Human Body, Natural Causes, and Aging of the World in Czech-Language Sources of the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
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David Tomíček
Abstract
Understanding nature as an entity operating in the created world was one of the great intellectual innovations of the High Middle Ages. The authors who stopped interpreting nature as a cloak covered with symbols and allegories and began to rediscover nature as an internal factor of causes and effects, the knowledge of which is the task of the natural sciences until today, came mainly from cathedral schools. This study, which deals with Czech-language texts from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, is also based on the conceptualization of nature as an order of created things. The first part of the study focuses on the metaphorical image of the human being as a microcosm and seeks to answer what function this discursive device performs in vernacular texts intended for a wider audience. The focus of the study then shifts to the process of growth and aging of the human body, which is observed mainly from a medical perspective, defined by the concepts of innate heat (calor naturalis) and radical moisture (humidum radicale). The topic is analyzed within the context of the interconnection between the greater and lesser world. The last part of the study deals with the incompletely preserved treatise on plague by Oldřich Velenský of Mnichov (d. after 1531) and examines the part that interprets a plague epidemic as a natural manifestation of the aging of the world and a sign of its end. This section examines the way in which the natural philosophical interpretation of an environmental crisis becomes part of the eschatological.
Abstract
Understanding nature as an entity operating in the created world was one of the great intellectual innovations of the High Middle Ages. The authors who stopped interpreting nature as a cloak covered with symbols and allegories and began to rediscover nature as an internal factor of causes and effects, the knowledge of which is the task of the natural sciences until today, came mainly from cathedral schools. This study, which deals with Czech-language texts from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, is also based on the conceptualization of nature as an order of created things. The first part of the study focuses on the metaphorical image of the human being as a microcosm and seeks to answer what function this discursive device performs in vernacular texts intended for a wider audience. The focus of the study then shifts to the process of growth and aging of the human body, which is observed mainly from a medical perspective, defined by the concepts of innate heat (calor naturalis) and radical moisture (humidum radicale). The topic is analyzed within the context of the interconnection between the greater and lesser world. The last part of the study deals with the incompletely preserved treatise on plague by Oldřich Velenský of Mnichov (d. after 1531) and examines the part that interprets a plague epidemic as a natural manifestation of the aging of the world and a sign of its end. This section examines the way in which the natural philosophical interpretation of an environmental crisis becomes part of the eschatological.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents VII
- Introduction 1
- Nature and Human Society in the Pre-Modern World 29
- Unnatural Humans: The Misbegotten Monsters of Beowulf 97
- Natural Environment in the Old English Orosius: Ohthere’s Travel Accounts in Norway 135
- When Is a Good Time? Health Advice and the Months of the Year 153
- Humans Serving Nature: Beekeeping and Bee Products in Piero de Crescenzi’s Ruralia commoda 169
- Medieval Epistemology and the Perception of Nature: From the Physiologus to John of Garland and the Niederrheinische Orientbericht. Bestiaries and the ‘Book of Nature’ 189
- Waste, Excess, and Profligacy as Critiques of Authority in Fourteenth-Century English Literature 217
- “A New Flood Was Released from the Heavens”: The Literary Responses to the Disaster of 1333 253
- The Environmental Causes of the Plague and their Terminology in the German Pestbücher of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 301
- Island, Grove, Bark, and Pith: Nature Metaphors in Teresa de Cartagena 331
- Nature, Art, and Human Perception in Giulio Romano’s Room of the Giants at the Palazzo del Te, Mantua (1532–1535) 353
- Human Body, Natural Causes, and Aging of the World in Czech-Language Sources of the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period 383
- Perception of Air Quality in the Czech Lands of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 415
- Johann Arndt’s Book of Nature: Medieval Ideas During the German Reformation 435
- Imitation vs. Allegorization: Martin Opitz’s Influential Proposal Concerning Poetic Reflections on Nature 459
- François Bernier and Nature in Kashmir: Belonging in Paradise? 485
- Cosmology and Pre-Modern Anthropology 505
- Praising Perchta as the Embodiment of Nature’s Cycles: Worship and Demonization of Perchta and Holda in Medieval and Early Modern Culture 549
- List of Illustrations 581
- Biographies of the Contributors 583
- Index 589
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents VII
- Introduction 1
- Nature and Human Society in the Pre-Modern World 29
- Unnatural Humans: The Misbegotten Monsters of Beowulf 97
- Natural Environment in the Old English Orosius: Ohthere’s Travel Accounts in Norway 135
- When Is a Good Time? Health Advice and the Months of the Year 153
- Humans Serving Nature: Beekeeping and Bee Products in Piero de Crescenzi’s Ruralia commoda 169
- Medieval Epistemology and the Perception of Nature: From the Physiologus to John of Garland and the Niederrheinische Orientbericht. Bestiaries and the ‘Book of Nature’ 189
- Waste, Excess, and Profligacy as Critiques of Authority in Fourteenth-Century English Literature 217
- “A New Flood Was Released from the Heavens”: The Literary Responses to the Disaster of 1333 253
- The Environmental Causes of the Plague and their Terminology in the German Pestbücher of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 301
- Island, Grove, Bark, and Pith: Nature Metaphors in Teresa de Cartagena 331
- Nature, Art, and Human Perception in Giulio Romano’s Room of the Giants at the Palazzo del Te, Mantua (1532–1535) 353
- Human Body, Natural Causes, and Aging of the World in Czech-Language Sources of the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period 383
- Perception of Air Quality in the Czech Lands of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 415
- Johann Arndt’s Book of Nature: Medieval Ideas During the German Reformation 435
- Imitation vs. Allegorization: Martin Opitz’s Influential Proposal Concerning Poetic Reflections on Nature 459
- François Bernier and Nature in Kashmir: Belonging in Paradise? 485
- Cosmology and Pre-Modern Anthropology 505
- Praising Perchta as the Embodiment of Nature’s Cycles: Worship and Demonization of Perchta and Holda in Medieval and Early Modern Culture 549
- List of Illustrations 581
- Biographies of the Contributors 583
- Index 589
