SOURCE: Fuehrer, M. L. “The Cosmological Implications of the Psychomachia in Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus.” Studies in Philology LXXVII, no. 4 (fall 1980): 344-53.

[In the following essay, Fuehrer justifies the concluding psychomachia, or spiritual battle, in Alan's Anticlaudianus by interpreting it as an action that unites earth and heaven by means of virtue's opposition to vice.]

The “psychomachia” with which Alan of Lille closes his Anticlaudianus presents a distinct crux for those who would explicate the work as a whole. Although an analysis of the entire poem is beyond the scope of one paper, insight into the intention of the “psychomachia” may well provide a key to solving the rest of the difficulties of the work.

The Anticlaudianus, written sometime between 1181 and 1184, constitutes Alan's efforts to construct an epic on the level of cosmology. The full title is Anticlaudianus de Antirufino. The rather obvious reference to Claudian's In Rufinum is not without significance in the interpretation of the poem. For as Peter Ochsenbein points out in his analysis of the poem, Claudian's work is a vituperatio of Rufinus, the perfectly evil man, and the Anticlaudianus is a laus of the “Antirufinus,” the perfect man.¹ Thus from a rhetorical point of view the two poems form a dialectic. The implications of this opposition will be explored later. For now, however, a brief exposition of the text is required in order to facilitate the analysis of the psychomachia in its content.

The poem is written in dactylic hexameter, the meter of epic. It is comprised of a prose prologue, a verse prologue, and nine books. The poem opens with the goddess Natura convening a council of her sisters, the various natural virtues. She is concerned about her deficiency in not succeeding in the creation of a homo perfectus and seeks the advice of her sisters. Two resolutions are established by the council: first, that neither Natura nor any of her sisters can create the human soul needed for the proposed novus homo, and second, that the goddess Fronesis along with Racio will be sent to the Creator of the universe to beg for the creation of a soul. The journey from the sublunary region to the super-celestial court of the Creator is undertaken. The request is granted and Fronesis and Racio return to earth with the soul for the novus homo. Natura then forms the body for Antirufinus, and her sisters confer the natural virtues upon him. Concordia joins body and soul together to create the new man. Meanwhile, Alecto, the queen of the vices, hears of this new man and rouses her demons, the vices, and sets out to attack Antirufinus. The psychomachia then takes place. The vices are defeated, and Antirufinus, who is now the homo perfectus, initiates a golden age in which the natural virtues come down to earth to dwell. The work ends in a harmonia mundi.

By the end of the seventh book of the poem, Antirufinus has come into being with all the natural virtues conferred upon him. He seems to be the homo perfectus that Natura had longed to create. The logical conclusion of the work appears to have been reached. Yet Alan introduces Alecto in the eighth book of the poem and concludes the poem with the psychomachia in book ten. There has been no indication in the preceding poem that an epic battle for the soul of the new man was necessary in any way. Lacking internal clues, the battle sequence seems superfluous.

A survey of the various solutions proposed for this problem reveals the difficulty inherent in the issue. The following four theories represent the most important which have been advanced. Jan Huizinga, apparently having courtly literature in mind, suggests that the psychomachia reveals the struggle of the courtly virtues against the worldly vices.² He attempts to demonstrate that the virtues in the battle sequence are not the traditional virtues which can be traced back to the seven capital virtues.³ Likewise he shows that the vices cannot be reduced to the seven capital vices. But Huizinga fails to explain how and why the virtues are courtly. He also fails to offer an analysis of the psychomachia which fits it into the context of the entire poem. There is nothing in the rest of the poem which he indicates as being a “courtly” setting which would necessitate the battle.

Winthrop Wetherbee, although he offers a wealth of information on Alan's poem, seems to despair of finding any rationale for the battle sequence. He suggests that the psychomachia is simply redundant. “These later events,” he writes, “are wholly redundant … the ‘Iliad’ of the final books is a concession to artistic pretensions which almost betray Alan's sure religious instinct.”⁴ Once again, an interpretation of the psychomachia forces a dichotomous analysis of the poem. Here a tension is established between the artistic tour de force of the battle scene and the theological import of the rest of the poem.

A third theory is offered by G. D. Economou in his book The Goddess Natura in Medieval Literature. The battle sequence, Economou suggests, is a literary device which Alan uses to establish the possibility of the soul's return to God. Once man is united to nature the vices can be overcome by following nature and her virtues.⁵

Economou's theory avoids the defect of the last two theories. He preserves the homogeneity of the poem by attempting to link the goddess Natura directly with the psychomachia. The theory seems incorrect, however. There is no text in the poem which supports either the theme of a “return to God” or the destruction of the vices by following Natura. While it is true that the concept of reditus is central to Neoplatonism, the theme of return would be out of place in Alan's poem. Since the new man has been created precisely to perfect nature, it would be inconsistent to instigate his return to God. Likewise, a careful reading of the text indicates that Natura herself is not involved in the battle, but only her sisters; they in turn only intervene occasionally in the battle on behalf of Antirufinus. Indeed, he initiates many of his own attacks upon the vices and often the virtues are left with a kind of “mopping-up exercise” with respect to the various species of vice. Economou's theory, while headed in the right direction by insisting upon a strictly Neoplatonic analysis of the problem, fails to give an analysis which accounts for the text.

The last theory to be considered is that of Peter Ochsenbein. He offers a multi-level interpretation which, while not incorrect, appears to be incomplete. He offers three levels of interpretation. The first is that the battle is an exorcism following a “Baptism epic.” The second is that the battle is a device which allows Alan to express his philosophical doctrine of the acquisition of virtue as a reduction from potential virtue to actual virtue through the operation of opposition to vice. According to his third level of interpretation the battle allows Alan to display the three topics for a rhetorical work of praise. They are the praise of the res externae, the natura animae, and the natura corporis of the hero.⁶ With this classification scheme Ochsenbein accounts for all of the virtues and vices.

And yet, Ochsenbein's interpretation is inadequate. In order to see this it is necessary to pay particular attention to his second thesis. According to Ochsenbein, the psychomachia is the occasion for the novus homo to reduce his potential virtues to actual virtues through his opposition to the vices. The basis for this interpretation is found in two of Alan's philosophical treatises, the Theologicae regulae and the De virtutibus et de vitiis et de donis spiritus sancti, where he establishes a threefold distinction with respect to the concept of virtue. He writes in the Regulae: “All human virtue is understood to be comprised in three ways: either by nature or by habit or by act.”⁷ Virtue, then, is found in man in three ways: by nature, i.e., as a kind of natural potency; by act which is the exercise of the virtue by the moral agent; and by habit which is the disposition to act virtuously as it is impressed upon the moral agent.

Virtue in the sense of a natural potency is innate. As Ochsenbein points out, Alan's concept of natural virtue is opposed to the Augustinian concept of virtue as the infusion of divine grace.⁸ For Alan, potential virtue is a “gift of nature.” It will be apparent later how Alan represents this gift in the poem.

But virtue possessed in potency, Alan argues in the De virtutibus, must be reduced to act.⁹ By repeating these moral acts, a disposition to moral behavior is impressed upon the soul. This state, Alan explains, is “virtue” in the full sense of the word, and is called a habit.¹⁰ But not all human potencies reduced to habit by act are moral virtues. So while Alan's threefold distinction yields the necessary conditions for a definition of virtue, the sufficient condition is still missing. This Alan supplies, however, with his concept of “opposition to a vice.” Whatever is opposed in the practical order to vice must be a virtue. Only those human potencies which are actualized by opposition to a vice can become the moral habits which are properly called virtues.¹¹

Ochsenbein applies the elements of this carefully worked out philosophical definition of virtue to the Anticlaudianus. When he does this, he discovers that the personified virtues in the poem represent the natural powers insofar as they are treated as the sisters of Natura in the first book. The gifts of these same virtues to the novus homo are interpreted as exemplifying human virtue in potentia. To become moral virtues for Antirufinus, they must be opposed in act by their perspective vices. Thus an explanation for a psychomachia in which the personified vices attack the novus homo.

This theory explains not only the function of the battle sequence in the poem but the disposition of the virtues in the struggle. Some of the virtues described by Alan do not take part in the battle, while others do. The concept of opposition can be used to explain this. For example, Racio and Fronesis, since they are potencies in opposition to no vice, do not take part in the battle. Concordia and Nobilitas are opposed to vices and thus appear on the field of battle.

In spite of the fact that Ochsenbein's theory yields a seemingly correct analysis of the psychomachia, it does so on only one level of interpretation, the moral. It ignores the cosmological scope of the poem which Alan himself suggests as important for achieving a full understanding of the poem. Thus in the prose prologue he writes: “In this work the sweetness of the literal sense will soothe the ears of boys, the moral instruction will inspire the mind on the road to perfection, the sharper subtlety of the allegory will whet the advanced intellect.”¹² He then goes on to inform the reader that the allegory is addressed to cosmology: “Let those, however, who do not allow their reflections to dwell on disgraceful imaginings but have the courage to raise them to a view of forms above the heavens (ad intuitum supercelestium formarum) enter the strait paths of my work.”¹³ The phrase supercelestium formarum suggests not only a cosmological interpretation of the poem, but a Neoplatonic one as well. The term is a commonplace with the Chartrian cosmologists.¹⁴

But how does a cosmological interpretation explicate the psychomachia? In order to answer this question, one must attend to what Ochsenbein and the other interpretors have overlooked, the aurea aetas, the “Golden Age” which is ushered in by homo perfectus immediately after the battle. Ochsenbein's interpretation fails to provide an answer to the question of how a moral struggle, which is only a moral struggle, could introduce a Golden Age in which, though it clearly has a moral dimension, is more than the moral in its scope. For Alan writes:

The Virtues now set up camp on earth, rightly acquire domain there and guide the world; the stars and the abodes at the poles are now no more pleasing to them than the earthly sphere. Now earth vies with heaven, now the world clothes itself in heavenly splendor, now the Olympians bedeck the earth. No longer is the field reclaimed with hoe or scored by the ploughshare, no longer does it bemoan the scars inflicted by the curved plough etc.¹⁵

This language, containing references to Ovid's Metamorphoses and Virgil's Georgics, indicates a preternatural era of not only moral and even sublunary harmony, but cosmic harmony as well.¹⁶ The very phrase iam celo contendit humus implies the harmonious continuity in its verb. For contendere as Alan uses it means the comparison of the two realms with each other as well as their mutual striving for a common goal.¹⁷ This notion of “continuity” is crucial for understanding the psychomachia on the cosmological level. The concept was the key principle of the vision of a hierarchical cosmos for the Chartrian Neoplatonists: a cosmos which was ontologically continuous, i.e., completely filled with being. That the principle of continuity is logically related to the Neoplatonic principle of “fullness of being” is recognized by A. O. Lovejoy. “From the Platonic principle of plenitude,” he writes, “the principle of continuity could be directly deduced. If there is between two given natural species a theoretically possible intermediate type, that type must be realized.”¹⁸ If a type fails to be actualized there would be a gap in the structure of the cosmos and the universe would not be as “full” of being as it could be. It would thus be lacking in perfection. It is this aspect of perfection with respect to man which Natura laments in the opening book of the poem.

The locus classicus for the principle of continuity among the Chartrian Neoplatonists and certainly for Alan is found in Macrobius' Commentarii in somnium Scipionis:

Accordingly, since Mind (mens) is from the Supreme God (summo deo) and soul (anima) is from Mind, and indeed forms and fills all which follow with life, and since this single splendor illuminates all and is apparent in the universe, as a single countenance reflected in many mirrors placed in a series, and since all things follow in a continuous succession (continuis successionibus), degenerating in sequence to the very bottom of the series, the careful observer will discern that from the Supreme God even to the bottom-most deep of things there is one tie, binding at every link and never broken (una mutuis se vinculis religans et nusquam interrupta conexio). This is the golden chain of Homer, which he tells us God ordered to be suspended from the sky to earth.¹⁹

These Macrobian images of the golden chain, light, and mirrors were taken over by the Chartrian philosophers and passed on into the tradition which includes Bernardus Silvestris and Alan. Alan explicitly refers to the Macrobius passage in the first book of the Anticlaudianus where he describes Racio staring into the mirror which reveals the system of cosmic causes.²⁰ These causes are linked together in such a way that a cosmos results.²¹ And this cosmos is the actualization or exemplification of the Ideas in the Mind of the Creator. The Neoplatonic distinction between the Idea and its exemplification could also be expressed in terms of being in potency (the Idea in the Mind of God) and being in act (the exemplification in the creature). St. Augustine, for example, refers to this description in the De diversis quaestionibus and by Alan's time it was well established.²² Thus, for fullness of being, Ideas had to pass from the dimension of thought to that of action, with each thought being exemplified in order to insure continuity.

Returning to Alan's poem, it will be remembered that Natura opened the first book with her lament over the absence of a homo perfectus. A careful analysis of this lament reveals that Natura's concern is with the discontinuity of the sublunar region, the region of the cosmos governed by Natura, from the rest of the cosmos. In her speech to her sister goddesses, Natura reveals that because of this lack all her region is subject to lawlessness. “Alas!” she says, “let us feel shame that our decrees for the earth (nostra terris) get no hearing because love for us grows cold, our waning reputation loses its power, we are exiled from the whole world as useless.”²³ Thus nature is out of joint with the rest of the cosmos—with the ordo universitatis. But why would the failure of one exemplar bring such a state of affairs into being? Ordinarily no one instantiation of a species would be required for the perfection of a species as exemplar. Why should the case be different for man? Here Alan yields another somewhat familiar answer in terms of the Neoplatonic theme of man as microcosm. According to this view, man is a unique exemplar in that he sums up both the spiritual and material realm, thus linking the two worlds into a unity. The problem of continuity, therefore, is most clearly expressed in the microcosm theme. Alan has this theme in mind when he puts the following words in the mouth of Natura: “Through our efforts let a man not just human but divine, inhabit the earth, … through his soul let him dwell in heaven, through his body on earth. On earth he will be human, in heaven divine.”²⁴

Alan alludes again to the idea of continuity a few lines later when Natura goes on to plead that man be allowed to be a mirror in which all of her works can be reflected.²⁵ So man is an essential link in the cosmos, and if this link fails, everything which depends upon it from below is reduced to a chaotic state. Here Alan departs slightly from the Neoplatonic cosmology in order to reaffirm a thesis which he apparently shares with Hugh of Saint Victor, namely that the failure of the microcosm is itself a fall and through this fall nature has been reduced to the status of an opus conditionis. Yet this Christian theme is deliberately not explicated in terms of a Victorine Heilsgeschichte but is developed along strictly preternatural lines which are at least neutral to the Neoplatonic interpretation Alan wishes to impose upon his subject matter. The question of perfection, therefore, must be understood in purely Neoplatonic terms, even though Alan adds elements of traditional theology in an apparent attempt to modify a more Chartrian interpretation.

In order to attain perfection as microcosm, man must be created anew according to Alan. References to the Pauline term novus homo immediately suggests the opus restaurationis. But Alan explicates the theme of restoration on two levels: the moral and the cosmic. Man as microcosm must be morally perfect. And in order to become so, he must overcome the dichotomy within himself between his potential virtue and its actual manifestation as habitus. The exemplification of moral perfection takes place in the psychomachia as Ochsenbein has demonstrated. But what must be remembered when reading Alan is that this exemplification is also cosmic. The vices which the new man overcomes, as well as the virtues which are bestowed upon him, are themselves exemplars. Alan uses the poetic device of personification in order to achieve this effect and it must be remembered that the various virtues always represent the divine Ideas in a Neoplatonic matrix. The new man also exemplifies or displays these virtues. Where the virtues exist ontologically as exemplars in the mind of God they exist in the moral order in man as habits. So the psychomachia has a moral and a cosmic dimension at one and the same time. This distinction between the virtues as they are exemplified in man's moral action and as they exist as cosmic exemplars Alan most likely found in Macrobius. In his Commentarii in somnium Scipionis, Macrobius distinguishes the purgative or “cleansing” virtues from the virtues which proceed from the mind of God as divine exemplars.²⁶ It is important to notice that Macrobius describes the purgative virtues as rendering man capable of engaging in divinity.²⁷ This corresponds to Alan's view of the psychomachia rendering Antirufinus perfect and initiating a kind of sublunar divine realm. But it is Macrobius' designation of the virtues as exemplars proceeding from the mind of God which accounts for order in the cosmos as well as in man. It is from the latter form of virtue that the purgative forms are ultimately derived.²⁸

Although it is true that Alan does not construe the moral virtues in precisely the same way as Macrobius does,²⁹ nonetheless his Antirufinus as the perfect microcosm “sums up” the continuity between the sublunary moral virtues and the celestial exemplars which, as he puts it, “Now set up camp on earth, rightly acquire domain there and guide the world.”³⁰

Notes

1. P. Ochsenbein, Studien zum Anticlaudianus des Alanus ab Insulis (Frankfurt/M., 1975), p. 172.

2. Jan Huizinga, Über die Verknüpfung des Poetischen mit dem Theologischen bei Alanus de Insulis, in Verzamelde Werken (Haarlem, 1948/53), IV, 53.

3. Ibid., 58. For a well-documented objection to Huizinga's thesis see Rosemond Tuve's “Notes on the Virtues and Vices” in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXVI (1963), 301-3.

4. W. Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century (Princeton, 1972), p. 217.

5. G. D. Economou, The Goddess Natura in Medieval Literature (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), p. 100.

6. Ochsenbein, pp. 173-4.

7. Alan of Lille, Theologicae regulae, P.L. 210.618-84, Rule 88, 667: “Omnis autem virtus homini tripliciter intelligitur convenire: aut natura, aut habitu, aut usu.”

8. Ochsenbein, p. 142. Cf. Alan of Lille, De virtutibus et de vitiis et de donis spiritus sancti, in Psychologie et Morale Aux XII^e et XIII^e Siècles, ed. D. O. Lottin (Gembloux, 1960), VI, 47-8.

9. De virtutibus, p. 48, “Sed quamvis homo a natura habeat has potentias, tamen adveniente etate non denominatur ab eis fortis, iustus, temperatus, quia huiusmodi denominationes potius sumuntur ab usu potentie quam a potentia.”

10. Loc. cit., “Quando habet voluntatem efficaciter perseverandi ita, ut habeat voluntatem nullo modo recedendi ab hac voluntate, tunc non est ibi dispositio, sed habitus, et tunc est virtus.”

11. Ibid., 50, “Nulla enim potentia, cuius usui non opponitur aliquod vitium, potest esse virtus.”

12. Alan of Lille, Anticlaudianus, Texte critique avec une Introduction et des Tables, ed. R. Bossuat (Paris, 1955), p. 56. Cf. Alan of Lille, Anticlaudianus or the Good and Perfect Man, trans. James J. Sheridan (Toronto, 1973), pp. 40-1. Henceforth the reference to the Latin text will appear first, followed by the reference to the corresponding text in the English translation.

13. Ibid., 56, Sheridan, p. 42.

14. Cf. Tim., 51C-52A. Proclus' El. Theo., Prop. 164 introduces the term ὑπερκόsμιος which is also found in Aesclep. 65.3 and in Pseudo-Dionysius Cel. Hier., Cap. I et passim.

15. Anticlaudianus, pp. 196-7, Sheridan, p. 216.

16. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 89-108 and Vergil, Georgics, I, 125 and 448. Alan might also have had in mind the reparation of the malediction in Gen. 3, 17-18: “… maledicta terra in opere tuo. …”

17. Anticlaudianus, p. 196.

18. A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), p. 58.

19. Macrobius, Commentarii in somnium Scipionis (Leipzig, 1963), I, xiv, 15.

20. Anticlaudianus, p. 70, “Unius speculi sese concedit in usum attente Racio, speculo speculatur in isto causarum seriem.” Cf. Bernardus Silvestris, Cosmographia, I, iv.

21. Ibid., p. 144, “Cernit in hoc speculo visu speculante Sophia, quicquid divinus in se complectitur orbis.”

22. St. Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus, P.L. 40.30, Bk. 73, p. 46.

23. Anticlaudianus, p. 64, Sheridan, p. 56.

24. Ibid., 64, Sheridan, p. 55.

25. Loc. cit., “Sit speculum nobis, ut nos speculemur in illo.”

26. Commentarii, I, viii, 8 and 10.

27. Ibid., I, viii, 8, “Purgatorias vocant, hominis sunt qua divini capax est, solumque animum eius expediunt qui decrevit se a corporis contagione purgare et quadam humanorum fuga solis se inserere divinis.”

28. Ibid., I, viii, 10, “Sunt quae in ipsa divina mente consistunt, quam diximus νου̑ν vocari, a quarum exemplo reliquae omnes per ordinem defluunt. Nam, si rerum aliarum, multo magis virtutum ideas esse in mente credendum est.”

29. That is, Alan would construe the moral virtues as “purgative” only in the sense that they purge the soul of vices by opposition. Macrobius apparently did not hold such an elaborate view of the moral virtues.

30. Funds for research on this topic were provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities.