus, 176b. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 161C, p. 12, l. 31–​34, defined deifi-
cation using Dionysius: deificatio sit ad Deum, sicut est possibile, assimilatio et unitio.
135 Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §64; De providentia et fato, c. 8,
§32; De malorum subsistentia, c. 7, §24.
136 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 202B, p. 184, l. 97–​117. For Proclus, see Expositio, 202C,
p. 186, l. 152–​171.
137 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 202A, p. 181, l. 22–​24: Contemplatio est substantiae intel-
lectualis se ipsam et omnia existentia et non existentia excedentis irretentibiliter, firma et
indeclinabilis ad supersubstantialem divinarum tenebrarum radium, sicut decet, extensio.
138 Sturlese, Homo divinus, p. 146–​147.
152  Chapter 2

Elementatio to its higher end, required a form of divine assistance.139 The labo-
rious investigation of the oblique motion is available to everyone, although
Berthold has made it clear that following Plato’s theorems earnestly will take a
person along “a certain byway that is beyond the common path of reasonings”.
Returning briefly to Proposition 202, where all the proof-​texts for the direct
and circular motions are found, we will see that this definition of contempla-
tion held for all three spiritual motions. By way of summary, then, let us return
to Berthold’s account of contemplation to see how the three motions and the
two orders of providence are unified within a single progression.
Before citing the relevant passages from Dionysius and Proclus on con-
templation, Berthold included the six kinds of contemplation discussed by
Richard of St. Victor, which he had used tacitly in the gloss on Psalm 42 at the
conclusion of the Prologus. He then cited several passages from Book v of the
Beniamin maior, in which Richard outlined a threefold order of contemplation
and subdivided each stage into the three causes that give rise to it and bring
it to perfection.140 First is the enlarging of the mind (dilatatio mentis), which
does not pass beyond the limit of human industry, and is subdivided into
teaching, mental exercise, and attention (traditio, exercitatio, attentio), which
are its causes. Second comes the lightening of the mind (sublevatio mentis),
corresponding to the liveliness of intelligence (intelligentiae vivacitas), when
the mind is inspired and illumined by heavenly light, and is sometimes (ali-
quando) elevated above knowledge, above human industry, and above nature
(supra scientiam, supra industriam, supra naturam). Here the mind sees reali-
ties that are above it, but cannot yet free itself from its habitual weight.
The third and highest stage is the dispossession of the mind (alienatio
mentis), which is brought about by the abundance of devotion, wonder, and
exultation (magnitudo devotionis, admirationis, exultationis). The abundance
of devotion, through the interplay of the soul’s fervent desire and divine assis-
tance, makes it receptive to a divine gift: “when the mind burns excessively
with the flame of heavenly desire, it becomes worthy to see something from
a divine revelation, so that it is helped to reach those theoretical ecstasies”.141

139 This was not itself entirely novel. According to Thomas Aquinas, God, if he pleases, grants
sanctifying grace to the pagan philosophers in view of their realisation of a natural capac-
ity as rational creatures to love God above all else. See A. Oliva, “La contemplation des
philosophes selon Thomas d’Aquin”, in Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques
96(2012), p. 585–​662, at p. 605–​612.
140 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 202B, p. 183, l. 64 –​p. 184, l. 95.
141 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 202B, p. 183, l. 79–​81, citing Richard of St. Victor, Beniamin
maior, lib. v, c. 8, 177D-​178A, p. 266, l. 59–​61: saepe enim in mente humana agitur, ut, dum
Expositio tituli 153

The abundance of wonder is kindled by the vision it receives of a reality that

is beyond all hope and conception (aestimatio); this wonder arouses attention,
and with attention comes thinking (cognitio). In this attentiveness, as the mind
climbs to higher and higher realities (dum mens humana semper ad altiora cres-
cit), it eventually reaches a point where it leaves the bounds of human capacity
altogether (dum diu crescendo tandem aliquando humanae capacitatis metas
excedit). This is finally perfected in the abundance of joy and the exultation in
which the mind goes out of itself entirely.
In Proposition 202, Berthold juxtaposed Richard’s two classifications of
contemplation, the six “genera” and the three “modes” (dilatatio, sublevatio,
alienatio), without explicitly establishing any correlation between them. For
more recent interpreters of Richard, there is a sense in which the three modes
describe the qualities common to all six genera. As Jean Châtillon has put it,
the sixfold division describes the objects of contemplation and the faculties
that apprehend them, whereas the three modes correspond to the different
states of the mind as it contemplates its object.142 But there is another sense,
as Châtillon also observed, in which the end of the Beniamin maior, with these
three modes, returned to the sixfold classification from its beginning, such that
dilatatio would refer to the first four degrees (in imagination and according to
imagination; in imagination according to reason; in reason according to imag-
ination; in reason according to reason), which are all contemplative activities
within the bounds of human effort; sublevatio to the fifth (above reason, but
not beyond reason), when the mind is inspired and illumined by God, but it
has not yet left its habitual ways behind; and alienatio to the sixth (above rea-
son, and seems to be beyond reason), when the mind is totally absorbed in
devotion, wonder, and praise.143
Both interpretations are available to a reader of the Expositio from the
materials taken from Richard in 202A-​B. The second option gains additional
confirmation in view of the meditation on Psalm 42 in the Prologus. We can
now see just how perceptively Berthold merged the sixfold and threefold mod-
els around the precise terms used by the Psalmist and in Lombard’s gloss.144

nimio caelestis desiderii incendio uritur, aliquid ex divina revelatione videre mereatur, unde
ad illos theoricos excessus adiuvetur.
142 J. Châtillon, “Les trois modes de la contemplation selon Richard de Saint-​Victor”, in
Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 41(1940), p. 3–​26, at p. 23; see also p. 14 and 16, and the
studies cited there.
143 Châtillon, “Les trois modes”, p. 23–​26. This interpretation is followed by J. Grosfillier,
“Introduction”, in Richard of St. Victor, De contemplatione (Beniamin maior), p. 46.
144 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 20, p. 34, l. 953–​963. See 1.3, n. 90–​91, above.
154  Chapter 2

According to Berthold, effudi, id est dilatavi, animam meam corresponds to the

summit of the search for God in the fourth kind of contemplation and the
desire to pass over into the fifth (dilatavi animam meam ad intelligendum supra
se ipsam). The fifth kind or the eye of intelligence that beholds the simple Form
would align with the second mode, the sublevatio mentis, when the intelligence
is inspired and illuminated with a revelation (202B: intelligentia humana divin-
itus inspirata et illo caelesti lumine irradiata), and sometimes passes beyond
knowledge, human industry, and nature. Nevertheless, it remains weighed
down to some extent because it is still reflexive (Prol. 20: ut quaereret Deum
intelligentia secundum rationem). The sixth kind of contemplation, the entry
into the primordial causes or “house of God”, would align with the three causes
of third and highest mode (alienatio mentis), especially wonder (ingrediar per
unum animae in locum tabernaculi admirabilis) and praise (in voce exultationis).
If we read this synthesis from the Prologus back into the citations from
Richard in 202B, we can see clearly how the dynamics of nature and grace
unfold in the soul’s ascent to God through a continuous process of contem-
plation that embraces the distinct activities of all three spiritual motions.
Berthold’s penultimate citation from Richard remarked that some have tended
to speak about “contemplation” and “speculation” as if they were synonymous.
Strictly speaking, however, contemplation occurs when one no longer sees the
truth through a mirror (per speculum) but unveiled and without any trace of
shadow.145 Speculation, then, corresponds to the first four kinds of contempla-
tion which, in the gloss on Psalm 42, relate to the search for God in the material
world and in the soul. We might say that these speculative stages are presup-
posed by the science of the Elementatio, as Berthold’s discussion of physics and
quadrivial science (duplex indagatio) from Albert’s Metaphysics commentary
implied, and do not fall within its purview in the strict sense. The mode of dil-
atatio mentis, however (corresponding to the fourth kind), when the mind has
prepared itself to the extent it is able and yet still desires to pass from know-
ing “in reason according to reason” to intelligentia, would correspond precisely
to the laborious study of Proclus’ propositions in the oblique motion, which
constitute a spiritual exercise leading the soul “beyond the common path of
reasonings”. The Platonic theorems, in other words, prepare the mind for the
passage from speculation, integuments or veils, to contemplation in the strict
sense. Berthold insisted that these theorems should be revealed only to those

145 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 202B, p. 183, l. 90–​92, citing Richard of St. Victor,
Beniamin maior, lib. v, c. 14, 187A-​B, p. 558, l. 108–​111: aptius tamen et expressius specula-
tionem dicimus, quando per speculum cernimus; contemplationem vero, quando veritatem
sine aliquo involucro umbrarumque velamine in sui puritate videmus.
Expositio tituli 155

who have been attracted by the most longed-​for unveiled image of truth.146
Therefore, the oblique motion pursued through the Elementatio should be
seen as the highest activity a person can undertake by their own effort –​that
is, the highest kind of “speculation” or dilatatio mentis that “enlarges” the soul
through the three causes of teaching (traditio, where Richard had “art”, ars),
exercise (exercitatio), and attention (attentio). It is a form of contemplation
in the broad sense that prepares the way for imageless contemplation in the
strict sense.
As Berthold’s final citation of Richard in 202B stated, the two higher modes
(sublevatio and alienatio), unlike dilatatio, should both be understood as gifts
from God:

No one from their own powers expects such an exultation or lightening

of the heart or ascribes it to their merits. It is certain that this is the result
not of human merit, but of a divine gift.147

These two highest modes, which correspond to contemplation in the strict

sense because they are beyond veils and images, align with the fifth and
sixth levels identified in the Prologus as the activities of intelligentia and the
unum animae. Berthold thus invited his reader to interpret the Proclean and
Dionysian proof-​texts for the circular and direct motions of the soul, cited in
the remainder of the commentary on Proposition 202, in light of Richard of
St. Victor’s theory of contemplation. At no point did he express any hesitation
about Richard’s theory, nor did he indicate that it diverged from the shared
view of Proclus and Dionysius: on the contrary, all of them were describing
contemplation as it can be realised in this life (contemplatio viae).
We may deduce from this that the vision of pure Form by intelligentia in
the sublevatio mentis corresponds to the intellectus adeptus of 123D. If the

146 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. K, p. 48, l. 389–​391: […] veritatis ipsius revelata
desiderantissimaque imagine pertrahuntur. Hi soli digni sunt, ut eis sapientiae, quae in ista
elementatione theologica continetur, dignitas exeratur. Cf. Gilbert of Poitiers, Expositio in
Boecii librum de bonorum ebdomade, prol., n. 7, p. 184, l. 32–​38.
147 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 202B, p. 184, l. 93–​95, citing Richard of St. Victor,
Beniamin maior, lib. v, c. 15, 187C, p. 558, l. 4-​6: Nemo autem tantam cordis exultationem vel
sublevationem de suis viribus praesumat vel suis meritis ascribat. Constat hoc sane non mer-
iti humani, sed muneris esse divini. This is not inconsistent with Richard’s earlier statement
that sublevatio occurs through the combination of human industry and grace (Beniamin
maior, lib. v, c. 2, 170B, p. 508, l. 17-​19). Châtillon, “Les trois modes”, p. 19, observes, that the
passive verbs used to describe this mode at Beniamin maior, lib. v, c. 4, 172D (inspirata and
irradiata) clearly put the initiative on the side of grace.
156  Chapter 2

intellectus adeptus should indeed be regarded as the lowest phase of this high-
est level of the human modes of knowing in 123D, its activity was identified
clearly as such in the gloss on Psalm 42 in the Prologus as the fifth kind of
contemplation, “in intelligence according to reason”. This would follow inas-
much as the immediate relation of agent and possible intellects still implies
the downward facing operation of intelligentia as it relates to the ratio univer-
salis or possible intellect. Finally, alienatio corresponds to the non-​reflexivity
of the unum animae, which is the higher phase of the same level in 123D.
Therefore, whereas the oblique motion corresponds to the dilatatio mentis, the
circular and direct motions, each in their own way, culminate in the sublevatio
and alienatio mentis –​one begins from within, the other from without, but
both depend on a concourse of the mind’s attention and enlargement, fervent
desire, and both are received as a divine gift or grace. This, for Berthold, was
the unanimous doctrine of contemplation shared by Proclus, Dionysius, and
the Christian doctors.
This incorporation of both registers of nature and grace in the Platonic
divine science on the basis of their common contemplative doctrine was
assumed by Berthold when he translated the doctrine of natural and voluntary
providence into the Platonic terminology of self-​sufficiency (antarkia) and
hierarchy (hierarchia). According to Berthold, in Proposition 9 Proclus proved
the existence of self-​sufficient (antarkes) principles that are perfect through
themselves. This corrected the view of Avicenna and Al-​Ghazali, who placed
self-​sufficiency beneath perfection because they defined sufficiency as some-
thing that is acquired after a prior state of imperfection.148 With Eustratius
and Dionysius, Berthold maintained that what is self-​sufficient always has its
inherent good perfectly (cui bonum perfecte ingenitum est), requiring noth-
ing outside itself. These self-​sufficient principles will play a pivotal role in
Berthold’s cosmology, where “secondary founts”, as recipients of “the superper-
fect”, “supersufficient”, “superabundant” efficient causality of the Good, have in
and from themselves “the plenitude of their own goodness” as formal causes,
and therefore can exercise proportional “superabundant” causality within
their own order.149 In Proposition 10, Berthold coined the term antarkia to
define precisely (stricte) the order of gods or “per se goodnesses”.150 The imma-
terial orders beneath the gods are self-​sufficient to greater or lesser degrees;

148 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 9A, p. 167, l. 18 –​p. 168, l. 36.

149 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 9B, p. 169, l. 102-​105: supersufficiens bonum est duplex,
quia vel est tale simpliciter vel in genere, quod etiam magis proprie dicitur supersufficiens
virtus vel ens vel vita etc., cum talia determinent bonum ad quoddam bonum.
150 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 10A, p. 177, l. 31-​35.
Expositio tituli 157

they are all regarded as beings that exist like species (entia secundum speciem),
spanning “the order of infinities” down to “intellectual hypostases”, which are
all “self-​sufficient by themselves entire but not entirely” (se totis licet non total-
iter), meaning that they are self-​sufficient in substance, power, and operation,
but are constituted out of a plurality of formal principles. Souls, finally, are
self-​sufficient in their substance but not in their operation. All these entities
are self-​sufficient (antarkes) by analogy to the gods.151
According to Berthold, hierarchia is to God and the gods in voluntary provi-
dence what antarkia (the order of self-​sufficient, per se principles) is in natural
providence.152 When commenting on the term deificatus in the Elementatio
and, more rarely, when confronted with Proclus’ mentions of intellectus divinus
(e.g., 181D), Berthold relied principally on a pair of Dionysian texts which asso-
ciate “hierarchy” with “deification”:

De ecclesiastica hierarchia 1.3, 376A: ‘Deification is assimilation and union

with God, as far as possible’ or, according to the other translation, ‘like-
ness and unity’ (‘Deificatio est ad Deum, sicut est possibile, et assimilatio et
unitio’ vel secundum aliam translationem ‘similitudo et unitas’).
De caelesti hierarchia 3.2, 165A: The goal of hierarchy is assimilation and
union with God, as far as possible (Intentio igitur hierarchiae est ad Deum,
sicut est possibile, assimilatio et unitio).153

Thus it was certainly not the case that Dionysius for Berthold was only an
authority in voluntary providence, although he sometimes spoke like “a the-
ologian”,154 or that Proclus only had insights into the order of natural provi-
dence: Dionysius transmitted the Platonic doctrine of the Good and the pri-
mordial causes as the “thearchy”; Proclus, more rarely, discussed the angels
and the outlines of a notion of hierarchy and deification by participation. This
unification of both orders of gemina providentia in the Platonic divine science

151 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 9B, p. 170, l. 129 –​p. 171, l. 147; 9E, p. 173, l. 214-​218, and
p. 174, l. 281 –​p. 175, l. 295.
152 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 10A, p. 179, l. 99-​102: Ex praedictis apparet differentia
inter antarkiam et hierarchiam, quia antarkia est ordo divinus secundum condiciones supra
positas in description emanans a Deo iuxta dispositionem providentiae naturalis; hierarchia
vero est ordo divinus emanans a Deo iuxta dispositionem providentiae voluntariae.
153 The adjective deificatus occurs in Propositions 135, 138, 153, 160. Berthold cited De eccle-
siastica hierarchia, 1.3, 376A, in the following propositions: 121B, 129B (Proclus: exdeatam
[ἐκθεουμένης]), 134B, 135G, 138C, 160B, 160E, 161C, 161D, 181C, 181D. He cited the passage
from De caelesti hierarchia, 3.2, 165A, three times: 10A, 145A, 153F.
154 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 5B, p. 115, l. 98 –​p. 116, l. 130.
158  Chapter 2

also had an exegetical advantage, which we have just witnessed. The relation-
ship of proportionality between the two orders enabled Berthold to apply texts
from Dionysius about hierarchy to the order of natural providence.155 Even if
the Elementatio theologica did not concern voluntary providence, Berthold
went out of his way to show that Proclus’ authority extended there as well, just
as Dionysius did to the order of natural providence, and that Platonism itself
transcended the divide of pagan and Christian, nature and grace.
155 See, for example, Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 140E, p. 41, l. 103-​136; 156A, p. 169, l. 12-​
21; 156D, p. 172, l. 130 –​p. 173, l. 166; 158A-​B, p. 184, l. 10 –​p. 185, l. 35; 162G, p. 21, l. 159-​171;
163D, p. 28, l. 131-​137; 165F, p. 41, l. 114 –​p. 44, l. 175; 177I, p. 185, l. 386.
 ­c hapter 3

Praeambulum libri

The habit of our divinising beyond-​wisdom exceeds every other

habit, not only of the sciences, but even the habit of intellect that is
wisdom, through which Aristotle receives the principles of his first
philosophy, which is merely of beings.1

∵
Berthold has moved from the consensus of authorities in the Prologus to the
focalisation of ancient wisdom on Proclus and his works in the Expositio tituli.
The third and final preface to the Expositio is a Praeambulum to the first thirteen
Propositions, and establishes the rational and scientific validity of the knowl-
edge transmitted in the Elementatio theologica. In sequence, the three prefaces
thus display roughly the same pattern found in each of Berthold’s commen-
taries (suppositum, propositum, commentum), which move from the general
and authoritative background to the textual specificity of the Elementatio, and
finally to demonstration alone.
In Berthold’s view, Proclus’ first thirteen propositions formed a coherent
group, which established the existence of the One and the Good, demon-
strated that the two names refer to the same first principle, and showed that
everything that is one or is good derives from that principle. The Praeambulum
aimed to account for the two “complex principles” or propositions that Proclus
assumed in these arguments. Since these propositions are so fundamental
for the remainder of the Elementatio, these two principles can be regarded as
“the foundations” of Proclus’ philosophy. According to Berthold, Proposition 1
(Omnis multitudo etc.) assumed “that there is multitude” (multitudinem esse)
and moved from the many to the One, while Proposition 7 (Omne productivum
etc.) presupposed that “the productive exists” (productivum esse) and estab-
lished the existence of the Good. At Proposition 13, after six Propositions each,

1 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 65, l. 454 –​p. 66, l. 458: Igitur habitus istius
nostrae divinalis supersapientiae excedit omnem alium habitum, non solum scientiarum, sed
etiam habitum intellectus, scilicet sapientiam, per quem Aristoteles in sua prima philosophia,
quae solum est entium, quia entis in eo, quod ens, accipit sua principia.

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_006

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
160  Chapter 3

Proclus showed that “the Good is identical with the One” (bonum uni idem).
Since Proclus’ arguments in his proofs for Propositions 1 and 7 take these prin-
ciples for granted, Berthold felt compelled, somewhat surprisingly, to address
doubts as to whether the science of the Elementatio theologica is a true science
at all:

Proclus assumes these two principles, upon which the edifice of this
entire philosophy depends as upon its own foundations, as if they are
grasped through the reception of the senses and in no way are intel-
lected, known, or apprehended by any other scientific habit, but only are
believed, just as the theology that concerns the divine Good according
to the order of voluntary providence is founded upon principles that are
believed, which are the articles of the Christian faith.2

The argument of the Praeambulum will be that a science founded on principles

that are only believed (credita) is nevertheless a science in the genuine sense.3
Berthold divided the Praeambulum into three sections, discussing (A) scien-
tific principles in general, (B) the three kinds of scientific principles, as well as
the properties and character of these principles in particular, and (C) the true
and properly scientific procedure of Proclus’ theology.
The way Berthold has presented the analogy between Proclus’ science
and Christian theology (both begin from believed principles, but with the
distinction of natural and voluntary providence), following so soon after his
use of Dietrich of Freiberg’s De subiecto theologiae in the Expositio tituli, have
understandably led commentators to assume that Berthold’s Praeambulum
remained faithful to Dietrich’s strict and methodological separation of the
divine science of the philosophers and revealed theology.4 Having looked at

2 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. A, p. 53, l. 15-​22: Ista duo principia, quibus totius
istius philosophiae structura sicut propriis fundamentis innititur, auctor supponit sicut per
sensus acceptionem nota et nullo modo vel intellecta vel scita vel aliquo alio habitu scientiali
apprehensa, sed solum credita, sicut et theologia, quae est de bono divino secundum ordinem
providentiae voluntariae, fundatur in principiis creditis, quae sunt articuli fidei Christianae.
Propter quod a plerisque dubitari solet de utraque theologia et sapientiali et divinali, an sit sci-
entia secundum veram scientiae rationem.
3 The notion that the articles of faith are genuine principles of the science of theology
begins with William of Auxerre. See M.-​D. Chenu, La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle
(Paris: Vrin, 19573), p. 12–​13.
4 See most recently R. Imbach, “Au-​delà de la métaphysique. Notule sur l’importance du
Commentaire de Berthold de Moosburg OP sur les Éléments de théologie”, in D. Calma (ed.),
Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes. Vol. 1, p. 376–​393, at p. 380–​381.
Praeambulum libri 161

the broader intertextual patterns in the Prologus and Expositio tituli, we have
found that Berthold decidedly and repeatedly blurred these boundaries in
light of the textual evidence that confronted him. The Praeambulum was no
exception to this pattern. Now, it is clear that Berthold held that the articles of
faith are the principles of the science of Christian theology, which holds sway
over the domain of voluntary providence. But through a consideration of the
Praeambulum with a view to its tacit sources, I will suggest that Berthold con-
ceived of that theology under the banner of a broader Platonic divine science
that united both orders of providence. Unlike Dietrich, who had maintained a
clear subordination of “the divine science of the philosophers” to “our theol-
ogy of the saints”, Berthold’s confrontation with the soteriological Platonism of
Proclus and Dionysius made this position impossible. Both sciences of natural
and voluntary providence begin from belief and both terminate in a deifying
apprehension of God. The dignity that Berthold’s predecessors and contempo-
raries reserved for Christian theology and the habit of faith that it cultivated
was thus extended to the natural revelation of supersapientia and the unum
animae awakened through speculation and contemplation.

1 Theology as a Science

Like the Prologus and the Expositio tituli, Berthold wrote the Praeambulum
with the Sapientiale of Thomas of York near at hand. And, like those two pref-
aces, Thomas was synthesised with the anthropology and noetics of a German
Dominican authority, and both were finally transformed and subordinated to
the definitive philosophical concord of the Platonists (Dionysius, Proclus, and
Boethius). This time, however, we must proceed carefully because Berthold’s
German Dominican source is, it seems, no longer extant. As Loris Sturlese first
observed, the final phrase of the introductory passage just cited, and perhaps
also a good deal of the Praeambulum, echoes Dietrich of Freiberg’s lost trea-
tise, De theologia, quod sit scientia secundum perfectam rationem scientiae, as it
was listed in an early catalogue of his works.5 Now that Berthold’s reliance on

5 See the text cited in n. 2, above. Sturlese, “Il De animatione caeli di Teodorico di Freiberg”,
p. 194, n. 84: “che Bertoldo dipenda da tale quaestio, o comunque da posizioni teodoriciane, è
mia netta impressione: ma non posso per ora dimostrario”. See also L. Sturlese, “Introduction”,
in Berthold of Moosburg, “Commentaire des Éléments de théologie de Proclus. Préambule
du livre”, in R. Imbach, M.-​H. Méléard (eds), Philosophes médiévaux. Anthologie de textes phi-
losophiques (XIIIe-​XIVe siècles) (Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1986), p. 335–​346, at p. 342–​
343: “[…] surtout on peut envisager l’éventualité que derrière le texte du Préambule se cam-
oufle un extrait de la Question perdue de Thierry de Freiberg Quaestio utrum theologia sit
162  Chapter 3

Thomas of York has been recognised, the range of material that could derive
from Dietrich has now been considerably narrowed. Indeed, what remain are
the pivotal epistemological passages in sections B and C that explain how a
legitimate science can begin from belief. If we entertain the possibility that
Dietrich was the source of these arguments and transpose them back into
the Parisian context within which Dietrich would have written such a trea-
tise on theology, certain puzzling aspects of the Praeambulum are clarified.
The surprising doubt raised “by many” about the scientific credentials of
the Elementatio theologica can be explained: this remark was copied from
Dietrich’s defence of the scientific status of theology in Paris. There were not in
fact “many” who doubted the legitimacy of the Elementatio theologica, though
there were who questioned the scientific status of Christian theology in the
late 13th century. I will propose that the Praeambulum followed Dietrich’s De
theologia by drawing an important analogy between the scientific procedure
of revealed theology and that of every other science (except the purely math-
ematical), including metaphysics. Berthold would have found in this analogy
the resources to show that metaphysics or, in this case, Proclus’ philosophy,
even though it begins from believed principles (because it begins from the
senses), is still a genuine science. But since Berthold’s soteriological Platonism
was not Dietrich’s divine science of the philosophers, this meant that the cen-
tral element of disproportion in the analogy of metaphysics and revealed the-
ology that may also have been present in the De theologia was left unaddressed
by Berthold –​I will suggest that this disproportion would have concerned the
relation between natural and voluntary assent or belief.
Let us first imagine what the context for Dietrich’s lost De theologia might
have been. While Dietrich was in Paris as a baccalaureus and lecturing on the
Sentences, sometime between 1282–​1292,6 debates concerning the scientific
status of theology conceived according to the model derived from Aristotle’s
Posterior Analytics reach “a fever pitch”.7 Followers of Thomas Aquinas invoked
the deductive model of Aristotle’s text and argued that theology is a science
in the strong sense, in that our theology is subalternated to the higher science

scientia secundum perfectam rationem scientiae”. The lost treatise is listed in the Stams cata-
logue, compiled sometime before 1330, perhaps as early as 1312–​1314. On the Stams catalogue,
see Sturlese, Dokumente und Forschungen, p. 128–​131.
6 Sturlese, Dokumente und Forschungen, p. 4; Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 30.
7 S. Brown, “Duo Candelabra Parisiensia. Prosper of Reggio in Emilia’s Portrait of the Enduring
Presence of Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines regarding the Nature of Theological
Study”, in J. Aertsen, K. Emery, Jr., A. Speer (eds), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277, p. 320–​356, at
p. 323.
Praeambulum libri 163

possessed by God and the blessed. They often drew an analogy with the human
sciences: an expert geometer knows demonstratively what the practitioner of
optics assumes –​that is, the geometer knows the reason why (propter quid),
while the optician knows the fact that (quia) –​but this does not undermine the
scientific status of optics.8 Among the most innovative and polarised reactions
to Aquinas in this debate came from Henry of Ghent (d. 1293) and Godfrey
of Fontaines (d. 1309). Both went back to the Posterior Analytics to criticise
the subalternation theory on its own grounds. For Henry of Ghent, we must
look beyond Aristotle to Christian authorities in order to ground the subalter-
nation theory. Henry proposed his famous notion of the middle light (lumen
medium), which the theologian possesses between the obscure light of faith,
which every believer has, and the clear light of glory of God and the blessed.9
Godfrey of Fontaines also went back to Aristotle but opposed both Henry and
the Thomists. Godfrey argued that we simply must give up calling theology a
science in the strict sense. In his fourth and eighth Quodlibets from 1287 and
1292,10 which probably coincided with Dietrich’s baccalaureate,11 he argued
against the subalternation theory, contending that any science that receives
its principles from a higher science through mere belief cannot be a science in
the strict sense of the term:

Therefore, to say that the principles of theology or the knowledge of

anything in theology itself [are merely believed], or that in the one who
is said to be knowledgeable in theology [these principles] are merely
believed and are not known or intellected [sunt solum credita et non
scita vel intellecta], and thus merely possess the certitude of adhesion,
and nevertheless produce the certitude of knowledge in the conclusions
reached from them, is to say that the conclusions would be better known

8 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 1, a. 2. On this doctrine and its reception, see J.-​
P. Torrell, “Le savoir théologique chez les premiers thomistes”, in Revue thomiste 97(1997),
p. 9–​30, at p. 16–​19 and 26–​29.
9 See, for instance, Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet XII, ed. J. Decorte, Opera omnia XVI
(Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1987), q. 2, p. 14, l. 20 –​p. 15, l. 23.
10 For the chronology, see J. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines.
A Study in Late Thirteenth-​Century Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 1981), p. xxvii-​xxviii. On Godfrey and his criticisms of Henry, see König-​
Pralong, Le bon usage des savoirs, p. 111–​123.
11 Dietrich’s De origine rerum praedicamentalium seems to use Godfrey’s Quodlibet ii (1286)
and Henry’s Quodlibet xiv (1290/​1291). See L. Sturlese, Storia della filosofia tedesca nel
Medioevo, p. 185–​188; Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 162–​165; P. Porro, “Res praedicamenti
e ratio praedicamenti. Una nota su Teodorico di Freiberg e Enrico di Gand”, in J. Biard,
D. Calma, R. Imbach (eds), Recherches sur Dietrich de Freiberg, p. 131–​143, at p. 142–​143.
164  Chapter 3

than the principles, and so have a twofold certitude, whereas the princi-
ples would have but one [kind of certitude]. This is to say contradictory
things and greatly to dishonour sacred theology and its teachers, by prop-
agating such lies about theology to those drawn to it.12

Godfrey based this argument on a distinction between the certitude of evidence,

which belongs to scientia, and the certitude of adhesion, which belongs to faith.
The latter comes from assent to authority and, he maintained, is weak and imper-
fect compared to the certitude of scientific evidence.13 According to Godfrey, one
cannot deduce stronger conclusions from weaker principles.14 Therefore, since
theology relies on principles that are only believed, which are grounded on certi-
tude of adhesion to authority, Godfrey concluded in 1293/​1294 (after Dietrich had
left Paris) that “theology is less properly a science than natural science”.15
The ensuing debate lasted well into the 14th century, with important
responses to Godfrey coming from Duns Scotus, James of Metz, Hervaeus
Natalis, and Bernard of Auvergne.16 What concern us are not these details but

12 Godfrey of Fontaines, Les quatres premiers Quodlibets de Godefroid de Fontaines, eds M. de

Wulf, A. Pelzer, (Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie de l’Université, 1904), iv, q. 10,
p. 262: Dicere ergo quod principia theologiae […] sive apud illum qui dicitur esse sciens the-
ologiam sunt solum credita et non scita vel intellecta et sic solum certitudinem adhaesionis
habentia, et tamen efficiunt certitudinem scientiae in conclusionibus ex ipsis elicitis, est
dicere quod conclusiones sint notiores principiis, scilicet duplicem certitudinem habentes,
cum principia non habeant nisi unam. Et hoc est dicere contradictoria et multum derogare
sacrae theologiae et doctoribus ipsius, tales fictiones de ipsa theologia attractantibus ipsam
propalare.
13 Godfrey of Fontaines, Le huitième Quodlibet de Godefroid de Fontaines, ed. J. Hoffmans
(Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie de l’Université, 1924), viii, q. 7, p. 73: notitia
debilis vel imperfecta ad evidentiam, sed firma quantum ad adhaesionem, quia innititur
auctoritati solum et non rei in se vel ostensae per rationem evidentem.
14 Godfrey of Fontaines, Les quatres premiers Quodlibets, iv, q. 10, p. 262.
15 Godfrey of Fontaines, Le neuvième Quodlibet de Godefroid de Fontaines, ed. J. Hoffmans
(Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie de l’Université, 1928), ix, q. 20, p. 292: Ergo
videtur quod theologia sit minus proprie scientia quam naturalis non tantum propter hoc,
quia scilicet habet evidentiam quae requiritur ad scientiam, sed minorem quam naturalis, –​
immo etiam quia nec habet evidentiam quae requiritur ad illam scientiam quae debet dici
proprie scientia. Propter quod dicendum esset illis, qui dicunt modo supradicto theologiam
esse scientiam proprie dictam, dicentes hoc se credere, quia infinitae auctoritates sanctorum
quibus in hoc credendum est videntur hoc dicere, quod non est ita. Immo nec una sola auc-
toritas viri magnae auctoritatis invenitur per quam possit hoc evidenter persuaderi.
16 J.-​P. Torrell, Recherches thomasiennes. Études revues et augmentées (Paris: Vrin, 2000),
p. 173, n. 4. For the subsequent debate, see J. Leclercq, “La théologie comme science dans
la littérature quodlibétique”, in Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 11(1939),
p. 351–​374; S. Brown, “Late Thirteenth Century Theology. Scientia Pushed to its Limits”,
Praeambulum libri 165

simply the fact that after Godfrey no one held that theology is a science in
the strictest demonstrative sense. Those who continued to regard it as demon-
strative had to admit some flexibility into their notions of what constituted
a demonstrative science. The Praeambulum was no exception to this pattern.
If the key passages from sections B and C of the Praeambulum are read as
traces of Dietrich’s lost treatise on the scientific status of theology, we can
surmise that Dietrich largely accepted the way in which Godfrey had framed
his own position in terms of the certitude of evidence and the certitude of
adhesion. But Dietrich’s original response would have been to focus on the role
that belief plays in every particular science that begins from without (quasi
ab extrinseco), including metaphysics and theology, and indeed every science
except the purely mathematical disciplines. In a sense, this argument would
have amounted to an intensification of Godfrey’s focus on subjective certitude,
but in so doing it redefined what constitutes a true science: the stability of first
principles is to be found within the cognitive process by which the subject
grasps universal propositions.17
With this background in mind, we will proceed gradually through the
Praeambulum. All of section A, which serves as a terminological dossier for

in R. Berndt, M. Lutz-​Bachmann, R.M.W. Stammberger (eds), Scientia und Disciplina.

Wissenstheorie und Wissenschaftspraxis im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 2002), p. 79–​90; P. Porro, “Tra l’oscurità della fede e il chiarore della visione. Il
dibattito sullo statuto scientifico della teologia agli inizi del XIV secolo”, in L. Bianchi,
C. Crisciani (eds), Forme e oggetti della conoscenza nel XIV secolo. Studi in ricordo di Maria
Elena Reina (Firenze: sismel –​Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014), p. 195–​256.
17 C. König-​Pralong, “Expérience et sciences de la nature chez Dietrich de Freiberg et
Berthold de Moosburg”, in L. Bianchi, C. Crisciani (eds), Forme e oggetti della conoscenza
nel XIV secolo, p. 107–​133, compares the Praeamble with Dietrich of Freiberg’s extant trea-
tises, and offers some valuable insights on the status of experimental sciences in Dietrich’s
works, especially through comparison with Roger Bacon. König-​Pralong rightly under-
scores an important innovation in the scientific epistemology of the Praeambulum, which
autonomises purely mathematical sciences and the experimental-​inductive sciences
which, for the first time, are distinguished not according to their objects but according to
the mode of apprehending the truth of the propositions comprising these sciences (p. 125,
128–​129). However, I do not find the differences between the Praeambulum and Dietrich’s
works noted in her study substantive enough to rule out the possibility that the central
portions of the Praeambulum derived from Dietrich. To be sure, the division between
analytical and experimental sciences was presented austerely in the Praeambulum, but
its argument would still make room for the mixed methods that we find mentioned in
the prologue of Dietrich’s De iride. Moreover, it obscures the purpose of the Praeambulum
to conclude, as König-​Pralong suggests, that for Berthold Platonic science has the same
certitude as mathematics (p. 129, p. 132–​133). The argument of the Praeambulum becomes
clearer if we read it as a theological text, and when its sources and interlocutors are
sought in that domain.
166  Chapter 3

Berthold’s argument, was taken from Sapientiale iii.23.18 These passages

explained how every science uses its rules and principles as its “proper foun-
dations”. These principles are already known and assumed (ex praecognitis)
as the basis for syllogistic reasoning and are “the most certain propositions
received from common teachings”. These propositions, although they are
commonly called simply “by the name of principles”, in fact receive different
names in each science, as Alan of Lille explained.19 Following Eustratius, we
may divide principles into three kinds:

Axioms (dignitates): believed (credita) through self-​evidence.

Hypotheses (suppositiones): lack self-​evidence; belief in them is con-
ceded following teaching or demonstration.
Postulates (petitiones): lack self-​evidence; their truth is not conceded but
is granted for the sake of the argument.20

These principles are used in different ways in demonstrative syllogisms. The

truth of an axiomatic proposition is grasped immediately because of the
identity of subject and predicate or, in the case of a syllogism, because of the
identity of the middle term with either extreme. A second group called the-
ses (positiones) is subdivided into hypotheses (suppositiones) and definitions
(definitiones). In general, a thesis is someone’s opinion that is gathered from
their philosophy. It is not grasped by all and its necessity is not immediately
understood. If it is presented as having been demonstrated in a higher science,
as in optics one appeals to geometry, and if it seems probable to a student of
the subalternated science, it is called a hypothesis (suppositio). If it does not
seem probable, it is a postulate (petitio). Unlike axioms and theses, definitions
do not predicate one thing of another; they are neither affirmative nor nega-
tive but are a simple understanding regarding one explicated thing (intellectus
quodammodo simplex cadens super unum explicitum).21

18 For an edition of passages from Sapientiale, lib. iii, c. 23, see F. Retucci, “Nuovi percorsi
del platonismo medievale. I commentari bizantini all’Etica Nicomachea nel Sapientiale
di Tommaso di York”, in Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 24(2013),
p. 85–​120.
19 Here Berthold added a reference to Expos. tit. K, p. 47, l. 349–​367.
20 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. A, p. 54, l. 53–​63.
21 One need not situate Berthold among his contemporaries John Buridan and Gregory of
Rimini who held that science concerns propositions and not things (cf. König-​Pralong,
“Expérience et sciences de la nature”, p. 123). Berthold received this view from Thomas
of York.
Praeambulum libri 167

Berthold began Section B with an outline of the three properties or proper

modes that the three kinds of principles presented in section A can assume. He
arranged these modes in terms of the various degrees of commonality found
among principles: some principles descend into every science, others only into
some sciences, while those in the third group are proper only to one science.
Once these modes of commonality have been explained, this classification
will be used to discuss the different modes of certitude proper to each kind of
principle.
The “most-​common” principles, by virtue of their universality, descend into
every science: for example, there is the principle of non-​contradiction or the
principle that words (voces) have determinate significations. The “modes or
conditions” of such principles are to be “the most secure of all” and beyond
deceit; they are true for everyone, everywhere, and always (omnibus ubique et
semper), and thus are present by nature and not by instruction. Berthold tells
us that these principles concern “being as being”, since being (ens) is “the most
universal of all formal intentions” –​however, he added cryptically, “according
to Plato it is otherwise”.22
The second group comprises “common” principles. These are proportion-
ately taken up by some, though not all, sciences. Examples come from Euclid’s
“common conceptions of the mind”: “the whole is greater than the part” or “if
equals are subtracted from equals, then the remainders are equal”.23
The third group includes principles proper to particular sciences that have
no proportional or analogical commonality across diverse sciences. For exam-
ple, it is a principle only in geometry that “all right angles are equal”, only in
optics that “light and colour move sight”, or only in physics that there is move-
ment in nature.

22 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. B, p. 56, l. 116-​119: ens, quod est universalissima
omnium intentionum formalium secundum Aristotelem, licet aliter sit secundum Platonem.
Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De origine rerum praedicamentalium, 1.25, p. 144, l. 239-​241: inten-
tio enim entis prima et formalissima est omnium intentionum; 3.8, p. 159, l. 40 –​p. 160,
l. 48: ratio entis […] est prima et formalissima omnium intentionum; 5.36, p. 191, l. 351-​
358: ens, quae est prima et formalissima omnium intentionum. Cf. id., De intellectu et intel-
ligibili, ii.15.1, p. 156, l. 9-​10: quantum ad primam et simplicissimam et universalissimam
intentionem, scilicet esse.
23 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. B, p. 56, l. 123-​126: quas communes animi con-
ceptiones vocant et ponuntur in principio Euclidis, puta, ‘si ab aequalibus aequalia demas’,
etc., et ‘omne totum est maius sua parte’. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De iride et de radialibus
impressionibus, eds M.R. Pagnoni-​Sturlese, L. Sturlese, in Opera omnia, vol. 4. Schriften
zur Naturwissenschaft, Briefe, eds M.R. Pagnoni-​Sturlese et al. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1985),
i.4.8, p. 128, l. 58-​59: per communem animi conceptionem, scilicet ‘si aequalia ab aequalibus
demas’ etc.; i.4.10, p. 128, l. 80-​81; ii.24.8, p. 186, l. 93-​94.
168  Chapter 3

We then come to the various modes of certitude found in these three kinds
of principles. The most-​common and common principles are known through
intellect (intellectus). Here Berthold used Thomas of York to explain how the
habit of intellect differs from the other habits presented by Aristotle in Book
vi of the Nicomachean Ethics. But the most important point, around which
the argument of the Praeambulum hinges, concerns the principles unique
to particular sciences. Only in some sciences (the purely mathematical), are
particular principles apprehended by intellect. The particular principles of all
other sciences, as we shall see, have a different mode of certitude and truth.
The notion of a veritable science will have to have sufficient latitude to include
these, which by far comprise most disciplines normally regarded as sciences.
Therefore, each science must be considered separately to determine, first,
whether it is purely mathematical and, if not, how it relates to the physical
world. Purely mathematical sciences like geometry and arithmetic have the
same certitude as the most-​common and common principles, for their prin-
ciples are known through intellect and not sense-​experience. In such cases,
exemplified by Euclid, the orders of nature and our knowledge are parallel: “we
apprehend the proper principles of such sciences by intellect in the first steps
in the progress in these sciences”.24
Sciences relating to the physical world apprehend truth in another way and
have a different degree of certitude. These sciences include physics and ethics,
where what is prior by nature comes later in the order of knowing because the
sciences begin with sense-​perception. Here Aristotle’s dictum holds true: every
art and intellective discipline begins from the prior cognition of the senses.25
The principles in these sciences are universals derived from sense, memory, and
experience. For example, in physics sense-​perception establishes “that there
is motion” and, in medicine, experience establishes “that scammony purges
bile”. In optics and astronomy an instrument is used to capture an experimen-
tum. In these sciences, there is no necessary relation between experience and
the universal proposition or principle derived from it.26 Therefore, whereas
intellect apprehends the principles of purely mathematical sciences as well
as most-​common and common principles, which have an intrinsic mode of
certitude and truth, the principles of every other particular science “have their
cause and reason as it were from the outside” (quasi ab extrinseco).27 Belonging

24 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. B, p. 58, l. 177-​178.

25 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. B, p. 59, l. 204-​209.
26 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 62, l. 331-​334.
27 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. B, p. 60, l. 241.
Praeambulum libri 169

to this second group are “the principles of metaphysical or divine sciences”.28

It is relative to this domain of exteriority that the text will make the decisive
argument that extends the true notion of a science to disciplines founded on
believed principles (credita).
Any proposition or principle derived from sense-​experience in sciences in
this second group is “only believed and in no way known or intellected” (as
Godfrey had said of revealed theology), since it lacks the necessity of intel-
lect.29 These principles, insofar as they are believed, are “apprehended under
the certitude of the ‘true’, [which] cannot possibly be otherwise”. This appre-
hension has three components: (1) the “apprehended” is what reason objec-
tively deals with in thinking, such as “this, which is moved, exists”;30 (2) it is
“true” by the equality of the thing apprehended and intellect, which occurs
through “a combination or composition of speech”;31 finally, (3) “certitude”
is “the firm and unshakeable assent of reason” concerning the thing appre-
hended as true.

28 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. B, p. 60, l. 271-​274: alia est cognitio principio-
rum communissimorum, communium et propriorum in scientiis pure mathematicis, quia
intellectus, alia vero metaphysicorum seu divinorum, physicorum et ad physica relatorum,
quia acceptio secundum sensum.
29 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. B, p. 59, l. 217-​229: Sic igitur procedente inda-
gatione per viam sensus et experientiae in praemissis scientiis sumptum est unum univer-
sale pro ipsarum scientiarum principio, quod principium in quacumque huiusmodi scientia
solum creditum est et nullo modo scitum nec intellectum, quia nec ex propria ratione termi-
norum cognitum est, quod esset intelligere, nec ex aliquibus principiis aliis seu causis conclu-
sum et ita nullo modo scitum, sed, ut dictum est, solum est creditum, et sic apprehensum sub
certitudine veri, quod impossibile est aliter se habere. Dico autem [1]‌ ‘apprehensum’ id, circa
quod obiective negotiatur ratio per cognitionem, ut hoc, quod est motum, esse; [2] ‘verum’
autem hic intelligo ipsam aequalitatem sive consonantiam rei apprehensae et intellectus,
quae quantum ad rationem et modum attenditur circa complexionem sive compositionem
locutionis; [3] ‘certitudo’ autem de ipsa veritate rei apprehensae est firmus et indeclinabilis
assensus rationis in rem sic apprehensam. For Godfrey, see n. 12-​13, above.
30 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. B, p. 60, l. 249-​250, clarifies that these are first
intentions. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De origine rerum praedicamentalium, 5.47, p. 194, l. 463-​
468: Circa quaedam enim entia sic negotiatur intellectus […]; 5.54, p. 197, l. 566-​568: Unde
huiusmodi entia proprie dicuntur res rationis, non autem ea, quae sunt primae intentionis,
quae important aliquam rem naturae et circa quae negotiatur intellectus tamquam circa res
naturae.
31 Presumably by affirmation and negation, and second intentions. This rare expression,
complexio locutionis, appears also in Dietrich of Freiberg, De origine rerum praedicamen-
talium, 5.54, p. 197, l. 559-​562: Possunt enim non entia, sicut et entia, in complexionem locu-
tionis et in praedicationem affirmativam vel negativam venire […]; id., De natura contrario-
rum, ed. R. Imbach, in Opera omnia, vol. 2, 13.1, p. 93, l. 44-​55.
170  Chapter 3

Within this framework, the Praeambulum then compared mathematical

and physical sciences. What is known demonstratively (scitum) by intellect is
also “apprehended by reason under the certitude of truth”, but the principle
that is believed (creditum) differs from it in two respects: (a) by its mode of
certitude and (b) in the order of apprehension. (a) Scientia takes its certitude
from the intrinsic evidence of the thing, that is, from the intention and rational
relations that the terms have to one another in a complex proposition, whether
immediately in the case of first principles, or mediately when a conclusion is
deduced from prior principles. By contrast, the certitude of faith derives not
from intrinsic evidence but has its cause and reason from without (quasi ab
extrinseco), such as “from the clear authority of an expert, from whose truth
the intellect cannot reasonably dissent”.32 At this stage one should note how
closely scientia and fides align with what Godfrey called the certitude of evi-
dence, where knowledge begins with per se principles that lead to clear conclu-
sions, and the certitude of adhesion, which begins from authority.
(b) The second difference between scientia and fides concerns the order of
apprehension. In scientia, the evidence of the thing arises from the intention
and rational relation of the terms which are, so to speak, “the intrinsic prin-
ciple of cognition found in the thing”.33 The thing itself is by nature appre-
hended first, prior to truth or falsehood, which both arise from the combining
activity of intellect. By contrast, in belief, the authority of an expert comes
first, “in whose truth reason declares our trust must absolutely be placed and
the will inclines to it”.34 In belief, the order of apprehension begins with truth
as such and not with the intrinsic evidence of the thing. Any necessity lacking
in the evidence of the terms is supplied by the authority of an expert, which
provides the secure foundation of truth.
At this point, Berthold gave a summary of what has been concluded so
far concerning principles in general. No principle is ever demonstrated; wis-
dom declares (manifestare) but does not demonstrate principles. The habit of

32 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. B, p. 60, l. 241-​242: puta ex evidenti auctoritate

alicuius experti, a cuius veritate intellectus rationabiliter dissentire non potest.
33 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. B, p. 60, l. 248-​250: quae sunt quasi intrinsecum
cognitionis principium repertum apud rem ipsam, prout est ens et res primae intentionis. Cf.
Dietrich of Freiberg, De accidentibus, 8.4, p. 64, l. 110-​113: universitas entium, quae sunt res
primae intentionis et vere res naturae, in duplicem maneriem rerum distinguitur secundum
duas differentias entis in eo, quod ens, quae est prima et simplicissima omnium formalium
intentionum repertarum in rebus; id., De visione beatifica, 3.2.9.1 (3), p. 86, l. 26-​33.
34 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. B, p. 60, l. 254-​56: Quia enim causam et
rationem suae certitudinis non habet a re ipsa, sed ab auctoritate alicuius experti, cuius ver-
itati omnino standum esse dicit ratio et inclinat voluntas […].
Praeambulum libri 171

principles of first certitude (which would correspond to most-​common, com-

mon, and purely mathematical principles) is innate. For Aristotle, this habit
is only in potency before being actualised by sense-​cognition, but for Plato,
according to Boethius, there is already in us “the seed of truth”, which is always
active, even if it “is aroused by instruction fanning the ember”.35
What remains to be determined is whether there can be a true science (vera
scientia) which begins from belief. Section C of the Praeambulum argues in the
affirmative, and proceeds by establishing an analogy between theology and
natural science. Godfrey refused to accept such a comparison. But the argu-
ment in the Praeambulum allows for it insofar as it has found a role for belief in
the physical sciences. Berthold will then argue that Platonic wisdom (divinalis
sapientia) has the same scientific structure, proportionately speaking (propor-
tionaliter loquendo), as the other genuine sciences, except the purely mathe-
matical.36 That is, it uses most-​common principles (e.g., non-​contradiction)
and common principles (e.g., “the whole is greater than the part”), which are
apprehended by the intellect. As for the two principles unique to this science,
“there is multitude” and “there is producer and produced”, Berthold will affirm
that Proclus assumes them and “proceeds perfectly following the scientific
mode”. In this most divine science (divinissima scientia), these two principles
are known in a way analogous (proportionaliter) to the sciences concerning
things conjoined to motion or change. Although Berthold did not make this
clear, we should assume that we need to understand both the elements of
similarity and difference in the analogy of (Platonic) theology and the natural
sciences.
In terms of their similarity, this theology resembles the physical sciences in
which there is no intrinsic or necessary connection between sense-​experience
and the universal proposition that serves as its principle: these principles must

35 Thomas of York, following Eustratius, had also criticised Aristotle in the name of the
Platonists regarding our knowledge of first principles. See Sapientiale, lib. iii, c. 24, in
Retucci, “Nuovi percorsi”, p. 93–​94. According to Eustratius, the need for sense-​perception
is not intrinsic to humanity but is a result of the Fall. See M. Trizio, “Neoplatonic Source-​
Material in Eustratios of Nicaea’s Commentary on Book vi of the Nicomachean Ethics”,
in C. Barber, D. Jenkins (eds), Medieval Greek Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics
(Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 71–​110, at p. 99–​101; id., “On the Byzantine Fortune of Eustratios
of Nicea’s Commentary on Books i and vi of the Nicomachean Ethics”, in B. Bydén,
K. Ierodiakonou (eds), The Many Faces of Byzantine Philosophy (Athens: The Norwegian
Institute at Athens, 2012), p. 200–​224, at p. 209–​216.
36 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 61, l. 307–​309: omnino eodem modo pro-
portionaliter loquendo secundum proprium modum scientiae procedit haec divinalis sapi-
entia sicut praedictae scientiae solis pure mathematicis exclusis.
172  Chapter 3

be believed. The Praeambulum explains this with an important account of the

cognitive structure of belief which, however, differs subtly from the account of
the secure foundation provided by belief in authority in section B:

Therefore, in taking this universal principle from sense-​experiences there

is nothing but a conjectural inference under the aspect of the true and
not under the aspect of being, as has been said. Accordingly, it is received
as believed, not as intellected or known [ut creditum, non ut intellectum
vel scitum]. As has been said, it is taken by a certain conjecture, but still
with the firm and unwavering assent of reason. This firmness and unwa-
vering assent arises from a certain natural instinct founded in the power
that at once distinguishes, collects, and gathers, which we call the cogita-
tive. In and through this power the simple and pure intentions of things,
separated from their images, to use the phrase of Averroes, are appre-
hended, distinguished, collected, and gathered.37

The production of the conjectural inference and the firm belief in it both occur
entirely in and through the cogitative power. The “true” as such, rather than the
thing itself, is still primary, but its stability comes not from authority, as section
B argued, but from the cogitative power, which separates the intentions stored
in memory and acquired by sense-​perception. Its activity, in other words, is at
once rational and natural or automatic. The parallels between the Praeambulum
and Dietrich’s extant works are strongest here, especially in the description of
the cogitative power and its close association with the estimative faculty,38 in its

37 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 62, l. 340-​349: Igitur in sumptione talis

universalis principii ex sensibilibus experimentis non est nisi quaedam coniecturalis illatio
sub ratione veri et non sub ratione talis entis secundum praemissa, et ideo solum accipitur
ut creditum, non ut intellectum vel scitum, et, ut dictum est, sumitur secundum quandam
coniecturam, cum firmo tamen et indeclinabili assensu rationis. Quae firmitas et indeclina-
bilis assensus surgit ex naturali quodam instinctu fundato in virtute distinctiva et collectiva
simul et collativa, quam cogitativam dicimus, in qua seu per quam apprehenduntur, dis-
tinguuntur, colliguntur, conferuntur simplices et purae rerum intentiones separatae a suis
idolis, ut verbo Averrois utar.
38 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.27.2, p. 200, l. 26-​32: Ratio particula-
ris, quam etiam aestimativam seu cogitativam vocant, est vis distinctiva, quae componit et
dividit et versatur circa intentiones rerum, etiamsi sint res universales, universales, inquam,
secundum considerationem, inquantum videlicet considerat rem aliquam absque principiis
secundum considerationem individuantibus seu particulantibus eam. Et hoc est, quod ille
commentator Averroes dicit, scilicet quod denudate rem a suo idolo, id est ab accidentibus,
sub quibus imaginativa rem considerat. See also id., De origine rerum praedicamentalium,
5.26, p. 187, l. 224 –​p. 188, l. 228; id., De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.7.5, p. 182, l. 112 –​p. 183,
Praeambulum libri 173

phrasing,39 and its terminology of conjecture.40 A mechanism like this could

serve as the beginning of a reply to Godfrey of Fontaines, in that it has effec-
tively extended the certitude of adhesion beyond the domain of revealed the-
ology to all physical sciences. There is an act of belief in all non-​mathematical
scientific habits.
This account of induction, appealing to Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics
ii.19 and Metaphysics i.1, also resembles Dietrich’s presentation of dialec-
tical demonstrations in De intellectu et intelligibili. The reference in the
Praeambulum to “the weaker mode of argumentation” that proceeds “by induc-
tion or by example” recalls Dietrich’s description of how from “sense, mem-
ory, and experience” there arises “a sort of logical or dialectical universal” that
properly speaking pertains to “our cogitative power”. If, Dietrich continued, a
definition is made from such terms, and from these definitions propositions
are developed to reach conclusions, this is called a demonstration only in an
attenuated sense.41 For a dialectical universal is not truly universal; it is only an
intention stripped of individuating, particular components so that, for exam-
ple, “human” or “horse” subsequently can be predicated of many things, rather
than the individual “Socrates”, which can be predicated only of one.42 Similarly,
we read in the Praeambulum that the universal arising from this weaker mode
of argumentation or induction –​from many sense-​perceptions, from memory,
and from experience –​is “beyond the particulars but not really separate” from
them (praeter particularia non quasi separatum).
The Praeambulum will not, however, leave us with only dialectical demon-
strations for all non-​mathematical sciences –​nor, for that matter, would
Dietrich.43 For Dietrich, the basis for necessary and demonstrative knowledge

l. 120; iii.17.1, p. 190, l. 3-​9; iii.33.1-​2, p. 204, l. 28-​53; id., Quaestio utrum in Deo sit aliqua vis
cognitiva inferior intellectu, 1.4.2.2 (11), p. 302, l. 78-​88; id., De visione beatifica, 3.2.9.7 (4),
p. 98, l. 21-​33; 4.3.2 (9), p. 115, l. 40-​54; id., De substantiis spiritualibus et corporibus futurae
resurrectionis, 4.6, p. 306, l. 96-​101.
39 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, prooem. (4), p. 14, l. 40; 1.2.2.1 (8), p. 47, l. 51: ut
verbo eius [Augustini] utar; 3.2.4 (10), p. 75, l. 48: ut verbis eius [Aristotelis] utar; id., De intel-
lectu et intelligibili, iii.2.1, p. 179, l. 21; id., De magis et minus, 11.4, p. 55, l. 68; id., De anima-
tione caeli, 9.1, p. 20, l. 48-​49; 10.4, p. 22, l. 96-​97; id., De iride et de radialibus impressionibus,
iv.23.5, p. 265, l. 112: ut verbis Philosophi utar; id., De intelligentiis et motoribus caelorum, ed.
L. Sturlese, in Opera omnia, vol. 2, 5.10, p. 360, l. 94-​95: ut verbis philosophorum utar.
40 See 2.3, n. 110, above.
41 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 62, l. 334-​339. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De
intellectu et intelligibili, iii.33.1, p. 204, l. 28-​36; id., De natura contrariorum, 56.2, p. 123,
l. 31 –​p. 124, l. 37.
42 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.27.2-​3, p. 200, l. 26-​42.
43 On Dietrich’s theory of demonstration, see W. Wallace, The Scientific Methodology of
Theodoric of Freiberg. A Case Study in the Relationship between Science and Philosophy
174  Chapter 3

is the ratio definitiva that is constituted in the possible intellect, which appre-
hends the quiddity of a thing through the parts of its definition or its causes.44
This ratio is apprehended in different ways in the sciences, depending on
the number of causes taken into account, whether formal causes alone (as
in metaphysics and mathematics) or all four causes (as in the other physi-
cal sciences).45 In some cases, for example in the study of the rainbow and
other radiant meteorological phenomena, these procedures will yield mixed
demonstrations, since the properties being studied are physical but the middle
terms of the demonstrations are mathematical and are derived from optics.46
Certain entities like accidents, however, cannot be understood independently
of the substance in which they inhere (“snub” cannot be understood inde-
pendently of “nose”; inversely, “nose” is the more formal element in the defi-
nition of “snub” that makes it intelligible).47 Since their definition includes
something extrinsic to the thing defined, accidents do not have a quiddity in
the strict sense. They do, however, have a quiddity in our way of understanding
them –​that is, one can give an answer to the question “What is an accident?”
or “What is the colour white?”, even though these have no reality apart from
the substance in which they inhere. Dietrich would call the answers to such
questions “logical definitions” or universals, and a demonstration founded on
such a definition is “logical” or “dialectical”. In his view, the failure to observe
this difference has led many to suppose that accidents are in fact separable
from their substances simply because we can understand them in this logi-
cal fashion. For Dietrich the same rules also impose themselves on the other
end of the ontological spectrum: we have already noted that for Dietrich the
separate substances, because they are simple, also do not have a quiddity in
the strict sense. For this reason, we can infer that the part of metaphysics that
reflects on the existence of such substances, rather than the part that studies

(Fribourg: University Press, 1959), p. 38–​76; De Libera, La mystique rhénane, p. 361–​373.

On the cogitative power, see especially A. de Libera, “D’Averroès en Augustin. Intellect et
cogitative selon Dietrich de Freiberg”, in J. Biard, D. Calma, R. Imbach (eds), Recherches
sur Dietrich de Freiberg, p. 15–​62, at p. 52–​62.
44 Dietrich of Freiberg, De origine rerum praedicamentalium, 5.26, p. 187, l. 221-​226; id., De
intellectu et intelligibili, iii.28.1, p. 201, l. 45-​59.
45 Dietrich of Freiberg, De origine rerum praedicamentalium, 5.60-​67, p. 199, l. 630 –​p. 201,
l. 698. Metaphysics and mathematics differ in how they conceive the formal ratio: met-
aphysics considers being as being, while metaphysics looks only to a determinate genus
of being; mathematics considers its subject according to the quiddity and form found
concretely in nature; mathematics considers the form as abstracted.
46 Dietrich of Freiberg, De iride et de radialibus impressionibus, prol. (5), p. 122, l. 35-​38; 1.2,
p. 124, l. 57 –​p. 125, l. 86.
47 Dietrich of Freiberg, De accidentibus, 12.1–​15.5, p. 68, l. 3 –​p. 74, l. 60.
Praeambulum libri 175

the attributes and properties of being as being, would also remain at the level
of probability and dialectics.48
Now, at this point, Dietrich would have to offer an account of how, even
though a person begins with a “logical universal”, one nevertheless arrives
in some non-​mathematical sciences to attain the necessary knowledge of
proper demonstration. Dietrich’s reflections on this subject, limited though
they are, can be presented as follows. In the formation of a speculative habit,
there are two active principles: the agent intellect and, in relation to the cog-
itative power, the heart. We act primarily in this process through our cogita-
tive power, by which we reflect on the universal intentions of things, but these
are only completely realised in the possible intellect.49 The cogitative power,
by “denuding” the intention of the substance from its images and accidental
“idols”, places the possible intellect in a disposition to receive the intelligible
species directly from the agent intellect.50 For Dietrich, in other words, the
agent intellect does not abstract the species from the imaginative or cogita-
tive power. Instead, the possible intellect emanates from the agent intellect
(procedit enim ab eo intelligendo ipsum), first by thinking the agent intellect
as its productive principle under the aspect of a determinate ratio, and then
it thinks that determinate intention as such.51 The contracting disposition
produced in the cogitative is related to the determinate intelligible species as
matter is related to the form.52 That is, although the possible intellect and the
cogitative are turned toward the same object, they are not turned toward one
another: the possible intellect never turns away from the agent intellect, and
relates to its object by the intelligible species, while the cogitative relates to
its object by the intentions it separates from the “idols”. This means that the
cogitative can apprehend an object that is in itself self-​evident and necessary,
even though it does not apprehend the object as such.53 In this life, the possi-
ble intellect always depends on the disposition it receives from the cogitative

48 See 2.3, n. 121, above.

49 Dietrich of Freiberg, De habitibus, ed. H. Steffan, in Opera omnia, vol. 2, 11.3-​4, p. 15, l. 16-​24.
50 Dietrich of Freiberg, De origine rerum praedicamentalium, 5.26, p. 187, l. 226 –​p. 188,
232: alioquin non differret intellectus a virtute cogitativa, quae etiam sic intentionem sub-
stantiae denudare potest, ut nuda apud ipsam maneat denudata ab omnibus imaginibus, ut
Averroes loquitur, et appendiciis accidentialibus. Et sic est intentio substantiae in ea disposi-
tione, ut secundum eam fiat virtute intellectus agentis forma in intellectu possibili, qua ipsi
formae seu rei secundum suam formam determinantur sua principia. Et ex hoc iam habet
forma rationem quiditatis et ipsa res esse quiditativum.
51 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.36.1-​2, p. 208, l. 25-​41.
52 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 4.3.2 (9), p. 115, l. 48-​54.
53 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.33.2, p. 204, l. 45-​53.
176  Chapter 3

and, therefore, it never knows without phantasms.54 Presumably this is how

Dietrich would explain the way in which a demonstrative scientific habit is
formed from premises that are initially believed. Unfortunately, Berthold does
not provide us with any further clues in the Praeambulum or elsewhere in the
Expositio about how this process occurs.

2 “Our Divinising Theology”

A more obvious and unresolved ambiguity in the Praeambulum relates to its

assumption that we can draw a valid analogy between what we might call, ech-
oing Godfrey’s language, the certitude of adhesion to authority and the certi-
tude of adhesion to a conjectural inference. The Praeambulum has maintained
that, in the order of apprehension, both kinds of certitude in some sense come
from without (quasi ab extrinseco), and both are grasped primarily as true with
enough firmness to serve as a basis for scientific inquiry. Nevertheless, if this
argument originally derived from a theological debate, we would expect to find
an explanation of the element of difference in the analogy, namely, how the-
ology is as scientific as natural philosophy and yet retains its exalted position
as the noblest of the disciplines. Berthold will take one route to establish this
conclusion, but he will not appeal to a mechanism of belief or to notions of
authority and conjecture to do so. One can easily conceive another path to a
similar result relative to Christian theology in particular that would also clarify
the ambiguous relationship between authority and inference: one, for exam-
ple, proceeds automatically (the conjecture) and one is voluntary (assent to
authority).
If Berthold was indeed using Dietrich’s De theologia, then at this point he
would have had to diverge, in his characteristic way, from his source. For if we
accept the reconstruction of a Parisian context for Dietrich’s De theologia, and
recall his Pauline discussion of the two orders of providence in the fragment
De subiecto theologiae, we can easily imagine one way to resolve the ambiguity
between authority and conjecture: the natural, automatic assent of the cogi-
tative power would pertain to what the De subiecto called “the divine science
of the philosophers”, whereas the free assent to sacred authority would relate
to our science (nostra scientia), theology as such (theologia simpliciter), our
divine science of the saints (nostra divina sanctorum scientia).55 Up this point

54 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.36.3-​4, p. 208, l. 42-​54.

55 Dietrich of Freiberg, De subiecto theologiae, 3.8-​10, p. 281, l. 92 –​p. 282, l. 112, cited at 2.3,
n. 96, above.
Praeambulum libri 177

in the Praeambulum, “the principles of metaphysical or divine sciences” had

been spoken of as if they were on equal footing, where it was possible to move
between belief in authority to belief in the conjectural inference for the sake
of the argument. But we know from the De subiecto that such an undifferenti-
ated sense of theology (in hac scientia) with ens divinum as its unifying subject
must be divided, in an eschatological perspective, into the two orders of prov-
idence: the divine science of the saints looks and will abide beyond the lim-
its of this world, whereas the divine science of the philosophers is as finite
as the order of nature. While the philosophers’ theology, like every natural
science, begins from believed principles, and nevertheless is a legitimate sci-
ence, the free assent to the authority of the highest truth surpasses it in certi-
tude. Metaphysics, as the study of being and as theology, begins with princi-
ples deriving from sense, memory, and experience in the cogitative power. But
even though the cogitative gives spontaneous, firm assent, it is not infallible,56
especially where no quidditative knowledge is available to our intellect. While
it is entirely conceivable that Dietrich would place metaphysics as ontology
on the solid ground of demonstrative knowledge that reasons about formal
causes, he consistently maintained that our natural knowledge of the sepa-
rate substances remains tentative, even though our conclusions can reach a
level of hypothetical necessity. For Dietrich, as we have seen, only in ethics and
the order of voluntary providence do we reach the things themselves, for faith
begets charity, and charity does not fail.
Berthold, however, took the difference in the proportion between theology
and the other sciences, including metaphysics, in another direction. His depar-
ture from the spirit of Dietrich’s De subiecto theologiae is clear simply from the
fact that the mark of ownership for the highest science has passed from the
theology of the saints to the “science”57 achieved by Proclus:

Praeamb. A, p. 53, l. 29: in ista sapientia divinali seu theologia sapientiali

Praeamb. B, p. 62, l. 321: haec sapientialis scientia

56 Dietrich of Freiberg, De habitibus, 9.1-​2, p. 14, l. 62-​72: veniemus ad aliquid magis intimum,
et hoc eo intimius, ut ita loquamur, quo spiritualius, et est phantasticum nostrum exspolia-
tum idolis et corporalibus rerum similitudinibus retinens apud se rei intentionem. Et istud
vocamus cogitativum nostrum. Et hic oritur aestimativa et per consequens ratio particu-
laris. Et operatio boni vel mali hinc surgit; consequenter autem ratio et proprietas virtutis
operativae. Sine hac vi spirituali daemon numquam fuisset lapsus. Ruina enim sua fuit eo,
quod inclinavit se in aestimatum bonum, quod non fuit verum. Intellectus autem semper
verorum est.
57 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. A, p. 53, l. 3-​4 and 21-​29; Praeamb. C, p. 68,
l. 539.
178  Chapter 3

Praeamb. C, p. 61, l. 308-​309: haec divinalis supersapientia

p. 65, l. 426-​429: habitus divinalis seu supersapientialis
p. 65, l. 444-​445: nostrae divinalis theologiae
p. 65, l. 454 –​p. 66, l. 455: nostrae divinalis supersapientiae
p. 67, l. 514: nostrae supersapientialis et divinalis sapientiae
p. 68, l. 539: habitus supersapientialis scientiae Platonicae
p. 69, l. 566: nostram divinalem philosophiam

With Berthold, the disproportion no longer fell between the divine sciences
of the saints and the philosophers, but between Platonic supersapientia and
Aristotelian first philosophy: “above the mode common to it and the other
sciences, [Proclus’ science] has something more in the reason and cause of its
certitude and unshakeable assent in these principles”.58
Berthold made the comparison between Aristotelian metaphysics and
Platonic supersapientia in two parts: (1) by an inspection of the cognitive prin-
ciple used in theology (p. 63, l. 375 –​p. 65, l. 425), and (2) by a consideration
of the supersapiential and divinising habit through which Platonic theology
receives its principles (p. 65, l. 426 –​p. 69, l. 569). While Berthold’s argument
proceeds mostly by compiling citations from Proclus, Dionysius, and Boethius,
and tacitly Sapientiale iii.23, its structure was clearly still indebted to theo-
logical discourse –​these are the sort of distinctions one would expect to find
relative to (2) faith, the habit perfecting (1) the intellect under the free move-
ment of the will, as we find for example in Thomas Aquinas.59 On these same
lines, Ruedi Imbach has observed that Berthold’s procedure in this part of
the Praeambulum recalls Aquinas’ discussion of sacred doctrine as a wisdom
surpassing human wisdom.60 If Berthold indeed has been using Dietrich’s De
theologia, then this structural parallel between sacred doctrine and supersapi-
entia should be interpreted in the maximal sense: Berthold has subordinated
Aristotelian sapientia to Platonic supersapientia as Dietrich had subordinated
pagan philosophy to Christian theology. This was possible because, as we have
seen, notions like revelation and deification through grace have been extended

58 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 63, l. 371-​374: immo supra modum com-
munem sibi et aliis scientiis aliquid amplius habet in ratione et causa suae certitudinis et
indeclinabilis assensus in ipsa talia principia.
59 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, iia iiae, q. 4, a. 2.
60 Imbach, “Au-​delà de la métaphysique”, p. 389: “Ce modèle qui postule au-​delà de la reine
des sciences philosophiques une science supérieur rappelle d’une certain façon le rap-
port que Thomas d’Aquin envisage, notamment au seuil de la Summa theologiae, entre la
sagesse philosophique et la science théologique, la sacra doctrina.” Cf. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 1, a. 6.
Praeambulum libri 179

to Hermetic and Platonic theology and anthropology, in no small part under

the inspiration of Romans 1:19: “What was known of God is manifest to them;
for God revealed it [revelavit] to them”.61 Unlike Dietrich’s divine science of the
philosophers, Berthold’s Platonism was soteriological.
Berthold was led to this remarkable conclusion by the texts. In Proclus he
found parallels to passages from Dionysius that his predecessors had used to
characterise the superiority of faith over natural philosophical reason. As with
Prologus 17, here the crucial source was Proclus’ De providentia et fato on the
modes of cognition. Berthold appealed to Proclus now to explain (1) the nature
of the cognitive principle used in theology. Contrasting the certitude of the
lower sciences with that of Platonic science, Berthold now shifted from speak-
ing of the cogitative power –​the basis for belief in natural science –​in the
first-​person (quam cogitativam dicimus), which (perhaps citing Dietrich) he
had used when describing mechanism of belief in natural science, to the third-​
person (ratio particularis, quam quidam cogitativam vocant).62 As in 123D, he
subdivided the ratio particularis into three functions (triplex officio): turning
below to imagination (phantasia), it is “opinionative” and is occupied with the
intentions of physical things; turning above itself, it is “scientific” and treats
pure mathematicals; in its middle operation, it considers mathematicals
applied to physical beings (harmonics, perspective, astronomy), which would
be the domain of mixed demonstration mentioned already. The cognitive prin-
ciple of Platonic science, Berthold continued, also exceeds the universal reason
(ratio universalis) or possible intellect that “apprehends the thing in its reason”
that, turned below, concerns logical intentions, whether first or second inten-
tions; toward itself, “metaphysical” intentions;63 and above, “it reflects beings
as such” (simpliciter entia speculatur). With the possible intellect we reach the
level of metaphysics as the study of being and its properties.
In 123D, Berthold had expanded the description of the lower function of the
cogitative by tacitly drawing from a passage in Albert’s Summa theologiae that

61 The same verse in the Vulgate reads: Quod notum est Dei, manifestum est illis: Deus enim
illis manifestavit. As the editors of the Expositio indicate, Berthold’s source here at the
beginning of the Prologus was Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, ed. I. Brady
(Grottaferrata: Collegium S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1971–​19813), lib. i, dist. 3,
cap. 1, §35, on the knowledge of God from creatures.
62 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 63, l. 378–​379. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De
intellectu et intelligibili, iii.27.2, p. 200, l. 26: Ratio particularis, quam etiam aestimativam
seu cogitativam vocant. Cf. 67C, p. 11, l. 100-​101, and 177H, p. 182, l. 297.
63 Instead of mathematicas, as is found in the Vatican manuscript, here the reading in the
Oxford manuscript (p. 64, l. 392: metaphysicas) should be followed in light of 123D (p. 129,
l. 134: metaphysicas).
180  Chapter 3

distinguished between conviction (fides), that must be placed below scientia,

from the theological faith (fides) that is above knowledge.64 Albert’s text, not
cited by Berthold, continued as follows:

But faith in theological matters is not this kind of faith, which occurs
through a medium, but is a light that, like a medium without a medium
by which would be proved, locates the faithful in the first Truth through
assent and certitude.65

Albert here echoed a phrase from Dionysius that he had just cited, which also
featured prominently in the question concerning the scientific character of
theology at the beginning of the Summa:

Dionysius in ­chapter 7 of his book On the Divine Names says that faith is a
light locating the faithful in the first Truth and the first Truth immutably
in them. And likewise, under this light, things are received that cannot be
received under the natural light.66

When Berthold moved beyond the possible intellect to establish the superi-
ority of the Platonic divine science over Aristotle’s metaphysics, we find him
appealing to Dionysius for an account of (1) the unum animae and (2) the cog-
nitive habit belonging to it (supersapientia) that has a structurally identical
role to fides in Albert:

Indeed, these cognitive principles relate only to beings, although accord-

ing to different reasons. However, many divine things are above being, as
is evident in the case of things divine according to essence and what is
divine according to cause, which is ‘above all beings’, as Dionysius attests
in c­ hapter 4 of On the Divine Names B. For this reason, in ­chapter 1 of the

64 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 123D, p. 128, l. 113-​117. For a similar notion of supra-​
intellectual faith among the pagan Platonists, see P. Hoffmann, “Erôs, Aletheia, Pistis … et
Elpis. Tétrade chaldaïque, triade néoplatonicienne”, in M. Delgado, C. Méla, F. Möri (eds),
Orient-​Occident. Racines spirituelles de l’Europe (Paris: Cerf, 2014), p. 63–​136.
65 Albert the Great, Summa theologiae, pars i, tr. 3, q. 15, c. 3, a. 1, p. 78, l. 69-​72: Fides autem in
theologicis non est talis fides, quae per medium fit, sed est lumen, quod ut medium non habens
medium, quo probetur, credentes locat in prima veritate per assensum et certitudinem.
66 Albert the Great, Summa theologiae, pars i, tr. 1, q. 1, p. 7, l. 53–​57: Et Dionysius libro De
divinis nominibus cap. VII dicit, quod fides est lumen locans credentes in primam veritatem
et primam veritatem in ipsis immobiliter. Et ideo sub lumine illius accipitur, quod sub lumine
connaturali accipi non potest.
Praeambulum libri 181

Mystical Theology, he calls ‘unlearned’ those ‘who are sealed off in beings
and believe that there is nothing supersubstantially beyond beings, but
they presume to know, with that cognition that is according to them-
selves, him, who makes the shadows his hiding place’. Consequently,
it is impossible that we should receive those things that are above us
according to our ownness [iuxta proprietatem nostram] and thus com-
pare things divine with a reason that has been reared on the senses, with
which we are deceived by appearances, as he says there in ­chapter 7 of
On the Divine Names. Dionysius adds an explanation for this, when he
describes the cognitive principle in us of things divine, which we are
seeking here: ‘one must see that our mind has a certain power for know-
ing, through which it examines things intelligible, but a union exceeding
the nature of the mind (the other translation says: “a unity superexalted
beyond the nature of the mind”), through which the mind is conjoined
to those things that are above it. Therefore, it is necessary to think divine
things according to this, not according to ourselves, but our whole selves
placed outside our whole selves and deified wholly. For it is better to be
God’s and not our own’.67

This is (1) “the cognitive principle with which the theologian is occupied con-
cerning divine things to be apprehended”.68 Here Berthold speaks only of the
theologian (theologus) and posits no distinction between the pagan Proclus
or the Christian Dionysius. The key doctrine that unites both theologians is
the principle that divine things must be known in a divine mode, for like is
only known by like, and that this knowledge is inherently dispossessive –​it
is not according to the creature’s ownness (proprietas).69 Indeed, the major
attributes of the unum animae mentioned here by Berthold correspond to
those used, for example, by Thomas Aquinas relative to the nature of faith, and
the distinction between knowing divine things “according to our mode”, as the
philosophers do, and knowing them “according to the mode of divine things”

67 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 64, l. 395-​415.

68 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 63, l. 375-​377: Quod patet primo ex prin-
cipii cognitivi inspectione, quo theologus in divinis apprehendendis versatur, quod est emi-
nentius et sic perspicacius omni alio principio cognitivo, quo circa alia quaecumque scibilia
occupamur.
69 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 65, l. 419-​420: quomodo divina tract-
antes efficiuntur di et cognoscunt divina; p. 65, l. 453: anima se totam in ipso [uno] statuens
efficiatur quasi Deus.
182  Chapter 3

through infused faith.70 Similarly, Aquinas’ commentary on the De divinis

nominibus implied that the “union above the nature of the mind” should be
identified with knowledge of divine things by grace.71 The crucial passages
from De divinis nominibus c. 7 on the unity exalted above the nature of the
mind and faith locating the soul in the highest Truth find a direct correlate
in Proclus’ statement in De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, that “this
unum is more divine than intellect”, and “locates” the soul in the divine life.72
Berthold would entirely accept the way Albert and Aquinas had used Dionysius
to describe this supra-​intellectual perfection of the intellect they identified as
faith. The only difference was that he realised that the same principle had to
be extended to the pagan Proclus and, through him, to the Platonic tradition.
Finally, Berthold contrasted (2) the cognitive habits of Platonic supersapi-
entia and Aristotelian sapientia in terms of their (a) certainty, (b) complexity,
and (c) nobility. Berthold’s source for the citations of Aristotle was Sapientiale
iii.23, where Thomas of York had focused on the dignity of wisdom in rela-
tion to all the other intellectual habits discussed in Nicomachean Ethics vi.73
Berthold’s arguments involved primarily a fortiori comparisons, which followed
quite naturally from the name he invented for the habit of Platonic theology: if
Aristotelian sapientia is so noble, how much nobler must Platonic supersapi-
entia be! (a) Wisdom, according to Aristotle, demonstrates not only from the
principles of things, but is a “veridical science” of the principles themselves.
The examples taken from Eustratius of “distances, length, breadth, depth” as
the principles of geometry then accomplishes an important transition in the

70 Thomas Aquinas, Super Boetium De Trinitate, ed. P.-​M.J. Gils (Roma: Commissio Leonina,
1992), q. 2, a .2, p. 95, l. 65-​77: Et secundum hoc de divinis duplex scientia habetur: una secun-
dum modum nostrum, qui sensibilium principia accipit ad notificandum divina, et sic de
divinis philosophi scientiam tradiderunt, philosophiam primam scientiam divinam dicentes;
alia secundum modum ipsorum divinorum, ut ipsa divina secundum se ipsa capiantur, quae
quidem perfecte in statu viae nobis est impossibilis, sed fit nobis in statu viae quaedam illius
cognitionis participatio et assimilatio ad cognitionem divinam, in quantum per fidem nobis
infusam inheremus ipsi primae veritati propter se ipsam.
71 Thomas Aquinas, In librum beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus Expositio, c. vii, lect. 1,
n. 705, p. 262: secundo vero, habet quamdam unitionem ad res divinas per gratiam, quae
excedit naturam mentis nostrae, per quam unitionem, coniunguntur homines per fidem
aut quamcumque cognitionem, ad ea quae sunt super naturalem mentis virtutem.
72 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 16, p. 25, l. 650-​652: per unum, quod est intellectu
divinius, ‘in quod consummans anima et locans se ad ipsam divina est et vivit divina vita,
secundum quod huic est licitum’.
73 Retucci, “Nuovi percorsi”, p. 91–​92. On Berthold’s ambiguous stance toward Aristotle
here, see W. Goris, “Metaphysik und Einheitswissenschaft bei Berthold von Moosburg”, in
Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 85(2018), p. 239–​258.
Praeambulum libri 183

Praeambulum from the earlier epistemological account of principles as propo-

sitions to an ontological conception of principles as objects.74 This shift made
possible Berthold’s ensuing argument, citing Proclus, that the Platonic ascent
through dialectic and the principles of the various sciences (the point in geom-
etry, the monad in arithmetic, etc.), rising to the unhypothetical first principle,
reaches a domain beyond what Aristotle had considered. To this extent must
the principles of Platonic wisdom surpass Aristotle’s in certitude.75 These are
precisely not the arguments we would expect to find in Dietrich, for they imply
that our knowledge of the separate substances can in fact be more certain than
our knowledge of being and its properties.
(b) Whereas sapientia is a combination of intellectus and discursive scientia,
the habit of “our super-​sapiential wisdom” is, in the words of Boethius, “the
simple inspection of the Form forming all things as such” (simplex inspectio
formae simpliciter omnia formantis).76 In other words, supersapientia is the
non-​discursive apprehension of the entire universe as it is enfolded in the
Form forming all things. This would correspond to the content of the intel-
lectus adeptus as Berthold inherited it from Dietrich of Freiberg, as implied in
Dietrich’s citation of Gregory the Great on St. Benedict’s vision of the entire
universe in a single ray of light. But, as we saw, the Boethian notion of intelli-
gentia for Berthold includes a deeper cognition prior to reflexivity. This funda-
mental dimension of intelligence emerges in Berthold’s subsequent citation
of Dionysius on the capacity of rational souls who, “by enveloping the many
into one” become “worthy of intellections equal to the angels”, insofar as this is
possible for the soul. The angels, Dionysius continued, are capable of a unitive,
uniform contemplation and are “figured [figurata] after divine supersapientia”.
In other words, to know the simple, the soul itself must become simple. The
“most divine cognition of God” for angels or for souls, Berthold concluded with
Dionysius, is “through ignorance according to the union above mind, when the
mind, having departed from everything else, and then also sending itself away,
is united with the super-​resplendent rays, and is illuminated hither and yon by

74 This elision was noted by S. Gersh, “Berthold of Moosburg and the Content and Method of
Platonic Philosophy”, in J. Aertsen, K. Emery, Jr., A. Speer (eds), Nach der Verurteilung von
1277, p. 493–​503, at p. 499–​500.
75 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 66, l. 488: certissima et altissima cognitio
hominis deificati.
76 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 67, l. 521-​523: intelligentiae vero celsior
oculus existit, supergressa namque universitatis ambitum illam simplicem formam pura
mentis acie contuetur. This is a combination of syntagms from Boethius’ De Trinitate (c.
2), on the intellectual mode of theology, and the Consolatio philosophiae (lib. v, prosa 4),
on intelligentia.
184  Chapter 3

the inscrutable depth of wisdom [inde et ibi non scrutabili profundo sapientiae
illuminata]”.77 These are the same texts Berthold used later in the Expositio to
describe the circular and the direct motions of the soul and the doctrine of
contemplation. If we are to assume a coherent doctrine behind it all, we must
again conclude that the habit of supersapientia, though it is first cultivated in
the oblique motion, is only perfected in these two higher motions, which are
given by God.
(c) The nobility of this science surpasses Aristotelian metaphysics in its sub-
ject and in its form. Whereas Aristotle’s metaphysics treats “being as being, its
parts and properties”, Plato’s divine science concerns “the universe of divine
things”: God, the primordial causes, and their orders. The latter science is com-
prised of “principles” through which the mind ascends to the contemplation
of the existence (anitas), but not the essence (quiditas) of God. Berthold once
again relies chiefly on the authority of Dionysius: the mind cannot know God
simply from his nature, for God exceeds all reason, “but from the ordering of all
things, placed out before him”.78 For Berthold, in a phrase redolent of Dietrich,
this is a necessity recognised by the philosophers in the domain of natural prov-
idence that must be respected by theologians reasoning within the sphere of
voluntary providence: “if none of the wise inquires generally after the essence
[quid est] of the superessential principle of all […] what theologian presumes
to inquire after the superunifical superessence of the primarily One?”79
Here yet again, the Platonic consensus, which united the best of the pagans
with the doctors of the Church, has transcended the boundaries of natural and
voluntary providence in the Praeambulum. Nevertheless, just as we saw with
Berthold’s incorporation of the terminology of antarkia and hierarchia, this
did not amount to a confusion of the two orders. Berthold had clearly asserted
that the articles of faith are the first principles in the theology of voluntary
providence. If questioned further about the difference between the two theol-
ogies, perhaps he would draw on the unused resources of the Praeambulum to

77 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 67, l. 523 –​p. 68, l. 538.

78 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 1, p. 5, l. 15-​16. Commenting on the same passage
(De divinis nominibus, 7.3, 869C-​D), Albert denied that even the blessed know the quid est
of God, but only the quia est. Cf. Albert the Great, Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus,
ed. P. Simon (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1972), 7.25, p. 356, l. 32 –​p. 357, l. 55, as well as 1.21,
1.24, 1.62, 5.3, 6.9, 7.30, 13.27; id., Super Dionysium De mystica theologia, c. 1; Super Epistulas
I and V. F. Ruello, Les “Noms divins” et leurs “raisons” selon saint Albert the Grand commen-
tateur du De divinis nominibus (Paris: Vrin, 1963), p. 98–​101, has argued convincingly that,
for Albert, there are degrees of knowledge of the divine quia est in the beatific vision
according to the various apprehensions of the rationes of the divine attributes.
79 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 123K, p. 133, l. 271-​274, cited in 1.2, n. 86.
Praeambulum libri 185

explain that they are believed through the free assent to authority rather than
through the spontaneous assent of the cogitative power. But whether he would
follow this route or not, it is clear that the habit of Platonic theology has not
replaced faith. Berthold has rather extended the dignity that had exclusively
belonged to faith, as Albert and Aquinas had understood it through Dionysius,
to the habit of supersapientia: the cognition of the unum animae is deifying
and salvific, it is given by a divine gift, and the difference between contem-
plation, in the strict sense, in via and in patria is simply one of degree rather
than kind.
There was for Berthold some doctrinal overlap between the articles of faith
and supersapientia. Following Thomas of York, Berthold held that the Trinity
was known to the philosophers reasoning to the invisibilia Dei; building on the
Clavis physicae, he held that the general Resurrection accords with the laws
of natural providence. This of course left out the doctrine of the Incarnation
and the sacramental means by which the restoration achieved through Christ
is communicated to individuals who are members of his body. As we will see
in Chapter 5, Berthold’s Eriugenian conception of human nature and the Fall,
as set out in his commentary on the final propositions of the Elementatio
theologica, brings the reader as close to the Incarnation of the Word as the
order of natural providence allowed. Sacred history and matters relating to
the fate of individuals would fall within the study of the order of voluntary
providence, which presupposes and consummates the order of natural prov-
idence.80 The precise character of this consummation can only be surmised
in its barest outlines from the Expositio. What seems clear is that no propo-
nent of the methodology of gemina providentia held that an individual, as an
individual, could somehow stand outside the order of voluntary providence.
Even though, as we have seen, the ontological constitution of angels embeds
them in the order of natural providence, we must assume for Berthold that
the the study of the order of natural providence through the Elementatio the-
ologica is something a person undertakes who is always embedded within the
voluntary order.
The astonishing thing about Berthold’s position is that the study of Platonic
philosophy through a pagan text and the development of the habit of supersa-
pientia makes a person more receptive to divine grace. This is possible because,
as we will see in further detail in Part Two, Berthold understood deification to
consist in the restoration of the human individual to the dignity that belongs
to human nature (the microcosm), which is itself a recapitulation of the

80 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 129F, p. 182, l. 299-​302.

186  Chapter 3

macrocosm. This pushes the dialectical relation between natural and volun-
tary providence in Berthold’s doctrine of the unum animae even further: the
highest freedom for the human individual consists in living in conformity with
the human nature that always abides in the Word. In other words, it seems
from the Expositio that the “consummation” of natural providence by volun-
tary providence is for the individual to become adequate to the hidden depth
of its nature where God already dwells.
What difference remains between supersapientia and faith, then, must
chiefly concern the means by which the perfecting habit dispossesses, unifies,
and locates its subject in the first truth. Both would begin from the outside, both
would begin with belief, and would both go beyond the mundane wisdom of
the (Aristotelian) philosophers. One follows the arduous way of reasoning by
the theorems of Platonic philosophy, which united knowledge and action, the
study of nature and ascesis, to the apprehension of the primordial causes and
the awareness of a more hidden depth in the soul. This enlarges the mind and
prepares it to be elevated to a non-​discursive but reflexive vision of those hid-
den mysteries through the acquired intellect (the sublevatio mentis that occurs
through human industry and grace) and, within and beyond that, to an oper-
ative union with the plenitude of the Word (the exultatio mentis). As Tauler
succinctly put it, to the extent that a person abandons themself and turns to
the ground of the soul, grace is born within them.81 Thoroughly in agreement
with the spirit of Berthold’s teaching, Tauler acknowledged that the pagans
were familiar with this ground through their knowledge and ascesis, while we
Christians, he lamented, are strangers to it.82 Tauler perfectly expressed the
cultural ramifications of Berthold’s extension of the dignity of faith to Platonic
supersapientia. For Berthold, this was nothing else but the consequence of his
realisation that the De mystica theologia of Dionysius and the Tria opuscula

81 John Tauler, Predigt 60d (Trinity Sunday), p. 300, l. 25-​28: Also verre sich der mensche in den
grunt liesse und kerte, do wúrt die genode geborn und anders nút eigenlich in der hoesten
wisen. –​Hievon sprach ein heidenscher meister Proculus […].
82 Cf. John Tauler, Predigt 61 (Nativity of John the Baptist), p. 332, l. 16-​21: Der nu in sinen inni-
gen grunt dicke kerte und dem heimlich were, dem wúrde manig edel blik von dem inwen-
digen grunde, der im noch klorer und offenbarer were (das Got ist) denne sinen liplichen
ougen die materieliche sunne. Disem grunde woren die heiden heimlich und versmochten ze
mole zergengkliche ding und giengen disem grunde nach. (“Whoever turns often into his
inner ground and becomes familiar with it, will receive many noble sightings of the inner
ground, which will reveal to him that God exists in a clearer and more manifest way than
the material sun is present to his bodily eyes. The pagans were familiar with this ground
and they abstained from material things and pursued this ground.”) For the rest of the
passage, see Part One, n. 6, above.
Praeambulum libri 187

of Proclus transmitted the same doctrine of divinising wisdom (sapientia div-

inalis) that proceeds “not according to ourselves, but our whole selves placed
outside our whole selves and deified wholly”.
As for the way of faith, if the sermons of Tauler can still serve as a guide, it
would follow the more immediate but no less difficult path of reaching the
divinity of the incarnate Word, whose lower and higher powers were con-
stantly tending to the Father,83 by a dispossessive conformity to his humanity,
by humility, and by the recognition of one’s own nothingness.84 In both paths,
we might say, the propensity of the old Adam for appropriation and familiarity
is gradually curbed as one begins to live by God’s life (dispensat mundum cum
dis; vivit divina vita), through whom the soul’s many works become a single
work (so ein guot werk mag heissen alle die manigvaltikeit).
83 John Tauler, Predigt 39 (Fifth Sunday after Trinity), ed. F. Vetter, p. 157, l. 13 –​p. 158, l. 23: Die
edele minnekliche sele, unser herre Jhesus Christus, die was nach iren obersten kreften ane
alle underlos gekert fúrwúrflichen in die gotheit, […] und was denne aber als selig und
gebruchlich als si ietzunt ist. […] Die im aller gelichest nu nachvolgent an den goetlichen
fúrwúrfen, in dem wirken und gebruchen ein wirt, die súllent im aller glichest her nach sin
in weselichem gebruchen eweklichen. […] Also tuot der inwendige verklerte mensche: der
ist inwendig in sinem gebruchende, und mit dem liechte siner redelicheit so úbersicht er
gehelingen die uswendige krefte und berichtet die zuo irem wúrklichem amte, und inwendig
ist er versunken und versmolzen in sinem gebruchlichen anhangende an Gotte, und blibt in
siner friheit ungehindert sins werkes. Doch disen inwendigen dienent alle die uswendigen
werk, das enkein so klein werk enist, es diene alles her zuo. So ein guot werk mag heissen
alle die manigvaltikeit. (“The noble and adorable soul, our Lord Jesus Christ, which was
in its higher powers without interruption objectively turned toward the divinity, […] was
then as blessed and joyful then as it is now. […] Those who now follow him in all things
as closely as possible in their objective orientation to the divine, in whom to act and to
enjoy are one –​these people should be as close to him as possible in essential and eternal
joy. […] This is what an inwardly illumined person does: he is inward in his enjoyment,
and with the light of his discernment he thus surveys at once the outer powers and directs
each of them to their task, and inwardly he is engulfed and melted away in his joyful
dependency on God, and remains in his freedom unhindered by his works. Rather, all
these outward works serve the inward joy, such that there is no work so small that it does
not contribute to all. Thus, one may call all the multiplicity one good work.”).
84 John Tauler, Predigt 45 (Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity), ed. F. Vetter, p. 197, l. 1-​2: Das eine
das ist das du bekennest din nicht, das din eigen ist, was du bist und wer du bist von dir selber.
(“The one thing necessary is that you recognise your nothing, which is proper to you, is
what you are, and is who you are in yourself.”).
 pa rt 2
Providere cum diis. The Philosophical
Principles of the Expositio

∵
 Wherever there is found a one in actuality, there providence is nec-
essarily found.1

∵
As was clear from Berthold’s sermon on Romans 1:20, the Hermetic concep-
tion of the macrocosm and microcosm, and their dynamic interrelation, was
for him the framework within which the entirety of philosophical theology
could be recapitulated. In what follows, this Hermetic motif will be used to
frame a systematic overview of metaphysical and anthropological themes in
Berthold’s commentary on the Elementatio theologica. As Berthold interpreted
Proclus within a commentary tradition deeply informed by the Liber de causis,
it was held as a basic principle that a higher or more primary cause has a wider
amplitude of causal influence than a lower or secondary cause (Propositions
56-​57). Diversity or multiplicity arises as lower causes restrict or limit the causal
influence of the higher: each lower cause presupposes both the power of the
immediately prior cause and the effect or substratum that this prior cause has
produced or elaborated (Propositions 71-​72). In this way, complexity increases
towards the centre of the cosmic order, where we find the human, who is “the
horizon of simple and composite beings”.2 The particularity of the human’s
place in the order, therefore, is not its status as an image of God (imago Dei),
for the plethora of principles above it, and especially the primordial causes, are
also imagines Dei.3 The human is set apart because it alone receives the gifts of
all the gods.4 In this sense, one might call it an imago deorum, which amounts
to saying that the human reflects within itself the totality of primordial causes
in the divine Word. Because it concentrates within itself the diversity found
in the cosmos, “composed from the primary parts of this greater world”, it is a
minor mundus and, accordingly, is every creature (omnis creatura).5

1 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 120H, p. 102, l. 372-​373: Necessario, ubicumque invenitur

unum secundum actum, ibi et providere invenietur.
2 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 72C, p. 39, l. 53-​67.
3 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 32E, p. 211, l. 166 –​p. 212, l. 201; 177C, p. 175, l. 81 –​p. 176, l. 93.
Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.34.1-​3, p. 172, l. 31 –​p. 173, l. 51. See also
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 93, a. 3.
4 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 162C, p. 18, l. 75-​79.
5 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 164D, p. 34, l. 88-​90.

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_007

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
192  Part 2

Following this order, then, we will begin with the macrocosm, descending
gradually to the human, who is “the most composite”, and finally consider the
dynamic relation between the two worlds –​that is, how individuals are made
adequate to the abiding dignity of the microcosm, and how the microcosm in
its entirety is harmonised with the macrocosm.6
6 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 59D, p. 168, l. 184-​185; 58F, p. 161, l. 159-​162.
 ­c hapter 4

Exstasis divini amoris

The Macrocosm

Broadly speaking, following Propositions 20-​21, Berthold demarcated four

internally ordered ranks (maneries) within Proclus’ cosmology of natural prov-
idence: (1) that of the One, which includes the gods or primordial causes; (2) of
Intellect, which includes everything beneath the primordial causes down to
and excluding heavenly souls; (3) of Soul, including both heavenly (“whole”)
and human (“partial”) souls; (4) and of Body or Nature, embracing the world
of generation or becoming.1 He largely but not exclusively interpreted the
interactions within and between these levels through a theory of causality
he adapted from Dietrich of Freiberg, who had distinguished between three
kinds of causes (essential, substantial, and accidental).2 Directly in line with
Dietrich, Berthold also maintained that, in any of these three kinds of causes,
one finds that an “interior transfusion” is the principle of any activity directed
to the outside –​this is true of all four maneries, of bodies as much as of the
Trinity.3 But in a significant departure from Dietrich, Berthold maintained that
only a Platonic perspective on causality and universality, which places the One
and the Good at the foundation of the cosmos, can adequately account for this
interior dynamism and the order that flows from it. Therefore, we must first
grasp the fundamental distinction in Berthold’s view between the Aristotelian
and the Platonic understandings of first principles in metaphysics and the-
ology, with which he began his remarks on Proposition 1 of the Elementatio.
Upon that basis we shall find that the philosophy of the Expositio can indeed
be regarded, as Loris Sturlese remarked, as a “thinking through” of Dietrich’s
metaphysics within the context of the Elementatio theologica and Berthold’s
understanding of the revision of first principles it required.4 The result of this,
as we glimpsed in Berthold’s subtle but decisive transformation of Dietrich’s

1 On the political and literary origins of the term maneries, see D. Calma, “Maneries”, in
I. Atucha et al. (eds), Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach (Porto: Fédération Internationale
des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2011), p. 433–​444.
2 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 3.2.9.4, p. 90, l. 2 –​p. 93, l. 104.
3 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, i.5.1 –​ i.9.2, p. 139, l. 59 –​p. 142, l. 93.
4 Sturlese, Homo divinus, p. 143: “Als Berthold die Entscheidung traf, die Philosophie Dietrichs
in Form eines Prokloskommentars zu durchdenken […]”.

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_008

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
194  Chapter 4

methodology and theology in the Expositio tituli and the Praeambulum, was a
philosophy that placed the ecstatic before the substantial and the non-​reflexive
prior to reflexivity both in the cosmos and in the human soul.

1 Plato and Aristotle on the One and the Good

By the end of the Praeambulum it became clear that Berthold was less inter-
ested in drawing a boundary between Christianity and pagan Platonism than
between the Platonic divine science and Aristotelian metaphysics. This con-
trast between the two traditions is carried on as a leitmotif of the Expositio.5
The problem, as we will now see, was not with Aristotle’s philosophy as a
whole, but rather with its account of the immaterial world.6 Berthold largely
accepted Aristotelian natural philosophy as it applies to the world of becom-
ing. But when the relationship of potency and act in that domain was extended
to apply to the order of the separate substances, according to Berthold the
consequences were dire: metaphysics became content to function as a sort of
logical game that had jettisoned any attempt to reach the realities themselves
or to make its practitioner disposed to receive them. For Berthold, realising
Aristotle’s ambitions for a science of the separate substances, whose transi-
tory contemplation is the highest felicity in this life, required a revision in first
principles.
At the outset of his commentary on Proposition 1 (“Every plurality in some
way participates the One”),7 Berthold announced that Plato and Aristotle have
opposed ways of accounting for the origin of distinction and plurality (ratio
distinguendi).8 According to Berthold, Aristotle’s mistake was not that “act
separates and distinguishes” (Metaphysics vii.13, 1039a7) but the belief that
this was universally the case. As the Dominican presented it, Aristotle arrived
at this position through a thoroughly physicalist orientation to the question
of substance: “in the foundation of nature, namely prime matter, nothing is

5 Passages may be classified according to the following themes: on abstract metaphysics and
real divine science (1A, 11A); on abstract and separate universals (16D, 67C, 135K, and 136D-​E);
on the soul as self-​moving (17A-​B); on the ideas (177H and 178B).
6 For a similar criticism of Aristotle made by Proclus, unbeknownst to Berthold, see C. Steel,
“Why Should We Prefer Plato’s Timaeus to Aristotle’s Physics? Proclus’ Critique of Aristotle’s
Causal Explanation of the Physical World”, in Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies.
Supplement 78(2003), p. 175–​187.
7 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 1, p. 3, l. 1: Omnis multitudo participat aliqualiter uno.
8 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 1A, p. 72, l. 48 –​p. 74, l. 125.
Exstasis divini amoris 195

distinct”. If act always determines potency, then prime matter must be “one by
privation” of act.
In Berthold’s reconstruction of the Aristotelian approach, we move from
this assumption about act and potency to a metaphysical reduction to being
as the first principle. Since act is in some sense “opposed” to potency, Berthold
presented what he described as a summary of Aristotle’s arguments in
Metaphysics x about the most fundamental opposition or contradiction, from
which arise the notions of act and potency as well as “one” and “many”.9 His
tacit and direct source here was Dietrich of Freiberg’s De natura contrariorum,
which used Aristotle’s text extensively to explain the nature of contraries that
are the basis of physical change in the elements apprehended by our senses.10
According to Aristotle, the opposition of potency and act is logically depend-
ent on the more fundamental opposition of privation and positive possession
(privatio et habitus). To understand what Berthold meant by this, we can look
more closely at Dietrich’s analysis of Aristotle’s arguments.11 Contraries are
what differ maximally within a genus, which is “the common nature” that the
notion of contrariety presupposes as the basis for comparison. While a genus
as a common nature implies some kind of formal content, it is also capable of
further determination by differentiae that are more formal than it; the genus
thus becomes “the subject”, broadly speaking, of affirmation and negation. The
genus in this perspective is an aptitude for either affirmation or negation; or, in
other words, it is what positively relates to the common term in question (hab-
itus) or what is remote from it (privatio). This is what Berthold assumed when
he wrote that this “first contrariety” of privation and habitus has “originated
from the first opposition as such” which (following Dietrich) he identified as
contradiction (contradictio) or affirmation and negation in a given subject.
“Contradiction” is more absolute than “contrariety” because the latter admits
of degrees and intermediary states, and these presuppose contradiction as
their measure. With contradiction, then, we arrive at the “first and original
reason of every distinction”, namely, “the contradictory opposition of being to
non-​being as such”. Tellingly, Berthold did not include the portion of Dietrich’s
argument emphasising that affirmation and negation must not be understood
in a strictly propositional or logical sense, but as “real, simple intentions con-
cerning being” –​for Dietrich, only in this way can they give rise to the real

9 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 1A, p. 73, l. 88–​89.

10 Dietrich of Freiberg, De natura contrariorum, 1.1, p. 83, l. 2-​3: Considerandum de vocatis
elementis, inquantum invenitur in eis principium transmutationis physicae […].
11 Dietrich of Freiberg, De natura contrariorum, 2.1-​3.5, p. 83, l. 12 –​p. 85, l. 91.
196  Chapter 4

intentions of “one” and “many”.12 But this was not the Aristotle Berthold was
resisting.
Berthold continued to rely on Dietrich to explain how, for Aristotle, the
notions of “one” and “many” are “the primary modes of being” deduced from
the absolute opposition (that is, the contradiction of affirmation and negation
or of being and non-​being). The notion of “one” (ratio unius) removes the dis-
tinction (removetur distinctio) that occurs between being and non-​being as
such, since what is one is simultaneously “indistinct in itself and distinct from
anything else”.13 That is, what is indistinct in itself contains no division or dis-
tance (remotio). In this sense the distinction that is effected by the opposition
of being and non-​being is removed or negated. But when the ratio unius is pre-
supposed and the distinction of affirmation and negation is posited (ponitur
distinctio), then we have the notion of “many” (ratio multi). For “many” implies
that there is one thing and another thing, and that this one is not that one.
Again following Dietrich, Berthold clarified that the opposition of affir-
mation and negation is found in every intention of being. Therefore, it is not
“exceeded by being itself” but is coterminous with it, for being is not a genus.
So too the first modes that arise from the opposition of “one” and “many” do
not divide any “common intention” but are “a simple enumeration of beings”.
This implies that the amplitude of the ratio unius is coextensive to that of the
ratio entis. However, in any determinate genus of being, the modes that arise
from the opposition of privation and habitus are themselves determinate.
Three examples of this are given by Berthold in 1A. (1) If the formal intention of
the genus is something analogically common, as “healthy” is said of an animal
and of urine, then we speak of the determinate modes of identity and diver-
sity (diversitas). Dietrich had argued that this term “diversity” is appropriate
because, in the case of analogical commonality, the intention of being is not
truly one (non tamen vere una), since the terms do not really and truly share
the common nature.14 (2) If the formal intention of the genus is univocally
common, then we have a clear case of the privation and habitus of a common
nature, whose modes are identity and “difference” (differentia). For example,
plants and animals univocally share the identical genus of “animated body”

12 Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De natura contrariorum, 13.1, p. 93, l. 47-​55. Cf. V. Decaix, “Les
transcendentaux et l’un. Dietrich de Freiberg à l’école de Thomas d’Aquin”, in Bochumer
philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter 16(2013), p. 146–​162, at p. 154–​160, on
the similarities of Dietrich’s derivation of the notion of “one” to the approach taken by
Aquinas.
13 Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De natura contrariorum, 16.2, p. 95, l. 30–​35.
14 Dietrich of Freiberg, De natura contrariorum, 19.2-​20.1, p. 97, l. 105 –​p. 98, l. 10.
Exstasis divini amoris 197

but “differ” in species.15 (3) Finally, if privation is somehow intrinsic to one pair
of the opposition, as the colour black is inherently the privation of the colour
white, then we speak of the determinate modes of “likeness” and “contrariety”
(similitudo, contrarietas).16
Berthold included these examples of determinate genera and their modes
because they provided a catalogue of the kinds of unity and plurality that pop-
ulate a world in which act or habitus always determines potency. Plato, how-
ever, followed another path (via) concerning the origin of plurality:

Although [Plato] conceded that distinction is the formal cause of plural-

ity, yet according to him act only distinguishes in material things, and not
everywhere, that is, not in the entire universe of things.17

In material things, it is indeed the case that what is more common –​either in
reality (prime matter) or in reason, whether it be analogical (being as such)
or univocal –​is more potential and is distinguished or “determined” by act
and specific differentiae. But it is otherwise in the immaterial order, where the
more common or “more universal” is more actual (activius); here, we are in
the domain of the universality of separation (universalitas separationis) or the
theological universal (universale theologicum), while regarding material things
we speak only of the universality of predication (universalitas praedicationis)
or the logical universal (universale logicum).
This is the fulcrum around which the discord of Plato and Aristotle turns in
the Expositio. Berthold explained that Aristotle, failing to observe this distinc-
tion of universality, understood being (ens) as a transcendental (transcendens)
and “the first of all intentions”, which does not have existence outside the soul
(non habens esse in rerum natura extra animam). He reached the priority of ens
by a logical abstraction according to the dictates of the universality of predica-
tion. Now, a transcendental is an intention that is not confined to a particular
genus or category.18 As we have seen, since the notions of “one” and “many” are
not confined to any determinate genus, they too for Aristotle must be transcen-
dentals, which do not exist outside the soul (transcendentia, quarum esse etiam

15 Dietrich of Freiberg, De natura contrariorum, 21.1-​23.2, p. 98, l. 16 –​p. 99, l. 42.

16 Dietrich of Freiberg, De natura contrariorum, 24.1-​3, p. 99, l. 50 –​p. 100, l. 71.
17 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 1A, p. 73, l. 90-​94: Plato vero alia via incedit circa multitu-
dinis originem, qui, licet concedat distinctionem esse formalem causam multitudinis, tamen
actus secundum eum non ubique, hoc est in tota rerum universitate, distinguit nisi in solis
materialibus.
18 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 11A, p. 185, l. 24-​25; 136E, p. 7, l. 140 –​p. 8, l. 161.
198  Chapter 4

non est extra animam). The entire deduction of the modes of the opposition of
affirmation and negation –​metaphysics as the science of being and its proper-
ties –​was thus regarded by Berthold as a purely logical exercise, which remains
valid if its application is restricted to those boundaries. For Berthold, unlike for
Dietrich, Aristotle’s deduction in Metaphysics x tells us nothing about the real
origin of diversity. This is why it was necessary to follow Plato’s more counter-​
intuitive approach. As Eustratius reported, Plato posited the ineffable Good as
the common cause of all things, prior to the difference of being and non-​being
(super ens et non ens). Distinction arises from the fact that what comes from
the principle (principiatum) its less actual than its source, and to that extent it
falls short (recessum) of the first principle as such.19
In Proposition 11 (“All beings proceed from one first cause”),20 we find a con-
vergent account of the Aristotelian approach to first principles. This time the
transcendentals were more directly Berthold’s focus. According to Berthold,
Aristotle held that being (ens) is “the first and most formal of all intentions”
because it is the last in “resolution”.21 As Wouter Goris has shown, Berthold’s
notion of the resolution to ens moved through two levels: the first followed the
argument of the Posterior Analytics to reach the principle of non-​contradiction,
and another taken from Avicenna that led to the non-​complex first principle of
knowing.22 As in Proposition 1, Berthold aimed to prove that Aristotle arrived
to the primacy of ens through a reflection on the first principles of logical anal-
ysis, always with the assumption that act determines potency. With this logical
primacy of being, the other transcendentals, “one, good, true, thing, and some-
thing” are seen further determinations of or additions to the notion of ens.
These additions, Berthold never tired of repeating, are purely rational and have
their reality only in the understanding.
Berthold then drew the critical conclusion that haunts Aristotle through-
out the Expositio, turning against him the words of Averroes’ commentary on

19 A similar argument about act and potency, which used the language of accessus and
recessus and appealed explicitly to the Elementatio theologica, was made by Godfrey of
Fontaines in favour the real identity of essence and existence in the separate substances.
See Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines, p. 90–​97.
20 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 11, p. 8, l. 1: Omnia entia procedunt ab una causa prima.
21 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 11A, p. 185, l. 28 –​p. 186, l. 53. This terminology derived
from Dietrich: De ente et essentia, ed. R. Imbach, in Opera omnia, vol. 2, i.2.2, p. 28, l. 78-​78;
id., De natura contrariorum, 15.1, p. 94, l. 3-​4; id., De quiditatibus entium, 1.3, p. 99, l. 12-​13;
id., De origine rerum praedicamentalium, 1.7, p. 139, l. 75-​76.
22 W. Goris, “Das Gute als Ersterkanntes bei Berthold von Moosburg”, in W. Goris (ed.),
Die Metaphysik und das Gute. Aufsätze zu ihrem Verhältnis in Antike und Mittelalter, Jan
A. Aertsen zu Ehren (Leuven: Peeters, 1999), p. 139–​172, at p. 151–​156.
Exstasis divini amoris 199

Metaphysics x: “being” and “one” are “universal categories which do not have
being outside the soul”.23 In the judgement of Jan Aertsen, this is the most
remarkable aspect of Berthold’s account of Aristotle.24 When confronted with
Aristotle’s explicit declaration that “good” and “bad” are in things (bonum et
malum sunt in rebus), Berthold conceded that, while this is true of things sub-
jectively (subiective), the transcendental notions of “good” and “bad” them-
selves for Aristotle still exist only in the soul as concepts (conceptibiliter sunt in
anima). What he likely meant was that “good” and “bad” are attributes that “sub-
jectively” presuppose something already constituted in actual being. Berthold
perhaps had in mind Nicomachean Ethics i.6, where Aristotle rejected the
existence of any ideal Good that would be distinct from its different meanings
in the various genera of being; any universal Good apart from these instances
could only be an abstraction. Indeed, Berthold immediately cited Eustratius’
criticism of this argument as “sophistic”, given that Aristotle himself affirmed
at the beginning of the Ethics that “the Good is what all things desire”.25 For
Dionysius, as Berthold noted, this universal desire is precisely one of the rea-
sons the Good should be placed beyond the difference of being and non-​being,
because it extends its causal power to both what is and what is not.26
Therefore, according to Berthold, when Proclus stated in Proposition 11 that
being is the immediate effect of the first cause, he meant something very dif-
ferent from Aristotle, for Proclus has understood being as being (ens in eo, quod
ens) in the “Platonic” way. In Berthold’s view, Aristotle worked with two mean-
ings of ens. It either referred to being in its generality, insofar as it abstracts
both from motion and change (physical being) and from mathematical being
(this is what Aristotle studied in the Metaphysics) or it referred to being as it
is constituted from its intrinsic principles, that is, after one has removed the
extrinsic principles of efficient and final causality from one’s consideration of
being (this is what Aristotle studied in Metaphysics xii, where he focused only
on the intrinsic principles of matter and form in substance).27 The Platonists,
however, gave “being as being” three additional senses, each of which referred

23 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 1D, p. 77, l. 218-​19: Ens et unum praedicamenta universalia
sunt, quae non habent esse extra animam.
24 Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought, p. 548.
25 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 11A, p. 187, l. 68-​80.
26 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 11A, p. 187, l. 81-​86.
27 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 11B, p. 188, l. 100-​117: […] Et secundum hanc generaliorem
entis rationem Aristoteles prosequitur de ipso in sua Metaphysica. […] Et istum modum
entis ponit Aristoteles XII Metaphysicae, ubi etiam dicit Commentator, quod res habet
rationem entis in eo, quod ens, inquantum subsistit ex his intrinsecis suis principiis, scilicet
materia et forma.
200  Chapter 4

to the ordered series of real intentions that are found in the universe. In the
broadest sense, it refers to the entire order of being and the higher principles
that constitute it (goodness and infinity); more strictly, it refers to the pri-
mordial cause of being; finally, most strictly, it refers to anything contained
within the order generated by that primordial cause.28 According to Berthold,
Proposition 11 could be interpreted relative to all three Platonic senses of “being
as being”, but more properly it should be understood to the final sense. Either
way, Proclus was describing being as it really is in the nature of things, where
what is more universal in its influence or more indeterminate is prior to what
is more determinate or less universal. By indicating a more adequate interpre-
tation of the proposition, in which the phrase “from one first cause” (ab una
prima causa) would refer to the order of beings descending from the primor-
dial cause of being, Berthold was signalling how thoroughly Proclus differed
from the later standpoint of the Liber de causis and its unequivocal affirmation
that the first of created things is being (Proposition 4: prima rerum creatarum
est esse et non est ante ipsum creatum aliud).
For the remainder of the Expositio, whenever Berthold explicitly compared
Plato and Aristotle, it was most frequently on the question of abstraction and
separation or, in other words, on the logical universality of predication and
the theological universality of separation (see, e.g., 16D, 67C, 135K, and 136D-​
E). Berthold’s source for this distinction once again was Dietrich of Freiberg,
who maintained that “abstraction is the work of reason” but “separation is the
work of nature”.29 But with Berthold, especially owing to his interpretation
of Dionysius’ De mystica theologia through Proclus, this distinction took on a
soteriological valence entirely absent in Dietrich. As Berthold has presented
it, the metaphysics of being is founded on a physicalist approach to the rela-
tion of act and potency that ultimately accounts for the origin of diversity
through a merely logical reflection: in the physical world, act determines
potency; in metaphysics, the most formal intentions and the categories of
our understanding are merely notional additions to being. The kinds of plu-
rality we are left with are catalogued only according to the different kinds of
predication.
To reason only according to logical universals was, therefore, to remain in
the familiar order of what is “according to us”. From this point of view, lurking
behind the metaphysics of being is the spectre of solipsism. The assumption
was never far from Berthold’s mind that Proclus and Dionysius were talking

28 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 11B-​C, p. 188, l. 118 –​p. 189, l. 166.

29 Dietrich of Freiberg, De animatione caeli, 36.1, p. 42, l. 64-​67.
Exstasis divini amoris 201

about the same thing when Proclus subordinated Aristotle to Plato while out-
lining the hierarchy of modes of cognition in De providentia et fato, and when
Dionysius introduced the mode of mystical theology:

Indeed, these cognitive principles relate only to beings, although accord-

ing to different reasons. However, many divine things are above being.
For this reason, in ­chapter 1 of the Mystical Theology, [Dionysius] calls
‘unlearned’ those ‘who are sealed off in beings and believe that there is
nothing supersubstantially beyond beings, but they presume to know,
with that cognition that is according to themselves, him, who makes the
shadows his hiding place’. Consequently, it is impossible that we should
receive those things that are above us according to our ownness [iuxta
proprietatem nostram] and thus compare things divine with a reason that
has been reared on the senses.30

The Platonists attend to the things established in nature (res rata in natura)
rather than logical categories (esse in anima).31 Their orientation to reality is,
in other words, primarily an ecstatic one. The fundamental boundary between
doing theology “according to ourselves” and “not according to ourselves” cor-
responded to the difference between logical and theological universals. To
think the immaterial, the categories of thinking that are at home in the phys-
ical world must be reversed. But it is important to bear in mind that, for all of
this, Berthold did not denigrate the material world or natural philosophy. The
invisible things of God are always sought first of all through the creation of
the world, whether the world is regarded as an obscure “vestige” of them or a
more transparent “sign”. It would be better to say that, for Berthold, Aristotle’s
natural philosophy would in fact be better served by grounding it in the divine
science of the Good.
Here Berthold owed something further to Dionysius, and his notion
that the divine light or “thearchic ray” reaches the human mind through

30 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 64, l. 395 –​p. 65, l. 421: Verum quia ista
principia cognitiva non sunt nisi entium, licet secundum diversas rationes, pleraque autem
divinorum sunt superentia […] unde et in Mystica theologia cap. 1 indoctos vocat, ‘qui in
existentibus sunt firmati nihil super existentia supersubstantialiter esse opinantes, sed
putantes scire ea, quae secundum ipsos, cognitione eum, qui ponit tenebras latibulum suum’.
Cum ergo hoc sit impossibile, scilicet quod iuxta proprietatem nostram ea, quae sunt super
nos, accipiamus et hoc comparantes divina rationi connutritae sensibus. Cf. Expositio, 71D,
p. 35, l. 123-​127, cited above in Introduction, section 3, n. 150.
31 See, for example, Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 1A, p. 74, l. 106-​109; 11A, p. 186, l. 54-​55;
16D, p. 28, l. 143; 51A, p. 113, l. 19; 64D, p. 196, l. 120.
202  Chapter 4

the material world precisely to lure it outside itself. When commenting on

what Dionysius meant when he says that the divine science proceeds “not
according to ourselves”, Berthold cited this famous dictum from De caelesti
hierarchia:

It is impossible for the thearchic ray to illumine us from above unless it

envelops itself, in order to elevate us, with various sacred veils that are
according to us [quae sunt secundum nos], arranged naturally and famil-
iarly by the paternal providence.32

These veils include the spectacles (theorias) spoken of by two commenta-

tors on Dionysius, John the Scot and John the Saracen. These are summoners
(appellantes), beckoning to the created intellect through “lights” scattered
in creatures in the mode of “vestiges, images, and signs” (as in the oblique
and the direct motions) to draw it to God. The final ascent to God, however,
as Berthold made clear by turning from this tacit citation of Albert’s Summa
theologiae to the De mystica theologia itself, is only attained by those who
go beyond these veils and theophanies into the divine darkness.33 This, for
Berthold, is God’s way of drawing the soul out of the solipsism to which it
so instinctively inclines, and that has expressed itself detrimentally in the
metaphysics of being. Berthold’s interpretation of Proposition 1 thus was a
first and decisive indicator of the path for the desirous soul to follow through
the veils.

32 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 16, p. 25, l. 660-​664: Et notandum, quod [Dionysius]
dicit ‘non secundum nos’ etc. (hoc est inquantum humani), quia ‘neque possibile est aliter
nobis supersplendere thearchicum radium nisi varietate sanctorum velaminum sursum
active circumvelantum et his, quae sunt secundum nos, providentia paterna connaturaliter
et familiariter apparantum’. Cf. Dionysius, De caelesti hierarchia, 1.2, 121B-​C.
33 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 16, p. 25, l. 671-​674: ‘solum non velate et vere apparet’
omnia transcendentibus et introeuntibus caliginem. In this respect, Berthold anticipated
the interpretation of Dionysius we find in authors like Denys the Carthusian (d. 1471), who
criticised earlier commentators, including Aquinas, for holding too narrowly to the prin-
ciple that God only appears to the created intellect in veils and for passing over precisely
these passages from De mystica theologia. See K. Emery, “Sapientissimus Aristoteles and
Theologicissimus Dionysius. The Reading of Aristotle and the Understanding of Nature in
Denys the Carthusian”, in A. Speer, A. Zimmermann (eds), Mensch und Natur im Mittelalter
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992), p. 572–​606, at p. 579–​590; id., “A Complete Reception of the
Latin Corpus Dionysiacum. The Commentaries of Denys the Carthusian”, T. Boiadjiev,
G. Kapriev, A. Speer (eds), Die Dionysius-​Rezeption im Mittelalter (Turnhout: Brepols,
2000), p. 197–​247, at p. 229–​231.
Exstasis divini amoris 203

2 Creation

The former [existence] is for the sake of the latter [order], because
an isolated essence does not properly have the notion of ‘good’
unless it is ordered.34

Therefore, goodness is the essential mode or intention of any given

thing.35

Berthold often illustrated the most fundamental principles of Proclus’ philos-

ophy using analogies from the physical world. For him it seems that the funda-
mental metaphysical registers of unity and goodness could each be illustrated
through a specific metaphor or image, and each image required the other to
be properly understood. In the register of unity, we can see that Berthold pre-
ferred the analogies of the containment of all numbers in the monad or of all
radii of a circle in its centre.36 In the register of goodness, he used the analogy
of the spontaneous generative activity of the sun as the clearest example of
the self-​diffusivity of the Good, in its action that is prior to the finite division
of choice and necessity.37 One image without the other would give the impres-
sion of either stasis (numerical relations without dynamism) or chaos (gener-
ative power without order). Therefore, it was fitting that in the commentary
on Proposition 30 (“Everything that is produced immediately from another,
remains in the producer and proceeds from it”),38 which in effect summarised
the entire process of procession and return, the two analogies were combined
in Berthold’s only explicit citation of Eriugena’s Homilia on the Prologue

34 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 25H, p. 148, l. 389-​394: Quod omne perfectum citra pri-
mum agat per intentionem diffundendi bonitatem suam et sic procedat in generationem
secundum ultimum potentiae suae, patet ex eo, quod bonum in recipiente est duplex, scilicet
absolutum, quod est esse, et respectivum sive bonum in ordine. Et primum est propter secun-
dum, quia absoluta essentia non habet rationem boni proprie, nisi prout est ordinata.
35 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7A, p. 141, l. 96: Bonitas igitur est uniuscuiusque rei essen-
tialis modus sive intentio.
36 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 1F, p. 79, l. 296 –​p. 80, l. 308; 2A, p. 82, l. 34 –​p. 83, l. 35;
2C, p. 86, l. 144-​145; 3A, p. 92, l. 27 –​p. 93, l. 32; 9E, p. 173, l. 230-​232.
37 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 5C, p. 119, l. 222-​224; 8E, p. 163, l. 224-​236; 18A, p. 44, l. 26-​
29; 18B, p. 47, l. 135 –​p. 48, l. 152; 18D, p. 52, l. 297 –​p. 53, l. 323; 22A, p. 102, l. 140-​145; 23E,
p. 119, l. 250-​256; 25I, p. 149, l. 436 –​p. 150, l. 440; 152C, p. 142, l. 70. On this conception of
freedom in Berthold, as he extracted it and amplified it from Albert the Great and Ulrich
of Strassburg, see W. Goris, “Metaphysical Freedom. From Albert the Great to Berthold of
Moosburg”, forthcoming.
38 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 30, p. 20, l. 1-​2: Omne quod ab aliquo producitur
immediate manet in producente et procedit ab ipso.
204  Chapter 4

of John (which he attributed to Origen).39 When employing either image,

Berthold would often introduce it as an “elegant”, “careful”, or “beautiful” illus-
tration of a metaphysical argument.40 He of course found the comparison of
God to the sun in numerous sources including Dionysius, Proclus, Avicebron,
Albert the Great, and Ulrich of Strassburg, and although he was not familiar
with Plato’s famous analogies of the Sun, Line, and Cave in the Republic, he
nevertheless recognised the principle that “the Good is diffusive of itself and
being” had its origin in Plato, who wrote in the Timaeus that “jealousy is far
removed from what is best” (ab optimo porro invidia longe relegata est) –​this
principle, he maintained, “must be pondered with diligence”.41
Berthold also found it necessary to use both images in his commentary to
Proposition 125 on the spontaneous causal activity of the gods:

Every god, from wherever it begins to show itself in an order, proceeds

through all secondaries, and indeed always multiplies and distrib-
utes its outflowings, but always retains the characteristic of its own
hypostasis.42

Evidently the term that stood out to him here was emicare, “to appear sud-
denly” or “to break forth”, since he devoted the entire discussion of the supposi-
tum (the authoritative, doctrinal background presupposed by Proclus) to “the
conditions of light” and how “these are found in the divinising nature”.43 He
argued that the three conditions of light were described in the analogy of the
sun from Dionysius. (1) Light acts through its essence: “our sun does not reason

39 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 30D, p. 196, l. 206-​215: ‘Conspice, quomodo omnium

rerum, quas mundi huius sensibilis globositas comprehendit, causae simul et uniformiter
in isto sole, qui est maximum mundi luminare, subsistunt, quomodo numerositas herbarum
et fructuum in singulis seminibus simul continentur, quomodo multiplices rerum in arte
artificis unum sunt et in animo disponentis vivunt, quomodo infinitus linearum numerus in
uno puncto unum subsistit! Et huiusmodi naturalia perspice exempla, ex quibus velut phys-
icae theoriae pennis poteris arcana verbi mentis acie inspicere et, quantum datur humanis
rationibus, videre, quomodo omnia, quae per verbum facta sunt, in ipso vivunt et facta sunt!’
This is a collection of phrases from ­chapters 9 and 10 of the Homily.
40 For example, beside the text of Proclus’ De decem dubitationibus cited at Expositio, 122F,
p. 119, l. 175-​180 in ms Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, f. 50rb, Berthold has written
puta pulchrum exemplum.
41 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7A, p. 139, l. 17-​23; 13B, p. 212, l. 111-​112.
42 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 125, p. 63, l. 1-​4: Omnis deus, a quocumque inceperit
ordine emicare se ipsum, procedit per omnia secunda, semper quidem plurificans suas deri-
vationes et partiens, servans autem proprietatem proprie ypostaseos.
43 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 125, p. 147, l. 11-​13.
Exstasis divini amoris 205

or choose” but shines by virtue of its very being. (2) Light shines universally: “it
illumines all things capable of participating its lights”, each according to their
capacity. (3) Light shines unceasingly.44
These were not only metaphors for Berthold, who held that there was a
deeper continuity between the laws describing the diffusion of physical light
and the principles of the diffusion of the highest Good. As he noted here, since
every essence flowing into another (influens in aliam) either is light or has
the nature of light, and since the Good is self-​diffusive, “the Good therefore is
light or has the nature or characteristic of light”.45 We are then given several
passages from Dionysius where the Good is likened to the sun, whose causal
activity Berthold described as a exseritio, a “revealing” or a “stretching-​forth”.46
The light of the Good redounds through the primordial causes or gods, the rays
of goodness (radii bonitatis), who imitate its causal activity within their own
domains.
This account of divine diffusion and manifestation was then balanced in
Proposition 125 by a discussion of the gods’ remaining.47 Here Berthold used
metaphors from the Clavis physicae to illustrate his point: the first causes
in themselves are one and are not separated from one another, but they are
divided in their effects; “just as in the monad all numbers are one [and] simple”,
so all the primordial causes are one individual in the divine Word.48 We should
not marvel, the Clavis continued, that this escapes the finest point of our mind
(mentis nostrae aciem fugiat) which is already overwhelmed by instances of
this in the concentrated and generative power of seeds, which burst forth into
variegated forms, colours, and fragrances.
Elsewhere, following the same lead from the Clavis, Berthold extended this
principle about the ineffable abundance found among things in his comments
to Proposition 121 (“Everything that is divine has an essence that is good-
ness, a unifical potency, and a cognition hidden and incomprehensible to all

44 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 125A, p. 147, l. 16 –​p. 148, l. 31. Cf. Dionysius, De divinis
nominibus, 4.1 and 4.4.
45 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 125B-​C, p. 148, l. 33 –​p. 149, l. 78.
46 The verbal form of this noun (exsero, exserere) was used in a similar context by Albert the
Great. See, for example, Albert the Great, De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa,
lib. i, tr. 2, c. 2, p. 27, l. 22-​58. It was taken up by Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono.
Liber 4, Tractatus 1-​2,7, ed. S. Pieperhoff (Hamburg: Meiner, 1987), lib. iv, tr. 1, c. 5 (5), p. 28,
l. 42-​50.
47 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 125D-​F, p. 149, l. 83 –​p. 152, l. 176.
48 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 125F, p. 152, l. 164-​173, cited Dionysius, De divinis nomini-
bus, 5.6 for the same analogy.
206  Chapter 4

secondaries altogether”),49 to declare that any essence (usia), creaturely or

divine, is incomprehensible:

In all things that exist, usia is altogether incomprehensible in itself, not

only to sense, but even to intellect. ‘For just as God, as he is in himself
beyond every creature, is not comprehended by intellect, so likewise the
creature in its hidden depths is known to be incomprehensible. Whatever
is perceived by bodily sense or considered by intellect in any creature is
nothing other than some accident of some incomprehensible essence.
What is known through quality, or quantity, or form, or matter, or any
accident is not what it is, but that it is’.50

Berthold did not explain precisely how he interpreted the Clavis on this point,
though a comparison with other passages in the Expositio can offer some fur-
ther clarification. To be sure, he did not view it within the broadly Aristotelian
perspective of the ten categories, even though these were integral to Eriugena’s
original argument in Periphyseon i and remained central to the Clavis. Rather,
it seems likely that Berthold would have understood this assertion within the
context of his doctrine of participation, according to which the essences of
creatures are constituted by different formal intentions.51 Of these intentions,
he identified goodness or unity as the deepest or most essential mode.52 It is

49 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 121, p. 60, l. 1-​3: Omne divinum existentiam [Berthold:
essentiam] quidem habet bonitatem, potentiam autem unialem et cognitionem occultam et
incomprehensibilem omnibus simul secundis.
50 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 121E, p. 107, l. 68-​75, citing Honorius Augustodunensis,
Clavis physicae, c. 6, p. 5, l. 12 –​p. 6, l. 19: Usia in omnibus, quae sunt, omnino per se ipsam
incomprehensibilis est non solum sensu, sed etiam intellectu. ‘Quia sicut Deus ultra omnem
creaturam in se ipso nullo intellectu comprehenditur, ita etiam in secretis suis creatura
incomprehensibilis cognoscitur. Quidquid autem in omni creatura vel sensu corporeo per-
cipitur vel intellectu consideratur, nihil est aliud nisi quoddam accidens unicuique incom-
prehensibili essentiae, nam aut per qualitatem aut quantitatem aut formam aut materiam
vel quodlibet accidens cognoscitur, non quid est, sed quia est’.
51 See the centrality of goodness in the citations of the Clavis at Berthold of Moosburg,
Expositio, 2A, p. 82, l. 12 –​p. 83, l. 38. The notion that the essence of the first cause is dif-
fused intentionally (intentionaliter) through the universe likely came to Berthold through
Dietrich of Freiberg, De cognitione entium separatorum, 79.3, p. 242, l. 36-​46. See 4.5,
n. 268, below.
52 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 3D, p. 97, l. 192-​198: ea, quae fiunt unum per crea-
tionem, sic fiunt unum, ita, quod ipsum fieri unum est eis esse unum, cum inquantum huius-
modi sint unum tantum, quod est uniuscuiusque eorum essentia; 5B, p. 118, l. 190-​192: licet,
ut solum a primo procedunt, stent sub unitate intentionis (scilicet boni), quae etiam est cui-
uslibet essentia; 7A, p. 141, l. 70-​73 and p. 143, l. 170-​171.
Exstasis divini amoris 207

as good or one that a creature is related immediately to the creative activity

of God.
To understand this point, we may begin by looking at his comments on
Proposition 7 (“All that is productive of another is greater than the nature of
that, which is produced”),53 which Berthold regarded as “almost the founda-
tion of the whole edifice of this science”.54 Its proof must establish that what is
produced depends on the producer not only for its existence but also for what-
ever causal power it has. The celebrated maxim of Dionysius, which Berthold
traced to the Timaeus, served that purpose well. The Good is not only diffusive
of existence (esse) but also itself (sui) –​in other words, the Good communi-
cates the very power of self-​diffusivity. Explicating the notion of “good” (ratio
boni) any further was, however, no straightforward matter. Since it cannot be
defined through anything prior to itself, it must be known through its effects
or proper modes.55 Even the name “the Good” does not capture its quiddity, if
it even has one, but rather reflects how we bless (sanctificamus) the origin of
all with the noblest name at our disposal. Berthold’s description, rather than
definition, of the Good was this:

‘Good’ is the essence of any given thing according to the reason by which
it primarily subsists formally from the universally first cause, [subsisting]
either as such or according to some determinate mode participated from
that, which subsists as such.56

Berthold glossed this description extensively.57 By “the essence of any given

thing”, he had in mind the arguments made by Dionysius, that if you remove
the good from something, you remove the thing altogether. According to the
Areopagite, even privation and non-​existence depend upon the Good. In this
respect, “good” is the most formal or essential aspect of a thing because all other
determinations presuppose it,58 just as “being” was regarded as fundamental

53 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 7, p. 6, l. 1-​2: Omne productivum alterius melius est
quam natura eius quod producitur.
54 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7A, p. 139, l. 9-​10.
55 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7A, p. 140, l. 40 –​p. 141, l. 69.
56 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7A, p. 141, l. 70-​73: bonum est uniuscuiusque rei essen-
tia secundum eam rationem, qua primo formaliter a causa universaliter prima subsistit vel
simpliciter vel secundum aliquem determinatum modum participatum ex eo, quod subsistit
simpliciter.
57 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7A, p. 141, l. 74 –​p. 143, l. 167.
58 A parallel argument at Expositio, 21D, p. 84, l. 295-​312, makes it clear that here he was
extending Averroes’ critique of Avicenna, who held that a thing is one by an addition to
its common nature. “One” and “good”, Averroes argued, are not accidental to a thing.
208  Chapter 4

from the standpoint of the universality of predication. This priority of “good”

is not so clear if we take as our starting point a given object of everyday expe-
rience, in which the notions of “being”, “one”, and “good” indeed seem to coin-
cide. But if we consider these notions “absolutely” or in themselves, according
to Berthold, then we see that “good”, in its orientation to the final cause or end
as intended by the principle, can precede the subject in which it inheres.59
Berthold at this stage would invoke the creative etymology of bonitas as a der-
ivation from the Greek boo-​boas, meaning, “I call out, you call out” (clamo-​
clamas).60 The Good calls all things immediately into being. Where there are
necessarily lower traces of this causality that are unable to subsist as good sim-
pliciter (as only the gods or primordial causes can), the Good determines or
contracts its causal power through these gods or primordial causes, which are
nearer to it, in order to strengthen the lower to realise its perfection.
Although we find ourselves at metaphysical bedrock of the Expositio and
can only rely on descriptions and metaphors instead of precise definitions, it
is important nevertheless to be as clear as possible about what Berthold was
aiming for. It was not, as these statements from Dionysius initially could be
taken to imply, that the creative activity of the Good was responsible for a
thing’s potential for existence. According to Berthold, that very potentiality
for existence is a function of the subsequent limitation of the causality of the
Good through the primordial cause of power (virtus) or infinity (infinitas),
which is the principle immediately subordinate to the Good.61 Even the ori-
entation toward existence presupposes a more spontaneous creative activity.
One way to clarify this difficult notion is to consider that the effect of the pri-
mordial cause of power or infinity, for Berthold, is a determinate potentiality
for subsistence. What this presupposes is the more holistic causality of the
Good, which is perhaps better understood as providing the relational context
or the dynamic universal structure within which the essence will exercise its
function.62 A thing exists for the sake of its function, which is its perfection.63

59 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7A, p. 141, l. 97 –​p. 142, l. 133.

60 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7B, p. 146, l. 276-​282. On the use of this etymology in
Eriugena, Albert the Great, and Ulrich of Strassburg, see De Libera, Métaphysique et noé-
tique, p. 186–​187.
61 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 3B, p. 94, l. 77-​92. See 4.4, n. 193, below.
62 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7A, p. 144, l. 181-​182: boni determinatio non est aliud nisi
boni diversa in diversis participatio.
63 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 13F, p. 218, l. 307-​312. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu
et intelligibili, i.1.1, p. 137, l. 3-​6: Sicut dicit Philosophus in II De caelo et mundo, unaquaeque
res est propter suam propriam operationem. Cuius dicti ratio est, quia propria operatio est
pertinens ad perfectionem rei et habet rationem boni et finis, propter quem res est, sine quo
omnis res esset frustra.
Exstasis divini amoris 209

But this perfection is not entirely self-​serving. Berthold gave a strong inter-
pretation of Dietrich of Freiberg’s declaration that a separated and isolated
essence (absoluta essentia) does not have the notion of the good (ratio boni),
but only insofar as it is ordered to something outside itself.64 In this view, at
the level of the singular or the individual, relationality precedes substantial-
ity; the totality is prior, and the parts have their function and possibility only
with respect to the whole.
We have seen already how, in Berthold’s view, Plato’s theorems direct the
soul outside itself to the things in nature (res rata in natura) and away from
the abstractions that have their reality only in the soul (esse in anima) that the
mind exclusively clings to so long as it is “sealed off in beings”. The progress of
intellectual perfection culminates in the non-​discursive and operative union
with the One. We glimpse now, in Berthold’s commentaries on Propositions 1
and 7, how the habit of supersapientia is already underway as one sets out along
the oblique motion from rational starting points that are oriented toward the
One and the Good. That is, the soul’s adjustment of its thinking to the realities
outside it, even at these initial stages, anticipates that divinising end precisely
because it mirrors the most fundamental disposition of the One or Good itself.
In Proposition 1, when Berthold first explained the Platonic perspective on the
origin of plurality, he stated that it must be sought ultimately with reference to
“the disposition of the first cause” that led it to produce.65 For this he turned
directly to Dionysius: the first cause is drawn out of itself by “the ecstasy of
divine love” (exstasis divini amoris), which disposes the cause to communicate
not just one but all possible modes of its goodness.66 This generative ecstasy
at the ground of reality “necessarily” institutes a plurality, because only diverse
gradations of unity and goodness are “the perfect demonstration of wisdom”.
Similarly, in Proposition 7, Berthold argued that his description of goodness as
the essential mode of any given thing was compatible with the Platonic under-
standing of creation as “the immediate procession of plurality from the first
cause”.67

64 See Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 25H, p. 148, l. 389-​394, cited at n. 34, above. Cf.
Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, i.10.3, p. 143, l. 22-​38.
65 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 1C, p. 75, l. 151 –​p. 77, l. 208.
66 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 1C, p. 76, l. 197-​200: exstasis divini amoris est causa mul-
titudinis rerum creatarum, exstasis, inquam, quae non sinit ipsum esse sine germine, sed
disponit ipsum ad communicandum se omnibus modis, quibus est possibile communicare
bonitatem suam. This was a tacit citation of Albert the Great, Summa theologiae, ed.
A. Borgnet, Opera omnia, vol. 32 (Paris: Vivès, 1895), pars ii, tr. 1, q. 3, m. 3, a. 1, p. 25a, which
Berthold embellished with Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 4.13, 712A-​B.
67 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7A, p. 143, l. 162-​163.
210  Chapter 4

The Platonic account of creation is discussed at greatest length in

Proposition 5 (“Every plurality is set beneath the One”).68 Berthold began
there by outlining the Peripatetic doctrine of the procession of all things
from the One.69 His major Peripatetic authority was Avicenna’s Liber de
philosophia prima sive scientia divina ix.4. Avicenna was frequently cited in
seminal works by William of Auvergne and Thomas Aquinas as an example
of an erroneous doctrine of mediated creative causality, according to which
God creates the highest separate intelligence, which then creates the second
separate intelligence, the first heavenly soul, and the first heavenly body, and
so on, until we reach the world of generation and corruption. In this view,
since a simple one can only produce a simple effect, diversity must arise
through the distinct, comparative activities of the first created intellect.
Using Ulrich of Strassburg’s De summo bono, Berthold explained the logical
ordering of these activities as follows. (1) The first created intellect contem-
plates the completely necessary existence (necesse esse) of God, from whom
it proceeds. It then contemplates itself as having come from the necessary
existent and thus understands itself as necesse esse, for it beholds itself in
the light of God’s intellect. In so doing, the intellect constitutes another
intellectual substance beneath itself as an intellectual light, which however
is diminished because it does not possess the abundance of the first light.
(2) The first created intellect then contemplates itself insofar as it is in act,
and thus the light of God’s intellect falls (occumbit) within it. The intellect
then extends its light to another being below it, and thereby constitutes
the first heavenly soul and the immediate mover of the outermost sphere.
(3) The first created intellect then contemplates itself according to the pos-
sibility that exists within it, which it receives from itself and not from the
necessary existent. As it thinks itself as possible, it produces the heavenly
body of the outermost sphere.
The Platonists, according to Berthold, with Dionysius as their chief repre-
sentative, would not be satisfied with this account.70 Although they hold even
more strictly to the unicity of the first principle, which is not only “one per
se” but is “the One as such and absolutely self-​identical”, they are still able to

68 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 5, p. 4, l. 1: Omnis multitudo secunda [Berthold: sub-

missa] est ab uno.
69 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 5A, p. 113, l. 13 –​p. 115, l. 70. Berthold’s explanations of
Avicenna’s position resemble passages from Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono. Liber 4,
Tractatus 2, 8-​14, ed. A. Palazzo (Hamburg: Meiner, 2012), lib. iv, tr. 2, c. 9 (1), p. 27, l. 20 –​
p. 28, l. 49.
70 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 5B, p. 115, l. 72 –​p. 118, l. 192.
Exstasis divini amoris 211

maintain that plurality is an immediate effect of the One. Giving a catena of

citations from Dionysius on the divine differentiation (discretio), Berthold
had to concede that here he was relying principally on texts about God as the
Good and not as the One, and he reminded the reader that they will ultimately
find that these two designations of the first principle are brought together in
Proposition 13. Now, the passages from Dionysius all assert that God remains
one while acting within plurality, but they do not explain precisely how this
is so. First, then, Berthold decided to confront an objection, which he seems
to have invented, that called Dionysius’ authority on these matters into
question: since Dionysius has spoken as “a theologian”, these texts should be
reserved for matters pertaining to voluntary providence and God’s direct inter-
ventions in history. However, the objection continued, following “the theolo-
gising philosophers or philosophising theologians”, one must hold that in the
order of natural providence things proceed from the One in a mediated and
linear fashion, just as Avicenna has proposed. Berthold responded that, on
this question of the origin of multiplicity from the One, it makes no difference
which order of providence was being considered. The Platonists do not even
have to abandon the principle that from a simple one only one can come.71 The
purpose of this objection and response, it seems, was to show that Dionysius, a
theologian, argued according to the same necessary and rational assumptions
as the theologising philosophers and philosophising theologians. The greatest
of the Platonists, therefore, did not abrogate from the laws of natural reason.
This also means that the fuller explanation that follows in Berthold of how the
divine differentiation (discretio) immediately produces a plurality can be read
back into Dionysius’ texts. Berthold must show how the One can be an imme-
diate source of plurality without denying the principle that from a simple one
only a one can come.
Although he does not use these terms, his response appealed to something
like the notion of enfolding and unfolding.72 Berthold first established that
for the Peripatetics (Aristotle, Avicenna) and the Platonists (Plato, Dionysius,
Boethius), God is as an intellective and volitional principle. The “archetypical
world” in God is one in form and in reality and, similarly, his will is “one and
immutable”. According to the Peripatetics, since plurality is completely unlike
the simple and immutable principle, what comes immediately from God must
be a mediating principle or “singular one” (unum singulare), that is, the first

71 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 5B, p. 116, l. 108-​111: ab uno singulariter existenti non
debeat procedere nisi unum, et idem eodem modo manens semper natum est facere idem.
72 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 5B-​C, p. 116, l. 112 –​p. 120, l. 240.
212  Chapter 4

created intellect.73 According to the Platonists, Berthold insisted, this conclu-

sion does not follow:

Notwithstanding these doctrines, the position of Platonic philosophy is

that, from the One, which is One as such and absolutely, remaining self-​
identical in every way, plurality proceeds immediately, in such a way that
it operates itself [agens se ipsum] in plurality and thus multiplies, as was
put forward earlier by Dionysius. By ‘plurality’, I mean not only the partial
[plurality] of the unities themselves, which is immediately related to the
primarily One, but also the total [plurality] of the universe, insofar as the
universe subsists in the intention of ‘one’ and ‘good’. This intention in the
First as such is not only the exemplary reason but also the efficient and
final reason.74

The divine wisdom or art, full of “living, unchangeable reasons”, is a principle of

order. An order is both one and many. A “singular one”, therefore, cannot ade-
quately represent the archetypical world. In Albert’s Summa theologiae these
arguments were meant to establish the agreement between Aristotle (with his
metaphor of the general and the army in the Metaphysics xii.10) and Dionysius
concerning the procession of creatures. Berthold, however, having framed a
debate between the Platonists and Peripatetics, intervened in Albert’s text to
reinforce the distinction of formal intentions, and emphasised the priority of
“good” as the essential mode or intention of any given thing.75 Insofar as the
universe, or anything in it, subsists in the intention of “one” or “good”, it has
come immediately from the One, and does so according to an ordered series.
It is here that we observe how the register of unity complements and cor-
rects the one-​sidedness of an exclusive focus on the Good. While the Good pro-
vides the dynamic and relational context within which an entity will receive

73 Here Berthold was summarising objections to the immediate procession of plurality pre-
sented in Albert the Great, Summa theologiae, pars ii, tr. 1, q. 3, m. 3, a. 1, p. 23a-​b. This was
the same article Berthold had used on the exstasis divini amoris.
74 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 5B, p. 116, l. 130 –​p. 117, l. 137: His autem non obstanti-
bus positio Platonicae philosophiae est, quod ab uno, quod est simpliciter unum et absolute
et omnino eodem modo manens, procedit immediate multitudo ita, quod ipsum est agens
se ipsum in multitudinem et sic multiplicans, ut supra positum est ex Dionysio; multitudi-
nem, inquam, non solum partialem ipsarum unitatum, quae est immediata ad ipsum prime
unum, sed etiam totalem universi, inquantum ipsum universum solum subsistit in intentione
unius et boni, quae intentio in simpliciter primo non solum est ratio exemplaris, sed effectiva
et finalis.
75 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 5B, p. 118, l. 190-​192; 5C, p. 119, l. 206-​207.
Exstasis divini amoris 213

its possibility and its existence, the essential order of invisible and separate
substances must be defined by the structure of number and proportion. This
was a principle Berthold accepted from Book ii of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “a
causal order requires a first, a middle, and a last”.76 As we saw already in 7A and
now in 5B, Berthold divided the ordered unities that arise immediately from
the One into two groups, in accordance with Proposition 64 (“Every primor-
dial unity establishes a twofold number: some of hypostases that are perfect
in themselves; others of illuminations having their hypostasis in others”).77 In
his commentary on Proposition 64, Berthold began by repeating the contrast
between the Aristotelian understanding of unity as a transcendental notion
identical with being, which has only esse in anima, and the Platonic view of
unity as a res extra animam.78 For the Platonists, unity as a principle contains
all that comes from itself in potency or virtually (virtualiter). This potency is
either (1) active or (2) passive. These in their extreme instances apply to the
One and to prime matter, respectively. The active potency is in turn subdi-
vided, such that it can apply (1a) simpliciter to God, (1b) to a primordial cause,
or (1c) to the trace of the One in any spiritual substance that requires further
determination in order to subsist.79 This yields the distinction in Proposition
64 between the “the primordial unities” that subsist through themselves (1b)
and their “illuminations” that require further determination in order to subsist
(1c and 2).
Berthold at this point referred the reader to Proposition 62 (“Every plu-
rality nearer to the One is fewer in quantity, but greater in power, than
more remote pluralities”)80 for his account of the precise number of the

76 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 5B, p. 118, l. 178-​179; 62B, p. 182, l. 57-​61. For a passage
known to Berthold that brought together both registers of proportional structure and
causal dynamism, see Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, prooem. (1-​2), p. 13, l. 2-​27.
77 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 64, p. 34, l. 1-​3: Omnis primordialis unitas duplicem
substituit numerum, hunc quidem per se perfectarum ypostaseon, hunc autem illustratio-
num in aliis ypostasim habentium. In the Tria opuscula, he found this principle applied to
the register of unity. See Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §63,
p. 102, l. 3-​7: Duplicibus autem unitatibus entibus sive etiam bonitatibus, quas bonum illud
produxit ens causa utrorumque et altero modo unum, et hiis quidem autotelon (id est per se
perfectis), hiis autem dispersis in participantibus causis.
78 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 64A-​B, p. 193, l. 14 –​p. 194, l. 54.
79 The trace of the One (1c) should be subdivided again because it must include (1cα) the
separate substances that are mentioned at 64F and (1cβ) human souls, which are not dis-
cussed there. On the illumination or vestige of the One in the human soul as an active
potency, see Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 24B, p. 129, l. 162-​198, 162B, p. 17, l. 32-​58.
80 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 62, p. 33, l. 1-​2: Omnis multitudo propinquius uni ens
quantitate quidem est remotioribus minor, virtute autem maior.
214  Chapter 4

self-​subsistent principles (1b and 1cα). Here, he produced what he regarded

as a remarkable (miranda) table enumerating the principles populating the
essential order of natural providence (from the One down to, and including,
heavenly souls).81 The smallest possible essential order, he maintained, and
therefore the order nearest to the One, is necessarily composed of the num-
bers 1 (first), 2 (middle), 3 (last). This corresponds to the six formal inten-
tions of the primordial causes of unity, infinity, being, life, intellect, and soul.
Berthold then assigned each primordial cause a number from 1 through 6 as
its root (radix). For example, the number 6 corresponds to the soul. The soul
is comprised of six formal intentions (goodness, infinity, being, life, intellect,
soul). This root is then increased by the same proportion found in the highest
order –​6 (first), 12 (middle), 18 (last) –​to reach the sum of 36. In other words,
in the essential order of the cosmos, there must be 36 heavenly souls. So per-
suaded was Berthold by this deductive reasoning that he used it to resolve an
ancient debate about the exact number of heavenly movers: 36 falls almost in
the middle of the figures proposed by Eudoxus (26) and Calippus (47)!82 As
amusing or naive as this approach must seem, we should bear in mind that
Berthold was convinced that the ecstasy of divine love has expressed itself in
a supremely orderly way, and that only a model like this can explain how a
plurality immediately unfolds from the One and how that One enfolds within
itself the archetypical world.

3 The Trinity and the Gods

In accordance with his views about the knowledge of God attained by the best
of the pagan philosophers of antiquity, Berthold’s interpretation of Proclus
was thoroughly Trinitarian. Berthold held that a Trinitarian theology could
and should be extrapolated from the text of the Elementatio theologica, not
because this would extrinsically grant it the Christian form its final and perfect
truth required, but because its own coherence as a revival of Plato’s thought
demanded it. For Berthold, the Platonists had harmonised the registers of
unity and goodness, of order and fecundity, in a Trinitarian understanding of
the first principle.
In one of the longest treatments of Trinitarian theology in the Expositio,
Berthold argued that, since generation (the procession of the Son from the

81 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 62B-​C, p. 181, l. 20 –​p. 184, l. 138.

82 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 203F, p. 195, l. 177-​196.
Exstasis divini amoris 215

Father) is “the communication of nature, it most of all befits that, which is

most communicable”. And since the first Good is most communicable, this is
what Dionysius meant when he said that “the ecstasy of the love of the highest
Good does not leave it without seed” (sine germine) –​for, Berthold explained,
“to sprout forth [germinare] is to generate”.83 The spontaneous communication
of the divine nature in the Trinity (bullitio or “boiling”) is thus the precondi-
tion for God’s spontaneous creative activity (ebullitio or “boiling-​over”).84 Both
dynamics are the result of what Berthold, commenting on the same passage
from De divinis nominibus 4.10, called the amorous motion (motus amorosus)
that moves the Good to communicate itself.85 For the principle to communi-
cate itself in an orderly way, it must already be order itself or, in other words,
as Berthold wrote in the Prologus, it must be the primarily Beautiful (prime
pulchrum).86 The Trinity is the Beautiful because it is “the cause of the agree-
ment and lucidity of universes, calling everything to itself, and gathering all in
all into the same”.87 From “this Beautiful there comes to all beings their beauty
according to their proper measure; on account of the Beautiful there arise the
concords, friendships, and communions of all things”.88 The relational context
created by the Good or Beautiful was thus understood by Berthold as the Holy
Spirit unfolding the interrelations present implicitly in the archetypical world
or divine Word that is coeternal with the Father.

83 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40C, p. 41, l. 203-​207: quia generatio communicatio natu-
rae est, illi maxime conveniet, quod est maxime communicabile; sed prime bonum est max-
ime communicabile seu communicativum sui; ergo sibi maxime conveniet generatio. Et hoc
est quod dicit Dionysius 4 cap. De divinis nominibus, exstasis amoris summi boni non sinit
ipsum sine germine esse; germinare autem generare est. Cf. Albert the Great, Summa theo-
logiae, pars i, tr. 7, q. 30, c. 1, p. 227, l. 21-​29.
84 On the theme of ebullitio, see M.R. Pagnoni-​Sturlese, “A propos du néoplatonisme d’Albert
le Grand. Aventures et mésaventures de quelques textes d’Albert dans le Commentaire
sur Proclus de Berthold de Moosburg”, in Archives de Philosophie 43(1980), p. 635–​654.
For Albert see, for example, Albert the Great, De animalibus, lib. xx, tr. 2, c. 1, p. 1306,
l. 34 –​p. 1307, l. 8: Luminosum enim ita ebullit luces quod continue videtur moveri motu ebul-
litionis si ipsum est fons lucis sicut est sol […]. Et sic est in fontali universitatis causa, a qua
ebullitione procedunt bonitatum ipsius luces et formae quae in rebus distantibus receptae
diversum esse accipiunt secundum diversam recipientium potestatum.
85 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 16A, p. 24, l. 23-​25: Haec Dionysius, ubi clare exprimit
motum amorosum esse in prime bono, quo se movet in sui multiplicationem et ad intra pro-
priam naturam per emanationem originalem et ad extra per causalem.
86 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 19, p. 29, l. 781: prime pulchrum, superbenedicta
Trinitas.
87 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 19, p. 29, l. 778-​779: causa consonantiae et claritatis
universorum et ad se ipsum omnia vocans et tota in totis congregans ad idem.
88 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 18, p. 28, l. 766-​769.
216  Chapter 4

This Trinitarian philosophy of creation was first outlined in Prologus 9 and 11.
As Berthold stated there, the world is made by wisdom, who has built its house
upon seven pillars (Proverbs 9:1).89 Following the Clavis physicae, he explained
that the paternal intellect has fashioned or “hewn out” these pillars or primor-
dial causes in the Word, which is the divine art (ars), and these are divided
and multiplied by the Holy Spirit in its effects.90 As we have seen, Berthold’s
response to the Peripatetic arguments about the procession of the cosmos from
the simple One in 5B was based on the assumption shared by Platonists and
Peripatetics that the first principle acts through intellect and will. In Berthold’s
view, these immanent operations of knowing and willing could be assimilated
to the begetting of the Son and the mutual spiration of the Holy Spirit.91 Such
a passage from the immanent operations to the distinction of persons in God
was not something Thomas Aquinas, or many Dominicans who succeeded
him in the 14th century, would accept; but it does find some precedent in the
more emanationist Trinitarian theology of the Franciscan school that followed
Bonaventure and, interestingly, in the theology of German Dominicans like
Ulrich of Strassburg and Hugh Ripelin of Strassburg.92

89 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 11, p. 18, l. 439 –​p. 19, l. 471. The seven pillars
are those mentioned in 62C, along with the lowest primordial cause of nature or body.
Presumably, it was not included in 62 because its effects belong to the domain of becom-
ing or generation, and therefore cannot be enumerated according to the patterns of
an immutable essential order. At Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 101B, p. 211, l. 26-​30,
Berthold spoke of seven “formal perfections”. For other instances, see, e.g., 8D, 23D, 58A,
71D, 99B, 133E, 140D, 155D.
90 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 9, p. 14, l. 300 –​p. 15, l. 320; 126B, p. 155, l. 44 –​p. 157,
l. 97. Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40C, p. 41, l. 177-​179: Plato ponit in prime bono
paternum intellectum formantem ex se verbum, quod est ratio omnium faciendorum, imago,
Filius et ars Patris et mundus archetypus, hoc est principalis mundi typus.
91 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 28B, p. 173, l. 77-​81; 42F, p. 61, l. 201 –​p. 63, l. 279.
92 See R. Friedman, Intellectual Traditions at the Medieval University. The Use of Philosophical
Psychology in Trinitarian Theology among the Franciscans and Dominicans 1250-​1350,
2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2013), vol. 1, p. 171. According to the more emanationist approach,
which Russell Friedman traces back to Richard of St. Victor, the persons of the Trinity
are distinguished according to the ways in which they originate or receive divine being.
Chapter 6 of Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum can be regarded as a locus classi-
cus for this approach, where Bonaventure read Dionysius through Richard, and used the
principle that the Good diffuses itself as a way to establish the threeness of persons that
must be conceived simultaneously with the divine unity as Being. Friedman distinguishes
between the emanationist model and the more relational approach, which emphasised
that the persons are defined by already fully formed relations of filiation and mutual spi-
ration. The relational model, favoured by many Dominicans after Aquinas, therefore pos-
ited a sharper divide between the creaturely “psychological” intimations of the Trinity in
Exstasis divini amoris 217

We have seen already that Berthold’s inspiration for his account of pagan
knowledge of the Trinity came from a Franciscan, Thomas of York (Sapientiale i.6)
in Proposition 131A-​C (“Every god commences its proper operation from itself”).
No less important was Dietrich of Freiberg’s thorough integration of Augustine’s
psychological image of the Trinity into the Peripatetic cosmology of the separate
intellects,93 which Berthold relied on in 131D-​F. Accentuating Dietrich’s argument,
Berthold identified the ratio boni as the basis of the active overflow of any intellec-
tual principle, whether in God or in intellects that are active through their essence
(intellectus in actu per essentiam). Dietrich had already argued that the sponta-
neous diffusion or boiling-​over (ebullitio) of a cause derives its fecundity from a
hidden interior transfusion or boiling (bullitio).94 In God, this interior transfusion
constitutes an “order of nature” of distinct persons. In all essentially active intel-
lectual principles below God (the primordial causes down to the highest portion
of the human soul), it results only in a relational distinction within a single sup-
posit.95 Thus in a spontaneous and free act of Trinitarian overflow, the One pro-
duces within itself simple principles (imagines Trinitatis) that are able to carry on
the further work of determining the “ones” or “goods” (“vestiges”) it has created.96
The continuity in this analogy between the creative and unbounded cau-
sality of the One or Good as Trinity and the bounded or determinate causality
of the primordial causes was established through Berthold’s interpretation of
Proclus’ notion of the self-​constituted (τὸ αὐθυπόστατον; antipostaton).97 The
origins of this notion went back at least to Iamblichus (d. c. 325), who used it

the immanent operations of the human soul and its full reality in God, which is known
only by revelation.
93 A. Colli, Tracce agostiniane nell’opera di Teodorico di Freiberg (Genoa: Marietti, 2010).
94 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 125D, p. 149, l. 83-​91.
95 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 131E, p. 196, l. 176 –​p. 197, l. 198.
96 On the gods as images of God, see Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 32E, p. 210, l. 156-​158
and p. 211, l. 183 –​p. 212, l. 201; 28C, p. 175, l. 150-​151; 177E, p. 178, l. 165-​169. Berthold’s source
was Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 1.2.1.1.6-​7, p. 41, l. 2 –​p. 44, l. 46. See also
the studies by K. Flasch, “Procedere ut imago. Das Hervorgehen des Intellekts aus seinem
göttlichen Grund bei Meister Dietrich, Meister Eckhart und Berthold von Moosburg”,
in K. Ruh (ed.), Abendländische Mystik im Mittelalter. Symposion Kloster Engelberg 1984
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986), p. 125–​134; id., “Converti ut imago –​Rückkehr als Bild. Eine
Studie zur Theorie des Intellekts bei Dietrich von Freiberg und Meister Eckhart”, in
Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 45(1998), p. 130–​150.
97 On self-​constitution in Proclus, see S. Gersh, From Iamblichus to Eriugena. An Investigation
of the Prehistory and Evolution of the Pseudo-​Dionysian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1978),
p. 125–​137; C. Steel, “Proklos über Selbstreflexion und Selbstbegründung”, in M. Perkams,
R.M. Piccione (eds), Proklos. Methode, Seelenlehre, Metaphysik (Leiden: Brill, 2006),
p. 230–​255; D.G. MacIsaac, “The Origin of Determination in the Neoplatonism of
Proclus”, in M. Treschow, W. Otten, W. Hannam (eds), Divine Creation in Ancient,
218  Chapter 4

to account for the freedom of the rational soul.98 Proclus generalised the idea
of self-​constitution by relating it to substantial self-​reversion (Propositions 42
and 43), which enabled him to apply it to almost all immaterial realities. In
Proposition 40 (“Everything that proceeds from itself has a self-​constituted
essence and precedes those things that subsist from other causes”),99 the first
passage in the Elementatio theologica devoted to the subject, Proclus con-
nected the notions of self-​sufficiency and self-​constitution, and definitively
located both in principles beneath the Good, since its simplicity is beyond
self-​sufficiency.100
For Berthold, however, although the Good is above self-​sufficiency because
of its superabundant power, it is not above self-​reversion or self-​constitution.101
On the contrary, according to Berthold’s interpretation of Proclus in the con-
text of Dietrich’s metaphysics, the Good is superabundant or “boils over” pre-
cisely because of its self-​reversion or interior transfusion (bullitio), which is
also true of the gods proportionately in their own domains. When Berthold
finally confronted Proclus’ refusal of self-​reversion in the One in the proof of
Proposition 40, he did so carefully:

This [refusal] was disproved above in the declaration, unless perhaps the
author wishes to say that, just as the primarily Good is better than self-​
sufficient principles, namely the antarkes, so also it is better than the per
se subsistent, namely, the antipostaton.102

Medieval, and Early Modern Thought. Essays Presented to the Rev’d Dr Robert D. Crouse
(Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 141–​172, at p. 157–​166; E. Ludueña, La recepción de Eriúgena,
p. 150–​154.
98 Henry of Ghent used the theorems of the Elementatio on self-​reversion for the same pur-
pose. See P. Porro, “The University of Paris in the Thirteenth Century. Proclus and the
Liber de causis”, in S. Gersh (ed.), Interpreting Proclus. From Antiquity to the Renaissance
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 264–​298, at p. 269–​275.
99 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 40, p. 24, l. 1-​2: Omnia que ab alia causa procedunt
precedent que a se ipsis subsistunt et habentia essentia authypostaton.
100 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 40, p. 24, l. 17-​18: Si autem bonum authypostatum,
ipsum se ipsum producens non unum erit. There was a lacuna Moerbeke’s translation after
this line that omitted Proclus’ brief explanation of his assertion: what proceeds from the
One is not one; but if the One were self-​constituted it would proceed from itself; there-
fore, the One would be both one and not one.
101 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 10F, p. 183, l. 229 –​p. 184, l. 255. Cf. 9B, p. 169, l. 102-​105.
102 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40 commentum, p. 45, l. 341-​344: Istud est reprobatum
supra in declaratione, nisi forte auctor velit dicere, quod, sicut prime bonum est melius
sibi sufficentibus, scilicet antarkes, ita etiam sit melius per se subsistentibus, scilicet
antipostaton.
Exstasis divini amoris 219

In other words, if Proclus only meant that the Good is above the self-​sufficient
goods or primordial causes (the antarkia described in Proposition 9) and in this
sense is above “self-​constituted principles”, then this more qualified statement is
correct. Now, although Proclus posited a kind of self-​sufficiency among the gods
in texts unknown to Berthold (e.g., Platonic Theology i.19), modern interpreters
of Proclus doubt whether self-​constitution would apply at that level, given the
doctrine’s intrinsic relation to self-​reversion.103 So committed was Berthold, how-
ever, to Dietrich’s Augustinian and Peripatetic metaphysics that it was unthink-
able that self-​reversion would not be at the root of all fecundity in the cosmos.
The Elementatio theologica provided several opportunities to address the
theme of self-​reversion (Propositions 15-​17, 42-​44, 82-​83). Beginning his com-
mentary on 15A, Berthold invoked Dietrich’s conception of the intrinsic for-
mal unity of the cosmos, which consists in “the redounding of one part into
another”, and in whose dynamism each part acquires the ratio boni.104 It is nec-
essary to posit “essential relations” inherent in the nature of each part of this
essential order, which preserve this dynamic hierarchy without compromising
the simplicity of the parts.105 The essences that comprise such an order are
completely identical with their operation.106 In other words, these essences
are inconceivable apart from their intrinsic relation to the rest of the order;107
their operation of self-​reversion is simultaneously the return to their principle
and is nothing else but the outward expression of the first principle within the
cosmos.108
This basic background helps us to understand Berthold’s strategy for navigat-
ing Proposition 40. In 40A, he first described two kinds of procession that cor-
respond to the general division of all things into the absolute and the relational
(respectivum).109 These correspond to the “causal” (absolute) and “original”

103 See MacIsaac, “The Origin of Determination”, p. 157–​159, and the literature cited there.
104 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 15A, p. 15, l. 12-​24. Cf. 6C, p. 130, l. 103-​126.
105 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 15A, p. 15, l. 39-​46. Cf. 16A, p. 24, l. 14-​31.
106 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 15B, p. 17, l. 102-​103.
107 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 32B, p. 207, l. 52-​57.
108 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 15C, p. 18, l. 134 –​p. 19, l. 139: Potest [se ipsum conver-
sivum] tamen habere partes ante totum, quae non ponunt in numerum, et sic motu amoroso,
qui est virtus concretiva seu unitiva naturalis, festinat ad se ipsum ut ad principium formale
suae propriae subsistentiae, et sic continet et figit se ipsum in esse transfundens se ipsum in
se ipso se ipsum in alio esse respectivo generando.
109 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40A, p. 36, l. 11-​14. The relational (respectivum) is a more
general term than the relative (relativum), since the latter is confined to the category of
relation, whereas the former is found in things outside that category. By this Berthold
seems to mean that an essence can be intrinsically defined by its tendency (habitudo)
toward something. See Expositio, 15A, p. 15, l. 31 –​p. 16, l. 38.
220  Chapter 4

(relational) orders described in 21A-​B and 29A.110 A causal order proceeds to

the outside (ad extra) and into a multiplicity of absolutely ordered, distinct
natures, whereas the Trinitarian, originative “order of nature” proceeds to the
inside (ad intra) and does not result in any inequality of natures. Following
Dietrich’s interpretation of Augustine, Berthold maintained that this origina-
tive order is also found in intellectual creatures as images of God, where it
results not in a distinction of persons but in three relationals (tria respectiva)
within a single supposit.111 Berthold underscored that this original “order of
nature” in God and in the images of God does not multiply their essences.112
In 40B, Berthold then provided definitions of generation and spiration as
“emanations” that are general enough to apply to the Trinity or to its images in
subordinate principles.113 From this general perspective, Berthold then moved
to consider the specific differences in the proportion by rehearsing the grades
of self-​sufficiency he had outlined first in Proposition 9.114 The self-​sufficient
is defined as “that which has from itself and in itself the fullness of its proper
goodness” as a formal cause. In this sense, God, and the gods in a secondary
way, subsist by themselves whole and wholly (subsistunt se totis et totaliter),
meaning that both are constituted only by one formal intention: “one” or

110 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 21B, p. 78, l. 84-​99; 29A, p. 182, l. 12 –​p. 184, l. 76.
111 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 21A-​B, p. 77, l. 40-​41, p. 78, l. 89-​90, and p. 79, l. 122-​124.
112 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40A, p. 37, l. 43-​53. In 21B, Berthold gave a fuller account
of what he meant by “order of nature” by relying on Albert the Great, Summa theologiae,
pars i, tr. 9, q. 41, c. 2, a. 1, p. 317, l. 87-​97. In the background of Albert’s text was Dionysius’
statement (De divinis nominibus, 2.7, 645B), that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are
“sproutings of the divine nature” (pullulationes divinae naturae). Here, Albert argued,
“nature” must not be understood in the primary sense to mean “essence”, because then
Dionysius would have asserted that the divine essence is multiple. “Nature” must rather
be understood in a secondary sense, as defined by Aristotle: “the power, from which the
coming-​forth comes forth” (vis, ex qua pullulat pullulans). In this sense, in the Trinity,
“nature” stands for “person” (supponit pro persona) with the added connotation of a spe-
cific notion of coming-​forth (consignificando notionem determinantem modum pullula-
tionis), by which that nature is communicated from one person to another (e.g., paternity,
generation, or spiration). In the self-​constituted principles below the Trinity, Berthold
added, “nature” stands for the relational (pro respectivo) and not for “person”, but with the
same added connotation of a specific notion of coming-​forth.
113 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40B, p. 37, l. 57 –​p. 39, l. 125; 42F, p. 61, l. 201-​296.
Berthold’s sources here are not indicated in the apparatus fontium. His general definitions
are taken from Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 1.3.2, p. 53, l. 2 –​p. 56, l. 86. From
John of Damascus, through Ulrich of Strassburg, Berthold also took a less general defini-
tion of generatio that clearly sets it apart from the mutable and temporal kind of genera-
tion found among creatures. See Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono. Liber 3, Tractatus
1-​3, ed. S. Tuzzo (Hamburg: Meiner, 2004), lib. iii, tr. 1, c. 2 (3), p. 10, l. 50 –​p. 12, l. 103.
114 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 9B, p. 170, l. 124 –​p. 171, l. 147; 40C, p. 39, l. 127 –​p. 40, l. 161.
Exstasis divini amoris 221

“good”. The gods are only “formally” self-​subsistent since they receive their
unity or goodness from the One, and therefore depend on the One as their
efficient cause. Here Berthold would look to Proposition 65 to say that the One
subsists as “one” according to cause, and the gods subsist as “ones” according
to “essence”. In this sense, the gods are self-​sufficient “not absolutely, but rel-
atively”.115 Invoking Proposition 64, Berthold described the gods as supremely
self-​sufficient as wholes and wholly (secundum se totum et totaliter) by virtue
of their simplicity and their superabundant power to originate their unique
formal determinations. In other words, as “essential” goods or ones the gods
are “wholly” self-​sufficient as formal causes, which allows them to act as prisms
refracting the causality of the Good into their own orders. Next come entities
constituted from at least two principles, which are self-​sufficient “as a whole
but not wholly”: they are self-​sufficient as wholes (sufficiunt sibi se totis per se)
because they are essentially and always active, but since they are constituted
out of more than one formal intention, they cannot be called “one” or “good”
in every way (totaliter). Such entities are also known as beings existing as a
species (entia secundum speciem). They are composite but not in such a way
that they could be called “individuals”; their composition comes only from
their essential or formal parts. These comprise the greater population of the
invisible world below the gods in Berthold’s Platonism: infinities, true beings,
lives, and intellectual hypostases. Next, heavenly souls are independent or self-​
sufficient by their divine and intellectual operation, but their animating (ani-
mealis) operation is fulfilled only in a body. Rational or human souls, finally,
have self-​sufficiency only in virtue of their supreme part that is not conjoined
to the body.116 This catalogue of self-​sufficient principles may be summarised
as follows:

115 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 9B, p. 170, l. 108-​112; 40C, p. 39, l. 132-​137. For this crucial
distinction between the primordial causes as subordinated to God (qua efficient cause)
and as per se subsistent (qua formal causes), Berthold may have been inspired by Thomas
Aquinas’ commentary on the Liber de causis. See E. Ludueña, “The Gods and Causality”.
116 In Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 43A, p. 66, l. 21 –​p. 67, l. 42, Berthold extended the
self-​constituted or self-​conversive all the way from the One and to the possible intellect
which, considered as a conceptional being (ens conceptionale) –​that is, according to the
mode of being that embraces the subject, object, and mode of its knowledge in act –​exer-
cises its independence by constituting the quiddities of things. What all these principles
share is that they are, at least in their activity, independent (per se standi). On the possible
intellect as ens conceptionale, see Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.8.1-​
9, p. 183, l. 3 –​p. 184, l. 51, and B. Mojsisch, “Sein als Bewußt-​Sein. Die Bedeutung des ens
conceptionale bei Dietrich von Freiberg”, in K. Flasch (ed.), Von Meister Dietrich zu Meister
Eckhart (Hamburg: Meiner, 1984), p. 95–​105. The possible intellect, however, is not (as
222  Chapter 4

God: per se subsistens absolute

Gods: sufficiunt sibi/​subsistunt et secundum se totas et totaliter
Entia secundum speciem: sufficiunt sibi/​subsistunt secundum se totas sed
non totaliter
Heavenly and human souls: sufficiunt sibi/​subsistunt non se totis

Having recalled this order of principles, Berthold then proceeded to outline

their dynamic interrelation in his comments on Proposition 40. He appealed
to Augustine’s acknowledgement that the Platonic doctrine of the divine “art”
or “archetypical world” was equivalent to the Christian understanding of the
coeternal and only-​begotten Word.117 Following Dietrich of Freiberg, Berthold
pushed this agreement to the limit by extending the Platonic doctrine of the
divine art to principles beneath God.118 Finally, he went beyond even the let-
ter of Dietrich’s text toward a more complete account of the Trinitarian activ-
ity of these principles by identifying the role of the spirit (spiritu producentis
vehente) in the conveyance of the form within the principle into its effect.119
Using a remarkable and singular epithet in the entire Expositio, Berthold then
introduced two passages from Dionysius the Platonist (Dionysius Platonicus).
One was the familiar passage we have seen several times already describing the
Trinitarian emanations as “sproutings of the divine nature”. The second follows
it in the De divinis nominibus:

Every divine paternity and filiation is given to us and to the supercelestial

powers from the primary paternity and primary filiation separated from
all things. From these the supercelestial powers become gods, and the
sons of gods, and deiform fathers, and are named minds, being perfected

ens naturae) an image of the Trinity because it is not essentially active. See Dietrich of
Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 1.2.2, p. 46, l. 3 –​p. 53, l. 41.
117 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 131B, p. 191, l. 46 –​p. 194, l. 117.
118 Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, i.8.1-​3, p. 141, l. 46 –​p. 142, l. 74.
119 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40C, p. 41, l. 193-​194. The phrase spiritu vehente was likely
taken from Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono, lib. iv, tr. 1, c. 5 (6), p. 29, l. 64-​82, where
Ulrich rejected the view of certain philosophers, like Hermes, who posited an intermedi-
ary spirit bearing the forms of the fluxus from the source to its recipients. Cf. Albert the
Great, De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa, lib. i, tr. 4, c. 1-​2, p. 44, l. 50 and
57, and p. 44, l. 33. Ulrich criticised Arius for identifying this intermediary with the Holy
Spirit and argued that the role of such a spiritus should be restricted to corporeal forms.
For Berthold, on the contrary, following Thomas of York, the Hermetic spiritus was among
the several acceptable witnesses to the pagan knowledge of the Holy Spirit. See Berthold
of Moosburg, Expositio, 6E, p. 132, l. 202 –​p. 133, l. 208, and 131B, p. 193, l. 81 –​p. 194, l. 117,
citing Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 14 and lib. vii, c. 6.
Exstasis divini amoris 223

spiritually (that is, incorporeally, immaterially, and intelligibly) by this

paternity and filiation.120

As Berthold presented it, then, Augustine and Dionysius Platonicus authorised

this extension of Trinitarian theology to subordinate principles and “gods”.
His singular use of the epithet Dionysius Platonicus in the entire Expositio dis-
plays the deeper assumptions that were at work here, which can be detected
elsewhere in the commentary where we find these Trinitarian passages in
the Areopagite cited almost in the same breath as phrases from the Hermetic
Liber xxiv philosophorum.121 There was no opposition here between pagan
and Christian Platonists on the question of first principles; in other words, for
Berthold the Platonists held to a Trinitarian account of the divine as Platonists
and only incidentally, in certain cases, as Christians.
This Platonism that Berthold held to be so profoundly in accordance with
Christian doctrine evidently marked a significant departure from Proclus.
Berthold, however, proceeded as if his interpretation conformed to the original
Platonic doctrine. This is clearest when Berthold, perhaps anticipating Proclus’
refusal of self-​reversion in the One, presented an anonymous objection: “if the
Good is itself producing itself”, that is, if it is self-​constituted, “it is not One”.122
Berthold’s response was a brief and standard assertion of Trinitarian divine
simplicity –​relations do not multiply the divine essence –​with little further
explanation. More interestingly, he followed this with what he seems to regard
as an undesirable consequence of that argument, which even the objector

120 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40C, p. 42, l. 214-​223: Omnis paternitas divina et filiatio
data est et nobis et supercaelestibus virtutibus ex patriarchia ab omnibus segregata et fil-
iarchia: ex qua, et di et deorum filii, patres et deiformes fiunt, et nominantur mentes, spirit-
ualiter videlicet tali paternitate et filiatione perfecta, hoc est incorporaliter, immaterialiter,
intelligibiliter […]. Cf. Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 2.8, 645C.
121 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40C, p. 42, l. 214-​227: Hoc expresse vult Dionysius
Platonicus 2 cap. De divinis nominibus, ubi dicit: ‘Pater quidem est fontana deitatis […].’
Hermes etiam Trismegistus in prima regula theologica idem videtur intendere […]. Cf.
Expositio, 21F, p. 86, l. 374-​381: Ex praedictis verbis Dionysii manifestum est in thearchica
processione divinarum personarum ordinem naturae sive naturalis originis incipere sive
principiari, si ita licet dicere, in superaeterna emanatione a Patre, qui est fons supersub-
stantialis deitatis sive fontana deitas, qui etiam secundum Trismegistum et Alanum dicitur
unitas in eo, quod Pater est principium, non de principio. Et sic ‘unitas (scilicet Pater) gignit
monadem (id est Filium, qui est principium de principio) et in se suum reflectit ardorem (scil-
icet Spiritum sanctum, qui est amor et nexus Patris et Filii)’. Dionysius is also cited alongside
the Hermetic Liber in Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 64C, p. 194, l. 56-​59; 137A, p. 15,
l. 24 –​p. 16, l. 36; and 141D, p. 48, l. 122 –​p. 49, l. 143.
122 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40C, p. 42, l. 235-​236: Nec valet instantia, qua posset dici,
quod bonum, si est ipsum se ipsum producens, non est unum.
224  Chapter 4

would want to avoid: if respective distinction removes unity in the Good, so

must it also compromise the unity of the gods.123 Perhaps his imagined inter-
locutor was an interpreter of Proclus who, like Dietrich of Freiberg, had identi-
fied the gods with the separate intellects.124 Such an interpreter would indeed
be unwilling to compromise the real simplicity of the separate intellects (even
though they are constituted out of multiple formal intentions), for this would
undermine the identity of their essence with their operation. Berthold and
anonymous objector shared the assumption that the gods and/​or the separate
intellects are simple and self-​reflexive. Both sides of the dispute would agree
that self-​reflexivity is so intimately related to the fecundity of the separate
principles that the objection must be ruled out.
Once it is granted that God and the primordial causes can be triune and
yet simple, Berthold considered another objection arguing that, since he has
affirmed a respective distinction in the gods but a distinction of persons in the
Trinity, he has effectively made the gods simpler than the Trinity.125 This led
Berthold to posit a basic but nevertheless crucial explanation of the difference
between God and the gods that undergirds the entire metaphysics of first prin-
ciples in the Expositio. He replied by pointing out that this respective distinc-
tion in the gods is in fact a sign of each their limitation: each god has a nature
that is “supposited” (suppositata) because it depends on the Good as an effi-
cient cause, and thus receives from outside itself its causal power to produce.
It is in this sense, at the conclusion of 40F, that he will argue that the notion of
the self-​constituted “primarily” pertains to the self-​sufficient gods, which are
self-​sufficient and limited as “good” but superabundant in their unique formal
intentions, and not to God himself who is the superabundant Good.126 This
was the basis for Berthold’s attempt in the commentum to offer an acceptable
interpretation of the letter of Proposition 40 in the face of Proclus’ outright
denial of self-​constitution to the One.127

123 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40C, p. 42, l. 237-​239: Et praeterea, si distinctio respectiva
adimeret unum in prime bono, ergo et in bonitatibus, quarum quaelibet est unum et bonum
per essentiam secundum auctorem.
124 See n. 170-​172, below.
125 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40C, p. 42, l. 239 –​p. 43, l. 251. Cf. Expositio, 28B, p. 175,
l. 136-​138: In prima [Trinitas], natura est ratio producendi, sed ipsum respectivum est pro-
ducens; in secunda productione natura absoluta suppositata est producens, sed bonum est
ratio producendi.
126 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 40F, p. 44, l. 283-​288.
127 Berthold incorrectly attributed to Proclus the notion that the archetypes exist in the mind
of the Good. See Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 164D, p. 32, l. 58-​9: Huic etiam alludit
illud auctoris libro De malorum subsistentia cap. 15, ubi dicit ‘apud conditorem universi
Exstasis divini amoris 225

As much as Berthold relied on Thomas of York, Dietrich of Freiberg, and

his Hermetic sources for his understanding of Platonic Trinitarian theology,
he was equally indebted to his Eriugenian sources like the Clavis physicae, the
glosses on Dionysius that he attributed to Maximus, the Liber de causis primis
et secundis, and the Homilia on John’s Prologue for his explanation of how
the gods arose within the Word and in what sense they are subordinate to the
One. The doxographical outlook of the Expositio was thoroughly informed by
Berthold’s assumption that the author of the Clavis, supposedly Theodorus the
abbot of Constantinople, was heir to a tradition of Dionysian theology that
included commentators like Maximus, who transmitted teachings handed
down from the Apostles.128 This tradition, in Berthold’s view, had reconciled
the divine names of Dionysius with Augustine’s doctrine of the divine ideas.129
With this pedigree, Eriugena’s synthesis of the Greek Fathers with Augustine in
his doctrine of the primordial causes, which both remain within and proceed
from the Word, became the Platonism that would unite Dionysius, Augustine,
Proclus, and Boethius in Berthold’s Expositio.130

esse omnes species et specierum numerum’. For Proclus, the conditor is the Demiurge, who
belongs to the lowest triad of intellectual gods.
128 Honorius Augustodunensis, Clavis physicae, c. 69, p. 48, l. 4-​5: Maximus philosophus tradit
a successoribus apostolorum omnium que sunt quinquepertitam divisionem […].
129 E.g., John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon, ed. É. Jeauneau (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996-​2002),
lib. ii, 616C, p. 125, l. 3168-​3191: Sunt igitur primordiales causae, quas rerum omnium prin-
cipia diuini sapientes appellant, per se ipsam bonitas, per se ipsam essentia, per se ipsam
uita […]. Sed ne quis aestimet quae de primordialibus causis diximus nullius auctoritatis
munimine fulciri, quaedam ex libro sancti patris Dionysii De diuinis nominibus huic operi
inserere non incongruum duximus. Cf. Gersh, “The Content and Method of Platonic
Philosophy”, p. 497: “Clearly Berthold could not have worked out so successfully the rap-
prochement between Proclean noetic principles, Pseudo-​Dionysian divine attributes, and
Augustinian eternal reasons without recourse to the Eriugenian doctrine of primordial
causes and their effects”. That Eriugenism was so instrumental in bridging the Platonisms
of Dionysius and Proclus confirms the verdict of J. Trouillard, “Érigène et la théophanie
créatrice”, in J.J. O’Meara, L. Bieler (eds), The Mind of Eriugena (Dublin: Irish University
Press for the Royal Irish Academy, 1973), p. 98–​113, at p. 98: “Quand on a le bonheur de
lire Jean Scot Érigène, on est surpris de découvrir […] une telle puissance de pensée et
d’expression. Celle-​ci lui de réinventer, à travers des documents mineurs, plusieurs des
intuitions les plus originales du néoplatonisme”.
130 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 176C, p. 163, l. 206 –​p. 164, l. 213: Verum ut ista diver-
sitas [specierum] excludatur, sciendum, quod principale exemplar simplex est intra
omnium causam, scilicet prime Deum sive eius mentem secundum Dionysium, Augustinum,
Boethium et Platonem cum suis sequacibus, ut iam diffuse ostensum est, exemplaria vero sub
primo principali exemplari, quae et ipsa dicuntur et sunt causae primordiales rerum sicut
ipsi dii, non quod prime Deus ad extra respiciat in universum producendo, sed quia in eis et
per ea determinat suam causalitatem utens eis quasi pro instrumento operationis suae.
226  Chapter 4

When Berthold read William of Moerbeke’s translation of the Elementatio

theologica, he found a text inherently amenable to this doctrine of the primor-
dial causes. Moerbeke used the adjective primordialis eight times to translate
ἀρχικός, ἀρχηγικός, and πρωτουργός.131 Of these eight cases, seven resulted in
the syntagm primordialis causa or primordialis unitas. Berthold was attentive
to these occurrences and sometimes cross-​referenced the relevant proposi-
tions,132 and used Eriugenian sources for four of them (Propositions 64, 97,
121, and 125). In seven of the eight propositions, Dionysius also featured prom-
inently in Berthold’s comments, even though the terms primordialis causa and
primordialis unitas were completely absent from the Corpus Dionysiacum.133
As Robert Crouse has shown, this terminology in Eriugena derived from
Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram (lib. vi, c. 10, §17) and from Bede’s De natura
rerum.134 Augustine was likely the source for the syntagm primordialis causa
in Hugh of St. Victor,135 Peter Abelard, and Peter Lombard’s Sentences (lib. ii,
d. 18, c. 5), and, through them, in the works of Alexander of Hales, Albert the

131 Propositions 64, 70, 71, 97, 113 comm., 115 comm., 121 comm., 125 comm.
132 For example, Expositio, 70D and 113F.
133 In certain editions of the Corpus, these terms would have appeared through Thomas
Gallus’ Extractio, in Dionysiaca, ed. P. Chevallier, 2 vols (Brugge: Desclée de Brouwer, 1937-​
1950), vol. 1, In De divinis nominibus, c. 5, p. 693, l. 340-​1: Et quod de his dixi, de aliis ideis
sive archetypis (scilicet aeternis rationibus Verbi) sentiendum est: verbi gratia, per se bonitas,
per se veritas, per se aeternitas, per se ipsa virtus, et similia quae simpliciter et aeternaliter
consistunt in Verbo Dei et primordialiter causant omnia existentia. Inter antiquas autem
causas primordialior est ipsum esse per se. […] Et invenies ipsas participationes primor-
dialius fundari in ipso esse. Cf. Thomas Gallus, Explanatio in libros Dionysii, ed. D. Lawell
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), p. 152, l. 953 –​p. 153, l. 960: et vt nostris. Quia primordiales
causalitates mentes nostras excedunt nec sufficimus effectus creatos ad illarum causarum
infinalitatem digne conferre […]; p. 462, l. 115-​126: quia in Verbo Dei summe simplici conti-
nentur unitiue et simpliciter omnia exemplaria, et ita omnia exemplarium causata in eodem
Verbo uniuntur […]. et illud vnvm, id est eterni Verbi unitas, est elementativvm, id est
primordialiter causatiuum, omnivm.
134 R. Crouse, “Primordiales Causae in Eriugena’s Interpretation of Genesis. Sources and
Significance”, in G. Van Riel, C. Steel, J. McEvoy (eds), Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible
and Hermeneutics. Proceedings of the Ninth International Colloquium of the Society for
the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies Held at Leuven and Louvain-​la-​Neuve June 7-​10, 1995
(Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996), p. 209–​220.
135 See Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis Christiane fidei, ed. R. Berndt (Münster i.W.:
Aschendorff, 2008), lib. i, pars 2, c. 1-​3, 205B-​207D, p. 59, l. 2 –​p. 62, l. 7, and Hugh’s earlier
Sententiae de divinitate, translated in B.T. Coolman, D. Coulter (eds), Trinity and Creation.
A Selection of Works of Hugh, Richard, and Adam of St Victor (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), p.
140–​154. These texts are quite suggestive of an Eriugenian influence, and even criticise
“some” who (wrongly interpreting Eriugena) would see the primordial causes as eternal
creatures located between God and the rest of creation (Sententiae, p. 141).
Exstasis divini amoris 227

Great, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas. After Eriugena and Thomas Gallus,
Albert, Aquinas, and Ulrich of Strassburg were among the few later authors to
employ the terms explicitly in their treatments of Dionysius.136 With Berthold,
this Eriugenian synthesis of Augustine and Dionysius reached a new degree of
fruition.
Prologus 3-​5 set the tone for every subsequent discussion of the primordial
causes in the Expositio. In these passages, Berthold first introduced his readers
to the notion of primordial causes and went to great lengths to demonstrate
how this terminology was faithful to Dionysius. According to Berthold, “the
invisible things of God” can be taken in two ways, intransitively or transitively
(intransitive vel transitive).137 Regarding their intransitive sense, Augustine and
Dionysius were clearly in agreement. For Augustine, these invisible things are
the eternal, unchangeable reasons in the Word (rationes aeternae et incommu-
tabiles in Verbo Dei Patris), which Dionysius called “exemplars pre-​existing in
God”.138
The situation for the invisibilia Dei understood transitively was more com-
plex. Berthold framed the discussion around De divinis nominibus 11.6, where
Dionysius responded to a letter requesting clarification about what he meant
when he sometimes said that God is life itself (per se vita) and, at other times,
that God is the substantiator (substantificator) of life itself.139 Berthold will
bring two more passages into play momentarily: De divinis nominibus 5.5 (read
alongside the glosses of Maximus) and Epistula ii, which also treats the prob-
lem raised in the letter mentioned by Dionysius. Berthold began, however, by
citing Thomas Gallus, the Eriugenian De causis primis et secundis (which he
attributed to Al-​Farabi), and finally Maximus. All three texts referred explicitly
to Dionysius and, satisfying the demands of Berthold’s literal method, all three
used the term invisibilia:

But if the invisible things of God are taken transitively, in this sense,
according to Thomas Gallus commenting on ­ chapter 11 of On the

136 Albert the Great, Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus, 5.24, p. 316, l. 64 –​p. 317, l. 11;
id., Summa theologiae, pars i, tr. 13, q. 55, m. 2, a. 1, p. 560a; Thomas Aquinas, In librum De
divinis nominibus Expositio, c. 1, lect. 2, §72, p. 21; c. 2, lect. 1, §113, p. 39; c. 9, lect. 1, §807,
p. 301.
137 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 3, p. 7, l. 78.
138 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 3, p. 8, l. 105 –​p. 9, l. 120. Albert the Great presented
the same dossier (Dionysius, Maximus, and Augustine): Summa theologiae, pars i, tr. 13,
q. 55, m. 2, a. 1, p. 559b-​561b; id., Summa theologiae, pars ii, tr. 1, q. 4, m. 1, a. 2, p. 72a-​77a;
id., In I Sententiarum, d. 35, a. 7, p. 189a-​191b.
139 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 11.6, 953B.
228  Chapter 4

Divine Names, ‘the divine Good is said to be the Substantiator’, namely,

‘of his invisible things, which are the rays, so to speak, of superunified
Goodness, such as per se being, per se life, and so on’. Al-​Farabi discusses
these invisible things in his treatise On the Cause of Causes, which begins,
‘The Principle of principles’, and states the following: ‘Therefore, there
are exemplars, the primary causes of things’. And below: ‘The first causes,
because of their infinite diffusion over all things and the incomprehen-
sible height of the ineffable purity of their excellence, are not perceived
by intellect, because they are not outside the First, who formed them in
the principle.’ And below: ‘The invisible things are hidden away in the
shadows of his excellence, but in their effects –​brought forth, as it were,
into a certain light of cognition –​they ceaselessly appear’. Thus Al-​Farabi.
Concerning these primordial causes, which Dionysius calls ‘per se power’,
‘per se being’ or ‘being-​itself’, etc., and ‘the principles of beings’, Dionysius
himself says the following in ­chapter 5 of On the Divine Names: ‘and
being-​itself is more ancient than per se life, and more ancient than per
se wisdom’.140

Like Thomas Gallus, Berthold clearly stated that the Good is the cause of these
principles or processions; we have already seen Berthold discuss this in terms
of efficient causality. In On the Divine Names 5.5 he found the precedent for
positing a rank among the primordial causes. But once again he will elaborate
this beyond anything he would find explicitly in Dionysius.
Before this, however, Berthold cited the first Eriugenian text of the
Expositio, the De causis primis et secundis. This text, in addition to explicitly
harmonising Augustine and Dionysius (notwithstanding it attribution to Al-​
Farabi, which Berthold never questioned) offered the crucial description of

140 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4, p. 9, l. 134-​149: Si vero accipiantur invisibilia Dei
transitive, quorum secundum Vercellensem super 11 cap. Dionysii De divinis nominibus
‘divina bonitas dicitur esse substantificatrix’, scilicet ‘suorum invisibilium quasi radiorum
superunitae bonitatis, ut sunt per se esse, per se vita, etc.’ –​de quibus invisibilibus prose-
quitur Alfarabius in libello De causa causarum, qui incipit: ‘Principium principiorum’, sic
inquiens: ‘Sunt igitur exempla causae rerum primariae’; et infra: ‘Causae primae propter
infinitatem super omnia diffusionem et incomprehensibilem altitudinem ineffabilis puritatis
suae excellentiae nullo percipiuntur intellectu eo, quod non distant a primo, qui eas in princi-
pio formavit’; et infra: ‘Invisibiles res in tenebris excellentiae suae absconditae sunt, in effect-
ibus autem suis veluti in quandam lucem cognitionis prolatae non cessant comparere’: haec
ille –​, de istis causis primordialibus, quas Dionysius vocat ‘per se virtutem’, ‘per se esse’ seu
‘secundum se esse’, et huiusmodi et ‘principia existentium’, sicit dicit ipse Dionysius 5 cap. De
divinis nominibus: ‘Et est ipsum secundum se esse senius eo, quod est per se vitam esse, et eo,
quod est per se sapientiam esse’.
Exstasis divini amoris 229

the two-​sided and transitional nature of these exemplars.141 The passage he

cited from the treatise derived ultimately from Periphyseon ii (550C-​551A and
552A), which contained Eriugena’s commentary on the meaning of the “shad-
ows” and “abyss” in Genesis 1:2. A briefer version of this passage was taken
over into the Clavis physicae, which Berthold marked with a marginal cross
(ms Paris, BnF lat. 6734, f. 35v). Berthold’s text of the De causis primis et secun-
dis, however, as Ezequiel Ludueña observed, evidently included a phrase not
found in the modern edition of Roland de Vaux or, for that matter, in the
Clavis: the invisibilia are shadows and abysses diffusing through and above all
things, and are unknowable “because they are not distant from the first” (eo,
quod non distant a primo).142 This final clause allowed Berthold to account
for the identity and distinction between the primordial causes and God, and
to harmonise Dionysius with what he found, for example, in Propositions 123
and 162 of the Elementatio theologica, which speak of the gods as hidden in
their superior or unitive aspect but manifest in the character of the pluralities
they produce. That is, as “good”, the primordial causes remain hidden in their
source; as the cause of infinity, being, life, and so on, they are known from
their effects.
Berthold gave a longer citation of the De causis primis et secundis in
Proposition 56 (“Everything that is produced by secondary causes, is pro-
duced more eminently by prior and more efficacious causes, from which the

141 Al-​Farabi must have been a complex figure in Berthold’s mind. As the supposed author
of De causis primis et secundis, he deserves the highest praise for describing the rela-
tion of the primordial causes to God in precise terms. However, as the supposed author
of the Liber de causis, which categorically affirms that the “first of created things is
being”, he must belong with “unlearned” who are “sealed off in beings”. See the table of
Philosophi famosi in Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, p. 4, l. 40-​41: Alfarabius De causa
causarum /​ item De causis; and 71D, p. 35, l. 123-​127, cited above in Introduction, section
3, n. 150. Cf. Expositio, 57B, p. 150, l. 94-​96: Licet etiam ista sint subtilius dicta prius et
secundum intentionem auctoris De causis, tamen non sunt de absoluta consideratione
istius auctoris, qui non ponit causas primarias proprie nisi ipsas bonitates propter earum
simplicitatem.
142 Ludueña, La recepción de Eriúgena, p. 328–​338. Cf. Honorius Augustodunensis, Clavis
physicae, c. 86, p. 61, l. 3-​6: que abyssus dicuntur propter incomprehensibilem altitudinem
infinitamque sui per omnia diffusionem, que nullo percipitur sensu, nullo comprehenditur
intellectu, tenebre autem propter ineffabilis sue puritatis excellentiam. See also De causis
primis et secundis et de fluxu qui consequitur eas, ed. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l’avicen-
nisme latin aux confins des XIIe-​XIIIe siècles, c. 2, p. 92, l. 12-​16: cause rerum prime propter
infinitam sui diffusionem et incomprehensibilem altitudinem et ineffabilis puritatis excellen-
tiam, nullo percipiuntur intellectu, excepto illo qui eas in principio formavit. Since Berthold
could have modified the parallel passage in the Clavis to suit this purpose, one can assume
that the phrase was found in his copy of De causis primis et secundis.
230  Chapter 4

secondary causes were produced”),143 which clarified his interpretation of this

passage:

After Al-​Farabi shows that [1]‌the exemplars of all things exist in the first
wisdom, in which all things are known as in their first exemplars, just as
things caused are known in their first causes, he immediately says what
these are: [2] ‘The exemplars are, therefore, the first causes of things’. And
below: [3] The first cause was never ‘without the first causes of things
that were made in it’. And shortly thereafter: ‘The first causes, because of
their infinite diffusion over all things and the incomprehensible height
of the ineffable purity of their excellence, are not perceived by intellect,
because they are not outside the First, who formed them in the principle’.
[4] This is because in their effects or in their processions into intelligible
forms, only their existence is known, not their essence, and [5] thus the
primary causes come forth in those things, of which they are the causes,
and they do not leave the first, namely, wisdom.144

This specifies [1]‌that the exemplars of all things exist in the divine mind, [2]
that these exemplars are the first causes of things, and [3] that the first cause
was never without these primordial causes made in it.145 All of this would apply
to the intransitive sense of invisibilia that denotes the living, eternal reasons
of things existing in the Word. Their transitive aspect came into view when
Berthold wrote [4] that from the phenomenal world of intelligible forms, spe-
cies, and definitions, one can only infer that these causes exist without grasping
their quiddity. [5] Therefore, the primary causes are manifest in their effects
but do not depart from the wisdom or mind of God. The epistemological point

143 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 56, p. 30, l. 1-​3: Omne quod a secundis producitur et a
prioribus et a causalioribus producitur eminentius, a quibus et secunda producebantur.
144 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 56D, p. 144, l. 137 –​p. 145, l. 148: Postquam ostendit
[Alfarabius] [1]‌ in prima sapientia esse omnium rerum exempla, in quibus sicut primis
exemplis sciuntur omnia sicut causata in primis causis, statim subinfert, quid sint talia
exempla dicens: [2] ‘Sunt igitur exempla causae rerum primariae’. Et infra: [3] Causa prima
numquam fuit ‘sine prioribus rerum causis in se factis’. Et parum infra: ‘Causae primae
propter infinitam super omnia diffusionem et incomprehensibilem altitudinem ineffabilis
puritatis suae excellentiae nullo percipiuntur intellectu eo, quod non distant a primo, qui
eas in principio formavit’. [4] Quod autem in effectibus, hoc est in processionibus earum in
formas intelligibiles cognoscuntur solummodo, quia sunt, non autem, quid sunt, et [5] sic
principales causae in ea, quorum sunt causae, proveniunt, et primum, id est sapientiam, non
reliquunt.
145 See also Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 99H, p. 202, l. 152-​159, where the primordial
causes were described as “uncreated”.
Exstasis divini amoris 231

at [4] brings us to the cusp of the transition from the intransitive, archetypi-
cal world and the transitive procession of creatures. In this way, the De causis
primis et secundis has provided the basic insight about the primordial causes
that Berthold will elaborate with principles derived from Propositions 64 and
65.146 The Good (causaliter) is properly diffusive only of goods (bonitates per
essentiam and bonitates per participationem) while these goods are in turn the
causes that strengthen the irradiations of the Good that are too weak to subsist
by themselves. Like the Good, the gods are only known imperfectly by their
processions.147 But since each god generates its own more limited “universe”
by a superabundance of a formal intention, it is in fact better known than the
Good.148 According to Berthold’s theory of formal intentions, a primordial
cause is one in re et intentione with what it essentially participates, namely, the
Good itself.149 The notion of a unitas or bonitas per essentiam thus can serve
the transitional function of being both a transcendent principle as a formal
cause (identical with the One-​Good as unum or bonum) but, insofar as it is an
effect of the One-​Good as an efficient cause (a god is not bonitas per causam
but per essentiam), it has a limited or supposited nature. This duality explains
how each god initiates its own characteristic intention from itself –​the nearer
a bonitas per essentiam is to the One, the greater the influence of its causal

146 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 13.3 was Berthold’s preferred text for showing that
Dionysius held that intention of “one” or “good” subsists in three modes. See Berthold of
Moosburg, Expositio, 113E, p. 37, l. 157 –​p. 38, l. 160: Et attende diligenter, quod sic enucle-
ate distinguit [Dionysius] triplex unum, scilicet prime unum, quod vocat supersubstantiale
unum et omnium causam, et existens unum, scilicet primo et per se unum, supra quod dicit
esse prime unum sicut terminans ipsum, et quod est participans unum. See also, for exam-
ple, Expositio, 1D, p. 77, l. 226 –​p. 78, l. 246; 5D, p. 120, l. 245 –​p. 121, l. 282; 64F, p. 197,
l. 149-​154.
147 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 162I, p. 21, l. 183 –​p. 22, l. 188.
148 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 123L, p. 133, l. 295 –​p. 135, l. 348.
149 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 2B, p. 84, l. 97-​9: Quoddam enim participans et quo essen-
tialiter participat, id est participans et participatum, sunt unum re et intentione. Et est sum-
mus modus participandi conveniens solum primordialibus causis. See also Expositio, 125D,
p. 149, l. 83-​120: omne activum prius natura transfunditur in se ipso, quam redundet ad extra
[…], ideo interior emanatio in ipsis diis est ratio et causa emicationis sive processus causalis,
qua de occulto supersubstantialis unionis quilibet deus emicat se ipsum. […] Sic ergo ‘omnis
deus existens unitas per se perfecta’ per 114 et ‘primordialis causa’ per 97 tradendo ‘universo
ordini’ suo propriam ‘proprietatem’ […]. Et hoc est, quod dicit Theodorus in Clave loquens
de primordialibus causis: ‘Primae causae in se ipsis unum sunt et simplices nullique cognitio
ordine definitae aut a se invicem segregatae: haec enim in effectibus suis partiuntur. […]
primordiales causae in principio omnium, scilicet in Verbo Dei, unum simplex atque indi-
viduum sunt, dum vero in effectus suos in infinitum multiplicatos procedunt’; 117C, p. 69,
l. 54 –​p. 70, l. 61.
232  Chapter 4

efficacy.150 By distinguishing each primordial cause (e.g., per se esse, per se vir-
tus) as good from its intention as causal primordial principle, Berthold found
an elegant account of the relation of God’s wisdom to its processions that did
not reify one apart from the other but preserved their dynamic relationship.
After citing the De causis primis et secundis in Prologus 4, Berthold cited a
lengthy Eriugenian gloss to De divinis nominibus 5.5, in which the primordial
causes are identified with the divine ideas and the processions.151 This com-
ment, under the authority of Maximus, provided the crucial terminological
equivalency between causae primordiales, ideae, formae aeternae, principalia
exempla, situated these in the Word prior to the multiplying work of the Holy
Spirit, and concluded by placing the entire doctrine under the shared author-
ity of Dionysius and Plato.152 Not only was the Triune nature of God known to
Plato, but so was the view that there are primordial causes that arise within the
Trinitarian processions that will refract its causality.
Berthold then turned to De divinis nominibus 11.6 and the question of God’s
relation to these causes or per se principles.153 A feature of Dionysius’ text pru-
dently omitted by Berthold was the critique of the view that the cause of life,
for example, is “a deity besides the super-​divine life”. Dionysius had explicitly
denied that these principles of beings are “creative substances and persons,
which [some] called the gods of beings and per se active creators”.154 Berthold

150 The Clavis had not emphasised the internal division in each primordial cause into a crea-
tive and a created aspect. See S. Gersh, “Honorius Augustodunensis and Eriugena. Remarks
on the Method and Content of the Clavis Physicae”, in W. Beierwaltes (ed.), Eriugena redi-
vivus. Zur Wirkungsgeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im Übergang zur Neuzeit.
Vorträge des V. Internationalen Eriugena-​ Colloquiums, Werner-​ Reimers-​Stiftung, Bad
Homburg, 26.-​30. August 1985 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1987), p. 162–​173. Berthold’s interpre-
tation of the De causis primis et secundis and its phrase eo, quod non distant a primo thus
brought him closer to Eriugena himself than the Clavis could.
151 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4, p. 10, l. 155-​174. Cf. Eriugena, Periphyseon, lib. ii,
615D-​617A, p. 124, l. 3142-​3188, and Honorius Augustodunensis, Clavis physicae, c. 116, p. 85,
l. 4 –​p. 86, l. 39. Another portion of Clavis c. 116 was used concerning participation at 2A,
but it is only cited in full at Expositio, 128A, p. 166, l. 12 –​p. 167, l. 57, alongside De divinis
nominibus, 5.8-​9 on the exemplars in God.
152 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4, p. 10, l. 165-​169: ‘Ideae a philosophis divinae vol-
untates appellari solent et praecipue a Platonicis, quoniam quaecumque voluit Deus facere,
in ipsis principaliter et causaliter fecit’. Et infra: ‘Has formas sive ideas Dionysius ceterique
sancti appellant per se ipsam bonitas, per se ipsam essentia […]’.
153 Coincidentally, in Periphyseon, lib. ii, 617A-​C, immediately following the passage that
became the source for the scholium just mentioned, Eriugena also appealed to the
authority of Dionysius and cited De divinis nominibus, 11.6 at length. This was not taken
over into the Clavis.
154 For this reason, Albert the Great, Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus, 11.27, p. 424, l. 80 –​
p. 425, l. 36, placed Dionysius with Aristotle against the idolatrous “followers of Hesiod”
Exstasis divini amoris 233

preferred to cite and slightly modify Dionysius’ positive statement that imme-
diately followed: being itself (per se esse) can be said divinely and causally
(divine et causaliter) of God himself, and divinely and participably (divine
participabiliter) of the providential powers of the unparticipable God.155
This would correspond neatly to Berthold’s own distinction of intransitive
and transitive invisibilia. The primordial causes as intransitive are the divine
wisdom or the archetypical world and are one (unum in re) with the divine
essence. But as causes, they are transitive, and are the Good as “divinely par-
ticipable”. In this passage, Dionysius had reported the teaching of some of his
“divine, holy masters”:156 they called the substantificator of per se bonitas and
per se deitas “the Beyond-​good” (superbona) and “the Beyond-​deity” (super-
dea), and called per se bonitas itself “the beneficent and deifying gift coming
from God”.157 As Berthold interpreted him, Dionysius had thus posited some
form of a subordination of these principles to God. Berthold presented this
interpretation as consistent with Dionysius’ Epistula ii to Gaius, which out-
lined how God is above the “thearchy” –​taken as a synonym for the primordial
causes, deities, goodnesses and beneficent, deifying gifts of the unparticipable
God.158

and the Platonists. Thomas Aquinas, In Librum De divinis nominibus Expositio, c. 11, lect. 4,
§931-​933, p. 346, also interpreted this passage as a critique of the Platonists. See V. Boland,
Ideas in God according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. Sources and Synthesis (Leiden: Brill,
1996), p. 299–​303; Hankey, “The Concord”, p. 163–​169.
155 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4, p. 10, l. 179-​180. Ludueña, La recepción de
Eriúgena, p. 343–​7, has noted a crucial variant: where Saracen’s translation reads par-
ticipaliter autem datas ex deo imparticipabili provisivas virtutes, Berthold has divine vero
participabiliter datas. As Ludueña indicated, participabiliter appears in Albert the Great,
Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus, 11.27, p. 424, l. 74 and p. 425, l. 41. Berthold’s only
other citations of De divinis nominibus, 11.6 –​in Expositio, 63B, p. 187, l. 35 –​p. 188, l. 52; and
113A, p. 34, l. 35-​44 –​both read particulariter, although this may be the result of a copyist’s
error. Berthold’s passing reference to De divinis nominibus, 11.6 at Expositio, 23A, p. 113,
l. 55-​57 suggests that he generally intended participabiliter as the correct reading.
156 Albert the Great, Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus, 11.29, p. 425, l. 66-​68, and Thomas
Aquinas, In Librum De divinis nominibus Expositio, c. 11, lect. 4, §938, identified these indi-
viduals with Hierotheus and other disciples of the Apostles.
157 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4, p. 11, l. 186-​196.
158 Albert’s comments on the Epistle focus on the problem of deification, and how deitas can
be regarded as both created and uncreated. His solution distinguishes between the formal
and efficient senses of “the principle of deification”. God is said to be above the formal
principle which is “the [created] participation of deity assimilating to God through grace
or glory”, while he is identical with the thearchy as the efficient cause of deity. See Albert
the Great, Super Dionysii Epistulas, Epistula ii, p. 483, l. 49-​58. For Berthold, Epistula ii
referred to the self-​sufficient gods (deus per essentiam) as formal causes and to their
dependency on God as their efficient cause (deus per causam).
234  Chapter 4

Since Berthold was of course aware of Dionysius’ outright rejection of any

deity besides (praeter) God, he knew he must tread lightly. He would explicitly
invoke the Proclean term “gods” for the first time only after citing the Psalms
95:3 and 97:9 that praise God as “far exalted above all gods”, and in Psalm 50:1
as the Lord of gods (Deus deorum dominus), and after citing Paul, who subordi-
nated “the gods in heaven and earth” to “our one God and Father, from whom
are all things and we in him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all
things and we through him” (1 Cor. 8:5-​6).159 The same gods mentioned by Paul
(isti di), Berthold declared, are for Proclus “beyond beings and the measures of
being, for every being is in them as number is in the monads, though beings
proceed from them”. Then there followed the pivotal text from De decem dubi-
tationibus 10.63, where Proclus used the same principle found in Proposition
64 to establish that “one” and “good” exists in three ways: according to cause,
existence, and participation.
Berthold anticipated that his readers would be uncomfortable with admit-
ting the existence of “gods by essence”. He invoked Boethius’ remarkable argu-
ment in the Consolatio philosophiae that everyone in bliss is god (omnis beatus
deus) to illustrate how there can be one God “by nature” and many gods as you
please “by participation”. “If you object”, Berthold remarked, “that therefore
there are [still] no gods by essence, I say that this does not follow, since every
god by essence participates deity because it does not have deity in its supera-
bundance”.160 The gods are subordinate to the immediate efficient causality of
the Good –​they participate or limit its superabundance –​and do so in such
a way that they are not distant from the first. That is, as formal causes consti-
tuted out of the single intention of “one” or “good” they refract the divine Light
by proportionately exercising the same spontaneous and generative activity
of the Good. In this way, Berthold’s original interpretation of his Eriugenian
sources (especially the Liber de causis primis et secundis) in terms of the dis-
tinction of formal intentions (“good”, “infinite”, etc.) and the relation between
formal and efficient causality established the accord of Proclus and Dionysius
on one of the central themes for the Elementatio theologica that would be most
difficult for his contemporaries to accept: the existence of primordial causes
that are divine by their essence.
At the heart of Berthold’s determinedly Platonic approach to the separate
substances was Proposition 65 (“Everything that subsists in any way, subsists
principaliformiter according to cause, or according to essence, or according to

159 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4, p. 12, l. 218-​226.

160 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4, p. 13, l. 248-​250. In 2A, p. 83, l. 48-​53, this limita-
tion of the higher by the lower is called the third “mode” of participation.
Exstasis divini amoris 235

participation in an exemplary way”).161 The same idea appeared also in Proclus’

proof to Proposition 140, which Dietrich of Freiberg had cited as the exhaustive
enumeration of the possible modes of any essential order.162 For Berthold, the
principle is “so obvious that it is in no need of proof”.163 Berthold’s elaboration
of Dietrich’s theory, after it has been subjected to the Platonic critique of the
universality of abstraction and the metaphysics of being, would be impossi-
ble without this principle, which provided the law of proportionality that cap-
tured the way in which the separate substances must be truly ordered among
themselves, independently of our thinking.
It was with these principles from Propositions 62-​66, having established
for the first time in the Prologus that the primordial causes or gods were in
fact posited by both Proclus and Dionysius, that Berthold schematised the
array of separate substances.164 As the final link in his catena of citations from
Gallus, the De causis primis et secundis, the glosses of Maximus, Dionysius, the
Scriptures, and Proclus, Berthold gave a heavily glossed citation of De divinis
nominibus 11.6 and interpolated the entire population of natural providence
into the Areopagite’s text, from the six primordial causes, to their orders, to the
self-​subsistent members of those orders, and finally their participants. Despite
his efforts to show that this simply was the common teaching of Proclus and
Dionysius, Berthold’s proportional reasoning about the relationship between
God’s unlimited causal influence and the limited influence of primordial
causes in their partial universes was the teaching for which he himself will
be cited in an anonymous commentary on the Sentences from 14th-​century
Regensburg.165

161 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 65, p. 35, l. 1-​3: Omne quod qualitercumque subsistit
aut secundum causam est principaliformiter aut secundum existentiam aut secundum par-
ticipationem exemplariter.
162 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.1.2, p. 146, l. 14-​19: Plures modos non
invenimus in essentialiter ordinatis; ii.7.4, p. 151, l. 66-​73. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio,
65F, p. 204, l. 109-​114, concluded by finding this logical triad also in Dionysius, Epistula
ix.2, 1108B.
163 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 74C, p. 54, l. 137-​142: Ubi primo notandum et quasi pro
fundamento ponendum, quod omne, quod qualitercumque subsistit, aut secundum causam
principaliformiter aut secundum essentiam aut secundum participationem exemplariter
per 65. Sed species, de qua agitur, subsistit tam in causa principaliformiter quam in par-
ticipantibus exemplariter, et hoc vere et secundum rem. Hoc enim ita manifestum est, quod
etiam non indigent probatione.
164 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4-​5, p. 12, l. 227 –​p. 13, l. 263. Proclus, De decem dubi-
tationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §63 yields Propositions 64 and 65 (l. 231-​242); Berthold
applied Proposition 65 to Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, prosa 10 (l. 243-​250),
and Propositions 62 and 66 to Dionysius (l. 254-​263).
165 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 8D, p. 162, l. 178-​209. See Conclusion, section 1, below.
236  Chapter 4

Just as Berthold used these Eriugenian sources to establish the subtle

boundary between God and the highest of his works, so he also employed the
Clavis to account for the dynamic presence of the Good as it moves through
these causes or instruments of its causality:

Divine goodness and essence and life and wisdom and everything, which
are in the font of all, first flow forth into the primordial causes and make
them to be, then through the primordial causes into their effects in an
ineffable way.166

That is, the same Good courses through all things providentially. Since these
causes, insofar as they are unities or goodnesses, are not strictly other than
God, “in a broad sense” God is said to become (fieri) through them in his prov-
idential and creative procession (processus seu exitus). The procession of a
cause “from the secrets of its eminence into an effect” is said not only of the
primordial causes, “which are said to be made [fieri], since they essentially
multiply themselves in their effects,” but also of “God by his providence […]
as Dionysius says in the Letter to Titus”.167 In this respect, Dionysius’ twofold
usage of the term “procession” (effects proceed from a cause; a cause proceeds
into its effects),168 was transmitted to Berthold through his Eriugenian sources.
This is what undergirded his view about the ineffability at the depth of each
thing (usia) by virtue of its immediate relation to the Good.169

166 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 18B, p. 47, l. 112-​5 = Honorius Augustodunensis, Clavis
physicae, c. 126, p. 94, l. 13-​6.
167 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 3A, p. 92, l. 14-​19: tunc est processus seu exitus rei existen-
tis in actu ex secretis suae eminentiae in effectum, et sic non solum causae primordiales
dicuntur fieri, cum se ipsas per essentiam multiplicant in effectus, sed etiam Deus ipse sua
providentia, quae ‘perfecta est’, ut dicit Dionysius in Epistula ad Titum, quae est causa, ut
sint omnia, et ad omnia procedit et in omni fit et continet omnia.
168 S. Gersh, “Ideas and Energies in Pseudo-​Dionysius the Areopagite”, in Studia Patristica
15(1984), p. 297–​300.
169 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 120D, p. 98, l. 255 –​p. 99, l. 268: Non est autem alia prov-
identia omnium et alia causa omnium, sed unus atque idem Deus, qui in omnia procedit et
in omni fit […]. Lux ineffabilis omnibus intellectualibus oculis semper praesens et a nullo
intellectu cognoscitur, quid sit, per omnia diffusa in infinitum et fit in omnibus omnia; 120E,
p. 100, l. 306-​8: Deus ex superessentialitate suae naturae, qua dicitur non esse primum
descendens, in primordialibus causis a se ipso creatur et fit principium omnis essentiae;
123M, p. 136, l. 367-​382: Dum ergo incomprehensibilis intelligitur, per excellentiam nihilum
non immerito vocatur; atvero suis theophaniis incipiens apparere, veluti ex nihilo dicitur ali-
quid procedere, et quae proprie super omnem essentiam existimatur, proprie quoque in omni
essentia cognoscitur. […] Ipse factor omnium in omnibus factus. On the ineffability of usia,
see 121E, cited at 4.2, n. 50, above.
Exstasis divini amoris 237

This Platonic consensus on the Trinity and the primordial causes was the
standard Berthold used when he incorporated Dietrich of Freiberg’s notion of
the essentially active intellect (intellectus in actu per essentiam) as an imago
Trinitatis into his commentary. Dietrich had used this notion explicitly to
interpret what Proclus meant by the gods in the Elementatio theologica.170
According to Dietrich, when Proclus spoke of “gods” he simply appropriated
the term to “inferior substances, namely the intelligences”, in order to indicate
that the One was beyond the names “intellect” and “god”.171 Berthold departed
from Dietrich by assimilating Proclus’ gods to the primordial causes or divine
processions of Dionysius and not to the intelligences of the Liber de causis.172
This coincided with Berthold’s extensive elaboration of one of Dietrich’s own
conceptual inventions, the notion that a certain set of separate substances can
be understood ontologically as beings existing as a species (entia secundum
speciem). Adopting this notion, Berthold will argue for the subordination of
the separate intellects to the gods considered in terms of their constitutive
formal intentions: the gods are constituted by one formal intention (“one” or
“good”), and the intelligences out of many (“good”, “power”, “being”, “life”, and
“intellect”). But this clear subordination of intelligences to the gods accord-
ing to the dictates of Platonic reasoning came at the cost of a proliferation of
separate principles that then must exist between the gods and intelligences
(the orders of separately subsisting “infinities”, “beings”, and “lives”). These we
found enumerated in the table at 62C, but now we will look more closely at
Berthold’s justification for positing their existence.

170 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, i.7.1, p. 140, l. 21-​28: illae intellectuales sub-
stantiae, quas philosophi intelligentias vocabant, de quibus agitur in Libro de causis et in
libro Procli, quas in pluribus locis illius libri deos nominat, quamvis secundum diminutam
et imperfectam rationem deitatis, sicut etiam Philosophus in xii Metaphysicae approbat
dictum illorum, qui vocabant principia moventia caelos, vocabant, inquam, deos secundum
diminutam et imperfectam rationem deitatis.
171 Dietrich of Freiberg, De cognitione entium separatorum, 9.2, p. 175, l. 70 –​p. 176, l. 81: Unde
attendendo hanc Dei immensitatem Proclus in libro suo superordinavit omnibus intellect-
ibus et secundum substantiam et secundum operationem quadam inexplicabili positiva
nominis proprietate essentiam divinam dicens propositione 20: ‘[…] et omnibus intellec-
tualibus hypostasibus superius ipsum unum’. Ecce, caruit nomine positivo, quo exprimeret
illam summam essentiam, quae Deus est, caruit, inquam, secundum intentionem suam, nec
suffecit sibi nomen intellectus, immo nec nomen Dei, quae duo nomina appropriate infe-
rioribus substantiis, id est intelligentiis, in processu eiusdem libri sui propositione 121[125],
130[134], 136[140], 141[145], et ibi in commento, ubi dicitur: ‘Plena autem sunt omnia diis, et
quod unumquodque habet secundum naturam, inde habet’.
172 E. Ludueña, “Creatio y determinatio en la Escuela Renana. De Alberto Magno a Bertoldo
de Moosburg”, in Princípios. Revista de Filosofia, 22/​37(2015), p. 77–​97, at p. 87–​94.
238  Chapter 4

4 Limit and the Unlimited

Moving below the thearchy (God and the gods) to the numerous orders
of entities that Berthold posited in the realm of being (from infinities to
human nature) above the realm of becoming (nature and human individu-
als), we are immediately confronted with the question of the relationship
between the creative causality of the One and the determinative causality
exercised by the first of the primordial causes. Berthold identified this pri-
mordial cause –​the prima unitas as distinct from the prime unitas or “the
primarily God” –​as “infinity” or the Unlimited. In so doing, he proposed a
solution to a puzzle that has vexed Proclus’ medieval and modern interpret-
ers, namely, how to produce a coherent account of the relationship between
the pair of Limit and the Unlimited (πέρας-​ἄπειρον), discussed mostly in
Propositions 89-​92, and the gods. Proclus’ most explicit statement about
their relation in the Elementatio theologica at Proposition 159 (“Every order
of gods is from the first principles, Limit and the Unlimited, but some relate
more to the causes of Limit, others to the causes of the Unlimited”),173 has
left his commentators from the time of Nicholas of Methone (d. 1160/​1166)
somewhat baffled, since it would seem to locate these two principles some-
where between the One and the gods, whose relation to the One was sup-
posedly immediate.174
As the situation has been recently described by Jonathan Greig, there are two
problems that confront Proclus’ interpreters on this point.175 The first concerns
the reconciliation of two apparently distinct causal models: one in which each
supersubstantial god unites a series of entities that emerge from it and share
its unique characteristic, and another in which Limit and the Unlimited are
the immediate causes of the mixture of Being. The second problem is to avoid
an undesirable consequence that could be drawn from in Proposition 159: if
the orders arising from the gods are composed of Limit and the Unlimited, this
would entail at least some composition in the gods themselves as principles of
those orders. If so, this would mean that the gods are not in fact pure unities.176

173 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 159, p. 78, l. 1-​2: Omnis ordo deorum ex primis est
principiis, fine et infinitate; sed hic quidem ad finis causas magis, hic autem ad infinitatis.
174 See E.R. Dodds’ commentary to Proposition 159, in Proclus, The Elements of Theology, ed.
E.R. Dodds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 19632), p. 281.
175 See J. Greig, “Proclus on the Two Causal Models for the One’s Production of Being.
Reconciling the Relation of the Henads and the Limit/​Unlimited”, in The International
Journal of the Platonic Tradition 14(2020), p. 23–​48, at p. 23–​28.
176 Greig, “Proclus on the Two Causal Models”, p. 28–​31.
Exstasis divini amoris 239

Let us call the first the “integration” problem, and the second the “simplicity”
problem.
Although Berthold did not directly raise these questions, we will see that
they nevertheless provide a helpful way of summarising the advantages and
shortcomings in his interpretation of Proclus on the Limit and the Unlimited.
Berthold’s proposal, in short, was that the One (prime unitas) should be iden-
tified as the Limit that produces a series of limits, which are the gods or pri-
mordial causes, and that the first primordial cause (prima unitas) should be
identified as the Unlimited. This allowed him to avoid the integration problem
altogether by maintaining that Proclus was in fact not outlining two different
models of causality. There was one causal pattern derived from the principles
of essential order and proportionality in Propositions 62-​66, and this applied
as much to the gods as to all other members of the essential order of natural
providence. Each primordial cause generates a series from its own characteris-
tic intention –​in the case of the Good, this produces the intermediary princi-
ples (bonitates per essentiam) that, since they are substantial goods, refract its
causal power. Each primordial cause also leaves a trace of its intention in every
principle and order subordinate to it. This allowed Berthold to say that the pri-
mordial cause of being (prime entitas) and order arising from it, which follows
immediately after the order of infinitas, is indeed constituted by Limit and the
Unlimited (Proposition 89) precisely because Limit and the Unlimited leave a
trace of their influence in every order of the gods (Proposition 159).
This proposal, however, led Berthold into some difficult territory relative to
the “simplicity” problem. Berthold would want to maintain that his account
of formal intentions did in fact preserve the unicity of each god as constituted
from only the intention of “one” or “good”, even though each god is subordi-
nate to the One according to its own degree of “contraction”.177 We may again
recall the table of six formal intentions in 62C, whose number at other times
expanded to include the seven “pillars” or formal perfections of the house of
God (unitas/​bonitas, virtus, entitas, vita, intellectualitas, animealitas, and nat-
uralitas). All that was required was to show that the first two intentions could
be assimilated to the Limit and the Unlimited. But as soon as Berthold made
this assimilation, he introduced a linear structure of subordination among the
primordial causes. The One (prime unitas) or Limit was the immediate cause
of the entire order of the gods as “ones” or “limits”. The highest member within
that order (prima unitas), the primordial cause of infinity or power (virtus), as

177 Berthold received the terminology of “formal intentions” and “contraction” from Dietrich,
who used it to interpret the Liber de causis. See Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intel-
ligibili, ii.16.1, p. 157, l. 28-​35.
240  Chapter 4

both an essential unity (unitas secundum essentiam) and an originary formal

cause (infinitas secundum causam), would fit Berthold’s desired model per-
fectly. However, every subordinate primordial cause within that order begin-
ning with prime ens must be, in Berthold’s words, “almost” (quasi) composite,
insofar as it presupposes the activity of both the One and infinity, which he
identified as an “auxiliary cause” (concausa) within the order of gods.
Readers of Proclus today would no doubt see this very linear model as a
major departure from Proclus’ own more sophisticated henology, even though
it was so advantageous for Berthold’s articulation of a coherent theory of cau-
sality in Proclus relative to the integration problem.178 Proclus in his commen-
tary on Plato’s Parmenides advanced an important but nevertheless obscure
distinction between the way in which the gods arise from the One, “accord-
ing to union” (καθ’ ἕνωσιν), and the way entities arise from the gods, by same-
ness and difference.179 Furthermore, for Proclus, since the precise number of
henadic principles can only be known to the gods,180 it would seem prepos-
terous to fix their number to six or seven. But this is exactly what Berthold
was invited to do under the guidance of Proposition 135, which established a
direct correlation between the number of gods and the number of the genera
of being.181 In the spirit of Dietrich, Berthold would hold that the entire exer-
cise of the oblique motion would be undermined if one could not reason nec-
essarily about the invisible things of God beginning from the creation that was
suffused with divine order and beauty.182 Ultimately, however, and perhaps

178 For the positions of C. D’Ancona, E. Butler, G. Van Riel, and an original solution to the
problem in Proclus, see Greig, “Proclus on the Two Causal Models”, p. 31–​46.
179 Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem commentaria, ed. C. Steel, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007-​2009), vol. 1, lib. i, p. 644, l. 9-​10; lib. ii, p. 745, l. 14-​23; vol. 3, lib. vi,
p. 1049, l. 26-​27.
180 Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum commentaria, ed. E. Diehl (Leipzig: Teubner, 1903-​1906), vol.
3, p. 12, l. 27-​30.
181 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 135M, p. 230, l. 301-​303. At 139D, Berthold addressed the
possible confusion arising from his interpretation, which places between the gods and
the “genus of beings” an intermediate “order of infinities”, according to the order of formal
perfections. With a citation from Clavis, c. 119, Berthold explains that the infinities can be
spoken of as non-​beings. This equivocation appeared to satisfy the commentator.
182 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 109B, p. 13, l. 29 –​p. 14, l. 37: qui cum constituatur ex sex
unitatibus, ut per declarationem 62 demonstratum est, necessarium est, quod in ipso tali
ordine partes ipsius distributae sint secundum partes senarii aliquotas ita, quod primum sit
unum tantum, 2 secunda et 3 tertia; 126F, p. 158, l. 146-​147: ponatur sub exemplo descriptionis
ordinis deorum, qui necessario constat ex sex diis; 139D, p. 35, l. 76-​81: Hanc enim negare non
possumus secundum intentionem auctoris, quia ad hoc praeter alia supra praemissa enu-
merata motiva cogit nos natura ordinis essentialis, quem necessarium est, sicut et in aliis,
immo prae omnibus aliis in multitudine uniali deorum salvum esse. Quod non esset, nisi
Exstasis divini amoris 241

more in accordance with Proclus’ own intent, Berthold understood that the
oblique motion was itself the means to a higher apprehension. The content
of this apprehension Berthold found described, not in Proclus’ commentaries
on Plato, but, as we will see, in the Clavis physicae, which taught him that rea-
son necessarily divided what was in itself the unified movement of God as the
beginning, middle, and end of all things.183
Berthold’s interpretation of the propositions on the absolute Limit and
Unlimited followed from his views about the six-​fold order of the gods. His first
lengthy discussion of the subject is found in Proposition 90 (“The first [prima]
Limit and the first [prima] Unlimited exist prior to everything constituted out
of limit and the unlimited”).184 Berthold’s first inclination would no doubt
have been to use the well-​established distinction in the Expositio between
the adverb prime (πρώτως) and the adjective primus (πρωτός), as it was first
occasioned by Proposition 8. In such a view, the prima finitas mentioned in
Proposition 90 should refer to the first effect of the primordial cause (e.g.,
prime finitas). However, in a rare departure from the letter of the Elementatio,
Berthold proceeded directly to identify the One as prime finitas which, he
argued, was what Dionysius had in mind when he spoke of the One limiting all
things, including infinity (omnem quidem infinitatem terminans).185 He further
associated the causality of Limit with God’s orderly arrangement of all things
according to measure, number and weight.186 Using the law of proportionality
in Proposition 65, he argued that the order of gods is in fact an order of limits
(finitates), who would exercise the same dispositive power within their own
domains.187

sex unitates contineret; 149F, p. 116, l. 165-​172: Hoc igitur positio, cui non potest intellectus
contradicere […].
183 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 125D, p. 150, l. 103-​109: Primae causae in se ipsis unum
sunt et simplices nullique cognito ordine definitae aut a se invicem segregatae: haec enim in
effectibus suis partiuntur. See also n. 216, below.
184 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 90, p. 46, l. 1-​2: Omnibus ex finitate et infinitate con-
stantibus preexistit secundum se prima finitas et prima infinitas.
185 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 90A, p. 154, l. 16 –​p. 155, l. 39: […] Praemissis diligenter
perspectis apparet ex sententia Dionysii prime unum, quod simpliciter omnia finit et termi-
nat, esse prime finitatem. See also Expositio, 159H, p. 198, l. 291-​298, citing Dionysius, De
divinis nominibus, 13.1 and 13.3.
186 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 159H, p. 199, l. 308-​311; 123K, p. 133, l. 271-​287.
187 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 90C, p. 156, l. 90 –​p. 157, l. 91. Incidentally, we may note
that Proclus sometimes wrote that the Limit is more like the One. See Proclus, Théologie
platonicienne, eds H.D. Saffrey, L.G. Westerink, vol. 3 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1978), lib. iii,
c. 8, p. 33, l. 1-​2; id., In Platonis Timaeum commentaria, vol. 1, p. 176, l. 11-​12; id., In Platonis
Parmenidem commentaria, vol. 1, lib. ii, p. 738, l. 18-​34; vol. 3, lib. vi, p. 1124, l. 6.
242  Chapter 4

According to Berthold, the first unity (prima unitas) among these gods
or limits is power or infinity (prime virtus, infinitas). He presented this as
the shared doctrine of Proclus, Dionysius, and the Clavis physicae.188 The
Unlimited or “infinity” is the naturally consequent determination to arise after
“limit” because, he argued, “it is necessary that every determining [principle]
be of an opposed ratio to what it determines”.189 He does not explain how this
rule would apply to lower formal intentions. For example, one might say that
entitas determines infinity understood as non-​entitas, and it may be that life
would determine entitas as “not-​life”, but this is not clear from the text.
The “extremes of the universe”, the gods and prime matter, share the com-
mon feature of being produced “by the primarily Good alone”.190 To explain
the relation of prime matter to the subsequent determinative causality of
prime infinitas, Berthold staged a confrontation between Plato and “others”
(in this case, Dietrich of Freiberg) regarding the question of whether matter is
“something one and simple through its essence”. Opposing this thesis, Dietrich
argued that matter is “many and essentially multiple” because of the plurality
of its inherent capacities to receive different forms.191 To present Plato’s alter-
native and correct position, Berthold took arguments from Ulrich of Strassburg
stating that matter has a threefold being: (1) as simple in its substance, it is
without composition and prior to “the first inchoation of form”; (2) as a “being
of potency”, it is subject to motion and change, insofar as it has “the inchoa-
tions of form”, although it remains one by privation of any form in act, “and
thus nothing yet is distinct in it”; (3) as “actual being”, it is “determined by the
act of form”.192 This threefold distinction of matter, presented here as an exe-
gesis of the Timaeus (which was not clearly stated in Ulrich) would correspond
for Berthold to a precise sequence of causal influence, from (1) the Good, (2) to

188 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 90B, p. 155, l. 41 –​p. 156, l. 77; 60B, p. 172, l. 66 –​p. 173, l. 75,
followed immediately by De divinis nominibus, 5.5 on the priority of per se esse relative
to the other processions; 60D, p. 173, l. 98-​107: Ubi notandum, quod hic [Dionysius] vocat
‘totam’ et ‘per se ipsam virtutem’ primam bonitatem intra ordinem unialem; 3B, p. 94, l. 77-​
92. For the agreement of all three authorities, see Expositio, 139D, p. 34, l. 60 –​p. 36, l. 117,
where non ens in the Clavis is identified with the order of infinities.
189 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 89B, p. 151, l. 58-​67.
190 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 59C, p. 166, l. 106-​115.
191 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 59C, p. 166, l. 124 –​p. 167, l. 148. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg,
De miscibilibus in mixto, ed. W. Wallace, in Opera omnia, vol. 4, 3.1-​4, p. 32, l. 3 –​p. 33, l. 28.
192 Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono, lib. iv, tr. 2, c. 7 (2-​6), p. 120, l. 18 –​p. 124, l. 153.
Berthold identified the inchoation of forms with Augustine’s notion of the seminal rea-
sons. See Expositio, 138 commentum, p. 31, l. 246-​248: secunda illustratio est infinitas ipsius
materiae per incohationes omnium formarum in ea, quas quidam vocant rationes semina-
les, quas certum non esse eiusdem essentiae cum materia.
Exstasis divini amoris 243

power (virtus),193 and finally (3) being, for “prime matter, although it is a one
when considered by itself, is yet unable to stand in the things of nature without
[something] determining it”.194
As for the troublesome Proposition 159, Berthold maintained that it must be
read in light of the Propositions 151-​156, which concern “the properties of the
gods, in comparison with one another and with their effects or orders”. From
this standpoint, Proposition 159 should be understood with reference to “a gen-
eral property belonging to every order caused by the gods”.195 In other words,
he read the phrase “order of the gods” (ordo deorum) in the text as a subjective
genitive, “the order that comes from the gods”. In Berthold’s view, this connected
Proposition 159 both to Proposition 89 (the first result of Limit and the Unlimited
is true Being), in that the order of being is clearly subordinate to the order of the
primordial causes, and to Proposition 102, which stated that prime ens (the pri-
mordial cause of Being) bestows the mixture of Limit and the Unlimited.196
Berthold’s commentary on Proposition 102 began by confronting an inter-
pretation which, considering Proposition 89, would restrict the communica-
tion of Limit and Unlimited to true beings (enter entia) that alone participate
“extensive infinity”, either insofar as they are eternal in an atemporal sense
or as perpetual through temporal succession.197 To avoid this result, Berthold
introduced a distinction among the gods themselves. The primordial cause
of being (prime ens) can be considered in two ways: as amethectum,198 it is

193 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 57G, p. 154, l. 224: materia prima, quae substantivatur per
posse. Cf. Averroes, De substantia orbis, in Aristotelis opera cum Averrois commentariis, vol.
9 (Venezia: Junta, 1562-​1574), c. 1, f. 3vL.
194 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 89B, p. 151, l. 53-​54. See also Expositio, 71D, p. 35, l. 128-​
138: Verbi gratia: prime (prime] primae ed.) virtus determinat essentiam materiae primae,
quae procedit a solo primo, per commentum 59, ad esse in potentia, puta ad virtutem recep-
tivam formae, et sic essentia materiae subicitur virtuti; sed quia uterque effectus tam prime
boni quam prime virtutis stat adhuc in quadam indeterminatione, ideo prime ens praesup-
ponens effectum utriusque determinat et informat ipsum entitate, scilicet essentia formae;
formae, inquam, talis, quae tantum dat esse.
195 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 159, p. 189, l. 5-​7: […] unam generalem proprietatem
omnibus ordinibus a diis causatis convenientem. See also Expositio, 159D, p. 194, l. 172-​176.
196 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 159F-​G, p. 196, l. 229 –​p. 197, l. 243.
197 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 102A, p. 217, l. 14-​26.
198 William of Moerbeke inexplicably transliterated ἀμέθεκτον in Propositions 99-​102, 123, 161,
which he had translated elsewhere as imparticipatum (Propositions 23-​24, 63 comm., 69
comm., 162 comm.). At Expositio, 99C, p. 200, l. 69-​81, Berthold inventively distinguished
between imparticipatum and amethectum, arguing that the latter denotes a loftier kind
of independent subsistence. That is, amethectum combines the senses of “the unpartici-
pated”, “the indivisible”, and “the not-​participating” (imparticipans). It is not only exalted
above its effects, but it is “independent as such”. In this sense, amethectum is equivalent
244  Chapter 4

“unbegotten”;199 however, “as a unity included within the unifical order, it

proceeds from two causes, namely, the primary cause and the auxiliary cause
[concausa]”.200 Such a distinction within each primordial cause, as uncaused
insofar as it is amethectum and yet dependent on the One, was a straightfor-
ward combination of Propositions 99 and 100. The gods are self-​sufficient qua
unities but are above self-​sufficiency qua the super-​plenitude of their distinc-
tive intention.201 In one sense, this aligned with Berthold’s characteristic dis-
tinction between the self-​originating character of each god as a formal cause,
coupled with its dependency on the Good as an efficient cause. However, we
see here that Berthold has added another layer of complexity: the god of enti-
tas (prime ens) depends both on the One and on prime infinitas as an “auxil-
iary cause”. Berthold was careful to observe the difference between the more
rarefied notion of the amethectum, which applies only to the gods, and the
wider amplitude of the self-​sufficient (antarkes).202 Yet this technical precision
had to be abandoned to address the problem at hand, for Berthold finally con-
ceded that prime ens “is, as it were, composed” from Limit and the Unlimited,
which both “act in prime ente itself and with it”.203 Only this can explain how
all beings are recipients of the mixture of Limit and the Unlimited (according
to Propositions 89 and 102). But the internal composition required to account
for the serial order among the gods has compromised the pure simplicity of
every god below prime infinitas.204
The conclusion drawn from Proposition 102 –​that prime ens is “quasi-​
composite” because Limit and the Unlimited “act in prime ente itself and
with it” –​was used in Berthold’s commentary on Proposition 159 to address

to the restricted senses of imparticipatum presented in Expositio, 23A, p. 112, l. 15 –​p. 113,
l. 54. However, at 161F, he was forced to admit that there is also a “less proper” sense of the
term amethectum.
199 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 23E, p. 117, l. 191-​201, where Berthold presented this
notion as the teaching of Dionysius.
200 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 102B, p. 218, l. 33-​38: licet prime ens inquantum amethec-
tum non sit ab alia causa, sed ingenitum per 99, tamen, inquantum est unitas quaedam
intra ordinem unialem conclusa, procedit a duabus causis, scilicet principali et concausa.
Principali, quod est prime unum, quod etiam directe est causa et totalis ipsius prime entis.
Concausa, scilicet prima unitate intra ordinem, scilicet prime infinitate, quae est intermedia
prime unius et prime entis per 92 in commento.
201 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 99B, p. 199, l. 55-​67; 100G, p. 208, l. 145-​154.
202 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 99A, p. 198, l. 13 –​p. 199, l. 41.
203 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 102B, p. 218, l. 43-​48.
204 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 23C, p. 115, l. 126-​128: participatorum quaedam sunt
simul, licet non secundum idem, participata, participantia et imparticipata, ut bonitates et
unitates.
Exstasis divini amoris 245

“a controversy among the wise” concerning the origin of plurality and, more
specifically, whether the dyad proceeds immediately from the One. From
Thomas of York, who accepted their arguments, Berthold cited Avicebron,
Gundissalinus, and Hermes on the dyad as the immediate product of the One
and the root of plurality, which Avicebron and Gundissalinus identified as
first matter and first form.205 Opposing such views were Dionysius, “whose
authority prevails, since it is supported by infallible reason”, and Boethius, who
maintained that the angels and all things incorporeal are immaterial. Berthold
resolved the controversy by distinguishing (or equivocating) between four dif-
ferent senses of the word “matter”.206 (1) In “the strict sense”, matter is what
is “mixed with privation”; (2) in its “less proper sense”, matter as it is found
in the celestial bodies is identical with “the subject” of place and extension;
(3) in its “wide sense”, matter can mean anything that is subjected to act, such
as rational souls and angels, which pass from intellection to non-​intellection;
(4) finally, in its “widest sense”, matter can mean “an actual determining
potency”. The latter refers to the notion we have encountered already in sec-
tion 4.1 in Berthold’s account of “theological universality”, according to which a
more actual formal intention is determined or contracted by a more potential
formal intention. In this fourth sense, one could say that “matter” is found in
all beings beneath the gods as far as heavenly souls, in which there is a gra-
dation of increasing formal determination and composition, but where the
result nevertheless remains a single nature (unum in re). In this sense, then,
everything proceeds from the dyad, which is “far better and more fittingly
named the Limit and Unlimited”.207 Nevertheless, when Berthold treated “the
origin of these two principles” in themselves, he sought no compromise and
rejected the arguments of Gundissalinus and Avicebron outright, using the
principle from 5B that idem manens idem semper natum est facere idem, and
the principle of procession by similitude. Since “nothing is the cause of its
contrary”,208 the One causes per se unities. Since two equally first principles

205 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 159B, p. 191, l. 75 –​p. 193, l. 137. Cf. Thomas of York,
Sapientiale, lib. ii, c. 11. On Thomas’ hylomorphism, see D.E. Sharp, Franciscan Philosophy
at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), p. 63–​64
and 83-​85.
206 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 159C, p. 193, l. 139-​167.
207 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 159D-​F, p. 194, l. 174 and p. 196, l. 229-​233.
208 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 159G, p. 197, l. 249. This does not contradict his argument
for the derivation of the Unlimited from the Limit in Expositio, 89B, p. 151, l. 58-​59: omne
determinans esse oppositae rationis ad illud, quod determinat, which referred to the emer-
gence of new formal determinations that are unlike their cause owing to their distance or
contraction of the cause’s power.
246  Chapter 4

cannot emanate immediately and causally (causaliter) from the One, they are
necessarily reduced to two principles or springs (scaturrigines): the prime uni-
tas and the prima unitas.209
With the notion that infinity or prima unitas is the auxiliary cause (con-
causa) of the order of the gods,210 Berthold maintained that the order of uni-
ties is subject to the same rational laws as the rest of the invisible world: the
highest member of any order acts as an auxiliary cause of its subordinate
members.211 This determination of the causality of the One by prime virtus
affects not only prime matter and prepares it for subsequent determinations,
but “in some sense leaves a trace of its intention in the goodnesses following
it”.212 Nevertheless, Berthold did not overlook the more speculative interpreta-
tive possibility that his Eriugenian sources offered him: a model of the primor-
dial causes or gods in which they are not so easily defined by linear structures.
Commenting on Proposition 140, where Proclus alluded to the sympathy (com-
patientia) that is found in everything owing to the total presence of the higher
principles in the lower, Berthold explained how each god not only leaves a ves-
tige of its intention in the lower gods, as we would expect by now, but also that
a lower god leaves a vestige of its intention in the order arising from a prior god.
In other words, because prime intellectus leaves a vestige of its causal power in
prime anima and prime natura, it “consequently” leaves a vestige “in the order

209 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 159G, p. 197, l. 263-​264. Berthold frequently referred to
the primordial causes as “springs”, see 17A; 18B; 18C; 99B; 100D; 123H; 131E; 140D; 143D;
153B; 177F.
210 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 152B-​C, p. 141, l. 57 –​p. 142, l. 81. An auxiliary cause is the
summit (summitas) within a particular order and is itself subordinated to a primordial
cause. See, for example, Expositio, 22B, p. 103, l. 180-​186.
211 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 159G, p. 198, l. 278-​286: immo [prime infinitas] relinquit
vestigium suae principiationis etiam in ipsis diis. Sic ergo omnis ordo deorum, quem dii
instituunt, est ex principiis primis fine et infinito formaliter et a primis principiis prime fini-
tate et prime infinitate causaliter et originaliter, quorum unum est simpliciter primum, puta
prime unum, aliud autem est secundario primum, a quo etiam tamquam a summo sui totus
ordo deorum dependet; non iam proprie causaliter, sicut a primo simpliciter principio, sed
suo modo, inquantum intra unum et eundem ordinem superius est concausa inferioris stans
sub ordine principalis principii, quod principale per ipsum et cum ipso et in ipso sequentia
producit.
212 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 57G, p. 153, l. 209-​214: Talis autem bonitas determinans
et quasi informans causalitatem prime boni, ubi ipsa causalitas non valet in se ipsa sub-
sistere, hoc est secundum gradum determinatae distantiae a primario boni actu, transcenso
videlicet ordine bonitatum, quae sunt effectus simpliciter prime boni, incipit suam actionem
in ordine virtutum, licet aliquale vestigium suae intentionis relinquat in sequentibus se
bonitatibus.
Exstasis divini amoris 247

of infinities, true beings, and lives”.213 This implies that the primordial causes
in the Word act in concert.214 The enfolded order of the archetypical world is
the basis for the unfolded sympathy of the cosmic order.
In one sense, of course, this example of prime intellectus was a conven-
ient choice for this kind of mutual implication of intentions, inasmuch as it
allowed Berthold to extrapolate Dietrich’s notions of intellectus in actu per
essentiam, essential causality, and the ontology of being according to species
(ens secundum speciem) to higher principles that are not, strictly speaking,
intellectual hypostases. But these passing acknowledgements of the relativity
of a strictly linear model are consistent with Berthold’s Eriugenian interpreta-
tion of Dionysius that we have noted already, where the strict divisions of real-
ity according to the laws of proportion and analogy were resolved into a uni-
fied perspective that finds the first principle itself coursing through or being
made in all things (ad omnia procedit et in omni fit).215 It was not by chance
that, shortly after offering the example of prime intellectus leaving its vestige in
the higher orders, Berthold cited the Clavis for the notion that God “descends
from himself and creates himself in all things”, and that the division of this
providential act into a beginning, a middle, and an end, “are one in him, but are

213 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 140D, p. 40, l. 95-​101: Sicut verbi gratia potentia prime
intellectus non incipit ubi potentia prime boni vel prime infinitatis vel prime entis vel prime
vitae, sed desursum, scilicet in ordine intellectuum, ubi primum manifeste apparet eius cau-
salitas, licet aliquale vestigium suae intentionis relinquat et in prime anima et in prime nat-
ura et per consequens in ordine infinitatum, enter entium et vitarum. Et sicut dixi de prime
intellectus potentiae incohatione, ita intelligendum est de aliorum deorum potentiis suo
modo. This follows a citation of the Clavis physicae, c. 167 and 170, on the descent of all
things from the Father of lights, and how “all things are from God and God is in all things
[…], since from him and through him and in him all things are made”.
214 On occasion Berthold would speak about the unique causality that belongs to each
god: prime ens (161A); prime vita (53B, 101E); prime intellectus (156E-​F); prime anima
(129D); prime natura (20A, 34D-​F). Berthold’s notion of a primordial cause of nature
(prime natura) signaled a modification of Proclus who, in Proposition 21, carefully used
“first” for the monadic One, Intellect and Soul, but “whole” for Nature. See M. Martijn,
Proclus on Nature. Philosophy of Nature and its Methods in Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s
Timaeus (Leiden: Brill, 2010), p. 49. In 129D, Berthold identified the prime anima with
the world soul (anima totius), which extends immaterially from the centre of the earth
to the heights of heaven and directs particular souls to their proper places. He identified
prime natura with Avicebron’s notion of natura universalis (Fons vitae, lib. iii, c. 45), the
unified principle that brings together and sustains the composite parts of bodies because
it acts upon “the universal body”. All things that proceed from prime natura, according to
Berthold’s enigmatic statement, do so naturally (naturaliter). The world soul and natura
universalis share the attributes of being unified principles whose activity is providential.
215 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 3A, p. 92, l. 14-​19.
248  Chapter 4

diverse in the minds of those contemplating”.216 The prayer at the end of the
Prologus, we recall, was intended to lift the contemplator (theoricus) from the
mode of dividedness to the unified vision of the divine light as the principle,
the guide, and the goal of all things. For Berthold, then, the rational divisions of
the order of natural providence according to the laws of proportionality, with
the proliferation of separate substances they entailed, were meant to prepare
the mind for this vision.

5 Determination, Generation, and Light

The intention of ‘good’ cannot subsist by itself.217

If Berthold relied on the distinction of efficient and formal causality to hold

together the superabundant causality of the gods in the Word alongside their
subordination to the One, he had to introduce a further level of differentiation
to account for the constitution of principles in the essential order below “the
thearchy”. To this end, he adapted two interrelated doctrines from Dietrich of
Freiberg to the framework of the Elementatio theologica: the ontological the-
ory of beings existing according to species (entia secundum speciem), and the
theory of the mode of causality that is constitutive of and exercised by them
(“determination” or “information”).218
Berthold inherited directly from Dietrich of Freiberg the notion of “being
according to species” or “being as such” (ens ut simpliciter).219 Dietrich had

216 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 140E, p. 42, l. 151-​158: super omnia Deus invisibilis et incor-
poralis et incorruptibilis potest a se ipso descendere et se ipsum in omnibus creare, ‘ut sit
Deus omnia in omnibus’ et usque ad extrema rerum […]. Deus totius universitatis conditae
principium sit et medium et finis: principium, quia ab ipso procedunt omnia, medium, quia
in ipso et per ipsum currunt omnia, finis, quia ipsum appetunt omnia, in quo quiescunt, quia
nihil ultra quaerunt. Et haec tria in ipso unum sunt, in animis contemplantium diversa. Cf.
Honorius Augustodunensis, Clavis physicae, c. 167, p. 132, l. 7-​10 and c. 171, p. 135, l. 2-​7. See
also Expositio, 125D, p. 150, l. 103-​109, cited above at n. 183, as well as the citation of the
Clavis in n. 213, above.
217 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 136E, p. 10, l. 208: Intentio boni non potest ipsa subsistere.
218 On determinatio and informatio, see Albert the Great, De causis et processu universitatis
a prima causa, lib. ii, tr. 1, c. 17, p. 81, l. 43-​44 and lib. ii, tr. 3, c. 13, p. 150, l. 44-​63; Ulrich of
Strassburg, De summo bono, lib. iv, tr. 2, c. 1 (3-​4), p. 58, l. 28-​46; Thomas Aquinas, Super
Librum de causis Expositio, lect. 18, p. 104, l. 1-​17; Dietrich of Freiberg, De animatione caeli,
11.1-​5, p. 22, l. 2 –​p. 23, l. 28; id., De quiditatibus entium, 1.4, p. 99, l. 21-​30.
219 On the synonymy of ens secundum speciem and ens ut simpliciter, see Dietrich of Freiberg,
De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.33.5, p. 172, l. 22-​28; id., Quaestio utrum substantia spiritua-
lis sit composita ex materia et forma, ed. B. Mojsisch, in Opera omnia, vol. 3, ii.20, p. 333,
Exstasis divini amoris 249

invented this notion as a way of accounting for the hierarchical subordination

of separate substances within an essential cosmic order, in which the essence
of every separate principle is identical with its operation. But the range of enti-
ties to which Dietrich applied it was more limited (intelligences and heavenly
souls) than what we find in Berthold. Following the lead of the Elementatio,
Berthold extended the range of ens secundum speciem upwards, into the order
of infinities, and downwards, past the order of heavenly souls, to human nature
as a species.
For both Dominicans, some kind of composition was required to explain the
derivation or creatureliness of these separate substances without compromis-
ing the essential activity that was predicated upon their simplicity. The basic
intuition that Dietrich and Berthold would not abandon was the assumption
that the universe is an intrinsic unity (unum per se), and therefore it must be
constituted out of an essential order, in which entities proceed from and return
to their principles according to stable and necessary patterns.220 This essen-
tial order unfolds between the cosmological genera (maneries) of the One,
the separate intelligences, as far as the heavenly souls and their bodies, which
use the sublunary elements as instruments in order to produce their effects
in the realm of becoming. This intrinsic order of the whole can be ensured
only by the intrinsic and essential constitution of its parts. As Berthold put
it, everything intrinsically related to something else in the order of essential
causes is “a certain whole”, but the relation of this whole to its own parts deter-
mines what place in the essential order it holds.221 The notion of ens secundum
speciem was introduced to account for the intrinsic composition that distin-
guishes secondary causes from God without undermining the essential bonds
of the order of natural providence.222

l. 181-​204. See also Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 2D, p. 87, l. 204-​208: Si autem est unum,
in quo est numerus secundum rem, hoc est dupliciter, quia vel facientia numerum sunt unum
in esse vel plura. Si unum, tunc vel taliter unitum est ens ut simpliciter et secundum speciem
tantum absque proprietate individuali vel est ens hoc et particulare et individuum.
220 Dietrich of Freiberg, De animatione caeli, 2.2-​5.3, p. 13, l. 25 –​p. 17, l. 30; id., De substan-
tiis spiritualibus et corporibus futurae resurrectionis, 1.1-​5.2, p. 303, l. 2 –​p. 307, l. 17. For
Berthold, see Expositio, 6B, p. 129, l. 75 –​p. 130, l. 126, as well as 33A, p. 214, l. 12 –​p. 215,
l. 36. Cf. Flasch, “Einleitung” to Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem
theologicam Procli. Prologus, Propositiones 1-​13, p. xxxiii-​xxxiv.
221 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 66E-​F, p. 5, l. 100 –​p. 6, l. 130.
222 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 44A, p. 73, l. 15-​21: unaquaeque res est propter suam pro-
priam operationem, ideo sola rei substantia seu essentia, si secundum se et absolute accip-
iatur, scilicet quantum ad solum esse, non sufficit intentioni naturae, nisi ipsa essentia sit
operatio. […] Absoluta enim essentia secundum se non habet rationem boni nec est de reali
ordine universi, inquantum est unum totum perfectum specie et partibus, de cuius ordinis
250  Chapter 4

To explain this kind of composition, Dietrich looked to Aristotle (Metaphysics

vii.10-​11) for the distinction between formal parts (partes ante totum), which
are simultaneously the principles of a simple form in the order of being and
the parts of a definition in the order of knowing, and quantitative or qualita-
tive parts (partes post totum), which are extraneous to the essential features of
the thing.223 According to Aristotle, formal parts are “before the whole” insofar
as they constitute the quiddity or definition of a thing and make it known in
such a way that the whole can be said to depend on those parts. Parts “after the
whole” have the nature of matter, meaning that they are the parts into which
a thing is divided when it is viewed as a “this” and not in its universal defini-
tion. These material parts can be corporeal (flesh and bones, in the case of
“this animal”) or intelligible (the semicircle is part of “this circle”).224 Dietrich
used these arguments to characterise the created separate substances in the
order of natural providence. In his view, separate substances exist more like a
species, ens secundum speciem (=es), because they have only “parts before the
whole”. An es is not an individual but a “singular”. For an “individual” in the
proper sense is what has “parts after the whole” or is an ens hoc (=eh).225
For Dietrich and for Berthold, the parts of a singular es are principles. In an
es, these principles “retain their nature as principles”, which explains why the
essence, power, and operation of es are one.226 That is, insofar as an essence
does not require these extrinsic, accidental relations to realise its activity, it is
incorruptible, its activity has no contrary, and as such the es belongs to the

ratione est, ut una res fluat in aliam aliqua virtute activa. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De intel-
lectu et intelligibili, i.1.1, p. 137, l. 3-​10, i.10.3, p. 143, l. 18-​28; id., De accidentibus, 18.8, p. 79,
l. 121 –​p. 80, l. 135.
223 See especially Dietrich of Freiberg, De origine rerum praedicamentalium, 5.26, p. 187, l. 221-​
224, 5.62, p. 200, l. 650-​662; id., De luce et eius origine, ed. R. Rehn, in Opera omnia, vol. 4,
10.1-​12.2, p. 17, l. 79 –​p. 19, l. 46; id., Quaestio utrum in Deo sit aliqua vis cognitiva inferior
intellectu, 1.1 (6-​7), p. 294, l. 36-​48; id., Quaestio utrum substantia spiritualis sit composita
ex materia et forma, ii.25, p. 335, l. 252-​269. See also id., De dotibus corporum gloriosorum,
2.3-​4, p. 270, l. 12-​23; id., De corporibus caelestibus quoad naturam eorum corporalem, ed.
L. Sturlese, in Opera omnia, vol. 2, 3.2, p. 381, l. 98 –​p. 382, l. 102; id., De accidentibus, 3.5,
p. 57, l. 88-​95; id., De quiditatibus entium, 7.5, p. 110, l. 60-​71; id., De mensuris, 4.17, p. 231,
l. 106-​125; id., De magis et minus, 11.4, p. 55, l. 64-​68.
224 As Berthold explained at Expositio, 76K, p. 70, l. 209 –​p. 71, l. 220, a substance, unlike an
essence, has parts after the whole. These parts, when they are brought together by the
form of the whole (forma totius), such as humanity (humanitas), have the mode of matter.
Humanity considered in itself is an essence, but when it is determined in such and such
parts (in has vel has partes), a substantial individual is constituted.
225 Suarez-​Nani, Les anges et la philosophie, p. 56–​73; Flasch, Dietrich von Freiberg, p. 314–​319.
226 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 34C, p. 229, l. 290-​311.
Exstasis divini amoris 251

essential structure of the cosmos.227 At the lower range of the essential order
are heavenly souls. These, however, are called substantial rather than essential
causes. Each heavenly soul is an eh because its activity partially depends on
the heavenly body to which it is united.228 Finally, in the realm of becoming,
there is no essential order. This is the domain of individuality and accidental-
ity properly speaking, insofar as all spiritual or corporeal principles, whether
angels, human individuals, or bodies, realise their activity in partial or total
dependency upon accidental, extrinsic relations founded on quantity and
quality.229
These ontological conditions are related to distinct kinds of causality. eh
come forth by generation, whereas es come forth by “simple emanation”,
“determination”, or “information”.230 What comes forth by generation passes
from potency into act, and accordingly is first an eh before it is es (which
is accomplished by the universalising activity of the possible intellect). For
example, nature produces a succession of individual horses, but the species
“horse” is only reached through abstraction. As for what comes forth by deter-
mination, its “formal principles” are first es by nature (prius natura). Certain
entities, like heavenly souls or the agent intellects of human beings, are first es
and then, by a logical ordering, they are individuated and are eh.231
In one of the lengthiest discussions of this topic in the Expositio, Berthold
contrasted es and eh insofar as their principles are capable of union with
one another (unibilia).232 That is, he proposed that we consider the opposing
ways the constitutive principles of es and eh, insofar as they are principles,
have simplicity, spirituality, and infinity. His argument proceeded from what
is more known to us to what is unknown. “Imperfect” unitable principles,
such as matter and form in a composite, are in “qualitative potentiality” and
are, “so to speak, material” because their simplicity is inferior to the compos-
ite in which they must be united in order to exist in act. This union of mat-
ter and form in act has “spirituality” because they mutually conjoin in their

227 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.26.1-​4, p. 164, l. 29 –​p. 165, l. 57; id., De
cognitione entium separatorum, 21.1-​4, p. 185, l. 30-​60.
228 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 25C, p. 142, l. 166-​172. Cf. Expositio, 44D; 50C; 51A; 76D.
229 Dietrich of Freiberg, De animatione caeli, 8.2-​3, p. 19, l. 6 –​p. 20, l. 30, 15.1-​2, p. 26, l. 38-​53;
id., De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.21.2, p. 193, l. 103 –​p. 194, l. 110.
230 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 3A, p. 93, l. 37-​38: Et tale fieri dicitur determinatio vel
informatio, ut quidam dicunt, vel compositio. See also n. 218, above.
231 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 3B, p. 95, l. 116-​121. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De luce et eius
origine, 10.1, p. 17, l. 79-​88.
232 For what follows, see Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 4B, p. 105, l. 129 –​p. 108, l. 242; 76D,
p. 66, l. 55 –​p. 67, l. 94.
252  Chapter 4

essence (se mutuo penetrant penetratione essentiae), as is most evident in the

“spirituality” of the simple and universal elements, which unite to form the
four elements perceptible to the senses. Insofar as these individual principles,
as principles, exist in potency, their “infinity” consists only in their indetermi-
nacy. Accordingly, they cannot bring themselves to union in act, but require
a higher agent (e.g., an artificer, a heavenly mover). The activity of this agent,
in turn, presupposes these potential principles that it brings into substantial
being by a process of generation. Since generation is preceded by motion and
alteration, the principles themselves must be mutable and, for this reason,
must exist first as individuals both in time and by nature before they are a
species. Therefore, unlike the particular (angels; the human agent intellect
prior to individuation)233 or the singular (es),234 the individual constituted
from such principles is measured by time; it comes to be and passes away
due to the disproportion between its principles and the stable motion of the
heavens.
As for the principles of unchangeable things or es, Berthold asserted that
they have a “simplicity” that is greater than any composite, whereas the sim-
plicity of the principles of eh is subordinate to the composite they form. It
follows from this that their “spirituality” is also greater, for what is simpler is
capable of greater compenetration. Finally, unlike the principles of eh, the
“infinity” of the principles of es consists in their actuality rather than potenti-
ality. This actuality, however, still stands in relation to a higher active “efficient”
principle. But rather than being brought into act by that agent, these lower
principles actively limit, contract, or “determine” the power of the immedi-
ately higher cause and act upon the “elaborated” substrate that the higher
cause has produced. In this way, we have a process of “determination” that
occurs by an order of nature and not by a temporal order (unlike “generation”);
that is, determination unfolds by simple emanation into being (per simplicem
emanationem in esse). Every principle that comes forth by determination, even

233 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 51C, p. 115, l. 98 –​p. 116, l. 111.

234 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 84B, p. 128, l. 20 –​p. 129, l. 44. An individual is corporeal
and has quantitative partes post totum. A “particular” has qualitative partes post totum,
and through them it is determined within “the most specific species”, and yet it remains
“one in being” and is not numbered by its parts. The “singular” subsists “singularly per se”,
having partes ante totum that retain their nature as principles. In Expositio, 10B, p. 180,
l. 122-​132, we read that the members of the order of antarkia (es), whose essence is iden-
tical with their power and operation, differ from one another specifically (specifice), until
we reach heavenly souls, which are “individuated” by their operation. In a hierarchia com-
prised of angels, the substance, power, and operation of each member differ, and each
member is a particular (particularis).
Exstasis divini amoris 253

if it is limited or contracted, is nevertheless identical with its operation.235 As

Berthold put it in a succinct and remarkable turn of phrase, their possibility is
their existence (in eis sit idem posse et esse).236 We might say that, for Berthold,
the domain of es, from the order of infinities to heavenly souls (prior to indi-
viduation) and to human nature as a species, corresponds to the contents of
“the archetypical world” and is, in some sense, nothing else than its unfolding
from the divine Word.237
For Berthold, this process of determination could only be understood if
one adopted a Platonic rather than Aristotelian perspective on universality.
This is most apparent in his commentary on Proposition 74 (“Every species is
a certain whole, for it subsists from many [parts], each of which complete the
species, but not every whole is a species”).238 Following Eustratius, he held
that there are fundamentally only two kinds of species: one is the result of
abstraction, the other is separate by nature.239 The first is constituted by the
actualised possible intellect from the parts of the form.240 It is through this
process that natural beings pass from the state of eh to es, since the pos-
sible intellect is what makes the universality in such things (intellectus agit
universalitatem in rebus). The second kind of species exists in rerum natura
apart from any activity of our intellect. Berthold argued that since the par-
ticipant (participans) exists in reality, so must the greater entity in which it
participates (participatum): “many human beings are one human being by
participation in the species”. Every species of the second kind, then, is an es
belonging to essential order of the cosmos. Some things belong to the intrin-
sic order of the universe only as species (es), while others do firstly as species,
and secondly as individuals, as is the case for angels and human souls. For the

235 See Berthold’s analysis of the seven regulae from Boethius’ De hebdomadibus in Expositio,
2A, p. 83, l. 54 –​p. 84, l. 93.
236 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 4B, p. 108, l. 238.
237 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 10, p. 16, l. 364 –​p. 17, l. 385. A comparison can
be made on this point with Henry of Ghent, who held that the number of creaturely
essences and that of the divine ideas were equal and finite. See P. Porro, “Ponere statum.
Idee divine, perfezioni creaturali e ordine del mondo in Enrico di Gand”, in Mediaevalia
3(1993), p. 109–​159.
238 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 74, p. 39, l. 1-​3: Omnis quidem species totum quoddam
est: ex pluribus enim subsistit, quorum unumquodque complet speciem; non omne autem
totum species.
239 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 74A-​C, p. 51, l. 44 –​p. 55, l. 185. See also Expositio, 67C,
p. 9, l. 60 –​p. 12, l. 134; 176D, p. 165, l. 242-​253; 177I, p. 183, l. 335 –​p. 184, l. 349.
240 See Dietrich of Freiberg, De origine rerum praedicamentalium, 5.26-​33, p. 187, l. 209 –​
p. 190, l. 311. See also Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 3.2.9.7 (3), p. 98, l. 11-​18; id.,
De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.36.1-​i ii.37.5, p. 208, l. 25 –​p. 209, l. 70.
254  Chapter 4

latter group, the species is “more truly and more really in the nature of things
than its individuals”.241
Berthold corroborated this argument about the two kinds of species with
Anselm’s famous denunciation of “the heretical dialecticians” who say that
universals are only “vocal sounds”, and who therefore suppose that colour is
nothing other than the body in which it inheres and that wisdom is nothing
other than the soul of the person in whom it is found.242 According to Anselm,
such confusions arise when reason is covered over with bodily imaginings
(in imaginationibus corporalibus obvoluta), a judgement that Berthold shared
based on his own interpretation of the De mystica theologia of Dionysius as a
guide to the discord over universals. For Anselm, the heretical consequences
of this contemplative failure are felt in the domains of Trinitarian theology
and Christology. Without real universals, Anselm contended, one cannot even
begin to understand how three persons in the Trinity are one God, or how it
was that Christ assumed human nature and not a human person. Berthold’s
only addition to these points was a lengthy citation from the Clavis physicae,
that explained how humanity (humanitas) is both simple in its cause and
“more than infinite” in individuals, as an example of a Platonic species.
This theory of the two kinds of species was closely related to Berthold’s the-
ory of form, which also assumed the ontology of es and eh, but proposed a
greater continuity between the two domains. As Sylvain Roudaut has observed
in a recent synthesis, Berthold’s doctrine of form and formal causality expanded
the application of these terms far beyond their more limited place in Proclus’
Elementatio theologica, which in Proposition 74 located forms at the level of
intellect and thus subordinated them to the levels of being and wholeness.243
Berthold was more influenced in this regard by Albert the Great, who distin-
guished between separate or forming form (forma formans) and immanent
or informing form (forma informans).244 At other times he followed Ulrich of
Strassburg, who delineated the grades of form from God to accidental, inan-
imate form.245 With Albert, Berthold presented the ranks of animate forms
in terms of their gradual approximation of the first mover and its capacity to

241 See Suarez-​Nani, Les anges et la philosophie, p. 60, for an illustrative comparison of
Thomas Aquinas and Dietrich of Freiberg on the subordination of individuals to species
in the cosmic order.
242 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 74C, p. 55, l. 186 –​p. 56, l. 227.
243 S. Roudaut, “Founding a Metaphysics of Light in Proclus’ Universe. Berthold of Moosburg’s
Theory of Forms”, forthcoming.
244 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 41C, p. 49, l. 73 –​p. 51, l. 148.
245 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 112D, p. 27, l. 73 –​p. 30, l. 165.
Exstasis divini amoris 255

constitute and govern an articulated whole.246 Heavenly souls, followed by

human souls, are the highest rank of forma informans, since they are partially
related to the bodies they move. A forma formans, by contrast, subsists in itself
and remains outside what it determines (foris manens). These include all es
beneath the gods as far as intellectual hypostases, which are “formed” by deter-
minatio, in that the subject elaborated by the higher principle is “informed” or
determined by lower, primordial “forms” or causes.
In his account of determinatio, Berthold combined Dietrich of Freiberg’s
theory of causality with the doctrine of flux (fluxus) developed by Albert the
Great (De causis et processu universitatis i.4) and Ulrich of Strassburg (De
summo bono iv.1.5), who was his preferred source on the theory of fluxus.247
Berthold discussed fluxus extensively in his commentary on Proposition 18
(“Everything deriving being to others is primarily that, which communicates
the derivation to the recipients”),248 where William of Moerbeke’s translation
of χορηγοῦν as derivere brought Proclus’ text directly into the semantic field
of the metaphysics of flow. Berthold’s definition of derivation (“derivation is
both a simple and continuous causal emanation, preserving the identity of
essence of the flowing form in the entire flow”) depended on Ulrich’s treat-
ment of fluxus.249 As Berthold explained it, “derivation” conserves the identity
of form or intention between the cause and effect (unlike equivocal causal-
ity), while remaining unaffected by its action (unlike univocal causality) and,
unlike causes that are principles (principatio), it does not enter the being (esse)
of what is derived.

246 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 205A-​C, p. 209, l. 12 –​p. 212, l. 121.

247 De Libera, Métaphysique et noétique, p. 190–​191, has explained how Ulrich’s modifications
of Albert’s doctrine of flux anticipated the doctrine of essential causality articulated by
Dietrich and Berthold. With Albert, Ulrich affirmed (1) that form is what flows, because
the origin of fluxus is the form of the light of the first universally active Intellect; (2) form
is said to flow insofar as it goes out from the first principle, and not insofar as it comes
from a material potency; (3) the origin of fluxus is the Giver of Form (dator formarum),
since anything that bestows form on anything else does so by virtue of the abundance of
this source. To these views, Ulrich added (4) what flows is essentially identical and differs
only in being; (5) the differentiation of being comes from the diverse realities into which
the form flows; (6) this differentiation is comparable to the multiplication of a genus in
its species, which does not multiply the essence of the genus but only its being. Dietrich’s
synthesis of these ideas with those of Proclus, according to De Libera (p. 204), allowed
him to elaborate the doctrine of essential causality in its definitive form.
248 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 18, p. 12, l. 1-​2: Omne derivans esse aliis ipsum prime
est hoc quod tradit recipientibus derivationem.
249 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 18C, p. 50, l. 245-​246: derivatio est emanatio causalis sim-
plex et continua conservans identitatem essentiae formae fluentis in toto fluxu.
256  Chapter 4

Following Albert and Ulrich, Berthold took one of his preferred examples
of fluxus from the activity of an artificer. The art in the artificer’s mind “flows”
through the body’s limbs and its tools, and through these the form is gradually
determined until it is realised in the artefact.250 The same form is found in the
art and in the artefact (idem essentia) and differs only in the mode of its exist-
ence (secundum aliud esse). To break through the materiality of the metaphor
to a more adequate understanding of the process of determinatio, one should
conceive the art itself as capable of producing artifacts by its simple intellec-
tual light, without the need of bodily limbs, instruments, and matter.251 To this
effect, in Proposition 18, Berthold used the example of the sun. For the sake
of argument, he noted, we might suppose that the sun is an essential cause
(though in fact it is a heavenly body that acts as an instrument of an intellec-
tual principle). He then proposed we make a twofold comparison between the
sun and its effects. (1) Compared with the sun’s essence as such, the effect is
identical with the cause, for the sun not only contains the effect in its power,
but precontains (praehabet) its effect in a nobler and more eminent mode
than the effect exists in itself. Considered simply as essence, the sun is “iden-
tical with all its gifts”, indeed “is itself its gift”, but in a more eminent mode.
However, (2) compared with “the essential modes or properties of the sun”, in
which the substance of the sun is founded (fundatur), such as “incorruptibility,
luminosity, moving in this particular way”, the effect is counted as something
distinct from the sun in both being and essence.252 Only (1) where there is
an identity of essence within a diversity of being or nature, can we speak of
derivation. The second comparison (2) falls within the domain of causality in
the strict sense, in which effects differ from causes in being and in essence.253
Dietrich of Freiberg, who had inspired this distinction of derivation and cau-
sality, explained that the difference in being and in essence in the second
comparison means that the efficient power of the heavens does not retain its
“proper intelligibility” when it is found in its effect,254 because the stable dis-
position of celestial power is received only imperfectly in sublunary matter.

250 Albert the Great, De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa, lib. i, tr. 4, c. 6, p. 49,
l. 80 –​p. 50, l. 11; Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono, lib. iv, tr. 1, c. 5 (2), p. 27, l. 16 –​p. 28,
l. 27. Albert also compared the ebullitio of the sun and of the first cause to the practical
intellect in De animalibus, lib. xx, tr. 2, c. 1, p. 1307, l. 11 –​p. 1308, l. 30.
251 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 174A, p. 137, l. 39-​45.
252 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 18D, p. 52, l. 300 –​p. 53, l. 323.
253 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 18D, p. 53, l. 324-​341. We should assume that Berthold
took the second comparison as the statement of the fact.
254 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.21.1-​2, p. 193, l. 100 –​p. 194, l. 110.
Exstasis divini amoris 257

(1) The first comparison brings us directly into the domain of determination
and the kind of causality that characterises es. According to Berthold, there are
three kinds of determination.255 (1a) In a logical consideration, the potential
genus is determined into act by the species through the differentia; (1b) among
material beings, a potency for form is determined in the act of form; (1c) in der-
ivation, the more actual is determined by the more potential. In all three cases,
the determinable, “existing in the determinate”, maintains its proper essence,
intention, and property, and is numbered only according to being. While it is
clear what the subject of determination is in (1a) and (1b), either the genus
or the material potential for form, what is the subject of the (1c) third kind
determination, which evidently was most important for Berthold? The answer
to this is not forthcoming in Proposition 18 and requires us to look elsewhere
in the Expositio.
According to Proposition 64, the One immediately produces two kinds of
unities: those that subsist in themselves (the gods), and those that subsist in
another. The members of the latter group are the subject of either determina-
tion or generation –​determination in the case of es (immutable species, form-
ing forms, or true forms), and generation in the case of eh (informing forms,
and the images of true forms). In a remarkable passage, Berthold explained
how, in every es below the gods, we find “unities” that are unable to subsist by
themselves (non valens subsistere) as they are in their immediate relation to
the One, owing to their “distance” in the procession that unfolds necessarily
according to an essential order.256 These unities are nothing else than the “uni-
ties exalted above the nature of the mind” described by Dionysius or, as Proclus
called them, “vestiges of the One” (the expression unum animae would be inap-
propriate here for the numerous principles prior to souls). These unities are
illuminated by principles subordinate to the One, which strengthens them to

255 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 18D, p. 53, l. 342-​354. See also Expositio, 3E, p. 97, l. 206 –​
p. 98, l. 247. At Expositio, 167E, p. 65, l. 210-​220, following Dietrich, Berthold distinguished
between the principles of the essence of an intellectus in actu per essentiam, and the parts
of the form that are gathered in the definition.
256 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 12A, p. 198, l. 39-​67: In separatis […] similiter aliqua de
praedictis causarum generibus, licet secundum aliam rationem a praefatis, inveniuntur. […]
Causa autem subiectiva et quasi materialis accipitur penes intentionem causalioris prin-
cipii, quae, cum in se et per se non possit subsistere propter distantiam sui a prime sua causa,
per aliam intentionem proximi subordinati producentis quasi informatur, determinatur et
singularizatur. On the role of determination in strengthening these vestiges that cannot
subsist on their own, see also Expositio, 3E, 30A, 41C, 59D, 64B, 65F, 90C, 137F, and 138B.
The role of “proximity” and “distance” in any essential order was emphasised already in
1C, after Berthold spoke of the ecstasy of divine love that leads God to create the universe.
258  Chapter 4

subsist –​this is what occurs through determination.257 A lower god determines

with its own irradiation the immaterial substrate already elaborated by one
or more prior principles. At the root of all of these substrates among spiritual
substances is the vestigium unius.258 But, Berthold stated clearly, at least in the
case of the determination of an es, “the subjective cause” of determination is
still more actual than the subsequent determination it receives.259 This is how
the es enumerated in the table at 62C arise.
We may locate this account of the determinatio or derivatio of es within a
larger framework of the modes of procession that Berthold systematised from
Dietrich of Freiberg in his commentary on Proposition 29 (“Every procession is
made through the likeness of the secondaries to the primaries”).260 Following
Dietrich, Berthold made a distinction between what proceeds (1) from reason
(a ratione) and (2) what proceeds according to reason (secundum rationem).261
(1) When something proceeds “from reason”, the reason itself is the productive
principle, such that no other power is required to bring about the procession; it
would be as if the art of playing the lute were to play the lute by itself. Dietrich
identified this as the mode according to which “the images of God”, that is,
every intellectus in actu per essentiam from the separate substances to the
human agent intellect, proceed insofar as they are imagines Dei. By contrast,
(2) to proceed “according to reason” means that the reason is in the producer
who has an additional power (virtus elicitiva) that brings about the production.

257 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 162B, p. 17, l. 33-​46: Et tales unitates sunt divinissima, quae
sunt in essentiis entium, vitarum, intellectuum et ceterorum, et sunt supposita traditionibus
aliorum deorum, quorum illustrationes pertingunt ad ipsa sicut a prime uno elaborata, et
sunt susceptiva omnis processus, qui est ab ipsis diis, et praecedunt simpliciter omnes dona-
tiones ipsorum deorum per 71. Hae enim sunt illae unitates, de quibus aliqualiter dictum
est super 135, et sunt in nobis excedentes secundum Dionysium 7 cap. De divinis nomini-
bus ‘mentis naturam’, et vocantur unitates superexaltatae. Sicut igitur in nobis sunt illud
intimum et supremum, quod Deus in natura nostra plantavit, quod etiam est ‘vestigium’ et
illustratio solius prime ‘unius’, quod determinatur ulterius aliis illustrationibus, puta virtutis,
entitatis, vitae, intellectualitatis et ceteris, ita est proportionaliter in omnibus enter entibus
supra hominem et citra deos, quod videlicet solius prime unius, super quam fundant aliae
causae primordiales suas illustrationes secundum ordinem totalitatis earum.
258 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 4B, p. 107, l. 231-​234.
259 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 41E, p. 51, l. 169-​179; 71E-​F, p. 36, l. 140-​153; 98B, p. 193,
l. 85-​86.
260 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 29, p. 19, l. 1-​2: Omnis processus per similitudinem
secundorum ad prima efficitur.
261 For what follows, see Expositio, 29B-​C, p. 184, l. 78 –​p. 185, l. 127, which relies on Dietrich
of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.32.1-​i i.36.3, p. 170, l. 104 –​p. 175, l. 115. For a fuller
account of Dietrich’s position, see also De visione beatifica, 1.2.1.1.1-​1.2.1.1.5, p. 37, l. 10 –​
p. 41, l. 69.
Exstasis divini amoris 259

What proceeds in this way are the determinate species of things (e.g., the spe-
cies “horse”) that have (2a) an exemplary form (forma exemplaris) in God. eh
properly speaking also proceed (2) “according to reason”, but in addition to
requiring (2a) the specific determination that comes from the exemplary form,
they have a further determination that God knows in their (2b) ideal form
(forma idealis). es, however, proceed both (1) as an image and (2a) according to
an exemplary form. This accounts for their self-​subsistent “singularity”, which
is simpler than “individuality”, but which is nevertheless determinate because
it corresponds to an exemplary form in the divine mind. According to Dietrich,
their mode of procession as (1) images predominates over (2a) that determi-
nacy, since each intellectus in actu per essentiam is “a likeness of the totality of
being” because it understands all being as such, and not just of some part of
being. For Berthold, who was able to refine Dietrich’s position on this point,
the true realisation of (1) is found in the gods, whereas every es below the
gods as far as the separate intelligences proceed according to both (1) and (2a).
Berthold also clarified that, in the case of heavenly souls and human beings,
we must be dealing with some combination of (1), (2a), and (2b), since their
relation to body makes them individuals, even though their highest part is an
essentially active intellectual principle. Finally, Berthold noted, generable and
corruptible things proceed only according to (2a) an exemplary form and (2b)
an ideal form.
Berthold elsewhere made similar refinements of Dietrich’s order of essen-
tial causes or intellectus in actu per essentiam.262 Dietrich had elaborated a the-
ory of three kinds of causes: (i) essential, (ii) substantial, (iii) and accidental
causes. In this model, God and es are essential causes. An essential cause is
an essence that produces another essence through a simple outflowing (per
simplicem defluxum), without motion or change. The only difference between
God’s activity and that of the es from this point of view corresponds to the
amplitude or determination of the causal activity –​that is, how many formal
intentions are presupposed by the es. Berthold was not satisfied with this
generic description of essential causality and thus subdivided it into three lev-
els: (ia) the unbounded causality of the Good; (ib) the limited, but relatively
unbounded causality of the gods; (ic) and the determinate and contracted cau-
sality of the es. Each god produces an entire cosmic series, whose intention is
equally present to all, but this is contracted within the order by the auxiliary
cause (concausa) at the order’s summit, which makes each member of that

262 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7B, p. 146, l. 265 –​p. 151, l. 447, supplemented with
Expositio, 51A, p. 113, l. 11 –​p. 114, l. 33.
260  Chapter 4

order a singular.263 From here, Berthold simply summarised Dietrich’s account

of substantial and accidental causes. In a substance, the essence is contracted
(contrahitur) to being either in potency or in act, and with this comes all the
extraneous instruments and attributes that are needed for the substance to
be realised in act. In this way, the substance is “contracted further to individu-
als” or eh possessing “parts after the whole”. A thing can vary in its substance,
insofar as it passes from an imperfect to a perfect state, but it cannot vary in
its essence. Heavenly souls with their bodies are the paradigm of substan-
tial causes. They presuppose the essences of generable things that have been
constituted by es and draw them out of potency into actuality through their
motions and with celestial heat and light, as far as the imperfection of sublu-
nary matter will allow.264 Finally, accidental causes presuppose substance, and
act upon the extrinsic features of the thing.
As we descend from the realm of being (es) into becoming (eh) we see that
the entire procession, from God to the material world, is related in Berthold’s
understanding of formal perfections or “intentions”. The One existing accord-
ing to cause produces only “ones”, either according to essence or participation,
which are immediately related to it. Each entity in its ground, insofar as it is
one or good, is immediately dependent upon the creative causality of the One.
Each of the six gods originates from itself a unique formal intention reflecting
its rank within the order of primordial causes. We have seen how this model
forced Berthold to admit both that a higher god leaves a vestige of its formal
intention in the lower god and that a lower god leaves a vestige of its formal
intention in the order arising from the higher gods. This reminds us that the
gods, despite falling into a rank when viewed from their effects, remain ineffa-
bly in the divine Word insofar as they are substantial goods that are “made” and
not “created”, and that creation proceeds from God according to the modalities
latent in the archetypical world.265
A series arises from each primordial cause according to “a causal proces-
sion”, which Berthold defined as “an emanation of a nature from another
nature that preserves the natural distinction within an intentional identity”.266
This description of the intelligible unity of a causal order as “intentional” came
from Dietrich of Freiberg, who had used it relative to Propositions 21 and 97 of

263 Compare Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7B, p. 147, l. 306-​316, with Expositio, 38B, p. 28,
l. 49-​51.
264 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 25C, p. 142, l. 177-​186; 72C, p. 39, l. 53 –​p. 40, l. 82.
265 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 9, p. 14, l. 300 –​p. 15, l. 320.
266 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 29A, p. 183, l. 54-​55: emanatio naturae a natura salvans
distinctionem naturalem in identitate intentionali.
Exstasis divini amoris 261

the Elementatio theologica.267 Dietrich argued that the unity of the universe
derives from the fact that “the essence of the first principle” is diffused “inten-
tionally” by its causal power.268 That is, the same essence is found in the effects
of the first principle, but it exists in each according to the recipient’s mode
of being.
Berthold included these passages from Dietrich in his commentaries on
Propositions 21 and 97,269 but he only explained exactly what he understood
by the term “intention” in Proposition 71.270 There Proclus had outlined the
important principle that each lower cause presupposes the causal power of
the higher cause as well as the substrate that the higher cause has elaborated.
Berthold’s discussion of the meanings of intentio, it must be noted, was not
prompted by the presence of the term in the Elementatio, but rather by Proclus’
use of the word “illuminations” (ἐλλάμψεις, illustrationes) to describe the cau-
sality exercised by the gods.271 In one sense, Berthold explained, “intention”
can refer to what exists indifferently in the soul or outside the soul. Such inten-
tions are either “the six transcendentals according to Aristotle” (ens, res, aliq-
uid, unum, verum, bonum), which “are identical in reality, but distinct in rea-
son”, or are the parts of a definition (genus, differentia, and species). In another
sense, “an intention is distinguished from the thing in the soul”, and this again
has two senses. If it “implies an imperfection”, we say that “the existence colour
in the [transparent] medium” is intentional (intentionale), which presumably
means that the illuminative power of colour is weaker or imperfect compared
to that of light. If “intention” denotes something that brings about a perfec-
tion, then it refers to the formal intentions of “good”, “infinite”, “being”, and so
on, as they exist in the primordial causes or, in a more contracted way, in the

267 Dietrich of Freiberg, De cognitione entium separatorum, 74.2-​5, p. 237, l. 99-​118.

268 Dietrich of Freiberg, De cognitione entium separatorum, 79.3, p. 242, l. 36-​41: De ista autem
unitate seu una intentione, de qua tot et talia dicta sunt, ut apparet intuenti, potest expres-
sius dici sic, videlicet quod ipsa est essentia primi principii in se ipsa existens secundum pro-
prietatem substantiae suae, sed intentionaliter secundum virtutem suam diffusa per rerum
universitatem, quo tota rerum universitas non solum ab ipso tamquam a causali primo prin-
cipio, verum etiam inter se secundum partes suas causaliter dependeat.
269 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 21I, p. 91, l. 531-​539; 97B, p. 186, l. 42-​53.
270 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 71, p. 38, l. 1-​9: Omnia que in primordialibus causis
totaliorem et superiorem ordinem habentia in effectibus secundum eas que ab ipsis illustra-
tiones supposita aliqualiter fiunt partialiorum traditionibus; et que quidem a superioribus
illustrationes suscipiunt eos qui a secundis processus, ille autem in hiis locantur; et ita prece-
dunt participationes alie alias, et illustrationes alie super alias desuper ad idem pertingunt
subiectum, totalioribus preoperantibus, partialioribus autem super illorum operationes sui
ipsorum traditiones elargientibus participantibus.
271 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 71A, p. 32, l. 21 –​p. 33, l. 47.
262  Chapter 4

higher members of their orders and in their participants. Berthold then went
on to contrast the Platonic and Aristotelian understandings of what it means
to be a “common” intention. For Aristotle, it had to do with the universality of
predication or signification. For Plato, intentions were understood to be com-
mon in reality (intentiones communes secundum rem), and it was of course this
approach that Proclus adopted in Proposition 71.272 These contrasts are famil-
iar enough. What was new in Berthold’s account was the close association of
the intentio extra animam, the irradiation or illumination of the primordial
causes, with the natural phenomena of light and colour.
The top and bottom of Berthold’s cosmology are connected seamlessly in
his theory of the diffusion of light. It is here that we come full circle and under-
stand why the metaphor of the sun served so well to illustrate the ecstatic cre-
ative activity of divine love. This went beyond a commonplace association. In
Propositions 36, 37, 125, and 143, we find that Berthold not only used light as a
metaphor to describe the procession and conversion of all things. He under-
stood the dynamics of these orders by extrapolating from specific principles
concerning the nature and diffusion physical light that had been propounded
by the perspectivists: Alhazen (De aspectibus, translated c. 1200), Roger Bacon
(De multiplicatione specierum and Perspectiva, early and mid-​1260s), Witelo
(Perspectiva, mid-​1270s), and John Peckham (Perspectiva communis, c. 1280).273
Berthold may have known the works of all these 13th-​century perspectivists.
He was certainly familiar with Alhazen’s De aspectibus274 and Dietrich of
Freiberg’s De iride et radialibus impressionibus (after 1304).275

272 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 71D, p. 33, l. 51-​62.

273 This natural scientific dimension of Berthold’s metaphysics been recognised since
Barbara Faës de Mottoni’s analysis of Propositions 36 and 37; see B. Faës de Mottoni, “Il
problema della luce nel Commento di Bertoldo di Moosburg all’Elementatio theologica
di Proclo”, in Studi medievali 16(1975), p. 325–​352. Alain de Libera concluded his funda-
mental study of the German Dominicans with Berthold’s theory of light as a way of sum-
marising the characteristic motifs of that intellectual culture; see De Libera, La mystique
rhénane, p. 410–​423. Most recently, Sylvain Roudaut has examined Berthold’s synthesis of
Dietrich of Freiberg’s theory of perfectional form and his incorporation of other sources
like Avicebron and Adam Pulchrae Mulieris, and has demonstrated that we can indeed
speak of “a metaphysics of light” in the Expositio; see Roudaut, “Founding a Metaphysics
of Light”, forthcoming.
274 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 143O, p. 72, l. 435 –​p. 73, l. 460.
275 We may recall here the glosses on Aristotle’s Meteorology attributed to Berthold that appear
in the margins of Dietrich’s De iride (in ms Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.30, f. 56v-​
57r) and the fragment on optics (in ms Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, F.iv.31, f. 45r-​v) that
was copied by the same scribe responsible for Berthold’s text of Macrobius’ In Somnium
Scipionis and the fragment of Proclus’ De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam. The
Exstasis divini amoris 263

Berthold’s discussions of light in Propositions 125 and 143 were guided by

his standard procedure of basing his comments on the precise terminology
used by Proclus (125: emicare; 143: a divino lumine).276 These passages, however,
should be read alongside his more systematic exposition of a theory of light in
his commentaries on Proposition 36 (“Of all things that are multiplied through
procession, the primaries are more perfect than the secondaries, and the sec-
ondaries are more perfect than those that come after them, and so on in the
same way”) and Proposition 37 (“Of all things subsisting through conversion,
the primaries are more imperfect than the secondaries, and the secondaries
are more imperfect than those that follow them, but the last things are the
most perfect”).277 These commentaries marked a flagrant departure from his
exegetical method, since in Propositions 36 and 37 Proclus had made no ref-
erence to light or illumination. Berthold’s decision to give a summary of the
entire metaphysics of the Elementatio theologica, as it can be recapitulated
in the pattern of procession and return, through a theory of light allows us
to glimpse some of the deepest assumptions he brought to the text. Perhaps
the only comparable passage in this respect was Berthold’s presentation of
the astrologer as a paradigmatic example of the human vocation to be a nexus
Dei et mundi, mediating between the stable realm of being and the changea-
ble realm of becoming, according to the Proclean notion of “ruling the world
with the gods”.278 Both passages not only clarify Berthold’s interpretation of
the philosophical principles of the Elementatio as a representative text of the
Platonic tradition, but also hint at his broader assumptions about how this
divine science was continuous with the philosophy of nature.
Berthold’s approach to Propositions 36 and 37 moved across three levels of
light (the physical, the intellectual, and the supersubstantial). For both com-
mentaries, even though Proposition 36 begins, so to speak, “from above” and
Proposition 37 “from below”, Berthold started out from the laws of physical
light, and from there moved to treat intellectual light and, finally, supersub-
stantial light. His preferred authorities for describing the level of intellectual

glosses and the fragment on optics are edited in Sturlese, “Note su Bertoldo di Moosburg
O.P.”, p. 249–​256.
276 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 125, p. 63, l. 1-​4, cited in n. 42, above; prop. 143, p. 71,
l. 1-​3: Omnia deteriora presentia deorum subsistunt; et si ydoneum sit participans, omne
quidem quod alienum a divino lumine fit, illustratur autem omne subito a diis.
277 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 36, p. 22, l. 1-​3: Omnium eorum que secundum proces-
sum multiplicantur prima sunt perfectiora secundis et secunda hiis que post ipsa, et conse-
quenter eodem modo; prop. 37, p. 23, l. 1-​3: Omnium secundum conversionem subsistentium
prima sunt imperfectiora secundis et secunda hiis que deinceps; ultima autem perfectissima.
278 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 16, p. 24, l. 636 –​p. 25, l. 646.
264  Chapter 4

light were Aristotle, the Liber de intelligentiis of Adam Pulchrae Mulieris, and
Avicenna; on supersubstantial light, Berthold turned to Dionysius and again
to Adam. For the foundational analysis of physical light, Berthold appealed to
“the perspectivists” in general (probably Alhazen and Dietrich), all of whom
were indebted to Aristotle’s De anima ii.7 and ­chapter 3 of his De sensu et
sensato.279
Berthold’s analysis of physical light centered on radiant forms (formae
radiosae) and the process of propagation or radiation (radiatio).280 Light and
colour are radiant forms. Unlike a physical form such as heat, which exclu-
sively inheres in its subject, a radiant form is an inherent quality that informs
its subject “in a certain order towards the outside”, by which it diffuses and
multiplies itself. According to Berthold, three things coincide in the process
of radiation: (1) the principle, (2) the medium, and (3) the mode of propaga-
tion. His account of (1) the principle was basically Aristotelian.281 The trans-
parency (diaphanum) as such is unbounded (interminatum). Light (lumen)
is a quality received into the transparent as a form is received by its subject.
Light in the transparency constitutes the transparency in act (perspicuum).282
The perspicuum is either bounded (terminatum), and as such is colour, or is
compressed (conculcatum), and as such is visible light (lux visibilis); in other
words, colour exists at the boundary of the transparent, while light exists in
the transparent.
Berthold devoted more attention to (2) the medium and (3) mode of radia-
tion. (2) The transparency is said to be “transmissive” of any form “because of a
certain ejection of its parts from one another”, and thus it is ordered to the out-
side (ad extra). At this point, Berthold appealed to Dietrich’s notion of essen-
tial causality and stated repeatedly that a radiating form retains its nature but
takes on a different mode of being (secundum aliud esse) outside its subject.
Visible light thus “proceeds according to its essence outside itself, making itself

279 For an overview of perspectivist optics in Alhazen and its Western reception, see A.M.
Smith, Alhacen’s Theory of Visual Perception. A Critical Edition, with English Translation
and Commentary, of the First Three Books of Alhacen’s De aspectibus, the Medieval Latin
Version of Ibn al-​Haytham’s Kitāb al-​Manāẓir, 2 vols (Philadelphia: American Philosophical
Society, 2001), vol. 1, p. lii-​cxii.
280 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 36A, p. 15, l. 13 –​p. 17, l. 80; 37A, p. 22, l. 11 –​p. 24, l. 79.
281 Aristotle, De anima, ii.7, 418a26-​419b2; id., De sensu et sensato, 3, 439a12-​440b25.
282 Diaphanum and perspicuum were generally treated as synonyms, the latter being the
Latin translation of the former, which was a transliteration from the Greek. Berthold,
however, seems to have followed Dietrich (De iride ii.4) who used diaphanum for the
transparency in its potential state and perspicuum for its actualised state.
Exstasis divini amoris 265

be outside itself according to its essence, but according to another mode of

being”.283
As for (3) the mode of radiation, Berthold stated that visible light diffuses
itself over a spatial distance. As such, he argued, it relates by nature first to
what is more distant, and consequently only to what is proximate (per prius
re ipsa et ordine naturae respiciat magis distans). From this principle we could
infer, for example, that prime matter is an immediate effect of the Good, whose
intention would pass immediately through the entire universe as “one” or
“good” until it reached the term most distant from it. Berthold underscored
the point that light diffuses itself in a linear fashion, because linear movement
implies the pure extrapolation of part after part (per eiectionem in distantia ut
distantia inquantum huiusmodi) without the connotation of return (reditus).
Such an assertion might lead us to expect that Berthold will focus more on
circularity in Proposition 37, which concerns the order of conversion. But that
is not what we find. He reaffirmed that the linear radiation of light indeed cor-
responds to procession; but for Berthold the paradigmatic example of conver-
sion is the perpendicular incidence of a ray on a reflective surface, so that the
ray is reflected directly back to its source.284
The Neoplatonic cosmological structure of procession and return is proba-
bly most frequently imagined in terms of nested circular patterns, where each
moment of procession is extrinsic to each moment of conversion. According
to Berthold’s proposal that it be likened to the linear diffusion of a ray reflected
upon itself, every moment of procession is also a conversion. This defies our
temporal imagination. It is, however, a perfect analogy for the dynamics of
essential causality that Berthold developed from Dietrich of Freiberg.285
Indeed, when Berthold discussed the “reflection” or conversion of “intellectual
light” in 37B, he cited this crucial passage from Dietrich’s De visione beatifica:

In the order of things that is intrinsic with regard to the disposition of

essential causes and effects, the posterior are not found without the prior,
nor any of those that are last without the absolutely first. Likewise, these
acts, which are concepts [conceptus] that are always essentially in act,

283 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 36A, p. 16, l. 46-​50: ut eadem lux secundum substantiam
sit secundum esse nature in proprio subiecto, sit autem et alibi et extra se secundum aliud
esse non solum secundum aliquem effectum, sed etiam secundum suam essentiam pro-
cedens ad extra se et faciens se extra se secundum suam essentiam, sed secundum aliud esse
in concernendo per se distantiam localem eorum, in quae se diffundit.
284 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 37A, p. 22, l. 30 –​p. 23, l. 60.
285 De Libera, La mystique rhénane, p. 419–​423.
266  Chapter 4

and which, in each degree of their order, remain fixed by the conception
[conceptione] which is their own essence, do not conceive anything with-
out this very conception by which they conceive their productive princi-
ple, and would have no existence without it. And thus, since such things
both proceed and subsist by their conception, by which they conceive
their principle (and this conception is nothing else but a certain essential
reflection or conversion into their very principle), it is necessary that all
such principles are subsistences according to conversion, even though
procession and conversion are the same in reality, just as radiation is in
its own way.286

As Berthold well understood, at the level of es, whose essence is identical

with their operation, every moment of procession is equally a moment of
conversion. The only difference between this mode of “radiation” and that of
the Good relates to the medium. Whereas these intellectual radiant forms are
diffused through a medium, which in the analogy is equivalent to the subject
elaborated by the primordial causes above it, the superintellectual light of the
Good presupposes no medium at all, but simply multiplies itself (multiplicans
se suis processibus in omnia), and yet remains one in its multiplication (unum
in multiplicatione et unum in processione). In this linear optical model, the self-​
communication of the Good in procession is timeless and identical with the
conversion of intellectual creatures to the Good.
The linear diffusion and reflection of light was therefore the most adequate
illustration of the exstasis divini amoris that is at the ground of the universe.
As Berthold’s comments on Propositions 125 and 143 reaffirm, the name “light”
befits God in several ways, but most of all God’s essence as Goodness.287 For
just as light is the most formal and noblest of all sensible forms, and has the

286 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 37B, p. 24, l. 91-​97: Sicut in ordine rerum, qui est per se
quantum ad dispositionem essentialium causarum et causatorum, posteriora non inveniun-
tur sine prioribus nec aliquid eorum, quae sunt post, sine simpliciter primo, ita isti actus, qui
sunt quidam conceptus per essentiam semper in actu, quorum quilibet in aliquo gradu sui
ordinis figitur sua conceptione, quae est eius essentia, nihil concipiunt sine ea conceptione,
quae concipiunt suum principium productivum, sicut et nullam entitatem haberent sine eo.
Et sic, cum huiusmodi res ex sua conceptione, qua concipiunt suum principium, et proce-
dant et subsistant, ipsa autem conceptio non est nisi quaedam in ipsum suum principium
essentialis reflexio sive conversio, necessarium est omnia talia principia esse subsistentia
secundum conversionem, licet conversio et processio sint idem secundum rem, sicut etiam
suo modo in radiatione.
287 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 143L, p. 69, l. 312-​314: Et ideo Dionysius in idem ponit haec
duo, scilicet bonum et lumen. Pulchrum autem mediante lumen reducitur ad rationem boni,
cum pulchritudo sit consonantia cum claritate.
Exstasis divini amoris 267

perfections of all visible qualities in itself in a unified and simpler way than they
are in themselves, so “the Goodness of the gods” embraces all of their formal
perfections or colours within itself.288 For this reason, the primordial causes
can be likened to prisms refracting the Good into their respective orders.289
It may be that the image of the linearity of the diffusion of Goodness in
Berthold’s thought ran even deeper. We have already seen that, for Berthold,
of the soul’s three motions, the direct or “linear” was the highest. For the soul
that moves in this way, the creatures of the world have become transparent to
their divine ideas, allowing the mind to ascend rapidly through the modes of
cognition until it reaches a transitory enjoyment of the intellectus adeptus and,
within that reflexivity, apprehends God through non-​reflexive ignorance above
the mind. This ignorance, as Berthold read in Dionysius (De divinis nominibus
7.3), occurs “when the mind, having departed from everything else, and then
also sending itself away, is united with the super-​resplendent rays, and is illu-
minated hither and yon [inde et ibi] by the inscrutable depth of wisdom”.290
This is how the minds of those “who sit in darkness and the shadow of death”
are illumined and filled by the rays of truth.291 When the soul is raised to the
cognition of the unum animae, it becomes united to this same linear progres-
sion of the Good to and from itself by non-​reflexively mirroring (inde et ibi) the
paternal and providential light. In this way the microcosm will be harmonised
with the macrocosm.
288 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 143L, p. 68, l. 301-​308: Sicut enim lux est maxime forma-
lis et nobilis inter omnes formas sensibiles et habet in se unite et simpliciter et excellenter
perfectiones omnium qualitatum visibilium adeo, quod etiam sit hypostasis, id est formalis
subsistentia, omnium colorum, ita bonitas deorum consistit in hoc, quod ipsa sola ratione
suae supersubstantialitatis est pura et immixta et sic omnino formalis nihil habens vel de
materia vel materiae condicionibus sibi permixtum, immo nec de aliis intentionibus formal-
ibus essentialiter.
289 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 125B, p. 149, l. 61-​64: ita dii, qui sunt per se bonitates,
radios bonitatis, quos copiosissime sicut supremae et provectissimae essentiae suscipiunt
ad instar prime boni omnibus suis intentionibus subiectis, copiosius largiuntur essentialiter,
universaliter et impausabiliter infundendo.
290 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 123D, p. 129, l. 152-​155. The only other citation of this text
is in Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 68, l. 533-​538.
291 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 143L, p. 70, l. 352-​357: Prime enim Deus est simpliciter
prima, purissima, simplicissima et superperfectissima veritas et ratio incommutabilis omni-
quaque diffundens radios suos in omne verum, licet per prius superimpleat ipsos deos super-
intellectuali lumine et consequenter omnes supercaelestes mentes, et sic descendat usque
ad illuminationem nostri, ‘qui’ etiam quasi ‘in tenebris et umbra mortis sedemus’. Cf. Luke
1:79: illuminare his qui in tenebris et in umbra mortis sedent.
 ­c hapter 5

Epulatio entis
The Microcosm

Here there resounds to the mind the wondrous sweetness of the

shouts of those who feast, of the banqueters calling out.1

∵
Berthold of Moosburg’s commentary on the final proposition of the Elementatio
theologica (“Every partial soul, descending into becoming, descends entire; it
is not the case that one part of it remains above while another part descends”)
recapitulated the central themes of his reconstruction of Platonic philoso-
phy and related them directly to the life of human individuals in the realm of
becoming.2 As the concluding words of his propositum indicate, he regarded
Proclus’ doctrine of the soul’s descent as the logical culmination of the entire
argument of the Elementatio:

For although something of [the human soul] always stands in the light of
actual intelligence, thinking itself and its principle from which it intellec-
tually and cognitively emanates, yet this cognition belongs to the whole
soul only accidentally. Therefore, nothing of the soul is said to remain
above, insofar as it is soul, but the whole descends into becoming accord-
ing to the Platonists. And, thus, the intention of the element and of the
entire book is manifest.3

1 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 20, p. 34, l. 966-​967: Unde sonat ei mira suavitas sonus
epulantium, id est sonantium epulantium. Cf. Peter Lombard, Commentaria in Psalmos, In Ps.
41:4, pl 191, 418A.
2 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 211, p. 103, l. 1-​3: Omnis partialis anima descendens in
generationem tota descendit et non hoc quidem ipsius sursum manet, hoc autem descendit.
3 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211F, p. 264, l. 246-​251: Quamvis enim aliquid eius semper stet
in lumine actualis intelligentiae intelligendo se ipsum et suum principium, a quo intellectual-
iter et cognitive emanat, tamen ista cognitio non est totius animae nisi per accidens. Ideo nihil
animae dicitur sursum remanere, inquantum est anima, sed apud generationem secundum
Platonicos tota descendit. Et sic etiam apparet intentio elementi et totius libri.

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_009

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
Epulatio entis 269

The entire mechanism of invisible principles, from the thearchy through the
manifold orders of entia secundum speciem, finds its end in the descent of the
human (“partial”) soul into becoming.4 Compressed into this brief passage
were several conclusions that Berthold has reached through a reflection on the
final propositions of the Elementatio. These were devoted to the nature and
ranks of “total” and “partial” souls (Propositions 184-​205) and, finally, to the ori-
gin and properties of the incorruptible “vehicle” or body (susceptaculum) that
is always united to total and partial souls (Proposition 196) and accompanies
a partial soul in its descent from being into the material body (Propositions
206-​210). As Berthold saw it, once Proclus had established the properties and
endurance of that spiritual body and described its descent with the partial soul
into the world of becoming, he had traversed the entire order of natural prov-
idence, in which each member is identical with its operation. What is left for
theology would presuppose and consummate that essential order.
For Berthold, this meant that the human soul and its incorruptible body
belong to the subject matter of the Elementatio theologica, the invisible things
of God within the order of natural providence. The coherence of his decision
to centralise the Hermetic motif of the macrocosm and microcosm, both of
which contain the four maneries of One, Intellect, Soul, and Body, depended

4 Adopting the terminology of Proclus, Berthold distinguished between three kinds of soul: (1)
“whole” or heavenly souls, (2) “partial” or human souls, and (3) the images of souls (indal-
mata seu idola animarum; cf. Proposition 64), which are the souls of animals and plants.
Their names correspond to their degree of separation from the body. According to 111E: (1)
are participated separably (separabiliter); (2) separably and inseparably; (3) inseparably.
Separability denotes the extent to which a soul has the principle of its vital motion inde-
pendently of the body and, therefore, is immortal. According to 183E: (1) are intellectual as a
whole but not wholly (non totaliter); (2) are not intellectual as a whole nor wholly (nec se totis
nec totaliter); (3) have only a trace of reason. Furthermore (1) have two parts, the intellective
and vegetative, and their name reflects the fact that they are at once conjoined and sepa-
rated from their bodies as a whole (se totis coniunctae et separatae); (2) have three parts, the
intellective, sensitive, and vegetative, and their name reflects how they are partly conjoined
and partly separated (partim coniunctae et partim separatae). The status of (1) “whole” souls
is clarified at 201B: as intellectual, they receive intelligible species directly from the separate
intelligences and, as vegetative, they relate directly to “universal nature” insofar as they pre-
pare a heavenly body, through exercising their operation (per potestativam expansionem),
to receive this intellectual influence seamlessly through circular motion. This completes
the flow (fluxus) of form that began with the Good and proceeded through its instruments
that determine its causality. In 184E, Berthold subdivided the second group: after (1) “divine”
heavenly souls, which participate a divine unity through their divine intellect, come (2a)
“intellectual” souls, which are partial souls that exist in being (in ente) and (2b) souls that
are “receptive of change” (transmutationis susceptivae), which are partial souls that exist in
becoming (in generatione) and pass from intellection to non-​intellection.
270  Chapter 5

on this. According to Berthold, as was noted already, the human’s unique place
in the cosmos derives not from its status as an imago Dei but rather, as it were,
as an imago deorum: only the human, the most composite creature, focalises
all the gifts of the gods found in the macrocosm. In one sense, this is a function
of the human’s weakness; the active vestige of the One in the human soul is
so feeble that it needs all the assistance the gods can offer. Yet this weakness
becomes its glory, for as an image of all the gods, human nature mirrors the
totality of the archetypical world. In this sense, the rival to human nature is
not any one of the principles above it but instead the entire macrocosm as
the most adequate image of God. The plenitude of the Word is unfolded in
both. This is how the microcosm as the “most composite” creature is also the
nexus Dei et mundi –​it is at once “every creature” and the centre-​point of the
creation.
This vision of human nature receiving all the gifts of the gods is precisely
what we find detailed in Berthold’s commentary on Proposition 211,5 where
he forged an extraordinary synthesis of some of his most important sources
(Proclus, Macrobius, the Clavis physicae, and Dietrich of Freiberg) to outline a
theory of the human soul’s “double descent” from God into the world of becom-
ing. The soul’s first descent is from God into its substantial union with human
nature as a species, the second is from human nature to the soul’s individual
existence in becoming. Both, Berthold insisted, occur atemporally –​their divi-
sions are a reflection of our understanding.
In his account of the first descent, which corresponds to the constitution
of human nature as a species and as the microcosm, Berthold presupposed
his earlier arguments about the priority of the Good over being, the doctrine
of the gods as an ordered series of primordial causes, and the ontology of ens
secundum speciem. This synthesis went beyond anything we find in Dietrich,
whose notion of ens secundum speciem was never applied to human nature or
to a narrative of “descent”.6 Here Berthold’s interpretation of the exemplarist
anthropology of the Clavis physicae through Dietrich’s ontology will provide
the decisive means for navigating these passages in the Elementatio theolog-
ica. Through his synthesis of these sources, Berthold maintained that, even
now, human nature in its singularity “imitates the presiding gods” because it
is constituted in being as almost (quasi) an ens secundum speciem.7 Human

5 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211C, p. 260, l. 90 –​p. 261, l. 124.

6 The major source for this narrative structure in Berthold was Macrobius, Commentarii in
Somnium Scipionis, i.11.10-​i .12.18, p. 47, l. 9 –​p. 51, l. 17.
7 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211C, p. 261, l. 113-​116: ubi [anima partialis] perfecte stat in
humanae naturae totalitate et integritate, in qua sunt omnes homines, unus homo formatus
Epulatio entis 271

nature itself, in other words, must be a member of the “world” that includes
every separate being standing in the eternal enjoyment of God (in aeterna Dei
fruitione).8
Yet Berthold was careful to avoid the autotheistic implications such a posi-
tion might entail. Regarding the second descent, which relates directly to the
passage cited above, Berthold again followed Dietrich. Both Dominicans main-
tained that there is a principle (intellectus agens) within the human soul that
“always stands in the light of actual intelligence”.9 But as Berthold clarified,
and Dietrich would concur, this does not save the soul from having to begin
its return to God from the senses and with phantasms –​in Proclus’ terms, no
part of the soul “remains above” (sursum manet). Nevertheless, as both authors
recognised, their arguments about the ongoing operation of the agent intel-
lect in the soul’s ground entailed a doctrine of recollection, at least relative to
the immutable reasons that cannot be derived from experience. Once again,
Berthold made this more explicit than Dietrich’s passing reference to the
Platonic doctrine.10
Berthold’s narratives of the first and second descents placed the unum ani-
mae prior to the agent intellect both in the constitution of human nature and
in the individual. As we have seen, the vestigium unius is presupposed by the
gods in the determination of any ens secundum speciem. In the individual, the
unum animae grounds the individuated agent intellect’s essential activity and
ecstatically relates the person to that nature and, thus, to its perpetual imita-
tion of “the presiding gods”. The final matter for us to consider, then, will be
the significance of this modification of Dietrich’s anthropology for Berthold’s
theory of deification. In accordance with the atemporal, exemplarist view of
human nature Berthold inherited from the Clavis physicae, which he advanced
in his rejection of Proclus on the soul’s temporal pre-​existence, Berthold under-
stood deification in terms of the return of the human individual to the state
that belongs to it insofar as it is a species, and from which it is never entirely
alienated (sic in ente supra loca et tempora collocatur, ubi etiam deos praesides
imitatur). Ultimately, we will see that Berthold, partly inspired by Bernard of
Clairvaux, understood the transitory enjoyment of such a state (intelligentia or,
in other words, intellectus adeptus and the unum animae) as, so to speak, “the
intellect in love” or as an operative union with the divine will.

ad imaginem et similitudinem prime boni. Et sic in ente supra loca et tempora collocatur, ubi
etiam deos praesides imitatur. See also Expositio, 208E, p. 237, l. 181-​187.
8 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 164D, p. 33, l. 76-​80.
9 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 1.1.1.3.6 (2) –​1.1.2.3 (3), p. 22, l. 110 –​p. 25, l. 76.
10 Dietrich of Freiberg, De cognitione entium separatorum, 94.6-​10, p. 258, l. 35 –​p. 259, l. 67.
272  Chapter 5

Berthold’s notion that the individual is related to the human species

through the unum animae can also provide the necessary groundwork to
begin drawing comparisons with his contemporaries like Meister Eckhart,
Henry of Ekkewint, and John Tauler.11 All four Dominicans share the view
that an individual participates in the same human nature that has been enno-
bled by the Word to the extent that a person leaves off what makes them
a “this” or a “that”. As they understood it, this dispossession is nothing else
than the exercise of charity. All of this was entailed in Berthold’s theory of
the soul’s double descent into becoming. If such a doctrine was “the intention
of the entire book”, then we can infer that, for Berthold, the purpose of the
Elementatio theologica was to recall the soul to its intrinsic and vital connec-
tion to the divine providence, exercising its oblique motion by providing the
rational means for the soul in the realm of becoming to make itself aware of
that abiding dignity and receptive to the ecstatic operation for which it is
already inherently worthy.

1 Human Nature and the Spiritual Body

Observe: what Proclus calls the vehicle, the Apostle calls the house
or habitation.12

The doctrine of the incorruptible vehicle (susceptaculum) of the soul appears

for the first time explicitly in Proposition 196 (“Every participable soul uses a
first, perpetual body that has an ingenerable and incorruptible hypostasis”).13
The term “participable soul”, as Berthold saw, applied generically to total and
partial souls. However, at this stage of the Expositio, he applied Proclus’ argu-
ment to heavenly and human souls separately, at 196D-​E and 196F, respectively.
When treating heavenly souls, his main sources were Dietrich of Freiberg and
Averroes’ De substantia orbis, and for human souls, the Clavis physicae. But
Proposition 196 had clearly required that a unified account of the incorrupti-
ble vehicle be given for both kinds of soul. We will see that the disparate ten-
dencies in Berthold’s sources for Proposition 196 gave rise to ambiguities and

11 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211C, p. 261, l. 119-​120: in quo descensu determinatur intra
ipsam humanam naturam ad hanc singularem unitatem. See 5.3, below.
12 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 210C, p. 249, l. 102-​103: Et attende: Quod auctor vocat sus-
ceptaculum, Apostolus vocat domum seu habitaculum.
13 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 196, p. 95, l. 1-​2: Omnis anima participabilis corpore
utitur primo perpetuo et habente ypostasim ingenerabilem et incorruptibilem.
Epulatio entis 273

tensions in his commentary, which were not addressed before Propositions

206-​210 on the incorruptible vehicle of the partial soul.
It is a principle for Proclus that from a transcendent, unparticipated monad
there arises a group of immanent, participated terms (Proposition 23). The
multiplicity of that participated group is in turn a function of the diversity of
participants. In the case of souls proceeding from the monadic and unpartic-
ipated Soul, the differentiation of “participable souls” must occur simultane-
ously with bodies to participate them.14 These participants or bodies, there-
fore, are required to account for a soul’s distinction from the unparticipated
Soul. If participable souls depend on a body for their individuation, that body
must be imperishable if the participated soul’s identity and immortality is to
be preserved. For this reason, Proclus posited a permanent “astral” body that
would guarantee the immortal soul’s identity throughout the great cycle of
death and rebirth, as well as a semi-​permanent “pneumatic” body that is sub-
ject to divine reprobation or reward between reincarnations.15 This pneumatic
vehicle, in turn, is what pervades the third body, which is entirely corruptible.
For both metaphysical and theological reasons, then, Proclus held that each
participable soul is eternally individuated by its own spiritual body.
Berthold’s main guides while navigating Proclus’ more simplified account
of the single incorruptible body in Proposition 196 were Dietrich of Freiberg
and the Clavis physicae. In 196F, Berthold drew upon twelve chapters in the
Clavis, citing 115 lines of the text, to offer a concise presentation of Eriugenian
anthropology. As Berthold presented it, the question of the nature of spiritual
body in the Clavis arose from a reflection on the status of the human as
imago Dei. The imago, as he read in the Clavis, includes everything in human
nature that is substantial and abiding in the eternal present of God’s creative
Word.16 Accordingly, the imago does not include the corruptible body that is

14 This argument was made explicitly in Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem commentaria, vol.
1, lib. i, p. 707, l. 8-​26. See also R. Chulp, Proclus. An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), p. 99–​105.
15 The difference between astral and pneumatic bodies is only implied in Proposition 209,
and was not detected by Berthold, who read this text in terms of the accretion of materi-
ality to a single incorruptible body. For a fuller account of the doctrine in light of Proclus’
other works, see E.R. Dodds, in Proclus, The Elements of Theology, p. 313–​321; J. Finamore,
Iamblichus and the Theory of the Vehicle of the Soul (Chico: Scholars Press, 1985), p. 85–​88;
J. Opsomer, “Was sind irrationale Seelen?”, in M. Perkams, R.M. Piccione (eds), Proklos.
Methode, Seelenlehre, Metaphysik, p. 136–​166, at p. 148–​151.
16 On time and eternity in Eriugena, see R. Crouse, “Predestination, Human Freedom and the
Augustinian Theology of History in Eriugena’s De divina praedestinatione”, in J. McEvoy, M.
Dunne (eds), History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time. Proceedings
of the Tenth International Conference of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies,
274  Chapter 5

extraneous to the intelligible essence of the human, but rather the spiritual
body that was created in Paradise, which abides even now and will exist after
the Resurrection:17

That essential body was established in Paradise; but it was yet only in rea-
son that it and the soul were created in that general and universal human,
who was made after the image of God, in whom all humans in body and
soul were altogether and at once established only in possibility, and in
whom they all sinned before they might have proceeded into their own
substances –​that is, before any could have appeared in discrete diversity
in their rational soul or spiritual body. This body would have adhered to
the incorruptible soul, had it not sinned. And in this body all humans will
be resurrected.18

A single spiritual body belongs to “the general and universal human” in

Paradise, prior to any divisions of time or place, prior even to human history
and the division of the sexes, both of which are the result of the Fall. In this
universal human, individuals were present only in possibility and did not yet
go forth into their proper substances, into distinct souls and spiritual bodies
by angelic reproduction.19 Since Adam turned towards himself rather than to

Maynooth and Dublin, August 16-​20, 2000 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002), p. 303–​
311, at p. 307–​309.
17 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 196F, p. 127, l. 148-​152: Corpus autem dico hoc corruptibile
carnalis adhuc animae merito suae inoboedientiae superbiaeque diversisque calamitatibus
involutae hospitium, non illud caeleste et spirituale, quod in paradiso cum animae creatum
est, quale et post resurrectionem futurum erit. Cf. Expositio, 210M, p. 255, l. 321-​324: Ibi
enim intellectus, ibi ratio, ibi sensus, ibi seminalis vita, ibi corpus, non hoc corruptibile mer-
ito peccati superadditum, sed spirituale et caeleste ante delictum datum et in resurrectione
futurum.
18 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 196F, p. 128, l. 171-​178: Primum illud essentiale corpus in
paradiso est conditum; sola tamen ratione et anima in ipso generali et universali homine ad
imaginem Dei facto creata est, in quo omnes homines secundum corpus et animam simul et
semel in sola possibilitate conditi sunt et in ipso omnes peccaverunt, priusquam in proprias
substantias prodirent, id est antequam quisquam in discreta differentia in anima ration-
ali et spirituali corpore appareret, quod corpus incorruptibili (incorruptibili] incorruptibile
Clavis) animae aeternaliter adhaereret, si non peccaret; et in hoc omnes homines resurrec-
turi sunt.
19 The Clavis omitted the more precise designation of this unrealised multiplication as a
form of angelic reproduction. Cf. Eriugena, Periphyseon, lib. ii, c. 582B, p. 362, l. 3975-​
3985: […] priusquam in proprias substantias prodirent, hoc est, antequam unusquisque
secundum angelicam multiplicationem in sua discreta differentia in anima rationali et
spirituali corpore appareret.
Epulatio entis 275

God, humanity in its fall simultaneously constitutes for itself corruptible bod-
ies appropriate to that lower life and receives them as the tunics of skin fash-
ioned by God (Genesis 3:21).20
Berthold undoubtedly discerned some similarities between Proclus and the
Clavis on these points: the spiritual body is caused by an immobile substance
(Proposition 207), while the lower body is superadded to accompany the soul’s
fall from being into becoming (Propositions 209-​210).21 But the differences
between the two authorities are even more striking. One problem concerns
the numerical status of the spiritual body. In the Eriugenian perspective of
the Clavis, the spiritual body as one and universal because it belongs to the
“universal human”.22 Individual corporeal bodies arise as bundles of properties
or accidents in the realm of temporal and spatial division.23 These particular
bodies are not, properly speaking, the natural bodies of their souls but rather
are garments “superadded” to common humanity.24 In this sense, as John
Marenbon has noted, for Eriugena there was really no question about the indi-
viduation of substance as such, since individuals are nothing but “concourses
of accidents”.25
Eriugena followed the consequences of this reasoning about the Fall in his
account of the general Resurrection, when the diversity of fallen humanity will
be restored to itself as it has always existed substantially in the divine Word.26
Material differentiation falls away entirely. In the Resurrection, souls who in
Paradise existed in possibility in the universal human will be differentiated

20 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 196F, p. 127, l. 154: ostendit animam sibi ipsi causare cor-
pus materiale. See also Expositio, 207E, p. 229, l. 151 –​p. 230, l. 190, where Berthold cited
Macrobius (In Somnium Scipionis, i.14.3).
21 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 207E-​F, p. 229, l. 151 –​p. 231, l. 213.
22 Eriugena also called the universal human “the plenitude of humanity” (plenitudo human-
itatis), following Gregory of Nyssa: Periphyseon, lib. iv, 759A-​B; lib. v, 922A-​C, 942B-​C,
953A-​B, and 957C. On Eriugena’s ontology of human nature, see C. Erismann, L’Homme
commun. La genèse du réalisme ontologique durant le haut Moyen Âge (Paris: Vrin, 2011),
p. 149–​292.
23 See the citations of the Clavis at Expositio, 74C, p. 55, l. 206 –​p. 56, l. 227, as well as
Eriugena, Periphyseon, lib. v, 941D-​944B.
24 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 196F, p. 129, l. 202-​214, citing Clavis, c. 272. Cf. Eriugena,
Periphyseon, lib. iv, 801C.
25 J. Marenbon, “Eriugena, Aristotelian Logic and the Creation”, in W. Otten, M. Allen (eds),
Eriugena and Creation. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Eriugenian
Studies, held in honor of Edouard Jeauneau, Chicago, 9-​12 November 2011 (Turnhout: Brepols,
2014), p. 349–​368, at p. 362–​363.
26 C. Steel, “The Return of the Body into Soul. Philosophical Musings on the Resurrection”, in
J. McEvoy, M. Dunne (eds), History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and his Time,
p. 581–​609.
276  Chapter 5

only by their merits and virtues, but not by any vices or by any individual
body.27 As Tullio Gregory observed, Eriugena was less concerned with the sta-
tus of individual souls than with the unity and future integrity of humanity,28
and with situating this general return within the rhythm of nature’s return to
the primordial causes.29
Berthold’s comments on Proposition 196 indicate that he was aware that
further clarification was going to be needed on this subject, both to elucidate
the doctrine of the Clavis and to show that the Elementatio theologica agrees
with it. His lengthy series of citations of the Clavis in 196F was bookended with
two cautionary remarks:

To be sure, concerning this body that the rational soul is said to use first
and that it always animates by its being, I will define nothing rashly, for
it should follow that it is perpetual, since it has an ingenerable, incor-
ruptible, and unchangeable subsistence; for just like the heavenly bod-
ies, it does not receive any outside ‘impressions’, if these are thought to
be ‘wandering’. Let us hear, however, what Theodorus judged about this
body in the Clavis. […]
These things may be brought forward without prejudice only to be
clear about what the doctors of the Church judged regarding the matter
at hand.30

Berthold concluded his catena of citations by reassuring his readers that the
Clavis conveyed “the most sound and catholic faith of the divine theologians,
Gregory and Maximus,” which itself was based on “unshakeable arguments”.31

27 Eriugena, Periphyseon, lib. v, 983B and 987A-​D.

28 T. Gregory, “L’eschatologie de Jean Scot”, in R. Roques (ed.), Jean Scot Érigène et l’histoire de
la philosophie. Laon 7-​12 juillet 1975 (Paris: cnrs Éditions, 1977), p. 377–​392.
29 Eriugena, Periphyseon, lib. v, 978D.
30 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 196F, p. 126, l. 128 –​p. 127, l. 31 and p. 130, l. 252-​3: Sane de
corpore, quo anima rationalis primo uti dicitur et quod semper animat esse suo, nihil habeo
temere definire, cum oporteret esse perpetuum sicut habens subsistentiam ingenerabilem et
incorruptibilem et inalterabilem, cum ad instar corporis caelestis impressiones non recipiat,
si esse ponitur peregrinas. Audiamus tamen, quid Theodorus in Clave sentiat de hoc corpore
[…]. Haec sine praeiudicio sint adducta ad hoc solum, ut clarescat, quid circa praesentem
intentionem doctores ecclesiastici senserint.
31 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 196F, p. 130, l. 228-​231: Sanissima namque et catholica
fide credimus divinorum virorum theologi, videlicet Gregorii et Maximi, de talibus incon-
cussas rationes reddentium dogmate imbuti, quod Conditor humanae naturae totam simul
eam creavit nec animum ante corpus nec corpus ante animam condidit. Cf. Eriugena,
Periphyseon, lib. v, 884B-​C.
Epulatio entis 277

The tone of Berthold’s cautionary remarks should be understood less as a note

of disapproval than an acknowledgment that he has introduced views from
reliable authorities that would be unfamiliar or possibly scandalous. He would
also have realised that he had not yet explained how to relate the account of
the bodies of heavenly souls in 196D-​E with the incorruptible susceptaculum of
human nature of 196F. Thus far, he has only given hints to the unified account
that we find, for example, in his interpretation of Proposition 210 (“Every vehi-
cle connatural to the soul always has the same shape and size, but it appears
greater or smaller and in dissimilar shapes because of the additions or remov-
als of other bodies”).32 But it would fall to Propositions 207-​210 to clarify the
ontology of the spiritual body of the partial soul, where, as we will now see,
Berthold adapted the metaphysics of Dietrich of Freiberg that he had used rel-
ative to the incorruptible bodies of heavenly souls at 196D-​E.
According to Dietrich, heavenly and earthly bodies are constituted in
inverse ways.33 In the case of corruptible bodies, privation and “the indetermi-
nate dimensions” in matter precede the form, so that the intrinsic principles
of a body are not principles as such (as Berthold will say, they do not retain
their nature as principles, with the properties of simplicity, spirituality, and
infinity),34 but are first “individual natures” rather than “beings existing as spe-
cies”. The situation is otherwise for incorruptible bodies: a heavenly body is
by nature intrinsically and fully ordered to its act without any privation. It is
by nature first an ens secundum speciem –​it is a heaven as such (caelum) –​
before it is this heaven (hoc caelum) and an individual. As we have seen, for
Dietrich, an ens secundum speciem is a being which proceeds from God “from
reason” (that is, as an image) and “according to reason” (from a forma exem-
plaris or ratio specifica) in the divine mind. This latter ratio is a determining
formal cause, giving it its definitional content, and situating it as a singular

32 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 210, p. 102, l. 1-​4: Omne anime susceptaculum con-
naturale et scema idem semper et magnitudinem habet, maius autem et minus videtur et
dissimilis scematis propter aliorum corporum appositiones et ablationes. See the citations
of the Clavis physicae, c. 272-​273 at Expositio, 196F, p. 129, l. 212-​214: Universaliter autem in
omnibus corporibus humanis una eademque forma communis omnium intelligitur et sem-
per in omnibus incommutabiliter constat; and 210C, p. 250, l. 104-​113: nec me existimes duo
corpora naturalia in uno homine docere. Unum corpus est, quo connaturaliter et consub-
stantialiter animae compacto homo conficitur; illud autem materiale superadditum rectius
vestimentum quoddam mutabile et corruptibile veri ac naturalis magis accipitur, quam
verum corpus […].
33 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 196D, p. 125, l. 89 –​p. 126, l. 103. See Dietrich of Freiberg,
De corporibus caelestibus quoad naturam eorum corporalem, 8.1-​2, p. 384, l. 66-​80, which
drew on the De substantia orbis of Averroes.
34 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 4B, p. 104, l. 125 –​p. 108, l. 242.
278  Chapter 5

entity within the universe as a per se element of its order.35 For something to
be an individual ens hoc before it is an ens secundum speciem means that the
universality inherent to the species is achieved only through the succession
of individuals in becoming and through intellectual abstraction. However, an
entity like a separate intelligence is an ens secundum speciem as such, with-
out ever becoming an ens hoc, and serves a necessary function in the order of
nature by its singular existence alone.36 The heavenly bodies are located at the
boundary of these two orders: by a natural, not a temporal order, a heavenly
body belongs first to the per se order of things before it is an individual or ens
hoc. The heaven only becomes “this” heaven when it acquires parts posterior to
the whole (partes posteriores toto) such as quantitative dimensions.37
Berthold juxtaposed the essential outlines of this argument with the human
spiritual body at the beginning of 196F (ad instar corporis caelestis) and went
no further. By Proposition 207 (“Every vehicle of a partial soul is established
from an immobile cause”),38 he began establishing the analogy directly.39 This
coincided with a greater reliance on Dietrich’s treatises on spiritual bodies
and the Resurrection (De substantiis spiritualibus et corporibus futurae resur-
rectionis and De dotibus corporum gloriosorum). Finally, in Proposition 208
(“Every vehicle of a partial soul is immaterial, indivisible in its substance, and
impassible”),40 he placed the human spiritual body together with the heavenly
bodies as a quasi ens secundum speciem:

The vehicle itself is first the essence of body as such before it is a qual-
ified body, and its form (that is, the partial soul) is first united to the

35 Dietrich of Freiberg, De origine rerum praedicamentalium, 5.17, p. 184, l. 117 –​p. 185, l. 131;
id., De visione beatifica, 1.2.1.1.3, p. 38, l. 42-​80; id., De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.33.5, p. 172,
l. 22-​28; id., Quaestio utrum substantia spiritualis sit composita ex materia et forma, ii.20,
p. 333, l. 181-​203. See also 4.5, above.
36 Dietrich of Freiberg, De origine rerum praedicamentalium, 3.24, p. 164, l. 182-​186: […] ens
ordinabile in genere simpliciter et per se est ens completum secundum speciem; cuius com-
plementi ratio consistit in eo, ut sit ens per se in habendo suam suam formam substantialem
ab agente per se in ordine ad finem per se intentum a natura.
37 Dietrich of Freiberg, De luce et eius origine, 10.1-​13.3, p. 17, l. 79 –​p. 20, l. 89. Cf. Berthold of
Moosburg, Expositio, 209B, p. 248, l. 49-​65.
38 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 207, p. 101, l. 1-​2: Omnis partialis anime susceptacu-
lum a causa immobili conditum est.
39 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 207F, p. 231, l. 207-​213: […] susceptaculum partialis ani-
mae, cum hanc habeat rationem ad susceptaculum divinae animae, quam habet anima par-
tialis ad divinam, sub qua ordinata est secundum substantiam […].
40 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 208, p. 101, l. 1-​2: Omnis partialis anime susceptacu-
lum immateriale est et indivisibile secundum substantiam et impassibile.
Epulatio entis 279

essence of its vehicle, such that it is the essence of body as such before it
is this body. Consequently, the union of the partial soul with its vehicle
precedes whatever dimensions might be supposed to exist in it. From this
it follows that not only the partial soul, but even its vehicle is indivisible
in its substance. […]
Since, therefore, the vehicle of the partial soul, which it first animates
by its being, is immaterial […] and since its union with its soul precedes
dimensions –​whether they are called ‘indeterminate’ or ‘determinate’ –​
it is necessarily indivisible in its substance after the manner of the celes-
tial bodies. In these cases, the soul is first united by nature to its sub-
ject, insofar as they are principles or beings as such, and the heaven is
by nature first constituted as a being as such and is, so to speak, a being
according to species; then it is determined into an individual, so that it
is this heaven.41

With this notion of the spiritual body and the partial soul forming a quasi ens
secundum speciem, after the manner of the heavenly bodies, Berthold has found
a way of accounting for the unicity of the incorruptible susceptaculum, and
thus of reconciling the Elementatio theologica with the teaching of the Fathers
as interpreted in the Clavis physicae. Given his rejection of the doctrine of
cyclical re-​embodiment (see 5.3, below), Berthold did not see the need to posit
a plurality of spiritual bodies to ensure a soul’s identity over time; as we will
see, the creation of individual souls occurs according to the divine will within
the order of voluntary providence. In Berthold’s Eriugenian modification of
Proclus, the spiritual body belongs to human nature as a species. Having inter-
preted the Clavis itself through the ontology of Dietrich of Freiberg, Berthold
could agree with the Eriugenian doctrine that, in the case of human nature,

41 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 208E, p. 236, l. 161-​172 and p. 237, l. 181-​187: Ipsum sus-
ceptaculum prius est essentia corporis simpliciter quam corporis huiusmodi, et eius forma
(scilicet partialis anima) prius unitur essentiae sui susceptibili, ut est essentia corporis sim-
pliciter quam huius corporis. Et per consequens unio animae partialis cum suo susceptaculo
praecedit dimensiones, quaecumque sibi fingerentur inexistere, et ex hoc non solum anima
partialis, sed etiam ipsius susceptaculum est indivisibile secundum substantiam. […] Cum
igitur susceptaculum animae partialis, quod primitus animat suo esse et sit immateriale […]
et unio eius cum sua anima praecedat dimensiones –​sive dicantur interminatae vel termina-
tae –​, ipsum necessario erit indivisibile secundum substantiam ad instar corporum caeles-
tium, in quibus prius natura unitur anima suo subiecto, inquantum sunt principia seu entia
ut simpliciter et constituitur caelum prius natura ut ens simpliciter et quasi ens secundum
speciem et deinde determinatur in individuum, ut sit hoc caelum.
280  Chapter 5

“neither the substances or essences or the reasons of things descend into gen-
eration, but only their passions or accidents”.42
The complete synthesis of these doctrines was achieved in Berthold’s
commentary on Proposition 211. Here, as was mentioned, Berthold fused the
accounts of the creation of humanity in Genesis 1:26 (Faciamus hominem
ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram) and in the Timaeus 41a-​42b (on the
cooperation of the younger gods with the Demiurge in fashioning the human
being). Berthold began by noting that the partial soul, because it subsists in
nature, can be considered in three ways (tripliciter considerari):43 (1) in the
nobler mode according to which it pre-​exists in its cause, (2) in itself according
to existence or “essentially”, or (3) according to participation, in that the cause
is considered in the effect.44 The consideration of the human soul secundum
causam looks to its subsistence in the hierarchy of primordial causes in light
of the plurality of its intrinsic formal principles; in this perspective, the human
soul is present especially secundum causam in the primordial causes of soul,
intellect, and in the One. But before indicating how one ought to understand
this mode of subsistence, Berthold introduces several passages from the Clavis,
which alludes (alludit) to this Proclean mode: “the human is a certain intellec-
tual notion eternally made in the divine mind”. Since all that is made by God
is “primordial and causal” in him, but “proceeding and caused” in time, the
human substance is one, but is seen under two aspects (una dupliciter intel-
lecta; duplex speculatio): as established in the intellectual causes and in the
effects of generation.45 This dual conception was clearly at some variance with
the tripartite model (cause, essence, participation), but Berthold reconciled
them with the twofold descent of the soul: the first passes from the primordial
causes into being, from (1) cause to (2) essence, and the second from (2) being

42 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211D, p. 262, l. 175-​7: Ex quibus aperte colligitur nec sub-
stantias seu essentias nec rationes rerum descendere in generationem, sed solum earum
passiones seu accidentia. Quid autem veritatis in hoc sit circa animam partialem, plenius
elucescet.
43 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211A, p. 258, l. 13-​18: omne, quod qualitercumque subsistit
aut secundum causam est principaliformiter aut secundum existentiam aut secundum
participationem exemplariter per 65, necessarium est ipsam partialem animam tripliciter
considerari: aut ut videtur in producente praeexistens ut in causa propterea, quod omnis
essentialis causa nobiliori modo praehabet in se ipsa causatum suum existens prime, quod
ipsum causatum est secundario […].
44 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211A, p. 258, l. 13-​31.
45 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211A, p. 259, l. 32 –​p. 260, l. 74. Cf. Honorius
Augustodunensis, Clavis physicae, c. 251-​252, p. 200, l. 17-​22 and 2-​3; c. 254, p. 202, l. 6 –​
p. 203, l. 32. On the duplex speculatio on human nature, see W. Beierwaltes, Eriugena.
Grundzüge seines Denkens (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1994), p. 82–​114.
Epulatio entis 281

into (3) becoming.46 In this sense, the first descent corresponds to the eternal
perspective on human nature in the Clavis, and the second to its manifesta-
tions in time.
This was the Platonic doctrine that, in Berthold’s view, was common to
Proclus and the Clavis. The first descent of the human soul is “into being by
nature and condition”, and the second is “into the particular mode of being
related to generation”.47 We should repeat with Berthold that this dual model
and the sequences of divine gifts within each descent do not imply the tempo-
ral pre-​existence of the soul, but were only reflections of our mode of thinking
(secundum modum nostrum intelligendi). In its first descent, the soul emanates
from the Good through the primordial causes into its proper existence. The
Good, through the primordial causes, “strengthens the irradiation of itself”,
so that the first primordial cause, power (prime virtus), bestows by its illu-
mination “the possibility to be”, and so on through being, life, intellect, and
soul, until finally, “through primarily nature, [the human soul] joins to itself
a spiritual and connatural body”.48 This is described as the human’s “singular
existence” and condition, before it has gone forth into individuals. Unified with
its “concreated natural vehicle”, the soul in this mode “stands perfectly in the
totality and integrity of human nature, in which all humans exist –​one human
formed after the image and likeness of the primal Good”. Thus the human soul
is established not “in generation”, but “in being”, “beyond place and time, where
even now it imitates the presiding gods”,49 and the spiritual body is located at
the end of the partial soul’s atemporal passage from its state secundum causam
in the primordial causes to its existence secundum propriam existentiam or
as an ens secundum speciem. Dietrich’s influence can be detected clearly in

46 For a tripartite reading of the Clavis, see Expositio, 211D-​E, p. 262, l. 175 –​p. 263, l. 191.
47 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211C, p. 260, l. 91-​93.
48 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211C, p. 260, l. 101 –​p. 261, l. 106: Deinde secundum
modum nostrum intelligendi ipsum prime bonum per donationem primordialium causarum
fortificat sui ipsius irradiationem […], per prime naturam coaptat sibi corpus spirituale et
connaturale.
49 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211C, p. 260, l. 109 –​p. 261, l. 115: Sic ergo descendens
anima per primordiales causas procedit per omnes per se perfectos ordines ipsarum primor-
dialium causarum, ubi semper, plus et plus praemissis donationibus, contrahitur ad anime-
alitatis existentiam singularem et ad unionem sui cum sibi concreato susceptaculo naturali,
ubi perfecte stat in humanae naturae totalitate et integritate, in qua sunt omnes homines,
unus homo formatus ad imaginem et similitudinem prime boni. Et sic in ente supra loca
et tempora collocatur, ubi etiam deos praesides imitatur. The final phrase, deos praesides
imitatur, came from Proclus (De malorum subsistentia, c. 7, §23, p. 202, l. 18-​25); see n. 62-​
63, below.
282  Chapter 5

Berthold’s description of the human nature constituted in the Word as a “sin-

gular existence” prior to individuation.
We find the same strategy (adjusting Proclus to the Clavis using Dietrich’s
ontology) at work when we turn from Berthold’s understanding of the unic-
ity of the spiritual body to his account of its incorruptibility. A key feature
of Eriugena’s doctrine, as Berthold inherited it from the Clavis, was that the
substantial spiritual body is a present condition that is “hidden” until the
Resurrection.50 The Eriugenian duplex speculatio entails that the universal
depth of every person corresponds to an eternal exemplar in the divine mind.
Berthold evidently endorsed this theory.51 His reliance on Dietrich to explain it
is clear in the following passage, where he described the nature of the spiritual
body constituted spiritually in being (in ente), as distinct from its material state
in becoming (in generatione):

Such spirituality is contracted by nature, that is, from the essential origin
of this substance. Thus, the vehicle that the partial soul first uses and ani-
mates with its being, although it is essentially a body, is spiritual, and is so
by the spirituality that abstracts from all bodily place and position, which
is contracted by nature from its essential origin, according to which it
depends on an immobile cause.52

For Dietrich, “spirituality contracted by nature” (when taken in its essential

rather than accidental signification) applies primarily to intrinsically spiritual
living substances (angels, souls) and equivocally to non-​living spiritual things

50 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 196F, p. 128, l. 190-​194: Cum incorruptibile perire non pos-
sit, ubi est nunc corpus incorruptibile, quod animae adhaereret, si non peccaret? Magister: In
secretis naturae sinibus adhuc latet; in futuro autem saeculo apparebit, quando mortale
hoc in illud mutabitur et corruptibile hoc induet incorruptionem. See also Expositio, 210M,
p. 255, l. 316-​320: Humana enim natura […] non est secundum hoc consideranda, quod
corporeis sensibus apparet irrationalibus animantibus similis, sed secundum hoc, quod ad
imaginem Dei condita est, priusquam peccaret. In hac omne, quod Conditor primordialiter
creavit, totum integrum manet. Adhuc tamen latet revelationem filiorum Dei expectans.
And, similarly, Expositio, 210C, p. 250, l. 110-​114; 210D, p. 243, l. 116-​120.
51 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211A, p. 259, l. 66 –​p. 260, l. 74.
52 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 208A, p. 232, l. 21-​25: Spiritualitas enim talis aut est con-
tracta per naturam, ex origine scilicet essentiali talis substantiae, et sic susceptaculum, quo
primitus utitur anima partialis et quod ipso esse animat, licet sit corpus per essentiam, est
spirituale, et hoc spiritualitate, secundum quam abstrahit ab omni loco et situ corporali,
contracta per naturam ex origine sua essentiali, secundum quam dependet causaliter ab
immobili causa.
Epulatio entis 283

(spiritual places such as heaven and limbo).53 In the passage used by Berthold,
Dietrich did not refer to any innate spirituality belonging to the original human
body in Paradise. For Dietrich, in the case of the resurrected body, that spiritual
quality is only, as it were, accidental or imbued from without (quasi ab extrin-
secus indita) and is not present by nature. In other words, the spirituality of
souls and resurrected bodies differ “equivocally”.54 Furthermore, while certain
spiritual substances are in their proper “place” essentially (such as God, the
intelligences posited by the philosophers and, perhaps, Dietrich adds, heavenly
souls, since these are all essential causes), others (such as angels and human
souls) are in their proper place only inchoatively (inchoative) by essence and
consummately (completive) or destitutely (destitutive) in their places, depend-
ing on their merits.55 Thus, in this passage at 208A, Berthold innovated from
Dietrich, firstly, by extending the concept of innate spirituality to the soul’s
incorruptible body in accordance with the Elementatio and the Clavis, and,
secondly, by adding an allusion to Proposition 207 (ab immobili causa), so that
the susceptaculum itself can now be said to possesses spiritual properties by
nature as an ens secundum speciem, by virtue of its origin from an immobile
cause in the order of being.56
Berthold had to go further to explain the relation between the spiritual
and corporeal bodies when commenting on Propositions 209 and 210,
where Proclus stated that the imperishable body acquires increasingly more
materiality in its descent, even while it remains self-​identical. According to

53 Dietrich of Freiberg, De substantiis spiritualibus et corporibus futurae resurrectionis, 36.4,

p. 339, l. 15-​22.
54 Dietrich of Freiberg, De substantiis spiritualibus et corporibus futurae resurrectionis, 36.8,
p. 339, l. 34-​40.
55 Dietrich of Freiberg, De substantiis spiritualibus et corporibus futurae resurrectionis, 23.1-​7,
p. 320, l. 41 –​p. 321, l. 94.
56 This did not, however, force Berthold to understand the Resurrection simply as the return
to a primordial state before the Fall. Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 209A, p. 240,
l. 21-​31: Est et alius ordo, scilicet supernaturalis, quo gubernatur specialiter rationalis et intel-
lectualis natura per providentiam Dei voluntariam secundum rationem meriti et praemii, et
pertinet ad statum vitae felicis, quo anima cum suo susceptaculo, quod primitus animat, est
in ente, ad quem statum pertinet non solum gloria animae in fruendo per contemplationem
et dilectionem fonte boni, ex cuius superplenitudine ipsa anima partialis utpote supercae-
lestis existens illuminatur, immo superimpletur divini luminis claritate, verum etiam glo-
ria ipsius susceptaculi, ut non solum sit spirituale spiritualitate contracta per naturam, ex
origine scilicet essentiali talis substantiae, sed etiam sit et dicatur spirituale ex perfectioni-
bus talem spiritualitatem naturaliter consequentibus, quibus ipsum susceptaculum etiam
dicitur gloriosum. Although Berthold did not mention it directly, he may have endorsed
the Eriugenian theory of a twofold return. See, for example, Eriugena, Periphyseon, lib. v,
908C-​D, 1001A-​B, and 1014B-​C.
284  Chapter 5

Berthold, following Dietrich, since spirituality and corporeality are not of

the same genus, a spiritual substance can “assume” or “be clothed” with cor-
poreality without leaving off its inherent spirituality.57 In an earlier passage,
Berthold had already incorporated arguments from Dietrich explaining how
two spiritual bodies (for Dietrich, “glorified” bodies) can be in the same place,
since they do not have an intrinsic relation to that place, and to account for the
way that spiritual bodies can be in the same place as corporeal bodies.58 Here
in Proposition 209, however, Berthold has adapted texts in Dietrich that orig-
inally had been used relative to Christ’s appearance to Thomas and the other
disciples after the Resurrection in order to explain Proclus.59 The Elementatio
and the Clavis led him to adapt these arguments to the present condition of
the Proclean spiritual body.
So influenced was he by the Apostolic authority of the Clavis that Berthold
did not regard this as a scandalous conclusion. In fact, in a most characteris-
tic gesture, he freely drew a direct connection between Proclus’ abiding and
incorruptible susceptaculum and the Eriugenian reading of Paul’s proclama-
tion that we have, in the present (habemus), “an eternal house in heaven not
made by hands”.60 The eternal habitation is both a present fact and a promise.
We can conjecture (coniecturam capere possumus) what the quality and state
of that spiritual body must be, if we compare it with the corruptible body of
our everyday experience: this body is visible and is temporal, that body is not
seen and is eternal, and it exceeds in perfection every visible body that we
can find. Berthold followed the Clavis in search of traces or intimations of the
spiritual body at the level of the invisible elements, whose subtlety and omni-
presence underlie and constitute the elements of sense-​experience.61 Rather
than criticising Proclus’ notion of an enduring and incorruptible spiritual
body, he sought to bring out its agreement with the Apostle’s teaching, author-
ised by the Clavis and understood through Dietrich’s ontology.
Although Berthold would not summarise things this way, what we have
witnessed so far is an undeniable subordination of Proclus’ theories of the

57 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 209C, p. 242, l. 91 –​p. 243, l. 110.

58 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 208B, p. 233, l. 59 –​p. 234, l. 101.
59 See Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 209A-​B, p. 241, l. 37, 44, 60-​69, and compare with
Dietrich of Freiberg, De substantiis spiritualibus et corporibus futurae resurrectionis, 31.3-​4,
36.9, and 37.7.
60 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 210C, p. 249, l. 83-​103. Cf. 2 Corinthians 5:1: quod aedifica-
tionem ex Deo habemus, domum non manufactam, aeternam in caelis.
61 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 210A, p. 247, l. 25 –​p. 248, l. 47. Cf. Expositio, 129A, p. 173,
l. 15 –​p. 175, l. 91, and his marginalia to his manuscript of the Clavis listed in Introduction,
section 2, above.
Epulatio entis 285

spiritual body and re-​embodiment to the Christian standpoint of the Clavis

physicae. For the anthropological implications of the Expositio, however, it
is perhaps even more important that we note how the balance in Berthold’s
synthesis shifted in the opposite direction, from the Clavis to Proclus. As we
saw in his comments on Proposition 211, Berthold described the enduring
condition of human nature in Proclean terms: the singular human nature
constituted in the first descent “imitates the presiding gods”.62 This was a ref-
erence to one of the most important passages for Berthold’s interpretation of
Proclus:

For each soul, when it exists above, journeys through the heavens (that is,
travels the high places) and governs the entire world, beholding beings,
and ascending with the presiding gods to the blissful and most perfect
banquet of being, and filling those which look upon it with nectar from
that place.63

Berthold alluded to this passage in his account of the astrologer as the exem-
plar of the nexus Dei et mundi in the Prologus, who “governs the world with
the gods”.64 His echo of the same text in his description of the soul’s first
descent (in Proposition 211) alerts us to two things. The first is that it shows
how Berthold, notwithstanding his criticism of Proclus on reincarnation (see
below), sought to give the doctrine an acceptable interpretation in conformity
with his view of the Elementatio theologica as the consummate restoration of
Plato’s theorematic philosophy. Secondly, and in line with the same passage in
the Prologus, the phrase “imitates the presiding gods” suggests that this abiding
condition of human nature is somehow related to the highest realisation of
human contemplation in this life. That is, what individuals achieve through
intellectual effort and divine assistance is what human nature as a singular ens
secundum speciem always does. For Berthold, this doctrine of providential co-​
operation with the divine, which somehow belongs always to human nature
with its spiritual body, and which souls partake of only in a transitory way, was
a common teaching of the greatest Platonists (Proclus, Dionysius, Macrobius,

62 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211C, p. 261, l. 115-​116.

63 Proclus, De malorum subsistentia, c. 7, §23, p. 201, l. 7 –​p. 202, l. 10: sursum quidem enim
ens anima omnis meteoropori (id est alta petit) et omnem mundum dispensat, entia specu-
lans et cum diis presidibus ad felicem et perfectissimam entis epulationem ascendens, et que
in ipsam respicientia replens eo quod ibi nectare.
64 See 1.2, n. 66, above.
286  Chapter 5

Boethius).65 If human nature is an ens secundum speciem, then it must play an

integral role within the essential order of natural providence. Its providential
action, like that of the heavenly souls that always exercise the highest intellec-
tual operation and the non-​reflexive operative activity of the unum animae,
cannot be intermittent.66 The difference is simply whether the soul is in gener-
ation or in being (in ente), and the latter is equivalent to the essential order of
natural providence, where essence is identical to operation. In Berthold’s inter-
pretation of this passage from Proclus’ De malorum subsistentia in atemporal
terms, what happens when the soul ascends “to the blissful and most perfect
banquet of being” is that it temporarily regains the knowledge that is always
underway in its ground, which connects it with the providential operation that
belongs to human nature as such. The human individual, in being harmonised
with its own nature as microcosm, is harmonised with the macrocosm and the
providence that is inherent to it.
The first descent of the soul arrives to the cusp of the transition from nat-
ural providence to voluntary providence, from the human species in ente to
the human individual in generatione. Berthold clearly evoked the terminology
of voluntary providence when he wrote that the second descent of the soul
occurs when it is well-​pleasing to the primarily Good with the advice of its
council (ad beneplacitum prime boni de consilio sui senatus):

Within human nature [the partial soul] is determined to this singular

unity, which deiform unity is specified in intellectuality, and this intel-
lectuality is singularised to the existence of this soul, which finally is par-
ticularised by the sensible and vegetative [powers].67

65 See the way he echoes the phrase “imitates the presiding gods” when introducing cita-
tions from these authorities at Expositio, 206C-​D, l. 81-​82, 92, 117, and 141; 207A, p. 225,
l. 18-​21; 207B, p. 226, l. 63 –​p. 227, l. 70.
66 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 197I, p. 139, l. 220-​223: In statu enim generationis potest
enumeratas quinque cognitionum species exercere [opinion, science, wisdom, intellect or
intelligence, the unifical], prout minus vel plus se ab his corporalibus separaverit; in statu
autem entis, ubi nullus rationis discursus est, ultimae duae cognitionis species ab anima
exercentur. The five modes are enumerated in Expositio, 197G, p. 136, l. 108 –​p. 138, l. 186.
67 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211C, p. 261, l. 117-​124: Existens vero in ente et totalitate
naturae humanae, ut dictum est, ad beneplacitum prime boni de consilio sui senatus per
descensum secundum (scilicet in generationem) in hunc mundum destinatur, in quo
descensu determinatur intra ipsam humanam naturam ad hanc singularem unitatem, quae
unitas deiformis specificatur in intellectualitatem et hoc intellectualitas singularizatur in
hanc existentiam huius animae, quae etiam ultimo particulatur per sensuale et germinale.
Et sic induit corpus materiale, quo etiam utitur secundum talis modi essendi exigentiam
naturalem. See also Expositio, 24B, p. 130, l. 189-​198.
Epulatio entis 287

Unlike the first descent, where each primordial cause bestowed its own effect,
the action here is undertaken exclusively by God, who produces the individual
soul immediately. Then soul puts on (induit) a material body, which it uses
according to the natural necessities of this mode of being. The last phrase is
consistent with Berthold’s view of Platonic doctrine, according to which the
soul is the “mover” rather than the “act” or “form” of the body.68
That God would be the immediate and exclusive agent in this process is
consistent with Berthold’s understanding of the relation between natural and
voluntary providence. In the perspective of natural providence, the thearchy is
unfolded into its necessary formal order; but from the standpoint of voluntary
providence, the thearchy simply is God. The first stages of the soul’s second
descent as described here are somewhat mysterious, and we are left to make
inferences based on passages discussed earlier in relation to the doctrine of
determination in the Expositio.69 This second descent must be understood as
another logical and non-​temporal narrative. The movement is evidently from
the more universal to the more limited. First, he began with three kinds of
determinacy (determination, specification, singularisation) that correspond
precisely to the terminology that defined the condition of entia secundum spe-
ciem. Such beings come forth by determination or “information”, they are con-
stituted in specific being (in esse specifico) and are “singulars”. We have encoun-
tered the notion of particularisation already passing relative to the ontological
status of angels and separate souls.70
Individuation, therefore, must be inchoate in the unum animae and fully
realised only when the material body is finally “put on”. What this seems to
entail is that the soul’s means of being made adequate to the condition of
human nature in its abiding integrity are already latent within it, especially
in its higher powers. These correspond to higher modes of life or cognition
that are realised only to the extent that the soul has separated from the body.71
The goal of human life is to join itself to the higher world (applicatio eius cum
mundo altiore) or to return to its higher world (redit anima ad suum saeculum

68 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 207C, p. 227, l. 78 –​p. 228, l. 129. Against the Peripatetics,
according to Berthold, the Platonists held that the soul descends by the will of God (nutu
Dei) into “an arranged body”, that it does not “beg” for its intelligible species, but knows by
recollecting its vision during its “natural state”.
69 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 201A, p. 173, l. 36-​39: colligitur omnem divinam ani-
mam habere tres partes formales intrinsecas et essentiales animae substantiam integrantes,
scilicet unum, quod est divinum, et intellectum, quo specificatur, et animealitatem, qua quasi
individuatur.
70 See 4.5, n. 234, above.
71 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 197I, p. 139, l. 221.
288  Chapter 5

altius).72 In the following section, we will look closely into the second descent
of the soul by following Berthold’s adaptation of Dietrich’s doctrine of the
agent intellect as the essential principle of the soul, as well as his understand-
ing of how this principle relates to the essential order of natural providence
and the soul’s beatitude.

2 Between Being and Becoming

Berthold’s account of the dynamic relation between the soul and its ground,
in both movements of procession and return, was heavily indebted to Part ii
of Dietrich of Freiberg’s De intellectu et intelligibili. After setting out the cos-
mological principles of his argument in Part i of his treatise, Dietrich then
turned to describe the relationship between the agent and possible intellects
(=ai, pi). Each intellect is essentially a likeness of the totality of being for, as
Aristotle stated (De anima iii.5, 430a14-​15), the ai makes all things, while the
pi becomes all things.73 Since there is an essential identity between both –​the
totality of being, either made or received –​Dietrich described their interrela-
tion using the all-​important principle from Proposition 65 (but Dietrich cited
Proposition 140 commentum) that, within an essential order, each thing shares
the same essence while existing either according the mode of a cause, of the
essence itself, or of participation. Thus, the pi is all things “by participation”,
while the ai is all things “by cause”. On this point Dietrich acknowledged that
he was venturing beyond the Scriptures and the articles of the faith, since the
argument was compelling him to admit that a cause below God could be said
to bring about the essence of a given effect. Nevertheless, he noted, having
in mind Proposition 56 of the Elementatio theologica and Proposition 1 of the
Liber de causis, even the philosophers agree that whatever a secondary cause
produces, the first cause does so in a more eminent way. It was safe to proceed
on this assumption since the primacy of God’s creative causality was not being
undermined. The remainder of Part ii of the treatise was devoted to deducing
(deducitur) from these premises that the ai is the causal principle (principium
causale) of the essence of the soul itself (ii.2-​i i.12). Once this is established,
Dietrich addressed the problems of the unicity and individuation of the intel-
lect (ii.13-​i i.31) before discussing the object and mode of the ai’s intellection
(ii.32-​42).

72 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. L, p. 50, l. 463-​468.

73 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.1.1-​5, p. 146, l. 5 –​p. 150, l. 34.
Epulatio entis 289

According to Dietrich, the ai is a substance that belongs to the same class of

beings that includes the separate intelligences of the Peripatetic philosophers or
the “gods” of Proclus, and is identical to the hidden recess of the mind (abditum
mentis) of Augustine’s De Trinitate.74 These intellects are in need of no ontologi-
cal supplement or accident to be what they are, that is, the ceaseless exercise of
active memory, active understanding, and active will. The pi, by contrast, is noth-
ing before it thinks, as Aristotle argued (De anima iii.4, 429b30-​430a2). When
it is actualised, it is identical to the intelligible form or species it receives from
the ai.75 Dietrich understood this identity in the strongest sense: there is no pi
“there” as a substance or subject before it thinks. Considered as a conceptional
being (ens conceptionale inquantum huiusmodi) –​a term Dietrich invented to
describe the mode of being of intellectual substances when viewed in terms of
their essential activities –​there is something substantial about the pi’s opera-
tion, because it constitutes the quiddities of things by its universal act or con-
ception (universalis conceptio). However, in the concrete order of conceptional
beings (ordo entium conceptionalium), which regards intellectual entities from
the perspective of their natural being (ens naturae), the pi’s actualisation by an
intelligible form is accidental to it.76 With this distinction, Dietrich intended to
secure the individuation of the possible intellect alongside the universality of
its content. Now, since the pi is nothing before it thinks, the ai must presuppose
something else that is together with it (simul) by nature before it can produce
the accidental disposition that is the intelligible species.77 This something is the
substance of the soul, which will receive the accidental disposition. The soul’s
substance is therefore in an immediate, mutual contact with the ai. Dietrich
clarified that this does not mean that the ai is simply the essence of the soul, as
if it were a form and the soul were its matter. Rather, they must be found together
(simul) in such a way that the ai is “the essential cause” of the soul.
Dietrich held that the argument about the ai as the essential cause of the
soul becomes much clearer once we accept, following Augustine, that the
soul is not affected by anything beneath itself.78 In other words, the soul-​body

74 See especially Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 1.1, p. 15, l. 10 –​p. 36, l. 104; id., De
intellectu et intelligibili, i.7.1-​4, p. 140, l. 16 –​p. 141, l. 43.
75 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.13.3, p. 187, l. 12-​17; id., De visione beat-
ifica, 3.2.3 (4), p. 73, l. 52-​64.
76 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.3.2, p. 148, l. 80-​87. On these kinds of ens
conceptionale, see De intellectu et intelligibili, iii.8.1-​i ii.9.2, p. 151, l. 79 –​p. 153, l. 14.
77 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.2.1-​3, p. 147, l. 50 –​p. 148, l. 76.
78 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.3.3-​i i.5.4, p. 148, l. 88 –​p. 150, l. 34.
On this doctrine in Augustine, see E. Bermon, Le cogito dans la pensée de saint Augustin
(Paris: Vrin, 2001), p. 239–​281.
290  Chapter 5

composite is not the subject of exterior sense-​perception and the interior

senses like common sense and imagination; instead, the soul alone produces
(facit) and performs (exercet) both external and internal functions, while the
body is only the instrument of these operations. For Augustine, this meant that
the soul has a certain interiority (intraneitas) that is not conjoined to the body.
Dietrich explained this as follows:

Although the soul, according to its whole essence, is conjoined to the

body (because it is simple), it is not however conjoined according to
every qualitative mode of its substance. For it has many diverse qualita-
tive, substantial modes in itself, any of which imply the whole essence
of the soul which, nevertheless, is one and all of them simultaneously,
whether it be conjoined according to some of its modes or not con-
joined according to others. Neither do these diverse modes multiply the
essence, but according to each there is one simple, undivided essence
beneath each.79

To explain this relation between a simple essence and its diverse qualitative
substantial modes (=qsm s), Dietrich gave three examples. The first came from
Augustine’s argument in De Trinitate that the mind is totally present in each of
its acts of memory, intellect, and will, which are distinguished only by relation.
These are the qsm s of the mind. Among natural beings, we find the qsm s
of genus, differentia, and species. This recalls Dietrich’s theory of determina-
tion: each of these are formal intentions, which imply the entire essence of a
thing while remaining distinct. As a better example, however, Dietrich pur-
posed that we consider how the vegetative, sensitive, and rational powers of a
soul are its qsm s. As Aristotle explained, each implies the total rational soul,
such that the vegetative exists in the sensitive, and the sensitive exists in the
rational, like the triangle exists in the quadrilateral.80 All these examples imply
that qsm s are related according to a determinate order, either of coequals, in
the case of imago Trinitatis (memory, intellect, will), or of prior and posterior

79 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.5.1, p. 149, l. 3-​10: Quamvis enim anima
secundum totam essentiam suam coniungatur corpori, quia simplex est, non tamen est coni-
uncta secundum omnem modum qualitativum substantiae suae. Habet enim in se plures et
diversos modos qualitativos substantiales, quorum quilibet importat totam essentiam ani-
mae, quae nihilominus una est, et tota simul est sive coniuncta secundum aliquem illorum
modorum sive non coniuncta secundum alium. Nec illi diversi modi numerant essentiam,
sed secundum quemlibet illorum est una simplex indivisa essentia sub quolibet illorum.
80 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 194F, p. 112, l. 149 –​p. 115, 242.
Epulatio entis 291

(the soul’s powers). Each qsm implies the total essence of that of which it is
a mode.
Having determined that there is such an inwardness in the soul, in which
the soul is entirely and essentially present, Dietrich returned to the main argu-
ment. Just as an animate thing has within itself the principle of its motion, so
too the rational soul has within itself a principle of its highest mode of life, that
is, to live intellectually according to the possible intellect.81 The principle of
intellectual life is the ai, which necessarily is inward (intraneus) to the rational
soul. This inwardness (ista intraneitas), Dietrich argued, is a “substantial iden-
tity”, and implies the mutual and essential relation (respectus) of two terms.
There is, then, a dynamic relationship between the ai and the substance of the
soul. This, however, does not make them totally identical. Burkhard Mojsisch
has rightly argued that we must interpret the preceding discussion of qsm s
only relative to the soul’s rational and vital operations, and not to say that
the ai is a qsm of the soul.82 Rather, we might say that this inwardness cor-
responds to the soul’s qsm that is the subject for the accidental disposition of
the intelligible species.83 The two related terms in “this inwardness” are in one
another (intra invicem) essentially (unum in alio essentialiter), and only in this
way are they the same in essence (idem per essentiam). That is, the ai and the
soul are two essentially related substances. In such cases, for Dietrich, Proclus’
threefold modes of existence apply. The soul and the ai cannot be essentially
identical in a univocal way, such that they would be one essence (una essentia),
nor does the ai participate its essence from the soul. The only option remain-
ing is that the ai relates to the soul according to cause (per causam). From this
it follows that the soul is in the ai “by a more eminent and noble mode than it
is in itself”.84

81 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.7.2-​4, p. 150, l. 46 –​p. 151, l. 75.

82 B. Mojsisch, Die Theorie des Intellekts bei Dietrich von Freiberg (Hamburg: Meiner, 1977),
p. 52–​53.
83 Dietrich clarified (at De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.6.1-​2) that it does not follow from this
inwardness that the soul, conjoined to the body, exercises its vital operations intellectu-
ally (intellectualiter) for, even when separated from the body, it is not essentially intel-
lectual or an intellect. This amounts to saying that the rational soul is not an intellectual
substance, because otherwise it would be an essential cause. See also De intellectu et intel-
ligibili, ii.17.1-​4, p. 157, l. 38 –​p. 158, l. 67. Dietrich did not mention whether the soul or,
more specifically, this intraneitas, would occupy the mode secundum essentiam between
the ai (secundum causam) and the pi (secundum participationem), but it would follow
from his argument.
84 See also Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.8.1-​i i.9.4, p. 151, l. 79 –​p. 153,
l. 27; id., De cognitione entium separatorum, 23.1-​6, p. 186, l. 93 –​p. 187, l. 110, where Dietrich
observed that the agent intellect satisfies the five criteria of an essential cause.
292  Chapter 5

Although Dietrich spoke of the ai as the lowest of the order of essentially

active intellects, in an important sense it is different in kind from the intelli-
gences above it. Some essential causes (separate intelligences and heavenly
souls), contain their effects in a simpler, nobler mode, but remain separate
from their effects (sublunary substantial form) and share no univocal defini-
tion with them. Other essential causes “claim for themselves the conditions
of their effects”. This applies to human and angelic ai s.85 Such ai s have the
individuating conditions of their essential effects “inchoatively”, which the
effects have as a “disposition”. For example, a temperament exists in the soul
inchoatively, in the body dispositively, and fully in the composite. According
to Dietrich, the necessary and sufficient condition for individuation is the pos-
session of parts that are after the whole (posteriores toto), which fall outside
the consideration of the essence as such, but which the essence depends upon
for its actuality. These parts can be quantitative, corporeal parts, such as a
body’s limbs and members, or qualitative parts.86 Since, at this point, Dietrich
recalled his earlier discussion of qsm s, we can assume that these qualitative
parts individuating the ai are something like “the sensible”, “the rational”, and
so on. These would be inchoate in the ai by “real natural relations”, which have
an ambiguous status: they are really from and in the nature of a thing (realiter a
natura et in natura rei), like the inclination (inclinatio) of a stone to fall or of fire
to rise; they exist in any ai according to its nature (in quolibet intellectu agente
secundum naturam suam); and yet they are also “after the whole”.87 Unlike cor-
poreal “parts after the whole”, these relations are not added to the essence but
perfectly hold the place of such parts (perfecte gerunt vicem partium), for they
determine or incline the essence of the ai to a spiritual substance disposed to
receive it according to its qualitative parts. Again, Dietrich insisted, the result-
ing individualised ai in the soul is not a form-​matter composite, for this only
occurs in the case of the intellectus adeptus once the possible intellect has been
elevated by grace. An analogy can, however, be made with the heart’s efficient
essential causality of the rest of the body or the way a form contains the entire
substance of a thing in itself.88 Therefore, although the ai is an essential cause,

85 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.19.2-​3, p. 159, l. 83-​105.

86 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.27.4, p. 166, l. 95-​101, and ii.18.1-​3, p. 158,
l. 70 –​p. 159, l. 78.
87 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.27.3, p. 166, l. 90-​93: Et sicut in alia man-
erie individuorum dictum est, quod sunt individua in habendo partes, quae sunt post totum,
ita etiam suo modo se habet circa intellectum quantum ad dictos respectus, qui sunt posteri-
ores toto, qui similiter est individuus in habendo eosdem.
88 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.9.1-​i i.11.3, p. 152, l. 3 –​p. 154, l. 74.
Epulatio entis 293

by virtue of these relations and its essential dependency on the soul’s sub-
stance, it has only accidental natural being and does not belong as such to the
per se order of the universe.89 Presumably, then, the individual ai belongs to
the order of voluntary providence, but through its intellectual activity, the soul
is related to the essential, natural order.
Berthold presupposed these arguments when he summarised the various
grades of limitation comprising the second descent of the partial soul. These
passages from Dietrich’s treatise clarify that the partial soul’s individuality
must be inchoate in the unum animae and the intellectus agens in the form of
qsm s.90 This would have implications for the soul’s return to God, as we see
in Berthold’s use of Dietrich’s arguments in his commentaries on Propositions
188 (“Every soul is both life and living”) and 193 (“Every soul subsists proxi-
mately from an intellect”).91 We have already addressed an initial perplexity
that could arise from a reading of 188E and 193E in isolation, where it would
seem that the Aristotelian (intellectus agens), Augustinian (abditum mentis
or facies), Proclean (unum animae; vestigium unius), and Dionysian (unitas
superexaltata mentis) candidates for the soul’s highest principle were placed
on equal footing. Berthold’s consistent position throughout the Expositio was
that the unum is “the supreme portion of the rational soul” and, more precisely,
the supreme “part of intellectual substance”.92 His apparent equivocation in
these passages can be explained simply by pointing out that the unum animae
is, ultimately, the essential cause of the soul in a primary sense, “with mind or
intellect mediating”.93
The reason why Berthold introduced them side-​by-​side in Proposition 188
was that he was concerned to explain the different kinds of “life” that heavenly
and human souls may live. A principle of life can be numerically distinct from
what it informs, as is the case of matter and form in a composite substance.
Inspired, however, by Dietrich’s De intellectu et intelligibili, Berthold proposed
that other kinds of intrinsic principles of motion or life are essentially one with
the substance in which they are found, and differ only intentionally or modally
(intentionaliter seu modaliter).94 Such is the case for separate substances that
have in themselves the principles of rational, intellectual, and divine lives.

89 Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ii.21.2, p. 161, l. 43-​49.

90 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 191E, p. 92, l. 110-​122.
91 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 188, p. 91, l. 1: Omnis anima et vita est et vivens;
prop. 193, p. 94, l. 1: Omnis anima proxime ab intellectu subsistit.
92 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 13D, p. 217, l. 270-​284; 20H-​i , p. 71, l. 235 –​p. 72, l. 275.
93 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 164B, p. 31, l. 26 –​p. 32, l. 34.
94 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 188D, p. 63, l. 156 –​p. 65, l. 201.
294  Chapter 5

Heavenly souls always live according to the intellectual and divine modes of
life, although the way in which they exercise the latter is more hidden from us
(magis nos ibidem lateat).95
As for the human soul, Berthold’s consistent position was stated succinctly
in the final subsections of the Expositio: because of its “partial” conjunction
with the body and its passage from intellection to non-​intellection, these
higher forms of life are available to it only by a rapture or a kind of crossing-​
over (raptim et secundum quendam transitum fiat aliquibus).96 The partial soul
descends whole (tota) into becoming because it cannot access this perfect
intellectual life spontaneously, although it always presupposes its active oper-
ation. Therefore, the soul’s formal union with the operation –​the state of the
intellectus adeptus –​that would link it to the essential order belongs to the
whole soul (totius animae) only accidentally.97 Nevertheless, Berthold’s inter-
pretation of the anthropological exemplarism of the Clavis through Dietrich
of Freiberg led him to add one important qualification to Proclus, which was
signalled in his application of Proposition 65 to the case of the partial soul in
211A: because of its inwardness (intraneitas) that is not joined with the body,
the partial soul does not descend totally (totaliter) into becoming.98 According
to Berthold, even though the human soul’s alienation from its own ground
cannot be fully overcome in this life, it can be mitigated through the process
of recollection. Since true philosophy embraces logic, natural philosophy, and
ethics,99 the spiritual exercise of the soul’s oblique motion through the study
of the Elementatio theologica, with its logical rigour and attention to natures
outside the soul, must coincide with ethical practice. As the soul gradually sep-
arates itself from bodily affections, it recollects (recordetur) the knowledge that

95 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 188E, p. 65, l. 230; 193E, p. 103, l. 126 –​p. 104, l. 134.
96 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211F, p. 263, l. 216.
97 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211F, p. 264, l. 246-​248: Quamvis enim aliquid eius sem-
per stet in lumine actualis intelligentiae intelligendo se ipsum et suum principium, a quo
intellectualiter et cognitive emanat, tamen ista cognitio non est totius animae nisi per
accidens.
98 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211E, p. 263, l. 192-​8: Et sic omnis anima partialis per essen-
tiam et se tota manet in suis primordialibus causis et tota procedit seu descendit non solum
in suam propriam existentiam, sed etiam in generationem. Sed non totaliter, quia non secun-
dum omnem modum, quo est in suis primordialibus causis quoad primum descensum, nec
secundum omnem modem, quo est in ente, quamvis nihil pertinens ad ipsius talis animae
substantiam, prout descendit in generationem, maneat in ente quoad secundum descensum
sive in esse intellectuali.
99 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 20, p. 32, l. 884 –​p. 34, l. 973; Expos. tit. L, p. 50,
l. 441-​470.
Epulatio entis 295

belongs to that principle of intellectual life.100 Insofar as it quiets even these

interior movements, the soul lives the divine life.101 The theory of recollection
provided the means of mediating the soul’s alienation from the ongoing activ-
ity in its ground and the gradual approximation of it through the discipline of
the oblique motion.
The place of the theory of recollection in Berthold’s account of the soul’s
double descent is most clearly defined in Proposition 207. Here Berthold used
the doctrine of recollection to interpret Proclus’ statement that the first body
of the partial soul is incorruptible because “it is established from an immobile
cause”. The soul’s mode of knowing requires an appropriate kind of body. Since
the soul’s modes of knowing in being and in becoming are so unlike, so too are
the kinds of body the soul uses: it requires a spiritual body when it is in being
(in ente) and is conformed to the presiding gods (conformis diis praesidibus)
or contemplating them (contemplatrix deorum), as “divine” and “intellectual”
souls always are; but when it is in becoming (in generatione) and has fallen
into “forgetfulness”, it uses a material body.102 For the Platonists, if the soul had
remained in its natural order (in ordine naturali), it would know things out-
side itself through the intelligible species with which the creator endowed it
and would not have to beg for intelligibility (mendicare species intelligibiles ab

100 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 211E, p. 264, l. 222-​228: Sed pro tunc solvitur secundum
Platonicos unio superioris partis, quod supra dixi principium intellectualis, a residua por-
tione substantiae ipsius animae, ne sit forma eius, licet ista solutio fiat plus et minus. Et per
consequens ipsa anima in unione sui ad corpus materiale secundum proportionem talis
solutionis obliviscitur eorum, quae prius existens in ente scivit, licet recordetur postea seda-
tis humoribus doctrina ventilante ad publicum semen veri, quod intus erat, sed in abdito
latitabat. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De cognitione entium separatorum, 94.6, p. 258, l. 35-​
42: Ut enim attrahamus ad huius rei restitutionem sententiam Platonicorum, videbimus eos
concordare nobiscum in hac re. Dicunt enim, quod anima rationalis separata portat secum
omnes artes, sed ex coniunctione sui ad corpus cadit in oblivionem earum. Sed istam sen-
tentiam Platonicorum quantum ad hoc, quod videtur sonare, quod anima fuerit informata
omnibus artibus ante infusionem suam in corpus, et per consequens, quod dicit de causa
oblivionis, non recipimus, cum teneamus et fateamur animam in sui infusione creari et in sua
creatione infundi. Berthold’s phrase ad publicum semen veri echoes Boethius, Consolatio
philosophiae, lib. iii, metrum 11. Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 194F, p. 114, l. 209-​231;
207A, p. 225, l. 13 –​p. 226, l. 58; 207D, p. 228, l. 111-​124.
101 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 202C, p. 186, l. 167-​171. Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato,
c. 8, §31, p. 140, l. 11-​12: quo adiaciens le unum quietem amat, clausa cognitionibus, muta
facta et silens intrinseco silentio.
102 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 207A, p. 225, l. 18-​21: Secundum Platonicos vero anima
partialis –​secundum duplicem sui statum, quem alternare potest in infinitum, per praemis-
sam –​alio indiget susceptaculo, prout est in ente conformis diis praesidibus (quando videli-
cet est contemplatrix deorum), alio vero, quando est in generatione cadens in oblivionem.
296  Chapter 5

extra).103 One might say that it would always know itself, according to the cir-
cular motion, and the world, according to the direct motion. To exercise these
motions perfectly, as the higher souls always do, the partial soul would need
a body like theirs, which Berthold described using the attributes Paul applied
the resurrected body (impassibility, clarity, subtlety, and agility).104 Looking
at the soul’s present embodied condition, however, Aristotle was right to say
that it must begin knowing by abstracting species from material things. In this
sense, the material body is appropriate to initiate the process of recollection.
Plato “did not deny this path”, but held that such a view must always be bal-
anced by the doctrine of recollection, which Berthold found authoritatively
expressed by Boethius: “Now, the body bringing forgetful weight /​does not
expel all light from the mind; /​within, there assuredly abides the seed of truth,
/​which is aroused by instruction fanning the ember”.105 For the Platonists, the
soul’s proper and vivid cognition has been obscured by the passions (confundi-
tur passionibus). This is why Berthold can argue at the end of Proposition 211
that, even though a part of the soul always stands in the light of actual intelli-
gence –​always recollecting its content through the universality that belongs to
the human species –​the whole soul is far removed from that light.
As Berthold put it before the concluding prayer of the Prologus, the wayfarer
is so remote from the font of paternal light because it is so distracted by cares,
occluded by imaginings, and bound up in lust.106 This light, whose “splendour
is the Word”, illuminates all people “coming into this world” (cf. John 1:9). It is
very important to note that Berthold, playing on the phrase in hunc mundum
(“into this world” or “into this pure [state]”), then reverses the more familiar
interpretation of the verse. That is, the true light does not illumine all peo-
ple equally who are born into the world of becoming –​or, at least, it is not
received equally by all. Rather, as Berthold made clear, it illumines only those
who “come into intellectual purity” (illuminat omnem hominem venientem in

103 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 207C, p. 227, l. 94-​100.

104 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 207A, p. 226, l. 40-​58. Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:39-​54.
105 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 207C, p. 227, l. 100 –​p. 228, l. 110; 207A, p. 225, l. 31 –​
p. 226, l. 34. Cf. Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, metrum 11, p. 91, l. 9-​12.
106 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 21, p. 34, l. 968-​973: Ex praemissis patere potest, cum
quanta difficultate anima etiam deiformis effecta in hac vita ascendat ad conspectum fontis
paternae lucis, cuius splendor gloriae est Verbum, ‘lux vera, quae illuminat omnem homi-
nem venientem in hunc mundum’, scilicet puritatem intellectualem, a qua longe est mens
hominis sollicitudinibus distracta, phantasmatibus obnubilata, taceo autem de carnali-
bus voluptatibus implicata. The final phrases (sollicitudinibus distracta, etc.) come from
Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, in PP Collegii S. Bonaventurae (eds), Opera
omnia, vol. 5 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1896), c. 4, §1, p. 306a.
Epulatio entis 297

hunc mundum, scilicet puritatem intellectualem).107 Again we are confronted

with the paradox that the cognition that belongs to the soul by nature as an
ens secundum speciem is by nature inaccessible to it as an individual ens hoc.
The exemplarist turn Berthold gave to the doctrine of recollection meant that
the fullness sought by recollection somehow must belong to human nature
as it subsists in the mind of God –​in effect a combination of the Eriugenian
anthropology of the duplex speculatio with the Proclean notion of imitating
the divine providence. Just as the ceaseless cognition of the ground of the soul
remains hidden to us, so does the spiritual body abide still “in the hidden folds
of nature”.108 According to the doctrine of the double descent, as Berthold
interpreted it through Dietrich of Freiberg’s De intellectu et intelligibili, individ-
ual souls created de novo are related to this plenitude through the unum ani-
mae and intellectus agens, which are simultaneously individuated and univer-
salising powers. We can turn now to consider the content of what for Berthold
was the highest approximation of that state a soul could reach in this life: the
transitory enjoyment of the state he understood to be the goal of the study of
the Elementatio theologica, namely, puritas intellectualis.

3 The Goodness of Silence: Deification and Providential Cognition

Berthold’s Eriugenian interpretation of the Proclean spiritual body (suscep-

taculum) coincided with the single most direct criticism of Proclus in the
Expositio. Berthold insisted three times, each time using the Clavis physicae,
that souls who fully enjoy blessedness after death can never fall. This criticism
was made at the conclusion of Proposition 196, again in 206, and finally in 209,
as Berthold cited the Clavis on the beatitude “promised to the saints” and the
macrocosmic reversion of all temporal things into their primordial causes,
when “God alone shall appear in them”.109 This return of creatures to their

107 Cf. Meister Eckhart, Sermo vi/​2 (First Sunday after Trinity), eds E. Benz, B. Decker, J. Koch,
Die lateinischen Werke, vol. 4 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1956), §57-​58, p. 57, l. 3 –​p. 58,
l. 3: Ubi nota primo, quod deus verissime mittit, gignit unigenitum suum in anima munda
et ‘in ipso et per ipsum omnia’, se ipsum, Ioh. 14: ‘ad eum veniemus’ etc. […] <Tertio> dic: in
mundum. Non dicit: ‘in hunc mundum’ [1 John 4:9], sed in mundum simpliciter. Igitur in
mundum intellectualem, secundum Platonem. See also Albert the Great, De intellectu et
intelligibili, lib. ii, tr. unicus, c. 10, p. 518a-​b, cited at 1.2, n. 79, above, and the citation of
Dionysius at Expositio, Prol. 17, p. 26, l. 685-​689.
108 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 196F, p. 128, l. 190-​2; 195D, p. 119, l. 99-​118.
109 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 196F, p. 170, l. 64-​5: Non autem video quomodo homo beat-
itudinem perderet si eam re ipsa plene perfecteque gustaret; 206F, p. 223, l. 261-​266: Istius
autem descensus animarum vult auctor in infinitum vicissitudines permutari, quod non
298  Chapter 5

causes transpires only when creatures doff the finitude of time and place and
revert to their infinite eternal principles while their nature remains intact; for
the microcosm, the full enjoyment of that vision, understood in this sense of
being “filled” with the plenitude of divinity by grace just as the humanity of the
Son was filled with divinity by nature, precludes the possibility of any temporal
pre-​existence in such a state or a subsequent lapse from the beatific vision.
The central refutation of Proclus on re-​embodiment is found in Proposition
206 (“Every partial soul can descend into generation and ascend from genera-
tion into being an infinite number of times”).110 Rather than rejecting the view
outright by merely contrasting it with the authoritative doctrine of the faith,
Berthold was more interested in giving it an acceptable metaphorical meaning.
We should remember that, for Berthold, Proclus belonged alongside Plotinus
as a philosopher who lifted the coverings (integumenta) with which the earli-
est Platonists had enshrouded Plato’s theorems (theoremata). Although he did
not recall this history of Platonism at this stage of the Expositio, it seems likely
that Berthold regarded the literal interpretation of reincarnation he found in
Macrobius and Proclus as either a further act of concealment or, more plau-
sibly, a failure to pierce all the way through those mythical coverings. His lan-
guage of refutation in 209F (refellitur) would suggest the latter view. In either
case, the search for an acceptable metaphorical meaning of reincarnation was
required if Berthold was to demonstrate the thorough compatibility of the
best of the pagan philosophers with the greatest theologian Paul (summus div-
inalis sapientiae theologus Paulus), his disciple Dionysius, and his commen-
tators. To this end, he was assisted by Albert the Great’s De natura et origine
animae, where the mythical soteriology of the Platonists is presented chiefly
as an account of the soul’s origin, its immortality, and its natural yearning for
knowledge.111

videtur intelligibile; anima enim fruens fonte omnium bonorum utpote beata et felicis vitae
nec timore torqueri potuerit nec falsa securitate decipi nec commutabili bono allici ut,
volens, a bono incommutabili se avertat nec ad aversionem ab aliquo violentari; 209F, p. 245,
l. 201: per hoc iterum refellitur descensus animarum.
110 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 206, p. 101, l. 1-​2: Omnis anima partialis descendere in
generationem in infinitum et ascendere potest a generatione in ens.
111 Albert the Great, De natura et origine animae, ed. B. Geyer (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff,
1955), tr. 2, c. 7, p. 30, l. 30 –​p. 31, l. 67. See also Albert the Great, Summa theologiae, ed.
A. Borgnet, vol. 33 (Paris: Vivès, 1895), pars ii, tr. 12, q. 72, m. 4, a. 3, p. 51a-​b: Ad dicta
Marcobii dicendum, quod fabulosa sunt, et integumenta eorum quae dixerunt Gentiles
idolotrae […]. Ad aliud dicendum, quod non intellexit Macrobius, nec etiam Plato, quod
anima rationalis vires acciperet in stellis: quia potentiae animae a substantia et esse animae
fluunt.
Epulatio entis 299

Berthold began Proposition 206 by noting that the word “place” (locus) in
the strict sense applies only to the corporeal realm of becoming. It also has a
“metaphorical” meaning for spiritual realities, where the higher is “located” by
the lower as what is “more exterior”, and the lower is “located” by the higher
as what is “more interior”.112 Here we may think of the hierarchy of cognition
outlined in 123D, where the ascent to higher modes of knowing coincides with
the apprehension of more fundamental aspects of the object. With this caveat
about metaphor, Berthold was preparing for the argument that the notion of
companion stars (stellae compares) in the Timaeus 42b, the “place” whence
souls arise and whither they return, must be understood in the metaphorical
sense.113 Platonists speak this way, he explained, because of their account of
the origin of the partial soul, which holds that the constellations exercise a
determinative operation through the influence of intellectual light, through
which a celestial mover scatters intellectual seeds proportionate to itself
within the soul.114 Berthold went so far as to claim that this accords with those
(e.g., Augustine) who say that souls “are poured in by being created and are
created by being poured in” (creando infundi et infundendo creari).115 With this
simple manoeuvre, Berthold stripped Platonic doctrine of its association with
the doctrine of the pre-​existence of souls, such that it becomes an account of
the soul’s intellectual origins and its natural desire to return to the interiority
where it can live the life most appropriate to it.116

112 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206A, p. 216, l. 14 –​p. 217, l. 37. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De
substantiis spiritualibus et corporibus futurae resurrectionis, 14.2-​3 and 14.4-​6, p. 313, l. 16-​21
and 30-​38.
113 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206B, p. 217, l. 39 –​p. 218, l. 75.
114 Here Berthold also looked to Macrobius (In Somnium Scipionis i.14), whom he cited on
the “fiery” intellect which the souls receive from the higher stars of the Milky Way (207E),
along with Boethius’ poetic images of recollection as glowing embers kindled by teaching
(207A-​C). This account of the human soul’s origin would be compatible with what he
found in Albert the Great, De natura et origine animae, tr. i, c. 5, p. 14, l. 14-​27.
115 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206B, p. 217, l. 51-​54: Et in talem sententiam concordant
etiam isti, qui dicunt animas creando infundi et infundendo creari ita, quod usque hodie
in circulis nativitatem ponitur ab eis una stella, quam Hyleg et Alkocoden vocant, quod
Latine sonat vita et intellectus, eo, quod nato vitam et intellectum conferre dicitur. See also
Expositio, 207C, p. 227, l. 78-​82.
116 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206B, p. 218, l. 62-​69: Videtur autem haec positio accipi ex
quattuor motivis praecipuis: tum quia animarum partialium cum intellectualibus et divinis
est eadem natura, cum sint eiusdem seyrae, ergo et idem locus; tum quia anima partialis non
debetur corpori terrestri nisi propter similitudinem eius ad caelum, igitur caelum est magis
proprius eius locus; tum quia anima partialis est quasi semen motorum caelestium secun-
dum expositionem Calcidii super Timaeo: ergo eorum erit ad eundem locum comparitas;
tum etiam quia sunt eiusdem operationis, scilicet intellectualis.
300  Chapter 5

More important still was Berthold’s account of the soul’s proper work in
its native “place” at 206C (quid autem animae partialis in comparibus stellis
existentis opus sit), where he forged a synthesis of Proclus and Dionysius on
the question of beatitude and embodiment.117 This comparative approach has
been followed unwittingly in more recent times by Jean Trouillard, who has
contrasted Eriugena, whom he judged to follow Dionysius, and Proclus on pre-
cisely this question. Drawing on the Tria opuscula and Proclus’ commentary on
the Republic (unknown to Berthold), Trouillard saw differences between the
two Platonists where Berthold found similarities.118 Trouillard was emphatic
that, for Proclus, separated souls rejoice at the prospect of being reunited with
a body. Virtuous and vicious souls alike find in their return to body the opportu-
nity for action, although they descend for different reasons –​some out of gen-
erosity and self-​sacrifice, and others out of forgetfulness. Berthold was in fact
aware of this view and cited the key passage from the De malorum subsistentia:
souls descend either because of “the inability to imitate the presiding [gods],
the desire for noble birth, purity, virtue, [or] divine intellect”.119 Berthold’s
first citation of De malorum subsistentia in 206C, regarding the soul’s work in
heaven, is also one that Trouillard would regard as characteristically Proclean:

For the primary good is not contemplation, intellective life, and knowl-
edge, as someone has said somewhere. No, it is life in accordance with
the divine intellect which consists, on the one hand, in comprehending
the intelligibles through its own intellect, and, on the other, in encom-
passing the sensibles with the powers of [the circle of] difference and in
giving even to these sensibles a portion of the goods from above. For that
which is perfectly good possesses plenitude, not by the mere preserva-
tion of itself, but because it also desires, by its gift to others and through
the ungrudging abundance of its activity, to benefit all things and make
them similar to itself.120

117 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206C, p. 218, l. 77 –​p. 219, l. 110.

118 J. Trouillard, “Métensomatose proclienne et eschatologie érigénienne”, in J. Sojcher,
G. Hottois (eds), Philosophies non-​chrétiennes et christianisme. Annales de l’Institut de
Philosophie et de Sciences morales (Bruxelles: Université libre de Bruxelles, 1984), p. 87–​99.
119 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206D, p. 220, l. 140-​2.
120 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206C, p. 218, l. 83-​89, citing Proclus, De malorum sub-
sistentia, c. 7, §23, p. 202, l. 10-​18: Non enim erat prime bonum thea, id est speculatio, vel
intellectualis vita et prudentia, ut alicubi ait aliquis, sed quod secundum divinum intellec-
tum detinens quidem intellectualia sui ipsius intellectu. Ambiens autem sensibilia his quae
alterius potentiis et eorum quae inde bonorum partem etiam ipsius his exhibens, quia, quod
perfecte bonum non in salvare se ipsum solum habet le plenum, sed iam et ea, quae ad
Epulatio entis 301

Rather than addressing the theme of the soul’s desire for embodiment, how-
ever, Berthold focused on the term plenum, and connected this passage with
one immediately preceding it, where Proclus stated that blessed souls in the
realm of being “feast” with the gods: “with the presiding gods the soul ascends
[…] to the fruition of divine things and especially of the primarily Good”.121
According to Berthold, on this point Proclus in fact agreed with Dionysius,
who wrote:

This, therefore, according to my knowledge, is the first rank of heav-

enly beings standing immediately in the circuit of God [in circuitu] and
around God, simply and unceasingly encircling his eternal cognition
in the highest arrangement beyond motion. This is what we find in the
angels, who view many blessed contemplations purely, and who are illu-
mined by simple and immediate splendours, and filled with divine nour-
ishment [divino nutrimento adimpletus] –​many, indeed, [are filled] by
the first effusion that is bestowed, but one [rank] by the invariable and
life-​giving unity of the thearchic banquet [invariabili et vivifica thearchi-
cae epulationis unitate].122

According to Berthold, who did not mention that this passage referred to the
seraphim at the summit of the angelic hierarchy, both texts describe the sta-
ble contemplation enjoyed by “divine souls” (the movers of the heavens) and
“intellectual souls” (human souls in being). The language of feasting and plen-
itude, he argued, suggests that we are dealing with an activity that is connat-
ural to the soul, and if it is given fully without impediment, then it does not
have a contrary (si est non impedita, non habet contrarium). This simple point

alia datione et non invidiosae operationis omnia bonifacere desiderat et sibi similia facere.
English translation: Proclus, On the Existence of Evils, trans. J. Opsomer, C. Steel (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 73–​4.
121 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206C, p. 218, l. 91-​93: Ex quibus verbis aperte colligitur
animam partialem, ut est in ente, esse beatam, sicut quae cum diis praesidibus ascendit ad
felicem et perfectissimam entis epulationem, id est ad fruitionem divinorum et specialiter
prime boni.
122 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206C, p. 218, l. 95 –​p. 219, l. 101, citing Dionysius, De
caelesti hiearchia, 7.4, 212A: Igitur hic quidem est secundum meam scientiam primus cae-
lestium substantiarum ornatus in circuitu Dei et circa Deum sine medio stans et simpliciter
et indesinenter ambiens aeternam ipsius cognitionem secundum supremam, ut in angelis,
supermobilem collocationem; multis quidem et beatis videns pure contemplationibus, sim-
plicibus autem et immediatis splendoribus illuminatus: et divino nutrimento adimpletus,
multa quidem, primo data effusione, una autem, invariabili et vivifica thearchicae epula-
tionis unitate.
302  Chapter 5

was meant to establish that Proclus was mistaken to assert that souls would
ever descend from their homes among their “companion stars”, but the Clavis
had it right: if ever souls delight in the immutable fount of all goods, nothing
could draw them away.123 Thus Berthold read Proclus through Eriugena (and
Dionysius) for whom, as Trouillard observed, the perfection of the soul is pre-
cisely to be “saturated by contemplation”.
The soul naturally longs for the kind of incorruptible body that “whole”
heavenly souls have already, and which will serve it in the greater realisation
of contemplative felicity.124 What a spiritual body enables, with the qualities
of agility, subtlety, and so on, is the further transmission of the goods that the
souls receive from intellects above them. For Berthold, souls do in a sense
ascend and descend from being into becoming in rare moments of contem-
plative raptus, but to say that a soul would descend from the permanent pos-
session of its own intellect (intellectus adeptus), is unthinkable. The Dionysian
correction of Proclus, which for Berthold truly grasped the doctrine behind
the Timaeus, which Proclus should have understood by the light of his own
principles, was that the soul does not turn directly back to the world of gen-
eration and corruption, but exercises a divine care for what is below because
of a kind of excess or overflow. As Proclus himself wrote, the soul raised to
“govern the world with the gods” by “ascending to the blissful and most perfect
banquet of being”, fills those who follow upon it with that same abundance.125
This idea immediately preceded Proclus’ remark, cited above, that “the pri-
mary good is not contemplation” or “intellective life”. So too for Dionysius,
hierarchy is intended to connect the higher and lower through such a dynamic
exchange.126 If contemplation does not result in some providential action, if it
does not abound, then it is not yet divine.

123 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206F, p. 223, l. 263-​6: anima enim fruens fonte omnium
bonorum utpote beata et felicis vitae nec timore torqueri potuerit nec falsa securitate decipi
nec commutabili bono allici ut, volens, a bono incommutabili se avertat nec ad aversionem
ab aliquo violentari.
124 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 185H, p. 24, l. 334 –​p. 25, l. 365; 202C, p. 185, l.127-​
136: quando incorruptibiles et immortales erimus et christiformem et beatissimum conse-
quemur finem, visibili ipsius Dei apparitione in castissimis contemplationibus adimpleti,
manifestissimis circa nos splendoribus refulgente, sicut circa discipulos in illa divinissima
transformatione; intelligibili autem luminis datione ipsius, impassibili et immateriali mente
participantes et super mentem unitione, in ignotis et beatis immissionibus superclarorum
radiorum, in diviniore imitatione supercaelestium mentium. Nam aequales erimus angelis,
ut veritas dicit Eloquiorum, et filii Dei, resurrectionis filii existentes.
125 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206C, p. 218, l. 80-​83, cited above at 5.1, n. 63.
126 Dionysius, De caelesti hierarchia, 3.2, 165A-​C.
Epulatio entis 303

In this respect, we see that Berthold attempted to be faithful to Proclus’

own doctrine set out in Proposition 129 (“Every divine body is divine through
a deified soul; but every soul is divine because of a divine intellect; but every
intellect is divine through participation in a divine unity: and if the One is
antotheon, that is, God from itself, intellect is most divine, soul is divine, and
body is deiform”).127 Proclus’ terminology prompted Berthold to discuss the
meaning of deification (deificatio). If the body is to be deified, this must occur
“through assimilation and union” with God, as Dionysius wrote. This can only
happen through the intermediary terms, such that “the body would be, as it
were, changed into soul, soul into intellect, and intellect into God”.128
Here, once again, Berthold’s guide to interpreting Proclus on deification was
the Clavis physicae.129 Berthold first included the famous images of light-​filled
air and red-​hot iron, which Eriugena elaborated from Maximus the Confessor,
and which subsequently were included in the Clavis.130 These metaphors orig-
inally were intended to illustrate how the divine and the human can be united
without confusion or, in the more universal scope of Eriugena and Berthold,
how a lower nature can be infused and transformed by the higher without los-
ing its identity: the corporeal is changed into the soul, “not so that it would be
lost”, but “to preserve it in a better essence”.
To get a clearer sense of how this will occur in the macrocosm, Berthold
continued, let us take as an example the deified person (ponamus hominem
deificatum pro exemplo), in whom the four cosmological genera are present.
He then cited the two familiar texts from Dionysius and Proclus –​Dionysius on
“the unity exceeding the nature of mind”, according to which it is necessary to
think divine things, “not according to ourselves”, and so on; and Proclus, who
made this point more clearly (istam intentionem clarius ponit Proclus), when he
disclosed the frenzy or cognition above mind, in which the soul “sees” the One
by “not seeing”, having brought all exterior and interior motions to stillness.

127 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 129, p. 65, l. 1-​5: Omne corpus divinum per animam
est divinum exdeatam, omnis autem anima divina propter divinum intellectum, omnis
autem intellectus divinus secundum participationem divine unitatis; et si quidem unum
autotheon [Berthold: antotheon] (id est ex se) deus, intellectus autem divinissimum, anima
autem divina, corpus autem deiforme. On this commentary, see E. Massa, “La deificazione
nel commento di Bertoldo di Moosburg a Proclo, Elementatio theologica, 129. Edizione del
testo e prime analisi”, in R. Lievens, E. van Mingroot, W. Verbeke (eds), Pascua Mediaevalia.
Studies voor Prof. Dr. J.M. de Smet (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1983), p. 545–​604.
128 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 129B, p. 177, l. 140-​141: quod corpus quasi mutetur in ani-
mam, anima in intellectum, intellectus in Deum.
129 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 129B, p. 177, l. 142 –​p. 179, l. 196.
130 See Gersh, From Iamblichus to Eriugena, p. 193–​203.
304  Chapter 5

According to Berthold, this shows that, although the preparation or purifica-

tion of the soul begins from below, deification begins from above, when God
is participated separably (separabiliter) through the unum animae, which is
the inseparable potency (per inseparabilem potentiam) or vestige God has left
in the soul. Then the intellect is transformed and made most divine (divinis-
simum), and so on for the soul and for the body. In this way the participation
in divinity passes through all intermediaries to the deification of the body (sic
participatio divinitatis transit per omnia media usque ad deificationem corporis).
Among these more familiar sources, it is most striking to find Berthold cit-
ing Bernard of Clairvaux, as a confirmation of the consensus of the Clavis and
Proclus about the deification of the microcosm (intended, we will recall, as an
illustration of what will transpire in the macrocosm):

And so, as Bernard says, ‘the whole person will proceed into God and,
adhering to him, from thenceforth will be one spirit with him’. ‘Just as
a tiny drop of water infused in a large quantity of wine seems to leave
itself, and now is imbued with the taste and colour of wine’, ‘so also, at
that time, in the saints’ (that is, ‘when they are drunk, so to speak, with
the abundance of the house of God, and in some way will have become
oblivious of themselves’), ‘all human affection will necessarily, in some
ineffable way, liquify and be poured out deeply into the will of God.
Otherwise, how will God be all in all, if in man something of man will
remain? Indeed, the substance will remain, but in another form, another
glory, and another power’.131

This citation brought together and reordered numerous phrases from

Bernard’s De diligendo Deo. This reordering, and the reference to Ephesians
3:19 that immediately follows it in the Expositio, indicate that Berthold’s source
was a popular florilegium, the so-​called Flores Bernardi.132 This chapter of the

131 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 129B, p. 179, l. 188-​196: Et sic, ut dicit Bernardus, ‘totus
homo perget in Deum et deinceps adhaerens ei unus cum eo spiritus erit’. ‘Quomodo stilla
aquae modica multo infusa vino deficere a se tota videtur, dum et saporem vini induit et
colorem’, ‘sic omnem tunc in sanctis’ (scilicet ‘quando quasi ebrii ab ubertate domus Domini
quodammodo obliti sui ipsorum fuerint’) ‘humanam affectionem quodam ineffabili modo
necesse erit a semet ipsa liquescere atque in Dei penitus transfundi voluntatem. Alioquin,
quomodo erit Deus omnia in omnibus, si in homine de homine quidquam supererit? Manebit
quidem substantia, sed in alia forma, alia gloria, aliaque potentia’.
132 Bernard of Clairvaux, De diligendo Deo, eds J. Leclercq, H. Rochais, Sancti Bernardi Opera,
vol. 3 (Roma: Editiones Cistercienses, 1963): totus … erit (c. 15, §39, p. 153, l. 9-​10); quo-
modo … colorem (c. 10, §28, p. 143, l. 15-​17); sic … sanctis (c. 10, §28 p. 143, l. 20); quando
… fueriunt (cf. c. 15, §39, p. 153, l. 7-​8); humanam … potentia (c. 10, §28, p. 143, l. 20-​24).
Epulatio entis 305

Flores embellished Bernard’s own summary of the argument in De diligendo

Deo about of the four ascending modes of love, according to which a person
(1) loves oneself for one’s own sake, (2) loves God for one’s own sake, (3) loves
God for God’s sake, and (4) loves oneself for God’s sake.133 In the lengthier dis-
cussion of the fourth mode in c­ hapter 10 of De diligendo Deo, Bernard spoke of
the rare possibility of attaining such love in this life, if only for an instant.134 In
the summary at c­ hapter 15, however, which was retained by the Flores, the glass
was half empty, and Bernard hesitated to affirm that the fourth mode could be
attained “perfectly” in this life.135 This would not have had a significant bearing
on Berthold’s analysis of Proposition 129, where the perspective was clearly
that of the Resurrection and the total deification of the microcosm, but it will
be worth keeping in mind when we return to consider Berthold’s conception
of the transitory cognition of the unum animae.
In one sense, Bernard only confirmed what Berthold already took from
the Clavis, with the metaphors of mixture illustrating how the substance of

I have not been able to consult a manuscript of the florilegium written before the 15th
century. Of the modern editions, the text used by Berthold was closer to Flores sancti
Bernardi (Venezia: Junta, 1503), lib. ix, c. 42, p. 162vb, than what is found in Flores operum
D. Bernardi abbatis Clarevallensis (Lyons: G. Rouillius, 1570), lib. ix, c. 36, p. 698, as the
latter makes no reference to the domus Domini. In both editions, the next and final
chapter of book ix is De longitudine, latitudine, sublimitate et profundo –​a clear echo of
Eph. 3:19, discussed below –​which summarised Bernard of Clairvaux, De consideratione,
lib. v, c. 13, §27. On the origins and medieval transmission of the Flores Bernardi, see
M. Bernards, “Flores Sancti Bernardi”, in J. Lortz (ed.), Bernhard von Clairvaux. Mönch
und Mystiker. Internationaler Bernhard-​Kongress Mainz 1953 (Mainz: Veröffentlichungen
des Instituts für europäische Geschichte Mainz, 1955), p. 176–​191, and U. Köpf, “Die
Rezeptions-​und Wirkungsgeschichte Bernhards von Clairvaux. Forschungsstand und
Forschungsaufgaben”, in K. Elm (ed.), Bernhard von Clairvaux. Rezeption und Wirkung
im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994), p. 5-​65, at p. 12–​17.
The same passage from the Flores used by Berthold featured prominently in Henry
Suso’s account of releasement (gelazsenheit) in The Little Book of Truth. See Henry Suso,
Daz buechli der warheit, c. 4, p. 336, l. 7-​24. On Bernard’s influence among Berthold’s
Dominican contemporaries, see G. Steer, “Bernhard von Clairvaux als theologische
Autorität für Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler und Heinrich Seuse”, in K. Elm (ed.),
Bernhard von Clairvaux, p. 233–​259.
133 Bernard of Clairvaux, De diligendo Deo, c. 15, §39, p. 152, l. 18 –​p. 153, l. 14.
134 Bernard of Clairvaux, De diligendo Deo, c. 10, §27, p. 142, l. 13-​15: Beatum dixerim et sanc-
tum, cui tale aliquid in hac mortali vita raro interdum, aut vel semel, et hoc ipsum raptim
atque unius vix momenti spatio, experiri donatum est.
135 Bernard of Clairvaux, De diligendo Deo, c. 15, §39, p. 153, l. 3-​6: Sane in hoc gradu diu statur,
et nescio si a quoquam hominum quartus in hac vita perfecte apprehenditur, ut se scilicet
homo diligat tantum propter Deum. Asserant hoc si qui experti sunt; mihi, fateor, impossibile
videtur.
306  Chapter 5

beatified human nature remains while it is imbued by grace with another glory
and another power, so that God may be “all in all”.136 Just as water takes on the
properties of wine, or iron the properties of fire, so human nature is enno-
bled by the divine nature. But the imagery used by Bernard (the banquet in
the house of God, drunkenness, and self-​forgetfulness) went further than this,
and struck a deeper resonance with more characteristic motifs of the doctrine
of contemplation in the Expositio, which have more in common with Proclus
and Dionysius than with the Clavis. The banquet, with the semantic register of
abundance and plenitude, was central to Berthold’s understanding of how dei-
fication occurs as an overflow from the top, so to speak, of the macrocosm and
microcosm. Such metaphors appeared at the culmination of his gloss on Psalm
42 at the conclusion of the Prologus, with the famished soul’s arrival to the
house of God (the vision of the divine ideas) and the heavenly banquet (usque
ad domum Dei, in voce exultationis et confessionis sonus epulantis). Similarly,
the correction of Proclus’ literalist reading of Plato’s myths of embodiment
with the Dionysian theology of the Clavis hinged on the idea that the soul’s
proper activity in the realm of being is a feast (epulatio), whose overabun-
dance redounds providentially to its body and all who follow after the soul.137
Bernard’s association of the banquet –​with “the house of the Lord” surely sig-
nifying for Berthold the primordial causes in the Word –​with the drunkenness
of the saints (quasi ebrii) and their self-​forgetfulness (obliti sui ipsorum) would
have aligned with Berthold’s own understanding of the unum animae as a non-​
reflexive ignorance of self that exceeds and grounds the self-​reflexivity of the
acquired intellect (123D). These themes are found in the immediate context of
129B with Dionysius (totos nos ipsos extra totos nos ipsos statutos /​ melius est
enim esse Dei et non nostri ipsorum) and with Proclus’ metaphor of the divine
frenzy of stillness (divina mania /​ quietens se ipsum).
The citation of Bernard also sheds new light on Berthold’s understanding of
the unum animae. In a work as vast and methodical as the Expositio, which so

136 The same description of unitive cognition by “the flower of the intellect” used at 129B was
cited at 114B, when Berthold maintained that Proclus was describing deification by grace
(per gratiam). See also Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 120C, p. 93, l. 97-​107.
137 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 206C, p. 218, l. 82-​83: et quae in ipsam respicientia replens
eo, quod ibi nectare; 209A, p. 240, l. 21-​31: Est et alius ordo, scilicet supernaturalis […] et per-
tinet ad statum vitae felicis, quo anima cum suo susceptaculo, quod primitus animat, est in
ente, ad quem statum pertinet non solum gloria animae in fruendo per contemplationem et
dilectionem fonte boni, ex cuius superplenitudine ipsa anima partialis utpote supercaelestis
existens illuminatur, immo superimpletur divini luminis claritate, verum etiam gloria ipsius
susceptaculi; 209E, p. 244, l. 158-​171: ubi degustat et copiosam alimentorum divinorum afflu-
entiam et inebriatur divini nectaris ubertate.
Epulatio entis 307

rarely departs from the parameters set by Proclus’ philosophical vocabulary, the
value of a passing reference or citation for understanding Berthold’s unspoken
assumptions can be inversely proportional to its quantitative presence. This
has been the case with the intellectus adeptus in 123D, which was crucial for
grasping Berthold’s modifications of Dietrich’s views about the roles of grace
and reflexivity in the vision of God, and with the Prologus’ astrologer who “gov-
erns the world with the gods”, which enabled us to see how Berthold adapted
Albert’s notions of the acquired and assimilative intellects and prophecy to a
Platonic register. If there is one thing that these phrases from Bernard intro-
duce that was altogether absent from the recurring citations of Proclus and
Dionysius on the unum animae, it was not the notion that the transformation
of human nature occurs by grace, in which there is no confusion of humanity
and divinity, but the idea that this occurs through a union of wills (unus cum
eo spiritus erit /​ humanam affectionem in Dei penitus transfundi voluntatem).
The echo of Ephesians 3:19 that immediately followed the citation of Bernard
in 129B (“thus a person will be filled unto all the fullness of God”) further rein-
forces the sense that affect, love, or will, is somehow operative at this highest
level of supra-​intellectual cognition. For this verse speaks of “comprehending”
Christ’s love (caritas), which exceeds every determinate mode of being (lati-
tudo, et longitudo, et sublimitas, et profundum) and every kind of knowledge,
precisely by being filled with that love.138 This imagery of plenitude evidently
agrees with the overall theory of deification in 129B. But by concluding on this
note, Berthold leaves the reader with the impression that the deification above
mind is in some sense a transformation of the human will into the divine will
or charity. The soul is so filled with God that it can love itself, a creature, for
God’s sake. It does not require much extrapolation to construe this as the soul’s
participation in the divine providence. If this is so, then it is through a kind
of intellect in love that the soul exercises providence with the presiding gods.
In an entry on Berthold of Moosburg in the Lexikon des Mittelalters, Willehad
Eckert clearly had this passage in mind when he concluded his brief summary
of the Expositio in three sentences: “[Berthold’s] interest in Proclus is above all
motivated by the thematic of the soul’s union with God which he, according

138 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 129B, p. 179, l. 197. Cf. Ephesians 3:17-​19: in caritate radi-
cati, et fundati, ut possitis comprehendere cum omnibus sanctis, quae sit latitudo, et longi-
tudo, et sublimitas, et profundum: scire etiam supereminentem scientiae caritatem Christi,
ut impleamini in omnem plenitudinem Dei (“being rooted and grounded in charity, you
might comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, length, height, and depth: to
know also the charity of Christ, which exceeds all knowledge, so that you may be filled
unto all the fullness of God”).
308  Chapter 5

to the model of Bernard of Clairvaux, sees as given through love”.139 This is a

remarkable judgement from the first scholar in the 20th century to devote sub-
stantial attention to Berthold of Moosburg. Eckert rightly marked the anthro-
pological inspiration for Berthold’s commentary, and hinted at centrality of
grace to Berthold’s conception of divine union (durch die Liebe gegeben sieht).
While I would agree with Loris Sturlese that a label like “affective mysti-
cism” for Berthold’s thought, which one might take Eckert’s summary to imply,
would be a very inadequate description of the Expositio (since, as Sturlese has
put it, for Berthold “the leap into mystical experience could not be a solution”
to the restrictions of the metaphysics of being), I would not go so far as to say
that Berthold therefore kept Bernard’s mysticism at a distance.140 It is true that
Berthold only cited Bernard in two, albeit important, passages, for the doctrines
of deification (129B) and contemplation (202A), and, moreover, likely relied on
a florilegium.141 It is also undeniable that for Berthold the Platonic alternative
to the Aristotelian metaphysics of being has to be made available, in principle,
to everyone who desires to follow the laborious path of reasoning according
to the oblique motion of the soul, until they arrive at the unhypothetical and
simple first principle that grounds all thought. So while it would be misleading
to suggest, though Eckert has not, that Berthold’s principal motive was to be
faithful to Bernard of Clairvaux –​it was to elucidate the soteriological wisdom
of the Platonists –​we should remain sensitive to the nuance this citation of
Bernard brought to the Platonic consensus of the Expositio. When Berthold
added that the unitive cognition of Proclus and Dionysius can be conceived as
a transformative union of wills, we should pay attention, for it is only in such
details that Berthold’s understanding of the unum animae can be allowed to
come into view.
It would be unsurprising if a commentator had understood providential,
non-​reflexive cognition through ignorance (Dionysius) or seeing the One

139 W. Eckert, “Berthold von Moosburg”, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 1 (München /​
Zürich: Artemis, 1980), col. 2034: “Das Proklos-​Interesse ist v. a. motiviert durch die
Thematik der Gotteseinigung der Seele, die er nach dem Modell des Bernhard v. Clairvaux
als durch die Liebe gegeben sieht”.
140 Sturlese, Homo divinus, p. 152: “Daß der Sprung ins mystische Erleben für Berthold keine
Lösung sein konnte, zeigt die Distanz, mit er die Mystik Bernhards in der Expositio betra-
chtet wird. Bernhard wird nur zweilmal erwähnt.”
141 The two definitions of contemplation taken from Bernard’s De consideratione in 202A
have the appearance of deriving on a florilegium, but in the printed editions of the Flores
Bernardi they are quite far apart: Flores sancti Bernardi, lib. v, c. 64, p. 68vb and lib. viii,
c. 90, p. 144rb; Flores operum D. Bernardi abbatis Clarevallensis, lib. v, c. 46, p. 318 and lib.
viii, c. 82, p. 622.
Epulatio entis 309

through not seeing (Proclus), in terms of love. This reading of the De mystica
theologia and De divinis nominibus 7.1 had been well established since the time
of Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141) and especially Thomas Gallus (d. 1226).142 Although
Berthold’s citation of Bernard gestured in this direction, it is equally important
to note that he nowhere made an outright identification of the activity of the
soul’s supra-​intellectual principle with amor. Some parallels between the two
notions, however, do appear elsewhere in the Expositio, where Berthold more
closely associated the banquet, divine plenitude, and love. We find this con-
nection stated most clearly in Proposition 177 (“Every intellect is a plenitude
[plenitudo] of species”, etc.).143 Explaining how an intellect is productive by
being “subject to the superessential will” (subicitur voluntati superessentiali),
Berthold linked its generative power to the presence of unity or goodness
within it:

Intellect is not only receptive of species but is even profusive of itself in

the specifying determination of all that is below. In this way, it makes the
goodness of silence to shine forth clearly in itself –​I mean the goodness
which is diffusive of itself, not by reasoning or choice, which here can
even be called the silence which is in the hidden places, that is, in the
holies of holies.144

The fecundity of an intellect is identical with the generative “goodness of

silence”. The vocabulary of this passage recalls what we read in Berthold’s
citations of Proclus and Dionysius on the angels as “revealers of the divine
silence”.145 According to the exegetical possibilities made available to Berthold
once he had integrated the methodology of natural and voluntary providence
into Platonism, these passages about the angels can be applied proportionately

142 See D. Lawell, “Ecstasy and the Intellectual Dionysianism of Thomas Aquinas and Albert
the Great”, in J. McEvoy, M. Dunne, J. Hynes (eds), Thomas Aquinas. Teacher and Scholar
(Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012), p. 155–​183; B.T. Coolman, Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy
in the Theology of Thomas Gallus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 1-​27.
143 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 177, p. 87, l. 1-​5: Omnis intellectus plenitudo ens speci-
erum, hic quidem universaliorum, hic autem particulariorum est contentivus specierum; et
superiores quidem intellectus universaliorem habent quanto particulariorem qui post ipsos,
inferiores autem particulariorem quanto totaliorem qui ante ipsos.
144 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 177C, p. 176, l. 116-​120: Non solum autem intellectus est sic
specierum receptivus, sed etiam est sui ipsius in omnium inferiorum specificationem profusi-
vus, et sic est faciens munde resplendere in se ipso bonitatem silentii, bonitatem, inquam, sui
ipsius diffusivam non ratiocinando nec praeeligendo, quod etiam potest hic vocari silentium,
quod est in abditis, scilicet secretis secretorum.
145 See Expositio, Prol. 6, 26H, and 32E.
310  Chapter 5

to the activity of the gods in the domain of natural providence.146 In light of

the distinction of hierarchy and antarkia in 10A, we can surmise that the dif-
ference in the proportion would be as follows: in a hierarchy ruled by will, “the
goodness of silence” generates only providential operations and graces, but
no substances, whereas in the order of natural providence, it is productive of
entia secundum speciem by “specifying determination”. Here in 177C, Berthold
connected that silence with the notions of overflow and plenitude. Although
the unum is not mentioned explicitly, the language of “the hidden places” and
“the holy of holies” was clearly meant to evoke the idea, found already in 162B,
that a unitas superexaltata is at the root of each separate intellect as an ens
secundum speciem. But what is most striking here was Berthold’s decision to
explain the word “silence”, which characterised Proclus’ “clearer” account of
deification through the unum animae cited at 129B, in terms of a spontaneous
and generative activity prior to reasoning or choice.
Berthold’s commentary on Proposition 175 (“Every intellect is primarily
participated by principles that are intellectual in both their substance and
operation”) had already explored the role of the will or love in the essential
activity of the intelligences.147 Here, Berthold began with an argument about
what belongs to the perfection of every intellectual nature in general.148 The
first text he offered was Dionysius, De divinis nominibus 4.13, on “the supera-
bundance of loving goodness” that draws God outside himself (extra se ipsum)
in ecstasy (secundum extasim). Berthold maintained that this applies propor-
tionately to every essential cause, stating that “love is an act of will, which
according to its proper notion denotes what belongs to the perfection of every
­intellectual nature”. In these intellectual substances, he explained, love does
not belong to the genus of an accident because it is not related to a potency
that follows the essence of the intellect or to an appetite triggered by some
object outside the intellect. This was an important clarification, for it might

146 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 156A, p. 169, l. 12-​21: sicut se habent superiores angeli in
ordine providentiae voluntariae, ita se habent proportionaliter dii in ordine providentiae
naturalis. ‘Si enim’, ut dicit Dionysius 4 cap. De divinis nominibus, ‘enunciat bonitatem div-
inam boniformis’ deiformis ‘angelus, illud existens secundum participationem’ secundo post
Deum, quod quidem est secundum eam ‘primo enuntiatum, imago Dei est angelus, mani-
festatio occulti luminis, speculum purum, clarissimum, incontaminatum, incoinquinatum,
immaculatum, suscipiens totam, si est conveniens dicere, pulchritudinem boniformis dei-
formitatis et munde resplendere faciens in se ipso, quemadmodum possibile est, bonitatem
silentii, quod est in abditis’, eodem modo proportionaliter est de diis.
147 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 175, p. 85, l. 1-​2: Omnis intellectus a secundum sub-
stantiam simul et operationem intellectualibus participatur primitus.
148 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 175A, p. 146, l. 13 –​p. 147, l. 58.
Epulatio entis 311

account for Berthold’s reluctance to identify the unum animae with amor, as
this could imply that it is a power somehow separate from the intellect. Rather,
love is “the inclination following the apprehended form”. This “will” desires its
own good and communion with what is apprehended. In the case of an intel-
lect essentially in act, this desired good is God, who is more inward to the intel-
lect than its innermost part. In its communion with the overflowing Good, the
intellect does not act by the necessity of compulsion or the necessity of nature,
but by the freedom of the will, which for Berthold is entirely consistent with
the immutability of necessity:149

Thus, every intellectual nature is elevated above its own nature, prop-
erly speaking, and attains to the likeness of the primarily Good. And
because the will of an intellect essentially in act is not a power, but its
very essence, it follows that the will does not belong to it such that the
will would move once it has been moved by an external desirable object.
Rather, it is said to be moved in goodness and love to cause all things that
come after itself, just as Dionysius says about the primarily Good, as we
saw above, that ‘divine love’ ‘does not leave it without seed’; so too, intel-
lectual love does not leave such an intellect barren. In this way, after the
example of the primarily Good, the goodness of the will of the intellect
itself cannot be without benevolence, nor can it be without the benefi-
cence through which it communicates its goodness in every way that it
can be communicated and participated by whatever things are capable of
participating in whatever way. For otherwise there would be jealousy in
it, since it would not diffuse or communicate the good that it can bestow
without any detriment to itself –​but it is known that such ‘jealousy is far
removed from’ everything divine.150

149 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 175A, p. 147, l. 33-​37: Et hoc enim duo consequuntur ipsam
voluntatem, unum in se, scilicet quod bonum proprium et eius communionem desiderat et
amat amore intellectuali, secundum, quod in talis boni redundantis communione non agit
necessitate coactionis, sed nec proprie necessitate naturae, sed voluntatis libertate, quae
bene stat cum immutabilitatis necessitate.
150 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 175A, p. 147, l. 38-​50: Et sic omnis intellectualis natura ele-
vatur supra naturam proprie dictam et accedit ad similitudinem prime boni, et quia voluntas
intellectus in actu per essentiam non est potentia, sed sua essentia, patet, quod non competit
ei, quod moveat mota ab appetibili extra, sed dicitur moveri in bonitate et amore ad cau-
sandum omnia, quae sunt post, sicut etiam de prime bono dicit Dionysius, ubi supra, quod
‘divinus amor’ ‘non dimisit ipsum sine germine’; ita etiam amor intellectualis non sinit intel-
lectum talem esse infecundum, et sic etiam ad instar prime boni bonitas voluntatis ipsius
intellectus non potest esse sine benevolentia, quae etiam non potest esse sine beneficentia,
per quam communicat bonitatem suam omni modo, quo communicari potest et participari a
312  Chapter 5

This is nothing if not a concise statement of Berthold’s rationale for elevat-

ing “good” over “being” as the primary name of God in Propositions 1 and 7,
and his understanding of “goodness” as the essential mode of any given thing,
according to which an essence is intrinsically related to an order outside itself.
The additional clarification here is that this communication of the good is not
only an ecstasy in God and the separate substances, but that it amounts to an
elevation “beyond nature” (elevatur super naturam) in all creatures below God.
Through the will, an intellect that is always essentially in act goes above itself
in love and beyond itself in fecundity. Similarities with the passage from 177C,
considered above, are undeniable: through willing or love, the separate intel-
lects “mirror” or “make present” the causality of the Good; this will is intrinsic
to the essentially active intellect (in abditis) and yet transcends it (in secretis
secretorum). Its activity is freedom itself, beyond reasoning or the necessity of
nature, and is equivalent to “the goodness of silence” and the activity of the
vestige of the One or Good in the intellect.
The echo of the Timaeus 29e in the final line of the text from 175A (invidia
longe ab omni divino noscitur relegata) was followed up explicitly in 175B,
where Berthold noted that Plato and Avicebron agreed when they stated that
separate intellects “institute those things that exist by willing”: Plato, when he
said that “the will of God is the most certain origin of things”, and Avicebron, in
more precise terms, when he wrote that “Plato considered that the forms come
to be in the intelligence from an intuition of the Will (ex intuitu voluntatis), and
they come to be in the universal soul from an intuition of the universal intel-
ligence”.151 Berthold would have interpreted this passage from Fons vitae v.17
with reference to the highest three cosmological genera of the Elementatio the-
ologica, but with the crucial difference that the domain of the Good has been
identified with the Will. We find Berthold citing the same text whenever he
wanted to explain how the separate intelligences receive the species of which
they are the plenitude.152 The overall picture here suggests that the one beyond
intellect, “the holy of holies” in the separate intellects wherein “the goodness
of silence” reigns and is revealed in their fecundity that mirrors the Good, is

quibuscumque et qualitercumque participare valentibus. Aliter enim esset in eo invidia, cum

non diffunderet et communicaret bonum, quod posset sine sui detrimento communicare,
quae tamen ‘invidia longe’ ‘ab’ omni divino noscitur ‘relegata’. Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 29e.
151 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 175B, p. 149, l. 109-​114. On Berthold’s use of Avicebron, see
A. Beccarisi, “Avicebron (Solomon Ibn Gabirol) and Berthold of Moosburg on Essential
Causality”, forthcoming.
152 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 145F, p. 86, l. 142 –​p. 87, l. 178; 170C, p. 97, l. 103-​105; 174B,
p. 139, l. 89-​111; 177C, p. 173, l. 15 and p. 175, l. 73-​75.
Epulatio entis 313

the “summit” of an intellectual substance that is immediately receptive to

the divine will. Far from an isolated capitulation to authority, then, Berthold’s
citation of Bernard was an acknowledgement of how profoundly the abbot’s
notion of deification –​a transformative plenitude arising from union with the
divine will –​agreed with what Berthold found in the Timaeus (the divine will,
free from jealousy, as the origin of all things), the Phaedrus (on the feast in
the heavenly circuit, reported by Proclus), Dionysius (the ecstatic love of the
Good), and Proclus (the silent “frenzy” and union with the divine providence).
For Berthold, the simplicity of an intellectual substance was primary, and
the notion of will or love could not compromise it.153 The idea that the vestig-
ium unius in all spiritual substances could be realised through a kind of love is,
however, consistent with our earlier analysis of the unum animae and acquired
intellect, where we concluded that the former should be seen as the higher
phase of the latter, the kernel of non-​reflexivity that grounds all intellectual
activity. To the extent he has identified love with this higher phase, Berthold
seems to have reached for the same doctrine expressed succinctly by Plotinus
(d. 270):

So, Intellect has one power to think insofar as it regards what is in itself,
and another insofar as it regards what transcends itself, with a kind of
apprehension and receptivity. It is in accordance with the second power
that it first sees, and then later while still seeing both comes to be intel-
lect and a unity. And the former is the contemplation of a wise intellect,
whereas the latter is intellect loving, when it becomes senseless, ‘drunk
with nectar’; then it falls in love, simplified into happiness by having its
fill. And it is better for it to be drunk with this drunkenness than to be
sober.154

For Plotinus as for Berthold, it would be inappropriate to speak of love as

something separate from intellect. The drunkenness of intellect is rather one
mode or “power” of its seeing that is always concomitant with the “sober” and
reflexive knowing that it grounds: “intellect always has its thinking and always
its non-​thinking”, as Plotinus went on to explain. So too for Berthold, not only
is the agent intellect of the soul always active, as Dietrich had argued, but the
unum animae must be even more active than it. Even if their operations belong
to the whole soul only accidentally, it is clear for Berthold that both are given to

153 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 175B, p. 150, l. 120-​129.

154 Plotinus, Enneades, vi.7[38].35. English translation: Plotinus, The Enneads, ed. L. Gerson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 842 (modified).
314  Chapter 5

the soul as a pair. But what Plotinus made explicit, and which Berthold, with-
out knowing the Enneads, assumed in his endorsement of Avicebron’s sum-
mary of Plato’s explanation of how forms come to be in the intellect (ex intuitu
voluntatis; subicitur voluntati superessentiali), was that the ecstatic activity of
intellect in love, its “reaching out” (ἐπιβολή), is simultaneously a “receptivity”
(παραδοχή).155 Berthold would have encountered the transliteration of the
first term in Moerbeke’s translation of the De providentia et fato (epibolis, id
est adiectionibus, simplicibus), but for him this passage in Proclus referred to
the higher phase of the possible intellect as it intuits and receives simple for-
mal intentions from the agent intellect.156 Be that as it may, we have now seen
that the same dynamic of higher and lower modalities is found at the next
and highest level, where the agent intellect, having been united to the possible
intellect in its lower phase, intuits, receives, and constitutes forms immedi-
ately from the divine will in its higher phase.
Far from undermining the philosophical coherence of the Expositio, the
notion of the unum animae as a kind of affective intellect can bring some
much-​needed clarity to Berthold’s occasionally faltering attempts to define the
proper activity of the unum apart from the intellectus agens.157 This struggle is
nowhere more apparent than in the commentary on Proposition 124 (“Every
god knows the divisible indivisibly, the temporal atemporally, the contingent
necessarily, the changeable unchangeably, and in general all things more emi-
nently than they are in their own order”).158 After explicitly referring back
to the degrees of cognition outlined in 123D, Berthold declared that it would
suffice to collapse the highest two modes (the fifth: intellectus adeptus and
unum animae; the sixth: the cognition of the separate intelligences) into one,
called “the intellective”.159 Following Dietrich of Freiberg, he maintained that
the intellective embraces the lower forms of sensitive and rational cognition

155 On the influence of this doctrine on Dionysius, see M. Harrington, “The Drunken Epibole
of Plotinus and its Reappearance in the Work of Dionysius the Areopagite”, in Dionysius
23(2005), p. 117–​138.
156 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 123D, p. 129, l. 144-​147.
157 Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 1, §5, p. 8, l. 4-​6: necesse et providen-
tialem cognitionem super intellectualem esse, et sic utique omnia providentiam cognoscere
uno quod sui ipsius, secundum quod et bonificat omnia […].
158 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 124, p. 62, l. 1-​4: Omnis deus impartibiliter quidem
partibilia cognoscit, intemporaliter autem temporalia, non necessaria autem necessarie
et transmutabilia intransmutabiliter, et universaliter omnia eminentius quam secundum
ipsorum ordinem.
159 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 124A, p. 139, l. 15 –​p. 140, 64. Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg,
Quaestio utrum in Deo sit aliqua vis cognitiva inferior intellectu, 1.1.5-​10, p. 294, l. 34 –​
p. 295, l. 67.
Epulatio entis 315

within itself in a simple mode (in ipso uniuntur modo simplici). This is because
the intellective knows an object in the simple essence (simplex essentia) that
is intrinsic to the intellect itself: unlike the sensitive power, which is occupied
with the particular, and reason, which abstracts the universal, the cognition
of the simple essence is neither universal nor particular (nec est universalis
nec particularis /​ nec est individua nec universalis proprie loquendo). That is,
the agent intellect contains the essence it knows and produces within itself,
and does so in a simpler and nobler way than the essence exists in its effect or
in the possible intellect, which apprehends it only through its divided formal
parts. Such a cognition beyond the universal and particular was precisely what
Proclus intended to convey with his notion of divine providence as what is prior
to intellect.160 Berthold explicitly acknowledged this in 124B, but was confined
to making a fortiori arguments about the unum animae as a cognitive princi-
ple based on Dietrich’s descriptions of the intellectus in actu per essentiam.161
Compared with these rather awkward and ambiguous passages, the clarity of
Berthold’s proposal that the separate intellects are “elevated above nature” by
their will that is identical with their essence (175A-​B) is more informative. Not
the cognition of the separate intellects but their fecundity is related to the ves-
tige of the One within them, in which they are always located (illocantur) and,
for that reason, always “imitate the gods”.162
Providence is found wherever there is an active vestige of the One.163 This
providence is operative in the human soul, even when a person is not aware
of it, through the unum animae, which is the principle of order and harmony
among the parts. As such, the unum animae (or, perhaps better here, the bonum
animae) is nothing else than the origin of divine love in the soul.164 In this

160 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 120, p. 60, l. 10-​11: Et enim ubi que pronoy (id est
intellectus provisoris) operatio nisi in supersubstantialibus? See also the parallel text to
Proposition 124 in Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 1, §5, and espe-
cially at p. 8, l. 8-​11: Non enim est le unum ipsius velut le individuum unum: hoc enim ulti-
mum entium et universali deterius, quo participans est quod est, illud autem et universali
melius […].
161 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 124B, p. 141, l. 78-​85; 124C, p. 141, l. 99-​100; 124D, p. 143,
l. 152-​154 and 170-​172. See also Expositio, 83B, p. 125, l. 88 –​p. 126, l. 108 on the higher “certi-
tude” of the superintellective.
162 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 134F, p. 217, l. 106-​132.
163 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 120H, p. 102, l. 382-​383: ubicumque invenitur unum secun-
dum actum, ibi et providere invenietur.
164 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 141F, p. 50, l. 194 –​p. 51, l. 197: immo etiam supremum
intra eandem essentiam sive substantiam respectu residuae portionis, sicut apparebit in
anima, habet providentiam coordinatam propter alternam habitudinem eorum ad invicem,
quam efficit divinus amor in eis. At Expositio, 141D, p. 48, l. 122 –​p. 49, l. 143, this is directly
related to the exstasis divini amoris.
316  Chapter 5

sense, the unum as the highest term within its own “order” must be placed prior
by nature to the agent intellect as the essential principle or auxiliary cause of
the soul for exactly the same reason Berthold placed the Good prior to being: it
provides the holistic field of possibility in which the intellect will operate. On
this question Berthold had invoked Avicebron’s notion of the divine will in the
Fons vitae as the power that creates and sustains the union of matter and form
by ordering the parts in relation to one another and to their source.165 By “intu-
iting” this will, an intellect becomes a plenitude. Like the caritas of Ephesians
3:19, this providential will is only “comprehended” when one is filled with it.166
In this way it surpasses the determinate knowledge of the intellect. When the
soul is “located” in its ground, even if only for a moment, it shares in the unitive
knowledge of the higher principles –​but there is also something more:

Their providence consists not in conjectural reasonings about the future,

as in the case in political affairs among us; but by taking their station in
the animative one, and through this being illumined all about with the
unifical light of the gods, they see things in time atemporally, and divided
things indivisibly, and those things in place without any place, and they
do not belong to themselves, but to those illuminating them.167

Passages like this indicate why Berthold would interpolate Proclus into the
description of the astronomer’s knowledge and activity in the Prologue, for this

165 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 13D, p. 215, l. 201-​218, citing Avicebron, Fons vitae, lib. v,
c. 31, p. 315, l. 5-​21 and lib. v, c. 36, p. 323, l. 17-​20: ‘Fac me scire, quod est ligans materiam et
formam, et quid est uniens et retinens earum unitionem, et quid est’, respondetur ex persona
magistri: ‘Haec est voluntas, quae est suprior illis, quia unitio formae et materiae non est nisi
ex impressione unitatis in illis. Et postquam inter unum et duo non est medium, scias per hoc,
quod inter unitatem et materiam et formam non est medium. Discipulus: Quod est signum,
quia unitas ordinatrix est materiae et formae? Magister: Signum ad hoc est omnimoda uni-
tio materiae et formae firma et stabilis et perpetua in earum creatione, id est principio uni-
tionis […].’ Et hoc est, quod dicit ibidem 36 cap.: ‘Verbum, scilicet voluntas, postquam creavit
materiam et formam, ligavit se cum illis, sicut est ligatio animae cum corpore, et effudit se in
illis et non discessit ab eis et penetravit a summo usque ad infimum’. Shortly before this, at
13C, p. 214, l. 169-​197, Berthold had cited passages from Dionysius on the Good as the cause
of friendship (amicitia) among the orders of beings.
166 See n. 138, above.
167 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 134F, p. 217, l. 127-​132, citing Proclus, De decem dubita-
tionibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §64, p. 106, l. 13-​18: et ipsorum providentia non in ration-
alibus coniecturativis futurorum, sicut politicorum, qui hic, sed in uno animeali stationem
sumens; et per hoc circumlustrare uniali lumine deorum vident akhronos, scilicet intempo-
raliter, quae in tempore, et indivisibiliter divisa, et quae in loco omnia sine loco, et sunt non
sui ipsarum, sed illustrantium.
Epulatio entis 317

is nothing else than a description of a prophetic knowledge whose certainty

exceeds any prediction confined to the realm of becoming.168 Everything in
this description could apply to the cognition of an intellectus in actu per essen-
tiam or, on the human level, the acquired intellect (i.e., the “intellective” of
124A) –​except for the final clause stating that the soul no longer belongs to
itself, as it would in reflexive, essential cognition, but to the higher causes. This
we may connect with the love that elevates intellect beyond its nature to imi-
tate the divine generative providence, by which it manifests “the goodness of
silence”, which has for its spontaneous result the perfect communication of
illumination to those that are below.169
Berthold’s synthesis of the Clavis physicae, Proclus, and Dietrich of Freiberg
in his exemplarist anthropology, and his views about its perpetual providential
activity to which the individual is related through the unum animae, bear strik-
ing similarities to Meister Eckhart’s speculations about the relation of the indi-
vidual to human nature and what this relation entails for the ethical life and
the exercise of charity. Eckhart’s understanding of the patristic adage that the
purpose or “fruit” of the Incarnation was “that man may become by the grace
of adoption what the Son is by nature” was closely related to his interpretation
of 2 Corinthians 3:18: the adopted sons of God will be changed into the “same”
image (in eandem imaginem transformamur) as the only-​begotten Son.170
Shortly after the passage discussed earlier, where Eckhart denied that beati-
tude would consist primarily in a reflexive act of the intellect, he stressed that
the Word is received only by those who are “empty of every form impressed or
begotten by creatures”.171 Eckhart applied this principle again when comment-
ing on the wedding at Cana and “the marriage” of human and divine natures,
and went further to unfold the ethical demand this natural philosophical
principle places on the individual.172 Since the Word assumed human nature,
not a human person –​and since human nature is univocally common to all,
including Christ, and is more interior to every person than they are to them-
selves –​it follows that whoever “wishes to become son of God […] must love

168 See 1.2, n. 66, above.

169 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 153F, p. 155, l. 231-​242.
170 Meister Eckhart, Expositio sancti evangelii secundum Iohannem, §106 (John 1:12-​13), p. 90,
l. 11 –​p. 91, l. 2. Cf. 2 Corinthians 3:18: Nos vero omnes, revelata facie gloriam Domini specu-
lantes, in eamdem imaginem transformamur a claritate in claritatem, tamquam a Domini
Spiritu.
171 Meister Eckhart, Expositio sancti evangelii secundum Iohannem, §110 (John 1:12-​13), p. 94,
l. 13-​14.
172 Meister Eckhart, Expositio sancti evangelii secundum Iohannem, §289-​291 (John 2:1), p. 241,
l. 5 –​p. 244, l.4.
318  Chapter 5

their neighbour as himself” and must deny whatever is personal and one’s own
(abnegare personale, abnegare proprium). This, Eckhart stated, is charity: to
love one God in all things and all things in him (diligit siquidem unum deum in
omnibus et omnia in ipso).
He advanced this metaphysical and ethical teaching even more strongly in
his sermons. Here are two especially clear examples:

The masters say that human nature has nothing to do with time, that it
is entirely untouchable and much more intimate and closer to man than
man to himself. And, therefore, God took on Himself human nature and
united it with His persons. There, human nature became God, because He
took the naked human nature itself on and not a man himself. Therefore,
if you wish to be the same Christ and be God, so abandon everything
that the eternal Word did not assume. The eternal Word did not take on
Himself a human being, hence, abandon what is a human being in you
and what you are, and take yourself according to naked human nature,
then you are the same with the eternal Word which human nature is with
Him. As there is no difference between your human nature and His own,
it is one, because what it is in Christ, this it is in you.173

The eternal Word did not take this person or that person to itself, but
it took a free and undivided human nature to itself, which was naked
without image; because the simple form of humanity is without image.
And, therefore, as in this assumption human nature was assumed by the
eternal Word as a simple one without image, the image of the Father,
who is the eternal Son, became the image of human nature. Because as
sure as God became man, so true it is that man has become God. And
so human nature has been overformed by having become the image of
God, who is the image of the Father. And so, if you shall be one Son, you
need to detach yourself and leave everything that makes a distinction
in you. Because man is an accident of nature; and, therefore, leave aside
all that is an accident in you, and take yourself according to the free and
undivided human nature. And since the same nature, according to which

173 Meister Eckhart, Predigt 24 (First Sunday in Advent), ed. J. Quint, Die deutschen Werke, vol.
1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1958-​1986), p. 420, l. 2-​11. English translation: Meister Eckhart,
The German Works. 64 Homilies for the Liturgical Year. 1. De tempore, eds L. Sturlese,
M. Vinzent (Leuven: Peeters, 2019), p. 89. See also the Latin sermon on the same per-
icope: Meister Eckhart, Sermo lii (First Sunday in Advent), §523, p. 437, l. 7 –​p. 438, l. 5.
Cf. Meister Eckhart, Predigt 25 (Tuesday after Fourth Sunday in Lent), ed. J. Quint, Die
deutschen Werke, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971-​1988), p. 13, l. 14 –​p. 16, l. 3.
Epulatio entis 319

you will take yourself, has become the Son of the eternal Father by the
assumption of the eternal Word, so you will become with Christ the Son
of the eternal Father, because you take yourself according to the same
nature that there has become God.174

Eckhart would later defend these ideas in the proceedings of his trial in
Cologne, appealing to the same arguments we find in his commentary on
John about the purpose of the Incarnation, the distinction between the only-​
begotten Son by nature and the sons by adoption through grace, and its impli-
cations for the correct understanding of charity as leaving off “this” or “that”.175
While these portions from the proceedings did not ultimately factor into the
papal bull In agro dominico (1329), two articles deriving from passages closely
related to them were censured, which taken on their own might imply a kind
of naturalistic autotheism (article 11: whatever the only-​begotten Son has in his
human nature, “he gave all this to me”) or the loss of any distinction between
the only-​begotten Son and the sons of God by adoption (article 12: whatever
the Scriptures say of Christ, all of this is true of every divine person).176
While the Incarnation was of course methodologically excluded from
Berthold’s consideration of the Elementatio theologica, it is nevertheless quite
conceivable that his view of the relation of an individual within the order of vol-
untary providence (Eckhart: “leave aside all that is accidental in you”) to human
nature as an ens secundum speciem (Eckhart: “human nature has nothing to do
with time”) which exercises providence with the gods (Eckhart: “assumed by
the eternal Word”) through the unum animae (Eckhart: “it is entirely untouch-
able and much more intimate and closer to man than man to himself”), would
have direct consequences for any treatment of the subject. Berthold’s theory
of the double descent of the soul, preserved a subtle but clear distinction
between the individual and human nature. The theory of deification he out-
lined in Proposition 129 affirmed that the individual “lives by the divine life”
through the unum animae, but also made it explicit that this transformation

174 Meister Eckhart, Predigt 46 (Eve of the Ascension), ed. J. Quint, p. 379, l. 6 –​p. 382, l. 3.
English translation: Meister Eckhart, The German Works. De tempore, p. 591–​593.
175 Meister Eckhart, Magistri Echardi Responsio ad articulos sibi impositos II, ed. L. Sturlese,
Acta Echardiana, Die lateinischen Werke, vol. 5 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006), §65-​72,
p. 333, l. 8 –​p. 336, l. 14.
176 In agro dominico, ed. L. Sturlese, Acta Echardiana, p. 598, l. 47-​51: Undecimus artic-
ulus: Quicquid deus pater dedit filio suo unigenito in humana natura, hoc totum dedit
michi. Hic nichil excipio, nec unionem nec sanctitatem. Sed totum dedit michi sicut sibi.
Duodecimus articulus: Quicquid dicit sacra scriptura de Christo, hoc etiam totum verificatur
de omni bono et divino homine.
320  Chapter 5

was not the annihilation of individuality (the Clavis physicae) or the individual
will (Bernard of Clairvaux). It is rather the harmonisation of the individual to
their own nature and, through that nature, to the divine. The union, as the cita-
tion of Bernard especially affirmed, is to be “one in spirit” with God through
the union of wills. Nevertheless, Berthold’s attempt to offer a metaphysics of
deification through a theory of human nature clearly moved along the trail
that Eckhart had opened.
Berthold was not alone among his contemporaries in developing these
Eckhartian themes. In his defence of Eckhart’s orthodoxy in the Little Book of
Truth (c. 1330), Henry Suso took great care to nuance the master’s thought on
these questions of the Incarnation, human nature, and individuality or per-
sonhood, with arguments from the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas.177
In one of the few sermons preserved from Berthold’s confrere in Bavaria, Henry
of Ekkewint, we find the Dominican preaching about the spark or tiny flame in
the soul (der funke oder der glanster der sêle). This spark has a perpetual appre-
hension of the divine reasons and guides a person with ethical council. Its con-
stant advice is that “you should let go of all man, so that you may be free of
him, as if all of human nature was enclosed within you and your nature was the
essence of all people, and as if you could see yourself in every man and every
man in you”.178 Berthold could be seen as combining the Eckhartian specula-
tion about the ontological status of human nature with the approach we find
in Henry of Ekkewint that focuses on a principle in the soul that mediates the
relation of an individual to human nature, and guides a person in charity.
Of all Berthold’s contemporaries, however, John Tauler came the closest to
what we find in the Expositio. In a sermon preached on the Nativity of John the
Baptist, Tauler surveyed the various ways the faculties and powers in the soul
“bear witness to the light” (John 1:7-​8).179 The lower faculties, the concupiscible
and irascible, give one kind of testimony, by turning away from appetites and
through perseverance. The higher powers of reason, will, and love, bear wit-
ness by apprehending the mysteries of God from afar, as John the Baptist had
insofar as he was a prophet. But even this apprehension is separated from the
light by a veil; the higher powers cannot attain to the ground (grunt). Here –​
which, Tauler stressed, is in fact no “here” at all, because it is prior to “this” or
“that” –​no image, determinacy, or created light can enter. Perhaps because the
language of “ground” could imply a kind of stasis or sterility, Tauler switched

177 See F. Retucci, “On a Dangerous Trail. Henry Suso and the Condemnations of Meister
Eckhart”, in J. Hackett (ed.), A Companion to Meister Eckhart, p. 587–​605, at p. 595–​599.
178 See Introduction, section 1, n. 29, above.
179 John Tauler, Predigt 61 (Nativity of John the Baptist), p. 329, l. 33 –​p. 332, l. 19.
Epulatio entis 321

to the semantic register of the abyss (abgrúnt) and to imagery of the churning
ebb and flow of the sea. Here we may recall for Berthold how the unum animae
is both silence and frenzy and is a more active principle than anything encoun-
tered in the world of experience. When the soul is engulfed in this abyss,
Tauler continued, it finds God’s eternal dwelling-​place, which God has never
left. Here, eternity is experienced and tasted, where there is no past and no
future. Tauler’s preference for the term “abyss” also allowed him to establish a
dynamic relation of difference and identity between the soul and God through
the image of one abyss calling out to another (Psalm 41:8: abyssus abyssum
invocat) –​just as, for Berthold, the Good summons all of its vestiges back to
itself.180 Whoever becomes aware (war neme) of this calling finds that a light
projects out from the ground and directs all the faculties of the soul toward
their principle and origin: this is the voice, like John the Baptist, calling the
soul out into the desert. When the soul enters this wilderness, which is beyond
all thought, speculation, space, and time, it “is simple and without distinction”.
The “experience” of God here is, one might say, the experience of remaining,
where a person finds human nature as it always was:

And to the one who truly enters here, it seems as though he has been
here eternally and as if he were one with him, even though this endures
for only a blink of an eye, and these blinks feel and appear as though they
last an eternity. And this radiates a light to the outside, and testifies that
the human was eternally in God in his uncreatedness. When he was in
him, then the human was God in God.181

Just as with Berthold, the soul’s entry into its ground coincides with an encoun-
ter with the exemplar of human nature in God, outside of the realm of becom-
ing and change. And so, Tauler concluded, unless a person returns to that state
of purity that was theirs when they passed from their uncreated to their cre-
ated state, they will never return to God.182 This not only requires forsaking

180 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 7B, p. 146, l. 270-​282.

181 John Tauler, Predigt 61 (Nativity of John the Baptist), p. 331, l. 26-​31: Es ist einvaltig und
sunder underscheit, und wer her in geratet recht, dem ist als er alhie eweklich gewesen si und
als er ein mit dem selben si, noch denne das es nút enist denne ougenblike, und die selben
blicke die vindent sich und zoeigent sich ein ewigkeit; dis lúchtet es us und git ein gezúg das
das der mensche was eweklichen in Gotte in siner ungeschaffenheit. Do er in im was, do was
der mensche Got in Gotte.
182 Cf. Meister Eckhart, Predigt 52 (Martyr), ed. J. Quint, Die deutschen Werke, vol. 2, p. 491, l. 9 –​
p. 494, l. 3. English translation: Meister Eckhart, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises, and Defense, p. 200.
322  Chapter 5

attachment and possessiveness. The spirit must also be transformed with the
light of grace and must make itself habitually acquainted with its own inward-
ness. Given this background, it is all the more remarkable that Tauler imme-
diately introduced Proclus alongside Plato and other unnamed pagans who
“were familiar with this ground”.183 Proclus had also featured at the conclusion
of Tauler’s sermon on Holy Cross Day after a similar exemplarist account of
the soul’s ground.184 As in his sermon for Trinity Sunday, Tauler was not inter-
ested in disabusing his audience of the impression that Proclus and Plato were
therefore familiar with the state of simplicity he has just described.185 He was
more concerned with making the point that these pagans were more familiar
with the hidden dignity of human nature, made known to them through a kind
of grace of which they were fully aware, than the Christians of his own day. If
we want to imagine the ethical implications and cultural context of Berthold’s
investigation of the invisible things of God in the order of natural providence,
and his conclusions about the activity of the unum animae as a kind of provi-
dential love that never deviates from its non-​reflexive directedness toward its
source, we need look no further.186
183 On this passage, see Part 1, n. 6 and 3.2, n. 82, above.
184 John Tauler, Predigt 65 (Holy Cross), ed. F. Vetter, p. 358, l. 10-​16: In der verborgenheit wirt
der geschaffen geist wider getragen in sin ungeschaffenheit, do er eweklichen gewesen ist e er
geschaffen wúrde, und bekent sich Got in Gotte und doch an im selber creatur und geschaf-
fen. Aber in Gotte sint alle ding Got, do sich diser grunt inne vindet. ‘Als der mensche her in
kumt’, spricht Proculus, ‘was denne uf den usseren menschen gevallen mag: armuete, liden
oder gebreste, das si weler kúnne es si, des enachtet der mensche nút’. (“In this hiddenness,
the created spirit is drawn back into its uncreatedness, where it is existing eternally before
it was created, and it knows itself God in God, but acknowledges itself to be a creature
and created. But in God all things are God, where this ground finds them within. ‘When
a person enters here,’ says Proclus, ‘whatever then happens to the outer person –​poverty,
suffering, failure, whatever these kind these might be –​the person does not notice it’ ”.).
185 See 3.2, n. 81, above.
186 See also John Tauler on “essential prayer”, in Predigt 24 (Sunday after the Ascension), ed.
F. Vetter, p. 101, l. 22 –​p. 102, l. 29, and on the mystical body, in Predigt 39 (Fifth Sunday
after Trinity), p. 158, l. 1 –​p. 159, l. 22.
Conclusion

1 Legacy

The earliest traces of the influence of the Expositio appear in the sermons of
John Tauler, whose astonishing endorsements of Proclus in his preaching have
been our most important guide and witness to the cultural and anthropolog-
ical implications of Berthold’s valorisation of the pagan philosopher within
his Christian milieu. Tauler not only cited some of the most important pas-
sages from the Tria opuscula used by Berthold to establish the concord of
Proclus and Dionysius in their doctrines of the one of the soul: he compared
them with contemporary notions of the imago Dei (Thomas Aquinas, Albert
the Great, Meister Eckhart) and, sometimes only ambiguously separated
them from the best of these positions (Dietrich of Freiberg). He also shared
Berthold’s judgement about the pagan knowledge of the Trinity, which was
the basis for Berthold’s synthesis of Dietrich’s metaphysics with the theory of
primordial causes from the Clavis physicae. Most importantly, Tauler’s judge-
ments about Proclus in Predigt 60d (Trinity Sunday) and Predigt 61 (Nativity of
John the Baptist) explicitly drew the conclusion that these achievements of
a pagan philosopher, who had such “familiarity” with the ground of the soul
(Berthold would say, who had perfected “the habit of our divinising supersa-
pientia”) ought to be received as a reminder, and even as a cause of shame, for
Christians. This is the strongest direct witness to the argument in this study that
Berthold’s Expositio should be understood as a project of reform that looked to
antiquity for a divine science of God, the universe, and human nature that had
been forgotten or even deliberately rejected by his contemporaries.1 Tauler’s
use of Proclus in Predigt 61 and Predigt 65 (Holy Cross) also coincided with his
elaboration of an exemplarist anthropology. In this view, an individual is medi-
ated to human nature in the divine mind through the ground, abyss, or the
one of the soul. Such an anthropology was precisely what Berthold articulated
in his commentary on Proposition 211. This is not to say that Tauler relied on
Berthold for such a view of human nature –​Meister Eckhart would be a more
likely source –​but that he would think of Proclus in such a context suggests

1 Cf. L. Sturlese, Philosophie im Mittelalter. Von Boethius bis Cusanus (München: Beck, 2013),
p. 102: “Berthold projizierte das Reformprojekt Eckharts züruck in ein mythisches ‘goldenes
Zeitalter’ der antiken Philosophie.”

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_010

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
324 Conclusion

that even on this matter he was familiar with his confrere’s interpretation of
the Tria opuscula.2
After this case of a decisive but implicit influence, there are three instances
of Berthold’s explicit influence in the 14th and 15th centuries: there are explicit
references to the Expositio from an anonymous author from 14th-​century
Regensburg, in the Mariological works of the Viennese Dominican theologian,
Franz of Retz (c. 1343 –​1427), and in the Apologia doctae ignorantiae (Defense
of Learned Ignorance) by Nicholas of Cusa (1401 –​1464).3
The earliest explicit mention of the Expositio is found in an anonymous
commentary on the Sentences written by a Dominican author in Regensburg in
the mid-​late 14th century.4 The citation of Berthold appears in the commentary

2 These speculations were not confined to the German Dominicans. One may also mention a
contemporary development in Jan van Ruusbroec, whose doctrine of the soul’s three “uni-
ties” and exemplarist anthropology was first outlined in his Spiritual Espousals (Die geeste-
like brulocht), completed in Brussels around 1335-​1343. See Jan van Ruusbroec, Die geestelike
Brulocht, ed. J. Alaerts (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988), b41-​b68, p. 286–​289; b1625-​1669, p. 470–​475;
and c125-​141, p. 586–​589. Incidentally, Tauler may have visited Ruusbroec around 1346, after
Ruusbroec established the community of Groenendaal, and transmitted some of his works
up the Rhine. A German translation of the Espousals was in circulation around 1350. See
G. Warnar, Ruusbroec. Literature and Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century, trans. D. Webb
(Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 130–​134.
3 There was possibly a tacit influence of Berthold on the incomplete commentary on the
Elementatio theologica transmitted anonymously but now attributed to John Krosbein, who
would have written the text before 1400. See F. Retucci, “Sententia Procli alti philosophi.
Notes on an Anonymous Commentary on Proclus’ Elementatio theologica”, in D. Calma (ed.),
Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages, II. New Commentaries on Liber de causis and Elementatio
theologica (ca. 1350-​1500) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), p. 99–​180, at p. 110–​113. On John Krosbein,
see D. Calma, “A Medieval Companion to Aristotle. John Krosbein’s Paraphrase on Liber de
causis”, in D. Calma (ed.), Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages, II, p. 11–​98, at p. 20. Commenting
on Proposition 115, Krosbein identified the gods as primordial causes (Retucci, “Sententia
Procli”, p. 156, l. 26-​30): Quod vero velit in hoc loco dicere deos ordinum singulorum, me fateor
ignorare, nisi forte velit hos esse primordiales causas et ydeas ordinum singulorum, que in sapi-
entia Dei supersubstantialiter et supervitaliter et superintellectualiter sunt unite, per quas pro-
ducuntur singula et formantur. Given the presence of this syntagm (primordialis causa) in
the Latin text of the Elementatio and its use among more mainstream authors influenced by
Augustine and Peter Lombard (see 4.3, n. 134-​136, above), its passing appearance in this com-
mentary on its own cannot, however, be taken as decisive evidence of Berthold’s influence.
4 ms München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 26897. The citation of Berthold was noted
first by F. Pelster, “Die Ehrentitel der scholastischen Lehrer des Mittelalters. Ein Beitrag und
eine Ergänzung”, in Theologische Quartalschrift 103(1922), p. 41–​42. The two citations of the
De causa Dei by Thomas Bradwardine (the doctor profundus), identified by Pelster at f. 33vb
and f. 43ra, establish a terminus post quem of 1344. Boese, Wilhelm von Moerbeke, p. 75, has
proposed that the commentator encountered Berthold’s work in Cologne while he was a
student there.
Conclusion 325

on distinction 1 of book ii of the Sentences, in response to the following ques-

tion: “whether the primarily first and unique principle, just as it can create all
things from nothing and conserve them, can annihilate anything that has been
created”.5 The commentator subdivides the question into several presupposi-
tions that must first be addressed, which concern the unicity of the first prin-
ciple and its status as the cause of all things. After setting out these problems,
with various arguments for and against each thesis, the author then advances
three principal arguments. Only the first is relevant here, which responds to
the question, “Whether, of the whole cause of being, it is possible that there is
a first effect prior to the first principle” (Numquid totius causae entis et possibilis
sit ante unum principium primum effectum).6 Here, the anonymous elaborated
an original interpretation of the distinction between prime primum and prima
primum, which, as he indicated, was inspired by (illud notabile similiter) “the
venerable father Berthold of Moosburg”. It is intriguing that this accurate refer-
ence, which was certainly to Expositio 8D, did not employ the alphanumerical
system that we find in the extant manuscripts of the commentary, but referred
instead to “the second principal article in theorem 8”. This could imply that
the Expositio, or portions of it, circulated before the index and the system of
alphabetical subdivisions were added.7
The passage in question from 8D outlined one of the characteristic termi-
nological distinctions in the Expositio, where Berthold explained for the first
time what he understood by the difference between two adverbs, prime and

5 ms München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 26897, f. 42rb: Utrum sicut principium prime
primum et unicum potest omnia de nichilo creare, possit sic aliquod creatum anichilare.
6 ms München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 26897, f. 42va: Notandum est quod differentia
est inter prima primum et prime primum. Nam primum vel prima primum est aliquod primum
in ordine aliorum, quod primum alia omnia eiusdem ordinis participant quodammodo, ut pri-
mus homo participatur quodammodo ab omnibus hominibus participatione naturae humanae.
Prime autem primum significat absolutissimum cuiuslibet ordinis rerum, cuius dicitur primum,
non quod participetur essentialiter ab aliis cuiuscumque ordinis. Ex quo [corpore add. sed exp.]
sequitur secunda differentia, quod primum cuiuslibet ordinis invenitur in multis eiusdem ordi-
nis, quoniam unumquodque respectu posterioris se dicit primum. Ex quo sequitur [sequitur in
marg.] secundus quod primum competit multis, quia competit tot sicut possunt esse individua
eiusdem ordinis, videlicet competit tot quot possunt esse ordines, non solum partiales sed etiam
universales. Prime autem primum non competit alicui, nisi quod omnibus quorumcumque ordi-
num est superpositum et nulli citra se formaliter aut essentialiter aut quomodolibet absoluto
immixtum aut commixtum, sed ab omnibus per universalem participationem penitus absolu-
tum et separatum. Et sic utor illo termino prime primum in titulo quaestionis. Et illud notabile
similiter est venerabilis patris Bertholdi de Mospurch ordinis nostri [ordinis nostri in marg.] in
suo commento super propositiones seu elementationes Procli, theoremate 8, articulo secundo
principali.
7 See Introduction, section 3, n. 177–179, above.
326 Conclusion

primo, found in Moerbeke’s translation.8 According to Berthold, prime mod-

ifies its term to indicate what is “the most absolute and most eminent of an
intention” (e.g., prime intellectus or intellectus secundum causam), while primo
indicates what is “perfect in this intention” and thus has that intention per
essentiam. What exists prime stands outside its order, while all things in the
order participate it analogically. What exists primo (for example, a separate
intelligence), although it is highest within a given order, is nevertheless limited
because participates the prime intellectus and, thus, has a determinate place
within the order.
The anonymous commentator developed from this passage his own termi-
nology of prime primum and prima primum and used it for a slightly differ-
ent purpose. For both Dominicans, the prime primum denoted a term that is
absolute and separate from the order it causes and is not “essentially” or “for-
mally” dependent on anything beneath it. Berthold’s own position was even
stronger than this, in that he argued that the gods as formal causes are also
not dependent on anything higher insofar as they are superabundant causes
that originate their characteristic intentions.9 For the anonymous author,
prima primum could apply to any member of an order, provided there are
terms beneath it, whereas primo for Berthold denoted only the highest mem-
ber within an order. Hence, the anonymous’ prima had a wider scope than
Berthold’s primo.
This reference suggests that the anonymous commentator knew the
Expositio quite well, for he has chosen a brief but important technical passage
where Berthold defined the central logical principle of essential order that he
found in Proposition 65 of the Elementatio, the De decem dubitationibus circa
providentiam 10.63, and Dionysius’ Epistula ix.2, 1108D. Berthold had found this
principle used extensively by Dietrich of Freiberg, who looked to Proposition
140 to reason about the order of separate substances according to the laws of
symmetry and proportion. With Proposition 8, Berthold had brought further
terminological clarity to that logical pattern. Without this principle, Berthold’s
harmonisation of Proclus with Dionysius through the Clavis, and his complex
elaboration of Dietrich’s ontology, in which the primordial causes are under-
stood as goodnesses or unities according to essence (bonitates per essentiam),
would have lacked a good deal of precision.
The next explicit reference to the Expositio comes from another Dominican,
Franz of Retz, in his Comestorium beatae Mariae virginis (Digest on the Blessed

8 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 8D, p. 162, l. 178-​209.

9 See especially his interpretation of the transliteration amethectum in 4.4, n. 198-​200.
Conclusion 327

Virgin Mary).10 In his discussion of the Virgin’s purity and her deification,
Franz used the citation from Bernard of Clairvaux that Berthold reports (alle-
gat) in Proposition 129B.11 Although this is the only known explicit citation of
the Expositio in Franz’s writings that has been mentioned by scholars, it is clear
that the Viennese master’s familiarity with Berthold’s commentary went well
beyond this. His preface to the citation of Bernard (homo tota mente vino deit-
atis adiunctus) echoed a passage from the Clavis physicae (sic humana natura
Deo adiuncta), which was cited earlier in the Comestorium with the attribu-
tion to Theodorus. In this earlier passage, Franz in fact combined two cita-
tions of the Clavis on deification that he would have found in Berthold, one
from 129B (the lower is absorbed into the higher but retains its nature, giving
the examples of air filled with sunlight and red-​hot iron) and then another
from 120C (just as air is filled with sunlight, human nature when joined to God
appears filled with divinity, yet retains its own nature).12 Earlier still in the
Comestorium, while ruminating on the Virgin’s proximity to the fount of wis-
dom (fons sapientiae) above all the angelic hierarchies, Franz explicitly cited
another passage from the Clavis of “Theodorus”, on the highest fount flow-
ing through the primordial causes and thence into creatures, until its waters

10 On Franz of Retz, whose works remain unedited, see G. Häfele, Franz von Retz. Ein Beitrag
zur Gelehrtengeschichte des Dominikanerordens und der Wiener Universität am Ausgange
des Mittelalters (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1918); Kaeppeli, Scriptores, vol. 1, p. 397–​398; I. Frank,
“Retz (François de)”, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité, vol. 13 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1988),
p. 434–​436. The centre of Franz’s intellectual activity was the newly established Faculty
of Theology in the University of Vienna. The citation of Berthold was identified in Häfele,
Franz von Retz, p. 192, and was noted by M.R. Pagnoni-​Sturlese and L. Sturlese in the
“Prolegomena” to the critical edition of Propositions 1-​13 of the Expositio, p. xl, n. 5.
11 ms Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-​Chorherrenstift, Cod. 43, f. 107ra-​b: Tertio principaliter est
purissima et deificata, quia immutata vino abyssalis dulcoris. Nam sicut modicum aquae
multo vino immissum totaliter convertitur in vinum, sic homo tota mente vino deitatis
adiunctus deificatur et in Deum deiformiter transmutatur. Unde Bernardus, sicut allegat
Pertholdus de Mosburg super Proclum […]. What follows is a verbatim citation of Bernard
from Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 129B, p. 179, l. 188-​196. See 5.3, n. 131, above.
12 ms Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-​ Chorherrenstift, Cod. 43, f. 104vb. Cf. Berthold of
Moosburg, Expositio, 129B, p. 177, l. 142 –​p. 178, l. 149, and 120C, p. 93, l. 101-​107. Bernard was
one of the authorities, alongside the Scriptures, Albert the Great, and Richard of St. Victor,
whom Franz cited most in the Comestorium, and it seems he knew the De diligendo Deo
independently from Berthold (see the citations at f. 293rb-​va and 294va). His echo of the
Clavis when introducing the citation of Bernard suggests that he began with Theodorus
and then recognised the connection Berthold had drawn between the two passages in
terms of their argument and imagery; perhaps he chose to cite Berthold explicitly at this
stage because he recognised that the citation combined disparate passages from the De
diligendo Deo.
328 Conclusion

return through the most hidden recesses of nature. Franz then followed this
an explicit citation of Proclus’ De providentia et fato, on the first cause as the
fount of all goods. Both citations clearly derive from 18B of the Expositio, where
Berthold discussed the different kinds of “fontal principles”.13 In total, then, we
find seven explicit citations of the Clavis physicae in the Comestorium beatae
Mariae virginis that were mediated by Berthold.14
Elsewhere in the same text, while discussing how the Virgin’s knowledge of
God increased from her contemplation of nature, Franz borrowed extensively
from the beginning of Berthold’s Prologus, but rearranged the authorities he
found there into the philosophers (Al-​Ghazali, Maimonides) and theologians
(Paul, Ambrose [=Ambrosiaster], the Wisdom of Solomon 13:1-​4, Hugh of St.
Victor, Gundissalinus, John of Damascus).15 Later in the Comestorium, while
discussing the necessary service imagination offers to reason in the contem-
plative ascent to God, Franz seems to have relied on these opening pages of
the Prologus again for the citation of Ambrose (=Ambrosiaster) and also for
the Wisdom of Solomon 13:1-​4.16
Evidently Franz had direct access to a copy of the Expositio and was famil-
iar with its contents, using it at least eleven times in the Comestorium bea-
tae Mariae virginis alone (seven times for the Clavis, twice for the authorities
from Prologus 1, once for Proclus, once for Bernard).17 Additionally, there is at

13 ms Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-​Chorherrenstift, Cod. 43, f. 78rb-​78va. Cf. Berthold of

Moosburg, Expositio, 18B, p. 47, l. 109 –​p. 48, l. 156.
14 In addition to the three mentioned in the previous notes, we find the same passage from
120C cited by Franz at f. 69rb (where it is followed by the 129B passage at f. 69vb) and later,
in an abbreviated form, at f. 129rb. The passage from 129B was also cited in an abbreviated
form at f. 164va-​b.
15 ms Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-​Chorherrenstift, Cod. 43, f. 110vb-​111ra. Cf. Berthold of
Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 1, p. 5, l. 5 –​p. 6, l. 47. Perhaps this rearrangement was influ-
enced by the presence of the two tabulae auctorum (Philosophi famosi, Doctores ecclesiae)
in the Expositio. Interestingly, Franz omitted the Bertholdian phrase divinalis sapientia
from his description of Paul as “the greatest theologian” as well as Berthold’s citations of
Dionysius. This was not out of any aversion to Dionysius’ authority, whom Franz freely
cited elsewhere, but a hesitation about Berthold’s Dionysian argument that God is invisi-
ble even to “the eye of the mind” (oculus mentalis).
16 ms Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-​Chorherrenstift, Cod. 43, f. 202vb-​203ra.
17 The link between Cologne and Vienna was likely Jodocus of Gorizia, who identified him-
self as a son of the Viennese convent in his explicit to the copy of Dietrich of Freiberg’s
De origine rerum praedicamentalium that he made in Cologne in 1363. Jodocus brought it,
along with four of the autographs of Albert the Great’s works that bear Berthold’s ex libris
and a nearly complete copy of Proclus’ De decem dubitationibus he made from Berthold’s
library, from Cologne either to Vienna or to Krems. These works were eventually bound
together and given as a gift by Nicholas Staynecker of Krems to Franz of Retz in 1395,
Conclusion 329

least one other citation of the Clavis in Franz’s later Lectura supra antiphonam
Salve Regina that was taken from Berthold.18 A study of Franz’s other works,
which I have not undertaken, would undoubtedly reveal further borrowings.19
This would allow us to establish how much of the Expositio Franz knew and
whether, as it seems from the Comestorium beatae Mariae virginis, he used it
primarily as a reference work, or whether he was influenced positively or neg-
atively by its philosophical content and aims.
Whereas the Regensburg commentator used Berthold as a philosophi-
cal authority for the distinction of prime-​primo, with the elaborate theory of
essential causality and proportionality this implied, Franz appears to have
regarded the Expositio as a source for older authorities on the doctrine of dei-
fication and on the possibility of knowing God from creation. It is interesting
to observe that Franz of Retz had a particular interest in the theory of deifica-
tion he found in the Clavis physicae of Theodorus, perhaps because it accorded
with what he read in Bernard of Clairvaux, but more likely as a rare and fas-
cinating authority in its own right (see his use of Expositio 18B on the primor-
dial causes). While the doctrine of primordial causes was unacknowledged but
implicit in the technical terminology used by the Regensburg commentator,
we see with Franz of Retz that the legacy of the Expositio had become more
closely associated with the rare Eriugenian contents it transmitted with the
authoritative attribution to Theodorus.
The Expositio was likely receiving increased attention in Cologne at the
time the two extant manuscripts were copied there, in 1437 (by the Dominican
Conrad Keller of Rottweil) and in 1444 (by the order of William Gray).
Berthold’s commentary was motivated and defined by the strict boundary he
posited between abstraction and separation, logical and theological universal-
ity, doing theology “according to ourselves” or “not according to ourselves”, and

who foliated the manuscript and added a table of contents. See Sturlese, Dokumente und
Forschungen, p. 125–​126, summarising Frank, “Zum Albertus-​Autograph”.
18 See ms Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-​Chorherrenstift, Cod. 52, f. 219rb, where Franz cited
the Clavis for this same passage from 120C on the light-​filled air as an image for the pres-
ervation of human nature even when it is infused by divinity.
19 Häfele, Franz von Retz, p. 197, has stated that Franz knew Proclus’ treatises De providentia
and De malorum subsistentia well. In the Comestorium, apart from the citation of the De
providentia et fato from Expositio 18B (at f. 78rb-​78va), Franz cited one passage of the Tria
opuscula independently of Berthold. At f. 218va, we find an explicit citation of De decem
dubitationibus circa providentiam q. 8, §54 (that divine justice does not immediately exact
punishment on wrongdoers but waits for the right moment), where Proclus gave the
three examples of the virtue of Plato, Archytas, and Theano, whose zeal for justice curbed
their anger. Coincidentally, the same passages from Proclus were cited by the Dominican
Thomas Waleys in 1326-​1327. See Introduction, section 1, n. 16, above.
330 Conclusion

the discordant forms of divine science they entail (the theology of being in the
Liber de causis or the Platonic theology of the Good of the Elementatio theo-
logica). One can imagine that such arguments could have resonated, at least
in part, with the debates between the schools of thought (known to scholars
as the Wegestreit) that were defined by their distinct approaches to Aristotle
and that had become institutionally enshrined in the colleges (bursae) of the
University of Cologne in the 15th century.20 The debate concerning the status
of universals was one among the many factors that led to the consolidation
of these schools. Each school defined their reading of Aristotle through the
approach taken by earlier masters, whether Albertists, Thomists, Aegidians,
Scotists, or nominalists (moderni). At the turn of the 15th century, a resolutely
“modern” reading of Aristotle prevailed in Cologne and, with it, a question-
ing of the “old” attempts at harmonising Aristotle with Christian doctrine
made by Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. By 1425, however, the realists
and antiqui began to have the upper hand, largely thanks to the efforts of the
Albertist, Heymericus de Campo, who was in Cologne from 1420/​1422–​1432 and
supported his Thomist colleagues even though he was critical of their views.21
For the remainder of the 15th century, Cologne flourished as a stronghold of
realism.
Berthold of course would agree entirely that a realist theory of univer-
sals was necessary to elucidate and defend the faith, but he would reject the
claim made by Albertists like Heymericus that an Aristotelian metaphysics
of being could adequately explain the doctrine of the flowing (fluxus) of uni-
versals from the divine mind. Berthold’s reading of Dietrich of Freiberg and
Eustratius through the lens of the De mystica theologia of Dionysius and the
De providentia et fato of Proclus meant that the Albertist notion of a continual
fluxus of universals from God, into creatures, and back again through intellec-
tual abstraction, had to be severed along the divide of logical and theological
universality. An author like Heymericus, if he ever read the Expositio, might
have been very sympathetic to Berthold’s valorisation of Proclus’ philosoph-
ical method, but he likely would have classified Berthold’s Platonism as an
instance of “the divine and superhuman philosophy of the Stoics”, who strove

20 For what follows, see M.J.F.M. Hoenen, “Via Antiqua and Via Moderna in the Fifteenth
Century. Doctrinal, Institutional, and Church Political Factors in the Wegestreit”, in
R. Friedman, L. Nielsen (eds), The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and
Modal Theory (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), p. 9-​36.
21 On Heymericus’ use of Albert the Great and his conception of metaphysics as a spiritual
discipline, see D. Calma, “Metaphysics as a Way of Life. Heymericus de Campo on
Universals and ‘The Inner Man’ ”, in Vivarium 58(2020), p. 305–​334.
Conclusion 331

for a comprehension beyond their human station, and perhaps even as a devi-
ation from the thought of Albert the Great.22 So while it is conceivable that
some thinkers in Cologne at that time would have been aware of the Expositio,
its positive influence on them seems less probable. Berthold’s uncompromis-
ing Platonic metaphysics of separation or detachment would have made an
uneasy bedfellow even for the most sympathetic Albertist, who would have
been willing to entertain the possibility of the knowledge of the separate sub-
stances without recourse to phantasms.23 His denigration of the Liber de causis
and relegation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics to the status of a logical reflection on
being and the transcendentals would have pleased neither the antiqui nor the
moderni in these 15th-​century debates.
The final explicit reference to consider, which is more of a reference to the
Expositio than to Berthold himself, is found in Nicholas of Cusa’s Apologia doc-
tae ignorantiae (1449). The question of the extent to which Cusanus knew the
text directly has frequently raised by scholars but never resolved. The strongest
arguments that Nicholas knew the Expositio first-​hand have been advanced
by Ezequiel Ludueña.24 Following the direction of Ludueña’s study and tak-
ing into consideration the larger context of the mention of the Expositio and
the pantheistic controversies alluded to by Nicholas, I will argue further that
Cusanus either spoke on the basis of an earlier and direct acquaintance with
the Expositio or had a reliable and accurate report about its contents.
Cusanus’ mention of the Expositio comes near the conclusion of the
Apologia:

22 See, for example, Heymericus’ Colliget principiorum, which was likely written in 1434, long
after Heymericus’ polemic against the nominalists began with his Tractatus problemat-
icus in 1424. On his Albertist classification of the history of philosophy, see D. Calma,
R. Imbach, “Heymeric de Campo, auteur d’un traité de métaphysique. Étude et édition
partielle du Colliget principiorum”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen
Âge 80(2013), p. 277–​423, at tr. 1, d. 1, c. 6, p. 297, l. 105. At Colliget, tr. 1, d. 1, c. 12, p. 301,
l. 182-​189, Heymericus indicated he was primarily interested in the Elementatio theologica
insofar as it agreed with the unanimous doctrine of Aristotle and the Liber de causis. His
preference for the theorematic method was signalled at Colliget, tr. 1, d. 1, c. 13, p. 303,
l. 222-​242.
23 On this aspect of 15th-​century Albertism, see A. Saccon, “Die natürliche Gotteserkenntnis
in den Schriften der Kölner Albertisten des 15. Jahrhunderts”, in Quaestio 15(2015),
p. 751–​760.
24 This question has been considered recently in A. Fiamma, “Nicholas of Cusa and the So-​
Called Cologne School of the 13th and 14th Centuries”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale
et littéraire du Moyen Âge 84(2017), p. 91–​128, at p. 109–​113, and in detail in E. Ludueña,
“Nicolás de Cusa. Una contribución a la historia del eriugenismo”, in J.M. Machetta,
C. D’Amico (eds), Nicolás de Cusa, identidad y alteridad. Pensamiento y diálogo (Buenos
Aires: Biblos, 2010), p. 75–​88.
332 Conclusion

It befalls [1]‌men of little intellect that they fall into errors when they
seek higher things without learned ignorance. They are blinded in their
mind’s eye by the infinity of the supreme intelligible light. And, unaware
of their blindness, they believe that they see, and, in their half-​sight, they
are made rigid in their assertions (just as, without the spirit, the Jews
were made moribund by the letter). There are [2] others who suppose the
[3] wise who see are ignorant and erroneous when [2] they read things
to which they are unaccustomed in [3] their texts and, above all, when
they then find these authors believing themselves to be wise when [2]
they think that [3] they are ignorant. Wherefore all the saints rightly warn
us that the intellectual light should be withdrawn from [1, 2] those with
feeble mental eyes. The works of the holy Dionysius, Marius Victorinus’
Ad Candidum, the Clavis physicae of Theodorus, the Periphyseon of John
Scotigena, the Quaternuli of David of Dinant, and the Commentaries of
brother John of Mossbach on the Propositions of Proclus, and other books
like these, should never be shown to such people.25

At this stage of the Apologia, Cusanus was responding explicitly to the

charges of pantheism levelled against him seven years earlier by John Wenck
in his De ignota litteratura (On Unknown Learning, 1442–​1443).26 Several of
Wenck’s accusations were directed against theses quoted from Nicholas’
De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance, 1440). The “third thesis”, which
prompted the passage in question, came from De docta ignorantia I.3-​4,
where Cusanus claimed that the quiddity of things, or the truth of beings,

25 Nicholas of Cusa, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, ed. R. Klibansky, Opera omnia, vol. 2, §43,
p. 29, l. 1 –​p. 30, l. 3: Accidit autem hoc viris parvi intellectus, ut in errores incidant, quando
altiora sine docta ignorantia perquirunt; et fiunt ab infinitate lucis summe intelligibilis
in oculo mentis caeci et suae caecitatis scientiam non habentes credunt se videre et quasi
videntes indurantur in assertionibus, sicut Iudaei per litteram non habentes spiritum ducun-
tur in mortem. Sunt alii, qui illos videntes sapientes putant ignorantes et errantes, quando
in eis legunt eis insolita, et maxime, quando reperiunt eos tunc se credere, quando cognos-
cunt se ignorantes. Unde recte admonent omnes sancti, quod illis debilibus mentis oculis lux
intellectualis subtrahatur. Sunt autem illis nequaquam libri sancti Dionysii, Marii Victorini
ad Candidum Arrianum, Clavis physicae Theodori, Iohannis Scotigenae Περὶ φύσεως,
Tomi David de Dynanto, Commentaria fratris Iohannis de Mossbach in Propositiones
Proculi et consimiles libri ostendendi. All references are to the Heidelberg Academy edi-
tion of Cusanus’ works: Nicholas of Cusa, Opera omnia, iussu et auctoritate Academiae
Litterarum Heidelbergensis (Leipzig /​Hamburg: Meiner, 1932-​).
26 For an informative contextualisation of the dispute, see K.M. Ziebart, Nicolaus Cusanus
on Faith and Intellect. A Case Study in 15th-​Century Fides-​Ratio Controversy (Leiden: Brill,
2014), p. 53–​136 and, on the Apologia in particular, p. 88–​105.
Conclusion 333

is unattainable in its purity (Quidditas rerum, quae est entium veritas in sua
puritate est inattingibilis), and therefore that the understanding of a quid-
dity can always be further improved or purified without end.27 While Wenck
agreed that truth of a thing in its purity cannot be attained in this life, he
took issue with Cusanus’ denial that a finite understanding can grasp the
quiddity of things at all and his related proposal that the purity of quid-
dity can instead be grasped immediately by learned ignorance.28 From this
argument Wenck deduced two unacceptable corollaries: the first charged
Nicholas with “the poison of error and falsehood”, the destruction of all
science, since the coincidence of opposites suspends the principle of non-​
contradiction. For Nicholas, indeed, it was a primary rule of learned igno-
rance that no proportion exists between the finite and the infinite, so that
no matter where one would begin among entities that exhibit degrees of
greater and lesser finitude, one cannot arrive to the absolute Maximum.
The absolute Maximum, for its part, can only be apprehended when it is
intuitively or “incomprehensibly” understood to coincide with the absolute
Minimum, because neither can be greater or lesser than itself.29 Cusanus
replied to Wenck’s charge about the destruction of scientific knowledge by
maintaining that the principle of non-​contradiction holds necessarily in the
domain of discursive reason, but that it must be recognised that this domain
is subordinate to the standpoint of intellect, which grasps the coincidence
of opposites non-​discursively. Wenck’s second corollary, derived from the
third thesis about the quiddity of things, shifted from epistemology to ontol-
ogy: “the absolute Maximum is a given thing in such a way that it is all things;
and it is also no thing” (cf. De docta ignorantia i.4). Wenck immediately asso-
ciated this idea with the beghards, who were condemned for maintaining
that they were “by nature indistinct from God”.30
Nicholas’ response, which immediately preceded the classification of the
three kinds of ignorance cited above, began by specifying Wenck’s generic
reference to the beghards by associating their thought with the heretical

27 John Wenck, De ignota litteratura, ed. E. Vansteenberghe, Le De ignota litteratura de Jean

Wenck de Herrenberg contre Nicolas de Cues (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1910), p. 28–​29.
28 John Wenck, De ignota litteratura, p. 23–​24.
29 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, eds E. Hoffmann, R. Klibansky, Opera omnia, vol. 1,
lib. i, c. 3, §9, p. 8, l. 20-​21.
30 John Wenck, De ignota litteratura, p. 28–​29. He attributed six heretical views to the
beghards: (1) that they are God and not distinct from him by nature; (2) that all divine
perfections are in them; (3) that they are eternal and in eternity; (4) that they created all
things; (5) that they are more than God; (6) that they needed no one, no God or deity.
334 Conclusion

doctrines attributed to Amalric of Bene.31 Now on the familiar ground of canon

law, Nicholas began to turn the tables on his opponent:

And if there were beghards who said, as Wenck writes, that they are God
by nature, they were rightly condemned, just as Innocent iii condemned
Amalric in a general council (on this, see the chapter Damnamus de
summa Trinitate), who did not have a sound understanding of how God
is all things by enfolding [Deus est omnia complicite]. John Andrea in his
Novella reports Amalric’s errors.32

This reference to Amalric, as Ludueña has argued, is decisive for understand-

ing the rationale for behind Nicholas’ list of dangerous books that includes the
Expositio.33 At the source of Amalric’s errors, which persisted all the way up to
the anonymous beghards (and now, by implication, to Wenck himself), was for
Nicholas the misunderstanding of the notion of enfolding (complicatio) and
unfolding (explicatio).34 Without this distinction, Amalric would have had no
way of avoiding the false interpretation of the statement that God is “the form
of everything” (forma omnium), which would identify God with all things as
they are unfolded in their particularity. Cusanus was implying that if Wenck,
having read the De docta ignorantia, has now made such an accusation against
its author, then he must unfortunately have suffered from the same blindness
as Amalric –​and in some sense was even worse off because he condemned it
in another without recognising it in himself. Looking to the Nicholas’ classifi-
cation of the kinds of ignorance, we see that Amalric and the beghards would
belong in group (1), who were simply mistaken, with Wenck in group (2) who,

31 On Amalric and his followers, see the studies collected in Lucentini, Platonismo,
ermetismo, eresia nel medioevo, p. 363–​469.
32 Nicholas of Cusa, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, §43, p. 28, l. 24 –​p. 29, l. 5: Et si fuerunt
Begardi, qui sic dicebant, ut scribit, scilicet se esse Deum per naturam, merito fuerunt con-
dempnati, prout etiam Almericus fuit per Innocentium Tertium condempnatus in concilio
generali, de quo in capitulo ‘Dampnamus de summa Trinitate’; qui non habuit sanum intel-
lectum, quomodo Deus est omnia complicite; de cuius erroribus Iohannes Andreas aliqua
recitat in Novella.
33 Ludueña, “Nicolás de Cusa”.
34 On Nicholas’ early formulation of this doctrine and his reception of 12th-​century
Chartrian sources, see D. Albertson, Mathematical Theologies. Nicholas of Cusa and the
Legacy of Thierry of Chartres (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 184–​186 and 230-​
232. A comparison between Nicholas and Eriugena on his point has been undertaken in
C. Riccati, Processio et explicatio. La doctrine de la création chez Jean Scot et Nicolas de
Cues (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1983), p. 110–​122, and W. Beierwaltes, “Cusanus and Eriugena”, in
Dionysius 13(1989), p. 115–​152.
Conclusion 335

given his unjust criticisms of Nicholas (and, elsewhere in De ignota litteratura,

Meister Eckhart), succumbed to a kind of double ignorance. The (3) wise who
see are, therefore, wise through learned ignorance, and they would presuma-
bly include Nicholas himself.35
As for the list of authors and texts Nicholas went on to mention, it is impor-
tant to note that Cusanus was not claiming that the writers themselves belonged
to group (3) –​he referred to books, not authors. Rather, the wise in group (3)
are those whose clear mental eyesight gives them the authority to interpret
such works. Earlier in the Apologia, Cusanus made it clear that, if a person
wishes to join the ranks of the wise, they should read the De mystica theologia
with the commentaries of Maximus, Hugh of St. Victor, Robert Grosseteste,
John the Scot, Thomas Gallus, “and other more recent commentators”.36 Now,
of these writings, only the glosses attributed to Maximus, the commentary of
Grosseteste, and the Explanatio and Extractio of Thomas Gallus were actually
devoted to the De mystica theologia, while Hugh and Eriugena wrote commen-
taries only on the De caelesti hierarchia. What Cusanus must mean is that these
are all reliable guides to follow as one grapples with the Dionysian corpus, and
eventually learns to approach the De mystica theologia with the proper intel-
lectual disposition. Once learned ignorance, or the intuitive understanding of
the nature of enfolding and unfolding and the coincidence of opposites, has
been gained, one can then begin the ascent into mystical theology,37 and, pre-
sumably, correctly interpret the more dangerous and esoteric texts listed in his
response to Wenck.
Nicholas’ reference to the Novella super Decretalibus of John Andrea (d.
1348) gives us some clues about the criteria he had in mind when compiling
this list. In the Novella, we read that three errors of Amalric were condemned
at the general council: (1) all things are God (omnia sunt Deus); (2) there are
primordial causes that create and are created (primordiales causae, quae
creant et creantur); (3) there will be a unification of the sexes at the end of
time, or there will be no sexual differentiation at all (adunatio sexuum post

35 Wenck’s criticisms of Eckhart were addressed by Cusanus almost immediately before

the passage in question. See Nicholas of Cusa, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, §32-​38, p. 22,
l. 10 –​p. 26, l. 25.
36 Nicholas of Cusa, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, §30, p. 20, l. 16 –​p. 21, l. 4. For an argument
that Cusanus intended to disseminate the Apologia widely, see Ziebart, Nicolaus Cusanus
on Faith and Intellect, p. 91.
37 Nicholas of Cusa, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, §7, p. 6, l. 7-​9: Unde, cum nunc Aristotelica
secta praevaleat, quae haeresim putat esse oppositorum coincidentiam, in cuius admissione
est initium ascensus in mysticam theologicam […].
336 Conclusion

consummationem, seu non erit distinctio sexus).38 In his report, John Andrea
cited the Chronicon of Martin of Opava who, like his contemporary Henry of
Segusia in 1271, had glossed Innocent iii’s decretals and established direct links
between each error and passages from Eriugena’s Periphyseon. Martin in fact
classified the Periphyseon as a liber Amalerici, while Henry identified Amalric
as a follower of John Scotus (secutus est iste Amalricus).39
Although it cannot be excluded that Cusanus had all three theses in mind,
as well as their association with Eriugena, when compiling his list of danger-
ous books, an examination of Nicholas’ views of each text, case by case, in his
other works tells a simpler story. In the Apologia, indeed, the only thesis men-
tioned from Andrea’s Novella was (1) that God is all things, which, Cusanus has
argued, must be qualified to mean that God as all things “by enfolding”. Indeed,
Nicholas himself had used expressions very similar to the notion of God as the
forma omnium in De docta ignorantia i.23 and ii.2 (forma formarum, forma
essendi).40 This is the thesis the wise could interpret fruitfully in the esoteric
works, thanks to learned ignorance, and it is a sufficient criterion to explain the
presence of each dangerous text listed here in the Apologia. Again, however,
we cannot rule out that Nicholas had the other theses in mind as well. We
will see that Nicholas never affirmed any version of errors (2) and (3), on the
primordial causes as created and creative principles or on the loss of sexual
differentiation, but his reasons for avoiding them can only be inferred from
other aspects of his thought.
Turning now to the list of dangerous books, we of course find an abun-
dance of material in Nicholas’ works relating to Dionysius, whose authority
he held in the highest esteem.41 Restricting ourselves to the Apologia, we have
already noted that for Nicholas learned ignorance must be presupposed as a

38 John Andrea, Novella super Decretalibus cum apostillis noviter editis (Venezia: De Tortis,
1505), f. 8rb.
39 For the texts, see Lucentini, Platonismo, ermetismo, eresia nel medioevo, p. 362–​365.
Martin’s list included two additional errors: (a) that ideas in the divine mind create and
are created (=2), and that all things will return to God and find rest in these ideas, and will
remain one individual (unum individuum); (b) just as Abraham and Isaac are one nature,
so all are one and all are God (omnia esse unum et omnia esse Deum) (=1); (c) no sin can be
imputed to those acting out of charity; (d) God is seen only in creatures, never in himself;
(e) had man not sinned, there would be no division of the sexes, but only angelic multi-
plication, and that after the Resurrection the sexes will be united (=3).
40 On the influence of Thierry of Chartres on these notions in particular, see J.-​M. Counet,
Mathématique et dialectique chez Nicolas de Cues (Paris: Vrin, 2000), p. 140–​150.
41 L. Baur (ed.), Cusanus-​Texte III, Marginalien, I. Nicolaus Cusanus und Ps.-​Dionysius im
Lichte der Zitate und Randbemerkungen des Cusanus (Heidelberg: Winter, 1940-​1941).
Conclusion 337

hermeneutical key for reading Dionysius correctly. He framed this point dra-
matically when he recalled that he received the vision of learned ignorance
as a gift from God before he had examined Dionysius or any of the other
“true theologians”.42 Whether or not this accurately described the historical
sequence of events is irrelevant. What Nicholas was implying is that the per-
spective of intellectus cannot be reached by the arduous effort of reason but is
always there, grounding reason in its discursive operation; intellectus can only
be received, it cannot be won. In other words, for Nicholas, one cannot even
begin to seek God except by learned ignorance, that is to say, without the recog-
nition that God withdraws precisely to the extent that discursive reason draws
nearer to him.43 In this sense, the De mystica theologia, properly understood,
would be the antidote to Amalric’s error: for Dionysius, God is beyond the coin-
cidence of opposites and the interplay of affirmative and negative theology or,
in other words, God is “the opposite of opposites”. Since God utterly transcends
the finite realm of distinction, division, and opposition, he can indeed be said
to be all things by enfolding, for he is “the being of all things in such a way that
he is not any of these things”.44
As for Marius Victorinus (d. c. 363), mentioned next in the Apologia, we
unfortunately do not have any further clues about how Nicholas interpreted
his letter to Candidus (Ad Candidum), with its arguments that the Word is the
“being” that proceeds from transcendent “non-​being”, and is the manifestation
of the existence that is “hidden” in the Father.45 It is conceivable, nevertheless,
that Cusanus would have tried to extract the doctrine of folding and unfolding
from these utterances, perhaps while clarifying that Victorinus’ words do not
necessarily entail the subordination of the Son to the Father that they might
seem to imply.
In the case of David of Dinant, whose works were censured at the same
council that condemned Amalric in 1210, we find Nicholas advancing a positive

42 Nicholas of Cusa, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, §16-​17, p. 12, l. 4-​22.

43 Nicholas of Cusa, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, §18, p. 13, l. 21-​26: Reperies enim ibi, quod,
licet ubique sit et non absit a nobis –​ut ait Paulus Atheniensibus, quando Dionysium con-
vertit –​, tamen tunc proprius ad ipsum acceditur, quando plus fugisse reperitur; quanto
enim ipsius inaccessibilis maior elongatio melius capitur, tanto propinquius inaccessibilitas
attingitur.
44 Nicholas of Cusa, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, §21, p. 15, l. 14-​16, and §24-​25, p. 17, l. 16-​20.
45 Marius Victorinus, Ad Candidum, eds P. Henry, P. Hadot, Traités théologiques sur la Trinité,
vol. 1 (Paris: Cerf, 1960), §2-​14, p. 132, l. 10 –​p. 151, l. 27. On the influence of Victorinus
on Eriugena’s notion of theophany, see G. Piemonte, Vita in omnia pervenit. El vital-
ismo eriugeniano y la influencia de Mario Victorino (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Patristica et
Mediaevalia, 1988); Beierwaltes, “Cusanus and Eriugena”, p. 134, n. 64.
338 Conclusion

interpretation of his thought in his later work De li non-​aliud (1462).46 David

was introduced there relative to a problem raised by Ferdinand, representing
the Aristotelians, who wondered how Dionysius’ statement that “the One is in
a sense the element of all” could be reconciled with the De mystica theologia,
where he denied the God is “one”.47 Ferdinand was instructed by Nicholas that
“element” here means that God is the cause of unity, since he is the immanent
and sustaining root of each thing. If this “element” were to be removed, all
things would cease to exist. If this is so, observed Ferdinand, this means that
David of Dinant and his followers erred minimally (minime errarunt) when they
called matter (hyle), intellect (nous), and nature (physis), “God” and declared
that the world is “the visible God”.48 Nicholas seemed to concur, and explained
that David identified hyle as the principle of bodies, nous as the principle of
minds, and physis as the principle of motions, but “he did not see that they dif-
fer among themselves insofar as they are principles, which is why he spoke as
he did”.49 That is (if I understand correctly), David called hyle, nous, and physis
“God” because he regarded them all under their aspect as “elemental” roots or
principles of bodies, minds, and motions, but he did not recognise that, since
each of these principles is an other, each is necessarily posterior to the Not-​
other. But you, Ferdinand, Nicholas continued, having received a correct inter-
pretation of Dionysius, see more clearly that God as the Not-​other defines all
things and is in all things, even though he is not mixed with any of them. What
the text implies here is that David of Dinant and his followers nearly reached

46 Due to a confusion of a later chronicler from Laon, it was believed in the 13th century that
David was directly influenced by Amalric. See E. Maccagnolo, “David of Dinant and the
Beginnings of Aristotelianism in Paris”, in P. Dronke (ed.), A History of Twelfth-​Century
Western Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 429–​442.
47 Nicholas of Cusa, De li non-​aliud, eds L. Baur, P. Wilpert, Opera omnia, vol. 13, c. 17, §81,
p. 42, l. 25 –​p. 43, l. 15; citing Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 13.3, 980B.
48 This refers to the well-​known fragment edited in David of Dinant, Quaternulorum frag-
menta, ed. M. Kurdziałek, in Studia Mediewistyczne 3(1963), p. 69–​71. For the last state-
ment, Nicholas likely had in mind the passage where David expressed his agreement with
Plato: the world is the sensible God (mundum esse Deum sensibilem).
49 Nicholas of Cusa, De li non-​aliud, c. 17, §81, p. 43, l. 3: et illa non vidit differre inter se ut in
principio, quocirca sic dixit. The sense of the Latin is unclear and has led translators either
to change the word order to et illa vidit non differre (Dupré: “und lenkt seinen Blick darauf,
daß sich jene, sofern sie im Ursprung sind, nicht voneinander unterscheiden”) or to ren-
der ut in principio more freely (Hopkins: “but he did not see that they differ among them-
selves as beginnings”). It does not seem possible to translate the latter phrase literally as,
presumably, Nicholas would hold that all these principles are indeed one insofar as they
exist complicite in the principle itself. Therefore, I follow Hopkins because I understand
the statement as a judgement of a shortcoming in David of Dinant’s philosophy, which is
then contrasted with the correct position of learned ignorance (Tu autem, etc.).
Conclusion 339

the truth of the doctrine of enfolding and unfolding (minime errarunt) but
emphasised one side of the relation (God’s immanence) at the expense of the
other (God’s transcendence). Indeed, David’s own Platonic formulations about
the world as the “visible” or “sensible” God come close to Cusanus’ own decla-
ration in the De li non-​aliud that “the creature is the appearance [ostensio] of
the creator defining himself, or the light, which God is, manifesting itself”.50
As for the Clavis physicae, named next in the Apologia, we have no direct
evidence of Cusanus’ reading of the text. This has not always been the view of
scholars. On the basis of Marie-​Thérèse d’Alverny’s judgement in her influen-
tial study of 1953 (“Le cosmos symbolique”), Paolo Lucentini ascribed the 15th-​
century marginalia in ms Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 6734
(the same manuscript used by Berthold), to Cusanus, whose attribution of the
Clavis to Theodorus, coupled with the verdict of d’Alverny, seemed to put the
matter beyond dispute.51 In her review of Lucentini’s Platonismo medievale in
1982, however, d’Alverny revised her earlier hypothesis, having consulted two
experts of Cusanus and after further comparison with the cardinal’s authentic
glosses.52 To my knowledge, d’Alverny’s doubts have remained unaddressed,
even though they are indeed substantial enough to revise the attribution to
Nicholas.53 This raises the question of how Cusanus came to attribute the text
to Theodorus. The copy of the Clavis physicae preserved in his personal library
(ms Bernkastel-​Kues, Bibliothek des St. Nikolaus-​Hospitals, Cod. Cus. 202) is
anonymous and contains no annotations. In the absence of any evidence for
the circulation of another manuscript of the Clavis ascribed to Theodorus, it

50 Nicholas of Cusa, De li non-​aliud, prop. 12, §118, p. 63, l. 4-​6: Creatura igitur est ipsius crea-
toris sese definientis seu lucis, quae deus est, se ipsam manifestantis ostensio.
51 On the Clavis marginalia, see Lucentini, Platonismo medievale, p. 77–​109, reprinted in
Lucentini, Platonismo, ermetismo, eresia, p. 19–​48, citing d’Alverny from 1953 at p. 23,
n. 11: “Le cardinal Nicolas de Cues, grand amateur, on le sait, de textes platoniciens et
néo-​platoniciens, a sans doute eu quelque temps notre manuscrit entre les mains, car les
annotations marginales du XVe siècle que porte celui-​ci ressemblent fort à son écriture.”
52 D’Alverny, “Platonismo medievale”, p. 349.
53 After consultation with Dragos Calma, who with Ruedi Imbach has published a study of
Cusanus’ marginalia on Heymericus de Campo (ms Bernkastel-​Kues, Bibliothek des St.
Nikolaus-​Hospitals, Cod. Cus. 106) –​see Calma, D., Imbach, R., “Les notes marginales de
Nicolas de Cues au traité Colliget principiorum d’Heymeric de Campo”, in K. Reinhardt et
al. (eds), Heymericus de Campo. Philosophie und Theologie im 15. Jahrhundert (Regensburg:
Roderer-​Verlag, 2009), p. 15–​51 –​I note that there are indeed significant discrepancies
between the two hands: the hand annotating the Clavis is more cursive, and there are
clear differences between, for instance, the letters “x”, “y”, the final superscript “m”, and
the abbreviation “con-​/​com-​”. D’Alverny already signalled a difference in their formation
of the letter “s”.
340 Conclusion

seems most likely that, like Franz of Retz, Nicholas relied on the Expositio for
the attribution.
Nicholas’ views about the Periphyseon can be gleaned from his marginalia
to Book i of the dialogue, which fortunately are preserved.54 We see in these
marginalia that he found in Eriugena phrases that would match the first of
Amalric’s erroneous theses.55 But Nicholas also saw that Eriugena understood
this statement correctly through the notions of the coincidence of opposites,56
of God as the opposite of opposites,57 and the corresponding notion of crea-
tion as theophany.58 Accordingly, Nicholas was able to paraphrase Eriugena’s
text using the terminology of complicatio.59 Along with Nicholas’ recollection
of his first encounter with Dionysius in the Apologia and his interpretation of
David of Dinant in the De li non-​aliud, this is a clear example of his use of the
hermeneutic of learned ignorance to draw out a correct and even fruitful inter-
pretation of a difficult work.
As for the primordial causes and the division of the sexes –​the other two
theses for which Amalric was condemned –​the cardinal’s judgement was less
positive. He certainly never used the syntagm causa primordialis in his works.
His discussion of the Platonic theory of divine ideas in De docta ignorantia
ii.9 gives some indication that the notion of an intermediary level of any sort
of created and creative principles would not fit easily into his own thought.60
In this passage, he noted the view of “certain Christians” who adopted the
Platonic theory of the world soul as the principle that contains the plurality
of exemplars as they exist between the simplicity of the divine mind and their
likenesses in the material world. A better proposal, he argued, can be reached
by recourse to learned ignorance. In this standpoint, one acknowledges that,
since God is the absolute and uncontracted Maximum, in him “the maximum

54 These are preserved in ms London, British Library, Cod. Addit. 11035, and have been pub-
lished in J. Koch, “Kritisches Verzeichnis der Londoner Handschriften aus dem Besitz
des Nikolaus von Kues”, in Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-​Gesellschaft
3(1963), p. 16–​100, at p. 86–​100. A selection of these is also found in Lucentini, Platonismo
medievale, p. 113–​124.
55 ms London, British Library, Cod. Addit. 11035, f. 64v: Forma omnium deus (Periphyseon, lib.
i, 501D).
56 ms London, British Library, Cod. Addit. 11035, f. 18v: Nota contraria de deo dici (Periphyseon,
lib. i, 452C).
57 ms London, British Library, Cod. Addit. 11035, f. 80r: Nota istud singularissime (Periphyseon,
lib. i, 517B-​C: infinitas infinitorum, oppositorum oppositio, contrarietas contrariorum, etc.).
58 ms London, British Library, Cod. Addit. 11035, f. 14v, 15r, 16r, 16v.
59 ms London, British Library, Cod. Addit. 11035, f. 82r: Deus est complicatio omnium amorum
(Periphyseon, lib. i, 519C).
60 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, lib. ii, c. 9, §141-​150, p. 89, l. 26 –​p. 96, l. 11.
Conclusion 341

truth of a circle is not other than that of quadrangle”; that is, all ideas are one
and “indistinct” in the Word. There is no need to posit an intermediary princi-
ple containing distinct exemplars –​or, in Nicholas’ terms, “there is no medium
between the absolute and the contracted” –​for if there were many exemplars
then there would be a plurality of “maximal and most true” things. The plural-
ity of primordial causes, whose number remained inscrutable for Eriugena but
was decidedly fixed by Berthold, thus was not recognised by Cusanus’ learned
ignorance.61
As for the overcoming of the division of the sexes, once again we can only
make inferences based on Cusanus’ other works. We find no endorsement
in his writings of the Eriugenian notion that sexual difference is doffed at
the Resurrection or that human nature as an imago Dei in Paradise with its
spiritual body is free from it. However, we can see that Cusanus’ obscure reflec-
tions on the subject of the Resurrection were, once again, explicitly marked
by learned ignorance.62 His discussion of eschatology in the final chapters of
De docta ignorantia iii.7-​12 approached such questions Christologically, focus-
ing primarily on Christ’s death, Resurrection, and the last judgement, and only
hinted at what the implications of these events might be for those who are
members of his body. His argument hinged on the notion that Christ’s human-
ity is the medium between the purely absolute and the purely contracted: as
united to his divine person it is absolute, as united to his divine person it is con-
tracted.63 The divine and human natures are united in such a way that there
is a mutual exchange of predicates (communicatio idiomatum) between them.
This means that, at the time of Christ’s death, his human body and soul were
never separated from his divine person, because his “maximum humanity” was
supposited in his divine person. Therefore, all the attributes of human nature,
including the union of body and soul, remained there.64 Nevertheless, since
it belongs to “the shadowy truth” of human nature to undergo death and the
separation of soul and body, it is fitting that Christ’s temporal birth should be
fulfilled in a temporal death, so that the full truth of humanity as it was in him
could be revealed. As temporally contracted, Christ’s humanity was thus a sign

61 On this aspect of Eriugena’s doctrine, see S. Gersh, “L’Ordo Naturalis des causes primor-
diales. La transformation érigénienne de la doctrine dionysienne des noms divins”, in Les
Études philosophiques 104(2013), p. 57–​78.
62 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, lib. iii, c. 7, §222, p. 140, l. 3-​4. See also H.-​G. Senger,
Ludus sapientiae. Studien zum Werk und zur Wirkungsgeschichte des Nikolaus von Kues
(Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 162–​180.
63 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, lib. iii, c. 7, §225, p. 141, l. 19-​20.
64 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, lib. iii, c. 7, §223-​224, p. 140, l. 5 –​p. 141, l. 5.
342 Conclusion

and image (signum et imago) of the supratemporal truth of humanity. At the

Resurrection, these shadows had their ending, for when the temporal truth of
contracted human nature was fulfilled in its corruptibility, only the incorrupti-
ble truth remained. And although there is only one indivisible humanity com-
mon to all human beings, such that it is possible to say that the humanity of all
has, in Christ, put on immortality, this is not a present reality except in him (cf.
1 Corinthians 15:20: “the first fruits of them that slept”).65 All of humanity will
rise from the grave because of the transformation Christ has accomplished.
Nicholas thus understood the Resurrection entirely through Christ’s temporal
birth and death, as the doctrine of learned ignorance required, and therefore
would have rejected the views he would find in Eriugena (if he had read Book
v of the Periphyseon or the entirety of the Clavis), and in Berthold, who located
the general Resurrection in the domain of “natural providence”,66 with their
concomitant views about the association of the fall from the pristine imago Dei
with the beginning of sexual differentiation.67
When we consider the list of dangerous works mentioned by Cusanus, we
must always remember that he concerned above all with defending the ration-
ale and hermeneutical validity of learned ignorance. The context of this pas-
sage in the Apologia and a survey of his judgements about the esoteric works,
as far as this is possible, indicate that it was the first of Amalric’s errors that
he was most concerned to correct by learned ignorance: God is all things “by
enfolding”. Imagining his encounter with “friar John of Mossbach”, we note
that such an idea could be found, for instance, in Berthold’s notion that all
things are immediately related to the Good, which is all things “according to
cause”, even though all things are other than the Good through their intrinsic
limitations or contractions.68 Berthold also stated that God’s transcendence

65 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, lib. iii, c. 8, §227-​228, p. 142, l. 17 –​p. 143, l. 29.
66 Eriugena admitted his difficulties in determining whether the general Resurrection will
be the result of nature or grace (Periphyseon, lib. v, 898D-​906C). He concluded that the
Resurrection is natural, but deification is gracious (979B-​C). Berthold’s references to
the Resurrection, the glorified bodies of the saints, and the spiritual topography of the
afterlife, were placed under the banner of voluntary providence (Expositio, 129A, p. 176,
l. 94 –​p. 177, l. 130) because, in Eriugenian terms, they would pertain to the “special”
Resurrection that follows the “general”.
67 The 15th-​century annotator of the Clavis was also hostile to the doctrines of sexual differ-
entiation and the spiritual body. Using the numbering in Lucentini, “Le annotazioni di
Nicola Cusano alla Clavis physicae”, in Platonismo, ermetismo, eresia nel medioevo, p. 24–​
48: L36: Nota quod male (Clavis c. 70); L39: Male. nota quod male (Clavis c. 76); L115: Error
(Clavis c. 271); L118: Error (Clavis c. 349); L119: Error (Clavis c. 381).
68 For example, Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 2E, p. 88, l. 237 –​p. 89, l. 265; 7D, p. 151,
l. 453-​470.
Conclusion 343

of every causal order coincides with his “becoming” (fieri) within all orders
of providence, which he described through Dionysius and the Clavis.69 As for
Berthold’s Eriugenian doctrine of primordial causes and the spiritual body,
we can only assume that Nicholas would have regarded these matters as det-
rimental for a true interpretation of Dionysius. And so, in light of these pat-
terns in the Apologia and Nicholas’ otherwise inexplicable attribution of the
Clavis to Theodorus, it is reasonable to conclude that he either had read the
Expositio directly or had a very accurate report of its contents. For Nicholas,
an axiomatic interpretation of Dionysius like Berthold’s, with its limited and
linear hierarchies of separate principles from the primordial causes to the ens
secundum speciem of human nature, would have at best been preparatory for
elucidating the dialectical mystical theology of the Areopagite.70 Berthold, as
it were, saw the promised land of the coincidence of opposites and the stand-
point of learned ignorance in his conception of the intellectus adeptus and
the unum animae, but he remained in the realm of the oblique motion, which
he had regarded as the best preparation of the soul for the reception of that
higher perspective.71

69 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 3A, p. 92, l. 14 –​p. 93, l. 32. See also, for example,
Expositio, 7A, p. 144, l. 196-​199: Secundum diversum igitur gradum huius determinationis
constituuntur etiam diversa bona minus vel plus contracta quasi secundum bonitatis quon-
dam intentionem et multiplicationem et quasi, ut sic loquar, unius boni ex alio expressionem.
Perhaps the most Eriugenian passage of all is found at Expositio, 119B, p. 83, l. 22 –​p. 84,
l. 34 (non apparentis apparitio, occulti manifestatio, negati affirmatio, incomprehensibilis
comprehensio, etc.).
70 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 5-​6, p. 13, l. 252 –​p. 14, l. 286. It has to be noted
that, in terms of his reception of Proclus, Cusanus’ annotations to the Elementatio theo-
logica are incomplete and much sparser than those accompanying the Platonic Theology
or the Commentary on the Parmenides. See S. Gersh, “Nicholas of Cusa”, in S. Gersh (ed.),
Interpreting Proclus. From Antiquity to the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014), p. 318–​349, at p. 327–​336, who concludes: “It seems implausible to suggest
that the philosophical ideas in the [Elementatio theologica] were simply of less interest to
Nicholas than those in the [In Parmenidem]. It is perhaps more reasonable to think that
the axiomatic methodology of Proclus’ treatise seemed inappropriate for articulating a
paradoxical ‘Dionysian’ theology”.
71 On this matter, Meister Eckhart was for Nicholas a superior, but still imperfect, interloc-
utor. Nicholas judged that Eckhart’s works should not be made widely available because
of their subtlety and difficulty. See Nicholas of Cusa, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, §36,
p. 25, l. 9-​12. Nicholas had acquired Eckhart’s Latin works in 1444 (ms Bernkastel-​Kues,
Bibliothek des St. Nikolaus-​Hospitals, Cod. Cus. 21) and used them in his defence of
Eckhart against Wenck. On this manuscript, see S. Frost, Nikolaus von Kues und Meister
Eckhart. Rezeption im Spiegel der Marginalien zum Opus tripartitum Meister Eckharts
(Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 2006). Nicholas’ marginalia to this manuscript are included
in the Stuttgart critical edition of Eckhart’s Latin works.
344 Conclusion

From the Regensburg commentator, for whom the linear model of prime/​
primo derived from “the venerable father Berthold” was an inspiration, to Franz
of Retz, who used the Expositio as a resource for his doctrine of deification that
preserves the distinct orders of nature even when they are elevated by grace,
to Nicholas of Cusa, who would prefer to interpret Dionysius through other
works of Proclus besides the Elementatio, we have seen that the explicit recep-
tion of the Expositio was more or less intertwined with its Eriugenian sources,
and was ultimately defined by the harmony of Dionysius with the Elementatio
theologica that Berthold had used these materials to establish.72
If not in his method but in his ambitions, Berthold profoundly antici-
pated Cusanus as a thinker who sought to articulate the accord of Dionysius
and Proclus simply insofar as both authorities were understood to be heirs
of Plato.73 For Berthold, this was a Platonism defined by Dionysius and the

72 This fortune has persisted to the present day. The first critical editions of Berthold
(Propositions 184-​211, by Loris Sturlese) and the Clavis physicae of Honorius (­chapters 1-​
314, by Paolo Lucentini) were published in the same series in 1974. This coincidence was
underscored by the series editor, E. Massa, “Presentazione”, in Berthold of Moosburg,
Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli. 184-​211. De animabus, ed. L. Sturlese
(Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1974), p. v–​xi. The first major study of the Expositio,
published in 2013 (Ezequiel Ludueña’s La recepción de Eriúgena), used Berthold’s
Eriugenian doctrine of the primordial causes to measure Berthold’s reception of and
innovations upon the intellectual heritage of the Dominican school of Cologne.
73 Nicholas of Cusa, De venatione sapientiae, eds R. Klibansky, H.-​G. Senger, Opera omnia,
vol. 12, §59, p. 57, l. 15-​19; §64, p. 61, l. 3 –​p. 62, l. 20. On Thomas Aquinas as the originator
of this reading of Proclus and Dionysius, see W. Hankey, “Misrepresenting Neoplatonism
in Contemporary Christian Dionysian Polemic. Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa versus
Vladimir Lossky and Jean-​Luc Marion”, in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
82/​4(2008), p. 683–​703, at p. 690; id., “The Concord”, p. 153–​154. On the importance of
this approach to the Platonic tradition, see Hankey, “Misrepresenting Neoplatonism”,
p. 693–​694: “Although the history of Cusanus is skewed because he accepted Dionysius’
self-​representation, in principle he is ready for another account. Because he has detected
that Dionysius reproduces Platonic texts, and because on a mixture of scriptural and
philosophic principles, he regards Plato as also divinely inspired, he could have given
up the derivation of the Dionysian doctrine from the mystical experience attributed to
St. Paul, without thereby depriving the doctrine of the corpus of spiritual authority and
truth. Equally, because Proclus is seen to borrow from both Dionysius and Plato, all three
belong to a common hunting of God, a common theological tradition and enterprise.
For Cusa, there is one sole source of being, truth, and good, beyond conceptual grasp,
but giving, disclosing, indeed creating itself diversely. In fact, Cusanus has the evidence
which moved modern scholars to place Proclus before Dionysius and which would allow
Dionysius to have received his Platonism via Plotinus and Proclus, rather than from Plato
directly. Because the fact that the Christian divine Dionysius was taught by the pagan
divine Plato overturns none of his deepest convictions, reordering the history to place
Conclusion 345

Latin corpus of Proclus as he knew it (Elementatio theologica and the Tria

opuscula), that could be elucidated using rare doxographies (Thomas of York),
marginal philosophies (Dietrich of Freiberg), or combinations of the two
(Eriugenism). For thinkers after Berthold who would entertain this deeper
agreement between Proclus and Dionysius, the face of the Areopagite would
have to change as his companion stepped further into the light. Berthold’s
understanding of Platonism evidently had already been formed when he
read, however extensively, Proclus’ commentary on the Parmenides. His two
brief citations this rich text indicate that he could find in it only the confir-
mation of the strict distinction between abstract and separate universals.74
This was the central axis around which the entire Expositio would revolve, just
as it passed through microcosm, in whom the frontiers of these two realms
were conjoined. This vision of a theorematic Platonism, with the existential
choice it presented through the De mystica theologia –​whether to do theology
according to ourselves and remained “sealed off” in beings, or not according
to ourselves, and prepare the mind for the gift of a higher insight –​had suffi-
cient urgency that whatever other dimensions of Proclus that Berthold found
in the Parmenides commentary were regarded either as secondary or impos-
sible to assimilate. What was primary was to make the mind receptive to the
domain of what is beyond being and the “divine frenzy” of stillness which, for
Berthold, it seems so inclined to ignore and retreat into the familiar territory
of abstraction, solipsism, and appropriation. As Dionysius and Proclus had
taught, “as long as we are occupied with what is below, we are incredulous
about all these things”.75

Proclus before Dionysius would be of no deep importance. In contrast, the interpene-

tration of philosophy and Scriptural revelation is of such heaven-​shaking consequence
for the twentieth-​century Christians to whom we now move that they are unwilling to
recognise the obvious philological facts which Nicholas and those around him saw. What
blinds them is a sectarian religious narrowness which belongs to their determination
either to free their religion from Hellenic philosophy, or to have it generate its own meta-
physics, or, stranger yet, to do both! At the very point when our historical researches make
us endlessly aware of the inescapable interpenetration of religion and philosophy, our
philosophy and theology fail us.”
74 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 11, p. 17, l. 401-​402; 41K, p. 53, l. 232-​243. Berthold
did not situate the Parmenides commentary relative to the three motions of the soul in
Expositio, Expos. tit. B-​D, p. 38, l. 49 –​p. 41, 147.
75 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 17, p. 27, l. 724-​728: ‘Donec autem circa ea, quae deor-
sum, volvimur, increduliter habemus circa haec omnia divino cognoscente impartibiliter et
superaeternaliter’. Haec ille. Ad idem consentit Dionysius 1 et 2 cap. Mysticae theologiae. Cf.
Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §32, p. 140, l. 6-​7.
346 Conclusion

2 Lady Philosophy’s Vesture

As the only commentary on the entire Elementatio theologica from the Latin
tradition, which also served later readers as an encyclopaedia of a vast tradi-
tion of sapiential theology (divinalis sapientia), the achievement of Berthold
of Moosburg’s Expositio was a substantial one. In comparison with similar
works from contemporary Dominican authors, such as the earlier commen-
taries on the Liber de causis or Nicholas of Strassburg’s Summa, the Expositio
stands out not only for its scope and complex use of sources, but above all
for its Dionysian critique of the Liber de causis and the metaphysics of being.
If we can conclude that the philosophical and hermeneutical principle “not
according to ourselves” was the guiding light of Berthold’s work, which was
presupposed in his professed exegetical method of compilatio, then we must
also acknowledge that the result was anything but unoriginal or derivative.
Although we may never know what was being taught in the Dominican
studia of the period, it is conceivable, given its subject matter, that the Expositio
would have been written with the schools of natural philosophy (studia nat-
urarum) in mind. It is clear in the commentary that Berthold regarded the
Metaphysics and the Liber de causis as fundamentally flawed in their assump-
tions about first principles. To be sure, certain doctrines from Metaphysics xii
could be incorporated into the Platonic synthesis, especially when elucidating
the background assumed by Proclus’ propositions on intellect, but by this stage
of the Expositio the framework has been entirely reconfigured along the strict
separation of theological and logical universality. It seems Berthold regarded
the other books of the Metaphysics as valuable for the study of the logical
intention of ens as it is derived or abstracted from the material world. But as a
theory of the separate substances, the metaphysics of being was for him only
a hindrance. The science of being as being would be conceded to Aristotle in
its logical domain, while the pursuit of wisdom and the salvation of the soul
through philosophy required leaving behind that familiar world and enter-
ing byways “beyond the common path of reasonings”.76 Of the Liber de cau-
sis there was little to retain. Perhaps Berthold also envisioned the progression
from the study of invisible realities in natural providence to the consideration
of voluntary providence in subsequent theological study. His emphasis on the
accord of Proclus and “Dionysius Platonicus” would have made this transition
a seamless one. Such hypotheses, however, must remain tentative given the
almost total lack of evidence concerning the place of the Liber de causis, not to

76 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. K, p. 48, l. 394-​400.

Conclusion 347

mention the Elementatio theologica, in the curricula of the Dominican schools

of this period.
Of all the philosophical projects we find among the German Dominicans
in the 14th century, Berthold’s Expositio most resembled the earlier Summa
of Nicholas of Strassburg, although there is no proof of a direct influence of
Nicholas on Berthold. Both thinkers identified their works as compilations,
either explicitly or conceivably suited to respond to a lack of books besetting
the provincial schools. More strikingly, both Dominicans looked to Boethius
to account for the rationale for their compilations. Nicholas made the point
clearly: Lady Philosophy’s garment has been divided and dismantled not only
by sectarianism, but also in the fragmentation and proliferation of compen-
dia and florilegia, which lacked the coherence required to direct the student
toward wisdom in its fullness.
There have been many occasions in this study to emphasise the centrality
of Thomas of York or Eriugena for the establishment of the peace that reigns
among the ancient philosophers of Berthold’s golden age, or the importance
of Dietrich of Freiberg as the source for the mechanisms of Berthold’s meta-
physics and anthropology, or the role of Eriugenian sources in the reception
of the Expositio. With the greater part of the commentary now in view, how-
ever, we may say that the author whom Berthold most closely approximated in
his understanding of the science of metaphysics and theology, and his views
about the kind of knowing demanded by it and the path by which the human
is to achieve it, was Boethius. Him we find described, with one of the few epi-
thets in the entire Expositio, as that “most brilliant man” (vir clarissimus).77
The prayer “with Plato and Boethius” to the paternal Light that concluded the
Prologus was taken directly from the Consolatio philosophiae, where the pris-
oner and Lady Philosophy attempt to move from the discursive apprehension
of finite goods to their simultaneity (cuncta simul) in the Good itself –​that
is, to ascend from ratio to intellectus. The aim of the Expositio was to re-​enact
the same movement that Proclus had undertaken in the Elementatio theolog-
ica: passing from the oblique motion of ratiocination to the intellectus adeptus
and the providential unum animae of the direct motion, or (which amounts to
the same thing) to the intelligentia of the circular motion. To join in the prayer
for divine grace common to a pagan and a Christian author was for Berthold
anything but a rhetorical trope.78 If we recall how thoroughly Berthold’s

77 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. E, p. 41, l. 153.

78 Cf. Albert the Great, De intellectu et intelligibili, lib. ii, tr. unicus, c. 9, p. 516b: et haec est
irradiatio de qua multum locuti sunt Philosophi, et ordinaverunt propter illam supplica-
tiones et orationes.
348 Conclusion

understanding of the formal and final causes of the Elementatio theologica –​

its theorematic method and its beatifying end –​was informed by Boethius,
and if we consider now how he synthesised doctrines he found in De Trinitate,
the Consolatio, and the De hebdomadibus, we will see that, for Berthold, the
method of the commentary was intrinsically connected to that end. In other
words, by considering Berthold’s use of Boethius, we can best understand the
continuity and distinction between the oblique motion and the two motions
that are above it.
Berthold’s discussion of the final cause of the Elementatio in the Expositio
tituli was framed by two themes from Boethius: first, the strong doctrine of
deification in the Consolatio (omnis beatus deus) and, secondly, the descrip-
tion of Lady Philosophy’s first appearance to the prisoner.79 Regarding the
first, Berthold connected two passages from Book iii of the Consolatio, where
it is argued that beatitude is to be found “in pursuing the perfect condition
brought about by the collection of all goods”, and that “everyone in bliss is god”
by participation.80 As Berthold framed it, this beatifying collection of all goods
is to be found in the passage from contemplating the gods dividedly (which
are divina per essentiam but nevertheless “participate” or “limit” God’s supera-
bundance),81 to contemplating God himself (et per hoc ad divinum principali-
forme), which anticipated the second prayer in the Expositio, where he looked
to Christ, “the mediator of God and man”, to lead the soul from the gods to the
One.82 In this regard, Berthold shared the view of Lady Philosophy, who agreed
with her servant Plato, that the passage from dividedness to unity always pre-
supposes a gift from the higher and unified principle.83
As for the second Boethian theme in the Expositio tituli, the appearance
of Lady Philosophy, Berthold began by recalling her face and stature.84 She
appeared to the prisoner as at once ancient yet animated by the vigour of
youth, with eyes aflame that can see beyond human capacity, whose height
at times seems to pierce the very heavens, while at other times she adopts a
more human measure. We have here already, as Robert Crouse observed, the

79 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. L, p. 49, l. 408-​430.

80 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, prosa 9, §22-​23, p. 68, l. 63-​69; lib. iii, prosa 10,
§25, p. 84, l. 85-​86.
81 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4, p. 12, l. 243 –​p. 13, l. 250.
82 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. L, p. 51, l. 486-​491.
83 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, prosa 9, §32, p. 79, l. 94-​97: Sed cum, uti in
Timaeo Platoni, inquit, nostro placet, in minimis quoque rebus divinum praesidum debeat
implorari, quid nunc faciendum censes, ut illius summi boni sedem repperire mereamur?
84 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, p. 49, l. 420-​430. Cf. Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae,
lib. i, prosa 1, §1-​6, p. 4, l. 1 –​p. 5, l. 24.
Conclusion 349

essentials of the Boethian conception of wisdom, in a figure who transcends

the same boundaries that Berthold sought to overcome:

In his final work, [Boethius] is most directly concerned with the prob-
lems –​not pagan or Christian, but universal –​of understanding the
rational order of the world, the vagaries of fortune, and the nature of
man’s freedom. Lady Philosophy is not natural or revealed, not philoso-
phy or theology; she is simply Sapientia, who can lift her head to pierce
the very heavens.85

Berthold’s conception of the supersapiential habit of the unum animae in the

Praeambulum, which received the properties Dionysius had used to describe
the faith that locates the mind in the first Truth, finds its precursor here. For
Berthold, the notions of divinising grace and revelation were intrinsic to the
natural philosophy of Platonism, and in this way it could challenge the stark
boundaries of nature and grace, pagan and Christian. It was the same concep-
tion of nature that led Berthold to affirm that true light that “illumines every
person who comes into the world” or “the natural light of intellect”, only fully
illumines those who “come into intellectual purity”.86
For the Dominican, this wisdom was most adequately realised, not in a dia-
logue like the Consolatio, which was intended to use poetic metre and rational
argument as the medicines of the soul, but in the theorematic form of the
Elementatio theologica. In his account of the theology of the unum animae
in the Praeambulum, Berthold had drawn on the tripartite division of specu-
lative philosophy he found in Boethius’ De Trinitate, into the physical, quad-
rivial, and theological (theologica).87 For Boethius, the “theological” proceeds
“intellectually” and not by imaginings. It is the intuitive vision of the Form

85 R. Crouse, “The Doctrine of Creation in Boethius. The De hebdomadibus and the

Consolatio”, in Studia Patristica 17(1982), p. 417–​421, at p. 418.
86 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 21, p. 34, l. 968-​973; Expos. tit. A, p. 37, l. 30 –​p. 38, l. 34.
87 Boethius, De Trinitate, c. 2, p. 169, l. 78-​83: in naturalibus igitur rationabiliter, in mathemat-
icis disciplinaliter, in divinis intellectualiter versari oportebit neque diduci ad imaginations,
sed potius ipsam inspicere formam, quae vere forma neque imago est et quae esse ipsum est
et ex qua esse est. Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 63, l. 375-​376: quo the-
ologus in divinis apprehendendis versatur; p. 64, l. 417: quo circa divina versari oportet; p. 65,
l. 423: circa divina versatur. See also A. Speer, “The Hidden Heritage. Boethian Metaphysics
and Its Medieval Tradition”, in Quaestio 5(2005), p. 163–​181, at p. 167–​174; id., “The Division
of Metaphysical Discourses. Boethius, Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart”, in K. Emery,
Jr., R. Friedman, A. Speer (eds), Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages. A Tribute
to Stephen F. Brown (Leiden: Brill, 2011), p. 91–​115, at p. 94–​106.
350 Conclusion

(ipsam inspicere formam) that forms all things. Following Boethius, Berthold
stated that the objects of knowing are determined by and correlative with
modes of knowing. Through this principle he made the insightful connection
between the description of theologica in De Trinitate with the highest of the
four modes of knowing identified in the Consolatio (lib. v, prose 4), intelligen-
tia, which comes after sense-​perception, imagination, and reason. Intelligence
is the mode of knowing exercised by the divine providence, which grasps the
simple Form (illam simplicem formam) beyond the entire universe.88 In the
Consolatio, intelligentia is described as primarily the possession of God, while
human beings tend toward it, as Olivier Boulnois has remarked, “in a ceaseless
effort of ascesis of all sensible images”.89 It is, in other words, the perspective
sought through prayer at the centre of the Consolatio and at the conclusions of
the Prologus and the Expositio tituli, which seeks the passage from the divided-
ness of fate to union with the divine providence.
That passage to beatitude, as Berthold described it in the phrase scalaris
ascensus, was figured on the vesture of Lady Philosophy as a ladder ascending
from the letters Π to Θ, which he interpreted in the standard way as a rep-
resentation of practical and theoretical philosophy (opus et scientia).90 The
rungs on this ladder are the propositions, elements, or “elevatements” of the
Elementatio theologica.91 For Berthold, we will recall, the highest achievement
of the ancient wisdom of Hermes (in the Liber xxiv philosophorum) and Plato
(in his originally theorematic philosophy concealed by the later Academy in
the kind of imaginings Boethius deemed inappropriate for theology) was
restored in the Elementatio theologica. This, and Proclus’ exhaustive explo-
ration of the three possible motions of the soul, were the two sources of his
“excellence”.92

88 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 67, l. 516-​520: cum cognitivum nostrae

supersapientialis et divinalis sapientiae sit non solum omnem scientiam, quae est entium,
sed etiam ipsum intellectum supracurrens, ut supra ostensum est, habitus etiam ipsius non
erit compositus proprie loquendo ex intellectu et scientia, sed simplex inspectio formae sim-
pliciter omnia formantis iuxta illud Boethii De Trinitate, quod ‘circa divina intellectualiter
versari oportet neque deduci ad imaginationes sed ipsam inspicere formam’. Et quia, ut idem
dicit De consolatione v libro prosa 5, ‘intelligentiae vero celsior oculus existit, supergressa
namque universitatis ambitum illam simplicem formam pura mentis acie contuetur’. Cf.
Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. v, prosa 4, §30, p. 149, l. 86-​88.
89 O. Boulnois, Métaphysiques rebelles. Genèse et structures d’une science au Moyen Âge
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2013), p. 53.
90 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. L, p. 49, l. 420-​430.
91 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. K, p. 47, l. 343-​348.
92 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. A, p. 37, l. 25-​31.
Conclusion 351

When we consider Berthold’s discussion of the difficulty and divinity of the-

ological theorems, we see why he held this method in such high regard.93 As
Hermes explained in his Asclepius, the difficulty of theology consists in the
fact that one cannot keep pace with “the torrent” of the river of divinity as it
rushes on ahead of those who would listen to it and speak about it. Therefore,
as Thomas of York (Berthold’s tacit source) concluded, theology demands an
attentiveness and concentration, a mode of knowing, that is almost super-
human: both the teacher and the student of theology must be attentive and
divine (oportet non tam tractantem, quam audientem esse divinum hominem
et attentum) –​all the more so, Berthold added, are these qualities demanded
of one who would follow “the coordination of theological elements”. At this
point, he had recourse to Boethius’ De hebdomadibus and the commentary of
Gilbert of Poitiers. Whereas for Boethius in the De hebdomadibus, the theo-
rems are what prevent the wisdom concealed in them from being divulged and
misunderstood, in Berthold’s tacit modification of Gilbert, and in accordance
with his history of Platonism, both the content and the theorems themselves
were the secret: the wisdom contained in this book should be revealed only
to the worthy, who are desirous of the unveiled (revelata) image of truth, and
who “are attentive (attenti) and perspicacious (perspicaces) in the apex of the
mind”. “Perspicacious” is the pivotal term here. It was presupposed in Berthold’s
unusual interpretation of John 1:9 (venientem in hunc mundum, scilicet puri-
tatem intellectualem). As he put it in the Prologus, what must be exercised in
the one who comes to know the invisible things of God is “the perspicacity of
the mind” (subiectum […] exercendum est animi perspicacitas).94 Combining
all of these Boethian threads together, we can understand that, for Berthold,
theorems are necessary in theology because they serve to sharpen the acies
mentis or awaken intelligentia –​which, as we saw, is intellect in its providential
state or intellect in love. They do this because the attention required to grasp
the meaning of a proposition must see how a multiplicity, doxographically and
philosophically, is gathered up and contained unconfusedly in simplicity and,
from there, how this simplicity is taken up into a greater totality through the
concatenation or “elementation” of theorems.95 Such a method at the level of

93 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. K, p. 47, l. 368 –​p. 48, 400. Cf. Thomas of York,
Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 5 (ms Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Soppr. A.vi.437,
f. 5va).
94 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 7, p. 14, l. 291-​292.
95 It can be argued that this theorematic method was implicit in the approximation of
intelligentia that the prisoner and Lady Philosophy pursued after the prayer inspired by
the Timaeus. See Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, pr. 12, §30, p. 94, l. 77 –​p. 95,
l. 81, and §36-​38, p. 95, l. 94 –​p. 96, l. 106: Ludisne, inquam, me inextricabilem labyrinthum
352 Conclusion

discursive reason would best approximate the onrush or torrent of divine prov-
idence that comprehends all things in a simple intuition. Berthold, therefore,
meant that the attention the teacher and student must cultivate is “divine” in
the fullest sense: it participates in providential knowledge.96 If, for Boethius,
the human rises to intelligentia through an ascesis of images, for Berthold this
happens through the theorematic method and the discipline of the passions.97
The Elementatio theologica, a pagan text, was thus a work whose study formed
the central part of a spiritual discipline that disposed the soul to receive
divine grace.
Observing his synthesis of these Boethian materials, we must acknowledge
how indebted Berthold remained to the very tradition he sought to overcome.
The notion of first philosophy as simultaneously the knowledge of God and a
participation in the divine self-​knowledge was, of course, a defining feature of
wisdom as described by Aristotle in Metaphysics i.1-​2.98 So too, the theorematic
method of the Liber de causis allured scholastic philosophers from before the
time of Berthold and well into the 15th century.99 Berthold’s conclusion that
the Elementatio incalculably surpassed its Peripatetic contenders because of its
realisation of the theorematic method shows the common ground he shared
with his opponent and the limitations of his critique, especially if we compare
it with the later efforts of Nicholas of Cusa and Marsilio Ficino.100 The goal

rationibus texens, quae nunc quidem qua egrediaris introeas, nunc vero quo introieris egre-
diare, an mirabilem quendam divinae simplicitatis orbem complicas? […] Tum illa: Minime,
inquit, ludimus remque omnium maximam dei munere, quem dudum deprecabamur, exegi-
mus. Ea est enim divinae forma substantiae, ut neque in externa dilabitur nec in se externum
aliquid ipsa suscipiat, sed, sicut de ea Parmenides ait, πάντοθεν εὐκύκλου σφαίρης ἐναλίγκιον
ὄγκῳ rerum orbem mobilem rotat dum se immobilem ipsa conservat. Quodsi rationes quoque
non extra petitas sed intra rei quam tractabamus ambitum collocates agitavimus, nihil est
quod admirere, cum Platone sanciente didiceris cognatos, de quibus loquuntur, rebus oport-
ere esse sermones.
96 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 65, l. 419-​420: divina tractantes effici-
untur di et cognoscunt divina. There may also be an echo of the watchtower (specula) of
providence at Expositio, 202F, p. 188, l. 228-​231, translated at 2.2, n. 55, above. Cf. Boethius,
Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iv, prosa 6, §30, p. 125, l. 117-​119.
97 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 197I, p. 139, l. 220-​221: In statu enim generationis potest
enumeratas quinque cognitionum species exercere, prout minus vel plus ab his corporalibus
separaverit.
98 Boulnois, Métaphysiques rebelles, p. 126–​131, as well as p. 12, 25, and 35.
99 For literature on the theorematic method in the 12th century and a study of its impor-
tance in the 15th century, see M. Meliadò, “Axiomatic Wisdom. Boethius’ De hebdoma-
dibus and the Liber de causis in Late-​Medieval Albertism”, in Bulletin de philosophie
médiévale 55(2013), p. 71–​131, at p. 94–​116.
100 S. Gersh, “Berthold of Moosburg, Nicholas of Cusa, and Marsilio Ficino as Historians of
Philosophy” (forthcoming), shows how, in Nicholas, learned ignorance and the method
Conclusion 353

presupposed by the Expositio and the means used to achieve it were inherited
from this tradition it sought to overcome. From Berthold’s perspective, one
could say, the outward appearance of a propositional metaphysics of being in
the Liber de causis promised the sought-​after ladder to the divine, but its con-
tent fell short of the ascesis or self-​criticism demanded by its method. Only
a theorematic metaphysics of the Good, as Boethius himself had attempted
in a more incipient way in the De hebdomadibus, could secure the passage to
intelligentia.
The Expositio, then, belonged solidly within the medieval tradition of met-
aphysics as a spiritual exercise.101 A major assumption that Berthold shared
with the Church Fathers and the Neoplatonic commentators of late antiquity
(and, incidentally, not with Boethius), was his view that the highest fruition
and goal of human life is to be sought in the exegesis of an inspired text. This
meant that the end sought in the science could not be entirely separated from
the method used to reach it.102 In Berthold’s Procleanised reading of Dietrich
of Freiberg, the unum animae and the agent intellect are perpetually active in
the soul. For him, this accorded with Boethius’ metaphorical account of recol-
lection and the ember or “seed of truth” that is aroused by teaching. Both the
ground of the soul and the ancient wisdom familiar with it had been concealed
by forgetfulness, but this did not affect their actuality. Otherwise, Tauler could
not have preached what he did about Proclus and his familiarity with the soul’s
ground.
If the ascent up the ladder of theorems is a spiritual exercise in that it forms
a divinising habitus, then it is in Berthold’s exegetical methods that we would
learn how the rungs are navigated. As we have seen, there are two methods in
the Expositio: the historical (suppositum, propositum) and the syllogistic (com-
mentum). In both cases, each proposition of the Elementatio is found to con-
tain unconfusedly within itself an entire tradition of philosophical speculation
and a sequence of syllogistic arguments. By discursively unfolding the content
that is latent in each proposition and comment, the compilator and theoricus
set out the necessary conditions for the movement back from plurality to unity.
The difficulty of this spiritual exercise consists in moving from the divided to

of conjecture replaced axiomatics, while for Ficino axiomatics in fact concealed the true
Platonic doctrine.
101 On this tradition, see Boulnois, Métaphysiques rebelles, p. 21–​62. Imbach, “Au-​delà de la
métaphysique”, p. 389, associates Berthold with the same tradition.
102 For a similar conclusion about unity of the content and method in the Expositio that
focuses on the meaning of principium in the three prefaces, see Gersh, “Berthold of
Moosburg and the Content and Method of Platonic Philosophy”.
354 Conclusion

the unified in such a way that the unified does not dissolve differences, as an
abstraction would, but gathers them up like a separate universal. To whatever
extent this is achieved, it coincides with the awakening of the unum animae,
the exercise of the perspicacity of the mind, and the beginning of the habit
of supersapientia. For the commentator, the Dionysian motto that theology
must proceed “not according to ourselves” must be understood in a double
sense, exegetical and philosophical, and in both senses it was recollection.103
To mend the torn vesture of Lady Philosophy was to ascend the ladder embla-
zoned upon it.
In the analysis of Berthold’s understanding of the macrocosm and micro-
cosm in Part 2, we have found that his project involved an ongoing dialogue
with Dietrich of Freiberg’s works.104 It is in the thought of Berthold’s “mod-
ern sage” (sapiens modernus) that the interplay of philosophical insight and
forgetfulness is also most apparent. Certain notions from Dietrich were iden-
tified by Berthold as authentically Platonic and were therefore embellished
(absoluta essentia secundum se non habet rationem boni; transfusio interior;
causa essentialis; maneries; ens secundum speciem; the agent intellect as the
essential cause of the soul), some were openly criticised as Aristotelian (the
transcendentia with the priority of ens, and the concomitant doctrine that
intellectus efficit universalitatem in rebus), while others were handled ambiva-
lently (the gods as intellectus in actu per essentiam). Berthold’s multiplication
of cosmological principles (infinities, beings, lives) followed from his applica-
tion of a few basic patterns of causal ordering from Proclus that he interpreted
through Dietrich.105 He was led down these paths, far indeed “beyond the com-
mon path of reasonings”, because he could not share Dietrich’s hypothetical
attitude to the divine science of the philosophers. If the metaphysics of the
Good was perfectly realised in antiquity, it was no longer necessary to hypoth-
esise about the separate substances within the constraints of the metaphysics
of being. With this he jettisoned Dietrich’s elegant Pauline distinction between
the transience of the philosophers’ worldly scientia and the enduring caritas
of practical life that looks beyond the boundaries of this world. For Berthold,
the aim was to harmonise the microcosm as far as possible with the macro-
cosm, where the heavenly souls must already exercise the kind of providential

103 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Praeamb. C, p. 64, l. 410-​417.

104 Sturlese, Homo divinus, p. 143: “Als Berthold die Entscheidung traf, die Philosophie
Dietrichs in Form eines Prokloskommentars zu durchdenken […]”.
105 See, for example, Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Prol. 4, p. 11, l. 201 –​p. 12, l. 242; Prol.
19, p. 28, l. 745 –​p. 30, l. 828; 1D, p. 77, l. 228 –​p. 78, l. 246; 8B, p. 158, l. 34 –​p. 161, l. 141; 65F,
p. 203, l. 102 –​p. 204, l. 114; 113A, p. 33, l. 10 –​p. 34, l. 62; 133E, p. 37, l. 133 –​p. 38, l. 161.
Conclusion 355

cognition to which individuals aspire in patria106 –​in other words, to live in

accordance with the human nature that abides in Paradise, as the Clavis taught
from the Fathers, or in Platonic terms, that abides in being (in ente) and the
order of natural providence.107 Whereas Dietrich only acknowledged the pos-
sibility of a transitory raptus, for Berthold the contemplative ascent can and
should pass over into the non-​reflexive cognition of providence that mirrors
the ecstasy of divine love and “the goodness of silence”. Berthold was emphatic
that deification did not entail a dissolution of human individuality or human
nature in God. Rather, it amounted to a harmonisation of the individual with
human nature and the divine will through the unum animae.108 In this regard,
the individual is restored to the natural providence that guides the macro-
cosm. As Berthold’s older contemporary put it, the highest bliss in this life is to
be moved by the same love that moves the sun and the other stars.
It is here that parallels with some of Berthold’s closer contemporaries, espe-
cially Meister Eckhart, Henry of Ekkewint, or John Tauler, began to emerge.109
Deification, as Berthold understood it through Proclus, Dionysius, the Clavis
physicae, and Bernard of Clairvaux, is when the lower is elevated beyond itself
to union with the higher, becomes transfused with the abundance it receives
from above, and communicates that bounty to what is below. Nature is not
destroyed; rather, the divided is taken up into an active unity or the unified
coordination of its parts. What changes is that the Good itself now operates
through the creature. As the Clavis put it, nothing is “seen” in the creature
except God, for, in other words, the creature has become a cooperator with the
divine. We may appreciate how careful Berthold was when he gave proof that

106 See, for example, Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 185G-​M, p. 23, l. 310 –​p. 28, l. 471.
107 Berthold would have likely agreed with Eckhart’s declaration that “the blessedness Christ
brought us was ours”. See Meister Eckhart, Predigt 5b (First Sunday after Trinity), ed.
J. Quint, p. 87, l. 5-​6: Diu saelicheit, der er uns zuo truoc, diu was unser.
108 To take one example from the conclusion of Eckhart’s most widely disseminated work
in the Middle Ages, Die rede der underscheidunge, ed. J. Quint, Die deutschen Werke, vol. 5
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1963-​1987), c. 23, p. 309, l. 3-​5: Der allen sînen willen hât und sînen
wunsch, der hât vröude; daz enhât nieman, dan des wille und gotes wille alzemâle einez ist.
Die einunge gebe uns got. Âmen. (“Whoever has all his will and his desire has joy; no one
has this unless his will and God’s will are entirely one. May God give us union. Amen.”).
109 Cf. L. Sturlese, “Die Kölner Eckhartisten. Das Studium generale der deutschen Dominikaner
und die Verurteilung der Thesen Meister Eckharts”, in A. Zimmermann (ed.), Die Kölner
Universität im Mittelalter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989), p. 192–​211, reprinted in Sturlese, Homo
divinus, p. 119–​135, at p. 134: “die Strategie Bertholds bestand darin, durch den Rückgriff
auf die Philosophie Dietrichs von Freiberg und durch ihre Einbettung in den denk-
geschichtlichen Kontext der platonischen Tradition die spekulativen Instanzen Eckharts
weiterzuführen. Dies ist die historische Bedeutung seines grossen Prokloskommentars.”
356 Conclusion

Proclus traversed all three motions of the soul by citing passages that are effec-
tively reports of an experience of the circular motion (the soul encountering
its “sisters” in the heavens and moves beyond them to Boethian intelligentia)
and the direct motion (beginning from creatures and culminating in the intel-
lectus adeptus and unum animae). In both cases, it seems the description of the
exercise of this higher mode of knowing was a report of the experience of the
doctrine of deification described objectively at 129B. The divided parts of cre-
ation are seen to be held together by a unity actively transfusing them, which
the Asclepius had likened to “the torrent of divinity”, or which St. Benedict saw
as a single ray of light enfolding the entire universe. Once the perspicacity of
the mind has been exercised and puritas intellectualis has been received, the
experience of the intellectus adeptus and unum animae is of creatures suddenly
becoming transparent to their exemplar, just as the air is filled with light.110
In the exercise of the oblique motion that prepares for that vision, the unum
animae is presupposed and gradually awakened; in each theorem or rung of the
ladder, when the divided is gathered into a unity, the inherently dispossessive
cognition of this principle (Dionysius: nullius neque sui ipsius neque alterius /​
melius est enim esse Dei et non nostri ipsorum; Proclus: sunt non sui ipsarum, sed
illustrantium) is communicated more and more to the rest of the soul as the
habitus is cultivated. As long as reason follows this motion, creatures will only
seem to be “vestiges” of their ideas, contradictions and oppositions that beckon

110 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, Expos. tit. C, p. 39, l. 73-​78. Cf. Meister Eckhart,
Predigt 103 (First Sunday after Epiphany), ed. G. Steer, Die deutschen Werke, vol. 4
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2003) p. 487, l. 121 –​p. 489, l. 140. English translation: Meister
Eckhart, The German Works. De tempore, p. 267–​269: “Now you may say: Ah, Lord, you
mean, this birth should happen, so that the Son be born in me. Ah, can I have a sign
by which I know that it has happened? Of course! Three true signs! Of them I will now
mention one. I am often asked whether man can achieve that he is not hindered by time,
crowd or matter. Yes, in truth, when this birth has taken place in truth, none of the crea-
tures will hinder you; rather, they all point you to God and to this birth. Take lightning as
an example. Whatever the lightning hits, it strikes; whatever it hits, be it a tree, an animal
or a man, it turns it immediately to itself. And if a man had turned his back to it, in this
moment it would turn him round to face it. If a tree had a thousand leaves, they would
all turn right side up towards the strike. See, so it happens with all who are touched and
struck by this birth, they will suddenly turn to this birth with everything that is pres-
ent. Yes, as far as something can be coarse, yes, what before was an impediment for you,
now will fully help you. Your face, therefore, will be turned towards this birth. Indeed,
everything that you see or hear, whatever it is, you can only grasp in all things nothing but
this birth. Indeed, all things become the naked God, as in all things you cannot recognize
or love but the naked God. Just as if man had looked for a long time into the sun in heaven,
what he sees after that is that the sun is placed in him. If you fail to search for God, to
grasp and love Him in all things and in each thing, there you miss this birth.”
Conclusion 357

for resolution. This persists all the way up to the rational apprehension of the
primordial causes, where the distinct cosmic genera have their source. But to
move from that most unified state of the possible intellect to the “altogether
at once” (cuncta simul) of beatifying intelligentia, either in its fleetingness or
permanence, was not an automatic process for Berthold. It was the result of
a divine work in the soul, as the best of the Platonists, pagan and Christian,
acknowledged. This was the philosophical revelation of divinalis supersapien-
tia Berthold of Moosburg discerned in the distant past. In it he recognised an
opportunity for the reform of theology by the recovery of the Platonic under-
standing of how nature and the soul are rooted in God, which the mind seems
so predisposed to ignore. If we must conclude that Berthold has blurred the
old boundary between nature and grace,111 and that the kinds of revelation
involved are plural, this is because the hardened divisions we would employ to
bring the conversation to a reassuring close are ill-​suited to capture the lowly
contemplator’s transient vision of a greater consensus.
111 Cf. Meister Eckhart, Die rede der underscheidunge, c. 23, p. 306, l. 10 –​p. 308, l. 3. English
translation: Meister Eckhart, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense,
p. 284–​285: “There was a man who would dearly have liked to make a stream flow through
his garden, and he said: ‘If the water could be mine, I should not care what sort of channel
brought it to me, iron or timber, bone or rusty metal, if only I could have the water.’ And
so anyone is quite wrong who worries about the means through which God is working his
works in you, whether it be nature or grace. Just let him work, and just be at peace.”
Translation

∵
Note on the Translation

The three prefaces of Berthold’s commentary (Prologue, Exposition of the

Title, Preamble) have been translated from the critical edition in the Corpus
Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi: Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio
super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Prologus, Propositiones 1-​13, eds M.R.
Pagnoni-​Sturlese, L. Sturlese (Hamburg: Meiner, 1984), p. 5-​69. The transla-
tion incorporates the notes from this edition with slight modifications and
additions, the most substantial being the new references to Thomas of York’s
Sapientiale, which was frequently Berthold’s direct source.

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_011

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
Prologue

The invisible things of God, from the creation of the

world, are beheld, being understood through the
things that are made.
Romans 1:20.

∵
[1] The greatest theologian of divinising wisdom, Paul, was aware of the hidden
things of God because he was rapt into the third heaven.1 Speaking of those
who are wise in worldly philosophy –​after stating,2 “What is known of God is
manifest to them, for God revealed it to them” –​he adds, “The invisible things
of God”, etc.
Now, Ambrose, in the Hexaemeron,3 which is found in the Gloss on these
verses,4 says this: “God, whose nature is invisible, fashioned a work, so that
he might be known from what is visible. By its visibility, the work points to its
maker, so that the uncertain might be known through the certain, and so that
the maker of this work (which could not possibly be made by human hands),
would be believed to be the God of all.”
»“For the ways to the creator”, as Gundissalinus writes in his book On Creation,5
“are his works. When we diligently turn our attention to these, we are able to reach
the understanding of any hidden thing of God whatsoever”; indeed, “the crafting
of the world is the setting-​forth of the invisible things of God”, as Dionysius says to
Titus.6«7 »Al-​Ghazali alludes to this in treatise 3 of his Metaphysics, ­chapter

1 2 Corinthians 12:2-​4.
2 Romans 1:19. “Revelavit”: cf. Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, ed. I. Brady
(Grottaferrata: Collegium S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1971–​19813), lib. i, d. 3, c. 1, §1,
p. 69, l. 8.
3 Ambrosiaster, Commentarius in epistulas Paulinas. Pars prima. In epistulam ad Romanos, ed.
H.J. Vogels (Wien: Hoelder /​Pichler /​Tempsky, 1966), In Rom. 1:19, p. 39, l. 28 –​p. 41, l. 3; apud
Peter Lombard, Sententiae, lib. i, d. 3, c. 1, §2, p. 69, l. 11-​14.
4 Cf. Peter Lombard, Collectanea in Epistulas d. Pauli, In Rom. 1:18-​19 (pl 191, 1326C-​D).
5 Dominicus Gundissalinus, De processione mundi, ed. G. Bülow, Des D. Gundisalvi Schrift von
dem Hervorgange der Welt (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1925), p. 2, l. 1-​3.
6 Dionysius, Epistulae, ix.2 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 642; pg 3, 1108B).
7 Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 7 (F f. 7va). All references to the Sapientiale are to ms
Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Soppr. A.VI.437 (henceforth F).

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_012

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
Prologue 363

11:8 the first principle is known only as the hidden is known through what is
manifest, that is, as the exemplar is known through the exemplated, which are
his works and attributes,«9 »for, according to Rabbi Moses in The Guide of the
Perplexed, ­chapter 33,10 “there is no way to the creator we seek except through
his creatures, for these prove his existence and what one must believe about
God”.«11
Dionysius, however, shows that God is a nature invisible not only to the bod-
ily and the spiritual eye, but even the eye of the mind, as he says in c­ hapter 1 of
On the Divine Names:12 “Certainly the knowledge and contemplation of what he
is (that is, God) is inaccessible to all beings, for the Good is supersubstantially
separated from all. You will find that many theologians have praised him not
only as invisible and incomprehensible, but also as inscrutable and unsearcha-
ble, just as those who have passed over into his hidden infinity have left no trace
behind. And yet the Good is not entirely incommunicable to any being; indeed,
he establishes singularly the supersubstantial ray within himself, and benevo-
lently sheds forth illuminations proportioned to every being, and elevates holy
minds to the contemplation of him and to communion and assimilation with
him, as far as possible.” Thus Dionysius. Damascene alludes to this in Book i, at
the beginning,13 when he says: “He does not forsake us in complete ignorance,
for he naturally implants in us the knowledge of his existence.”
And so, as is said in the Sentences,14 man has been assisted to know God in
two ways: “from rational nature, and from the works made by God,” which man-
ifest the maker. I say, “from nature” because “what is known of God is manifest
to them”.15 The Gloss explains:16 this refers to what can be known about God by
the guidance of reason. And I say, “from works”, “for creation itself”, according

8 Cf. Al-​Ghazali, Metaphysica, ed. J.T. Muckle, Algazel’s Metaphysics. A Medieval Translation
(Toronto: St. Michael’s College, 1933), pars i, tr. 3, c. 11, p. 87, l. 3-​6.
9 Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 4 (F f. 5rb).
10 Moses Maimonides, Dux seu director dubitantium aut perplexorum (Paris: Ascensius,
1520), lib. i, c. 33, f. 12v.
11 Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 3 (F f. 3va).
12 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 1.2 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 13–​15; pg 3, 588C-​D).
13 John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, ed. E.M. Buytaert (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan
Institute, 1955), lib. i, c. 1, p. 12, l. 21-​23 (pg 94, 789B); apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib.
i, c. 5 (F f. 5vb).
14 Cf. Peter Lombard, Sententiae, lib. i, d. 3, c. 1, §1, p. 69, l. 6-​7; apud Albert the Great, Summa
theologiae sive de mirabili scientia Dei. Libri I, pars I. Quaestiones 1-​50A, ed. D. Siedler
(Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1978), pars i, tr. 3, q. 13, a. 4, p. 46, l. 12-​15.
15 Romans 1:19.
16 Cf. Peter Lombard, Collectanea in Epistulas d. Pauli, In Rom. 1.18-​19 (pl 191, 1326B).
364 Prologue

to Damascene in the passage just mentioned,17 “its permanence, and its gov-
ernance declare the greatness of the divine nature”. For this reason, those scru-
tinising the works of the creator are reproved in Wisdom, ­chapter 13,18 because
they did not know the creator from those works, for “from the greatness and
beauty of the creature their creator could be seen by knowledge”.19 And so,
according to Hugh, commenting on the Hierarchy of Dionysius,20 “nature, hav-
ing been established in servitude, pointed to its creator”.
Indeed, according to Augustine in Book iv of The Literal Commentary on
Genesis,21 “there is no knowledge that is not preceded by objects to be known;
these, moreover, are first in the Word, though which all things are made, before
they are in all things that have been made. Thus, the human mind first expe-
riences through bodily sense those things that have been made and derives
knowledge of them only in a small measure because of human weakness. It
then seeks after their causes, if in some way it can attain them, which primar-
ily and immutably abide in the Word of God. Thus, it beholds the invisible
things of the Word through the things which are made, once these things are
understood. But who is unaware of how sluggish and dull the mind is at doing
this, with what difficulty the mind undertakes it, and how long the mind tar-
ries because of the corruptible body that weighs down the soul, even when it
is caught up with a most fervent zeal to undertake this search earnestly and
diligently?”
[2] From all the foregoing, therefore, it follows that “the invisible things of
God”, etc.
In these words introduced from Paul, we may consider three things: what
is beheld, since it says “the invisible things of God”; from what and in what
they are beheld, because it has “from the creation of the world”; and that
through which they are beheld, because it has “through those things, which
are made”, etc.
The first denotes the object to be understood; in the second, following a
twofold interpretation, we have the subject to be pondered and the subject to
be exercised and elevated; finally, the middle term that has been brought into
view is discerned and analysed.

17 John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, i.1, p. 12, l. 23-​24 (pg 94, 789B).
18 Wisdom of Solomon 13:1-​4.
19 Wisdom of Solomon 13:5; cf. Augustine, De Trinitate, eds W.J. Mountain, F. Glorie
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1968), xv.2.3, p. 462, l. 36-​45.
20 Hugh of St. Victor, Commentaria in Hierarchiam caelestem, i.1 (pl 175, 926A).
21 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, ed. J. Zycha (Wien: Tempsky, 1894), iv.32.49, p. 129, l. 25 –​
p. 130, l. 10.
Prologue 365

The object ultimately to be contemplated is, as it were, inscrutable, illimit-

able, and ineffable. For who shall thoroughly seek out the invisible things of
God? Who shall lay hold of, I dare not say comprehend, the illimitable? Who
shall describe the ineffable? For “the seeker shall be overcome by glory”;22
the intruder into immensity shall be charged with wrongdoing; the one who
declares the unsayable through their senselessness shall be laughed to scorn.
The subject especially to be pondered is fourfold: the bodily, the spiritual,
the intellectual, and the unifical. Similarly, the subject especially to be exercised
and elevated is threefold according to Augustine,23 but fourfold according to
Dionysius:24 the bodily, the spiritual, the mental, and the unifical visual power.
The middle term that is really beheld, discerned, and analysed is also four-
fold: the bodily, the animated, the intellectual, and the unifical.
[3] Regarding the first, know that the invisible things of God can be
taken in two ways: either intransitively or transitively.
In the first way, it means the following: the invisible things of God are God,
as we read in the First Letter to Timothy, ­chapter 1:25 “Unto the King of ages,
the immortal” (the Gloss:26 “immutable”), “invisible” (the Gloss: “incomprehen-
sible”), “the King of ages” (the Gloss: “the Trinity”).
Augustine, in his book On Seeing God, c­ hapter 2,27 discussing the words of
Ambrose, says this: “God is an invisible nature.” And later:28 “Undoubtedly the
error of the Arians is increased if it is believed that the Father’s nature is invis-
ible while the Son’s is visible. Therefore, Ambrose affirmed that the nature of
both is one and is equally invisible, and to this he added the Holy Spirit.” And
below:29 “Therefore, God is an invisible nature, not just the Father, but the
Trinity itself is one God.” Thus Augustine. And so not only is the Father invisi-
ble, as some30 interpret the words of the Apostle to the Colossians, c­ hapter 1,31
where he speaks of the Son, “who is the image of the invisible God”; rather, the

22 Proverbs 25:27.
23 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Prologus 20, n. 247.
24 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 15, n. 160.
25 1 Timothy 1:17.
26 Peter Lombard, Collectanea in Epistulas d. Pauli, In 1 Tim. 1:6-​17 (pl 192, 333C).
27 Augustine, Epistulae, ed. A. Goldbacher (Wien: Tempsky, 1895-​1923), 147.7, §19, p. 292, l. 10-​
11; cf. Ambrose, Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam, ed. M. Adriaen (Turnhout: Brepols,
1957), p. 18, l. 369 –​p. 20, l. 432.
28 Augustine, Epistulae, 147.7, §19, p. 293, l. 1-​4.
29 Augustine, Epistulae, 147.8, §20, p. 293, l. 13-​14.
30 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, In omnes s. Pauli Apostoli epistolas commentaria, 2 vols
(Torino: Marietti, 1929), vol. 2, Ad Col. 1, lect. 4, p. 119a.
31 Colossians 1:15.
366 Prologue

Son is consubstantial, that is, coessential with the Father, and thus is invisible
like the Father.
Concerning the invisibility of the Trinity, Dionysius says this in ­chapter 2
of On the Divine Names:32 “In the divine union, that is, in supersubstantiality,
these are all one and common with the primary Trinity: the supersubstantial
Essence, the superdivine Deity, the Goodness beyond good [superbona boni-
tas], which is the Identity beyond all of the complete Characteristic existing
beyond all, the Unity beyond the principiated, the Ineffable, the Pluriluminous,
Ignorance, absolute Unintelligibility.” Thus Dionysius. If God is unknowable,
he is invisible. And below:33 “For all divine things and whatever is revealed to
us are known only through participations. Those things themselves, whatever
they are in their own principle and foundation, are beyond the mind, beyond
all substance and all knowing.” Thus Dionysius. These are the proper invisible
things of God in the strict sense.
There are also the appropriated or attributed invisible things of God,
according to the words of Hugh of St. Victor:34 “The invisible things of God are
three: power, wisdom, and benevolence.”
The invisible things of God are equally the eternal and immutable reasons
existing in the Word of God the Father, according to what is said by Augustine
in Book vi of On the Trinity, ­chapter 10:35 “The Word … is the art of the omnip-
otent and wise God, and is filled with all living, immutable reasons.” Dionysius
calls these reasons “exemplars” in c­ hapter 5 of On the Divine Names,36 where
he says: “We say that the exemplars in God are the substantiating reasons of
beings and that they singularly preexist. Theology calls them the predefini-
tions of beings and the determinative and effective divine wills, according to
which the supersubstantial Substance has predefined and produced all things.”
We read this in the Letter to the Hebrews, ­chapter 11:37 “By faith we under-
stand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that visible things
would arise from invisible things.” Augustine glosses this as follows:38 “What is
meant by ‘from invisible things’ is the invisible world, which was in the wisdom

32 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 2.4 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 76–​77; pg 3, 641A).

33 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 2.7 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 94; pg 3, 645A).
34 Hugh of St. Victor, De tribus diebus, ed. D. Poirel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), p. 3, l. 6 –​p. 4,
l. 7 (pl 176, 811C).
35 Augustine, De Trinitate, vi.10.11, p. 241, l. 20-​23.
36 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 5.8 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 360–​361; pg 3, 824C).
37 Hebrews 11:3.
38 Cf. Peter Lombard, Collectanea in Epistulas d. Pauli, In Hebr. 11:2-​4 (pl 192, 489D-​490A);
Albert the Great, Summa theologiae, ed. A. Borgnet, vol. 31 (Paris: Vivès, 1894), pars i, tr. 13,
q. 55, m. 2, a. 1, p. 560a.
Prologue 367

of God, after whose likeness this visible world was made … This is the arrange-
ment according to which he has arranged all things, so that they would arise
after the manner of the intelligible exemplar that was in God’s mind.” Thus
Augustine.
Augustine himself discusses these eternal reasons in question 73 of 83
Questions in the following terms:39 “Now there are certain primary ideas,
forms, or reasons of things. These are stable and immutable, unlike the things
themselves that have been formed. And so the eternal reasons, which are
held together in the divine intelligence, always exist in the same mode. And
while these never come to be or pass away, everything that can come to be and
pass away, and everything that does come to be and pass away, is said to be
formed according to them.” He says this, and much else besides, in the same
text. Accordingly, he declares40 that “such power is placed in them, that no one
can be wise without knowing them”. Augustine also discusses these reasons at
length in Book v of The Literal Commentary on Genesis,41 and how God knows
all things in them and produces all things through them.
Let these words suffice for now concerning the invisible things of God in the
first sense, that is, when taken intransitively.
[4] But if the invisible things of God are taken transitively, then in this
sense, according to Thomas Gallus, commenting on ­chapter 11 of On the Divine
Names,42 “the divine Good is said to be the Substantiator”, namely, “of his invis-
ible things, which are the rays, so to speak, of superunified Goodness, such as
per se being, per se life, and so on”. Al-​Farabi discusses these invisible things
in his treatise On the Cause of Causes,43 which begins, “The Principle of prin-
ciples”, and states the following: “Therefore, there are exemplars, the primary
causes of things.” And below:44 “The first causes, because of their infinite dif-
fusion over all things and the incomprehensible height of the ineffable purity
of their excellence, are not perceived by intellect, because they are not outside
the First, who formed them in the principle.” And below:45 “The invisible things
are hidden away in the shadows of his excellence, but in their effects –​brought
forth, as it were, into a certain light of cognition –​they ceaselessly appear.”

39 Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus lxxxiii, ed. A. Mutzenbecher (Turnhout: Brepols,

1975), q. 46, p. 71, l. 26-​32.
40 Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus lxxxiii, q. 46, p. 70, l. 10-​11.
41 Cf. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, v.13.29-​v.18.36, p. 156, l. 9 –​p. 161, l. 16.
42 Thomas Gallus, Extractio de Divinis nominibus (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 705b).
43 Liber de causis primis et secundis, ed. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l’avicennisme latin aux
confins des XIIe-​XIIIe siècles (Paris: Vrin, 1934), c. 2, p. 91, l. 15-​16.
44 Liber de causis primis et secundis, c. 2, p. 92, l. 12-​16.
45 Liber de causis primis et secundis, c. 2, p. 93, l. 4-​6.
368 Prologue

Thus Al-​Farabi. Concerning these primordial causes, which Dionysius calls

“per se power”,46 “per se being”47 or “being-​itself”, and so on, and “the principles
of beings”, Dionysius himself says the following in ­chapter 5 of On the Divine
Names:48 “Being-​itself is both more ancient than per se life, and more ancient
than per se wisdom.” And later:49 “I say that he made being-​itself to preexist,
and through being-​itself he made to subsist everything that exists in any way.
And because the principles of beings participate the Being of all, they exist and
are principles; first they exist, and then they are principles. And if the power
of what lives, insofar as it is the principle of what lives, is called per se life …”.
Concerning this passage in Dionysius, Maximus in his Comment writes:50
“There are primordial causes, which the Greeks call ‘ideas’, meaning ‘species’
or ‘eternal and immutable forms’, according to which and in which the visible
world is formed and governed. This is why, among the Greek sages, they earned
the name potyn, which means the primary exemplars that the Father made in
the Word, and which he divided and multiplied in his effects through the Holy
Spirit. They are also called porismata, meaning ‘predestinations’, for in them
all things whatsoever come to be and are made by the divine providence, and
they are predestined all together and at once; for nothing among visible and
invisible creatures arises by nature before it is predefined and preordained in
these causes, prior to all time and extension.” And shortly thereafter:51 “The
ideas are frequently called ‘divine wills’ by the philosophers, and especially by
the Platonists, since whatever God willed to make, he primarily and causally
made in them.” And below:52 “Dionysius and other saints called these forms
or ideas ‘goodness-​through-​itself’, ‘essence-​through-​itself’, ‘life-​through-​itself’,
‘power-​through-​itself’, ‘wisdom-​through-​itself’ … For whatsoever is good, is
good through participation in per se goodness, and whatsoever exists, exists
by participation in per se essence, and whatsoever lives, lives by participa-
tion in per se life (and so on for the other participations and participants) …
Accordingly, no power, either general or particular, is found in the nature of

46 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 8.2 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 418; pg 3, 889D).

47 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 5.5 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 337 [transl. Eriugenae]; pg
3, 820A).
48 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 5.5 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 337; pg 3, 820A).
49 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 5.5 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 339; pg 3, 820B).
50 Commentator, In De divinis nominibus, 5 (ms Paris, BnF lat. 17341, f. 247ra-​b); apud Albert
the Great, Summa theologiae, pars i, tr. 13, q. 55, m. 2, a. 1, p. 559b-​560a.
51 Commentator, In De divinis nominibus, 5 (ms Paris, BnF lat. 17341, f. 247rb); apud Albert the
Great, Summa theologiae, pars i, tr. 13, q. 55, m. 2, a. 1, p. 560a.
52 Commentator, In De divinis nominibus, 5 (ms Paris, BnF lat. 17341, f. 247rb-​va); apud Albert
the Great, Summa theologiae, pars i, tr. 13, q. 55, m. 2, a. 1, p. 560a.
Prologue 369

things, which does not proceed from the primordial causes by an ineffable par-
ticipation.” Thus Maximus.
In ­chapter 11 of On the Divine Names,53 where Dionysius explains in what
sense God was sometimes called per se Being and per se Life, and at other times
the Substantiator of per se being and per se life, he also says this: “We say ‘per se
being’, ‘per se life’, and ‘per se deity’ in a divine sense and in a causal sense: caus-
ally, with respect to the one superprincipial and supersubstantial Principle and
Cause of all, but divinely and participably (we say that) providential powers are
given from out of the imparticipable God, who is the per se Substantiator, the
per se Vivifier, the per se Deifier. Beings, according to their characteristic, exist
by virtue of these and are called participants, givers of life, existents, divine
things, and so on. For this reason (God) is first said to be the Substantiator of
them, then of their wholes, then of their particulars, and finally of what partic-
ipates in them particularly. And what should be said about these? Since some
of our divine and holy teachers indeed call the Substantiator of per se goodness
and deity ‘the Beyond-​good’ and ‘the Beyond-​divine’, calling ‘per se goodness
and deity’ the beneficent and deifying gift coming forth from God, and ‘per se
beauty’ at once the per se beautifying effusion, the whole beauty and the par-
ticular beauty, the completely beautiful and the partially beautiful, and what-
ever other things have been or may be said in a similar fashion, they are point-
ing to the providences and goodness participated by beings. These providences
proceed from God by an abundant effusion and are superabundant, so that
the Cause of all is strictly above all and, supersubstantially and supernaturally,
altogether exceeds what exists according to any substance or nature.” This is
what Dionysius says about the First Cause as such and the primordial causes,
which he calls the thearchy, the agatharchy [principatum boni], the primary
principles of beings, deities, goodnesses, unities, and the beneficent and deify-
ing gifts of the Beyond-​deity and the Beyond-​good, who is the imparticipable
and superprincipial God beyond every principle.
Dionysius’ Second Letter to the monk Gaius should be understood in this way.
It reads as follows:54 “How is it that he is beyond all and beyond the thearchy
and beyond the agatharchy? In this way: if you took ‘deity’ and ‘goodness’ to
mean the exercise of the beneficent gift and the inimitable imitation of the
Beyond-​deity and the Beyond-​good, by which we are deified and made good.
For indeed, if this is the principle of deification and of deifying the blessed,
he is the Superprincipial beyond every principle and beyond this deity and

53 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 11.6 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 521–​526; pg 3, 953D-​956B).

54 Dionysius, Epistulae, ii (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 608–​610; pg 3, 1068A-​1069A).
370 Prologue

goodness, just as he is beyond the thearchy and agatharchy. Insofar as he is

inimitable and incomprehensible, he exceeds the imitations and relations of
what imitates and what participates him.” Thus Dionysius in the Letter.
See how Dionysius declares so plainly that the First Cause as such is beyond-​
god, beyond-​good and is principial beyond every principle, beyond deity and
goodness, and beyond the thearchy and the agatharchy! Accordingly, the
beyond-​blessed Trinity of primary persons, in which “the Father is fontal deity,
but the Son and the Holy Spirit are god-​born of deity, if one must speak in
this way, and burgeonings of the divine nature, and are like flowers and super-
substantial lights”55 –​this Trinity, I say, is “supersubstantial, beyond-​god,
and beyond-​good”, according to Dionysius at the beginning of the Mystical
Theology.56
Concerning these gods –​above which is God, the great Lord and great
King, “the primary God and the one God supersubstantially beyond-​god”,57
who is “exalted in the highest”58 for he is “God the Lord of gods”59 –​Dionysius
writes the following,60 using the words of the Apostle:61 “For if there are gods
either in heaven or on earth, just as there are indeed many gods and lords,
yet to us truly there is one God: the Father, from whom are all things and
we in him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we
through him.”
These gods, as is said in the book On the Existence of Evils,62 “are beyond
beings and are the measures of being, because every being is in them as in
unitary numbers, and yet beings proceed from them”.
These gods are called unities and goodnesses, which God, who is the pri-
marily One and Good, produced, as is said in question 10 of On Providence:63
“Indeed, every god, as I have said already, exists as a god according to the One
(which we emphatically declare to exist prior to intellect), being identical with
the Good and proceeding from the Good. Now, there are two kinds of unities or

55 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 2.7 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 96–​97; pg 3, 645B).

56 Dionysius, De mystica theologia, 1.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 565; pg 3, 997A).
57 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 2.11 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 116–​117; pg 3, 649C).
58 Psalm 96:9.
59 Psalm 49:1.
60 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 2.11 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 118; pg 3, 649D-​652A).
61 Cf. 1 Corinthians 8:5-​6: Nam etsi sunt qui dicantur dii sive in caelo […].
62 Proclus, De malorum subsistentia, ed. H. Boese, Tria opuscula (De providentia, libertate,
malo). Latine Guilelmo de Moerbeka vertente et Graece ex Isaacii Sebastocratoris aliorum-
que scriptis collecta (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1960), c. 2, §11, p. 190, l. 15 –​p. 191, l. 17.
63 Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, ed. H. Boese, q. 10, §63, p. 102, l. 1 –​
p. 104, l. 16.
Prologue 371

goodnesses that the Good produced, being the cause of both and yet remain-
ing one in another way; some of these are self-​complete, meaning per se per-
fect, but others are scattered into what participates the causes. For the ‘one’
and the ‘good’ are threefold: either according to cause, namely, the First, for
he is the Good and Cause of beings and of all goods and unities; or according
to existence, namely, any god existing as one and good; or according to partic-
ipation, namely, the one and good in substances, by which every substance is
unified and is boniform. Every god, then, if it is a unity, is a self-​complete unity,
that is, per se perfect, for it is not the being of another, but of itself. But every
intellect and soul that participates a certain one is unifical, for it is a certain
one that soul and intellect participate.”
From what has been said it is abundantly clear that God, the Lord of gods,
is called “God” in one sense, because he is God according to cause primarily,
that the gods that are produced are called “god” in another sense, because
each is a god according to essence, and, finally, in another sense, that those
who participate deity called “god”, as Boethius says in Book iii of On the
Consolation of Philosophy, prose 10:64 “Everyone in bliss is god; certainly,
God is one by nature, but nothing prevents there being as many gods as you
please by participation.” Now if you object, “So gods according to essence
do not exist!”, I say that the two are not mutually exclusive, since every god
according to essence participates deity inasmuch as it does not have deity
in its superabundance like the primarily God, who is blessed throughout
the ages.
So much for the first kind of transitive invisible things mentioned above.
[5] The invisible things also include the effects of the primordial causes, and
these are either per se perfect or have their subsistence in others.
The per se perfect are, for example, infinities, true beings, lives, intellectual
hypostases, total and partial souls, and what participates in these. Concerning
these primordial causes and their effects, Dionysius says the following in
­chapter 11,65 as was recounted above: “And the good God is first said to be
Substantiator of them (that is, of per se being, per se power, and so on), and
then of their wholes (that is, of the orders that the primordial causes institute;
these orders are called wholes because they are per se perfect), and then of
their particulars (that is, of the singulars of these orders), and then of what
participates in them particularly (in which the perfections of the higher exist

64 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, ed. C. Moreschini, De consolatione philosophiae.

Opuscula theologica (München /​Leipzig: Saur, 20052), lib. iii, prosa 10, p. 84, l. 85-​86.
65 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 11.6 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 523, pg 3, 956A).
372 Prologue

neither first nor per se, such as the intellectuality that is participated particu-
larly in us and by us human beings).”
These are the invisible things of God taken transitively, which are discussed
most subtly in this Theological Elementation within the domain of natural
providence.
[6]‌ For there are also the invisible things of God in the order of voluntary
providence, such as the angels, which, as Proclus says in On the Existence of
Evils, c­ hapter 3,66 are “the class that is the interpreter of the gods, existing in
continuity with the gods. This class knows the mind of the gods and brings the
divine will to light. Surely it is a divine light proceeding from the light abiding
within the sanctuary that appears without, and is nothing other than the Good
proceeding and coming to light first of all from those that remain inside the
One. For it is necessary to make the procession of wholes continuous; but one
thing is by nature consequent upon another because it is similar. Many goods,
therefore, are consequent upon the founts of goods, that is, the number of uni-
ties that remain concealed within the ineffable Fount. Continuous with these
founts is the first number of things proceeding and descending from here, sta-
tioned as it were at the portals, that is, before the gates of the gods, uttering
forth their silence.” Thus Proclus.
The invisible things of God are also human souls and especially the blessed
with their glorified bodies. For bodies that are not glorified are visible, though
there are exceptions to this, for the universal elements, the celestial element,
and certain familiar elements, such as fire as it exists in its own sphere, are not
visible; only compressed bodies, which arrest the visual ray by their density, are
visible. But as to how other spirits are invisible, such as demons, or our souls
with rational and intellectual powers, or how prime matter and substantial
forms are invisible, all of this I pass over for now.
So much then for the first part regarding the invisible things of God.
[7] Now there follows the second part: from the creation of
the world.
In this part, we observe both the “from which” and the “in which” (for “from
the creation of the world” can be taken either objectively or subjectively); here,
in other words, the object to be pondered and the subject to be exercised and
elevated are considered. As to the first, if “the creation of the world” is taken
intransitively, the totality of all things is to be pondered; but if it is taken tran-
sitively, it refers to the being of certain things. The second, what is to be exer-
cised, refers to the perspicacity of the mind.

66 Proclus, De malorum subsistentia, c. 3, §14, p. 194, l. 8-​18.

Prologue 373

Now “world” comes from “adornment”: for “cosmos” in Greek, which is

the same as “adornment”, is translated into Latin as “world”.67 In this way,
“world” can be interpreted either with reference to the macrocosm or to the
microcosm.
[8] The macrocosm, meaning the greater world, is described by Trismegistus
to his companion Asclepius as follows:68 “The world is the immutable work of
God, a glorious construction, a good work composed of a multiform variety of
images, a mechanism of God’s will, who sustains his work without jealousy.”
[9] Regarding this description one should observe that the world is called
a work and not a creature. Perhaps this is because of the primordial causes.
For these, as was said above with Maximus,69 God “the Father made in the
Son, and divided and multiplied in his effects through the Holy Spirit”, and
according to them the visible world is formed and governed. For this reason,
Dionysius says70 that, through being-​itself, God made to preexist “all that he
made to subsist in any way”, for being or being-​itself is one of the primordial
causes.
For this reason, Theodorus in the Key71 does not dare call them “creatures”,
for they are “the heaven of heavens” and “the waters that are above the heav-
ens”.72 As it is written in the Psalm:73 “For he spoke, and they were made; he
commanded, and they were created.” Now, the primordial causes are called
“heavens” [caeli] by derivation, either from “concealing” [a celando] or because
they are the houses of the sun [casae elios], that is, the abode of the highest
God,74 who dwells in darkness and light inaccessible75 “and has made the
shadows his hiding place”.76 All of these notions signify the primordial causes

67 Cf. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri xx, ed. W.M. Lindsay, 2 vols
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), vol. 1, lib. xiii, c. 1, §2; Papias, Elementarium doctrinae
rudimentum (Venezia: Pincius, 1496), s.v. “Mundus”, f. 106v.
68 Asclepius, ed. C. Moreschini, Apulei opera quae supersunt. Vol. iii. De philosophia libri
(Leipzig: Teubner, 1991), c. 25, p. 66, l. 21 –​p. 67, l. 2; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib.
vii, c. 1 (F f. 212rb).
69 Commentator, In De divinis nominibus, 5 (ms Paris, BnF lat. 17341, f. 247ra-​b); apud Albert
the Great, Summa theologiae, pars i, tr. 13, q. 55, m. 2, a. 1, p. 559b-​560a.
70 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 5.5 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 339; pg 3, 820B).
71 Cf. Honorius Augustodunensis, Clavis physicae, ed. P. Arfé, La Clavis physicae (316-​529) di
Honorius Augustodunensis (Napoli: Liguori Editore, 2012), c. 333, p. 71, l. 327 –​p. 72, l. 346.
72 Psalm 148:4.
73 Psalms 32:9 and 148:5.
74 Huguccio of Pisa, Derivationes, eds E. Cecchini et al., 2 vols (Firenze: sismel –​Edizioni
del Galluzzo, 2004), vol. 2, s.v. “Celo” (C123, p. 210, §7).
75 Cf. 1 Timothy 6:16.
76 Psalm 17:12.
374 Prologue

themselves. They are also the “waters” that are above the heavens, according
to the interpretation of Theodorus in the Key,77 where he explains what is said
in Genesis 1,78 “the Spirit of God was borne above the waters”, to mean that
“he is supereminent above established causes in the excellence of knowledge”.
For the God of gods himself, that is, God the Father, “spoke”, meaning he begot
the Son, in whom these most divine things “were made”; he “commanded”
these most divine things, the primordial causes, and all things “were created”
in them, that is, through them, through the Holy Spirit, who divided and mul-
tiplied them in his effects.
Therefore, Hermes said the world is a “work” and, moreover, a work of the
highest artificer, who accomplished his work, the universe of things, within
which the primordial causes are supereminent. It is, I say, a work that is most
perfect, most beautiful, and most orderly.
It is a “work”, which is a word derived from “labour”, because, according to
Cicero in Book ii of On the Nature of the Gods,79 the world is “the sower, the
planter, and the begetter of all things governed by nature and is, so to speak,
the rearer and nourisher that gives nutriment to all things, which are like its
limbs and parts, and contains them”.
It is “most perfect” because, according to Plato in the Timaeus,80 “God the
artificer made” the world resemble the most perfect thing, namely, “the intelli-
gible substance, the nature that is eminent, primary, and perfect in every way”.
Therefore, the world is perfect in every way, and contains all things by imita-
tion, which the intelligible world contains through its essence.
It is “most beautiful”, since it is formed after the fairest exemplar, just as
Boethius sings in Book iii of On the Consolation, metre 9:81

From the supernal exemplar

You lead all things out, you who are most beautiful; the beautiful world
You carry in your mind, and you form it after your image and likeness.

77 Honorius Augustodunensis, Clavis physicae, ed. P. Lucentini (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e

Letteratura, 1974), c. 87, p. 62, l. 4-​5.
78 Genesis 1:2.
79 Cicero, De natura deorum, eds O. Plasberg, W. Ax (Leipzig: Teubner, 1933), ii.34.86, p. 83,
l. 15-​18; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 1 (F f. 212rb).
80 Plato, Timaeus, ed. J.H. Waszink, Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus
(London /​Leiden: The Warburg Institute /​Brill, 1962), 30d-​31a, p. 23, l. 16-​18; apud Thomas
of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 2 (F f. 57rb-​va).
81 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, metrum 9, p. 80, l. 6-​8.
Prologue 375

And likewise, according to Trismegistus, from the same text mentioned ear-
lier,82 “the world is prepared by God as the dwelling place of all species”, and
thus is most beautiful [speciosissimus].
The world is “most orderly”, for it is made in wisdom by the Beyond-​wise, who
reaches from the supernal to the lowest bound, and arranges all things sweetly
in weight, number, and measure,83 or in order, form, and mode.84 For nothing
is without order, as Trismegistus says in the same text,85 since everything that
is made is ordered and “nothing is without the composition of order”. Order,
according to Augustine,86 is “the arrangement that allots to things equal and
unequal their proper place”. For “in all things”, according to Trismegistus,87 “the
world is sustained by order”. For this reason, in Book ii of On the Nature of the
Gods,88 Cicero says that the world is that than which “nothing is better, nothing
superior, nothing more beautiful”.
And so, the world is rightly called “the work of God”, who is the King of
kings, the Lord of lords, the God of gods.89 As Dionysius says in ­chapter 12 of
On the Divine Names,90 “Scripture calls by the name of kings, lords, and gods
the more primary adornments in each [dominion].”
Since, therefore, the primordial causes are the most primary things above
the whole universe, they are kings, lords, and gods. Above them and their king-
doms and dominions is God, the great Lord and King above all gods, above
which he is exalted in the highest.91 There is nothing like his work in all the
kingdoms of the gods. For although they reign and preside in their kingdoms,
as Proclus says in On the Existence of Evils,92 since their kingdoms are partial
universes, that is, parts of the whole universe, they fall short of its perfection.
This universe is the work of the highest God, which enfolds all things and is the
kingdom of all the ages, whose glory even the gods themselves will proclaim,

82 Asclepius, c. 3, p. 42, l. 4-​5; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 1 (F f. 212rb).
83 Wisdom of Solomon 8:1.
84 Cf. Augustine, De natura boni, i.3 (pl 42, 553).
85 Asclepius, c. 39, p. 84, l. 8; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 37 (F f. 42vb), lib. ii,
c. 1 (F f. 51ra).
86 Augustine, De civitate Dei, eds B. Dombart, A. Kalb (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), xix.13,
p. 679, l. 11-​12.
87 Asclepius, c. 39, p. 84, l. 8-​9; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 37 (F f. 42vb), lib. ii,
c. 1 (F f. 51ra).
88 Cicero, De natura deorum, ii.7.18, p. 56, l. 18-​20; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii,
c. 1 (F f. 212rb).
89 Cf. Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 12.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 527; pg 3, 969A).
90 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 12.4 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 535; pg 3, 972B).
91 Cf. Psalm 96:9.
92 Proclus, De malorum subsistentia, c. 2, §11, p. 190, l. 5-​10.
376 Prologue

declaring themselves to be the work of the highest God, who “established it

forever and into the age of ages”.93
[10] And then there follows in Trismegistus: “immutable”.
And this seems obvious with respect to the intelligible world, whether the
supersubstantial or the substantial intellectual world, which is complete being,
and is stable, fixed and immobile, immutable and eternal. For this reason, it is
described by Pliny94 as follows: “The world” is “without beginning and without
end, … sacred, immense, eternal, all in all, and truly is itself whole; infinite, and
yet like what is finite; the most determinate of all, and yet like what is indeter-
minate; enfolding at once in itself all things within and without; at once the
work of the nature of things and the nature of things itself.”
The sensible world, however, is becoming and is not stable or fixed, but is
moving and mutable. Plato in the Timaeus95 also describes it in this way: the
world “is begotten and not eternal, … the object of opinion through fragile
sense, since it is indeterminate, arises and perishes, and never retains a fixed
and stable position”. Thus Plato.
The world soul96 is the nexus of these two worlds, the sensible and the
intelligible. According to Plato,97 it is a self-​moving essence, and thus agrees
with the higher through its essence and with the lower through its animating
motion. And although the sensible world regarded in itself is becoming and
mutable, yet in its totality the world, insofar as it simply enfolds the works
of the beyond-​blessed God altogether, is an immutable work. For every work
proceeding from an immobile cause as such has an immutable essence.98 For
this reason, Pliny says that the world is eternal, and the philosopher Secundus
says that it is “an eternal steadfastness”,99 and thus is an eternal arrangement or
work that remains upright, is ruled over, and is ordered, and thus is immutable.
Behold: “his work is full of the glory of the Lord”!100

93 Psalm 148:6.
94 Pliny, Naturalis historia, ed. K. Mayhoff, 5 vols (Leipzig: Teubner, 1892-​1909), vol. 1, ii.1.1-​2,
p. 128, l. 12-​20; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 1 (F f. 212rb).
95 Plato, Timaeus, 27d-​28a, p. 20, l. 16-​20; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 1 (F f.
212rb).
96 Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 34b, p. 26, l. 17-​19.
97 Cf. Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, ed. J. Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1970),
i.14.19, p. 58, l. 30-​31.
98 Cf. Proclus, Elementatio theologica, translata a Guillelmo de Morbecca, ed. H. Boese
(Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1987), prop. 76, p. 40, l. 1-​2.
99 Vita Secundi philosophi, ed. B.E. Perry, Secundus the Silent Philosopher. The Greek Life of
Secundus (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 8.1, p. 78, l. 13-​14 and p. 94; apud Thomas
of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 1 (F f. 212ra).
100 Ecclesiasticus 42:16.
Prologue 377

[11] And so, fittingly, there follows in Trismegistus: “a glorious construction”,

which means an edifice filled with glory.
Now, glory is defined in four ways. According to Cicero,101 it is the praise pro-
claimed from the mouth of many, or it is a proclamation widely disseminated;
or, according to Augustine,102 it is “recognition with illustrious praise”; or,
finally, it is “what no reasonable person would hesitate to bestow”, as Aristotle
says.103 According to Aristotle, glory makes itself manifest to everyone’s aware-
ness by its nobility and honour. Glory belongs to God in these ways, for only
he can be proclaimed by the mouth of many, because all things declare the
glory of his magnificence and tell of his wonderous deeds104 in the glorious
construction of the world that “he made magnificently”,105 which is also set
forth with illustrious praise before the recognition of all, so that, in his work,
its builder may be “praiseworthy and glorious unto the ages”.106 He appears
here, through his glorious construction, with his nobility and honour before
the face of all who are aware of him, for in it he has made all things noble and
honourable.
Now if, as Proclus says in his commentary on the Parmenides, “the world
is the plenitude of every kind of species”,107 and, »as Trismegistus says in the
text mentioned above,108 it is “the receptacle and container of everything
God governs”, and according to Cicero in Book ii of On the Nature of the Gods,
­chapter 15,109 it is “the common abode and city of both gods and human beings”
and, according to the philosopher Secundus,110 it is “the admirable furnish-
ment” (which means the lofty and beautiful instrument and adornment) –​from

101 Cicero, De inventione, ed. E. Stroebel (Leipzig: Teubner, 1915), ii.55.166, p. 150b, l. 18-​19;
Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, ed. M. Pohlenz (Leipzig: Teubner, 1919), iii.2.3, p. 317,
l. 24 –​p. 318, l. 1; vel potius Glossa interlinearis, in Biblia Sacra cum Glossis interlineari
et ordinaria […] (Lyons: Trechsel, 1545), Ps. 70:8, f. 184v, ex Cassiodorus, Expositio in
Psalterium, 70:8 (pl 70, 498C).
102 Augustine, Contra Maximinum haereticum Arianorum episcopum, ii.13 (pl 42, 770).
103 Aristotle, Topica, translatio Boethii, ed. L. Minio-​Paluello (Bruxelles /​Paris: Desclée de
Brouwer, 1969), iii.3, 118b21-​22, p. 57, l. 24-​25.
104 Cf. Psalm 18:2.
105 Isaiah 12:5.
106 Daniel 3:56.
107 Proclus, Expositio in Parmenidem Platonis, ed. C. Steel, Commentaire sur le Parménide de
Platon, traduction de Guillaume de Moerbeke. Tome I. Livres I à IV (Leuven: Presses univer-
sitaires de Louvain, 1982), lib. iii, p. 136, l. 99 –​p. 137, l. 00.
108 Cf. Asclepius, c. 17, p. 55, l. 13-​15; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 1 (F f. 212rb).
109 Cicero, De natura deorum, ii.62.154, p. 112, l. 30-​31; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib.
vii, c. 1 (F f. 212rb).
110 Vita Secundi philosophi, 8.1, p. 78, l. 12; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 1 (F f.
212rb).
378 Prologue

all of this it follows that the world must be a glorious construction, made not of
timber and stones, but of all sensible and intelligible things. For this reason, it
is called the common abode of gods (whether according to essence or accord-
ing to participation) and of human beings, and especially of those who are
wise in the wisdom that is the virtue and final possibility of every science, and
which is the possession of divine individuals who know all things in the high-
est degree. And this is fitting, for this wisdom is attained through the causes
of all things, which are known through two kinds of toil, namely, through the
labours demanded even of the person who is divine, and through the labours
inherent to the things themselves by virtue of their perfection beyond perfec-
tion, according to which they exceed every principle of knowing. Just so are
the primordial causes, which are in the ineffable Fount of all goods, the God of
gods whose majesty is ineffable and indescribable.
Now, this world is also called “an abode”. This is the orb-​shaped111 abode that
the beyond-​wise Wisdom, who is “an infinite sphere, whose centre is every-
where and circumference nowhere”,112 “built for itself”,113 provoking a certain
sage114 to cry aloud: “O Israel, how great is the abode of God, and how vast is
the place of his possession; it is great and has no end; it is high and immeasura-
ble!” O Israel, you are a man most upright and a man who sees, by virtue of your
lively effort in the study of divine wisdom, how great is the abode of God.115
“The abode of God” is said to be the circuit of all those things in which God
shows himself, either through power, through the effects of nature, grace, and
glory, through his image, or through his vestige. For in all these things the
elegance and glory of divine contemplation are shown. Wherefore, a certain
Israelite declared:116 “Lord, I have loved the elegance of your abode, and the
place of the habitation of your glory.”
The “elegance” of the abode is the beauty of form [formae], because in it
there are wonderous works, works that are lofty, glorious, and concealed. For
“the place of the habitation of his glory”, which is light inaccessible, is beyond

111 Cf. Hermes Latinus, Liber de sex rerum principiis, eds P. Lucentini, M. Delp
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), p. 153, l. 11-​16; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 1 (F
f. 212ra).
112 Hermes Latinus, Liber viginti quattuor philosophorum, ed. F. Hudry (Turnhout: Brepols,
1997), maxim 2, p. 7, l. 1-​2.
113 Proverbs 9:1.
114 Baruch 3:24-​25.
115 Jerome, Hebraicae quaestiones in libro Geneseos, ed. P. de Lagarde (Turnhout: Brepols,
1959), In Gen. 32:28, p. 41, l. 8-​14; cf. Albert the Great, Super Dionysii Mysticam theologiam
et Epistulas, ed. P. Simon (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1978), c. 1, p. 453, l. 35-​37.
116 Psalm 25:8.
Prologue 379

all form [speciem] and elegance, for “the place of his possession” is “vast” and
beyond-​beautiful in a way that can scarcely be imagined. Upon it the Beyond-​
blessed sits as upon the throne of his kingdom, who is beyond-​praiseworthy
and glorious, truly great throughout the ages, of whose greatness there is
no end. And so, he is endless, lofty beyond every height, and immeasurable,
for the infinite sphere “built for himself an abode”117 shaped as an orb, both
regarding things intelligible and things sensible, as is clear to us, and “has hewn
seven pillars”.118
“He has hewn”: from the most hidden living and immutable reasons of the
first and most eminent Art and of the other arts, which God the Father made
in his Word (which indeed is his Art and is the first as such) –​“he has hewn”,
I say, he has polished and rounded out pillars that are most steady, upright, and
fit for his work. “Seven pillars”: the number seven, according to Macrobius in
Book i of On the Dream of Scipio,119 is by its manifold majesty understood to be
fruitful in its parts as well as in the whole of its parts, for its primary fastening is
constructed from one and six. Now, one, which is the monad, is not a number,
but the fount and principle of numbers; the beginning and end of all refers to
the highest God and to the intellect or mind born from the highest God, which,
since it cannot be numbered (for it is one), nevertheless creates from itself and
contains within itself the innumerable species of the classes of things.
Therefore, the highest God, though his paternal intellect, has hewn the first
pillar, which he called goodness, erecting it upon its own stability,120 at the
top of which were six small capitals. These are the primordial causes, which
he constituted in the first perfect number insofar as they are perfect unities;
he has placed himself perfectly upon them, and thus “he made them perfect,
unmixed, and complete goods”.121 And thus »the number six that, when joined
with one, makes seven, is a number with various and manifold religious hon-
ours and powers«,122 which is related back to the primordial causes, through
which and in which the beyond-​wise Wisdom has hewn six other pillars for the
fabrication of its outer habitation: for Wisdom dwells within the inner abode,
just as it says: “I dwell in the high and lofty places and my throne is in the pil-
lars of cloud”,123 of the cloud that is most superluminous and most fecund. Of

117 Proverbs 9:1.

118 Proverbs 9:1.
119 Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, i.6.6-​8, p. 19, l. 19 –​p. 20, l. 3.
120 Cf. Psalm 103:5.
121 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 4.20 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 246; pg 3, 717C).
122 Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, i.6.12, p. 20, l. 21-​24.
123 Ecclesiasticus 24:7.
380 Prologue

the other six pillars it is said124 that “the pillars of heaven tremble (not with
the fear of punishment but with admiration) and are astonished at the com-
mand of him” who made them. The first of these is called infinity, which has
12 crossbeams and two bases upon which it is established, with the first pillar
having only one base. The second is called being, having 18 crossbeams and
three bases. The third is life, with 24 crossbeams and four bases. Fourth is intel-
lectuality, having 30 crossbeams and five bases. The fifth is animateness, with
36 crossbeams and six bases. Sixth is naturalness, greatest in quantity but least
in power; to it the crossbeams of the fifth column are connected, and it has
seven bases. Behold, the dignity of the number seven! And so not without rea-
son is seven called the attendant of the entire edifice by Macrobius.125 This is
the orb-​shaped abode.
And so, it is called “the city”, that is, the city of the great King, because “God
shall be known in her abodes”.126 Oh, such “glorious things are spoken of you,
city of God!”,127 for your entire edifice rises up into a holy and wonderful tem-
ple, into which you too, O primordial causes, have been built together for a
habitation of God through the Holy Spirit!128
[12] With the structure of the abode now in place, there follow its paintings
and engravings, for it is said by Trismegistus to be “a good work composed of a
multiform variety of images”.
It is “good”, which is the essence of any given thing, for it proceeds from the
primarily Good. The world is a whole good because it contains all; it is a for-
mal good through the dynamic influence of superiors into the middle terms,
and of the middle terms into the inferior; it is a good bounded in species and
in parts because it is established in the mutual relation of superordinate and
subordinate, which necessarily is bounded at the limits. Therefore, you should
understand the meaning of the term “good” not adjectivally but substantively.
Concerning “the multiform variety of images”, note that Hermes specifically
says “of images”, because “exemplar” properly speaking pertains to the super-
substantial, “image” to the substantial, and “imitation” [exemplum] to both.
For “likeness” is said relative to all things produced internally or externally, as
well as to things belonging to the same order, as Dionysius says in ­chapter 9 of
On the Divine Names.129 Now, according to Dionysius, there are three kinds of

124 Job 24:11; Glossa interlinearis ad loc., in Biblia Sacra cum Glossis interlineari et ordinaria,
f. 51r.
125 Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, i.6.81, p. 33, l. 29-​30.
126 Psalm 47:4.
127 Psalm 86:3.
128 Cf. Ephesians 2:21-​22.
129 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 9.6 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 468–​472; pg 3, 913C-​916A).
Prologue 381

likenesses: there is a most perfect likeness, by which something is said to be

like itself or like that with which it is identical in absolute being, even though
it is distinct in relative being, just as among divine things the Son is like the
Father; there is a perfect likeness, by which an image is like its prototype or first
exemplar; and there is an imperfect likeness, by which something is said to be
like its cause because it displays some vestige of it. And so, because this primar-
ily active Cause brings forth all things as such, all things resemble it as such,
even though they are of a different and multiform likeness. For this reason, the
philosopher Secundus130 calls the world “a multiform formation”; and, accord-
ingly, this world is said by Trismegistus to be “good, composed of a multiform
variety of images”. »For “image” means, as it were, “imitage” [imitago].«131
To see how this is the case, one should consider corporeal things, spiritual
things, and the things between them.
In corporeal things, this is the case either visibly (for example in reflected
and radiant phenomena), or subsistently (as in artificial or natural things),
whether you consider minerals, seeds, aquatic life, reptiles, mobile animals,
birds –​and this is only to mention things generable and corruptible. Indeed,
among incorruptible things, “look to the heavens, whose aspect [species] is
the glory of the stars”,132 and consider the celestial spheres and the multiform
variety of things moving in these spheres and stars, the eccentric circles and
epicycles, and especially the images in the eighth sphere (the Chaldaeans say
there are 48 of these images, but according to the Indians there must be many
more,133 for they say that in any face among the signs of the Zodiac there are a
variety of images).
Now, leaving behind such things because they are corporeal, open your
spiritual eye and consider the hierarchies of angels, their orders, the things
set beneath them, and their hierarchical acts. Each of these, according to
Dionysius in c­ hapter 4 of On the Divine Names is “an image of God, a manifesta-
tion of hidden light”.134 This applies to either extreme, either corporeal things
or spiritual things: »in bodies an image is a certain external configuration of
bodily features«,135 while in spiritual things »an image is a species belonging

130 Vita Secundi philosophi, 8.1, p. 78, l. 13; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 1 (F f.
212ra).
131 Huguccio of Pisa, Derivationes, s.v. “Imitator” (I49, p. 606, §1).
132 Genesis 15:5; Ecclesiasticus 43:10.
133 Cf. Albert the Great, De animalibus, ed. H. Stadler, 2 vols (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1916-​
1920), vol. 2, lib. xx, tr. 2, c. 2, p. 1310, l. 13-​14.
134 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 4.22 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 269; pg 3, 724B).
135 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, ed. B. Mojsisch, Opera omnia, vol. 1. Schriften zur
Intellekttheorie (Hamburg: Meiner, 1977), 1.1.1.1 (1), p. 17, l. 61-​63.
382 Prologue

indifferently to the thing and that with which it is made coequal«, according to
Hilary in his book On the Councils.136
Finally, as to the middle terms, that is, human beings, who are made by God
»according to his image and likeness«,137 consider the variety of bodily figures
and natures of souls, in whose hidden depths according to Augustine138 are all
true reasons, and according to Boethius:139

Within … there clings the seed of truth,

Which is aroused by instruction fanning the ember.

Even for the Peripatetics the first principles of the sciences and other things
are in the hidden depths of the soul. There is a discussion of this below.140
Now, leaving behind all natural things, consider their limit and the beginning
of things beyond nature: the movers of the celestial spheres, which are both
united to the spheres and separate from them, according to diverse relations,
insofar as they are divine and intellectual souls.141 Each of these possesses all
the species that intellect has primarily142 and, indeed, each is all things: sensi-
ble things in the mode of an exemplar, but intelligible things in the mode of an
image.143 Above these souls are intellectual hypostases, or separate intellects,
that are per se subsistent. Each of these is what is prior to it and what comes
after it in an intellectual mode144 and is the plenitude of species.145 Each spe-
cies is constitutive of things perpetual.146 Above the intellects are lives, and
above these are true beings. Infinites are above these. Above infinities there
are the primordial causes of all things; these are the self-​sufficient, the unpar-
ticipated, the gods. Infinitely beyond them is the Beyond-​god, the Beyond-​
unknown of ineffable majesty.
Behold, what various multiformity and multiform variety of images you
find in the world by a glorious construction, by which the whole good is con-
structed and adorned!

136 Hilary of Poitiers, Liber de synodis, §13 (pl 10, 490B).

137 Genesis 1:27.
138 Cf. Augustine, De immortalitate animae, iv.6 (pl 32, 1024).
139 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, metrum 11, p. 91, l. 11-​12.
140 Berthold of Moosburg, Praeambulum A-​B.
141 Cf. Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 184, p. 90, l. 1-​3.
142 Cf. Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 194, p. 95, l. 1.
143 Cf. Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 195, p. 95, l. 1-​2.
144 Cf. Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 173, p. 84, l. 1-​2.
145 Cf. Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 177, p. 87, l. 1.
146 Cf. Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 178, p. 87, l. 1.
Prologue 383

[13] There follows in Hermes: “a mechanism of God’s will”.

“A mechanism” in that, according to Trismegistus in the same text,147 the
world is “a sort of instrument or mechanism subjected to the will of the high-
est God”. It is called “an instrument” because, just as in a musical instrument
there is a diverse multiplicity of chords and a manifold diversity of things like
and unlike, which produce a sweet harmony when struck in an orderly way
due to their proportion with one another, so also, according to Theodorus in
the Key,148 “the beauty of the whole universe –​established from things like
and unlike –​is constituted like a certain wonderful harmony, which is joined
together out of diverse genera and various forms, and is ordered out of the
diverse orders of substances and accidents in a certain ineffable unity. For just
as an instrumental melody is made up of diverse qualities and quantities of
sounds through proportions of things truly differing from one another, but
which through the skills of the musical art yield a natural sweetness, so too
from one nature’s subdivisions, which seem dissonant among themselves
when regarded on their own, the concord of the universe is brought together
into unity according to the will of the creator.” Thus Theodorus. And so, accord-
ing to Hermes in the Hellera,149 “Knowing music is nothing other than under-
standing the order of all things together.” And below, he writes:150 “By divine
song, the order of singular things, brought together into a whole by skilful rea-
son, produces a concord that is most sweet and true.” Thus Hermes. See why
the world is called an instrument!
The world is fittingly called “a mechanism”, which means a well-​crafted, arti-
ficial, or ingenious construction. “Well-​crafted”, because it is his work, and is
crafted not only out of the dawn and the sun, but out of all things.151 “Artificial”,
because it is the artifice of the highest Art, who is the artificer of all,152 who
looks out upon all,153 and because it is most artfully brought to completion.
And what is more “ingenious” than the works of the Lord, which are great
and highly sought after in all his divine and good wills that constitute beings?
Behold, “how great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are made exceed-
ingly deep. The unwise does not know it, and the fool does not understand

147 Asclepius, c. 16, p. 55, l. 5-​6.

148 Honorius Augustodunensis, Clavis physicae, c. 131, p. 99, l. 15-​25.
149 Asclepius, c. 13, p. 52, l. 17-​18; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 6 (F f. 62rb).
150 Asclepius, c. 13, p. 52, l. 19 –​p. 53, l. 1; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. vii, c. 6 (F
f. 62rb).
151 Cf. Psalm 73:16.
152 Cf. Wisdom of Solomon 7:21.
153 Wisdom of Solomon 7:23.
384 Prologue

it.”154 And above:155 “I will exult in the works of your hands”, because you are
God, from whom all “jealousy is far removed”;156 you sustain your work without
jealousy.157
Let this suffice, then, for the macrocosm.
[14] Now, concerning the microcosm, which is the human being, one must
know what is written by Trismegistus in the text mentioned above:158 »The
human is the nexus of God and the world, existing beyond the world through
two kinds of scientific inquiry, namely, the physical and the quadrivial [doc-
trinalem]. Both are perfected through human reason. In this way the human
is properly called the governor of the world. He is, however, subjoined to God,
receiving his beauties that are not immersed in the world, in extension and
time, through a divine likeness, which is the light of the simple intellect, which
he participates from the God of gods.«
[15] In this description, one must first understand how the human is “the
nexus” of God and the world, which means “a joining”: this necessarily occurs
through likeness. By virtue of this likeness, the human being may be said to be
like God and the world, such that he binds or connects them together.
Here, one should note that the human being, in his composition, embraces
the four primary parts of the universe, by virtue of which he is rightly called
“the small world” or “the creation of the world” and “the nexus of God and the
world”. These parts are body, soul, intellect and the one or unity. Concerning
the last of these, since the first three are obvious, Proclus says this in ques-
tion 10 of the book On Providence:159 “For there lies in us (that is, in us human
beings), a hidden vestige of the One, something that is more divine than intel-
lect.” Dionysius agrees with him in ­chapter 7 of On the Divine Names,160 calling
this kind of one “the union [unitionem] exceeding the nature of the mind (or,
according to the other translation:161 the unity [unitatem] superexalted beyond
the nature of the mind), through which the mind is conjoined to those things
that are above it (that is, above the nature of the mind)”.
The human is “the nexus of God and the world” through these four parts.
For he is assimilated to God and to things divine by the one and the intellect,

154 Psalm 91:6-​7.

155 Psalm 91:5.
156 Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 29e, p. 22, l. 18-​19.
157 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 8, n. 68.
158 Albert the Great, Metaphysica, ed. B. Geyer (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1960-​1964), vol. 1,
lib. i, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 2, l. 5-​15; cf. Asclepius, c. 6-​10, p. 44, l. 3 –​p. 49, l. 17.
159 Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §64, p. 106, l. 9-​11.
160 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 385; pg 3, 865C).
161 Translatio Eriugenae (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 385).
Prologue 385

and to the world and things mundane by the soul and the body. And thus he is
beautifully and perceptively called “the nexus”, “the bond” or “the continuation
of God” through the one, which is like God and things divine –​like God, who
according to Dionysius in ­chapter 13 of On the Divine Names,162 is “One, for he
is all things unitively according to the one exceeding unity” and like things
divine according to essence, each of which is one or a unity, for the human is
such through his highest part –​and is like the intelligible world through the
intellect, which is like things intelligible, whether they be such according to
cause or according to essence.
Furthermore, he is the nexus of God, of things divine, and of things intelli-
gible on the one side, through the one and the intellect, and of animate and of
bodily things on the other side, through the soul and the body.
[16] And then it follows in Trismegistus: “existing beyond the world through
two kinds of scientific inquiry, namely, the physical and the quadrivial”.
Here, one should note that »physical scientific inquiry perfects the human
intellect chiefly insofar as it is related to time, while quadrivial scientific
inquiry perfects it insofar as the intellect is inclined toward extension; for the
speculative intellect must be perfected according to every kind of speculative
form, according to which the true is examined«.163
»Now, things studied in physics are conceived with matter, which is sub-
jected either to motion, to alteration, or both; therefore, the inquirer conceives
them with time, according to which they exist in the temporal thing. As a
result, whatever is known about them is mixed with a great deal of opinion and
lacks the stability and necessity of a scientific habit.«164 »For an unstable habit
necessarily corresponds to an unstable object, as Plato says in the Phaedo.165
Now, forms existing in matter are always unstable –​for they exist, as it were,
in a narrow strait [in euripo], that is, they are seething [in ebullitione] (for a
narrow strait is the seething of the sea as it churns to and fro), and so nothing
certain, nothing stable can be conceived relative to them. For this reason, there
can only be opinion about them and nothing can be known about them, as
Heraclitus said.«166

162 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 13.2 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 540; pg 3, 977C).

163 Cf. Albert the Great, Metaphysica, lib. i, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 1, l. 13-​18.
164 Cf. Albert the Great, Metaphysica, lib. i, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 1, l. 18-​26.
165 Cf. Plato, Phaedo, translatio Henrici Aristippi, ed. L. Minio-​Paluello (London: The Warburg
Institute, 1950), 90c, p. 50, l. 16-​17.
166 Cf. Albert the Great, Summa theologiae, ed. A. Borgnet, vol. 32 (Paris: Vivès, 1895), pars ii,
tr. 1, q. 4, m. 1, a. 2, p. 74a.
386 Prologue

»However, quadrivial sciences, through rational inquiry, receive the medium

of their demonstration according to the defining aspect of the form. Although
the form exists only in physical things and not outside physical things, never-
theless, its defining aspect is not conceived with physical matter; it does not
depend in its essential principles on physical matter but receives the prin-
ciples of its essence apart from physical matter. And so, in all the variety of
physical things, those that are investigated relative to the form remain certain
and stable. Examples of these are the even, the odd, and every proportion of
number in arithmetic, the circle and the square in geometry, the fifth and the
fourth in harmonics, conjunction in a point and every interrelation of the stars
in astronomy, and other things of this sort. And just as these are stable and
free from motion and alteration, so they produce stable habits that possess
necessary knowledge and not opinion. Therefore, they are called quadrivial or
instructional sciences, which do not depend on experience but rather on the
understanding of terms. It is otherwise in physics, where experience counts for
more than learning by demonstration.«167
From the foregoing it is sufficiently clear how physics and the quadrivial
sciences are perfected by the power of human reason.
It is also clear now that, through these, and especially through astronomy
and astrology, the human being is properly called “the governor” of the sensi-
ble world.168 Among all who philosophise, to the astrologers alone it is granted
by divine obligation to be inquirers of the celestial decrees from the consid-
eration of causes that are primary, natural, per se, essential, and sempiternal,
and to be aware of things to come. For these thinkers never depart from the
principles of nature and natural science, just as Haly in his Commentary on
the Quadripartitus169 commends us to follow the procedure of Ptolemy and,
moreover, because, according to Al-​Farabi in On the Origin of the Sciences,170
the wise man is the measure of all things, dwelling among the elements and
parts of the world, gaining the highest delights. And thus, according to Proclus
in question 10 of On Providence,171 he rules the world with the gods.

167 Cf. Albert the Great, Metaphysica, lib. i, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 1, l. 28-​56.

168 Cf. Albert the Great, De intellectu et intelligibili, ed. A. Borgnet, vol. 9 (Paris: Vivès, 1890),
lib. ii, tr. unicus, c. 9, p. 517a-​b.
169 Cf. Haly, Commentum in Quadripartitum Ptolemaei, in Ptolemy, Quadripartitum,
Centiloquium […] cum Commento Haly Heben Rodan (Venezia: Locatellus, 1493), f. 2vb.
170 Cf. Al-​Farabi, De ortu scientiarum, ed. C. Baeumker, Über den Ursprung der Wissenschaften
(De ortu scientiarum). Eine mittelalterlichen Einleitungsschrift in die philosophischen
Wissenschaften (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1916), c. 1, §2, p. 18, l. 20-​26; c. 2, p. 22, l. 27-​30.
171 Proclus, De malorum subsistentia, c. 7, §23, p. 201, l. 7 –​p. 202, l. 9.
Prologue 387

»These two kinds of scientific inquiry form the steps and conveyances
to divinising wisdom, which belongs to the human, not as human, but as
divine.«172
For, according to Proclus in the text mentioned above,173 the human is
divine through the one that is more divine than intellect: “the soul, attaining
this and settling itself within it, is divine and lives by divine life, to the extent
permitted to it”. Thus Proclus.
Dionysius agrees with him, in the text mentioned above. After Dionysius
spoke174 about the union or unity superexalted above the nature of the mind
(or the intellect), “through which the mind is conjoined to those things that
are above it”, he immediately adds:175 “Therefore, it is necessary to think divine
things according to this (that is, the union or unity), not according to ourselves,
but our whole selves placed outside our whole selves and deified whole”. Thus
Dionysius.
Note that he says, “not according to us”, and so on (that is, insofar as we are
human). For “it is impossible for the thearchic ray to illumine us from above
unless it envelops itself, in order to elevate us, with various sacred veils that are
according to us, and that are arranged naturally and in a familiar way by the
paternal providence”, as Dionysius says in c­ hapter 1 of the Angelic Hierarchy.176
»John the Scot and John the Saracen, discussing this passage in their
Comments, state that the created intellect cannot approach God through
knowledge except in reflections and theophanies. Reflections are the lights
scattered in creatures, calling out like a vestige, an image, or a sign; theoph-
anies are intellectual lights descending through God’s influence into angels
and men, revealing the unbounded light that is God, as much as possible.«177
For, according to Dionysius in c­ hapter 1 of the Mystical Theology,178 “God only
appears unveiled and in truth” to those who transcend all things and enter the
darkness. This “divine darkness”, as Dionysius says in the Letter to Dorotheus,179
“is the inaccessible light, wherein God is said to dwell”.
[17] “The human is subjoined to God”, which follows in the description from
Hermes. This means “he is conjoined”, “he is bound”.

172 Cf. Albert the Great, Metaphysica, lib. i, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 1, l. 57-​58 and p. 2, l. 2-​4.
173 Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §64, p. 106, l. 11-​12.
174 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 385; pg 3, 865C); Berthold of
Moosburg, Prol. 15, n. 160.
175 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 385–​386; pg 3, 865D-​868A).
176 Dionysius, De caelesti hierarchia, 1.2 (Dionysiaca, vol. 2, p. 733; pg 3, 121B-​C).
177 Cf. Albert the Great, Summa theologiae, pars i, tr. 3, q. 13, c. 1, p. 40, l. 3-​11.
178 Cf. Dionysius, De mystica theologia, 1.3 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 573; pg 3, 1000C).
179 Dionysius, Epistulae, v (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 620; pg 3, 1073A).
388 Prologue

According to Dionysius at the beginning of the Mystical Theology,180 this

occurs by a strong contrition, through the abandonment of the senses and
intelligible operations, of all sensible and intelligible things, and of all beings
and non-​beings, so that a person, insofar as he is divine, might rise unknow-
ingly, insofar as it is possible, “to union with him, who is beyond all substance
and knowing”. And Dionysius adds181 that it is necessary to go beyond one-
self and all things. Now, this abandonment and excess of all things and union
with God is accomplished by the peace of God that passes all intellect182 –​
the intellect, I say, which, according to Plato,183 “belongs to God and to a few
chosen ones”. On account of this peace, as Dionysius says in ­chapter 11 of On
the Divine Names,184 “souls unite their profuse reasonings, and directing them-
selves toward the one purity that gathers the intellectual power together, they
arrive, according to their character and by their own path and order, through
the immaterial and simple intellect, to that union which surpasses intellect”.
Thus Dionysius.
Behold, what Dionysius called “the mind” earlier in c­ hapter 7,185 here he
calls “the intellect”, above which is the union, one, or unity, »by which, as by
his summit that God planted in human nature,«186 the human is conjoined
or subjoined to God, and through which he enters the divine darkness! “Into
this”, as Dionysius says to Dorotheus,187 “enters everyone, who is held worthy to
know and see God by not seeing and not knowing him, because he is beyond
everything sensible and intelligible.” Take note of the entire Letter.
Proclus agrees with the foregoing in his book On Fate and Providence,188
where, having enumerated three modes of cognition (the opinionative, the
quadrivial, and the scientific), speaking about the fourth kind of cognition, the
intellective, he describes its difference from the third mode in this way:189 “For
scientific knowledge indeed seems to belong to the soul, insofar as the soul
is cognition; whereas intellect belongs to it insofar as the soul is an image of
what is truly intellect.” And below:190 “Imitating this intellect as much as it can,

180 Cf. Dionysius, De mystica theologia, 1.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 567–​568; pg 3, 997B).
181 Cf. Dionysius, De mystica theologia, 1.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 568; pg 3, 997B-​1000A).
182 Cf. Philippians 4:7.
183 Plato, Timaeus, 51e, p. 50, l. 9-​10.
184 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 11.2 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 503–​504; pg 3, 949D).
185 Cf. Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 385; pg 3, 865C); Berthold of
Moosburg, Prol. 15, n. 160 and 16, n. 174.
186 Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, prooem. (4), p. 14, l. 34-​35.
187 Dionysius, Epistulae, v (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 620–​621; pg 3, 1073A).
188 Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, ed. H. Boese, c. 8, §27-​29, p. 136, l. 1 –​p. 138, l. 15.
189 Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §30, p. 139, l. 11-​14.
190 Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §30, p. 139, l. 18-​20.
Prologue 389

the soul itself also becomes intellect, running beyond scientific knowledge.”
And below:191 “After all these cognitions, I want you to receive the fifth mode
of knowing, even though you believed Aristotle, who only leads up as far as
intellectual activity and insinuates nothing beyond it. But now I want you to
follow Plato and the theologians before Plato, who are wont to praise for us
a cognition beyond intellect, and who divulge it as a truly divine frenzy, for
they say this arouses the one of the soul, no longer an intellectual faculty, and
connects it to the One. For all things are known by like: the sensible by sense,
scientific objects by science, the intelligibles by intellect, and the One by the
unifical. Indeed, when thinking, the soul knows itself and whatever it thinks
through contact, as we have said; likewise, when thinking, the soul is ignorant
of itself and other things, and because of that, casting forth its one, it loves to
be at peace, enclosing itself from cognitions, having been made silent. For how
else could it cast itself toward the most ineffable of all without putting to sleep
the chatter within? Therefore, let it become one so that it may see the One; or
rather, so that it may not see it. For by seeing it will see something intellectual
and not what is beyond intellect; it will think a certain one, but not the One
itself. My friend, when someone realises this most truly divine operation of the
soul, entrusting oneself to it alone, to the flower of the intellect, and quieting
oneself not only from external motions, but also from internal motions, having
become god, as far as this is possible for the soul, one will only know in the way
the gods know all things, in an ineffable manner, each according to the one
that is properly theirs. But as long as we are occupied with what is below, we
are incredulous about all these things, which are grasped by the divine knower
indivisibly and in a manner beyond eternity.” Thus Proclus.
Dionysius is of the same mind in ­chapters 1 and 2 of The Mystical Theology,192
which will become clear to an extent in what follows.
[18] In this way, therefore, the human is truly subjoined to God, to the inef-
fable One, through his one, that is, through the divine likeness –​for, by his one,
which is the image of God, by which man is capable of God himself [capax ipsius
Dei] and connected to God, man has the likeness of God, or rather is the likeness
of God and a god by participation –​“receiving”, according to Trismegistus,193
“beauties that are not immersed in the world, in extension and time”.
Here, one should know that »God made the human according to his image
and likeness«.194 And notably it says “his”, for, according to Dionysius in

191 Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §31-​32, p. 139, l. 24 –​p. 140, l. 8.

192 Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 19, n. 224 and 20, n. 236.
193 Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 14, n. 158.
194 Cf. Genesis 1:27.
390 Prologue

­chapter 9 of On the Divine Names,195 “the theologians say that nothing is like
God in himself, who exists above all; yet God gives the divine likeness to those
who convert to him –​who exists beyond all definition and reason –​according
to the power for imitation. And it is the power of divine likeness that converts
all things to the cause.” Thus Dionysius. »Now, every conversion occurs through
the likeness of those that convert to that, toward which they are converted.«196
Therefore, the human is converted to God in this way, to whom he is subjoined,
and receives beauties not immersed in the world, that is, in extension and time.
Consider what we have from Dionysius in c­ hapter 4 of On the Divine Names:197
“the Beautiful is identical to the Good, because all things altogether desire the
Beautiful and the Good, according to every cause, and there is no being that
does not participate the Good and the Beautiful”. And slightly earlier, speaking
about the primarily Good, he says this:198 “This Good is praised by the holy
theologians as the Beautiful, as Beauty, as Love and the Beloved, and whatever
other gifts of beauty befit that beautifying graciousness. Now, the Beautiful and
Beauty should not be divided in the cause that comprehends the whole in one.
For indeed, it is by dividing this [unity] into participations and participants,
as it is found in beings, that we call that which participates beauty ‘beautiful’,
while by ‘beauty’ we mean the participation of the Beautifying cause of all that
is beautiful. For the supersubstantial Beautiful is called Beauty because of the
beauty communicated from it to all beings, according to the degree of beauty
of each; and also because it is the cause of the lucidity and consonance of
universes. For, in the manner of light, it sends out with a flash the communi-
cations of its fontal ray that beautify the universes; and also because it calls
everything to itself, for it gathers all in all into the same. For this reason, it
is named ‘Beautiful’. It is called ‘Beautiful’ as being both most beautiful and
beyond-​beautiful, and is always beautiful according to the same aspect and
the same manner.” And below:199 “And thus it precontains exceedingly in itself
the fontal beauty of every beauty. For, indeed, by the substantial and simple
nature (in other words:200 ‘in the simple and supersubstantial [nature]’) of all
beautiful things, every beauty and every beautiful thing preexists uniformly
according to cause. And from this Beautiful there comes to all beings their

195 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 9.6 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 467–​468; pg 3, 913C).

196 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 32, p. 21, l. 1-​2.
197 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 4.7 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 185; pg 3, 704B).
198 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 4.7 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 178–​181; pg 3, 701C-​D).
199 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 4.7 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 182–​184; pg 3, 704A).
200 Cf. Albert the Great, Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus, ed. P. Simon (Münster
i.W.: Aschendorff, 1972), c. 4. §84, p. 190, l. 44-​45.
Prologue 391

beauty according to their proper measure; on account of the Beautiful there

arise the concords, friendships, and communions of all things; and all things
are united by the Beautiful.” And below, in c­ hapter 11,201 after Dionysius shows
that “per se being”, “per se life”, and “per se deity” are taken in two ways, both
divinely and causally, and, after explaining this distinction, he adds: “And what
needs to be said about these?”, and so on, as was noted above concerning the
invisible things of God.202
[19] From the foregoing it can be gathered that, just as (according to the
author in question 10 of On Providence203) “ ‘one’ and ‘good’ exist in three ways”,
so also “beautiful” is said in three ways.
»“Beautiful” is said either according to cause, meaning the First, for he is
Beautiful«204 because of the beauty communicated from him according to the
degree of each. For he is the cause of the agreement and lucidity of universes,
calling everything to himself, and gathering all in all into the same. And this
is the fontal Beauty that precontains exceedingly in itself every beauty, as was
said.205 It is also the primarily Beautiful, the beyond-​blessed Trinity, such that
what is said here may be understood with reference to it:206 “The eye will mar-
vel at the beauty of the radiance thereof, and the heart trembles at its pouring-​
down.” Behold, the radiance of everlasting light207 and the splendour of the
paternal glory, and the figure of his substance,208 that is, the substantial mark
and image of his goodness! “At the beauty”, I say, that is beyond the most beau-
tiful; and “of the radiance” of the Son; and “the eye of the beholder will marvel”
at the paternal light; and “the heart trembles” at the pouring-​down of the Holy
Spirit upon the glorious souls devoted to the study of the power of beauty. In
just this way the noble Apuleius the African introduces Plato in the book On
the God of Socrates:209 “Plato, who was endowed with celestial eloquence, said
that on account of the incredible and ineffable transcendency of his majesty,
he (namely, the God of gods) cannot be comprehended even in the slightest
degree, and stated that the understanding of this God can scarcely be had even

201 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 11.6 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 524–​526; pg 3, 953D-​956A).

202 Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 4, n. 53.
203 Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §63, p. 102, l. 7.
204 Cf. Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §63, p. 102, l. 7-​8.
205 Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 18, n. 199.
206 Ecclesiasticus 43:20.
207 Cf. Wisdom 7:26.
208 Cf. Hebrews 1:3.
209 Apuleius, De deo Socratis, ed. C. Moreschini, Apulei opera quae supersunt. Vol. iii. De phi-
losophia libri (Leipzig: Teubner, 1991), 3.124, p. 11, l. 4-​10; apud Albert the Great, Summa
theologiae, pars i, tr. 3, q. 13, c. 1, p. 41, l. 14-​20.
392 Prologue

by the wise, when they have separated themselves from the body as much as
possible.” Thus Apuleius.
»“Beautiful” is also said according to existence, meaning any single god that
exists as one, good, and beautiful«210 and as per se beauty, as the per se beauti-
fying effusion, and as total beauty. The beyond-​beautiful and fontal Beauty is
perfectly innate within them, so that he might make them perfect, unmixed,
and complete beauties,211 and thus participants in beauty in the highest
degree. For this reason, they are per se beautiful, per se beauties and are called
the primordial causes of every beauty found among beings, such that it can be
said of them:212 “Praise and beauty are before him; sanctity, holiness, and mag-
nificence are in his sanctuary.” And again:213 “O Lord my God, you are exceed-
ingly magnificent; you have put on praise and elegance and are clothed with
light as with a garment.” In the translation of Jerome:214 “Glory and elegance in
bestowing honour are before his face; strength and exultation are in his sanc-
tuary.” And again:215 “O Lord my God, you are magnificent in the highest; you
have put on glory and elegance, you are clothed with the light that you have
made.” Behold, how the beauty of the primordial causes is most glorious and
fairest, and how exceedingly great is their elegance, their glory, and form, so
also that God himself, clothed with them, is magnified in the highest!
»“Beautiful” is also said according to participation, for instance, relative to
the beautiful that is found in substances according to every variety of their
beauty, either total beauty or particular beauty, and, among the latter, whether
they be totally beautiful or beautiful in part.«216 The following verse can be
interpreted relative to the participants in beauty:217 “The Lord bless you, the
beauty of justice.” “Of justice”, I say, that is divine and “distributes to all, accord-
ing to worthiness, commensuration, beauty, good ordering, and adornment,
and administers all distributions and orders to each according to what is truly
the most just limit, and is the cause of the cooperation proper to all things.
For divine justice orders and limits all things, and preserves all things with-
out admixture or confusion, and bestows to all things what agrees with each,
according to their worthiness.” Dionysius says this in ­chapter 8 of On the Divine

210 Cf. Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §63, p. 102, l. 9-​10.
211 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 11, n. 121.
212 Psalm 95:6.
213 Psalm 103:1-​2.
214 Psalm 96:6, translatio Hieronymi (pl 28, 1203C).
215 Psalm 104:1-​2, translatio Hieronymi (pl 28, 1208B).
216 Cf. Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §63, p. 102, l. 10 –​p. 104, l. 11.
217 Jeremiah 31:23.
Prologue 393

Names.218 And again it is written:219 “The beauty of the field (that is, of the
world) is with me” through the immutable reasons, the archetypical exemplars
of things, the beauties not immersed in the world, but separated and elevated
beyond union with bodily forms. And, notably, Trismegistus says “beauties”
because, according to Plato,220 the artificer cannot make things diverse in
form to have one countenance; indeed, Plato says, “it cannot happen that there
would exist one face that would contain all the forms and countenances of all
things and would display the various appearances of bodies found everywhere”.
For these beauties are “not immersed” but are separate according to the
various degrees of separation of the beauties themselves. After the primar-
ily Beautiful –​which is most absolute, most unlimited, and is simply exalted
above all things –​the per se beauties hold the highest degree of separation,
since they are most immediate and most akin to the primarily Beautiful. Next,
the other beauties of the orders of per se beauties assume the degrees of sep-
aration proportionate to themselves, until we reach total and partial souls,
which are intermediate between the beauties not immersed in the world and
those that are immersed “in the world, in extension and time”.
The human, who is subjoined to God, “receives” these beauties “through the
divine likeness” or image, that is, through the mind or the simple and imma-
terial intellect, which is the image of the primarily Intellect (with regard to
the intelligible beauties that it resembles), and through the one or unity lifted
high above the nature of the mind or simple intellect.221 This one or unity,
because of its supereminence in the entire domain of the soul, is called “light”
or “the simple light of the intellect”, by which the soul resembles the primarily
One and the primordial unities (with regard to their beauties and, above all,
the beauty of the primarily One). For, by his one, the human enters into the
supersubstantial world, the beyond-​luminous divine darkness that, as was said
already,222 is inaccessible, “in which God is said to dwell, and indeed is called
‘invisible’ because of its excessive lucidity, and ‘inaccessible’ because of the
excess of the effusion of supersubstantial light”.223
This beyond-​blessed world is the beyond-​unknown, the beyond-​resplendent,
and the highest summit, “where the simple, absolute, and unchanging theolog-
ical mysteries”, as Dionysius says in the prayer on the Mystical Theology,224 “lie

218 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 8.7 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 434–​435; pg 3, 893D-​896A).

219 Psalm 49:11.
220 Plato, Timaeus, 50d, p. 48, l. 17-​19.
221 Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 17, n. 185.
222 Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 16, n. 179.
223 Dionysius, Epistulae, v (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 620; pg 3, 1073A).
224 Dionysius, De mystica theologia, 1.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 566–​567; pg 3, 997A-​B).
394 Prologue

hidden away in the super-​resplendent darkness of the silence teaching hid-

denly, the darkness that causes to shine forth what is beyond-​lucid in what is
most obscure, and that fills to excess, with beyond-​beautiful lucidities, minds
that are dispossessed of eyes, in what is altogether impalpable and invisible.”
Thus Dionysius.
The mental eye is the simple intellect, and the one that is lifted high above
the nature of the mind is more divine and more luciform than it. “For God
is light.”225 Alan alludes to this in Proposition 6 of On Intelligences,226 say-
ing: “The first of substances is light” and, consequently, “to the extent that any-
thing possesses light, it holds fast to divine being; any substance that is more
luminous than another is said to be nobler than it”, according to Proposition 7
in the same text.227
Therefore, since the one, which we are discussing here, is more luciform
than the simple intellect (which itself is light, as Aristotle says),228 the one is
nobler than it. It is thus the noblest thing that the human participates from
the God of gods –​not through an echo or a passing image, like a mirror par-
ticipates the image of the face over against it, but rather through an impres-
sion, as a seal is imprinted in wax. And so, it is written in the Psalm:229 “the
light of your countenance, O Lord, is sealed upon us”. The Gloss:230 “meaning,
your face is luminous and illumines us, namely, the image, by which you are
known”, now in a glass darkly but, in the time to come, as you are, face to
face.231 For this one of ours is the face or countenance, the hidden depth of
the mind,232 the higher reason, which inheres only in those divine things
that are the object of contemplation.233 By this we are like God, and in it
this light or this seal is impressed. “Therefore, the countenance of God is
taken to be our reason, for just as someone is known by their countenance,
so God is known through the mirror of reason; and just as one person’s coun-
tenance is likened to another by conformity, so through reason we are like

225 1 John 1:5.

226 Adam Pulchrae Mulieris, Liber de intelligentiis, ed. C. Baeumker, Witelo. Ein Philosoph und
Naturforscher des XIII. Jahrhunderts (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1908), prop. 6, p. 8, l. 6.
227 Adam Pulchrae Mulieris, Liber de intelligentiis, prop. 7, p. 9, l. 19-​22.
228 Aristotle, De anima, iii.5, 430a14-​15.
229 Psalm 4:7.
230 Glossa ordinaria (Ps. 4:7) marg., [facsim., v. 2, p. 460b], eds M. Morard, et al., Glossae Sacrae
Scripturae electronicae (Paris: cnrs-​i rht, 2017), accessed 29 June 2020 [http://​gloss-​
e.irht.cnrs.fr].
231 Cf. 1 Corinthians 13:12.
232 Cf. Augustine, De Trinitate, xiv.7.9, p. 433, l. 19.
233 Cf. Augustine, De Trinitate, xii.7.12, p. 367, l. 104-​106.
Prologue 395

God, according to what is said:234 »God made the human to his image and
likeness«.”235
So much, then, concerning the microcosm. Let this suffice for the sec-
ond part.
[20] As for the third part, that is, how the invisible things of God, from the
creation of the world, are beheld, being understood through the
things that are made, one should know that on this matter different sages
among the theologians and the philosophers advanced along different paths.
For Dionysius in c­ hapter 1 of the Mystical Theology236 teaches Timothy the
path that was mentioned above,237 and is as follows: the passage through the
activity of the senses and things intellectual, the abandonment of all things
sensible, intelligible, of beings and non-​beings, and, as far as possible, the
ascent in ignorance to union with him, who is beyond every substance and
cognition. There is also [the path] through the exceeding of oneself, through
separation from all things, and an upward action.238 Here Dionysius gives the
example of Moses.239 Then, when the soul becomes deiform and has arrived
at the apex of contemplation, it contemplates the place where God is, “and
then it takes leave of these sights and seers, and enters the darkness of igno-
rance”.240 Enough has been said already about this darkness.241
Now Plato, as Augustine recounts in Book viii of On the City of God,242 “is
praised for having perfected philosophy by joining both philosophies (that
is, the Socratic and the Pythagorean) into one, which he then arranged into
three parts: the moral, which above all concerns action; the natural, which is
considered by contemplation; and the rational, by which the true is separated
from the false”. Plato and his followers arrived at the knowledge of the invisible
things of God through these parts, as through three paths, so that they could
understand where the cause of all natural things is to be found, the light of all
reasons, and the end of all actions. And thus, they discerned “that in God must
be found the cause of subsisting, the reason of thinking, the order of living”.
The first of these pertains to the natural part, the second to the rational part,
and the third to the moral part. Following these paths, they reached “that which

234 Cf. Genesis 1:27.

235 Peter Lombard, Commentaria in Psalmos 4:7 (pl 191, 88A).
236 Cf. Dionysius, De mystica theologia, 1.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 567–​568; pg 3, 997B).
237 Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 17, n. 180.
238 Cf. Dionysius, De mystica theologia, 1.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 568–​569; pg 3, 997B-​1000A).
239 Cf. Dionysius, De mystica theologia, 1.3 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 574–​575; pg 3, 1000C-​1001A).
240 Dionysius, De mystica theologia, 1.3 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 577; pg 3, 1001A).
241 Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 16, n. 179, and 19, n. 222.
242 Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.5, p. 220, l. 24 –​p. 221, l. 62.
396 Prologue

surpasses everything, namely the one, true, and best God, without whom no
nature subsists, no doctrine instructs, no exercise liberates. And so, may he be
sought, in whom for us all things are serene; may he be discerned, in whom for
us all things are certain; may he be loved, in whom for us all things are right.”
And then Augustine shows243 that Plato advanced along the first path to the
Principle of all things, which is not made and from whom everything exists. In
this way, what is known of God, God showed to them, for the invisible things
of God, and so on.244 Augustine says245 that the Platonists had also understood
God through the second path: “For they distinguished those things that are
beheld by the mind from those that are reached by the senses, not depriving
the senses of anything of which they are capable, nor attributing to them any-
thing that is beyond their capacity. But they said that the light of minds, which
can come to know all things, is the same as God himself, by whom all things
are made.” Finally, Augustine says that the Platonists understood God through
the moral part of philosophy:246 “in this part the question of the highest Good
is discussed, to which all our actions are directed; by seeking it, not for the
sake of something else but for the sake of itself, and by reaching it, we would
be blessed, and there would be nothing further we would require. Therefore,
God is the end, because we will everything else on account of him, but himself
only for his own sake.” This is from Augustine’s teaching in On the City of God.
In question 73 of the book 83 Questions,247 the title of which is “On the
Ideas”, Augustine also says this: “But every soul except for the rational soul is
denied the power to contemplate these (that is, the ideas). The rational soul
does this by that part in it which surpasses the rest, namely, by the mind or
reason, as if by a kind of face or by its inward and intelligible eye. And, indeed,
not the whole soul and not just any soul is said to be prepared for this vision,
but rather the soul that is holy and pure, which has that very eye, by which the
ideas are beheld, in a state that is healthy, limpid, serene, and like those things
that it intends to see.” And below, in the same chapter:248 “Plato called these
primary reasons of things the ideas, which are not only ideas, but are them-
selves true, because they are eternal and remain immutable and self-​identical.
Whatsoever exists, in whatever way it exists, comes into being by participation
in these. But the rational soul, among those things which are established by

243 Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.6, p. 223, l. 45 –​p. 224, l. 53.
244 Cf. Romans 1:19-​20.
245 Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.7, p. 224, l. 16-​20.
246 Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.8, p. 224, l. 2-​6.
247 Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus lxxxiii, q. 46, p. 71, l. 33 –​p. 72, l. 40.
248 Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus lxxxiii, q. 46, p. 73, l. 60-​73.
Prologue 397

God, transcends all things and is near to God when it is pure. And to the extent
that it adheres to God in charity, to that degree the soul is in some way flooded
with that intelligible light from him. Having thus been illumined, the soul dis-
cerns these reasons, not through bodily eyes, but through that primary part
of itself that excels the rest, namely through its intelligence. By the vision of
these reasons the soul becomes most blessed. These reasons, as was said, may
be called ideas, forms, species, reasons; and while it is granted to many to call
them what they wish, it is granted to few to see them in truth.” Thus Augustine.
Belonging to that smaller company was the one who said:249 “Like as the
hart desires the water-​brooks, so longs my soul after you, O God. My soul is
athirst for God, the living fount; when shall I arrive and when shall I appear
before the face of God? My tears have been to me etc., … while they daily say to
me, ‘Where is now your God?’ These things I ponder upon” (in other words:250
“I meditate upon”), as we read in the Gloss,251 “through all visible things. ‘Where
is my God?’, means that I have, so to speak, surveyed the visible things of the
world through the windows of the senses, so that through them I might know
the invisible creator –​and know him not only through these visible things,
but even through my soul itself. For having abandoned these exterior instru-
ments belonging to the bodily senses, my mind returns to itself and begins to
contemplate itself, so that it might see him in itself” (thus the Gloss) in imag-
ination according to imagination, and in imagination according to reason,252
(resuming with the Gloss:) “so that it might recognise him within itself (in rea-
son according to imagination and in reason according to reason), so that it can
understand whether any of this could belong to God himself. And this is what
is meant by ‘I pour out’: that is, ‘I have dilated my soul within me’. But because
my mind finds God neither in exterior things nor within the soul, I shall pass
over, that is, ‘I shall go beyond myself’, to things intellectual, as it were, in this
sense: ‘I have dilated my soul to know those things that are above it’ (so that
it might seek God in intelligence according to reason). For if the soul remains
in itself, and does not go beyond itself, it will not see God, who is beyond. But
why have I done this? Because in this way (that is, through intelligence, that
eye, which according to Boethius,253 is higher than imagination and reason –​
‘for surpassing the boundary of the universe it views that simple Form by the

249 Psalm 41:2-​5.

250 Peter Lombard, Commentaria in Psalmos 41:4 (pl 191, 417B).
251 Peter Lombard, Commentaria in Psalmos 41:4-​5 (pl 191, 417B-​418A).
252 Cf. Richard of St. Victor, De contemplatione (Beniamin maior), ed. J. Grosfillier
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), lib. i, c. 6, p. 102, l. 5 –​p. 104, l. 10 (pl 196, 70B-​C).
253 Cf. Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. v, prosa 4, p. 149, l. 86-​88.
398 Prologue

pure apex of the mind’ –​in this way, I think,) I shall pass over or I shall enter
(by the one of the soul) into the place of the wonderful tabernacle (that is,
into light inaccessible, which is the primordial causes), even into the abode
of God: ‘with the voice of praise and of thanksgiving is the sound of one who
feasts’. I know not what hymns or songs, sweet to one’s heart, are resounding in
that eternal festival. Here, one is taken up like a hart to the water-​brooks and
is soothed with the voice of exultation and eternal praise; here, there resounds
to the mind the wondrous sweetness of the shouts of those who feast, of the
banqueters calling out.”
[21] Perhaps from all of this it is now clear with what great difficulty even
the soul that has been made deiform ascends in this life to glimpse the Fount
of paternal light, whose splendour of glory is the Word,254 “the true light, which
illumines everyone coming into this world”255 (that is, into intellectual purity
itself), and how far from this is »the mind of one who is distracted by cares,
clouded by images, not to mention entangled by bodily lusts«.256
Therefore, with Plato and Boethius, I deem it good that the lowly contem-
plator should resolutely implore the most divine light with supplicant prayers,
saying: O most blessed, most excellent, most revered, most honourable, most
complete, most omnipotent, most free, most sovereign, most virtuous, most
simple Light; remove from those who seek you the innate restriction of nature,
the crooked habitual ways, the indolent discipline, the ignorance of the meas-
ure of intellectual capacity, the aversion to the light of intelligible lucidity, the
dread of such subtlety, the degree of remoteness, the presumption of familiar
intelligibility, the search for too much provability and demonstrability!

And grant, Father, that our minds may climb to your august throne,
Grant the sight of the Fount of good, and grant light
To fix upon you the mind’s unblinded eye!
Disperse the clouds and weight of this earthly concretion;
Shine in the splendour that is yours! For you are serenity,
You are untroubled rest for worshippers, to see you is the end,
You, the principle, conveyance, guide, path, and boundary –​the same.257
254 Cf. Hebrews 1:3.
255 John 1:9.
256 Cf. Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, eds PP Collegii S. Bonaventurae, Opera
omnia, vol. 5 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1896) c. 4, §1, p. 306a.
257 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, metrum 9, p. 80, l. 22-​28.
Exposition of the Title

An exposition of the title prefixed to the Theological Elementation:

Here begins the Theological Elementation of Proclus,
Son of Diadochus, Son of Licius, the Platonic Philosopher

∵
This is the title prefixed to the present book. In it the four causes of the work,
which are customarily sought out at the beginnings of books, are stated
plainly. First there is the primary efficient cause, since it says: of Proclus;
the subjective material cause is touched upon in the phrase Theological
Elementation, which also expresses the directive formal cause and the per-
fective final cause.
[A] Now, the philosopher Proclus was the author of this book. He was one
of the greatest disciples of Plato, and so by prophetic insight he was named
“Proclus”, which means, as it were, “being esteemed from far and near” [pro-
cul cluens vel prope] or “being esteemed before” [ante cluens]; and “being
esteemed” means “exceeding” or “surpassing”. For, according to Papias,1 “I am
esteemed” is the same as “I exceed” or “I surpass”.
For Proclus exceeded by far [procul excellebat] all the followers of Plato and
thus surpassed them all in ability [praepollebat], such that there emanated
forth from him most of all, as it once had from Plotinus, “the very voice of
Plato”, which, as Augustine attests in Book iii of Against the Academicians,2
“is the purest and most lucid in all of philosophy after the clouds of error have
been cleared away” and all the coverings [integumentis], with which the first
Platonists, and especially the Academicians, had concealed Plato’s wisdom.
For it was customary among them, as Cicero says and Augustine recounts in
the same work,3 “to conceal his doctrine and not reveal it to anyone, except to
those who had lived with them up to old age”. And thus Proclus, like Plotinus,
as is recounted in the same text,4 “was deemed to be so similar” to Plato “that

1 Cf. Papias, Elementarium, s.v. “Cluere”, f. 34v.

2 Augustine, Contra Academicos, ed. W. Green (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), iii.18.41, p. 59, l. 41 –​
p. 60, l. 43.
3 Augustine, Contra Academicos, iii.20.43, p. 60, l. 5-​7.
4 Augustine, Contra Academicos, iii.18.41, p. 60, l. 43-​46.

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_013

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
400  Exposition of the Title

one would have supposed that they lived at the same time; but since so many
centuries had elapsed, one had to suppose that Plato was reborn in him”.
Now, the excellence and surpassing ability of Proclus in comparison to the
other Platonists is abundantly clear from the fact that, in the present book, he
gave order to the theorems of Plato himself and explained what he had thus
ordered in a most subtle way. Concerning these theorems, Eustratius says this
in his commentary on Book I of the Ethics, ­chapter 4:5 “Plato passed on the-
orems concerning the first Good that are above contempt; indeed, they are
magnificent conveyers of the soul into what is absolutely highest.”
The excellence of Proclus also appears in the fact that, by ascending through
the three motions that the divine Dionysius ascribes to angels and souls in
­chapter 4 of On the Divine Names, section K6 (which concerns the circular,
direct, and oblique motions), he arrived at the knowledge of the highest Good,
insofar as this is attainable to mortal humans under the guidance of the natu-
ral light of the intellect. As Dionysius treats them in that text, the definitions
of these motions as they belong to the soul are as follows:7 “Indeed, the motion
of the soul is circular when it enters into itself from things external. It is a uni-
form convolution of its intellectual powers, granting inerrancy to the soul, as
it were, in the form of a certain circle, first by gathering it, diffused in many
externals, to itself, and then, with the soul having been given form, uniting it
unitively with the united powers, and thus guiding it to the Beautiful and the
Good, which is beyond all beings, and is one and the same, without beginning
and without end. But the soul is moved obliquely insofar as it is illumined with
divine cognitions according to its capacity, not intellectually and singularly,
but rationally and diffusely, as it were, with mixed and transitory activities; and
from exterior things as from certain variegated and manifold signs, it rises up
to simple and united contemplations. But it moves by the direct motion when,
neither entering into itself nor being moved by singular intellectuality (for this,
as I have said, belongs to the circular motion), it proceeds to those things that
are around it.”
[B] That Proclus ascended by the circular motion, as I have claimed, is clear
from his book On Fate and Providence, ­chapter 6,8 where he shows that reason,
moved insofar as it is reason, looks to intrinsic reasons, and as such “evidently

5 Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, translatio Roberti Grosseteste, ed. H.P.F.

Mercken (Leiden: Brill, 1973), lib. i, c. 4, p. 68, l. 60-​62.
6 Cf. Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 4.8-​9 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 189–​194; pg 3, 704D-​705B); cf.
Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 6 (F f. 6rb).
7 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 4.9 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 190–​193; pg 3, 705A-​B).
8 Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 6, §17, p. 124, l. 20-​24.
Exposition of the Title 401

distances itself from the senses, which it disdains, and is sequestered from
pleasures and pains”. And immediately thereafter he speaks about the uniform
convolution of the soul’s intellectual powers, saying:9 After the motion of the
rational soul, I see another motion, better than the last, “with the lower powers
now quieted and exhibiting none of the tumult that is usually found among
the masses; by this motion, the soul is converted toward itself and sees its own
substance and the powers existing in it, and the harmonic reasons from which
it is made, and the many lives of which it is the plenitude, and it recollects that
it is a rational world –​indeed, an image of those things that are prior to it, from
which it has come forth, but an exemplar of those which come after it, over
which it presides.”
And a little later in the same chapter, he writes:10 “After these two activities of
this rational soul, as was said, we climb back up now to its highest intelligence,
through which it actually sees its sister souls in the world” –​and then, further
on11 –​“and again, above all these souls, it sees the intellectual substances and
orders” –​and then12 –​“and yet again prior to these it sees the monads of the
gods themselves that are beyond intellect.”
Boethius states the same thing concisely in Book v of On the Consolation of
Philosophy, prose 4,13 while explaining the difference between intelligence and
reason: “But there exists a higher eye of intelligence: for surpassing the bound-
ary of the universe it views that simple Form by the pure apex of the mind.”
So much for the first motion.
[C] That Proclus also ascended to the knowledge of God by the direct
motion –​»not by returning into himself, nor by proceeding with discursive rea-
son from things that are outside, but departing from creatures as from certain
tokens, images, or signs that are variegated and manifold in themselves, toward
unitive reflections, not intelligibly but intellectually, not discursively but uni-
tively, that is, not by the mind’s oblique motion, but by its direct vision«14 –​is
clear in ­chapter 8 of the book mentioned above.15 By this point Proclus has
enumerated three of the soul’s modes of cognition, that is, the opiniona-
tive, the scientific, and that which ascends up to the one and unhypothetical
“through all the forms, so to speak –​dividing some, analysing others, making

9 Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 6, §18, p. 124, l. 2 –​p. 126, l. 8.

10 Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 6, §19, p. 126, l. 1-​3.
11 Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 6, §19, p. 126, l. 5-​6.
12 Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 6, §19, p. 126, l. 8-​9.
13 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. v, prosa 4, p. 149, l. 86-​88.
14 Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 6 (F f. 6vb).
15 Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §27-​29, p. 136, l. 1 –​p. 138, l. 15.
402  Exposition of the Title

the many from the one and the one from the many”. Through this process the
soul ascends to the principle of beings as such and “as far as the ascent of the
instruction of the sciences reaches”. Then he immediately adds:16 “There is yet
a fourth mode that you must understand, and this is our simpler cognition that
no longer uses methods such as analyses, syntheses, divisions, or demonstra-
tions, but gazes upon beings by simple epiboles, meaning ‘projections’, and, so
to speak, by antoptices, meaning ‘per se visions’. Those who can achieve this
mode of knowing praise it, referring to it now reverently as intellect and not as
science. Or have you not heard that Aristotle in his books on demonstration in
fact says something like this, that intellect in us is greater than all science, and
that he defines it as that by which we know the terms? And that Plato in the
Timaeus declares that intellect and science are modes of cognition in the soul
that relate to beings? For science indeed seems to belong to the soul, insofar
as the soul is cognition; whereas the intellect belongs to it insofar as the soul
is an image of what is truly intellect. For the latter sees things intellectual, or
rather being itself, through one epibole, as he says (meaning ‘injection’ or ‘intu-
ition’), and through contact with the things known; thinking itself, it beholds
those beings within it, and because of that, it thinks both that it itself exists
and that it is thinking, and that it at once thinks being and what it is itself.
Therefore, imitating this as much as it can, the soul itself becomes intellect,
running beyond science, abandoning the manifold methods with which it was
formerly adorned, and raises its eyes to beings alone.”
Shortly thereafter,17 Proclus discusses the cognition above intellect, which
the theologians before Plato also divulged by calling it a truly divine frenzy: “For
they claim that the one of the soul no longer arouses an intellectual power”, but
connects the one itself to the highest One, to which, “casting forth its one, the
soul loves to be at peace, enclosing itself from cognitions, having been made
silent, and keeping quiet with inward silence”. Dionysius agrees with these
points in c­ hapter 7 of On the Divine Names section B and c­ hapter 4, section N.18
So much for the direct motion.
[D] Proclus certainly also ascended by the oblique motion to the knowledge
of the highest Good. This motion was proper to the philosophers and occurred
»by a laborious investigation of the first Principle of all beings, by divid-
ing, defining, using common principles, proceeding from the known to the
unknown by discursive reason, ascending from the sensible to the intelligible,

16 Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §30, p. 139, l. 1-​21.

17 Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §31, p. 139, l. 1 –​p. 140, l. 12.
18 Cf. Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.1 (Dionysiaca vol. 1, p. 385–​386; pg 3, 865C-​868A)
and 4.11 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 205–​207; pg 3, 708D-​709A).
Exposition of the Title 403

and tending from one thing to another among the intelligible, until it arrives to
the ultimate«19 as such. It is clear from the present book that Proclus accom-
plished this. For here he ascends to the highest by attending to the condition
of the works, the governance of what is made, and the reconciliation of con-
traries. For these are the three ways by which the philosophers arrived at the
knowledge of God by discursive reason.
»A person ascends by attending to the condition of the works, because,
as Gundissalinus says in On the Creation of Heaven and Earth,20 “The ways to
the creator are his works. When we diligently turn our attention to these, we
are able to reach the understanding of any hidden thing of God whatsoever”;
indeed, “the crafting of the world is the projection of the invisible things of
God”, as Dionysius says in the Letter to Titus.21«22 The author ascended along
this path, both by the investigation of the many and the one, and by the inves-
tigation of productive principles and what is produced, as is clear from the first
12 elements.23
»A person also ascends to God from the governance of what is made, just as
Cicero shows in Book ii of On the Nature of the Gods, ­chapter 5.24 His words are
summarised as follows: the world exists and is ruled by reason; but the reason
ruling the world is beyond the world and not from the world; therefore, there is
some reason that rules the world, which we call God or his providence.«25 The
author also proceeded along this path in this book, as is clear from proposition
120 and many that follow,26 and especially in the book On Providence,27 where
ten questions concerning providence are resolved.
A person also ascends to the knowledge of God from the reconciliation of
the contraries that are in the world, Plato made clear in the Timaeus.28 In this
work, Plato himself pursued the cognition of God and the highest Artificer by
all three paths. Boethius is also in agreement with him in Book iii of On the
Consolation, prose 12:29 “The world could hardly have come together from such

19 Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 6 (F f. 6vb).

20 Dominicus Gundissalinus, De processione mundi, p. 2, l. 1-​3.
21 Dionysius, Epistulae, ix.2 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 642; pg 3, 1108B).
22 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 7 (F f. 7va).
23 Proclus, Elementatio theologica, props 1-​12, p. 3, l. 1 –​p. 9, l. 19.
24 Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum, ii.6.16-​i i.7.19, p. 55, l. 11 –​p. 57, l. 4.
25 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 7 (F f. 8ra).
26 Cf. Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 120, p. 60, l. 1-​13.
27 Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam.
28 Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 27d-​29d, p. 20, l. 15 –​p. 22, l. 14 et seqq.
29 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, prosa 12, p. 92, l. 14-​25; cf. Thomas of York,
Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 7 (F f. 8rb).
404  Exposition of the Title

diverse parts into one form, were there not one God, who joins such diver-
sity together. But this diversity of natures, once brought together, is discordant
with itself, and would dissociate and tear apart, were there not One who sus-
tains what he has brought together. Such a defined order of nature, moreover,
would not have proceeded forth, nor would the things thus arranged unfold in
local motions, times, effective causes, spaces, and qualities, were there not One
who, remaining himself, arranged these varieties of change. This, whatever this
is, by which the things that are made abide and are set in motion, I call ‘God’,
using the word that everybody uses.” That Proclus proceeded along this path is
clear from proposition 2030 and those that follow, and in many other places in
the present book, and in his book On the Existence of Evils.31
From the foregoing, the excellence and surpassing ability of this author,
Proclus, are abundantly clear.
[E] Now, in the title there follows: of Diadochus, of Lycius. These might
be Proclus’ first name and surname, such that he would have had three names;
or, as seems more likely to me, these were the first names of his ancestors,
which he prefixed to the title of his book following the ancient custom. For the
ancients not only set down their own names in their titles and the names of
their parents, but also their ancestors’ first names, last names, and epithets, as
is clear from the books of that most brilliant man, Boethius.32 For this reason
Proclus also adds both his school and his profession: “the Platonic philosopher”.
Therefore, he states: Of Diadochus, meaning “son of”. Now Diadochus
means “what is taught” or “what teaches generously”, for dia means “gener-
ous”,33 or it derives from dia and doxa, which means “glory”34 –​meaning, as
it were, “generous glory” or “generously glorifying” or “glorious and generous”.
For there is nothing (to say nothing of his descendant) more generous than
wisdom itself, in whose possession Diadochus glorified.
Wisdom’s generosity appears from its source, the height of its nobility, and
the multitude of its generous effects that it produces in those who have it.
»The source of wisdom is most high because “the fount of wisdom is the
Word of God in the highest”,35 not only the divine wisdom of the orthodox
or the faithful, but even of the Gentile philosophers, as is clear from Plato’s

30 Cf. Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 20, p. 13, l. 1 –​p. 14, l. 31.
31 Proclus, De malorum subsistentia.
32 Cf. Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, titulus, p. 3; id., De Trinitate, ed. C. Moreschini, pro-
logus, p. 165; id., Utrum Pater et Filius, ed. C. Moreschini, p. 182.
33 Cf. Papias, Elementarium, s.v. “Dia”, f. 46r.
34 Cf. Huguccio of Pisa, Derivationes, s.v. “Doxa” (D88, p. 348, §1).
35 Ecclesiasticus 1:5.
Exposition of the Title 405

propositions, which Augustine recounts.«36 For in Book viii of On the City

of God, c­ hapter 3,37 he says that God is “the light of all”, and in c­ hapter 4,38
that God is “the enlightener of truth” and “the reason of thinking”, without
which “no teaching instructs”. In Book ix, ­chapter 25,39 he says that God is
“the giver of intelligence”. And in Book i of the Soliloquies, near the beginning,
he writes:40 “God, the Father of truth, the Father of wisdom, … the Father of
intelligible light”; and below:41 “God of truth, in whom and from whom and
through whom are true all things that are true; God of wisdom, in whom and
from whom and through whom are wise all who are wise”; and below:42 “God,
intelligible light, in whom and from whom and through whom shine intelligi-
bly all things that shine intelligibly.”
The height of the nobility of wisdom is clear »because it is desirable in itself,
as Aristotle shows in Book vi of the Ethics, ­chapter 15,43 where he says that
wisdom and prudence are desirable in themselves: “now, what is desirable
in itself is free and perfect through itself, serving nothing else, governing the
order through itself and holding dominion within itself”, as the Commentator
explains on the same text.44
If we now turn the mind’s gaze toward the effects of wisdom, it becomes
clear that wisdom is also generous. In those who possess it, wisdom, with
regard to evil things, is fugitive of vice, sanative of sickness or allative of health,
conducive to a place far from disturbances and passions, and contemptive of
this life and this world; but with respect to the good, wisdom is formative of
life, inculcative of the virtues, perfective of the soul, consummative of crea-
tion, elongative from our animal nature, impletive with longings, introductive
of delight, and operative of beatitude.«45 »And so Cicero, in Book v of the

36 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 1 (F f. 1rb).

37 Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.4, p. 220, l. 35-​36; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i,
c. 16 (F f. 20ra).
38 Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.4, p. 220, l. 50-​60; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib.
i, c. 16 (F f. 20rb).
39 Augustine, De civitate Dei, ix.25, p. 334, l. 12; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 16
(F f. 20rb).
40 Augustine, Soliloquia, i.1.2 (pl 32, 870).
41 Augustine, Soliloquia, i.1.3 (pl 32, 870).
42 Augustine, Soliloquia, i.1.3 (pl 32, 870); apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 16 (F
f. 20va).
43 Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, vi.13, 1144a1-​2.
44 Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, lib. vi, c. 15 (ms Vaticano [Città del],
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2171, f. 129ra).
45 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 1 (F f. 1rb).
406  Exposition of the Title

Tusculan Disputations, c­ hapter 5,46 exclaims: “O Philosophy, the guide of life,

O discoverer and cultivator of virtue, and expeller of vices, what would we,
and indeed the whole life of humankind, be without you?” And below:47 “You
have been the discoverer of laws, the mistress of morals and discipline. We
take refuge in you; from you we implore succour. We, who formerly devoted
our greater part to you, now give ourselves over entirely. For a day spent well
in your precepts is preferable to perpetuity and immortality without them.
Whose succour do we need more than yours, you who have granted to us tran-
quillity of life and taken from us the fear of death?”«48
Therefore, from the explanation of his name, one can gather the nature and
greatness of the philosopher Diadochus, whose name is inscribed in the title.
[F] Then there follows in this title: of Licius, meaning “son of”. Licius was
the grandfather of Proclus. Now, Apollo was also called Licius,49 and Apollo
stands for the “sun”,50 which according to the Gentiles of old was the god of
wisdom;51 or, according to Papias,52 “Licius” comes from lichios, meaning the
luminescent purple stone in lanterns that shines forth in splendour, and for
this reason a lantern is called a lichios.
And so, one can surmise from his name that Licius was, in a manner of
speaking, a god or the sun, and the fontal, overflowing abundance of wisdom,
with the ray of his wisdom passing over everything. For among the sages of his
time it is likely that he shone like a radiant lantern. Otherwise, it would have
been inappropriate for Proclus to inscribe this at the beginning of his book,
»unless those to come could obtain immense benefits from the splendour
of his wisdom. For it is quite possible that, from the illumination of wisdom,
many devoted themselves to the exercise of their own intellect and, conse-
quently, to gather kindred spirits, to educate them in the preambles to wisdom,
to dissolve doubts, to consider the height of wisdom, and to apprehend the
deeper truth.«53
[G] Next in the title we have the sect to which Proclus belonged: of the
Platonist.

46 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, v.2.5, p. 406, l. 3-​5.

47 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, v.2.5-​6, p. 406, l. 9-​16.
48 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 1 (F f. 1vb-​2ra).
49 Cf. Papias, Elementarium, s.v. “Licium”, f. 91r.
50 Cf. Papias, Elementarium, s.v. “Apollo”, f. 13r; Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum, vol. 1, lib.
viii, c. 11, §53.
51 Cf. Augustine, De ordine, ed. W. Green (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), i.4.10, p. 94, l. 22-​26.
52 Cf. Papias, Elementarium, s.v. “Luchinus”, f. 91r.
53 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 3 (F f. 3ra-​b).
Exposition of the Title 407

Now, just as Augustine says in Book viii of On the City of God, ­chapter 1,54
“there is no one, who has even a meagre acquaintance with such things, who
does not know about those philosophers called Platonists, who derive their
name from the learned Plato. Therefore, concerning this Plato, I will touch
briefly upon those things I deem necessary to the present question, first by
recalling his predecessors in this kind of literature.”
And he says in c­ hapter 2 of the same book:55 “As far as Greek literature is
concerned (which among the nations is the more celebrated), two schools
of philosophers are known to us: the one is called Italic, coming from that
part of Italy once known as Magna Graeca; the other is Ionian, coming from
those lands now called Greece. To the Italic school belonged the authority of
Pythagoras of Samos, from whom the very name of philosophy takes its origin;
… the founder of the Ionic school was Thales the Milesian; … Anaximander
was his pupil and succeeded him; … Anaximander left Anaximenes as his dis-
ciple and successor; … and Anaxagoras was his pupil” along with Diogenes.
Succeeding Anaxagoras was Archelaus, whose disciple Socrates is said to have
been, and Socrates was the master of Plato –​which is why I have briefly sum-
marised these passages from Augustine’s City of God.
“Therefore, having acquired such illustrious renown by his life and death,
Socrates left behind many followers of his philosophy”, as Augustine says in
­chapter 3.56 “But among the disciples of Socrates”, as we read in c­ hapter 4,57
“Plato shone with a most surpassing glory and, not unjustly, he eclipsed the
others in every way.”
Plato, as is said in Book iii of Against the Academicians,58 “was the wisest
and most learned man of his times, and he spoke in such a way that what-
ever he said became important, and he spoke of such things that, in whatever
way he said them, they never became unimportant”. And later:59 “In this way,
he added to the Socratic charm and subtly (which Socrates possessed in eth-
ical doctrine), an expertise in things natural and divine … and is said to have
devised the perfect practice of philosophy”, “which is arranged in three parts”,
as we saw already from On the City of God,60 “one part is moral, which above all

54 Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.1, p. 217, l. 34-​39.

55 Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.2, p. 217, l. 1 –​p. 218, l. 48.
56 Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.3, p. 219, l. 31-​32.
57 Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.4, p. 219, l. 1-​3.
58 Augustine, Contra Academicos, iii.17.37, p. 57, l. 6-​9.
59 Augustine, Contra Academicos, iii.17.37, p. 57, l. 15-​21.
60 Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.4, p. 220, l. 25-​28; cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 20,
n. 242-​246.
408  Exposition of the Title

concerns action, the other part natural, which is considered by contemplation,

and the third part is rational, by which the true is separated from the false”.
And later:61 “But as to Plato’s views about these parts taken altogether or about
each singly, that is, what he understood to be the end of all actions, the cause
of all natures, and the light of all reasons –​I believe it would take a long time
to explain these, and I do not wish to make rash assertions.” Thus Augustine.
Therefore, from this same Plato, whom Labeo calls a demigod,62 the phi-
losophers mentioned already, namely, Proclus and his ancestors Diadochus
and Licius, are called Platonists in order to distinguish themselves from the
Peripatetics and Cynics. For, according to Augustine in Book iii of Against
the Academicians,63 “Nowadays we scarcely see any philosophers who are not
Cynics, Peripatetics, or Platonists. The Cynics are especially popular because
a certain liberty of life or licentiousness brings them delight. Since, however,
philosophy touches on learning, teaching, and morals, by which the soul is
cared for,” we have in the title: of the philosopher.
[H] The word “philosophy”, as was said,64 comes from Pythagoras. For “when
asked what he professed, he responded truly, saying that he was ‘a philosopher’,
meaning a lover of wisdom, since it seemed supremely arrogant to claim that
one was wise. And so, from that point on, it pleased those who came thereaf-
ter that, no matter how much a person seemed to excel in wisdom, either to
himself or to others, he would not be called anything except ‘a philosopher’ ”,
as Isidore writes in Book viii of the Etymologies.65
Now Cicero writes, in Book v of the Tusculan Disputations,66 that seven phi-
losophers in antiquity “were and were called sophi by the Greeks and, by us,
‘the wise’ ”. Below he adds:67 “their name was preserved down to the age of
Pythagoras who, as Heraclides Ponticus (a most learned man and a student of
Plato) reports, is said to have gone to Phlius and to have learnedly and regularly
discoursed on certain subjects with Leon, the prince of the Phliusians. When
Leon, admiring his genius and eloquence, asked him what art he professed
above all else, he answered that he in fact knew no art but was rather a philoso-
pher. Leon, admiring the novelty of the name, asked him who the philosophers
were and what distinguished them from others. Pythagoras then replied … ,”

61 Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.4, p. 220, l. 33-​38.

62 Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.13, p. 230, l. 31-​32.
63 Augustine, Contra Academicos, iii.19.42, p. 60, l. 1-​5.
64 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio tituli G, n. 55.
65 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum, vol. 1, lib. viii, c. 6, §2-​3.
66 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, v.3.7, p. 407, l. 7-​9.
67 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, v.3.8-​9, p. 407, l. 19 –​p. 408, l. 3.
Exposition of the Title 409

and below:68 “those who hold all other pursuits as nothing, and studiously look
into the nature of things –​these people call themselves zealous for wisdom,
that is, philosophers; and just as there [that is, in sport,] one is freest when one
is a spectator, appropriating nothing for oneself, so too in life, the contempla-
tion and knowledge of things surpass all other pursuits by far.” Pythagoras also
gives the example of the marketplace.69 “Pythagoras not only coined the name
‘philosophy’, but also magnified the thing itself.”70 Thus Cicero.
And so, from the foregoing, the identity of the author of this book, the sect
to which he belonged, and his profession, have all been made clear.
[I] There follows Theological Elementation, which expresses the
material, the formal, and the final cause of the book.
It expresses the subjective material cause in that the book, through the
ordering of elements, treats the divine Good according to the order of nat-
ural providence. For this reason, it is called an “elementation” [elementatio],
and not of just any kind, but “theological”, to distinguish it from the Physical
Elementation,71 which this author is also said to have produced. In these two
words the matter and subject are touched on most succinctly.
It touches on its matter, because the elements are, so to speak, the hyle-
ments72 or the propositions, out of which this book is constructed and made
whole. If they are taken in themselves and according to their own notion,
they possess only the mode of matter with respect to this wisdom itself,
and they contribute to its wholeness; “the mode of matter”, I say, which car-
ries the notion of a principle or an element, insofar as from them, together
with the form, as from an intrinsic principle, as it were, the substance of
the composite thing is constituted. For just as grammar has letters or ele-
ments for its material, from which it is brought together into a whole, and
just as the Arithmetic of Jordan,73 the Geometry of Euclid,74 the Optics of
Peckham,75 and certain other sciences, have hylementary propositions, so
too this book has 211 elements, which are the principles of demonstration in
this philosophy.

68 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, v.3.9, p. 408, l. 14-​20.

69 Cf. Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, v.3.9, p. 408, l. 3-​14.
70 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, v.3.10, p. 408, l. 21-​22.
71 Proclus, Elementatio physica, ed. H. Boese, Die mittelalterliche Übersetzung der Stoicheiosis
physike des Proclus (Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag, 1958).
72 Cf. Huguccio of Pisa, Derivationes, s.v. “Yle” (I45, p. 605, §3).
73 Jordan of Nemi, Arithmetica.
74 Euclid, Elementa.
75 John Peckham, Perspectiva communis.
410  Exposition of the Title

Aristotle alludes to this meaning of “element” in Book v of the Metaphysics,76

where he discusses the several senses of the term: “the elements of geometri-
cal diagrams” and the elements of demonstrations all “are called ‘elements’ in
a similar sense”. What the Commentator explains about this passage can be
summarised as follows: »They are called “elements” in a similar sense and in
accordance with the same notion. But the first composite parts of geometrical
diagrams, meaning those figures depicted in extension, are called “elements” in
that they are composite parts relating only to position and are “parts from the
whole” or “universal parts”. But if what is meant is rather “an intrinsic element”
by virtue of some power, then this denotes the “elements” of demonstrations,
according to the notion of element introduced above. Now, the first demon-
strations of all, to which none are prior, and which exist in many demonstra-
tions that follow them due to their power, are called “the elements of demon-
strations”. Now, although these first demonstrations exist in the consequent
demonstrations through their power, they also exist in them in some mode
according to their substance: for, when dealing with a subject and a predicate,
the first demonstration is implicated in the second, and so on, where the prior
is always in the consequent according to the order of theorems. Postulates,
hypotheses, and definitions are the elements of the first demonstrations in this
way, and certain propositions are the truest “elements” of the conclusions«77
and, consequently, are the matter.
These theological elements are also the subject insofar as they include that
which exists as something in act, in that it has the property of a subject. The
act of consideration is concerned with the properties and attributes of this
subject, which has a common notion by virtue of an analogical attribution to
one first term, and to this first term the notion of a subject primarily belongs.
»This entire book treats the universe of divine things according to its proces-
sion from the highest Good and its return into the Good, according to the order
and the proper intrinsic modes of the divine things themselves. These modes
are placed in them by what is primarily divine or divine according to cause.
This book treats this universe according to the order of natural providence,
and not presently according to the order of voluntary providence (following
the distinction made by Augustine in Book viii of The Literal Commentary on
Genesis).78 It is necessary that everything treated here should agree in a single

76 Aristotle, Metaphysica, v.3, 1014a35-​37.

77 Cf. Albert the Great, Metaphysica, lib. v, tr. 1, c. 4, p. 217, l. 8-​26; cf. Averroes, Metaphysica,
ed. R. Ponzalli, Averrois in librum V (Δ) Metaphysicorum Aristotelis commentarius
(Bern: Francke, 1971), lib. v, comm. 4, p. 86, l. 78 –​p. 87, l. 88.
78 Cf. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, viii.9, p. 243, l. 25 –​p. 244, l. 20.
Exposition of the Title 411

notion of a subject, by virtue of which this philosophy itself is a single sci-

ence. That subject is called, and indeed is, the divine good, which belongs to
the first principle of all simply, absolutely, and causally or primarily, but to the
other goods, namely the divine according to essence and the divine according
to participation, attributively in relation to the first. This attribution occurs
according to the modes distinguished by Averroes while commenting on the
beginning of Book iv of the Metaphysics:79 namely, in relation to the primary
efficient cause, in relation to the ultimate end, and also in the relation of acci-
dents to their subject.«80 For God, who is the highest Good, is not only “the
principle without principle, the process without variation, the end without
end”, as is said in rule 7 from Trismegistus,81 but indeed “God” is also that, “in
comparison with whom substance is an accident, and an accident is nothing at
all”, as we read in rule 6 of the same text.82 Now, Hermes means that any sub-
stance is an accident by virtue of its dependency on the First, to whom alone
the notion of a subject belongs –​not as it belongs to beings existing in passive
potency, but as the active potency by which he, who made the universes, sus-
tains all things. Avicebron uses the term “accident” in this sense in Book iii of
the Fount of Life, ­chapters 36 and 54.83
From this it is clear that the subject of this book is the divine good within the
order of natural providence, and this is expressed by the title Theological
Elementation.
[K] In the same phrase, but taken under another notion, one finds expressed
the book’s directive formal aspect or the formal cause. For the form of proceed-
ing in this book is through the coordination and separation of theorems or
elements, which are, so to speak, elevatements or elaboratements84 because
they elevate and cultivate the mind. These are the rules of this most divine
philosophy; and it is also by virtue of these that it is called an “elementation”,
just as Varro calls grammar “letteration”, according to Isidore.85

79 Cf. Averroes, Commentaria in libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis (Venezia: Junta, 1562), lib.
iv, comm. 2, f. 65rF-​vI.
80 Cf. Dietrich of Freiberg, De subiecto theologiae, ed. L. Sturlese, Opera omnia, vol. 3. Schriften
zur Naturphilosophie und Metaphysik (Hamburg: Meiner, 1983), 3.5-​6, p. 281, l. 69-​84.
81 Hermes Latinus, Liber xxiv philosophorum, maxim 7, p. 13, l. 1-​2.
82 Hermes Latinus, Liber xxiv philosophorum, maxim 6, p. 12, l. 1-​2.
83 Cf. Avicebron, Fons vitae, ex Arabico in Latinum translatus ab Johanne Hispano et Dominico
Gundissalino, ed. C. Baeumker, 2 vols (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1892-​1895), vol. 1, lib. iii,
c. 36, p. 161, l. 14 –​p. 162, l. 10; lib. iii, c. 54, p. 199, l. 8-​17.
84 Cf. Papias, Elementarium, s.v. “Elementum”, f. 52r; Huguccio of Pisa, Derivationes, s.v. “Yle”
(I45, p. 605, §4-​5).
85 Cf. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum, vol. 1, lib. i, c. 3, §1.
412  Exposition of the Title

For every science uses the rules by which it is upheld like its own founda-
tions, as Alan writes in the prologue of On the Rules of Theology,86 so that dia-
lectic has maxims, “rhetoric has commonplaces, ethics has general teachings,
physics has aphorisms, arithmetic has aporismata, meaning ‘subtle rules’ ”,
music has axioms, meaning “measures”, geometry has theorems, meaning
“speculations”, and astronomy has excellences. In the same way, this philoso-
phy, the most excellent, most divine, and most difficult of all sciences, has rules
that are “exceedingly more obscure and subtler than the other” rules of other
sciences, as is said in the same text.87 “Although complete necessity holds sway
over the other rules, since the regular course of nature is governed by regularity
alone, the necessity of theological rules is nevertheless absolute and unshakea-
ble, because they produce conviction about what cannot be changed by action
or by nature. And so, because of their immutable necessity and their glorious
subtlety, they are almost fittingly called ‘glorious paradoxes’ by certain philos-
ophers”, or “enigmas” because of their obscurity, or “marquetries” because of
their intrinsic splendour, or “hebdomads” because of their dignity.88
But the author calls them “theological elements”, meaning “propositions”, in
which there is a discourse on the divine or on God, who is both the most divine
and the most difficult to attain.
»”Most divine”, as Trismegistus says to Asclepius in On Hellera,89 which
means “On the God of gods” (where he establishes that, of all discourses
inspired by divine obligation, a discourse on the God of gods is more divine in
religious devotion), stating, “if you will be found to understand it, your whole
mind will be filled with all goods”. It is also “most difficult”, and for this rea-
son Trismegistus in the same text compares the discourse to a torrent:90 “An
account of divinity … is most similar to a torrent of a river running from on
high, sweeping and churning, such that it rushes on ahead of our attention, not
only as we listen but also as we speak about it”.
Thus it follows that not only the teacher but even the auditor must be a
divine and attentive person.
“A divine person” because, in light of what Trismegistus says in the same
text,91 “an account of divinity is to be known through the divine concentration

86 Cf. Alan of Lille, Regulae caelestis iuris, ed. N. Häring, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et
littéraire du Moyen Âge 48(1981), prologue, §1, p. 121.
87 Cf. Alan of Lille, Regulae caelestis iuris, prologue, §1-​5, p. 121–​122.
88 Cf. Alan of Lille, Regulae caelestis iuris, prologue, §5-​6, p. 122.
89 Asclepius, c. 1, p. 39, l. 4-​5.
90 Asclepius, c. 3, p. 41, l. 19-​23.
91 Asclepius, c. 3, p. 41, l. 19-​20.
Exposition of the Title 413

of awareness”. For this is true philosophy: the assiduous inquiry into the knowl-
edge of divinity. As Trismegistus says there,92 philosophy consists “only in
repeated contemplation and the holy reverence with which one must know
divinity”.«93 “An attentive person”, because of the elementation, extension, or
coordination of the theological elements themselves; for to the extent that
they contain a loftier meaning, so they require a more attentive and skilful
auditor. Therefore, they are not to be expounded to fleshly or even to spiritual
people, as is clear from the parable that Rabbi Moses sets down on this mat-
ter in ­chapter 182,94 but only to intellectual people, »who, by a more rigorous
inquiry, are attentive and perspicacious in the apex of the mind, and are less
carried away by the fickleness of praise than attracted by the most longed-​for,
unveiled image of truth itself. Only to these worthy people should the worthi-
ness of wisdom contained in this Theological Elementation be uncovered. And
so are they led into these theorems as into a certain byway that is beyond the
common path of reasonings.«95
Now, I say “beyond the common path of reasonings” because, as Boethius
states near the beginning of On the Trinity:96 “In physics one must apply one-
self rationally, in mathematics scientifically, and in theology intellectually,
not being led astray by imaginings, but rather by looking into the Form itself,
which is a true form and not an image.” For the intentions of the Theological
Elementation diverge from those of all other sciences such that »one cannot
find discourses akin to them with which they could be easily explained«.97
From the foregoing one can grasp succinctly both the form or mode of pro-
ceeding in this book and the reason for its name, Theological Elementation,
which is imputed from the form. Moreover, one can understand why it is not
called “First Philosophy” or “Metaphysics”, “On the Pure Good”, “On the Light
of Lights”, “On the Cause of Causes”, or “On the Flowers of Divine Things”, as
others98 –​who all treated similar material, but completely unlike the present
author –​bothered to call their works.

92 Asclepius, c. 12, p. 52, l. 2-​4.

93 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 5 (F f. 5va).
94 Cf. Moses Maimonides, Dux seu director dubitantium aut perplexorum, lib. iii, c. 52,
f. 109v-​112r; cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 3 (F f. 4ra).
95 Cf. Gilbert of Poitiers, Expositio in Boecii librum de bonorum ebdomade, ed. N. Häring, The
Commentaries on Boethius by Gilbert of Poitiers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval
Studies, 1966), prologue, §7, p. 184, l. 32-​38.
96 Boethius, De Trinitate, c. 2, p. 169, l. 78-​82.
97 Cf. Gilbert of Poitiers, Expositio in Boecii librum de bonorum ebdomade, prologue, §8,
p. 184, l. 39-​45.
98 Cf. Albert the Great, De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa, ed. W. Fauser
(Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1993), lib. ii, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 59, l. 7 –​p. 61, l. 68.
414  Exposition of the Title

[L] Finally, the name Theological Elementation expresses the perfec-

tive final aspect or final cause. In this sense, “theological elementation”, mean-
ing “of divine reason”, connotes a ladder ascending from the divine according
to participation to the divine according to essence, and through this to the
primarily divine, the divine according to cause, who is to be contemplated.
The contemplation of this divinity makes the contemplator not only blessed,
by pursuing “the perfect condition that is brought about by the collection of all
goods”,99 but even god.
For, as Boethius says in Book iii of On the Consolation, prose 10,100 “since it
is obvious that they become blessed by acquiring beatitude, and by acquiring
justice they become just, and by acquiring wisdom they become wise, so by a
similar argument it follows necessarily that by acquiring divinity they become
gods. Therefore, everyone who is in bliss is god; certainly, God is one by nature,
but nothing prevents there being as many gods as you please by participation.”
Now, this ladder ascending through deified reason to the divine reason
according to cause seems to be implied by the allegory [integumentum], with
which Lady Philosophy’s embroidered garment is described using two let-
ters, the Greek pi and theta, as we have it from Boethius in Book i of On the
Consolation, prose 1.101 Having described Philosophy’s countenance, expres-
sion, complexion, strength, age, and height, he describes her garment:102 “Her
robes were fashioned perfectly with the finest threads, the most delicate art-
istry, and imperishable materials, which, as I would later learn from her, she
wove herself.” And below:103 “On the hem at the bottom one could discern
a woven Greek pi, and at the top a theta, and between the two letters there
seemed to be steps emblazoned as a ladder, forming an ascent from the lower
to the higher letter.”
Now what are meant by these robes if not the sciences? And, among the
sciences, this one is the worthiest. Seneca points out its difference from every
other human science in Book I of On Natural Questions, ­chapter 1:104 “the dif-
ference between philosophy … and the other arts is as great as that … between
the part of philosophy concerned with humans and the part concerned with
gods: the latter is higher and more spirited … In short, the difference between

99 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, prosa 2, p. 60, l. 10-​11.

100 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, prosa 10, p. 83, l. 80 –​p. 84, l. 86.
101 Cf. Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. i, prosa 1, p. 4, l. 1 –​p. 5, l. 12.
102 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. i, prosa 1, p. 5, l. 12-​15.
103 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. i, prosa 1, p. 5, l. 17-​21.
104 Seneca, Naturalium quaestionum libros, ed. H. Hine (Leipzig: Teubner, 1996), lib. i, §1, p. 1,
l. 5 –​p. 2, l. 17; apud Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 5 (F f. 5va).
Exposition of the Title 415

the two is as great as that between God and human beings: the one teaches us
what is to be done on earth; the other, what is to be done in heaven; the one
dispels our wrongdoings and casts the light in, with which the uncertainties of
life can be discerned; the other goes beyond the darkness in which we wallow
and guides us, standing upright, out of the shadows, and leads us to the light’s
source.”
And so, this science is denoted by the theta sewn on the upper hem of
Philosophy’s robes. For it consists in contemplating not just any object, but
the highest Good, which is the end of all desires because, as Plato says, as
Augustine recounts in Book viii of On the City of God, ­chapter 4,105 it is the end
of all actions, the cause of all natures, and the light of all reasons.
“For if the human being is constituted in such a way that, through what sur-
passes everything in him, he may attain unto that, which surpasses all things
as such (that is, the one, true, and best God, without whom no nature subsists,
no doctrine instructs, no exercise liberates), then may he be sought, in whom
for us all things are serene; may he be discerned, in whom for us all things are
certain; may he be loved, in whom for us all things are right.”
“If, therefore”, as Augustine says in ­chapter 5, “Plato declared that the wise
person is the one who imitates, knows, and loves this God, and becomes
blessed by participating in him”, what remains to be said, except that the end
of theological wisdom is God? And what could be signified by those two letters
on Philosophy’s garment, except activity and knowledge?
And so Avicebron, in Book i of the Fount of Life, ­chapter 2,106 responds to the
question, “What is it that the human ought to seek in this life?”, and says: “Since
the part of the human that knows is better than all other parts, then the higher
activity is to seek knowledge. As for knowledge, however, it is more necessary
that he know himself, so that through this he might know things that are out-
side him; for his essence comprehends and penetrates all things, and all things
are subjected to his power. Along with this, he should also seek knowledge
of the final cause, on account of which he was made, so that he might seek
it out more zealously, because happiness will follow on account of this.” And
later, in the character of the Disciple:107 “What, therefore, is the final cause for
which the human was made? Master: To join himself to the higher world, so
that each thing might return to what is similar to it.” And later:108 “Knowledge

105 Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii.4-​5, p. 220, l. 33-​38 and p. 220, l. 56 –​p. 221, l. 2; cf.
Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 16 (F f. 20ra).
106 Avicebron, Fons vitae, lib. i, c. 2, p. 4, l. 1-​9.
107 Avicebron, Fons vitae, lib. i, c. 2, p. 4, l. 23-​25; cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. i, c. 1 (F
f. 1va).
108 Avicebron, Fons vitae, lib. i, c. 2, p. 5, l. 2-​4.
416  Exposition of the Title

and activity liberate the soul altogether from the captivity of nature and purge
it of its darkness and obscurity; in this way, the soul returns to its higher world.”
And later, in ­chapter 4:109 “The knowledge, for which the human being was
created, is the knowledge of all things insofar as they exist and is, above all, the
knowledge of the first Essence, which sustains and moves them”, in order that
the soul may be joined to the higher world.
Boethius sings of this world in Book iii of On the Consolation, metre 9:110

From the supernal exemplar

You lead all things out, you who are most beautiful; the beautiful world
You carry in your mind.

From all the foregoing it is abundantly clear that, not only through activity and
knowledge, as through the two letters, the practical and theoretical, but even
more so through the highest philosophy of the Theological Elementation, a per-
son returns by an ascent to his final perfection, for the sake of which he was
created: namely, happiness or, to speak more plainly, beatitude. “For there is no
reason for a person to philosophise except that he may be blessed”, according
to Augustine in Book xix of On the City of God, ­chapter 2,111 “but what makes
him blessed is the End of all good; therefore, there is no reason to philosophise,
except the End of all good”: “for the End of all good, as soon as anyone arrives
to it, immediately makes him blessed”.112
Now, what is the end of all good but the highest Good, the Good that is “the
Good of every good”?113
To the knowledge of this Good this entire book is arranged, since it makes
us ascend through the good participants in the divine Good, to knowledge of
the divine goods according to essence. And that we may ascend through this to
contemplate the highest Good, the primarily Good, may we be carried across
with his support, who is the mediator of God and humanity, Jesus Christ,114
who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, unto the
ages of ages. Amen.
109 Avicebron, Fons vitae, lib. i, c. 4, p. 6, l. 13-​15.
110 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, metrum 9, p. 80, l. 6-​8.
111 Augustine, De civitate Dei, xix.1, p. 659, l. 121-​123.
112 Augustine, De civitate Dei, xix.2, p. 660, l. 8-​9.
113 Augustine, De Trinitate, viii.3.4, p. 272, l. 17.
114 Cf. 1 Timothy 2:5.
Preamble of the Book

Here begins the text, to the exposition whereof I add this clarifi-
cation, showing that this philosophy most truly and properly pos-
sesses the notion of a science that is veridical, most certain, and,
following from this, that it is the highest science.

Every multitude etc.

∵
The author, who is portrayed most skilfully in the title as a most learned man,
when setting out his theology in detail, first demonstrates the One as such and
the Good as such, and then proceeds to treat the properties of this One and
Good in element 8.1 Now, “one” has the notion of a principle and “good” that
of a cause. But since a principle is found in more things than a cause, it is prior
according to definition. Therefore, this philosopher first establishes that the
One exists and then, in element 7, that the Good exists.2
To establish the One’s thatness or its existence, he uses a certain complex
principle, namely, “there is multitude”. Similarly, when establishing the that-
ness of the Good, he uses another principle, “there is the productive”. He
assumes these two principles, upon which the edifice of this entire philosophy
depends as upon its own foundations, as if they are grasped [nota] through
the reception of the senses and in no way are intellected, known [scita], or
apprehended [apprehensa] by any other scientific habit, but only are believed,
just as the theology that concerns the divine Good according to the order of
voluntary providence is founded upon principles that are believed, which are
the articles of the Christian faith.
For this reason, many have tended to doubt whether either theology, the
sapiential and the divinising, is a science in the true sense of the word.
To address this doubt, I will do three things. First, I present certain prelim-
inaries regarding the principles from which the sciences proceed in general,
and upon which they are founded in their considerations and in the demon-
strations of their conclusions. Secondly, I discuss the three kinds of principles

1 Cf. Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 8, p. 7, l. 1-​2.

2 Cf. Proclus, Elementatio theologica, prop. 7, p. 6, l. 1-​2.

© Evan King, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004465480_014

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-nd 4.0 license.
418  Preamble of the Book

found in the sciences in particular, as well as their properties and notions.

Thirdly, I demonstrate from the foregoing that in this divinising wisdom or
sapiential theology there is truly and properly a scientific mode and proce-
dure that begins from its proper principles, as they are enumerated in the sec-
ond part.
[A] As to the first point, one should know that every science uses its rules
and principles as its own foundations, and from these one acquires the knowl-
edge [scientia] of conclusions. »For every science considers causes and prin-
ciples proportionate to its subject, as we know from Book vi of Aristotle’s
Metaphysics, ­chapter 1.3 For all knowledge begins from things that are already
known [praecognitis], as Aristotle states in Book vi of the Ethics, c­ hapter 4,4
and Book i of the Posterior Analytics, ­chapter 1,5 saying that “every instruc-
tion and intellective discipline begins from pre-​existing cognition”. Now, the
knowledge of conclusions is had through a demonstrative syllogism. But those
things, from which syllogisms proceed, are either principles as such or are
principles relative to the conclusion. Therefore, since all knowledge proceeds
through syllogisms, every science [scientia] must possess certain things that
are already understood, and these are the principles. For unless there are some
propositions that are most certain and received from common teachings, from
which the syllogisms would proceed, it would be impossible to demonstrate
anything at all.
Although the name “principle” is common to every proposition that is
already understood in any science, nevertheless, one assigns different names
to them in different cases depending on the characteristic of the designa-
tions, as we saw already in the Exposition of the Title from the prologue to
the treatise On Ecclesiastical Rules.6 Now, by a common name the principles
are called “terms”, according to what Aristotle says in Book vi of the Ethics,
­chapter 9:7 “intellect” is “of terms, about which there is no reasoning”. On this
the Commentator writes:8 “All principles are terms, because we, who seek to
know more specifically how many principles there are, ascend towards them

3 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, vi.1, 1025b3-​10.

4 Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, vi.3, 1139b26.
5 Aristotle, Analytica posteriora, eds L. Minio-​Paluello, B.G. Dod (Brugge /​Paris: Desclée De
Brouwer, 1968), i.1, 71a1-​2, p. 5, l. 3-​4.
6 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Expos. tit. K, n. 86.
7 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, ed. R.A. Gauthier (Leiden /​Bruxelles: Brill /​Desclée De Brouwer,
1972), vi.9, 1142a25-​26, p. 262, l. 26-​27.
8 Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, lib. vi, c. 9 (ms Vaticano [Città del],
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2171, f. 119vb).
Preamble of the Book 419

by analysis and come to rest; about these terms there is no reasoning, … essen-
tial definition, designation of the cause, or syllogism”, as Aristotle says in the
same place.
Now, there are three kinds of principles, according to the Commentator in
­chapter 8 of the same text:9 “axioms [dignitates], hypotheses [suppositiones],
and postulates [petitiones]”. Now, “axioms are whatever things are understood
by the student that are both believed intrinsically and, perhaps, only need to
be presented, which happens when they are spoken” –​for example, “things
equal to the same thing are equal to one another”. “However, when the auditor
does not have an inherently credible understanding of what is said, but still
posits and concedes it to the one who assumes it, this is a hypothesis; for exam-
ple, we do not presuppose the proposition ‘this figure is a circle’ on the basis
of a common understanding or concept without instruction, but we listen and
concede it without a demonstration. When, on the contrary, what is said is not
understood and is not conceded, but is assumed for the sake of the argument,
then we call it a postulate.”
In Book i of the Posterior Analytics,10 Aristotle says that the principle of a
demonstration is the immediate proposition, which is subdivided into axioms
and theses. Theses are subdivided into hypotheses and definitions. An axiom
is the greatest proposition, »which anyone accepts as soon as they hear it«.11
A thesis, as Aristotle says in Book i of the Topics,12 is an unfamiliar opinion
coming from someone who is renowned for their philosophy. A hypothesis,
according to Aristotle in Book i of the Posterior Analytics, ­chapter 2,13 is what
can assume either part of a contradiction, by which I say that something is or
is not. But a definition assumes neither existence nor non-​existence, for a defi-
nition as such is neither affirmative nor negative; thus, it does not predicate
the definition of something else, that is, it does not predicate the notion of the
definition to the thing defined.
In ­chapter 9 of the same text,14 Aristotle states that an axiom is not a
hypothesis or a postulate, because an axiom is a principle that is intrinsically
and immediately apparent, and does not stand in need of any reasoning or a

9 Cf. Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, lib. vi, c. 7 (ms Vaticano [Città
del], Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2171, f. 112va).
10 Cf. Aristotle, Analytica posteriora, i.2, 72a7 and 72a14-​24.
11 Cf. Boethius, Quomodo substantiae in eo quod sint bonae sint, ed. C. Moreschini, p. 187,
l. 17-​18.
12 Cf. Aristotle, Topica, i.11, 104b19-​20.
13 Cf. Aristotle, Analytica posteriora, i.2, 72a18-​20.
14 Cf. Aristotle, Analytica posteriora, i.10, 76b23-​39.
420  Preamble of the Book

syllogism to demonstrate or explain it. It requires only the reason that exists
in the soul (just as a visible luminous body requires nothing for it to be seen
except sight falling upon it from without), for it is understood [cognoscitur]
when it is seen. The truth of an axiomatic proposition is understood in this
way, when the identity of the predicate and subject in the substance is seen.
The necessity of a syllogism is understood when the identity of both extremes
with the middle term is seen. Because an axiom requires no exterior reasoning,
it does not inherently depend on reasoning, for it is accepted by all. However,
when something is demonstrable in a higher science, and if it is accepted by
the student and seems probable to them, then to them it is a hypothesis; I say,
“to them”, because a hypothesis as such is what is not demonstrable nor is it
accepted by everyone. Now, if something is demonstrable in a higher subalter-
nating science, and it does not seem probable to the student, then it follows
that the teacher begs it of the student, and this is a postulate. Nevertheless, one
commonly calls a “postulate” everything that is accepted without demonstra-
tion when it is in fact demonstrable, whether it seems probable to the student
or not. Definitions, which are put forward at the beginnings of demonstrations,
are not hypotheses, because every hypothesis predicates something of some-
thing else or from something else, and is a proposition that brings two notions
into an ordered relation (the subject and the predicate), either in one subject
or from one subject. A definition does not do this, but merely exemplifies a
simple thing; intellect, when it apprehends the definition qua definition, is
nothing else than a kind of simple understanding [intellectus] falling upon one
thing that has been unfolded.
Furthermore, one should know that all indemonstrable principles of any
discipline are comprehended under a general name: “a common concept of
the mind”. According to Boethius in On the Hebdomads,15 there are two kinds
of common concepts: those accepted by everyone and those accepted only by
the learned.«16
So much for the first part.
[B] Now, regarding the properties, proper modes, and notions of the princi-
ples of the sciences, [one should know that] there are three different kinds of
principles: some are most-​common, others are less common, and are intrinsi-
cally proper to particular sciences.
The first are and are called most-​common because, by their universal power,
they descend into all sciences. For example, “it is impossible that the same

15 Cf. Boethius, Quomodo substantiae in eo quod sint bonae sint, p. 187, l. 18-​25.
16 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. iii, c. 23 (F f. 166vb-​167rb).
Preamble of the Book 421

thing at the same time is and is not”, or “it is impossible that the affirmation
and the negation of something is true”, or “names have determinate mean-
ings”. Aristotle discusses these Book iv of the Metaphysics,17 stating that they
are grasped by reason or by the experience gained from the mere judgement
of things in everyday life, as is clear from that text. The modes or conditions
of any most-​common principle, as we read in the same place,18 are that it is
“most certain of all”, that “one cannot lie about it”, that it is “best known”, one
cannot be deceived about it or err, that it is not “conditional” or hypothetical,
(»such that it would be true only here or now or henceforth, but it is true to
everyone, always, and everywhere«),19 and, finally, that it necessarily “comes
to the one who has it” by nature, not by instruction. Now, these principles are
most-​common in this way because they concern being as being, which is the
most universal of all formal intentions according to Aristotle –​but for Plato it
is otherwise, as will be clear later.20
There are also principles that are less common than these. They are, nev-
ertheless, common by virtue of their power and the extent of their universal-
ity. For even if they do not descend into every science, they still descend into
some, insofar as their commonality is taken up proportionately by different
sciences. This is clear in the case of those principles that are called “common
concepts of the mind” and posited at the beginning of Euclid; for example, “if
you take equals from equals”, and so on,21 and “every whole is greater than its
part”.22 These are said to be less common than the principles of the first kind
insofar as they are found only in discrete or continuous quantities.
There are also principles of a third kind, which are intrinsically proper to
particular sciences. They are not taken up by different sciences according to
proportional or analogical commonality; rather, each principle stands accord-
ing to its own notion. If it descends from a higher science into a determinate
science, or even if it is used in some other science, nevertheless, this kind of
principle will always stand according to its proper and determinate notion and
nature, and is not taken from here to another determinate intention by way of
any analogical commonality. For example, in geometry, there is the definition

17 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, iv.3-​4, 1005b19-​1009a5 (esp. c. 3, 1005b19-​20; c. 4, 1007b17-​18

and 1006b7-​9).
18 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, iv.3, 1005b11-​17.
19 Cf. Albert the Great, Metaphysica, lib. iv, tr. 2, c. 2, p. 174, l. 62-​64.
20 Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio, 1A, p. 71, l. 22 –​p. 74, l. 127.
21 Euclid, Elementa, eds J.L. Heiberg, E.S. Stamatis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1969-​1977), vol. 1,
lib. i, common concept 2, p. 5, l. 10; id., Opera a Campano interprete fidissimo tralata
(Venezia: Pacioli, 1509), f. 4v.
22 Euclid, Elementa, vol. 1, lib. i, common concept 8, p. 6, l. 4; id., Opera a Campano, f. 4v.
422  Preamble of the Book

of the circle23 or the principle “all right angles are equal”;24 in optics, the prin-
ciple “colour moves sight”, and so on; in physics, “there is motion in nature”.
Having now outlined the different kinds of scientific principles, let us now
consider their mode of certitude and the way their truth is apprehended.
»It is evident that, in most-​common principles and in those we have called
“common”, the truth is apprehended from the notion of the terms. Since, as
Aristotle says in Book vi of the Ethics, c­ hapter 4,25 the cognitive habits “by
which the soul says” or apprehends “what is true” are five, namely, art, demon-
strative knowledge [scientia], prudence, wisdom, and intellect –​for it belongs
to suspicion and opinion to say what is false, as he writes there26 –​it follows, as
Aristotle concludes in ­chapter 7,27 that there will be no demonstrative knowl-
edge, art, prudence, or wisdom concerning the principle of the knowable
[scibilis] or of the sciences [scientiarum]. It remains, therefore, that intellect
relates to the principle or the kind of principles mentioned above. According
to the Commentator,28 intellect is “that, according to which we take cognition
of the principles” and through which we come to cognise them. For intellect
alone has the principles of the sciences as its subject. For this reason, as the
Commentator says at the beginning of ­chapter 8,29 “concerning the common
conceptions, which we call axioms, our intellect, through its intellectual activ-
ity, shows the simple and actual proximity between the objects of knowledge,
which is immediate and cannot be reached through a syllogism, in that it does
not require a mediating definition in order to comprehend the things intel-
lected”. Aristotle says the same in the final chapter of Book i of the Posterior
Analytics.30«31
From the foregoing it is clear that most-​common and common principles are
apprehended from the notion of the terms or through the habit called “intel-
lect” which, as is said in c­ hapter 8 of On Fate and Providence,32 is greater than
all scientific knowledge in us and is that by which we understand the terms

23 Cf. Euclid, Elementa, vol. 1, lib. i, definition 15, p. 2, l. 9-​13; id., Opera a Campano, f. 4r.
24 Euclid, Elementa, vol. 1, lib. i, postulate 4, p. 5, l. 3; id., Opera a Campano, f. 4v.
25 Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, vi.3, 1139b15-​17, p. 255, l. 13-​15.
26 Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, vi.3, 1139b17-​18, p. 255, l. 15-​16.
27 Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, vi.6, 1140b33-​1141a8.
28 Cf. Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, lib. vi, c. 6 (ms Vaticano [Città
del], Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2171, f. 111rb).
29 Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, lib. vi, c. 7 (ms Vaticano [Città del],
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2171, f. 111vb).
30 Cf. Aristotle, Analytica posteriora, i.34, 89b10-​15.
31 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. iii, c. 23 (F f. 167vb).
32 Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §30, p. 139, l. 7-​10.
Preamble of the Book 423

or principles. This apprehension does not occur in any way through another
habit or through the experiential apprehension [experimentalem notitiam] of
the senses, as becomes obvious if one examines these principles case by case.
However, if we speak about the certitude of apprehended truth with regard
to proper principles, then a distinction must be made: some proper principles
belong to purely mathematical sciences, others do not, and if not, they belong
to physical sciences or those related to the physical sciences.
For purely mathematical sciences, let us take as examples the principles of
arithmetic and geometry. The principles of these sciences have the same mode
of certitude as common and most-​common principles; that is, such proper
principles are grasped through the habit of intellect or according to the reason
of the terms, and not through the experiential apprehension [notitiam] of the
senses. Admittedly, sometimes we already possess some cognition of the sub-
stance of the things signified by the terms through the apprehension [appre-
hensionem] of the senses (for example, the number four, the number six, the
circle, the triangle, and so on). In the case of non-​mathematical sciences, how-
ever, the principles themselves are received through the senses or the experi-
ential apprehension of the senses, and not through intellect or any cognitive
habit besides intellect.
The reason for this is as follows. We apprehend the proper principles of the
mathematical sciences, which concern things abstracted by our consideration
of them, at the outset of our entry into these sciences, and we apprehend them
by intellect. For, in such sciences, those things that are prior as such in real-
ity and in nature are also grasped earlier by us. Therefore, at the first stage
of our approach toward these objects of knowledge, the principles appear to
our intellect, whether they are definitions (for example, of the circle or the
triangle, or of the number four or the number six and so on), or whether they
are the propositions that they call “postulates” (for example, “to extend a line
indefinitely” or “all right angles are equal” and so on, which are enumerated
at the beginning of Euclid).33 Therefore, it is the same for common and most-​
common principles as it is for principles that are proper to purely mathemat-
ical sciences: their mode and notion of certitude and apprehended truth is as
we have just described it.
However, it is otherwise for sciences concerning things joined to mat-
ter, to bodily nature, or to any changeable substance in general, or even to
unchangeable substance –​whether such things are the essences themselves,

33 Euclid, Elementa, vol. 1, lib. i, postulates 2 and 4, p. 4, l. 16-​17 and p. 5, l. 3; id., Opera a
Campano, f. 4v.
424  Preamble of the Book

the substances, the natural attributes, properties, or operations of essences

or substances, or in general any alteration or change, by which the things are
affected, either by nature or by the determination of intellect (as happens, for
example, in ethics). In the sciences concerned with such things, I say that their
proper principles have another mode of apprehended truth and certitude. For
in all these sciences that are investigated and comprehended through the scru-
tiny of natural reason –​whether they concern things abstracted both accord-
ing to existence and our mode of consideration, or things joined to matter or
bodily nature, as was said, or things abstracted according to our mode of con-
sideration that are related to the physical world –​in all these cases, the things
that are grasped earlier by us and according to our mode of thinking are later
in reality (and thus by nature are grasped later, even though they are grasped
earlier by us). Such things are the objects of the senses. In the pursuit of these
sciences, these things occur earlier, relative to us, in the inquiry undertaken by
way of the senses.
Aristotle’s teaching that is transmitted in the prologue of the Metaphysics34
applies to the pursuit of these sciences: from sense there arises memory, and
from these two an experience is acquired, and from many experiences comes
the universal, which is the principle of art and science. He makes the same
point at the beginning of Book I of the Posterior Analytics:35 “Every art and
intellectual discipline comes from the pre-​existing cognition” of the senses.
Thus in physics, “there is motion” is received through the cognition of the
senses; in medicine, “scammony purges the bile”; in music, “the proportion of
pitches is relative to the size of the hammers being struck”; in optics, “light and
colour move sight”,36 while the principle “the angles of incidence and reflec-
tion in a mirror are equal” is captured by experience using an instrument called
a pinhole camera, as is evident in Book iv of Alhazen’s Optics;37 similarly, in
astronomy, the experiential knowledge of certain things is gained through the
instrument of the armillary sphere.
Therefore, proceeding along this path of sense and experience in the pur-
suit of these sciences, one universal is taken as their principle, and this prin-
ciple in each science is only believed, and not at all known or intellected. For
is not grasped from the proper reason of the terms, which would require the

34 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, i.1, 980b28-​981a12.

35 Aristotle, Analytica posteriora, i.1, 71a1-​2, p. 5, l. 3-​4.
36 Cf. John Peckham, Perspectiva communis, in D. Lindberg (ed.), John Pecham and the
Science of Optics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), lib. i, prop. 1, p. 62, l. 2-​5.
37 Cf. Alhazen, Opticae thesaurus, ed. F. Risner (Basel: Episcopius, 1572), lib. iv, c. 7 and 10,
p. 104–​106 and 108.
Preamble of the Book 425

use of intellect, nor is it a conclusion reached from any other principles or

causes; rather, as was said, the principle is only believed. Accordingly, it is
apprehended under the certitude of the true, which cannot possibly be other-
wise. Now, I say “it is apprehended”, meaning the principle is that with which
reason is objectively occupied in cognition, for example, “that, which is moved,
exists”; I understand “the true” to mean the equality or consonance of the thing
apprehended and the intellect (this, in its notion and mode, involves a com-
plexion or composition of speech); finally, “certitude” about the truth of the
apprehended thing itself is the firm and unshakeable assent of reason in the
apprehended thing.
Now, although the believed [creditum] is apprehended by reason under the
certitude of the true and, in this respect, agrees under a common notion with
the known [scito], nevertheless, they differ from one another.
First, they differ in the mode and reason of certitude. For demonstrative
knowledge [scientia], relative to the known, brings about a kind of certitude
arising from the evidence of the thing itself. This evidence occurs in the intel-
lect from the intention and the notion of the terms, which form a complex
with one another; this happens either through the immediate relation of the
terms with one another, if the proposition is immediate in both cause and sub-
ject (first principles, for example, are like this), or through a mediate relation,
if the conclusion was deduced from prior principles. But the certitude of faith
or credulity with respect to the believed does not arise from the evidence of
the thing, as it does in demonstrative knowledge, but rather has its cause and
reason from the outside, as it were –​that is, from the clear authority of some
expert, from whose truth the intellect cannot reasonably dissent.
From this distinction in the mode of certitude there arises the second
difference between the believed and the known. This consists in the order
of apprehension according to which someone apprehends the thing itself
(which is in fact the primary object of cognition) as well as the truth about
that thing. This truth is one mode of the thing apprehended. For, in demon-
strative knowledge, the evidence of the thing comes from the intention and
notion of the terms, which are, as it were, the intrinsic principle of cognition
discovered in the thing itself, insofar as it is a being and a thing of first inten-
tion. From this it follows that the thing itself by nature is apprehended first
under its own real notion, which is the object of cognition, and only then does
one apprehend truth or falsity about it, since, as Aristotle says, truth and fal-
sity are certain modes of complexion.38 But it is otherwise for faith in relation

38 Cf. Aristotle, De interpretatione, 1, 16a12-​13; De anima, iii.6, 430a27-​430b28.

426  Preamble of the Book

to principles that are believed. For it does not have the cause and notion of
its certitude from the thing itself, but from the authority of some expert, in
whose truth reason declares our trust must absolutely be placed and to whose
truth the will inclines. From this it follows that the believed as such is appre-
hended as true primarily and through itself and, as believed, it is known only
under the notion of the true and not in its own notion, according to which it
is a natural being. Thus, the believed does not have the same evidence as the
known, because things known have evidence firstly and through themselves,
insofar as they are beings of this or that kind according to the proper notion
of their entity; things believed, however, are apprehended firstly and through
themselves and have evidence only insofar as they are true, and not insofar
as they are beings of this or that kind according to the real and proper notion
of their entity.
From the foregoing, by way of summary, we can gather eight noteworthy
conclusions about principles.
The first is that the cognition of principles is one thing, and the cognition of
conclusions is another: for there is no demonstration of principles, but only of
conclusions, because principles are not understood through anything prior –​
for they are themselves the principles of knowing other things –​but conclu-
sions are known from the principles.
The second is that the cognition of most-​common principles, common
principles, and those proper to purely mathematical sciences are one thing,
because they are intellected, but the principles of metaphysics or things
divine, of physics, and of things related to physics, are another, because they
are received through the senses.
The third conclusion is that all principles do not possess the same certitude
and evidence.
The fourth is that there is neither demonstrative knowledge, nor art, nor
prudence of the principle of the knowable; there is either the reception of the
senses (with respect to the believed), or intellect or wisdom (with respect to
the other principles).
The fifth is that it belongs to wisdom to manifest the principles the sciences,
not to demonstrate them.
The sixth is that the habits of principles of the first kind of certitude are
innate in us. Later it will become clear whether they are in us by nature only
in potency and proceed into act from pre-​existing sense-​cognition, as Aristotle
says,39 or, as Plato says, whether they are by nature in us already in act, although

39 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Praeamb. B, n. 34-​35.

Preamble of the Book 427

they are aroused by instruction fanning the ember, according to Boethius in

Book iii of On the Consolation, metre 11:40

Within … there clings the seed of truth,

Which is aroused by instruction fanning the ember:
For why, being asked a question, do you freely and correctly respond,
Unless buried deep in the heart there burned a living coal?
If Plato’s Muse makes the truth resound,
What each forgetful person learns, they recollect.

The seventh conclusion is that nothing is more known than the first principles.
The eight is that it does not belong to any science to demonstrate its princi-
ples, even though they are disclosed by first philosophy or wisdom.
From these eight conclusions the properties of every complex principle,
insofar as it is a principle, appear in summary form: namely, such a principle is
conceived by intellect or common reason, or by the reception of the senses; it
comes last in analysis and thus is terminative; it is more permanent and more
manifest; it is first apprehended and far removed from deception, and is intel-
lected through itself; it is understood from what comes after it, but in a differ-
ent mode of cognition than that which comes after it; it is understood most of
all; and it is not considered by any particular science.
So much for the second principal part of the Preamble.
[C] It remains to consider the third and final part, which concerns the
proper mode of theological consideration.
One should know that this divinising wisdom proceeds in exactly the same
way, according to the proper mode of a science, proportionately speaking, as
the sciences mentioned above, apart from the purely mathematical sciences.
This applies to its apprehension [notitiam] and use of most-​common and com-
mon principles, as well as to the way in which its proper principles are received.
Now, this divinising wisdom uses most-​common principles, such as “it is
impossible that the affirmation and the negation of something are true”, or “it
is impossible that something both is and is not”, and “names have determinate
meanings”, and any others that there may be.41
This divinising wisdom also presupposes common principles like the other
sciences, especially the quadrivial sciences, but by an analogy, in accordance
with the notion of its own matter and subject; examples of these principles

40 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. iii, metrum 11, p. 91, l. 11-​16.

41 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Praeamb. B, n. 17.
428  Preamble of the Book

are “the whole is greater than its part”,42 “whatever things are equal to one and
the same thing are equal to one another”,43 “if you take equals from equals, the
remainders will be equal”,44 and so on. The extension of principles is propor-
tionate to the degree of their power.
This sapiential science also has its proper principles, from which it perfectly
proceeds according to the scientific mode. It follows this procedure in terms of
the apprehension [notitiam] of its principles, in terms of their source, and in
terms of the process by which it demonstrates conclusions, either positively or
by a reductio. Now, the proper principles of this science are “there is multitude”
and “there is the productive and the produced”.
These principles are grasped in this most divine science in the same way,
proportionately speaking, as the proper principles are in other sciences that
concern things joined to motion or change and to matter, and in those sciences
that are related to the physical world, such as music, optics, so on. For it is
obvious that in such sciences there is no necessary relation between the appre-
hension [apprehensionem] of the senses and the apprehension of the intellect
which arises from them. Consequently, there is no necessary relation between
sensible, experiential apprehension [notitiam] and the universal proposition,
which the science takes for its principle, as if something could be inferred nec-
essarily from the sensible, as it were, according to the proper notion of the
terms, or concluded from its per se causes –​unless it might seem to someone
that that weak mode of argumentation, which occurs through induction or by
example,45 could hold, but even from these nothing is inferred or concluded,
nor does anything come to be apprehended according to its proper notion
or cause.
Therefore, in taking this universal principle from sensible experiences there
is nothing but a certain conjectural inference under the notion of the true and
not under the notion of determinate being, as has been said. Thus, the univer-
sal principle is only received as believed, not as intellected or known. And, as
has been said, it is taken according to a certain conjecture, but nevertheless
with the firm and unshakeable assent of reason. This firmness and unshakea-
ble assent arise from a certain natural instinct founded in the distinctive and
simultaneously collective and collative power that we call “the cogitative”.46

42 Euclid, Elementa, lib. i, common concept 8, p. 6, l. 4; id., Opera a Campano, f. 4v.

43 Euclid, Elementa, lib. i, common concept 1, p. 5, l. 9; id., Opera a Campano, f. 4v.
44 Euclid, Elementa, lib. i, common concept 3, p. 5, l. 11-​12; id., Opera a Campano, f. 4v.
45 Cf. Peter of Spain, Summulae logicales, ed. L.M. De Rijk (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972), tr. 5,
§3, p. 56, l. 12 and p. 58, l. 4-​5.
46 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Praeamb. C, n. 56.
Preamble of the Book 429

In or through this power the simple and pure intentions of things are appre-
hended, distinguished, collected, and drawn together, once they have been
separated from their idols, to borrow an expression from Averroes.47 This is the
doctrine of Aristotle in Book i of the Metaphysics, ­chapter 2,48 and in the final
chapter of Book ii of the Posterior Analytics,49 where he shows how, from many
sensations, memory arises in rational creatures once reason is stimulated, and
from many memories there comes experience, and from many experiences the
universal, which comes after the particulars and is, as it were, not separate
from them but is nearly identical with them. Such is the principle of art and
science, as has already been explained.50
»It is similarly the case in this science with regard to the reception of its
proper principles, namely, “there is multitude” and so on, which the author
receives and assumes, not by a propter quid demonstration, which is “from
what is prior or from the causes”, but by a quia demonstration, which is
“from those things, which seem to the many or to the wise to be the case, or
which are agreed upon from prior things”, as Aristotle, in Book I of the Ethics,
­chapter 10,51 and his commentator, Eustratius,52 have it. As if in response to
the question, “what are the modes by which the principles are cognised?”,
Aristotle says in that passage that there are three modes:53 “Now, some princi-
ples are viewed by induction, others by sense, and others by habituation, and
others in other ways.” Now, they are cognised “by induction”, for example, “if
you take equals from equals, what remains are equal”, and others like this. The
Commentator explains this as follows:54 if someone doubts these, you assume
numbers, sizes, and other things that can be measured in the demonstration
of this principle. But the principles are cognised “by sense” when, for example,
we know the particular qualities of the elements that are prior to them, such
as the heat of fire, the humidity of air, and so on. The principles are cognised
“by habituation” when, for example, we understand that the virtues are good
and morally upright by performing them and in becoming familiar with their
acts.«55

47 Cf. Averroes, De anima, ed. F.S. Crawford (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of
America, 1953), lib. iii, comm. 6, p. 415, l. 62-​64.
48 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, i.1, 980b28-​981a12.
49 Cf. Aristotle, Analytica posteriora, ii.19, 100a3-​9.
50 Cf. Berthold of Moosburg, Praeamb. B, n. 34.
51 Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, i.7, 1098a33-​b2.
52 Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, lib. i, c. 7, p. 124, l. 46-​48.
53 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, i.7, 1098b3-​4, p. 152, l. 5-​6.
54 Cf. Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, lib. i, c. 7, p. 126, l. 98 –​p. 127, l. 12.
55 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. v, c. 24 (F f. 169ra-​b).
430  Preamble of the Book

The principles of this science, “there is multitude”, and so on, are received in
exactly the same way. In fact, over and above the mode common to it and the
other sciences, it has something greater in the notion and cause of its certitude
and its unshakeable assent in these principles themselves.
This becomes evident first from a consideration of the cognitive principle,
with which the theologian applies himself to divine objects, and which is more
eminent and thus more acute than every other cognitive principle that we use
relative to any knowable objects whatsoever.
For it exceeds the particular reason, which some56 call “the cogitative” and
which, though it is one in subject, is three in operation. Regarding its lower
part, where it touches the imagination, the particular reason is opinionative
and is occupied with the intentions of physical things; regarding its higher
part, where it is joined to the universal reason, it knows demonstratively [sci-
entifica] and is occupied with purely mathematical things, such as arithmetic
and geometry (these two kinds of speculation belong to reason, as the author
explains in c­ hapter 8 of On Fate and Providence,57 near the beginning); as for its
middle part, the particular reason is occupied with mathematical things that
are applied to the physical world, for example, with number related to sound in
the case of harmonics, the visual and radial line in the case of optics, or moving
quantity in the case of astronomy. From here the levels in reason can be con-
sidered from the diversity of knowable objects with which reason is occupied.
Now, the cognitive principle of this science also exceeds the universal rea-
son, which we call “the possible intellect”, which apprehends the thing in its
reason. This universal reason, regarding its lower part, is occupied with logi-
cal intentions; regarding its middle part, with metaphysical intentions, as can
be gathered from the book and chapter mentioned above;58 but regarding its
higher part, it reflects beings as such and is intellect, as is written in the same
passage.59
Indeed, these cognitive principles relate only to beings, though according to
different notions. However, there are many divine things above being, as is clear

56 Cf. Averroes, De anima, lib. iii, comm. 6, p. 415, l. 59 –​p. 416, l. 91; Albert the Great, De
anima, ed. C. Stroick (Münster i.W.: Aschendorff, 1968), lib. iii, tr. 2, c. 19, p. 206, l. 27-​28;
Thomas Aquinas, De anima, ed. A.M. Pirotta (Torino: Marietti, 19594), lib. ii, lect. 13, §396-​
398, p. 101; Dietrich of Freiberg, De intellectu et intelligibili, ed. B. Mojsisch, Opera omnia,
vol. 1, iii.27.2, p. 200, l. 26.
57 Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §28, p. 136, l. 1 –​p. 138, l. 5. Reading metaphysicas
with ms Oxford, Balliol College Library, Cod. 224B, where the critical edition follows ms
Vaticano (Città del), Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2192 (mathematicas).
58 Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §29, p. 138, l. 1-​15.
59 Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §30, p. 139, l. 1-​7.
Preamble of the Book 431

in the case of things divine according to essence and what is divine according
to cause, which is “above all beings”, as Dionysius attests in ­chapter 4 of On
the Divine Names B.60 For this reason, in ­chapter 1 of the Mystical Theology,61
he calls “unlearned” those “who are sealed off in beings and believe that there
is nothing supersubstantially beyond beings, but they presume to know, with
that cognition that is according to themselves, him, who makes the shadows
his hiding place”. Consequently, it is impossible that we should receive those
things that are above us according to our ownness and thus compare things
divine with a reason that has been reared on the senses, through which we
are deceived by appearances, as he says there in ­chapter 7 of On the Divine
Names.62 Dionysius adds an explanation for this,63 when he describes the cog-
nitive principle in us of things divine, which we are seeking here: “one must
see that our mind has a certain power for knowing, through which it examines
things intelligible, but a union exceeding the nature of the mind (the other
translation says: ‘a unity superexalted beyond the nature of the mind’), through
which the mind is conjoined to those things that are above it. Therefore, it is
necessary to think divine things according to this, not according to ourselves,
but our whole selves placed outside our whole selves and deified wholly. For it
is better to be God’s and not our own; thus, divine things will be given to those
made to be with God”. Thus Dionysius.
Behold, how beautifully he describes this cognitive principle, this union or
unity, with which »one must apply oneself to divine things«,64 and its super-
eminence relative to every other principle in us! Proclus speaks of this princi-
ple, which he also calls “the one of the soul”, and about its eminence relative
to every other cognitive power in us, in the text discussed above,65 and about
how those treating divine things are made gods and knowers of things divine.
For this reason, in question 10 of On Providence,66 he says that this one itself is
more divine than the intellect.
Thus, it is evident that this science, because of its cognitive principle
through which it considers divine things, not only incomparably exceeds all
particular sciences in the certitude of its principles, but even the metaphysics
of the Peripatetics that is occupied with being as being.

60 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 4.3 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 175; pg 3, 697A).

61 Dionysius, De mystica theologia, 1.2 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 569–​570; pg 3, 1000A).
62 Cf. Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 384–​385; pg 3, 865C).
63 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 385–​386; pg 3, 865C-​868A).
64 Cf. Boethius, De Trinitate, c. 2, p. 169, l. 79-​80.
65 Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §31-​32, p. 139, l. 1 –​p. 140, l. 5.
66 Cf. Proclus, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam, q. 10, §64, p. 106, l. 9-​11.
432  Preamble of the Book

This is evident in a second way from a consideration of the divinising or

supersapiential habit through which this theology receives its principles, and
from a reflection on the eminence of this habit itself relative to all other habits,
whether these be scientific or even sapiential.
To make this point clearer, one should know that, just as Plato and Aristotle
diverge on the question of the cognitive powers and modes of cognition in the
human soul, so likewise they do not agree on the question of scientific and
sapiential habits.
Aristotle, as the author attests in his book On Fate and Providence, c­ hapter 8,67
leads us through the cognitive powers and modes of cognition in our soul as
far as intellect and intellectual activity, and insinuates nothing beyond this.
But Plato and the theologians before Plato praised a cognition beyond intel-
lect, which they divulge as a divine frenzy, and they say that this cognition is
the one of the soul. For in this one –​which Dionysius, as we saw,68 calls “the
union (or, according to the other translation, ‘the unity’) superexalted above
the nature of the mind (or intellect)” –​the cognitive power and the cognition
are the same. Therefore, it necessarily follows that, just as the cognitive pow-
ers and modes of cognition are ranked in terms of nobility and eminence, so
too must the sapiential habits of these cognitive powers be ranked in terms of
nobility and excellence. For one cognitive power relates to another just as one
habit relates to another. Now, the cognitive power of this, our divinising the-
ology, exceeds not only the cognitive powers of all sciences but even the intel-
lect itself, as was said –​and the intellect, according to the author in the text
mentioned above,69 is greater than every science and belongs to the soul itself
“insofar as it is an image of what is truly intellect”. For “imitating this as much
as it can, the soul itself becomes intellect, running beyond science, abandon-
ing the manifold methods with which was formerly adorned, and raises its eyes
to beings alone”. Thus Proclus.
The eminence of this cognitive power, the one or unity of the soul, is so
great that the soul –​once it is completely stationed within it –​is almost made
into God, according to Dionysius and the author in the passage mentioned
above.70 Therefore, the habit of this, our divinising beyond-​wisdom, exceeds
every other habit –​not only of the sciences, but even the habit of intellect that
is wisdom, through which Aristotle received his first principles in his first phi-
losophy which, because it concerns being as being, is merely of beings.

67 Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §31, p. 139, l. 2 –​p. 140, l. 6.

68 Berthold of Moosburg, Prol. 15, n. 160; 16, n. 174; 17, n. 185.
69 Cf. Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §30, p. 139, l. 8-​21.
70 Berthold of Moosburg, Praeamb. C, n. 63-​66.
Preamble of the Book 433

Now, according to Aristotle himself, this habit of wisdom, although it seems

to differ in general from intellect, nevertheless is said by him to consist in sci-
ence and intellect.
»This can be shown more clearly by the three propositions that Aristotle
himself gives in Book vi of the Ethics, c­ hapter 8.71 The first is that wisdom is
the most certain kind of knowledge; the second, that wisdom is “intellect and
demonstrative knowledge [scientia]”; the third, that wisdom “is the most hon-
ourable knowledge because it holds the highest rank”. He proves the first prop-
osition when he says72 that “wisdom must not only know what follows from
the principles but also must be able to say what is true about the principles”.
The second part of this quotation shows the difference between wisdom and
intellect; for, according to what Eustratius the commentator says there,73 wis-
dom “is not only the cognition of things demonstrated from the principles but
is the veridical science of the principles themselves and those things relating
to them”. For wisdom is able to think these things, not only by a primary recep-
tion, but, if needed, it can use arguments to persuade someone who requires
them. For this reason, first philosophy is entirely wisdom and the first philoso-
pher is entirely wise, “because it crafts the crafts, knows the sciences scientifi-
cally, demonstrates the principles, and, where it is fitting, manifests them”, and
conveys them to the other sciences. The Commentator gives the fine example
of geometry:74 geometry assumes extensions, height, width, and depth, but the
philosopher himself demonstrates these, and likewise for the other sciences.
And so from the foregoing it is clear that intellect is the simple reception of
principles, but wisdom is the reception of the principles with certainty about
them.«75
If, therefore, wisdom is the most certain knowledge, as the first proposition
states, because it receives the principles of the sciences with certainty about
them, what shall we say about our beyond-​wisdom? It receives, with certainty,
not only the principles of beings (which according to Aristotle are themselves
beings),76 but even the principles that are beyond beings, and especially the
primarily Good, which is the principle and cause, not only of all beings, but

71 Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, vi.7, 1141a16-​20, p. 259, l. 17-​22.

72 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, vi.7, 1141a17-​18, p. 259, l. 19-​20.
73 Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, lib. vi, c. 7 (ms Vaticano [Città del],
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 2171, f. 112rb and 112va).
74 Cf. Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, lib. vi, c. 7 (ms Vaticano [Città
del], Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2171, f. 112vb-​113ra).
75 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. iii, c. 23 (F f. 168ra-​b).
76 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, v.1, 1012b34-​1013a23.
434  Preamble of the Book

even of the divinising principles that are the primordial principles of all beings,
which are beneath the first Principle as such. What shall we say, except that
this is the most certain and highest cognition of the deified human?
For this reason, the author, speaking about that cognition of the soul,
by which it ascends to the One and hypothetical, says this in On Fate and
Providence, ­chapter 8:77 “From this, the geometer and each of the other scien-
tists will derive knowledge of their principles, because it reconnects the many
and divided principles with the one principle of all. For what it (meaning: the
Principle) is in all things, in geometry is the point, in arithmetic the monad,
and in each science that which is most simple, from which the sciences bring
forth and demonstrate what belongs to them. But, to be sure, each of these is
called a particular principle, but the Principle of all beings is the principle as
such, and it is this that the ascent of the teaching of the sciences reaches”. Thus
Proclus.
From what has been said it is abundantly clear that, if wisdom is said to
have such certainty while it only concerns beings, how great will the certitude
of that wisdom be, which treats not only beings, but beyond-​beings, which, as
it were, infinitely surpass beings themselves? For among these are things that
are divine according to essence and indeed God himself, who is glorious unto
the ages.
»Similarly, from the second proposition we have the other difference
between wisdom and intellect, namely, that wisdom consists of intellect and
demonstrative knowledge. For, as the Commentator states,78 wisdom is the
habit composed of intellect and knowledge. For intellect has cognition of the
principles and demonstrative knowledge concerns conclusions derived from
the principles, but wisdom has the necessary knowledge of both. Accordingly,
Aristotle says79 that “the wise must not only know what follows from the prin-
ciples (that is, the conclusions), but must be able to say what is true about the
principles”. “Therefore, when the soul conceives both kinds of truth –​both the
truth about the principles and the truth about what follows from the princi-
ples –​then it becomes intellectual, and a theologian (that is, a wise soul).”«80
Thus the Commentator.81

77 Proclus, De providentia et fato, c. 8, §29, p. 138, l. 7-​15.

78 Cf. Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, lib. vi, c. 7 (ms Vaticano [Città
del], Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2171, f. 113ra).
79 Berthold of Moosburg, Praeamb. C, n. 72.
80 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. iii, c. 23 (F f. 168rb).
81 Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, lib. vi, c. 7 (ms Vaticano [Città del],
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2171, f. 113rb).
Preamble of the Book 435

Indeed, since the cognitive power of our supersapiential and divinising wis-
dom not only runs beyond every kind of knowledge that concerns beings, but
even ascends beyond intellect itself, as was shown above,82 the habit of this
wisdom will not strictly speaking be composed of intellect and knowledge, but
will be the simple inspection of the Form forming all things as such, according
to what is said by Boethius in On the Trinity:83 “in theology one must apply
oneself intellectually, not being led astray by imaginings, but rather by looking
into the Form itself”.
And since, as he says in Book v of On the Consolation, prose 5,84 “there exists
the higher eye of the intelligence, for, surpassing the boundary of the universe,
it views that simple Form by the pure apex of the mind”, so therefore, accord-
ing to Dionysius in ­chapter 7 of On the Divine Names,85 “because of the divine
wisdom, souls have the rational power, indeed, to go about in a circle around
the truth of beings, and because of their abundant variety they fall short of the
unitive minds, but also, by virtue of enfolding the many into the one, they are
held worthy of intellections equal to the angels, insofar as this is fitting and
possible for souls”.
Now, Dionysius had said already86 that in these angels “intellectual power
and activity shines forth pure and immaculate and is able to behold the divine
intellects. And by virtue of its simplicity and immateriality, the intellectual
power is shaped, as much as possible, by its simplicity, immateriality, and by
its divinely, conformly, and uniformly unitive character, after the divine and
beyond-​wise mind and reason”. And below, in the same chapter, section i,87
after he spoke about the cognition of God in a general way, he adds: “And there
is, furthermore, the most divine cognition of God, which is known through
ignorance according to the union above mind, when the mind, having departed
from everything else, and then also sending itself away, is united with the
super-​resplendent rays, and is illuminated hither and yon by the inscrutable
depth of wisdom.” Dionysius makes the same point in ­chapter 1, section A.88
From these passages, we clearly see the eminence of the habit of the super-
sapiential science of the Platonists in comparison to the habit of sapiential
metaphysics.

82 Berthold of Moosburg, Praeamb. C, n. 69.

83 Boethius, De Trinitate, c. 2, p. 169, l. 79-​81.
84 Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae, lib. v, prosa 4, p. 149, l. 86-​88.
85 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.2 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 390–​391; pg 3, 868B-​C).
86 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.2 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 389–​390; pg 3, 868B).
87 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.3 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 406; pg 3, 872A-​B).
88 Cf. Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 1.1 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 5-​8; pg 3, 585B-​588A).
436  Preamble of the Book

»The third proposition, from which the third difference comes, is that wis-
dom is the most honourable knowledge.89 This is explained in two ways. The
first is relative to its matter and subject, since we say that things divine are
most honourable.«90 According to Aristotle,91 these things are being as such
and its parts, modes, and properties. »The second is relative to its form, since
we think using the most honourable principles, and wisdom is a veridical and
most certain knowledge about these principles. Therefore, Aristotle says in the
same place92 that “wisdom is the demonstrative knowledge and intellect of
things that are most honourable by nature”.«93
From this third proposition, once again, we clearly see the eminence of the
habit of this divinising science above the habit of metaphysics. In terms of
matter and subject, this wisdom concerns the most honourable things, namely,
the divine good according to cause primarily and according to essence or exist-
ence –​that is, the first Good and One and the goodnesses and unities –​and
also what participates goodness after the manner of an exemplar.
Similarly, in terms of its form, these are the most honourable principles,
through which this divinising science ascends to the thatness of the primarily
One and primarily Good (I do not say “the whatness”), in accordance with what
Dionysius writes in c­ hapter 7 of On the Divine Names, section H:94 “Moreover,
one must ask how we are to know God, who is neither intelligible, nor sensible,
nor is absolutely any of those things that exist. So is it never true to say that we
know God? Not from his nature, for this is unknown and exceeds all reason
and mind; but from the ordering of all things, just as it has been projected from
him”, and so on. Thus Dionysius.
For this reason, the author ascends methodically and gradually, according to
his capacity, to what is beyond all things, through the principles proper to the
science, as will be clear immediately in what follows.
From all the foregoing it is abundantly clear that this, our divinising philoso-
phy, is most truly and properly a science –​a science, moreover, that is veridical,
most certain, and thus the highest of all, both by virtue of its mode of pro-
ceeding from principles that are most-​common, common, and proper, which
is truly scientific, and by virtue of the habit, by which it receives its principles,
as has been shown here extensively.
89 Berthold of Moosburg, Praeamb. C, n. 71.
90 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. iii, c. 23 (F f. 168rb).
91 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, vi.1, 1026a19-​32.
92 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, vi.7, 1141b2-​3, p. 260, l. 14-​15.
93 Cf. Thomas of York, Sapientiale, lib. iii, c. 23 (F f. 168rb).
94 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 7.3 (Dionysiaca, vol. 1, p. 402–​403; pg 3, 869C-​D).
Bibliography

Manuscripts

Anonymous Ratisbonensis, Quaestiones in IV libros Sententiarum, MS München,

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 26897, ff. 1ra-​138vb.
Eustratius of Nicaea, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, MS Vaticano (Città del),
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2171, ff. 1ra-​211vb.
Franz of Retz, Comestorium beatae Mariae virginis, MS Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-​
Chorherrenstift, Cod. 43, ff. 1ra-​296rb.
Franz of Retz, Lectura super antiphonam Salve regina, MS Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-​
Chorherrenstift, Cod. 52, ff. 1ra-​260va.
Thomas of York, Sapientiale, MS Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Soppr.
A.VI.437, ff. 1ra-​230vb.
William of Conches, Glossae super Macrobium (versio longior), MS Vaticano (Città del),
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb. lat. 1140, ff. 2r-​153v.

Primary Sources

Adelheid Langmann, Die Offenbarungen der Adelheid Langmann, Klosterfrau zu

Engelthal, ed. P. Strauch, Strassburg, Trübner, 1878.
Alan of Lille, Summa ‘Quoniam homines’, ed. P. Glorieux, in Archives d’histoire doctri-
nale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 20(1953), p. 113–​364.
Alan of Lille, Regulae caelestis iuris, ed. N. Häring, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et
littéraire du Moyen Âge 48(1981), p. 121–​226.
Albert the Great, Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet, 38 vols, Paris, Vivès, 1890–​1899.
Albert the Great, De animalibus, ed. H. Stadler, 2 vols, Münster i.W., Aschendorff,
1916–​1920.
Albert the Great, Physica, ed. P. Hossfeld, Editio Coloniensis iv/​1-​2, Münster i.W.,
Aschendorff, 1987–​1993.
Albert the Great, De caelo et mundo, ed. P. Hossfeld, Editio Coloniensis v/​1, Münster
i.W., Aschendorff, 1971.
Albert the Great, De natura loci. De causis proprietatum elementorum. De generatione et
corruptione, ed. P. Hossfeld, Editio Coloniensis v/​2, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1980.
Albert the Great, De anima, ed. C. Stroick, Editio Coloniensis vii/​1, Münster i.W.,
Aschendorff, 1968.
Albert the Great, De natura et origine animae, ed. B. Geyer, Editio Coloniensis xii,
Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1955, p. 1–​46.
438 Bibliography

Albert the Great, Metaphysica, ed. B. Geyer, Editio Coloniensis xvi/​1-​2, Münster i.W.,
Aschendorff, 1960–​1964.
Albert the Great, De fato, ed. P. Simon, Editio Coloniensis xvii/​1, Münster i.W.,
Aschendorff, 1975, p. 65–​78.
Albert the Great, De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa, ed. W. Fauser, Editio
Coloniensis xvii/​2, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1993.
Albert the Great, Summa theologiae sive de mirabili scientia Dei. Libri I, pars I. Quaestiones
1-​50A, ed. D. Siedler, Editio Coloniensis xxxiv/​1, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1978.
Albert the Great, Super Dionysium De caelesti hierarchia, eds P. Simon, W. Kübel, Editio
Coloniensis xxxvi/​1, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1993.
Albert the Great, Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus, ed. P. Simon, Editio Coloniensis
xxxvii/​1, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1972.
Albert the Great, Super Dionysii Mysticam theologiam et Epistulas, ed. P. Simon, Editio
Coloniensis xxxvii/​2, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1978.
Alexander of Hales, Summa fratris Alexandri, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 4 vols,
Quaracchi, Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1924–​1948.
Alfarabi, De ortu scientiarum, ed. C. Baeumker, Über den Ursprung der Wissenschaften
(De ortu scientiarum). Eine mittelalterlichen Einleitungsschrift in die philosophischen
Wissenschaften, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1916.
Alghazali, Metaphysica, ed. J.T. Muckle, Algazel’s Metaphysics. A Medieval Translation,
Toronto, St. Michael’s College, 1933.
Alhazen, Opticae thesaurus, ed. F. Risner, Basel, Episcopius, 1572.
Ambrose, Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam, ed. M. Adriaen, Corpus Christianorum.
Series Latina 14, Turnhout, Brepols, 1957.
Ambrosiaster, Commentarius in epistulas Paulinas. Pars prima. In epistulam ad
Romanos, ed. H.J. Vogels, Wien, Hoelder /​Pichler /​Tempsky, 1966.
Apuleius, Apulei opera quae supersunt. Vol. III. De philosophia libri, ed. C. Moreschini,
Leipzig, Teubner, 1991.
Aristotle, Analytica posteriora, translationes Iacobi, Anonymi sive ‘Ioannis’, Gerardi et
Recensio Guillelmi de Moerbeka, eds L. Minio-​Paluello, B.G. Dod, Aristoteles Latinus
iv/​1-​4, Brugge /​Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1968.
Aristotle, Topica, translatio Boethii, ed. L. Minio-​Paluello, Aristoteles Latinus v/​1-​3,
Bruxelles /​Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1969.
Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, translatio Roberti Grosseteste, ed. R.A. Gauthier,
Aristoteles Latinus xxvi/​1-​3, Leiden /​Bruxelles, Brill /​Desclée de Brouwer, 1972.
Augustine, De immortalitate animae, Patrologia Latina 32, Paris, Migne, 1841, cols 1021–​1034.
Augustine, Soliloquia, Patrologia Latina 32, Paris, Migne, 1841, cols 869-​904.
Augustine, Contra Maximinum haereticum Arianorum episcopum, Patrologia Latina 42,
Paris, Migne, 1985, cols 743-​814.
Augustine, De natura boni, Patrologia Latina 42, Paris, Migne, 1865, cols 551-​572.
Bibliography 439

Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, ed. J. Zycha, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum

Latinorum 28/​1, Wien, Tempsky, 1894.
Augustine, Epistulae, ed. A. Goldbacher, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum
Latinorum 34/​1-​2, 44, 57, 58, Wien, Tempsky, 1895–​1923.
Augustine, Contra academicos. De beata vita. De ordine. De magistro. De libero arbi-
trio, eds W. Green, K. Daur, Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 29, Turnhout,
Brepols, 1970.
Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII, ed. A. Mutzenbecher, Corpus
Christianorum. Series Latina 44A, Turnhout, Brepols, 1975, p. 3–​249.
Augustine, De civitate Dei, eds B. Dombart, A. Kalb, Corpus Christianorum. Series
Latina 47–​48, Turnhout, Brepols, 1955.
Augustine, De Trinitate, eds W.J. Mountain, F. Glorie, Corpus Christianorum. Series
Latina 50–​50A, Turnhout, Brepols, 1968.
Averroes, Commentaria in libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, in Aristotelis opera cum
Averroes commentariis, vol. 8, Venezia, Junta, 1562.
Averroes, De substantia orbis, in Aristotelis opera cum Averrois commentariis, vol. 9,
Venezia, Junta, 1562–​1574, f. 3r-​14v.
Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros, ed. F.S. Crawford,
Cambridge, Mass., Medieval Academy of America, 1953.
Averroes, Averrois in librum V (Δ) Metaphysicorum Aristotelis commentarius, Bern,
Francke, 1971.
Averroes, La béatitude de l’âme, eds M. Geoffroy, C. Steel, Paris, Vrin, 2001.
Avicebron, Fons vitae, ex Arabico in Latinum translatus ab Johanne Hispano et Dominico
Gundissalino, ed. C. Baeumker, 2 vols, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1892–​1895.
Bernard of Clairvaux, De diligendo Deo, eds. J. Leclercq, H.M. Rochais, Sancti Bernardi
Opera, vol. 3, Roma, Editiones Cistercienses, 1963, p. 119–​154.
Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli. 184–​211. De
animabus, ed. L. Sturlese, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1974.
Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Prologus,
Propositiones 1-​13, eds M.R. Pagnoni-​Sturlese, L. Sturlese, Corpus Philosophorum
Teutonicorum Medii Aevi vi/​1, Hamburg, Meiner, 1984.
Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Propositiones
14-​34, eds L. Sturlese, M.R. Pagnoni-​Sturlese, B. Mojsisch, Corpus Philosophorum
Teutonicorum Medii Aevi vi/​2, Hamburg, Meiner, 1986.
Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli.
Propositiones 35-​65, ed. A. Sannino, Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii
Aevi vi/​3, Hamburg, Meiner, 2001.
Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Propositiones
66-​107, ed. I. Zavattero, Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi vi/​4,
Hamburg, Meiner, 2003.
440 Bibliography

Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli.

Propositiones 108-​135, ed. F. Retucci, Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii
Aevi vi/​5, Hamburg, Meiner, 2011.
Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli.
Propositiones 136-​159, ed. F. Retucci, Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii
Aevi vi/​6, Hamburg, Meiner, 2007.
Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Propositiones
160-​183, eds U.R. Jeck, I.J. Tautz, Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi
vi/​7, Hamburg, Meiner, 2003.
Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli.
Propositiones 184-​211, ed. L. Sturlese, Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii
Aevi vi/​8, Hamburg, Meiner, 2014.
Berthold of Moosburg, Tabula contentorum in Expositione super Elementationem theo-
logicam Procli, ed. A. Beccarisi, Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore, 2000.
Berthold of Moosburg, “Commentaire des Éléments de théologie de Proclus. Préambule
du livre”, in R. Imbach, M.-​H. Méléard (eds), Philosophes médiévaux. Anthologie de
textes philosophiques (XIIIe-​XIVe siècles), Paris, Union Générale d’Éditions, 1986,
p. 335–​372.
Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae. Opuscula theologica, ed. C. Moreschini,
München /​Leipzig, Saur, 20052.
Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, eds PP Collegii S. Bonaventurae, Opera
omnia, vol. 5, Quaracchi, Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1896, p. 293–​316.
Cassiodorus, Expositio in Psalterium, Patrologia Latina 75, Paris, Migne, 1865, cols
9–​1056.
Christina Ebner, Der Nonne von Engelthal Büchlein von der Gnaden Überlast, ed. K.
Schröder, Tübingen, Laupp, 1871.
Cicero, De inventione, ed. E. Stroebel, Leipzig, Teubner, 1915.
Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, ed. M. Pohlenz, Leipzig, Teubner, 1919.
Cicero, De natura deorum, eds O. Plasberg, W. Ax, Leipzig, Teubner, 1933.
David of Dinant, Quaternulorum fragmenta, ed. M. Kurdziałek, in Studia Mediewistyczne
3(1963).
Dietrich of Freiberg, Opera omnia, vol. 1. Schriften zur Intellekttheorie, ed. B. Mojsisch,
Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi ii/​1, Hamburg, Meiner, 1977.
Dietrich of Freiberg, Opera omnia, vol. 2. Schriften zur Metaphysik und Theologie, eds
R. Imbach et al., Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi ii/​2, Hamburg,
Meiner, 1980.
Dietrich of Freiberg, Opera omnia, vol. 3. Schriften zur Naturphilosophie und Metaphysik,
eds J.-​D. Cavigioli et al., Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi ii/​3,
Hamburg, Meiner, 1983.
Bibliography 441

Dietrich of Freiberg, Opera omnia, vol. 4. Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft, Briefe, eds
M.R. Pagnoni-​Sturlese et al., Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi ii/​
4, Hamburg, Meiner, 1985.
Dionysius the ps.-​Areopagite, Opera omnia quae exstant, Patrologia Graeca 3-​4, Paris,
Migne, 1857-​1889.
Dionysius the ps.-​Areopagite, Dionysiaca, ed. P. Chevallier, 2 vols, Brugge, Desclée de
Brouwer, 1937–​1950.
Dominicus Gundissalinus, De processione mundi, ed. G. Bülow, Des D. Gundisalvi Schrift
von dem Hervorgange der Welt, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1925.
Euclid, Opera a Campano interprete fidissimo tralata, Venezia, Pacioli, 1509.
Euclid, Elementa, eds J.-​L. Heiberg, E.S. Stamatis, 5 vols in 6, Leipzig, Teubner, 1969–​1977.
Eustratius, In Ethicam Nicomacheam commentarius, translatio Roberti Grosseteste, ed.
H.P.F. Mercken, Corpus Latinum commentariorum in Aristotelem Graecorum vi/​1,
Leiden, Brill, 1973.
Flores operum D. Bernardi abbatis Clarevallensis, Lyons, Rouillius, 1570.
Flores sancti Bernardi, Venezia, Junta, 1503.
Geminus, Elementa astronomiae, ed. K. Manitius, Leipzig, Teubner, 1898.
Gilbert of Poitiers, The Commentaries on Boethius by Gilbert of Poitiers, ed. N. Häring,
Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1966.
Glossa interlinearis, in Biblia Sacra cum Glossis interlineari et ordinaria […], Lyons,
Trechsel, 1545.
Glossa ordinaria, eds M. Morard et al., Glossae Sacrae Scripturae electronicae, Paris,
cnrs-​i rht, 2017, accessed 29 June 2020 [http://​gloss-​e.irht.cnrs.fr].
Godfrey of Fontaines, Les quatres premiers Quodlibets de Godefroid de Fontaines, eds M.
de Wulf, A. Pelzer, Les philosophes belges ii, Louvain, Institut supérieur de philos-
ophie de l’Université, 1904.
Godfrey of Fontaines, Le huitième Quodlibet de Godefroid de Fontaines, ed. J. Hoffmans,
Les philosophes belges iv/​1, Louvain, Institut supérieur de philosophie de l’Univer-
sité, 1924.
Godfrey of Fontaines, Le neuvième Quodlibet de Godefroid de Fontaines, ed. J. Hoffmans,
Les philosophes belges iv/​2, Louvain, Institut supérieur de philosophie de l’Univer-
sité, 1928.
Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet IV, eds G. Wilson, G. Etzkorn, Opera omnia viii, Leuven,
Leuven University Press, 2011.
Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet XII, ed. J. Decorte, Opera omnia xvi, Leuven, Leuven
University Press, 1987.
Henry Suso, Deutsche Schriften, ed. K. Bihlmeyer, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1907.
Henry Suso, The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons, trans. F. Tobin, Mahwah, Paulist
Press, 1989.
442 Bibliography

Hermes Latinus, Liber de sex rerum principiis, eds P. Lucentini, M. Delp, Corpus
Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis 142, Turnhout, Brepols, 2006.
Hermes Latinus, Liber viginti quattuor philosophorum, ed. F. Hudry, Corpus
Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis 143A, Turnhout, Brepols, 1997.
Hilary of Poitiers, Liber de synodis, Patrologia Latina 10, Paris, Migne, 1845, cols 479-​546.
Honorius Augustodunensis, Clavis physicae, ed. P. Lucentini, Roma, Edizioni di Storia
e Letteratura, 1974.
Honorius Augustodunensis, La Clavis physicae (316–​529) di Honorius Augustodunensis,
ed. P. Arfé, Napoli, Liguori Editore, 2012.
Hugh of St. Victor, Commentaria in Hierarchiam caelestem, Patrologia Latina 175, Paris,
Migne, 1854, cols 923-​1154.
Hugh of St. Victor, De tribus diebus, ed. D. Poirel, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio
Mediaevalis 177, Turnhout, Brepols, 2002.
Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis Christiane fidei, ed. R. Berndt, Münster i.W.,
Aschendorff, 2008.
Huguccio of Pisa, Derivationes, eds E. Cecchini et al., 2 vols, Firenze, sismel –​Edizioni
del Galluzzo, 2004.
Humbert of Romans, Opera de vita regulari, ed. J.J. Berthier, 2 vols, Roma, Befani, 1888.
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W.M. Lindsay, 2 vols,
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1911.
Jan van Ruusbroec, Die geestelike Brulocht, ed. J. Alaerts, Corpus Christianorum.
Continuatio Mediaevalis 103, Turnhout, Brepols, 1988.
Jerome, Liber Psalmorum, Patrologia Latina 28, Paris, Migne, 1845, cols 1127-​1240.
Jerome, Hebraicae quaestiones in libro Geneseos, ed. P. de Lagarde, Corpus
Christianorum. Series Latina 72, Turnhout, Brepols, 1959.
John Andrea, Novella super Decretalibus cum apostillis noviter editis, Venezia, De Tortis,
1505.
John of Damascus, Opera omnia quae exstant, Patrologia Graeca 94, Paris, Migne, 1864.
John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa. Versions of Burgundio and Cerbanus, ed. E.M.
Buytaert, St. Bonaventure, Franciscan Institute, 1955.
John Scotus Eriugena, L’Homélie sur le prologue de Jean, ed. É. Jeauneau, Sources chré-
tiennes 151, Paris, Cerf, 1969.
John Scotus Eriugena, Expositiones in Ierarchiam coelestem, ed. J. Barbet, Corpus
Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis 31, Turnhout, Brepols, 1975.
John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon, ed. É. Jeauneau, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio
Mediaevalis 161-​165, Turnhout, Brepols, 1996–​2002.
John Tauler, Die Predigten Taulers. Aus der Engelberger und der Freiburger Handschrift
sowie aus Schmidts Abschriften der ehemaligen Strassburger Handschriften, ed. F.
Vetter, Berlin, Weidmann, 1910.
Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, ed. J. Willis, Leipzig, Teubner, 1970.
Bibliography 443

Marius Victorinus, Ad Candidum, eds P. Henry, P. Hadot, Traités théologiques sur la

Trinité, vol. 1, Paris, Cerf, 1960, p. 126–​173.
Meister Eckhart, Die lateinischen Werke, eds E. Benz et al., 5 vols, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer,
1936–​2007.
Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen Werke, eds J. Quint, G. Steer, 5 vols, Stuttgart,
Kohlhammer, 1936-​.
Meister Eckhart, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans. E.
Colledge, B. McGinn, Mahwah, Paulist Press, 1981.
Meister Eckhart, Das Buch der göttlichen Tröstung, trans. K. Flasch, München, Beck, 2007.
Meister Eckhart, The German Works. 64 Homilies for the Liturgical Year. 1. De tempore,
eds L. Sturlese, M. Vinzent, Leuven, Peeters, 2019.
Moses Maimonides, Dux seu director dubitantium aut perplexorum, Paris,
Ascensius, 1520.
Nicholas of Cusa, Opera omnia, iussu et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum
Heidelbergensis, Leipzig /​Hamburg, Meiner, 1932-​.
Nicholas of Strassburg, Summa. Liber 2, tract. 1-​ 2, ed. G. Pellegrino, Corpus
Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi v/​2(1), Hamburg, Meiner, 2009.
Nicholas of Strassburg, Summa. Liber 2, tract. 3-​ 7, ed. G. Pellegrino, Corpus
Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi v/​2(2), Hamburg, Meiner, 2009.
Nicholas of Strassburg, Summa. Liber 2, tract. 8-​14, ed. T. Suarez-​ Nani, Corpus
Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi v/​2(3), Hamburg, Meiner, 1990.
Papias, Elementarium doctrinae rudimentum, Venezia, Pincius, 1496.
Peter Lombard, Commentaria in Psalmos, Patrologia Latina 191, Paris, Migne, 1854, cols
61-​1296.
Peter Lombard, Collectanea in Epistulas d. Pauli, Patrologia Latina 191-​192, Paris, Migne,
1854–​1855.
Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, ed. I. Brady, Grottaferrata, Collegium
S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1971–​19813.
Peter of Spain, Tractatus, Called Afterwards Summulae logicales. First Critical Edition
from the Manuscripts with an Introduction, ed. L.M. De Rijk, Assen, Van Gorcum, 1972.
Plato, Phaedo, translatio Henrici Aristippi, ed. L. Minio-​Paluello, Plato Latinus ii,
London, The Warburg Institute, 1950.
Plato, Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus, ed. J.H. Waszink,
London /​Leiden, The Warburg Institute /​Brill, 1962, p. 5–​52.
Pliny, Naturalis historia, ed. K. Mayhoff, 5 vols, Leipzig, Teubner, 1892–​1909.
Plotinus, The Enneads, ed. L. Gerson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum commentaria, ed. E. Diehl, 3 vols, Leipzig, Teubner,
1903–​1906.
Proclus, Elementatio physica, ed. H. Boese, Die mittelalterliche Übersetzung der
Stoicheiosis physike des Proclus, Berlin, Akademie-​Verlag, 1958.
444 Bibliography

Proclus, Tria opuscula (De providentia, libertate, malo). Latine Guilelmo de Moerbeka
vertente et Graece ex Isaacii Sebastocratoris aliorumque scriptis collecta, ed. H. Boese,
Berlin, De Gruyter, 1960.
Proclus, The Elements of Theology, ed. E.R. Dodds, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 19632.
Proclus, Théologie platonicienne, eds H.D. Saffrey, L.G. Westerink, vol. 3, Paris, Les Belles
Lettres, 1978.
Proclus, Commentaire sur le Parménide de Platon, traduction de Guillaume de
Moerbeke. Tome I. Livres I à IV, ed. C. Steel, Leuven, Presses universitaires de
Louvain, 1982.
Proclus, Elementatio theologica, translata a Guillelmo de Morbecca, ed. H. Boese,
Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1987.
Proclus, On the Existence of Evils, trans. J. Opsomer, C. Steel, Ithaca, NY, Cornell
University Press, 2003.
Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem commentaria, ed. C. Steel, 3 vols, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 2007–​2009.
Ptolemy, Quadripartitum, Centiloquium […] cum Commento Haly Heben Rodan,
Venezia, Locatellus, 1493.
Richard of St. Victor, Opera omnia, Patrologia Latina 196, Paris, Migne, 1855.
Richard of St. Victor, De contemplatione (Beniamin maior), ed. J. Grosfillier, Turnhout,
Brepols, 2013.
Robert Grosseteste, Die philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, ed. L. Baur,
Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1912.
Robert Grosseteste, Compotus, eds A. Lohr, P.E. Nothaft, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 2019.
Seneca, Naturalium quaestionum libros, ed. H. Hine, Leipzig, Teubner, 1996.
Thomas Aquinas, In omnes s. Pauli Apostoli epistolas commentaria, 2 vols, Torino,
Marietti, 1929.
Thomas Aquinas, In librum beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus Expositio, ed. C. Pera,
Torino, Marietti, 1950.
Thomas Aquinas, In Aristotelis librum De anima commentarium, ed. A.M. Pirotta,
Torino, Marietti, 19594.
Thomas Aquinas, De substantiis separatis, ed. Leonina, vol. 40D, Roma, Santa Sabina,
1968.
Thomas Aquinas, Super Boetium De Trinitate. Expositio libri Boetii De ebdomadibus, ed.
Leonina, vol. 50, Roma /​Paris, Commissio Leonina /​Cerf, 1992.
Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum de causis Expositio, ed. H.D. Saffrey, Paris, Vrin, 2002.
Thomas Gallus, Paraphrasis super De divinis nominibus, ed. P. Chevallier, Dionysiaca,
Brugge, Desclée de Brouwer, 1937, p. 673–​708.
Thomas Gallus, Explanatio in libros Dionysii, ed. D. Lawell, Corpus Christianorum.
Continuatio Mediaevalis 223, Turnhout, Brepols, 2011.
Bibliography 445

Thomas of York, Sapientiale. Liber III, cap. 1-​20, ed. A. Punzi, Firenze, sismel –​Edizioni
del Galluzzo, 2020.
Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono. Liber 1, ed. B. Mojsisch, Corpus Philosophorum
Teutonicorum Medii Aevi i/​1, Hamburg, Meiner, 1989.
Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono. Liber 2, Tractatus 1-​4, ed. A. de Libera, Corpus
Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi i/​2(1), Hamburg, Meiner, 1987.
Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono. Liber 2, Tractatus 5-​6, ed. A. Beccarisi, Corpus
Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi i/​2(2), Hamburg, Meiner, 2007.
Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono. Liber 3, Tractatus 1-​3, ed. S. Tuzzo, Corpus
Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi i/​3(1), Hamburg, Meiner, 2004.
Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono. Liber 4, Tractatus 1-​2,7, ed. S. Pieperhoff, Corpus
Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi i/​4(1), Hamburg, Meiner, 1987.
Ulrich of Strassburg, De summo bono. Liber 4, Tractatus 3, ed. A. Palazzo, Corpus
Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi i/​4(4), Hamburg, Meiner, 2005.
Vita Secundi philosophi, ed. B.E. Perry, Secundus the Silent Philosopher. The Greek Life of
Secundus, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1964, p. 68–​100.
William of Auvergne, Opera omnia, ed. F. Hotot; Supplementum, ed. B. Le Ferron, 2 vols,
Paris, Thierry, 1674.
William of Conches, Glosae super Platonem, ed. É. Jeauneau, Paris, Vrin, 1965.

Secondary Sources

Aertsen, J., “Ontology and Henology in Medieval Philosophy (Thomas Aquinas, Master
Eckhart and Berthold of Moosburg)”, in E.P. Bos, P.A. Meijer (eds), Proclus and His
Influence in Medieval Philosophy, Leiden, Brill, 1992, p. 120–​140.
Aertsen, J., Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought. From Philip the Chancellor
(ca. 1225) to Francisco Suárez, Leiden, Brill, 2012.
Albertson, D., Mathematical Theologies. Nicholas of Cusa and the Legacy of Thierry of
Chartres, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.
Allen, J.B., The Friar as Critic. Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, Nashville,
Vanderbilt University Press, 1971.
Anzulewicz, H., “Entwicklung und Stellung der Intellekttheorie im System des Albertus
Magnus”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 70(2003),
p. 165–​218.
Anzulewicz, H., “Anthropology. The Concept of Man in Albert the Great”, in I.M.
Resnick (ed.), A Companion to Albert the Great. Theology, Philosophy, and the
Sciences, Leiden, Brill, 2013, p. 325–​346.
Baeumker, C., Witelo. Ein Philosoph und Naturforscher des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster
i.W., Aschendorff, 1908.
446 Bibliography

Baur, L. (ed.), Cusanus-​Texte III, Marginalien, I. Nicolaus Cusanus und Ps.-​Dionysius im

Lichte der Zitate und Randbemerkungen des Cusanus, Heidelberg, Winter, 1940–​1941.
Beccarisi, A., “La scientia divina dei filosofi nel De summo bono di Ulrico di Strasburgo”,
in Rivista di storia della filosofia 61(2006), p. 137–​163.
Beccarisi, A., “Dietrich in the Netherlands. A New Document in the Lower Rhenish
Vernacular”, in J. Biard, D. Calma, R. Imbach (eds), Recherches sur Dietrich de
Freiberg, Turnhout, Brepols, 2009, p. 221–​237.
Beccarisi, A., “Le Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi (CPTMA)”, in
Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 57(2010), p. 425–​430.
Beccarisi, A., “Ex Germano in rebus divinis. ‘Spekulative’ und ‘deutsche’ Mystik im
Kontext”, in Quaestio 15(2015), p. 169–​182.
Beccarisi, A., “Avicebron (Solomon Ibn Gabirol) and Berthold of Moosburg on Essential
Causality”, forthcoming.
Beierwaltes, W., “Der Begriff des unum in nobis bei Proklos”, in P. Wilpert (ed.),
Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung, Miscellanea
Mediaevalia 2, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1963, p. 255–​266.
Beierwaltes, W., “Cusanus and Eriugena”, in Dionysius 13(1989), p. 115–​152.
Beierwaltes, W., Eriugena. Grundzüge seines Denkens, Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann,
1994.
Bermon, E., Le cogito dans la pensée de saint Augustin, Paris, Vrin, 2001.
Bernards, M., “Flores Sancti Bernardi”, in J. Lortz (ed.), Bernhard von Clairvaux.
Mönch und Mystiker. Internationaler Bernhard-​ Kongress Mainz 1953, Mainz,
Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für europäische Geschichte Mainz, 1955, p. 176–​191.
Boese, H., Die mittelalterliche Übersetzung der Stoicheiosis physike des Proclus, Berlin,
Akademie Verlag, 1958.
Boese, H., Wilhelm von Moerbeke als Übersetzer der Stoicheiosis theologike des Proclus.
Untersuchungen und Texte zur Überlieferung der Elementatio theologica, Birkenau,
Bitsch, 1985.
Böhringer, L., “Kölner Beginen im Spätmittelalter –​Leben zwischen Kloster und Welt”,
in Geschichte in Köln 53(2006), p. 7–​34.
Boland, V., Ideas in God according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. Sources and Synthesis,
Leiden, Brill, 1996.
Boulnois, O., Métaphysiques rebelles. Genèse et structures d’une science au Moyen Âge,
Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2013.
Brown, S., “Duo Candelabra Parisiensia. Prosper of Reggio in Emilia’s Portrait of the
Enduring Presence of Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines regarding the
Nature of Theological Study”, in J. Aertsen, K. Emery, Jr., A. Speer (eds), Nach der
Verurteilung von 1277. Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im
letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts. Studien und Texte, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 28,
Berlin, De Gruyter, 2001, p. 320–​356.
Bibliography 447

Brown, S., “Late Thirteenth Century Theology. Scientia Pushed to its Limits”, in R.
Berndt, M. Lutz-​Bachmann, R.M.W. Stammberger (eds), Scientia und Disciplina.
Wissenstheorie und Wissenschaftspraxis im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, Berlin, Akademie
Verlag, 2002, p. 79–​90.
Bürkle, S., Literatur im Kloster. Historische Funktion und rhetorische Legitimation frau-
enmystischer Texte des 14. Jahrhunderts, Tübingen, Francke, 1999.
Bürkle, S., “Ebner, Christine”, in W. Kühlmann (ed.), Killy Literaturlexikon, vol. 3, Berlin,
De Gruyter, 2008, p. 163b-​165b.
Caiazzo, I., Lectures médiévales de Macrobe. Les Glosae Colonienses super Macrobium,
Paris, Vrin, 2002.
Caiazzo, I., “Mains célèbres dans les marges des Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis
de Macrobe”, in D. Jacquart, C. Burnett (eds), Scientia in margine. Études sur les
marginalia dans les manuscrits scientifiques du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance, Genève,
Librarie Droz, 2005, p. 171–​189.
Calma, D., “La connaissance réflexive de l’intellect agent. Le ‘premier averroïsme’ et
Dietrich de Freiberg”, in J. Biard, D. Calma, R. Imbach (eds), Recherches sur Dietrich
de Freiberg, Turnhout, Brepols, 2009, p. 63–​105.
Calma, D., Le Poids de la citation. Étude sur les sources arabes et grecques dans l’oeuvre
de Dietrich de Freiberg, Fribourg, Academic Press, 2010.
Calma, D., “Maneries”, in I. Atucha et al. (eds), Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach,
Porto, Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2011, p. 433–​444.
Calma, D., “Du néoplatonisme au réalisme et retour. Parcours latins du Liber de causis
aux XIIIe –​ XVIe siècles”, in Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 54(2012), p. 217–​276.
Calma, D., “The Exegetical Tradition of Medieval Neoplatonism. Considerations of a
Recently Discovered Corpus of Texts”, in D. Calma (ed.), Neoplatonism in the Middle
Ages, I. New Commentaries on Liber de causis (ca. 1250–​1350), Turnhout, Brepols,
2016, p. 11–​52.
Calma, D., “A Medieval Companion to Aristotle. John Krosbein’s Paraphrase on Liber
de causis”, in D. Calma (ed.), Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages, II. New Commentaries
on Liber de Causis and Elementatio Theologica (ca. 1350–​1500), Turnhout, Brepols,
2016, p. 11–​97.
Calma, D., “Metaphysics as a Way of Life. Heymericus de Campo on Universals and
‘The Inner Man’ ”, in Vivarium 58(2020), p. 305–​334.
Calma, D., Imbach, R., “Les notes marginales de Nicolas de Cues au traité Colliget prin-
cipiorum d’Heymeric de Campo”, in K. Reinhardt et al. (eds), Heymericus de Campo.
Philosophie und Theologie im 15. Jahrhundert, Regensburg, Roderer-​Verlag, 2009, p.
15–​51.
Calma, D., Imbach, R., “Heymeric de Campo, auteur d’un traité de métaphysique.
Étude et édition partielle du Colliget principiorum”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale
et littéraire du Moyen Âge 80(2013), p. 277–​423.
448 Bibliography

Carron, D., “A Theological Reading of the Liber de causis at the Turn of the Fourteenth
Century. The Example of William of Leus”, in D. Calma (ed.), Neoplatonism in the
Middle Ages, I. New Commentaries on Liber de causis (ca. 1250–​1350), Turnhout,
Brepols, 2016, p. 467–​550.
Catto, J., “Theology and Theologians 1220–​1320”, in J. Catto (ed.), The Early Oxford
Schools, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 471–​517.
Châtillon, J., “Les trois modes de la contemplation selon Richard de Saint-​Victor”, in
Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 41(1940), p. 3–​26.
Chenu, M.-​D., La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle, Paris, Vrin, 19573.
Chulp, R., Proclus. An Introduction, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Clark, J.G., “Trevet, Nicholas (b. 1257x65, d. in or after 1334)”, Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 349–​351.
Colli, A., Tracce agostiniane nell’opera di Teodorico di Freiberg, Genoa, Marietti, 2010.
Coolman, B.T., Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus, Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 2017.
Coolman, B.T., Coulter, D. (eds), Trinity and Creation. A Selection of Works of Hugh,
Richard, and Adam of St Victor, Turnhout, Brepols, 2010.
Counet, J.-​M., Mathématique et dialectique chez Nicolas de Cues, Paris, Vrin, 2000.
Creytens, R., “Les écrivains dominicains dans la chronique d’Albert de Castello (1516)”,
in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 30(1960), p. 227–​313.
Crouse, R., “The Doctrine of Creation in Boethius. The De hebdomadibus and the
Consolatio”, in Studia Patristica 17(1982), p. 417–​21.
Crouse, R., “Primordiales Causae in Eriugena’s Interpretation of Genesis. Sources and
Significance”, in G. Van Riel, C. Steel, J. McEvoy (eds), Iohannes Scottus Eriugena.
The Bible and Hermeneutics. Proceedings of the Ninth International Colloquium of the
Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies Held at Leuven and Louvain-​la-​Neuve
June 7–​10, 1995, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1996, p. 209–​220.
Crouse, R., “Predestination, Human Freedom and the Augustinian Theology of History
in Eriugena’s De divina praedestinatione”, in J. McEvoy, M. Dunne (eds), History
and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time. Proceedings of the Tenth
International Conference of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies,
Maynooth and Dublin, August 16–​20, 2000, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2002,
p. 303–​311.
Dahan, G., “Les prologues des commentaires bibliques (XIIe-​XIVe siècle)”, in J. Hamesse
(ed.), Les prologues médiévaux. Actes du Colloque international organisé par l’Aca-
demia Belgica et l’École française de Rome avec le concours de la F.I.D.E.M. (Rome,
26–​28 mars 1998), Turnhout, Brepols, 2000, p. 427–​470.
D’Alverny, M.-​Th., “Le cosmos symbolique du XIIe siècle”, in Archives d’histoire doctri-
nale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 20(1953), p. 31–​81.
Bibliography 449

D’Alverny, M.-​Th., “Une rencontre symbolique de Jean Scot Érigène et d’Avicenne.

Notes sur le De causis primis et secundis et fluxu qui consequitur eas”, in J.J. O’Meara,
L. Bieler (eds), The Mind of Eriugena, Dublin, Irish University Press for the Royal
Irish Academy, 1973, p. 170–​181.
D’Alverny, M.-​Th., “Paolo Lucentini, Platonismo medievale. Contribua per la storia
dell’Eriugenismo”, in Scriptorium 36/​2(1982), p. 348–​351.
D’Ancona, C., “Saint Thomas lecteur du Liber de causis”, in Revue thomiste 92(1992),
p. 785–​817.
Dean, R.J., “Cultural Relations in the Middle Ages. Nicholas Trevet and Nicholas of
Prato”, in Studies in Philology 45(1948), p. 541–​564.
Dean, R.J., “The Dedication of Nicholas Trevet’s Commentary on Boethius”, in Studies
in Philology 63(1966), p. 593–​603.
Decaix, V., “Les transcendentaux et l’un. Dietrich de Freiberg à l’école de Thomas
d’Aquin”, in Bochumer philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter 16(2013),
p. 146–​162.
Decaix, V., “Théologie rationnelle ou métaphysique? Les deux sens de la métaphysique
chez Dietrich de Freiberg”, in Quaestio 13(2013), p. 303–​321.
Denzinger, H., Enchiridion Symbolorum, ed. P. Hünermann, Freiberg /​Basel /​Wien,
Herder, 200946.
Dondaine, H.-​F., Le Corpus dionysien de l’université de Paris au XIIIe siècle, Roma,
Edizioni di Storia et Letteratura, 1953.
Draelants, I., “Le ‘siècle de l’encyclopédisme’. Conditions et critères de définition d’un
genre”, in A. Zucker (ed.), Encyclopédire. Formes de l’ambition encyclopédique dans
l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge, Turnhout, Brepols, 2013, p. 81–​106.
Dronke, P., Hermes and the Sibyls. Continuations and Creations, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1990.
Dronke, P., Intellectuals and Poets in Medieval Europe, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e
Letteratura, 1992.
Eckert, W., “Berthold von Moosburg O.P. Ein Vertreter der Einheitsmetaphysik im
Spätmittelalter”, in Philosophisches Jahrbuch 65(1957), p. 120–​133.
Eckert, W., “Berthold von Moosburg”, in K. Ruh et al. (eds), Die deutsche Literatur des
Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, vol. 1, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1978, p. 816–​817.
Eckert, W., “Berthold von Moosburg”, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 1, München /​
Zürich, Artemis, 1980, col. 2034.
Ehrle, F., “Nikolaus Trevet. Sein Leben, seine Quodlibet und Quaestiones Ordinariae”,
in Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters. Festgabe Clemens
Baeumker, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1923, p. 1–​63.
Emden, A.B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, 3 vols,
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1957–​59.
450 Bibliography

Emery, Jr., K., “Sapientissimus Aristoteles and Theologicissimus Dionysius. The Reading
of Aristotle and the Understanding of Nature in Denys the Carthusian”, in A. Speer,
A. Zimmermann (eds), Mensch und Natur im Mittelalter, Miscellanea Mediaevalia
21, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1992, p. 572–​606.
Emery, Jr., K., “A Complete Reception of the Latin Corpus Dionysiacum. The
Commentaries of Denys the Carthusian”, T. Boiadjiev, G. Kapriev, A. Speer (eds), Die
Dionysius-​Rezeption im Mittelalter, Turnhout, Brepols, 2000, p. 197–​247.
Erismann, C., L’Homme commun. La genèse du réalisme ontologique durant le haut
Moyen Âge, Paris, Vrin, 2011.
Evans, J., Berggren, J.L., Geminos’ Introduction to the Phenomena. A Translation and
Study of a Hellenistic Survey of Astronomy, Princeton, Princeton University Press,
2007.
Faës de Mottoni, B., “Il commento di Bertoldo di Moosburg all’ Elementatio theolog-
ica di Proclo. Edizione delle proposizioni riguardanti il tempo e l’eternità”, in Studi
medievali 12(1971), p. 417–​461.
Faës de Mottoni, B., “Il problema della luce nel commento di Bertoldo di Moosburg
all’Elementatio theologica di Proclo”, in Studi medievali 16(1975), p. 325–​352.
Ferro, T., “Berthold of Moosburg, Reader of Ulrich of Strassburg. On Natural Providence”,
forthcoming.
Fiamma, A., “Nicholas of Cusa and the So-​Called Cologne School of the 13th and 14th
Centuries”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 84(2017), p.
91–​128.
Finamore, J., Iamblichus and the Theory of the Vehicle of the Soul, Chico, Scholars Press,
1985.
Flasch, K., “Einleitung”, in Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem the-
ologicam Procli. Prologus, Propositiones 1-​13, eds M.R. Pagnoni-​Sturlese, L. Sturlese,
Hamburg, Meiner, 1984, p. xi–​xxxviii.
Flasch, K., “Von Dietrich zu Albert”, in Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und
Theologie 32(1985), p. 7–​28.
Flasch, K., “Procedere ut imago. Das Hervorgehen des Intellekts aus seinem göttlichen
Grund bei Meister Dietrich, Meister Eckhart und Berthold von Moosburg”, in K.
Ruh (ed.), Abendländische Mystik im Mittelalter. Symposion Kloster Engelberg 1984,
Stuttgart, Metzler, 1986, p. 125–​134.
Flasch, K., “Converti ut imago –​Rückkehr als Bild. Eine Studie zur Theorie des
Intellekts bei Dietrich von Freiberg und Meister Eckhart”, in Freiburger Zeitschrift
für Philosophie und Theologie 45(1998), p. 130–​150.
Flasch, K., Dietrich von Freiberg. Philosophie, Theologie, Naturforschung um 1300,
Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 2007.
Flasch, K., D’Averroès à Maître Eckhart. Les sources arabes de la ‘mystique’ allemande,
Paris, Vrin, 2008.
Bibliography 451

Flasch, K., “Dietrich von Freiberg und Siger von Brabant. Eine Studie zur ‘Schule’
Alberts des Großen”, in A. Beccarisi, R. Imbach, P. Porro (eds), Per perscrutationem
philosophicam. Neue Perspektiven der mittelalterlichen Forschung. Loris Sturlese zum
60. Geburtstag gewidmet, cptma Beiheft 4, Hamburg, Meiner, 2008, p. 127–​141.
Flasch, K., Meister Eckhart. Philosoph des Christentums, München, Beck, 2011.
Flasch, K., Meister Eckhart. Philosopher of Christianity, trans. A. Schindel, A. Vanides,
New Haven /​London, Yale University Press, 2015.
Frank, I., “Zum Albertus-​Autograph in der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek und
zum ‘Albertinismus’ der Wiener Dominikaner im Spätmittelalter”, in G. Meyer,
A. Zimmermann (eds), Albertus Magnus –​Doctor Universalis 1280–​1980, Mainz,
Matthias-​Grünewald-​Verlag, 1980, p. 89–​117.
Frank, I., “Retz (François de)”, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité, vol. 13, Paris, Beauchesne,
1988, p. 434–​436.
Friedman, R., Intellectual Traditions at the Medieval University. The Use of Philosophical
Psychology in Trinitarian Theology among the Franciscans and Dominicans 1250–​1350,
2 vols, Leiden, Brill, 2013.
Frost, S., Nikolaus von Kues und Meister Eckhart. Rezeption im Spiegel der Marginalien
zum Opus tripartitum Meister Eckharts, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 2006.
Führer, M., “The Agent Intellect in the Writings of Meister Dietrich of Freiberg and
its Influence on the Cologne School”, in K.-​H. Kandler, B. Mojsisch, B. Stammkötter
(eds), Dietrich von Freiberg. Neue Perspektiven seiner Philosophie, Theologie und
Naturwissenschaft, Amsterdam, Grüner, 1999, p. 69–​88.
Führer, M., Gersh, S., “Dietrich of Freiberg and Berthold of Moosburg”, in S. Gersh (ed.),
Interpreting Proclus. From Antiquity to the Renaissance, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2014, p. 299–​317.
Gelber, H.G., It Could Have Been Otherwise. Contingency and Necessity in Dominican
Theology at Oxford, 1300–​1350, Leiden, Brill, 2004.
Gersh, S., From Iamblichus to Eriugena. An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evolution
of the Pseudo-​Dionysian Tradition, Leiden, Brill, 1978.
Gersh, S., “Ideas and Energies in Pseudo-​Dionysius the Areopagite”, in Studia Patristica
15(1984), p. 297–​300.
Gersh, S., Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. The Latin Tradition, 2 vols, Notre Dame,
Ind., University of Notre Dame Press, 1986.
Gersh, S., “Honorius Augustodunensis and Eriugena. Remarks on the Method and
Content of the Clavis Physicae”, in W. Beierwaltes (ed.), Eriugena redivivus. Zur
Wirkungsgeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im Übergang zur Neuzeit.
Vorträge des V. Internationalen Eriugena-​Colloquiums, Werner-​Reimers-​Stiftung, Bad
Homburg, 26.-​30. August 1985, Heidelberg, Winter, 1987, p. 162–​173.
Gersh, S., “The Structure of the Return in Eriugena’s Periphyseon”, in W. Beierwaltes
(ed.), Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena. Vorträge des VII.
452 Bibliography

Internationalen Eriugena-​Colloquiums Werner-​Reimers-​Stiftung Bad Homburg, 26.-​

29. Juli 1989, Heidelberg, Winter, 1990, p. 108–​125.
Gersh, S., “Berthold of Moosburg and the Content and Method of Platonic Philosophy”,
J. Aertsen, K. Emery, Jr., A. Speer (eds), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277. Philosophie
und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts.
Studien und Texte, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 28, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2001, p. 493–​503.
Gersh, S., “The First Principles of Latin Neoplatonism. Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius”,
in Vivarium 50(2012), p. 113–​138.
Gersh, S., L’Ordo Naturalis des causes primordiales. La transformation érigénienne de
la doctrine dionysienne des noms divins”, in Les Études philosophiques 104(2013),
p. 57–​78.
Gersh, S., “Nicholas of Cusa”, in S. Gersh (ed.), Interpreting Proclus. From Antiquity to the
Renaissance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 318–​349.
Gersh, S., “Berthold of Moosburg, Nicholas of Cusa, and Marsilio Ficino as Historians
of Philosophy”, forthcoming.
Goris, W., “Das Gute als Ersterkanntes bei Berthold von Moosburg”, in W. Goris (ed.),
Die Metaphysik und das Gute. Aufsätze zu ihrem Verhältnis in Antike und Mittelalter,
Jan A. Aertsen zu Ehren, Leuven, Peeters, 1999, p. 139–​172.
Goris, W., “Metaphysik und Einheitswissenschaft bei Berthold von Moosburg”, in
Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 85(2018), p. 239–​258.
Goris, W., “Metaphysical Freedom. From Albert the Great to Berthold of Moosburg”,
forthcoming.
Gottschall, D., “Eckhart and the Vernacular Tradition. Pseudo-​Eckhart and Eckhart
Legends”, in J. Hackett (ed.), A Companion to Meister Eckhart, Leiden, Brill, 2013,
p. 509–​551.
Grabmann, M., Mittelalterliches Geistesleben. Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der
Scholastik und Mystik, 3 vols, München, Hueber, 1926–​1956.
Gregory, T., “L’eschatologie de Jean Scot”, in R. Roques (ed.), Jean Scot Érigène et l’his-
toire de la philosophie. Laon 7–​12 juillet 1975, Paris, cnrs Éditions, 1977, p. 377–​392.
Greig, J., “Proclus on the Two Causal Models for the One’s Production of Being.
Reconciling the Relation of the Henads and the Limit/​ Unlimited”, in The
International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 14(2020), p. 23–​48.
Grupe, D., The Latin Reception of Arabic Astronomy and Cosmology in Mid-​Twelfth-​
Century Antioch. The Liber Mamonis and the Dresden Almagest, PhD diss., The
Warburg Institute, 2013.
Guldentops, G., “Henry Bate’s Encyclopaedism”, in P. Binkley (ed.), Pre-​Modern
Encyclopaedic Texts. Proceedings of the Second COMERS Congress, Groningen, 1-​4 July
1996, Leiden, Brill, 1997, p. 227–​237.
Häfele, G., Franz von Retz. Ein Beitrag zur Gelehrtengeschichte des Dominikanerordens
und der Wiener Universität am Ausgange des Mittelalters, Innsbruck, Tyrolia, 1918.
Bibliography 453

Haines, R.M., “Grey, William (c.1414–​1478)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,

Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, May 2011 [http://​www.oxforddnb.
com/​view/​article/​11567], accessed 6 May 2013.
Hamesse, J., “Les florilèges philosophiques. Instruments de travail des intellectuels à la
fin du moyen âge et à la Renaissance”, in L. Bianchi (ed.), Filosofia e teologia nel tre-
cento. Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, Louvain-​la-​Neuve, Fédération Internationale
des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 1994, p. 479–​508.
Hamesse, J., “Approche terminologique de certaines méthodes d’enseignement et
de recherche à la fin du moyen âge. Declarare, Recitare, Conclusio”, in O. Weijers
(ed.), Vocabulary of Teaching and Research between Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Proceedings of the Colloquium, London, Warburg Institute, 11–​12 March 1994, Turnhout,
Brepols, 1995, p. 8–​28.
Hankey, W., God in Himself. Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in the Summa
Theologiae, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987.
Hankey, W., “Misrepresenting Neoplatonism in Contemporary Christian Dionysian
Polemic. Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa versus Vladimir Lossky and Jean-​Luc
Marion”, in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 82/​4(2008), p. 683–​703.
Hankey, W., “The Concord of Aristotle, Proclus, the Liber de Causis & Blessed Dionysius
in Thomas Aquinas, Student of Albertus Magnus”, in Dionysius 34(2016), p. 137–​209.
Häring, N., “Commentary and Hermeneutics”, in R. Benson, G. Constable (eds),
Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982,
p. 173–​200.
Harrington, M., “The Drunken Epibole of Plotinus and its Reappearance in the Work of
Dionysius the Areopagite”, in Dionysius 23(2005), p. 117–​138.
Hasse, D.N., Avicenna’s De anima in the Latin West. The Formation of a Peripatetic
Philosophy of the Soul 1160–​1300, London /​Torino, The Warburg Institute /​Nino
Aragno Editore, 2000.
Hellmeier, P., “Der Intellekt ist nicht genug. Das proklische unum in nobis bei Berthold
von Moosburg”, in Philosophisches Jahrbuch 126/​2(2019), p. 202–​226.
Hellmeier, P., “The Meaning of the Biblical Citations in the Expositio of Berthold of
Moosburg”, forthcoming.
Hindsley, L.P., The Mystics of Engelthal. Writings from a Medieval Monastery, London,
Macmillan, 1998.
Hoffmann, P., “Erôs, Aletheia, Pistis … et Elpis. Tétrade chaldaïque, triade néoplatonici-
enne”, in M. Delgado, C. Méla, F. Möri (eds), Orient-​Occident. Racines spirituelles de
l’Europe, Paris, Cerf, 2014, p. 63–​136.
Hoenen, M.J.F.M., “Via Antiqua and Via Moderna in the Fifteenth Century. Doctrinal,
Institutional, and Church Political Factors in the Wegestreit”, in R. Friedman, L.
Nielsen (eds), The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal
Theory, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 2003, p. 9–​36.
454 Bibliography

Hunt, R., “The Introductions to the Artes in the Twelfth Century”, in Studia mediaevalia
in honorem R.J. Martin, Brugge, De Tempel, 1948, p. 84–​112.
Imbach, R., “Metaphysik, Theologie und Politik. Zur Diskussion zwischen Nikolaus von
Strassburg und Dietrich von Freiberg über die Atrennbarkeit der Akzidentien”, in
Theologie und Philosophie 61(1986), p. 359–​395.
Imbach, R., “Die deutsche Dominikanerschule. Drei Modelle einer Theologia mystica”,
in M. Schmidt, D.R. Bauer (eds), Grundfragen christlicher Mystik. Wissenschaftliche
Studientagung Theologia mystica in Weingarten vom 7.-​10. November 1985, Stuttgart-​
Bad Cannstatt, Frommann-​Holzboog, 1987, p. 157–​172.
Imbach, R., “Au-​delà de la métaphysique. Notule sur l’importance du Commentaire de
Berthold de Moosburg OP sur les Éléments de théologie”, in D. Calma (ed.), Reading
Proclus and the Book of Causes. Vol. 1. Western Scholarly Networks and Debates,
Leiden, Brill, 2019, p. 376–​393.
Imbach, R., Lindblad, U., “Compilatio rudis ac puerilis. Hinweise und Materialien
zu Nikolaus von Strassburg OP und seiner Summa”, in Freiburger Zeitschrift für
Philosophie und Theologie 32(1985), p. 155–​233.
Iremadze, T., Konzeptionen des Denkens im Neuplatonismus. Zur Rezeption der
Proklischen Philosophie im deutschen und georgischen Mittelalter. Dietrich von
Freiberg –​Berthold von Moosburg –​Joane Petrizi, Amsterdam, Grüner, 2004.
Jeauneau, É., “L’usage de la notion d’integumentum à travers les gloses de Guillaume
de Conches”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 24(1957),
p. 35–​100.
Jeauneau, É., “Gloses de Guillaume de Conches sur Macrobe. Note sur les manuscrits”,
in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 27(1960), p. 17–​28.
Jeauneau, É., Études érigéniennes, Paris, Études augustiniennes, 1987.
Jeck, U.R., Aristoteles contra Augustinum. Zur Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Zeit und
Seele bei den antiken Aristoteleskommentatoren im arabischen Aristotelismus und im
13. Jahrhundert, Amsterdam, Grüner, 1994.
Jeck, U.R., “Die hermetische Theorie des Mikrokosmos in der Metaphysik Alberts des
Grossen und im Prokloskommentar des Berthold von Moosburg”, in Patristica et
Mediaevalia 20(1999), p. 3–​18.
Jeck, U.R., “Weisheit im Schatten Apollons. Der Proklos Kommentar des Berthold von
Moosburg als Einführung in die Philosophie und Geschichte des Platonismus”, in
Archiv für mittelalterliche Philosophie und Kultur 17(2011), p. 112–​170.
Jeschke, Th., Deus ut tentus vel visus. Die Debatte um die Seligkeit im reflexiven Akt (ca.
1293–​1320), Leiden, Brill, 2011.
Jundt, A., Histoire du panthéisme populaire au Moyen Âge et au seizième siècle,
Strasbourg, Fischbach, 1875.
Kaeppeli, Th., Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi, 4 vols, Roma, Santa Sabina,
1970–​1993.
Bibliography 455

Kaeppeli, Th., “Ein Fragment der Akten des in Friesach 1315 gefeierten Kapitels der
Provinz Teutonia”, in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 48(1978), p. 71–​75.
Kaluza, Z., “Comme une branche d’amandier en fleurs. Dieu dans le Liber viginti quat-
tuor philosophorum”, in P. Lucentini, I. Parri, V. Perrone Compagni (eds), Hermetism
from Late Antiquity to Humanism. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Napoli,
20–​24 Novembre 2001, Turnhout, Brepols, 2003, p. 93–​123.
Kandler, K.-​H., “Theologie und Philosophie nach Dietrich von Freibergs Traktat De
subiecto theologiae”, in J. Aertsen, A. Speer (eds), Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter?,
Miscellanea Mediaevalia 26, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1998, p. 642–​647.
Kandler, K.-​H., “Theologische Implikationen der Philosophie Dietrichs von Freiberg”,
in K.-​H. Kandler, B. Mojsisch, B. Stammkötter (eds), Dietrich von Freiberg. Neue
Perspektiven seiner Philosophie, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, Amsterdam,
Grüner, 1999, p. 121–​134.
Kandler, K.-​H., “Anima beata vel homo glorificatus possit progredi in aliquam natu-
ralem cognitionem. Bemerkungen zu eschatologischen Gedanken des Dietrich
von Freiberg, vor allem zu seinem Traktat De dotibus corporum gloriosorum”, in J.
Aertsen, M. Pickavé (eds), Ende und Vollendung. Eschatologische Perspektiven im
Mittelalter, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 29, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2002, p. 434–​447.
Keussen, H., Die Matrikel der Universität Köln. Erster Band: 1389–​ 1475, Bonn,
Hanstein, 1928.
King, E., “Berthold of Moosburg on Intellect and the One of the Soul”, in Dionysius
36(2018), p. 184–​199.
King, E., “Eriugenism in Berthold of Moosburg’s Expositio super Elementationem the-
ologicam Procli”, in D. Calma (ed.), Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes. Vol.
1. Western Scholarly Networks and Debates, Leiden, Brill, 2019, p. 394–​437.
King, E, “Sapiens modernus. The Reception of Dietrich of Freiberg in Berthold of
Moosburg”, forthcoming.
Koch, J., “Kritisches Verzeichnis der Londoner Handschriften aus dem Besitz des
Nikolaus von Kues”, in Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-​Gesellschaft
3(1963), p. 16–​100.
König-​Pralong, C., “Dietrich de Freiberg, métaphysicien allemand antithomiste”, Revue
thomiste 108(2008), p. 57–​79.
König-​Pralong, C., Le bon usage des savoirs. Scolastique, philosophie et politique cultur-
elle, Paris, Vrin, 2011.
König-​Pralong, C., “Expérience et sciences de la nature chez Dietrich de Freiberg
et Berthold de Moosburg”, in L. Bianchi, C. Crisciani (eds), Forme e oggetti della
conoscenza nel XIV secolo. Studi in ricordo di Maria Elena Reina, Firenze, sismel –​
Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014, p. 107–​133.
Köpf, U., “Die Rezeptions-​und Wirkungsgeschichte Bernhards von Clairvaux.
Forschungsstand und Forschungsaufgaben”, in K. Elm (ed.), Bernhard von Clairvaux.
456 Bibliography

Rezeption und Wirkung im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz,

1994, p. 5–​65.
Krebs, E., Meister Dietrich (Theodoricus Teutonicus de Vriberg). Sein Leben, seine Werke,
seine Wissenschaft, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1906.
Kupfer, M., “The Cosmic Vision of Saint Benedict, e specula and in speculo”, in N.
Bouloux, A. Dan, G. Tolias (eds), Orbis disciplinae. Hommages en l’honneur de
Patrick Gautier Dalché, Turnhout, Brepols, 2017, p. 139–​165.
Largier, N., “Die ‘deutsche Dominikanerschule’. Zur Problematik eines historiogra-
phischen Konzepts”, in J. Aertsen, A. Speer (eds), Geistesleben im 13. Jahrhundert,
Miscellanea Mediaevalia 27, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2000, p. 202–​213.
Largier, N., “Time and Temporality in the ‘German Dominican School’. Outlines of a
Philosophical Debate Between Nicolaus of Strasbourg, Dietrich of Freiberg, Eckhart
of Hoheim, and Ioannes Tauler”, in P. Porro (ed.), The Medieval Concept of Time.
Studies on the Scholastic Debate and Its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy,
Leiden, Brill, 2001, p. 221–​253.
Largier, N., “Das Glück des Menschen. Diskussionen über beatitudo und Vernunft in
volkssprachlichen Texten des 14. Jahrhunderts”, in J. Aertsen, K. Emery, Jr., A. Speer
(eds), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277. Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität
von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 28, Berlin,
De Gruyter, 2001, p. 827–​855.
Lawell, D., “Ecstasy and the Intellectual Dionysianism of Thomas Aquinas and Albert
the Great”, in J. McEvoy, M. Dunne, J. Hynes (eds), Thomas Aquinas. Teacher and
Scholar, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2012, p. 155–​183.
Leclercq, J., “La théologie comme science dans la littérature quodlibétique”, in
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 11(1939), p. 351–​374.
Lerner, R., The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1972.
Libera, A. de, “Philosophie et théologie chez Albert le Grand et dans l’école domin-
icaine Allemande”, in A. Zimmermann (ed.), Die Kölner Universität im Mittelalter,
Miscellanea Mediaevalia 20, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1989, p. 49–​67.
Libera, A. de, “Albert le Grand et Thomas d’Aquin interprètes du Liber de Causis”, in
Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 74(1990), p. 347–​378.
Libera, A. de, La mystique rhénane. D’Albert le Grand à Maître Eckhart, Paris, Seuil,
1994.
Libera, A. de, “Albert le Grand et la mystique allemande”, in M.J.F.M. Hoenen, J.H.J.
Schneider, G. Wieland (eds), Philosophy and Learning. Universities in the Middle
Ages, Leiden, Brill, 1995, p. 29–​42.
Libera, A. de, Raison et foi. Archéologie d’une crise d’Albert le Grand à Jean-​Paul II, Paris,
Seuil, 2003.
Libera, A. de, Métaphysique et noétique. Albert le Grand, Paris, Vrin, 2005.
Bibliography 457

Libera, A. de, “D’Averroès en Augustin. Intellect et cogitative selon Dietrich de Freiberg”,

in J. Biard, D. Calma, R. Imbach (eds), Recherches sur Dietrich de Freiberg, Turnhout,
Brepols, 2009, p. 15–​62.
Lindberg, D., John Pecham and the Science of Optics, Madison, University of Wisconsin
Press, 1970.
Löhr, G.M., Beiträge zur Geschichte des Kölner Dominikanerklosters im Mittelalter,
Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Dominikanerordens in Deutschland
15–​17, Leipzig, Harrassowitz, 1920–​1922.
Löhr, G.M., Die Kölner Dominikanerschule vom 14. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert, Köln, Kölner
Universitätsverlag Balduin Pick, 1948.
Longpré, E., “Fr. Thomas d’York, O.F.M. La première somme métaphysique du XIIIe siè-
cle”, in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 19(1926), p. 875–​930.
Lord, M.L., “Virgil’s Eclogues, Nicholas Trevet, and the Harmony of the Spheres”, in
Mediaeval Studies 54(1992), p. 186–​273.
Lucentini, P., Platonismo medievale. Contributi per la storia dell’eriugenismo, Firenze, La
Nuova Italia, 1980.
Lucentini, P., “Hermes Trismegistus II. Middle Ages” in W. Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary
of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, vol. 1, Leiden, Brill, 2005, p. 479–​483.
Lucentini, P., Platonismo, ermetismo, eresia nel medioevo, Louvain-​la-​Neuve, Fédération
Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2007.
Lucentini, P., Perrone Compagni V., “Hermetic Literature II. Latin Middle Ages”, in W.
Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, vol. 1, Leiden, Brill,
2005, p. 499–​529.
Ludueña, E., “Nicolás de Cusa. Una contribución a la historia del eriugenismo”, in J.M.
Machetta, C. D’Amico (eds), Nicolás de Cusa, identidad y alteridad. Pensamiento y
diálogo, Buenos Aires, Biblos, 2010, p. 75–​88.
Ludueña, E., “Platon vs. Aristoteles en la Expositio de Bertoldo de Moosburg”, in S.
Filippi (ed.), Controversias filosóficas, científicas y teológicas en el pensamiento tardo-​
antiguo y medieval, Rosario, Paideia Publicaciones, 2011, p. 383–​398.
Ludueña, E., La recepción de Eriúgena en Bertoldo de Moosburg. Un aporte sobre la
Escuela de Colonia, Saarbrücken, Publicia, 2013.
Ludueña, E., “Eriúgena en el siglo XIV. Su presencia en la Expositio de Bertoldo de
Moosburg”, in Scintilla 10/​2(2013), p. 99–​154.
Ludueña, E., “El politeismo de Proclo en la Expositio de Bertoldo de Moosburg”, in S.
Filippi, M. Coria (eds), La identidad propia des pensamiento patrístico y medieval.
¿Unidad o pluralidad?, Rosario, Paideia Publicaciones, 2014, p. 393–​403.
Ludueña, E., “Creatio y determinatio en la Escuela Renana. De Alberto Magno a Bertoldo
de Moosburg”, in Princípios. Revista de Filosofia 22/​37(2015), p. 77–​97.
Ludueña, E., “The Gods and Causality. On Aquinas’ Presence in Berthold’s Expositio”,
forthcoming.
458 Bibliography

Maccagnolo, E., “David of Dinant and the Beginnings of Aristotelianism in Paris”,

in P. Dronke (ed.), A History of Twelfth-​Century Western Philosophy, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 429–​442.
MacIsaac, D.G., “The Origin of Determination in the Neoplatonism of Proclus”, in M.
Treschow, W. Otten, W. Hannam (eds), Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval, and
Early Modern Thought. Essays Presented to the Rev’d Dr Robert D. Crouse, Leiden,
Brill, 2007, p. 141–​172.
Marenbon, J., From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre. Logic, Theology and
Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Marenbon, J., “Eriugena, Aristotelian Logic and the Creation”, in W. Otten, M. Allen
(eds), Eriugena and Creation. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference
on Eriugenian Studies, held in honor of Edouard Jeauneau, Chicago, 9–​12 November
2011, Turnhout, Brepols, 2014, p. 349–​368.
Marenbon, J., Pagans and Philosophers. The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to
Leibniz, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2015.
Martijn, M., Proclus on Nature. Philosophy of Nature and its Methods in Proclus’
Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, Leiden, Brill, 2010.
Massa, E., “Presentazione”, in Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem
theologicam Procli. 184–​211. De animabus, ed. L. Sturlese, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e
Letteratura, 1974, p. v–​xi.
Massa, E., “La deificazione nel commento di Bertoldo di Moosburg a Proclo, Elementatio
theologica, 129. Edizione del testo e prime analisi”, in R. Lievens, E. van Mingroot,
W. Verbeke (eds), Pascua Mediaevalia. Studies voor Prof. Dr. J.M. de Smet, Leuven,
Leuven University Press, 1983, p. 545–​604.
McGinn, B., “Sapientia Judaeorum. The Role of Jewish Philosophers in Some Scholastic
Thinkers”, in R.J. Bast, A.C. Gow (eds), Continuity and Change. The Harvest of Late
Medieval and Reformation History, Leiden, Brill, 2000, p. 206–​228.
Meliadò, M., “Axiomatic Wisdom. Boethius’ De hebdomadibus and the Liber de cau-
sis in Late-​Medieval Albertism”, in Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 55(2013), p.
71–​131.
Meuthen, E., Kölner Universitätsgeschichte, Band I. Die alte Universität, Köln, Böhlau
Verlag, 1988.
Meyer, G., Burckhardt, M., Die mittelalterlichen Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek
Basel. Beschreibendes Verzeichnis. Abteilung B: Theologische Pergamenthandschriften.
Bd. 2: Signaturen B VIII 11 –​B XI 26, Basel, Verlag der Universitätsbibliothek, 1966.
Minnis, A.J., Medieval Theory of Authorship. Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later
Middle Ages, Aldershot, Wildwood, 19882.
Minnis, A.J., Nauta, L., “More Platonico loquitur. What Nicholas Trevet really did to
William of Conches”, in A.J. Minnis (ed.), Chaucer’s Boece and the Medieval Tradition
of Boethius, Woodbridge, Brewer, 1993, p. 1–​33.
Bibliography 459

Mojsisch, B., Die Theorie des Intellekts bei Dietrich von Freiberg, cptma Beiheft 1,
Hamburg, Meiner, 1977.
Mojsisch, B., “Sein als Bewußt-​Sein. Die Bedeutung des ens conceptionale bei Dietrich
von Freiberg”, in K. Flasch (ed.), Von Meister Dietrich zu Meister Eckhart, cptma
Beiheft 2, Hamburg, Meiner, 1984, p. 95–​105.
Mojsisch, B., “Aristoteles’ Kritik an Platons Theorie der Ideen und die Dietrich von
Freiberg berücksichtigende Kritik dieser Kritik seitens Berthold von Moosburg”,
in K.-​H. Kandler, B. Mojsisch, B. Stammkötter (eds), Dietrich von Freiberg. Neue
Perspektiven seiner Philosophie, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, Amsterdam,
Grüner, 1999, p. 267–​281.
Mojsisch, B., “Die Theorie des Intellekts bei Berthold von Moosburg. Zur
Proklosrezeption im Mittelalter”, in Th. Kobusch, B. Mojsisch, O. Summerell (eds),
Selbst –​Singularität –​Subjektivität. Vom Neuplatonismus zum Deutschen Idealismus,
Amsterdam, Grüner, 2002, p. 175–​184.
Mojsisch, B., “Aristoteles mit oder ohne Platon”, in L. Honnefelder et al. (eds), Albertus
Magnus und die Anfänge der Aristoteles-​Rezeption im lateinischen Mittelalter,
Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 2005, p. 821–​833.
Mulchahey, M.M., “First the Bow is Bent in Study …”. Dominican Education Before 1350,
Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998.
Mulchahey, M.M., “The Studium at Cologne and its Role within Early Dominican
Education”, in Listening. Journal of Religion and Culture 43(2008), p. 118–​147.
Müller, J., “Der Einfluß der arabischen Intellektspekulation auf die Ethik des Albertus
Magnus”, in A. Speer, L. Wegener (eds), Wissen über Grenzen. Arabisches Wissen und
lateinisches Mittelalter, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 33, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2006, p. 545–​568.
Nauta, L., “The Scholastic Context of the Boethius Commentary by Nicholas Trevet”, in
M.J.F.M. Hoenen, L. Nauta (eds), Boethius in the Middle Ages. Latin and Vernacular
Traditions of the Consolatio philosophiae, Leiden, Brill, 1997, p. 41–​67.
Oliva, A., “La contemplation des philosophes selon Thomas d’Aquin”, in Revue des
sciences philosophiques et théologiques 96(2012), p. 585–​662.
O’Meara, D., “La science métaphysique (ou théologie) de Proclus comme exercise spir-
ituel”, in A.-​P. Segonds, C. Steel (eds), Proclus et la théologie platonicienne. Actes du
Colloque International de Louvain (13–​16 mai 1998) en l’honneur de H.D. Saffrey et L.G.
Westerink, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2000, p. 279–​290.
Opsomer, J., “Was sind irrationale Seelen?”, in M. Perkams, R.M. Piccione (eds), Proklos.
Methode, Seelenlehre, Metaphysik, Leiden, Brill, 2006, p. 136–​166.
Paschetto, E., “L’Elementatio theologica di Proclo e il commento di Bertoldo di
Mosburgo”, in Filosofia 27(1976), p. 353–​378.
Pagnoni-​Sturlese, M.R., “A propos du néoplatonisme d’Albert le Grand. Aventures et
mésaventures de quelques textes d’Albert dans le Commentaire sur Proclus de
Berthold de Moosburg”, in Archives de Philosophie 43(1980), p. 635–​654.
460 Bibliography

Pagnoni-​Sturlese, M.R., “Filosofia della natura e filosofia dell’intelletto in Teodorico di

Freiberg e Bertoldo di Moosburg”, in K. Flasch (ed.), Von Meister Dietrich zu Meister
Eckhart, Hamburg, Meiner, 1984, 115–​127.
Palazzo, A., “Le fonti ermetiche nel De summo bono di Ulrico di Strasburgo”, in P.
Lucentini, I. Parri, V. Perrone Compagni (eds), Hermetism from Late Antiquity to
Humanism. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Napoli, 20–​24 Novembre 2001,
Turnhout, Brepols, 2003, p. 189–​202.
Palazzo, A., “Ulrich of Strasbourg and Denys the Carthusian. Textual Analysis and
Doctrinal Comments”, in Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 46(2004), p. 61–​113.
Palazzo, A., “La sapientia nel De summo bono di Ulrico di Strasburgo”, in Quaestio
5(2005), p. 495–​512.
Palazzo, A., “La ricezione di un passo ermetico (Asclepius 8) nel tardo medioevo. Ulrico
di Strasburgo, Pietro di Tarantasia, Riccardo di Mediavilla, Bertoldo di Moosburg e
Dionigi il Certosino”, in T. Iremadze, T. Tskhadadze, G. Kheoschvili (eds), Philosophy,
Theology, Culture. Problems and Perspectives. Jubilee Volume Dedicated to the 75th
Anniversary of Guram Tevzadze, Tbilisi, Nekeri /​Arche, 2007, p. 104–​25.
Palazzo, A., “The Scientific Significance of Fate and Celestial Influences in Some
Mature Works by Albert the Great. De fato, De somno et vigilia, De intellectu et intelli-
gibili, Mineralia”, in A. Beccarisi, R. Imbach, P. Porro (eds), Per perscrutationem phil-
osophicam. Neue Perspektiven der mittelalterlichen Forschung. Loris Sturlese zum 60.
Geburtstag gewidmet, cptma Beiheft 4, Hamburg, Meiner, 2008, p. 55–​78.
Palazzo, A., “Albert the Great’s Doctrine of Fascination in the Context of his Philosophical
System”, in L. Honnefelder, H. Möhle, S. Bullido del Barrio (eds), Via Alberti. Texte –​
Quellen –​Interpretationen, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 2009, p. 135–​215.
Palazzo, A., “Albert the Great’s Doctrine of Fate”, in L. Sturlese (ed.), Mantik, Schicksal
und Freiheit im Mittelalter, Köln, Böhlau, 2011, p. 65–​95.
Palazzo, A., “Philosophy and Theology in the German Dominican Scholae in the
Late Middle Ages. The Cases of Ulrich of Strasbourg and Berthold of Wimpfen”,
in K. Emery, Jr., W. Courtenay, S. Metzger (eds), Philosophy and Theology in the
Studia of the Religious Orders and at Papal and Royal Courts. Acts of the XVth
International Colloquium of the Socitété internationale pour l’étude de la philoso-
phie médiévale, University of Notre Dame, 8–​10 October 2008, Turnhout, Brepols,
2012, p. 75–​105.
Palazzo, A., “Ulrich of Strasbourg’s Philosophical Theology. Textual and Doctrinal
Remarks on De summo bono”, in A. Speer, Th. Jeschke (eds), Schüler und Meister,
Miscellanea Mediaevalia 39, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2016, p. 205–​242.
Palazzo, A., “Regna duo duorum. Berthold of Moosburg’s Theory of Providence and
Fate”, forthcoming.
Pellegrino, G., “La Summa di Nicola di Strasburgo (1315–​1320). Compilatio rudis ac puer-
ilis o novus libellus?”, in A. Beccarisi, R. Imbach, P. Porro (eds), Per perscrutationem
Bibliography 461

philosophicam. Neue Perspektiven der mittelalterlichen Forschung. Loris Sturlese zum

60. Geburtstag gewidmet, cptma Beiheft 4, Hamburg, Meiner, 2008, p. 204–​215.
Pellegrino, G., “Novus ex veteribus libellus. Guglielmo di Conches nella Summa di Nicola
di Strasburgo”, in C. Martello, C. Militello, A. Vella (eds), Cosmogonie e cosmologie
nel medioevo. Atti del Convegno della Società italiana per lo studio del pensiero medi-
evale (S.I.S.P.M.), Catania, 22–​24 settembre 2006, Louvain-​la-​Neuve, Fédération
Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2008, p. 339–​349.
Pelster, F., “Die Ehrentitel der scholastischen Lehrer des Mittelalters. Ein Beitrag und
eine Ergänzung”, in Theologische Quartalschrift 103(1922), p. 37–​56.
Peters, U., Religiöse Erfahrung als literarisches Faktum. Zur Vorgeschichte und Genese
frauenmysticher Texte des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1988.
Pfeiffer, F., “Predigten und Sprüche deutscher Mystiker”, in Zeitschrift für deutsches
Altertum 8(1851), p. 209–​258.
Piemonte, G., Vita in omnia pervenit. El vitalismo eriugeniano y la influencia de Mario
Victorino, Buenos Aires, Ediciones Patristica et Mediaevalia, 1988.
Porreca, D., “Hermes Trismegistus. William of Auvergne’s Mythical Authority”, in
Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 67(2000), p. 143–​158.
Porreca, D., “Hermes Trismegistus in Thomas of York. A 13th-​Century Witness to the
Prominence of an Ancient Sage”, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du
Moyen Âge 72(2005), p. 147–​275.
Porro, P., “Ponere statum. Idee divine, perfezioni creaturali e ordine del mondo in
Enrico di Gand”, in Mediaevalia 3(1993), p. 109–​159.
Porro, P., “Essere e essenza in Giovanni Picardi di Lichtenberg. Note sulla prima ricezi-
one del tomismo a Colonia”, in M. Pickavé (ed.), Die Logik des Transzendentalen.
Festschrift für Jan. A. Aertsen zum 65. Geburtstag, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 30,
Berlin, De Gruyter, 2003, p. 226–​245.
Porro, P., “Res praedicamenti e ratio praedicamenti. Una nota su Teodorico di Freiberg
e Enrico di Gand”, in J. Biard, D. Calma, R. Imbach (eds), Recherches sur Dietrich de
Freiberg, Turnhout, Brepols, 2009, p. 131–​143.
Porro, P., “The University of Paris in the Thirteenth Century. Proclus and the Liber de
causis”, in S. Gersh (ed.), Interpreting Proclus. From Antiquity to the Renaissance,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 264–​298.
Porro, P., “Tra l’oscurità della fede e il chiarore della visione. Il dibattito sullo statuto
scientifico della teologia agli inizi del XIV secolo”, in L. Bianchi, C. Crisciani (eds),
Forme e oggetti della conoscenza nel XIV secolo. Studi in ricordo di Maria Elena Reina,
Firenze, sismel –​Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014, p. 195–​256.
Potestà, G.L., “Per laboriosam investigationem ascendendo. L’edizione di Bertoldo di
Moosburg”, in Rivista di filosofia Neoscolastica 76(1984), p. 637–​643.
Retucci, F., “Magister Thomas Anglicus minor: Eine neue Quelle der Expositio super
Elementationem theologicam Procli Bertholds von Moosburg –​das ungedruckte
462 Bibliography

Sapientiale des Franziskaners Thomas von York”, in Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio

super Elementationem theologicam Procli. Propositiones 136–​159, ed. F. Retucci,
cptma vi/​6, Hamburg, Meiner, 2007, p. xxii-​xxxix.
Retucci, F., “Tommaso di York, Eustrazio e la dottrina delle idee di Platone”, in A.
Beccarisi, R. Imbach, P. Porro (eds), Per perscrutationem philosophicam. Neue
Perspektiven der mittelalterlichen Forschung. Loris Sturlese zum 60. Geburtstag
gewidmet, cptma Beiheft 4, Hamburg, Meiner, 2008, p. 79–​111.
Retucci, F., “Berthold de Moosburg”, in M.-​A. Vannier et al. (eds), Encyclopédie des mys-
tiques rhénans. D’Eckhart à Nicolas de Cues et leur réception, Paris, Cerf, 2011, p. 195–​196.
Retucci, F., “Nuovi percorsi del platonismo medievale. I commentari bizantini all’Et-
ica Nicomachea nel Sapientiale di Tommaso di York”, in Documenti e studi sulla
tradizione filosofica medievale 24(2013), p. 85–​120.
Retucci, F., “On a Dangerous Trail. Henry Suso and the Condemnations of Meister Eckhart”,
in J. Hackett (ed.), A Companion to Meister Eckhart, Leiden, Brill, 2013, p. 587–​605.
Retucci, F., “Sententia Procli alti philosophi. Notes on an Anonymous Commentary on
Proclus’ Elementatio theologica”, in D. Calma (ed.), Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages,
II. New Commentaries on Liber de causis and Elementatio theologica (ca. 1350–​1500),
Turnhout, Brepols, 2016, p. 99–​180.
Retucci, F., “Magister Thomas Anglicus Minor. Tommaso di York fonte dell’Expositio di
Bertoldo di Moosburg”, in F. Amerini, S. Fellina, A. Strazzoni (eds), Tra antichità e
modernità. Studi di storia della filosofia medievale e rinascimentale, E-​THECA, On
Line Open Access Edizioni, 2019, p. 1–​41.
Retucci, F., “Between Cologne and Oxford. Berthold of Moosburg and Thomas of York’s
Sapientiale”, forthcoming.
Retucci, F., Goering, J., “The Sapientiale of Thomas of York, OFM. The Fortunes and
Misfortunes of a Critical Edition”, in Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 52(2010),
p. 133–​155.
Riccati, C., Processio et explicatio. La doctrine de la création chez Jean Scot et Nicolas de
Cues, Napoli, Bibliopolis, 1983.
Ringler, S., Viten-​und Offenbarungsliteratur in Frauenklöstern des Mittelalters, München
/​Zürich, Artemis-​Verlag, 1980.
Rodnite, H., The Doctrine of the Trinity in William of Conches’ Glosses on Macrobius.
Texts and Studies, PhD diss., Columbia University, 1972.
Roudaut, S., “Founding a Metaphysics of Light in Proclus’ Universe. Berthold of
Moosburg’s Theory of Forms”, forthcoming.
Ruello, F., Les “Noms divins” et leurs “raisons” selon saint Albert the Grand commentateur
du De divinis nominibus, Paris, Vrin, 1963.
Ruh, K., “Heinrich von Ekkewint (Eckbuint, Egwint, Egwin)”, in K. Ruh et al. (eds), Die
deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, vol. 3, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1980,
p. 718–​720.
Bibliography 463

Ruh, K., Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, Band III. Die Mystik des deutschen
Predigerordens und ihre Grundlegung durch die Hochscholastik, München, Beck,
1996.
Saccon, A., Intelletto e beatitudine. La cultura filosofica tedesca del XIV secolo, Roma,
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2012.
Saccon, A., “Die natürliche Gotteserkenntnis in den Schriften der Kölner Albertisten
des 15. Jahrhunderts”, in Quaestio 15(2015), p. 751–​760.
Sannino, A., “Berthold of Moosburg’s Hermetic Sources”, in Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 63(2000), p. 243–​258.
Sannino, A., “Il concetto ermetico di natura in Bertoldo di Moosburg”, in P. Lucentini,
I. Parri, V. Perrone Compagni (eds), Hermeticism from Late Antiquity to Humanism.
Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Napoli, 20–​24 Novembre 2001, Turnhout,
Brepols, 2003, p. 203–​221.
Sannino, A., “Il Liber viginti quattuor philosophorum nella metafisica di Bertoldo di
Moosburg”, in A. Beccarisi, R. Imbach, P. Porro (eds), Per perscrutationem philo-
sophicam. Neue Perspektiven der mittelalterlichen Forschung. Loris Sturlese zum 60.
Geburtstag gewidmet, cptma Beiheft 4, Hamburg, Meiner, 2008, p. 252–​272.
Senger, H.-​G., Ludus sapientiae. Studien zum Werk und zur Wirkungsgeschichte des
Nikolaus von Kues, Leiden, Brill, 2002.
Senner, W., Johannes von Sterngassen OP und sein Sentenzen-​Kommentar, 2 vols, Berlin,
Akademie Verlag, 1995.
Senner, W., “Dominican Education”, in J. Hackett (ed.), A Companion to Meister Eckhart,
Leiden, Brill, 2013, p. 711–​723.
Sharp, D.E., Franciscan Philosophy at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century, London, Oxford
University Press, 1930.
Sheffler, D., Schools and Schooling in Late Medieval Germany. Regensburg, 1250–​1500,
Leiden, Brill, 2008.
Smalley, B., “Thomas Waleys O.P.”, in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 24(1954),
p. 50–​107.
Smalley, B., English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century, Oxford,
Blackwell, 1960.
Smalley, B., “Peter Comestor on the Gospels and his Sources”, in Recherches de théologie
ancienne et médiévale 46(1979), p. 84–​129.
Smith, A.M., Alhacen’s Theory of Visual Perception. A Critical Edition, with English
Translation and Commentary, of the First Three Books of Alhacen’s De aspectibus, the
Medieval Latin Version of Ibn al-​Haytham’s Kitāb al-​Manāẓir, 2 vols, Philadelphia,
American Philosophical Society, 2001.
Solère, J.-​L., “Maître Eckhart, Proclus et Boèce. Du statut des prologues dans l’axio-
matique néoplatonicienne”, in J. Hamesse (ed.), Les prologues médiévaux. Actes du
Colloque international organisé par l’Academia Belgica et l’École française de Rome
464 Bibliography

avec le concours de la F.I.D.E.M. (Rome, 26–​28 mars 1998), Turnhout, Brepols, 2000,
p. 535–​571.
Solère, J.-​L., “L’ordre axiomatique comme modèle d’écriture philosophique dans l’An-
tiquité et au Moyen Âge”, in Revue d’histoire des sciences 56/​2(2003), p. 323–​345.
Speer, A., “Sapientia nostra. Zum Verhältnis von philosophischer und theologischer
Weisheit in den Pariser Debatten am Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts”, in J. Aertsen, K.
Emery, Jr., A. Speer (eds), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277. Philosophie und Theologie
an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts. Studien und Texte,
Miscellanea Mediaevalia 28, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2001, p. 248–​275.
Speer, A., “The Hidden Heritage. Boethian Metaphysics and Its Medieval Tradition”, in
Quaestio 5(2005), p. 163–​181.
Speer, A., “The Division of Metaphysical Discourses. Boethius, Thomas Aquinas and
Meister Eckhart”, in K. Emery, Jr., R. Friedman, A. Speer (eds), Philosophy and
Theology in the Long Middle Ages. A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown, Leiden, Brill, 2011,
p. 91–​115.
Steel, C., “Medieval Philosophy: an Impossible Project? Thomas Aquinas and the
‘Averroistic’ Ideal of Happiness”, in J. Aertsen, A. Speer (eds), Was ist Philosophie im
Mittelalter?, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 26, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1998, p. 152–​174.
Steel, C., Die Adler und die Nachteule. Thomas und Albert über die Möglichkeit der
Metaphysik, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 2001.
Steel, C., “The Neoplatonic Doctrine of Time and Eternity and its Influence on Medieval
Philosophy”, in P. Porro (ed.), The Medieval Concept of Time. Studies on the Scholastic
Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy, Leiden, Brill, 2001, p. 3–​32.
Steel, C., “The Return of the Body into Soul. Philosophical Musings on the Resurrection”,
in J. McEvoy, M. Dunne (eds), History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and
his Time. Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference of the Society for the
Promotion of Eriugenian Studies, Maynooth and Dublin, August 16–​20, 2000, Leuven,
Leuven University Press, 2002, p. 581–​609.
Steel, C., “Why Should We Prefer Plato’s Timaeus to Aristotle’s Physics? Proclus’ Critique
of Aristotle’s Causal Explanation of the Physical World”, in Bulletin of the Institute of
Classical Studies. Supplement 78(2003), p. 175–​187.
Steel, C., “Proklos über Selbstreflexion und Selbstbegründung”, in M. Perkams, R.M.
Piccione (eds), Proklos. Methode, Seelenlehre, Metaphysik, Leiden, Brill, 2006,
p. 230–​255.
Steel, C., “William of Moerbeke, translator of Proclus”, in S. Gersh (ed.), Interpreting
Proclus. From Antiquity to the Renaissance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
2014, p. 247–​263.
Steer, G., “Bernhard von Clairvaux als theologische Autorität für Meister Eckhart,
Johannes Tauler und Heinrich Seuse”, in K. Elm (ed.), Bernhard von Clairvaux.
Bibliography 465

Rezeption und Wirkung im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz,

1994, p. 233–​259.
Sturlese, L., “Introduzione” in Berthold of Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem
theologicam Procli. 184–​211. De animabus, ed. L. Sturlese, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e
Letteratura, 1974, p. xv–​lxxxiii.
Sturlese, L., “Alle origini della mistica speculativa tedesca. Antichi testi su Teodorico di
Freiberg”, in Medioevo 3(1977), p. 21–​87.
Sturlese, L., “Gottebenbildlichkeit und Beseelung des Himmels in den Quodlibeta
Heinrichs von Lübeck OP”, in Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie
24(1977), p. 191–​233.
Sturlese, L., “Il De animatione caeli di Teodorico di Freiberg”, in R. Creytens, P. Künzle
(eds), Xenia Medii Aevi historiam illustrantia, oblata Thomae Kaeppeli O.P., 2 vols,
Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1978, vol. 1, p. 175–​247.
Sturlese, L., “Saints et magiciens. Albert le Grand en face d’Hermès Trismégiste”, in
Archives de Philosophie 43(1980), p. 615–​634.
Sturlese, L., “Super Dionysii Mysticam theologiam et Epistulas, ed. P. Simon (Alberti
Magni Opera omnia, t. XXXVII, pars 2) and Summa theologiae sive de mirabilia scien-
tia Dei, Libri I pars 1, Quaestiones 1–​50A, ed. D. Siedler (Alberti Magni Opera omnia,
t. XXXIV, 1)”, in Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e
Filosofia, Series iii, 10/​4(1980), p. 1691–​1698.
Sturlese, L., “Albert der Große und die deutsche philosophische Kultur des Mittelalters”,
in Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 28(1981), p. 133–​147.
Sturlese, L., “Eckhart, Teodorico e Picardi nella Summa philosophiae di Nicola di
Strasburgo. Documenti per una storia della filosofia medievale tedesca”, in Giornale
critico della filosofia italiana 61(1982), p. 183–​206.
Sturlese, L., “Proclo ed Ermete in Germania da Alberto Magno a Bertoldo di Moosburg.
Per una prospettiva di ricerca sulla cultura filosofica tedesca nel secolo delle sue
origini (1250–​1350)”, in K. Flasch (ed.), Von Meister Dietrich zu Meister Eckhart,
cptma Beiheft 2, Hamburg, Meiner, 1984, p. 22–​33.
Sturlese, L., Dokumente und Forschungen zu Leben und Werke Dietrichs von Freiberg,
cptma Beiheft 3, Hamburg, Meiner, 1984.
Sturlese, L., “Note su Bertoldo di Moosburg O.P., scienziato e filosofo”, in Freiburger
Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 32(1985), p. 249–​259.
Sturlese, L., “Homo divinus. Der Prokloskommentar Bertholds von Moosburg und die
Probleme der nacheckhartschen Zeit”, in K. Ruh (ed.), Abendländische Mystik im
Mittelalter. Symposion Kloster Engelberg 1984, Stuttgart, Metzler, 1986, p. 145–​161.
Sturlese, L., “Il dibattito sul Proclo latino nel medioevo fra l’università di Parigi e lo
studium di Colonia”, in G. Boss, G. Seel (eds), Proclos et son influence. Actes du collo-
que de Neuchâtel, juin 1985, Zürich, Éditions du Grand Midi, 1987, p. 261–​285.
466 Bibliography

Sturlese, L., “Tauler im Kontext. Die philosophischen Voraussetzungen des

‘Seelengrundes’ in der Lehre des deutschen Neuplatonikers Berthold von Moosburg”,
in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 109(1987), p. 390–​426.
Sturlese, L., “Die Kölner Eckhartisten. Das Studium generale der deutschen Dominikaner
und die Verurteilung der Thesen Meister Eckharts”, in A. Zimmermann (ed.), Die
Kölner Universität im Mittelalter, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 20, Berlin, De Gruyter,
1989, p. 192–​211.
Sturlese, L., “Traktat von der Seligkeit”, in K. Ruh et al. (eds), Die deutsche Literatur des
Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, vol. 9, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1995, p. 998–​1002.
Sturlese, L., Storia della filosofia tedesca nel Medioevo. Il secolo XIII, Firenze, Olschki,
1996.
Sturlese, L., “Philosophische Florilegien im mittelalterlichen Deutschland”, in K. Elm
(ed.), Literarische Formen des Mittelalters. Florilegien, Kompilationen, Kollektionen,
Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2000, p. 39–​72.
Sturlese, L., “Intelletto acquisito e divino. La dottrina filosofica di Alberto il Grande
sulla perfezione della ragione umana”, in Giornale critico della filosofia italiana 82/​
2(2003), p. 161–​189.
Sturlese, L., Vernunft und Glück. Die Lehre vom intellectus adeptus und die mentale
Glückseligkeit bei Albert dem Grossen, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 2005.
Sturlese, L., Homo divinus. Philosophische Projekte in Deutschland zwischen Meister
Eckhart und Heinrich Seuse, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2007.
Sturlese, L., “Universality of Reason and Plurality of Philosophies in the Middle Ages.
Geography of Readers and Isograph of Text Diffusion before the Invention of
Printing”, in A. Musco et al. (eds), Universality of Reason, Plurality of Philosophies in
the Middle Ages. XII Congresso internazionale di filosofia medievale. Palermo, 17–​22
September 2007, Palermo, Officina di Studi Medievali, 2012, p. 1–​22.
Sturlese, L., Die Philosophie im Mittelalter. Von Boethius bis Cusanus, München, Beck, 2013.
Sturlese, L., “Berthold of Moosburg, the unum animae, and Deification”, forthcoming.
Suarez-​Nani, T., Tempo ed essere nell’autunno del medioevo. Il De tempore di Nicola di
Strasburgo e il dibattito sulla natura ed il senso del tempo agli inizi del XIV secolo,
Amsterdam, Grüner, 1989.
Suarez-​Nani, T., “Substances séparées, intelligences et anges chez Thierry de Freiberg”,
in K.-​H. Kandler, B. Mojsisch, B. Stammkötter (eds), Dietrich von Freiberg. Neue
Perspektiven seiner Philosophie, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, Amsterdam,
Grüner, 1999, p. 49–​67.
Suarez-​Nani, T., Les anges et la philosophie. Subjectivité et fonction cosmologique des
substances séparées à la fin du XIIIe siècle, Paris, Vrin, 2002.
Suarez-​Nani, T., “Les êtres et leurs lieux. Le fondement de la localisation selon Dietrich
de Freiberg”, in J. Biard, D. Calma, R. Imbach (eds), Recherches sur Dietrich de
Freiberg, Turnhout, Brepols, 2009, p. 145–​163.
Bibliography 467

Tautz, I.J., Erst-​Eines, Intellekte, Intellektualität. Eine Studie zu Berthold von Moosburg,
Hamburg, Kovač, 2002.
Teeuwen, M., The Vocabulary of Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages, Turnhout,
Brepols, 2003.
Thali, J., Beten –​Schreiben –​Lesen. Literarisches Leben und Marienspiritualität im
Kloster Engelthal, Tübingen, Francke, 2003.
Theben, J., Die mystische Lyrik des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Untersuchungen –​Texte –​
Repertorium, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2010.
Théry, G., “Originalité du plan de la Summa de bono d’Ulrich de Strasbourg”, in Revue
thomiste 27(1922), p. 376–​397.
Torrell, J.-​P., “Le savoir théologique chez les premiers thomistes”, in Revue thomiste
97(1997), p. 9–​30.
Torrell, J.-​P., Recherches thomasiennes. Études revues et augmentées, Paris, Vrin, 2000.
Trizio, M., “Neoplatonic Source-​Material in Eustratios of Nicaea’s Commentary on
Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics”, in C. Barber, D. Jenkins (eds), Medieval Greek
Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics, Leiden, Brill, 2009, p. 71–​110.
Trottmann, C., La vision béatifique. Des disputes scholastiques à sa définition par Benoît
XII, Paris, École française de Rome, 1995.
Trottmann, C., “La théologie comme pieuse science visant la béatitude selon Albert le
Grand”, in Revue thomiste 98(1998), p. 387–​410.
Trottmann, C., “La théologie des théologiens et celle des philosophes”, in Revue thom-
iste 98(1998), p. 531–​561.
Trouillard, J., “Métensomatose proclienne et eschatologie érigénienne”, in J. Sojcher,
G. Hottois (eds), Philosophies non chrétiennes et christianisme. Annales de l’Institut
de Philosophie et de Sciences morales, Bruxelles, Université libre de Bruxelles, 1984,
p. 87–​99.
Trouillard, J., “Érigène et la théophanie créatrice”, in J.J. O’Meara, L. Bieler (eds), The
Mind of Eriugena, Dublin, Irish University Press for the Royal Irish Academy, 1973,
p. 98–​113.
Tugwell, S., “Waleys [Wallensis], Thomas”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 800–​801.
Vansteenberghe, E., Le De ignota litteratura de Jean Wenck de Herrenberg contre Nicolas
de Cues, Münster i.W., Aschendorff, 1910.
Vaux, R. de, Notes et textes sur l’avicennisme latin aux confins des XIIe-​XIIIe siècles, Paris,
Vrin, 1934.
Ventura, I., “On Philosophical Encyclopaedism in the Fourteenth Century. The Catena
aurea entium of Henry of Herford”, in G. de Callataÿ, B. Van den Abeele (eds), Une
lumière venue d’ailleurs. Héritages et ouvertures dans les encyclopédies d’Orient et
d’Occident au Moyen Âge. Actes du colloque de Louvain-​la-​Neuve, 19–​21 mai 2005,
Louvain-​la-​Neuve, Centre de recherche en histoire des sciences, 2008, p. 199–​245.
468 Bibliography

Ventura, I., “Encyclopédie et culture philosophique au Moyen Âge. Quelques con-

sidérations”, in A. Zucker (ed.), Encyclopédire. Formes de l’ambition encyclopédique
dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge, Turnhout, Brepols, 2013, p. 107–​123.
Wallace, W., The Scientific Methodology of Theodoric of Freiberg. A Case Study in the
Relationship between Science and Philosophy, Fribourg, University Press, 1959.
Warnar, G., Ruusbroec. Literature and Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century, trans. D.
Webb, Leiden, Brill, 2007.
Winkler, N., Von der wirkenden und möglichen Vernunft. Philosophie in der volkssprachi-
gen Predigt nach Meister Eckhart, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2013.
Wippel, J., The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines. A Study in Late Thirteenth-​
Century Philosophy, Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America Press, 1981.
Zavattero, I., “La figura e il pensiero di Proclo in Bertoldo di Moosburg”, in ARKETE.
Rivista di studi filosofici 1(2005), p. 51–​67.
Zavattero, I., “Berthold of Moosburg”, in H. Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval
Philosophy. Philosophy Between 500 and 1500, Dordrecht, Springer, 2011, p. 163–​165.
Zavattero, I., “Bonum beatitudinis. Felicità e beatitudine nel De summo bono di Ulrico di
Strasburgo”, in Memorie Domenicane 42(2011), p. 283–​313.
Zepeda, H., The First Latin Treatise on Ptolemy’s Astronomy. The Almagesti minor (c.
1200), Turnhout, Brepols, 2018.
Ziebart, K.M., Nicolaus Cusanus on Faith and Intellect. A Case Study in 15th-​Century
Fides-​Ratio Controversy, Leiden, Brill, 2014.
Index of Manuscripts

Basel Köln
Universitätsbibliothek Historisches Archiv
B.xi.10. 6 W 258a. 29, 38
F.i.21. 29
F.iv.30. 5, 36, 262 London
F.iv.31. 14, 28, 36, 38, 40, 90, 105, 110, 136, British Library
204, 262 Cod. Addit. 11035. 340

Bernkastel-​Kues München
Bibliothek des St. Nikolaus-​Hospitals Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
Cod. Cus. 21. 343 Clm 14448. 28, 38
Cod. Cus. 106. 339 Clm 26897. 324–​325
Cod. Cus. 202. 339
Oxford
Dresden Balliol College Library
Sächsische Landesbibliothek Cod. 224B. 22, 38, 53, 110, 179, 430
Db. 87. 27, 38
Paris
Erfurt Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal
Universitätsbibliothek lat. 473. 26
Dep. Erf, ca. F 72. 37 Bibliothèque nationale de France
lat. 6734. 30, 34, 229, 339
Firenze lat. 17341. 31, 368, 373
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
Conv. Soppr. A.vi.437. 71, 73, 74, 112, 351, Vaticano (Città del)
362–​363, 373–​378, 381, 383, 400–​401, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
403, 405–​406, 413–​415, 420, 422, 429, Urb. lat. 1140. 19, 21
433–​434, 436 Vat. lat. 2171. 405, 418–​419, 422, 433–​434
Vat. lat. 2192. 22, 35, 37, 53, 57, 110, 179, 430
Klosterneuburg Vat. lat. 3091. 51
Augustiner-​Chorherrenstift
Cod. 43. 327–​328 Wien
Cod. 52. 32 Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
Cod. Vindob. 273. 26, 37–​38
Index of Authors (Ancient)

‘Abd al-​Masīḥ of Winchester 27 Asclepius 19, 69, 70–​75, 77, 80–​84, 351, 356,
Adam Pulchrae Mulieris 108, 262, 264, 394 373, 375, 377, 383–​384, 412–​413
Adelheid Langmann 11–​13 Augustinus Hipponensis 6, 19, 32, 55,
Alanus ab Insulis 69, 77, 108, 166, 223, 65–​66, 75, 77, 94–​95, 98–​99, 104–​107,
394, 412 116–​117, 129, 133–​135, 139, 141, 143, 145–​146,
Albertus de Castello 9, 35–​36 148–​149, 217, 220, 222–​223, 225–​228, 242,
Albertus Magnus 3, 10, 15, 26–​31, 35–​38, 289–​290, 299, 324, 364–​367, 375, 377,
42–​50, 52–​53, 71–​72, 74, 81–​84, 86–​93, 382, 394–​397, 399, 405–​408, 410, 415–​416
99, 101, 103–​104, 113, 116, 126–​127, 130, Averroes (Abū ʾl-​Walīd Muḥammad ibn
134, 140, 142, 144, 150, 154, 179–​180, 182, Aḥmad ibn Rushd) 5, 15, 82, 119–​120,
184–​185, 202–​205, 208–209, 212, 215, 124, 137–​138, 147, 172, 175, 198, 207, 243,
220, 222, 227, 232–233, 248, 254–​256, 272, 277, 410–​411, 429–​430
297–​299, 307, 323, 327–​328, 330–​331, Avicebron (Abū Ayyūb Sulaymān ibn Yaḥyā
347, 363, 366, 368, 373, 378, 381, 384–​ ibn Gabirol) 6–​7, 133, 147, 204, 245,
387, 390–​391, 410, 413, 421, 430 247, 262, 312, 314, 316, 411, 415–​416
Alexander Aphrodisiensis 119, 124 Avicenna (Abū ʿAlī al-​Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh
Alexander Halensis 226 Ibn Sīnā) 15, 17–​18, 20, 39, 82, 86–​89,
Alexander Neckam 77 156, 198, 207, 210–​211, 264
Alfarabi (Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn
Muḥammad al-​Fārābī) 31, 82, 85, 88, Beda Venerabilis 226
119, 124, 227–​230, 367–​368, 386 Benedictus Casinensis 120, 126, 132, 183, 356
Al-​Farghani (Abū al-​ʿAbbās Aḥmad Bernardus Claraevallensis 56, 125, 271, 304–​
ibn Muḥammad ibn Kathīr 308, 313, 320, 327, 329, 355
al-​Farghānī) 15 Bernardus de Alvernia 164
Algazel (Abū Ḥamid Moḥammed ibn Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus) 4, 14–​
Moḥammed al-​Ghazālī) 156, 328, 15, 52, 54–​56, 58–​59, 66, 68, 79, 96–​99,
362–​363 101, 104, 106–​108, 110–​111, 131, 133, 135,
Alhazen (Ḥasan ibn al-​Haytham) 262, 147, 161, 171, 178, 183, 211, 225, 234–​235,
264, 424 245, 253, 286, 295–​296, 299, 347–​353,
Amalricus de Bena 334–​338, 340, 342 371, 374, 382, 397–​398, 401, 403–​404,
Ambrosiaster 328, 362 413–​414, 416, 419–​420, 427, 431, 435
Ambrosius Mediolanensis 328, 362, 365 Bonaventura de Balneoregio 96, 216, 227,
Anaxagoras 407 296, 398
Anaximander 407
Anaximenes 407 Calcidius 299
Anselmus Cantauriensis 254 Campanus Novariensis 27
Apuleius 15, 20–​21, 76, 150, 391–​392 Cassiodorus 139, 377
Aristotle x, 5, 15, 24, 35, 40, 45–​48, 50–​51, 54, Christina Ebner 11–​12, 14
81, 88, 90, 111–​112, 114, 116–​118, 128, 137, Cicero (Marcus Tullius) 15, 22, 77–​79, 86,
143, 144, 159, 162–​163, 167–​168, 171, 173, 105, 112, 374–​375, 377, 399, 403, 405–​
180, 182–​184, 194–​201, 202, 208, 211–​213, 406, 408–​409
220, 232, 237, 250, 261–​262, 264, 288–​ Conradus Keller de Rotovilla 37, 329
290, 296, 330–​331, 346, 352, 377, 389,
394, 402, 405, 410, 418–​419, 421–​422, David de Dinanto 332, 337–​340
424–​426, 429, 432–​434, 436 Dionysius Cartusianus 202
Index of Authors (Ancient) 471

Dionysius ps.-​Areopagita ix, 6, 31–​33, 35, Henricus de Gandavo 141, 163, 218, 253
39, 44–​50, 66, 73, 76–​79, 83–​84, 86, Henricus de Lübeck 42
89–​94, 99–​101, 106, 108–​109, 112, 115–​118, Henricus de Segusio 336
124–​125, 127, 130, 147–​152, 155–​158, 161, Henricus Suso 42–​43, 81, 83, 93–​94, 305, 320
178–​186, 199–​202, 204–​205, 207–​212, Heraclitus 385
215–​216, 220, 222–​223, 225–​229, Hermes Trismegistus 19, 49, 69–​79, 81–​82,
231–​237, 241–​242, 244–​245, 247, 254, 87–​88, 100, 108, 147, 150, 222–​223, 245,
257–​258, 264, 266–​267, 285, 297–​298, 350–​351, 373–​378, 380–​381, 383–​385,
300–​303, 306–​311, 313–​314, 316, 323, 326, 387, 389, 393, 411–​413
328, 330, 332, 336–​338, 340, 343–​346, Hervaeus Natalis 52, 164
349, 355–​356, 362–​366, 368–​371, 373, Hesiod 232
375, 379–​381, 384–​385, 387–​395, 400, Heymericus de Campo 330–​331, 339
402–​403, 431–​432, 435–​436 Hieronymus Stridonius 6, 378, 392
Dominicus Gundissalinus 147, 245, 328, Hilarius Pictaviensis 382
362, 403 Homer 15
Honorius Augustodunensis 30
Eckhardus de Hochheim (Meister Clavis physicae 7, 9, 29–​35, 38, 55–​56, 78,
Eckhart) 7, 38, 42, 65, 66, 81, 83, 93, 185, 205–​206, 216, 225, 229, 231–​232, 236,
116, 123, 127–​130, 272, 297, 317–​321, 323, 240–​242, 247–​248, 254, 270–​277, 279–​
335, 343, 355–​357 285, 294, 297, 302–​306, 317, 320, 323, 326–​
Euclides 28, 167–​168, 409, 421–​423, 428 329, 332, 339, 342–​344, 355, 373–​374, 383
Eustratius Nicaenus 106–​107, 156, 166, 171, Hugo de Sancto Victore 139, 226, 309, 328,
182, 198–​199, 253, 400, 405, 418–​419, 335, 364, 366
422, 429, 433–​434 Hugo Ripelin de Argentina 216
Hugutio Pisanus 373, 381, 404, 409, 411
Franciscus de Retz 324, 326–​329, 340, 344 Humbertus de Romanis 10

Galterius ab Insulis 28 Iacobus Metensis 164

Geber (Jābir ibn Aflāḥ) 15, 28 Iamblichus 217
Geminus Rhodius 27 Iodocus de Gorizia 37, 328
Gerhardus Cremonensis 27–​28 Iohannes Andreae 334–​336
Gerhardus de Sterngassen 42 Iohannes Buridanus 166
Gilbertus Porretanus 55, 103, 107, 155, 351, 413 Iohannes Cronisbenus 324
Godefridus de Fontibus 163, 163–​165, 169–​ Iohannes Damascenus 220, 328, 363–​364
171, 173, 176, 198 Iohannes Duns Scotus 164
Gregorius i papa (Magnus) 6, 120, 183 Iohannes de Sterngassen 42
Gregorius Ariminensis 166 Iohannes Pecham 262, 409, 424
Gregorius Nyssenus 15, 32, 275–​276 Iohannes Picardi de Lichtenberg 42, 52
Guillelmus Alvernus 71, 73–​76, 210 Iohannes Quidort 128
Guillelmus Autissiodorensis 160 Iohannes Rusbrochius 324
Guillelmus de Conchis 4, 15, 19, 21, 52, 105 Iohannes Sarracenus 35, 202, 233, 387
Guillelmus de Leus 51 Iohannes Scotus Eriugena 9, 31–​33, 35, 202–​
Guillelmus de Moerbeka 23, 26, 48, 118–​119, 203, 206, 225–​227, 229, 232, 274–​276,
218, 226, 243, 255, 314, 326 283, 300, 302–​303, 332, 334–​337, 340–​
342, 347, 384, 387
Haly (‘Alī ibn Riḍwān) 85, 386 Iohannes Tauler 42, 63–​65, 67, 77, 81, 83,
Henricus de Ekkewint 6–​7, 13–​14, 272, 100–​101, 124, 186–​187, 272, 320–​324,
320, 355 353, 355
472  Index of Authors (Ancient)

Iohannes Wenck de Herrenberg 332–​ Philo Alexandrinus 105

335, 343 Plato x, 15, 16, 20, 22, 24, 35–​36, 40, 45, 47–​
Iordanus Nemorarius 409 48, 52, 54, 58–​59, 65–​67, 75–​79, 84–​85,
Isidorus Hispalensis 15, 373, 406, 408, 411 87, 90, 95, 101, 104–​106, 108–​109, 112,
117, 133, 150–​152, 167, 171, 184, 194, 197,
Lactantius (Lucius Caecilius Firmianus) 75 200–​201, 204, 209, 211, 214, 216, 225, 232,
Ler von der selikeyt 122–​124, 128 240–​242, 262, 285, 296–​298, 306, 312,
Liber de causis 6, 15, 17–​18, 20, 39–​40, 42, 314, 322, 329, 338, 344, 347–​348, 350,
44–​51, 54, 73, 108, 150, 191, 200–​221, 229, 352, 374, 376, 384–​385, 388–​389, 391,
237, 239, 288, 330–​331, 346, 352–​353 393, 395–​396, 398–​400, 402–​404, 407–​
Liber de causis primis et secundis 31, 33, 225, 408, 415, 421, 426–​427, 432
227–​229, 231–​232, 234–​235, 367 Plinius 78, 376
Liber de vi rerum principiis 71–​72, 378 Plotinus 15, 22, 104–​106, 298, 313–​314,
Liber xxiv philosophorum 2, 19, 71–​74, 76–​ 344, 399
77, 106, 108, 147, 223, 350, 378, 411 Porphyrius 15, 77
Ludolphus de Luco 28 Ptolemaeus 15, 27–​28, 84–​86, 88, 386
Pythagoras 15, 24, 407–​408
Macrobius (Ambrosius Theodosius) 5,
14–​16, 18–​24, 26, 28, 33, 36, 38–​39, 77, Quodvultdeus 19, 75, 77
105, 262, 270, 275, 285, 298–​299, 376,
379–​380 Richardus de Sancto Victore 96–​99, 125,
Marius Victorinus 332, 337 152–​155, 216, 327, 397
Marsilius Ficinus 352–​353 Robertus Grosseteste 15, 27–​28, 335
Martinus Oppaviensis 336 Rogerius Bacon 165, 262
Maximus Confessor 31–​32, 79, 225, 227, 232,
235, 276, 303, 335, 368–​369, 373 Secundus Philosophus 376–​377, 381
Moses Maimonides 15, 107, 328, 363, 413 Seneca (Lucius Annaeus) 77, 414
Summa fratris Alexandri 69
Nemesius Emesenus 15
Nicolaus Ambianensis 108 Thābit ibn Qurra 15
Nicolaus Cusanus 38, 324, 331–​344, 352 Thales 407
Nicolaus de Argentina 42, 51–​54, 58, 346–​347 Theodoricus Carnotensis 336
Nicolaus Staynecker 328 Theodoricus de Vriberg (Dietrich of
Nicolaus Trevet 4, 68, 103–​104 Freiberg) 2–​3, 5, 9, 15, 23, 29–​30, 32,
36–​37, 42–​44, 52–​53, 55, 64, 70, 77, 81,
Origenes Alexandrinus 6, 31, 204 83, 91, 100, 104, 109, 113–​116, 118–​124,
Ovidius 15, 20 126–​128, 130, 132–​134, 136–​148, 149,
160–​165, 167, 169, 170, 172–​179, 183–​184,
Papias 373, 399, 404, 406, 411 191, 193, 195–​198, 200, 206, 208–​209, 213,
Parmenides 352 217–​222, 224–​225, 235, 237, 239–​240,
Paulus (Apostolus) 66, 69–​70, 79, 99–​100, 242, 247–​251, 253–​262, 264–​265, 270–​
112, 132, 234, 272, 284, 296, 298, 328, 337, 273, 277–​279, 281–​284, 288–​295, 297,
344, 362, 364–​365, 370 299, 307, 313–​315, 317, 323, 326, 328, 330,
Petrus Abaelardus 77, 226 345, 347, 353–​355, 381, 388, 411, 430
Petrus Hispanus 428 Thomas Bradwardinus 324
Petrus Lombardus 6, 9, 47, 57, 96, 98–​99, Thomas de Aquino 14–​15, 28, 43–​48, 50, 52,
153, 179, 226, 268, 324, 362–​363, 365–​ 54, 64, 92, 100, 123, 139, 152, 162–​163, 178,
366, 395, 397 181–​182, 185, 191, 196, 202, 210, 216, 221,
Index of Authors (Ancient) 473

227, 233, 248, 254, 320, 323, 330, 344, Ulricus Engelberti de Argentina 3, 31,
365, 430 42, 44, 47–​48, 71, 75–​76, 81, 83, 91–​
Thomas Eboracensis 2–​4, 17, 21, 30–​31, 44, 93, 104, 134–​136, 148, 150, 203–​205,
71–​75, 77–​79, 81, 104, 106, 108–​113, 124–​ 208, 210, 216, 220, 222, 227, 242, 248,
125, 131–​132, 148, 161–​162, 166, 168, 171, 254–​256
182, 185, 217, 222, 225, 245, 345, 347, 351,
361–​363, 373–​378, 381, 383, 400–​401, Valerius Maximus 15
403, 405–​406, 413–​415, 420, 422, 429, Varro Reatinus 411
433–​434, 436 Vergilius 15, 68
Thomas Gallus 35, 226–​228, 235, 309,
335, 367 William Gray 38, 329
Thomas Waleys 4, 5, 329 Witelo (Erasmus Ciołek) 262
Index of Authors (Modern)

Adriaen, M. 365 Bürkle, S. 10, 14

Aertsen, J. 43, 87, 123, 140, 144, 162, 183, 199 Burnett, C. 15
Alaerts, J. 324 Butler, E. 240
Albertson, D. 334 Buytaert, E.M. 363
Allen, J.B. 4 Bydén, B. 171
Allen, M. 275
Amerini, F. 3 Caiazzo, I. 15, 19
Anzulewicz, H. 87 Calma, D. x, 31, 44, 50–​51, 123, 143, 160, 163,
Arfé, P. 31–​33, 373 174, 193, 324, 330–​331, 339
Atucha, I. 193 Campillo Bo, Á. x
Ax, W. 374 Carron, D. 51
Catto, J. 4
Baeumker, C. 7, 108, 386, 394, 411 Cavigioli, J.-​D. 23, 146
Barber, C. 171 Cecchini, E. 373
Bauer, D.R. 43 Chatelain, É. 143
Baur, L. 28, 336, 338 Châtillon, J. 153, 155
Beccarisi, A. x, 3, 42–​43, 48, 52, 56, 70, 92, Chenu, M.-​D. 160
123, 134–​135, 140, 312 Chevallier, P. 226
Becker-​Lindenthal, H. x Chulp, R. 273
Beierwaltes, W. 232, 280, 334, 337 Clark, J.G. 4
Benson, R. 103 Colledge, E. 127
Benz, E. 297 Colli, A. 217
Berggren, J.L. 27 Constable, G. 103
Bermon, E. 289 Coolman, B.T. 226, 309
Bernards, M. 305 Coulter, D. 226
Berndt, R. 165, 226 Counet, J.-​M. 336
Berthier, J.J. 10 Courtenay, W. 47
Bianchi, L. 58, 165 Crawford, F.S. 429
Biard, J. 123, 143, 163, 174 Creytens, R. 36, 139
Bieler, L. 31, 225 Crisciani, C. 165
Bihlmeyer, K. 93 Crouse, R. 226, 273, 348, 349
Binkley, P. 57
Boese, H. 1, 14, 23, 26, 36–​37, 55, 68, 324, 370, D’Alverny, M.-​Th. 30, 31, 339
376, 388, 409 D’Amico, C. 331
Böhringer, L. 8 D’Ancona, C. 44, 240
Boiadjiev, T. 202 Dahan, G. 68, 103, 104
Boland, V. 233 Dan, A. 120
Borgnet, A. 81–​82, 144, 209, 298, 366, 385–​386 De Callataÿ, G. 58
Boss, G. 42 De Lagarde, P. 378
Boulnois, O. 350, 352–​353 De Libera, A. 42, 44, 47, 48, 87, 92, 140, 174,
Bouloux, N. 120 208, 255, 262, 265
Brady, I. 179, 362 De Rijk, L.M. 428
Brown, S. 162, 164 De Vaux, R. 31, 229, 367
Bullido del Barrio, S. 83 De Wulf, M. 164
Bülow, G. 362 Dean, R.J. 4
Burckhardt, M. 6 Decaix, V. 196
Index of Authors (Modern) 475

Decker, B. 297 Goering, J. 3–​4

Decorte, J. 163 Goldbacher, A. 365
Delgado, M. 180 Goris, W. 182, 198, 203
Delp, M. 378 Gottschall, D. 6
Denifle, H. 143 Grabmann, M. 42
Denzinger, H. 123 Green, W. 399, 406
DeWeese, L. x Gregory, T. 276
Diehl, E. 240 Greig, J. x, 238, 240
Dod, B.G. 418 Grosfillier, J. 96, 153, 397
Dodds, E.R. 238, 273 Grupe, D. 27
Dombart, B. 375 Guldentops, G. 57
Dondaine, H.-​F. 31
Draelants, I. 57 Hackett, J. 1, 7, 320
Dronke, P. 72, 338 Hadot, P. 337
Dunne, M. 273, 275, 309 Häfele, G. 327, 329
Dupré, W. 338 Haines, R.M. 38
Hamesse, J. 58, 68
Eckert, W. 1, 11, 307–​308 Hampton, A. x
Ehrle, F. 4 Hanegraaff, W. 71
Elm, K. 58, 305 Hankey, W. x, 46–​47, 92, 233, 344
Emden, A.B. 3–​4 Hannam, W. 217
Emery, K. 47, 123, 162, 183, 202, 349 Häring, N. 103, 412–​413
Erismann, C. 275 Harrington, M. 314
Etzkorn, G. 141 Hasse, D.N. 86
Evans, J. 27 Hedley, D. x
Heiberg, J.L. 421
Faës de Mottoni, B. 262 Hellmeier, P. x, 79, 115–​116, 122
Fauser, W. 45, 413 Henry, P. 337
Fellina, S. 3 Hindsley, L.P. 10
Ferro, T. 48, 76, 134 Hine, H. 414
Fiamma, A. 331 Hoenen, M.J.F.M. 4, 42, 330
Finamore, J. 273 Hoffmann, E. 333
Flasch, K. 2, 42–​43, 65, 128, 130, 136, 139–​145, Hoffmann, P. 180
162–​163, 217, 221, 249–​250 Hoffmans, J. 164
Frank, I. 37, 327, 329 Honnefelder, L. 83
Friedman, R. 216, 330, 349 Hopkins, J. 338
Frost, S. 343 Hossfeld, P. 50, 71, 140
Führer, M. 126, 140 Hotot, F. 75
Hottois, G. 300
Gauthier, R.A. 418 Hudry, F. 2, 70–​73, 77, 378
Gelber, H.G. 3–​4 Hünermann, P. 123
Geoffroy, M. 5 Hunt, R. 103
Gersh, S. x, 18, 26, 82, 106, 135, 140, 183, 217–​ Hynes, J. 309
218, 225, 232, 236, 303, 341, 343, 352–​353
Gerson, L. 313 Ierodiakonou, K. 171
Geyer, B. 48, 298, 384 Imbach, R. 3, 43, 51–​53, 70, 123, 134, 137, 140,
Gils, P.-​M.J. 182 142–​143, 146, 160–​161, 163, 169, 174, 178,
Glorie, F. 364 198, 331, 339, 353
Glorieux, P. 69 Iremadze, T. 70
476  Index of Authors (Modern)

Jacquart, D. 15 MacIsaac, D.G. 217, 219

Jeauneau, É. 19, 21, 31, 33, 105, 225 Manitius, K. 27
Jeck, U.R. 10, 53, 70 Marenbon, J. x, 33, 77, 275
Jenkins, D. 171 Martello, C. 52
Jeschke, Th. 47, 128 Martijn, M. 247
Jundt, A. 6 Massa, E. 303, 344
Juste, D. 28 Mayhoff, K. 376
McEvoy, J. 226, 273, 275, 309
Kaeppeli, Th. 1, 8, 36, 327 McGinn, B. 127
Kalb, A. 375 Méla, C. 180
Kaluza, Z. 2, 72 Méléard, M.-​H. 161
Kandler, K.-​H. 126, 140, 143 Meliadò, M. 352
Kapriev, G. 202 Mercken, H.P.F. 400
Keussen, H. 38 Metzger, S. 47
Kheoschvili, G. 70 Meuthen, E. 8
King, E. 31, 53, 115 Meyer, G. 6, 37
Klibansky, R. 332–​333, 344 Militello, C. 52
Kobusch, Th. 70 Minio-​Paluello, L. 377, 385, 418
Koch, J. 297, 340 Minnis, A.J. 4, 103
König-​Pralong, C. 139–​142, 163, 165, 166 Möhle, H. 83
Köpf, U. 305 Mojsisch, B. 10, 70, 91, 114, 126, 140, 221, 248,
Kübel, W. 142 291, 381, 430
Kühlmann, W. 11 Morard, M. 394
Künzle, P. 139 Moreschini, C. 21, 76, 82, 101, 107, 371, 373,
Kupfer, M. 120 391, 404, 419
Kurdziałek, M. 338 Möri, F. 180
Mountain, W.J. 364
Lagerlund, H. 8 Muckle, J.T. 363
Largier, N. 43, 53, 123 Mulchahey, M.M. 5–​6, 9, 10, 47, 50–​51
Lawell, D. 226, 309 Müller, J. 87
Leclercq, J. 164, 304 Musco, A. 43
Lerner, R. 123 Mutzenbecher, A. 367
Lievens, R. 303
Lindberg, D. 424 Nauta, L. 4
Lindblad, U. 51–​53 Nielsen, L. 330
Lindsay, W.M. 373 Nothaft, P.E. 28
Lohr, A. 28
Löhr, G. 9 O’Meara, D. 108
Longpré, E. 2 O’Meara, J.J. 31, 225
Lord, M.L. 68, 104 Oliva, A. 152
Lortz, J. 305 Opsomer, J. 273, 301
Lucentini, P. 2, 30–​33, 70–​72, 75, 82, 334, Otten, W. 217, 275
336, 339–​340, 342, 344, 374, 378
Ludueña, E. x, 31, 44, 218, 221, 229, 233, 237, Pagnoni-​Sturlese, M.R. 9–​10, 141–​142, 167,
331, 334, 344 215, 327, 361
Lutz-​Bachmann, M. 165 Palazzo, A. 47, 50, 70, 82–​83, 92, 134–​135, 210
Parri, I. 2, 70, 82
Maccagnolo, E. 338 Pellegrino, G. 51–​53
Machetta, J.M. 331 Pelster, F. 324
Index of Authors (Modern) 477

Pelzer, A. 164 Senner, W. 1, 8–​9

Pera, C. 46 Sharp, D.E. 245
Perkams, M. 217, 273 Sheffler, D. 6
Perrone Compagni, V. 2, 70–​72, 82 Siedler, D. 35, 363
Perry, B.E. 376 Simon, P. 99, 134, 142, 184, 378, 390
Peters, U. 11 Smalley, B. 4–​5, 68
Pfeiffer, F. 6 Smith, A.M. 264
Piccione, R.M. 217, 273 Sojcher, J. 300
Pickavé, M. 43, 140 Solère, J.-​L. 107
Piemonte, G. 337 Speer, A. 43, 47, 87, 123, 140, 162, 183,
Pieperhoff, S. 205 202, 349
Pirotta, A.M. 430 Stadler, H. 81, 381
Plasberg, O. 374 Stamatis, E.S. 421
Pohlenz, M. 377 Stammberger, R.M.W. 165
Poirel, D. 366 Stammkötter, B. 126, 140
Ponzalli, R. 410 Steel, C. 5, 26, 54, 87, 108, 194, 217, 226, 240,
Porreca, D. 71–​73, 75 275, 301, 377
Porro, P. 3, 43, 52–​54, 70, 134, 163, 165, Steer, G. 305, 356
218, 253 Steffan, H. 137, 142, 175
Punzi, A. 71 Strauch, P. 11
Strazzoni, A. 3
Quint, J. 127, 318–​319, 321, 355 Stroebel, E. 377
Stroick, C. 87, 430
Rehn, R. 142, 250 Sturlese, L. x, 1–​2, 5–​6, 8–​10, 14–​15, 23, 26–​
Reinhardt, K. 339 30, 33, 36, 37, 42–​43, 47, 52–​53, 55, 58,
Resnick, I.M. 87 64–​65, 67, 72, 81–​82, 87–​88, 109, 123–​
Retucci, F. x, 2–​4, 9–​10, 71, 72, 77, 166, 171, 124, 128, 134, 136, 139–​142, 151, 161–​163,
182, 320, 324 167, 173, 193, 250, 263, 308, 318–​319, 323,
Riccati, C. 334 327, 329, 344, 354–​355, 361, 411
Ringler, S. 10, 12–​13 Suarez-​Nani, T. 51, 53, 140, 142, 149, 250, 254
Risner, F. 424 Summerell, O. 70
Robinson, J. x Székely, I. x
Rochais, H. 304
Rodnite, H. 15 Tarlazzi, C. x
Roques, R. 276 Tautz, I.J. 10, 70
Roudaut, S. 254, 262 Teeuwen, M. 58
Ruello, F. 184 Thali, J. 11, 13–​14
Ruh, K. 6, 11, 67, 123, 217 Theben, J. 12
Théry, G. 47
Saccon, A. 8, 123, 331 Tobin, F. 94
Saffrey, H.D. 44, 47, 241 Tolias, G. 120
Sannino, A. 10, 70–​72, 75 Torrell, J.-​P. 163–​164
Schindel, A. 65 Treschow, M. 217
Schmidt, M. 43 Trizio, M. 171
Schneider, J.H.J. 42 Trottmann, C. 124, 140, 144
Schröder, K. 11 Trouillard, J. 225, 300, 302
Seel, G. 42 Tskhadadze, T. 70
Segonds, A.-​P. 108 Tugwell, S. 4
Senger, H.-​G. 341, 344 Tuzzo, S. 220
478  Index of Authors (Modern)

Van den Abeele, B. 58 Webb, D. 324

Van Mingroot, E. 303 Wegener, L. 87
Van Riel, G. 226, 240 Weijers, O. 58
Vanderkwaak, M. x Westerink, L.G. 241
Vanides, A. 65 Wieland, G. 42
Vansteenberghe, E. 333 Willis, J. 22, 376
Vella, A. 52 Wilpert, P. 338
Ventura, I. 58 Wilson, G. 141
Verbeke, W. 303 Winkler, N. 122–​123
Vetter, F. 63, 65, 77, 187, 322 Wippel, J. 163, 198
Vinzent, M. 318
Vogels, H.J. 362 Zavattero, I. 8, 10, 92, 109
Zepeda, H. 28
Wallace, W. 173, 242 Ziebart, K.M. 332, 335
Warnar, G. 324 Zimmermann, A. 37, 128, 140, 202, 355
Waszink, J.H. 374 Zucker, A. 57–​58
Watson, D. x Zycha, J. 364