SOURCE: Ardizzone, Maria Luisa. “Guido Guinizzelli's ‘Al cor gentil’: A Notary in Search of Written Laws.” Modern Philology 94, no. 4 (May 1997): 455-74.

[In the following essay, Ardizzone explores Guinizelli's position concerning the relationship between light and God.]

Se Dio non rompe in ciel ció c'ha firmato.

(Guido Guinizzelli, “Madonna mia, quel di ch'amor consente”)

The notary Guido Guinizzelli, who probably studied in Bologna and died in about 1276, wrote the poem “Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore,” which is commonly regarded as the manifesto of the scuola of the “dolce stil nuovo,” a name that traces to Dante.¹ Tradition has preserved twenty-two texts of Guido Guinizzelli's as well as three dubiously attributed canzoni and two fragments.² His work suggests that he was well acquainted with philosophy and rhetoric. The University of Bologna, where he may have studied, guaranteed a connection between the study of philosophy and the training for the career of notary, both of which took place in the faculty of Arts.³ In Purgatorio, canto 26, Dante meets Guinizzelli and calls him “padre,” thus acknowledging his debt.⁴ Information about Guinizzelli's poetry derives from Bonagiunta Orbicciani, a Tuscan poet whom Dante meets in Purgatorio, canto 24. In Bonagiunta's poem “Voi ch'avete mutata la mainera” Guido Guinizzelli is blamed for having changed the way of making poetry, introducing a new way which has “sottiglianza” and an “obscura … parlatura.” Bonagiunta defines this new way in an elliptical expression: Guinizzelli is said to have made canzoni “a forza di scrittura.”⁵ In prevailing scholarly interpretations, Guinizzelli is blamed for having refused the teaching of Guittone d'Arezzo, “l'alta spera” in Orbicciani's phrase, and for having started a new, strongly intellectual way, choosing to make poetry that entrusts its strength to the authorities that enter into the writing, “a forza di scrittura.”

Guinizzelli's new way was, first of all, an imitation of the Sicilian school, largely of the poetry of Giacomo da Lentini and Guido delle Colonne; as such, his new way was mostly a recovery of the older Sicilian tradition. It is evident that Guinizzelli borrows from the poets of the Sicilian school the central idea of expressing love through metaphors drawn from the phenomenology of nature. However, because Bonagiunta's poetry also imitated the Sicilian school, we have to look for the cause of Bonagiunta's accusation of obscurity in other peculiarities of Guinizzelli's poetry. The “senno” which comes from Bologna (“ancor che 'l senno vegna da Bologna”), according to Bonagiunta, must be related to Bologna University's faculty of Arts, to which the ars notaria belonged, and which through the dictamen connected legal science with general literary culture.⁶ My reading therefore proposes that Guinizzelli's new way was first of all a capacity for organizing new content, which I shall discuss in a highly rhetorical context. Dante recognizes this capacity in De vulgare eloquentia, calling Guinizzelli “doctor” and quoting one of his canzoni as an example of suprema constructio.⁷

“Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore” shows that Guinizzelli's “constructio” is not only rhetorical but also conceptual. The theme of love takes on a cosmological meaning and the traditional topos is brought face to face with the sciences of the time—that is, with jurisprudence, with the philosophy of nature, and with theology. My reading of the canzone begins by addressing Guinizzelli's concept of love as a natural law written in the “gentil cor,” inquiring into the notion of natural law which the canzone proposes. The connection between love and natural law asserted in the canzone's first stanza and related to the field of theology in the fifth stanza—to a God who is “shining” and “creating”—suggests that the natural law originates from being written in the gentle heart as part of the cosmological order in which God manifests himself. Since God is represented as an activity of light—“splende” in Guinizzelli's text—his law is coincident with that of the diffusion of light. Guinizzelli's canzone thus introduces a connection between the field of natural law and the field of theology, an association which was peculiar to the tradition of canon law in Bologna. The canzone also shows that because of the coincidence between natural law and divine law, the field of theology is associated here with the debate on the philosophy of nature that occurred in the thirteenth century, in the encounter between the Neoplatonic tradition and the philosophy of Aristotle.

The construction that the notary has made of different fields, organizing a new whole, centers at first on an homologia entis between the process (law) of illumination of the universe and love's laws. Here Guinizzelli utilizes the rhetorical principles of comparison or, as Gérard Genette says, “figures of analogy,”⁸ as well as metalepsis (transposition)—that is, the transfer of qualities from one object to another. The language that the poet utilizes in his comparison tends to reduce logical connections in favor of classical concinnitas or brevitas. Brevitas and analogy, interacting with the “sottiglianza” of the contents, produce the canzone's alleged obscurity. However, it is to the constructio, both rhetorical and conceptual, that the canzone trusts its inventio, in the rhetorical meaning of invenire ‘to find’—that is, the thing the poet is seeking.

Denial of the aristocracy of birth was not a new element in the organization of the canzone. In fact, this theme—as scholars recognize—could be found in the poetry of the French tradition, in Guittone d'Arezzo, and in a treatise crucial for the thirteenth-century theory of love, Andreas Capellanus's De amore.⁹ Elements of conceptual novelty can, however, be perceived in the handling of natural law, which Guinizzelli invokes as he seeks to connect natural law and theology. If we consider Bologna's tradition for the study of law, the tradition of natural law traces back several centuries to Justinian's Corpus iuris—that is, to the Roman tradition of jurisprudence as collected for this emperor in the sixth century. Guinizzelli's example of the bird's habit in the canzone—“Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore / come l'ausello in selva a la verdura”—which is then compared with the natural law of love in the “gentil cor,” finds Guinizzelli activating a common topos of the old ius naturae contained in the Corpus iuris, one which subsumes a still older tradition of Roman jurisprudence (Ulpium, third century). Ulpium, in dividing law into ius naturalis, ius gentium, ius civile, sets up the concept of “ius naturalis”: “ius naturale est quod animalia docunt. Nam ius istud non humani genus proprium, sed omnium animalium quae in terra, quae in mare nascuntur avium quoque communum est” [Natural law is that which animals teach. This law is in fact not specific to human beings, but rather common to all animals which are born on the earth and on the sea, birds among them].¹⁰

The peculiarity of the canzone lies in its connecting of natural law as it springs from jurisprudence with the field of theology. For such a connection we must look to the tradition of canon law, which was established in Bologna with Gratian's twelfth-century Decretum (Concordia discordantium canonum) and sustained through the commentaries on Gratian's text made by the decretalists.¹¹ As Dom Lottin has pointed out, the peculiarity in the work of Gratian, an eminent man of law and theologian, was that of making a connection between the natural law of Roman jurisprudence and divine law; for him, natural law equals divine law (“divinae vel naturalis legis … ius naturae est quod in Lege et Evangelio continetur” [Law, divine or natural … natural law is that which is contained in the Law and in the Gospel]).¹²

According to Lottin, the connection between law and theology that is found in Gratian was also crucial in the teaching of Anselm of Laon, who represented a theological tradition which exercised a long influence on the medieval conception of law and was also important for the Victorine school, persisting in different ways until the thirteenth century and the advent of Thomas Aquinas.¹³ Although Lottin does not mention the De cessatione legalium written by the English philosopher Robert Grosseteste,¹⁴ this text nevertheless states a position which seems to be related to the tradition of Gratian and Anselm of Laon, but with a peculiarity of great importance because the divine law is identified with the law of light.¹⁵ In Grosseteste's book which, according to its editors, exerted an enormous influence, an essential idea was that the Mosaic written laws became necessary when man lost the natural law which God had inscribed in his heart.¹⁶ The point here is that natural law is rational, a point we also find in Gratian. A further important aspect stressed by Grosseteste is that the natural law has not been definitively lost because it was renewed with the birth of Christ. Like Gratian, Grosseteste asserts that natural law is equal to divine law. With Christ, he writes, we have a new natural law, and this natural law is written in nature and in the heart of man.

If the natural law is the law of God, it is crucial to show how this law is expressed in Grosseteste. Since God is an activity of light, the laws of light will be the laws of nature. Christ's advent is placed in relationship to Solomon's parable. Christ is light, and light is identified with law (“Mandatum lucerna est et lex lux … in Christi adventu legalia finita esse” [light has been sent, and law is light … with Christ's advent, the necessity of the law ceases]).¹⁷ Christ's advent is placed in relationship to the basic law of the diffusion of light, a theme only sketched in this text (probably written in the 1230s) but addressed by Grosseteste in all his work.

In Particula tertia 1-4, he asserts: “Item, conversacio Christi et doctrina et ipse Christus lux est mundi. Natura autem lucis est ut in omnes undique partes a principio lucente equaliter se diffundat. Inanis autem est lucis diffusio, ubi non est lucis receptivum. Ut igitur diffusio lucis Christi et naturaliter sit in partes omnes et non inaniter in partem aliquam, oportet ut inchoetur a medio gentium que sunt huius lucis receptive et in omnes undique gentes se diffundat” [Christ's word and teaching and Christ himself is the light of the world. The nature of light to diffuse itself from a lucent point in every part in the same way. However, the diffusion of light is useless if there is not something capable of receiving light. So that as the light of Christ may diffuse itself naturally and not uselessly to all places, it is necessary for it to be received by a medium of people who are recipients of this light and that it diffuse itself to others].¹⁸ The word ‘medium’, a technical word in Aristotle's theory of perception,¹⁹ underlines the relationship between Christ's advent, the law of light, its diffusion, and therefore the importance of the object's receptivity, which is proper to the medium of “gentium” (“medio gentium”), recipients of this “lux.”

The importance of Grosseteste's book lies in the connection between natural law and theology which was also crucial for Gratian, but Grosseteste further identifies them with light's law, bringing into them notions of the physics of Aristotle.²⁰ Because Gratian's Decretum was a key text in the Bolognese tradition of jurisprudence after the second half of the twelfth century, we may consider Gratian the main source of natural law which Guinizzelli connects to the field of theology.²¹ But the connections between theology, light, and notions that derive from the Physics and Metaphysics of Aristotle as they occur in Guinizzelli's canzone require us to consider that the notion of law, both natural and divine, acquires a special connotation in Guinizzelli's canzone which cannot derive from Gratian. This sends us back to Grosseteste's De cessatione legalium which, although not necessarily a direct source, may have been a part of the circle of references from which Guinizzelli could have received suggestions.

In the decades when Guinizzelli lived (probably between the 1230s and the 1270s), the field of light was a topic of debate in the Franciscan school, thanks largely to Grosseteste's previous research on light. Whatever the importance of Grosseteste's influence on the curriculum studiorum of the Franciscans and its connections between mathematics, the physics of light, and theology,²² the diffusion of light was in any case a topic common also to the work of Bonaventure and of Albert the Great. Both these thinkers were involved in a rereading of the Neoplatonic tradition, reconsidering it in light of Aristotelian philosophy, a connection which drew in Aquinas as well.²³

Dante, in the commentary on the canzone “Amor che nella mente mi ragiona” in Convivio 3, recalls the Liber de causis and Albert the Great's De intellectu et de intelligibili on the diffusion of light and the relationship between diffusion and the capacity of matter to absorb it.²⁴ The outlook in pseudo-Grosseteste's De summa philosophiae is similar,²⁵ as is that in the book, edited by Clemens Bæumker and ascribed to Witelo, known as Liber de intelligentiis,²⁶ and in Bartolomeus de Bologna's De luce. The last work, however, was apparently written in the late 1270s or early 1280s, and therefore cannot confidently be treated as an influence on Guinizzelli, who died in about 1276.²⁷

My purpose in recalling these works is to suggest a range of references to which Guinizzelli's poetry could be related, considering these less as sources than as documents of the great debate on light in the second half of the thirteenth century—a debate in which Guinizzelli participates through the language of poetry. What I have identified as Guinizzelli's conceptual “constructio” has its center in his notion of law. Rather than approaching the field of ethics in its relationship with jurisprudence, as Gratian does, Guinizzelli is interested in nature. The medieval notion of law as a sign written by God in nature presides over Guinizzelli's theory of natural law. Nature guarantees ethics because the laws of ethics are written in the laws of nature.

I now turn to the notion of the diaphanous, which is common to most of the authors I have recalled, whether the term ‘diaphanous’ actually appears or not. As I will show, the diffusion of light is represented by means of notions peculiar to Aristotle's Physics. After rereading Guinizzelli's canzone with the notion of the diaphanous in mind, we can proceed to look at the components of Guinizzelli's “constructio.”

Although the word ‘diaphanous’ does not appear in the poem, the canzone proposes the notion of the diaphanous as crucial for understanding its meaning. In Guinizzelli, human love is connected with divine law. The connection is associated with the spreading of light in the universe, with its gradations, because light is the activity of God. The meaning of the word ‘diaphanous’ belongs to the laws of the diffusion of light and connects light to physics.

In the fifth stanza of the canzone, we find God invoked in his activity of shining, and for that reason connected with the activity of creating. The figure of concinnitas condenses a complex field of references into a few words: “Splende'n la'ntelligenzia del cielo / Deo crïator.” In this line, we can identify a long tradition which may be termed Dionysian (after pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite). Guinizzelli seems to look to this tradition for his gradation of light, which, however, includes a reconsideration of the Neoplatonic tradition in its encounter with the Aristotelian philosophy of nature and Aristotle's Metaphysics.

In the canzone, in fact, love in the cosmos appears to be related to the capacity of matter to absorb light—that is, to become transparent. To indicate transparency, Aristotle used the term ‘diaphanous’. As I will show, transparency in the canzone is articulated in terms of the Aristotelian concept of matter and form with an emphasis on the moment of potentiality, suggested as a latent energy in which love operates to make the human become divine.

Because it was introduced in Aristotle's De anima, the word ‘diaphanous’ entered Europe by way of the translations from Aristotle in the thirteenth century. Previously the same content was expressed by the word ‘perspicuum’.²⁸ It is important that, with Aristotle, the concept of transparency becomes associated with the basic notions of matter and form or potency and act which rule Aristotle's physics. Book 2, chapter 7, of De anima introduces the term ‘diaphanous’ to designate the property of transparency of a medium (e.g., the air) which is fundamental to sight. For Aristotle, the act of sight depends on the existence of transparency. This transparency enables light to exist because it makes the light visible. Light, moreover, is the activity of a transparent substance as transparent; Aristotle notes that “this character of transparency is shared by air, water, and many solid objects.” The act of sight takes place when a colored object moves the diaphanous, which sends a movement to the eyes. This notion of the diaphanous had great significance among the Aristotelian commentators and also in the field of optics originated by Arabic culture.²⁹ The fact that Aristotle had identified the heavens with the diaphanous in action—adding to the four elements (air, water, fire, earth) a fifth element, that is, ether (ether being diaphanous)—was of enormous importance for the medieval scholastics. As Aristotle points out in the cited De anima passage, the diaphanous was an entity common to the heavens and the sublunar world, but with an essential difference: the heavens, which were made of ether, were diaphanous in act, while the sublunar world contained limited amounts of the diaphanous in certain elements like air and water and “some solid objects.” More important, in the sublunar world the diaphanous was a sign of potentiality which in a state of actuality resembled the heavens—or better, the diaphanous was an entity that signified the potentiality of matter to be acted upon. It was commonly understood as a potential transparency of certain elements and/or objects able to receive light, multiply it, and make it visible. This Aristotelian notion, present in medieval commentaries on De anima and De sensu et sensatu, became highly significant for such Oxford philosophers as Grosseteste and Roger Bacon when they put forth the basis of Western optics. It was mostly through Grosseteste that this Aristotelian learning interacted in Oxford with another tradition which we may refer to as Neoplatonism.³⁰

The importance of the term and notion has to be seen in light of the entire tradition of the philosophy of light. ‘Diaphanous’, focusing on the concept of the potentiality of matter to be permeated by light, furnished a physical base for the Neoplatonic tradition. The Neoplatonic emanation of the Many from the One intersects with the notion of the diaphanous. The diaphanous provides a physical law for identifying the degree of any matter's potential transparency—that is, its capacity to absorb light—and for tracing the hierarchy of the Divine in the cosmos.

In De lineis, Grosseteste introduces the term ‘diaphanous’ to explain the laws of the propagation of light in geometrical terms through the medium and the action performed by the medium itself, which interacts with the agent, light, in determining the laws of diffusion. In explaining the laws of the diffusion of light Grosseteste singles out the action performed by the sun's light when it acts on different elements: “Agens naturale multiplicat virtutem suam a se usque in patiens, sive agat in sensum, sive in materiam. Quae virtus aliquando vocatur species, aliquando similitudo. … Non enim agit per deliberationem et electionem. … Sed propter diversitatem patientis diversificantur effectus … sicut sol per eandem virtutem in diversis passis diversos producit effectus. Constringit enim lutum et dissolvit glaciem” [A natural agent multiplies its power from itself to the object upon which it acts, whether sensory or material. This power is sometimes called ‘species’, sometimes ‘likeness’. … It does not act through deliberation or choice … but its effects are different because of the difference in the matter that received it. … In the same way, the sun, because of the same virtue, in different matters generates different effects and in fact congeals mud and melts ice].³¹ Different effects are connected with the different nature (i.e., matter) of the element that receives the power of the sun. Mud is opposed to ice.

Dante, commenting in the Convivio on his canzone “Amor che nella mente mi ragiona,” which is largely indebted to Guinizzelli, invokes Albert the Great's De intellecto et de intelligibili, which has similarities to the above-cited passage from Grosseteste. Dante writes, in fact, that the light of the sun, which is one, is differently received by the different bodies: “La luce del sole, la quale é una, diversamente dalle corpora essere ricevuta … certi corpi per molta chiaretate di diafano avere in se mista tosto che il sole li vede, diventano tanto luminosi che per multiplicamento di luce … rendono agli altri di sè grande splendore siccome é l'oro e alcuna pietra” [The light of the sun, which is single, is differently received by different bodies. Certain bodies, because they are transparent, become highly luminous when the sun sees them, because they multiply light … and because of that, they give their light to other bodies, as does gold or some precious stones].³²

With regard to the diaphanous, Guinizzelli's canzone proposes an identification: the law of love is homologous with the law of the illumination of the universe. The proposed notion of “gentilezza” is reached by opposing the nobility of birth and by affirming a physical election as the sign of a hierarchy written in nature. To be gentle is apparently comparable to the potentiality of predisposed matter to absorb light and be infused by it. This formulation recalls Grosseteste's statement about the diffusion of light for which it is necessary to have a medium: “gentium que sunt huius lucis receptive.” Light—natural law—includes the agency of light on the one hand, and on the other the potentiality of matter, a passivity which contains the potentiality of becoming active. God, an activity of light, diffuses itself in nature, but is absorbed in a different way. Here Guinizzelli introduces a concept of hierarchy as a law written in nature, evident in the process of light—a hierarchy which he clearly asserts in the sonnet he addressed to Bonagiunta in response to the latter's criticism. This hierarchical procession of light—related to matter's capacity to absorb it—is also found in De intelligentiis, mentioned above, which radicalizes Grosseteste's De luce by identifying God with light. Crucial in all this is the association between light, divine being, and nobility. Light is divine being. To participate in light is to participate in divinity. The notion of nobility is associated with the capability of matter to be penetrated by light. “Unum quodque quantum habet de luce tantum retinet esse divini. … Substantia in orde universi magis habens de luce quam alia dicitur nobilior. … Nobilitas vero in omnibus attenditur secundum appropriquantionem maiorem et participationem esse divini” [The greater the amount of light a thing holds, the more it contains divine being. … In the order of the universe, a substance that has more light than another must be judged as holding a higher degree of nobility. … Nobility in everything is in proportion to its propinquity to and participation in the Divine Being].³³ Now, from this point onward, I will develop my rereading of the poem, looking for the nucleus I have proposed of a law written into physics as a sign of the divine law. Guinizzelli focuses on that through a series of analogies, which suggests that the canzone organizes itself as knowledge obtained through analogy.

Here is Guinizzelli's first stanza:

Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore
come l'ausello in selva a la verdura;
          ne fe' amor anti che gentil core,
né gentil core anti ch'amor, natura:
          ch'adesso con' fu 'l sole,
sì tosto lo splendore fu lucente,
né fu davanti 'l sole;
e prende amore in gentilezza loco
cosi propïamente
come calore in clarità di foco.

(Lines 1-10)

Love, in the poem, is brought into connection with the word “cor” (heart), which displays a crucial connotation because it is defined as “gentil” (gentle). In the second line of the first stanza, nature's law is connoted by the metaphor of the bird. The “cor gentil” and love are one and the same, because one and the same natural law presides over them as over the bird's instinct to preserve itself in the greenery of the forest or to spend its life in the greenery of the forest. In the first stanza, nature, we read, did not create love before the gentle heart, but love and the gentle heart were created together. Beginning in line 5, love and the “gentil core” are compared in their synchronous birth with that of the sun and of splendor; that is, they were created simultaneously, just as the sun was created simultaneously with splendor.³⁴ A second comparison connects love and the gentle heart to the clarity of fire. The ascriptions of “splendore” and “claritate” to “sun” and “fire” generate the two main characteristics of the gentle heart, because it is “lucente” and has “calore” (heat). Love is identified with the “gentle heart” through the individuation of a law of nature stated in terms of the contemporary philosophy of nature.

The second stanza suggests a more complex meaning of natural law:

          Foco d'amore in gentil cor s'aprende
come vertute in petra preziosa,
          che da la stella valor no i discende
anti che 'l sol la faccia gentil cosa;
          poi che n'ha tratto fòre
per sua forza lo sol ciò che li è vile,
stella li dà valore:
così lo cor ch'è fatto da natura
asletto, pur, gentile,
donna a guisa di stella lo 'nnamora.

(Lines 11-20)

Central here is the process by which the fire of love “s'aprende”—that is, takes place or ignites in the “gentil cor.” The analogy turns on the word “vertute” in its sense of power or valor, which heralds what the poet is bringing into the field of love: the Aristotelian theory of potentiality and act which is fundamental to Aristotelian physics.

The meaning of the second stanza develops as follows: the precious stone has a potential power which is transformed into an actual power by the power infused into it from a star. However, the precious stone cannot be infused with the star's power before the sun's activity frees it from what is commonplace and transforms it into “gentil cosa.” Now the star can give it power. In the same way, the heart, which is “asletto” (elected or chosen) by nature and “gentile,” actualizes this potentiality when a woman, who acts like a star, “lo 'nnamora.” Schematized in terms of its forces, the poem's vertical downward trajectory unites the heavenly realms with sublunar physics, transmitting a power compared with that of love, that is, in terms of light. The woman, who is identified with a star, is proposed as a point of light which enlarges the other natural points of light, functioning as an agent and transforming potentiality into act.

Love is identified as “vertute,” but the word's meaning clearly associates the field of ethics with a meaning derived from the field of physics. De motu cordis contains a paragraph that clarifies the meanings of the word ‘virtute’ (virtus) as applied to the activity of the soul.³⁵ Guinizzelli's use of his vocabulary here confirms his tendency to find the laws of ethics in the laws of physics. In fact, the two occurrences of ‘virtute’ are related to the two different fields that Guinizzelli is trying to connect: ethics and physics. Associated with the “petra preziosa,” ‘virtute’ has the meaning of potency (“come vertute in petra preziosa”), and is therefore linked to physics. When related to “gentil cor,” as the canzone's fourth stanza will show, it encompasses a meaning related to ethics as a custom or habitus of virtue and to physics as a potency. This association, which involves a kind of conciliation based on the different meanings of the same word, suggests that Guinizzelli's rhetorical ability is also related to dialectic, mostly to the harmonization of discordances that Peter Abelard had organized into a system.³⁶

The importance of physics returns in the third stanza, which expands indications of the peculiarities of love, utilizing the Aristotelian notion of natural place:³⁷

          Amor per tal ragion sta 'n cor gentile
per qual lo foco in cima del doplero:
          splendeli al su' diletto, clar, sottile;
no li stari' altra guisa, tant' è fero.
          Così prava natura
recontra amor come fa l'aigua il foco
caldo, per la freddura.
Amore in gentil cor prende rivera
per suo consimel loco
com' adamàs del ferro in la minera.

(Lines 21-30)

Love has its seat in the gentle heart, like the flame at the tip of a double candle, where it shines freely, “splendid and subtle.” ‘Fero’ defines love for the poet: it is proud. It is therefore connected to nobility because of the natural law of elements, according to which lightness tends upward. A bad or low nature meets love in the same way in which water meets fire: its coolness kills the fire. The Aristotelian notion of natural place (“loco”) is again invoked in the metaphor of the diamond which naturally has its place in the mineral, iron.

The fourth stanza centers once more on the sun's activity. Again we have the downward trajectory:

          Fere lo sol lo fango tutto 'l giorno:
vile reman, ne 'l sol perde calore;
          dis' omo alter: “Gentil per sclatta torno”;
lui semblo al fango, al sol gentil valore:
          ché non dé dar om fé
che gentilezza sia fòr di coraggio
in degnità d'ere'
sed a vertute non ha gentil core,
com'aigua porta raggio
e 'l ciel riten le stelle e lo splendore.

(Lines 31-40)

Mud is the new earthly matter introduced and is presented as the natural being which is unable to receive the light of the sun. The sun strikes the mud all day long. It remains base; the sun does not lose heat. The man who asserts that he is noble by birth is compared to mud. Crucial here is the reason why mud is base. It is not inherently so, but rather because it is an entity unable to absorb light. Compared with the other elements that Guinizzelli has proposed, the elements opposed to mud are ones which Aristotle and his medieval commentators designated as “diaphanous.” They include precious stones, which absorb light and multiply the light of the sun, and, as we shall see, water.

As I have said, the word ‘diaphanous’ does not appear in Guinizzelli's canzone, but the process he evokes, the action of the light upon nature, could be seen as a process of “diaphanization” where what is noble proves inherently sensitive to the light of the sun or to the action of the stars, just as the diaphanous is transparent and extremely sensitive to light. This implied analogy amounts to a significant expansion of the notion of “gentilezza.” “Gentilezza” is an innate disposition; a gentle heart is like transparent water that allows a ray of light to traverse it, a ray infused with the heavens' activity, their holding of stars and splendors (“che gentilezza sia fòr di coraggio / in degnità d'ere', / sed a vertute non ha gentil core, / com'aigua porta raggio / e'l ciel riten le stelle e lo splendore”). The field of meaning energized by the analogy can be denoted by the word ‘sensibility’, which in itself corresponds to ‘diaphanous’. Sensibility includes sensitivity but is more than that. Here it represents the quality (i.e., potentiality) of matter to become transparent, that is, the property of receptivity to light.

This poem suggests an equivalence between “gentilezza” and sensibility by means of the activity of light as an agent on matter. By analogy with matter predisposed to light, the word ‘gentilezza’ takes on the larger meaning of potentiality to be acted upon, of receptivity, and therefore, according to Aristotle, of a state of passion, of “being acted upon.”³⁸ Metalepsis organizes the meaning of ‘gentilezza’, ascribing to it the condition of matter predisposed to absorb light.

Love, therefore, is the result of a law of nature, a sensibility in the recipient which transforms into power. This law conjoins the two states of this process: to be sensitive—that is, receptive—and to be powerful. The notions of potentiality and act here identify the process of love as a process of becoming. The Aristotelian notions are utilized to show the divine becoming of mankind as a process of sensibility to light, God being an activity of light. Love as the human becoming divine is the insight which appears most crucial and which Dante will not forget.

The fifth stanza transports us to the heavenly world:

          Splende 'n la 'ntelligenzia del cielo
Deo crïator piu che ['n] nostr'occhi 'l sole:
          ella intende suo fattor oltra 'l cielo,
e 'l ciel volgiando, a Lui obedir tole;
          e con' segue, al primero,
del giusto Deo beato compimento,
così dar dovria, al vero,
la bella donna, poi che ['n] gli occhi splende
del suo gentil, talento
che mai di lei obedir non si disprende.

(Lines 41-50)

I will start by explaining the meaning of the stanza. God the Creator shines in the heavens' intelligence, more than the sun shines to our eyes, and the intelligences of heaven have a relationship of intelligence with God (“Splende 'n la 'ntelligenzia del cielo / … / ella intende suo fattor oltra 'l cielo”). By virtue of that relationship they move the heavens, performing an operation in which the intelligence transforms pure intellective knowledge into a movement of the heavens which guarantees the cosmological order (“e 'l ciel volgiando, a Lui obedir tole”). Stated in other terms, the act of understanding has as a consequence an operation (the moving of the heavens) in which the intelligence acts in agreement with God's will (“e con'segue, al primero, / del giusto Deo beato compimento”). The action performed by the intelligences—that is, the angels in heaven—is offered as a model of perfect love. Just as God shines in the intelligences of the heavens, which in their understanding perform an act of obedience, so also does a beautiful woman shine in the eyes of a gentle man, giving him a desire for obedience (“cosí … / la bella donna, poi che ['n] gli occhi splende / del suo gentil, talento / che mai di lei obedir non si disprende”). The word ‘love’ does not occur in this stanza, and the omission is a sign of Guinizzelli's rhetorical mastery. In the first stanza the word ‘natura’, crucial to the logical connections, was set in a strategic position by being postponed, obliging the reader to look for it. In the same way here, the reader has to look for “love” because it is the necessary link in the chain Guinizzelli has organized. By being unspoken but powerfully implied, this word organizes the meaning of the fifth stanza: love as God's law and therefore as the law of the cosmos.

Underlying the fifth stanza is a conjunction of the so-called Dionysian tradition with Aristotelian philosophy.³⁹ Pseudo-Dionysius presented God's activity as an activity of light. Love and light are identified; God shines because he loves. The angels' being consists in receiving the light of God. According to Dionysius, the nobility of being in the universe corresponds to the degree of light imbued. The opaque is not noble at all. The angels' nature therefore consists in absorbing light. To be suffused with light is seen as an activity of intelligence, because intelligence means the ability to understand God, who is light. To be penerated by light means to know Him, to participate in His process of emanation, and this, in turn, is intelligence. In medieval vocabulary, ‘intende’ means not only to understand but also to will.⁴⁰ Love is therefore included in the word ‘intende’ because it is an understanding that is also a willing, a kind of sublime appetitus. In the fifth stanza Guinizzelli develops the great connotations of love, bringing it face to face with divine law. Love and knowledge are identified because, through the shining of light, the relationship of intelligence is a relationship of understanding and willing. The word ‘creator’, which Guinizzelli utilizes to refer to God, connected with the word ‘splende’, becomes understandable in the light of the Dionysian tradition. The focus falls again on the unuttered word ‘love’, because, in Dionysius, God creates because his nature is love.⁴¹ God being an activity of light, love and creation are identified. The activity of love is at the same time an activity of light and creation. The four words ‘splende’, ‘creatore’, ‘intelligenzia’, and ‘intende’ send the learned reader to a field of meanings, all of which are correlated to love as the written law of God.

But in Guinizzelli this content, however much it may derive from the Dionysian tradition, is also connected with Aristotle. The angels' intelligences moving the heavens bring us again to Aristotle, for it was he who propounded the existence of intelligences (movers distinct from the primum mobile) that move the heavens in book 12 of the Metaphysics. It is by way of the encounter of the Neoplatonic tradition with Aristotle's Metaphysics that the angels are considered not only intelligences but also movers.⁴² And it is through Aristotle that the Dionysian tradition comes to be reared in terms of physics in the thirteenth century. The cosmological order is seen in the identification between divine law and the law of nature, for which Aristotelian physics provided fundamental rules. The role of the “donna-angel” addressed in the sixth stanza participates in this process:

          Donna, Deo mi dirà: “Che presomisti?”,
siando l'alma mia a lui davanti.
          “Lo ciel passasti e 'nfin a Me venisti
e desti in vano amor Me per semblanti:
          ch'a Me conven le laude
e a la reina del regname degno,
per cui cessa onne fraude.”
Dir Li porò: “Tenne d'angel sembianza
che fosse del Tuo regno;
non me fu fallo, s'in lei posi amanza.”

(Lines 51-60)

But it is not just the Aristotle of the Physics and Metaphysics who presides over the canzone, because “sottiglianza” also derives from some suggestions which the tradition of Aristotle's logic exercises on the mind of the notary. The canzone, however, by proposing knowledge through a progression of analogies that directs the reader to the knowledge of God's law, contains another suggestion.

It is possible to reconstruct for “Al cor gentil …” a syllogistic procedure organized into three predications, of which the first is placed last: (1) God's law is an activity of light (and love); (2) created entities—written signs of this law—are closer to God to the degree that they are disposed to light and love; (3) gentle hearts, because they are naturally predisposed, have this (love-)law written within their hearts. Through metalepsis, the gentle participate in the procession of light as the medium of its diffusion. Logical relations rule this canzone-manifesto, organized through love-law into a concordance of physics, ethics, and theology, establishing a new basis for the notion of human nobility.

Dante, probably Guinizzelli's greatest reader, understands the reason for his obscurity because he understands the reasons for his “sottiglianza.” In canto 26 of Purgatorio Guinizzelli has the role of introducing Arnaut Daniel. Dante's Guinizzelli seems to place himself in the tradition of the trobar clus. But the impetus for his trobar clus is suggested in the poem Guinizzelli wrote in response to Bonagiunta Orbicciani. Here the notary characterizes himself as “saggio,” looking for truth (“vero”) step by step. “Vero” appears mostly to be the law of nature in its coincidence with the divine cosmological law Guinizzelli has introduced into poetry. Love as the truth written in the heart of mankind as a part of cosmological truth also governs the conceptions of Dante.

Dante's “Amor che nelle mente mi ragiona” (Convivio, chap. 3) reveals why he addresses Guinizzelli as his father. The laws of rationality on which Dante centers his concept of love in the canzone of Convivio are divine and cosmological; they develop Guinizzelli's insights in “Al cor gentil. …” Dante does not invoke Guinizzelli in the commentary to the canzone. In the fourth chapter of the Convivio, the chapter on nobility, Guinizzelli is instead invoked in relation to the law by which predisposed matter is capable of receiving light, and this disposition is explicitly related to light acting on the soul: “Ché, secondo dice lo Filosofo nel secondo de l'Anima, ‘le cose convengono essere disposte a li loro agenti, e a ricevere li loro atti’; onde se l'anima é imperfettamente posta, non é disposta a ricevere questa benedetta e divina infusione; sì come se una pietra margarita è male disposta, o vero imperfetta, la vertù celestiale ricever non può, sì come disse quel nobile Guido Guinizzelli in una sua canzone, che comincia: Al cor gentil ripara sempre Amore” [According to Aristotle's De Anima 2, things are well disposed to their agents in order to receive their actions. Therefore, if the soul is not perfectly disposed, it is unable to receive this blessing and divine infusion. In the same way, if a pearl is ill-made or imperfect, it cannot receive the celestial virtue. This is what the noble Guido Guinizzelli said in a canzone which begins, “Al cor gentil ripara sempre Amore”] (Convivio 4.20). But also in the canzone “Amor che nella mente mi ragiona,” this lesson f Guinizzelli is crucial, because in the commentary we find the relationship of the hierarchy of light in the universe connected with the light acting on the soul. Light illuminates the soul as it illuminates the “angelica creatura”: “Tra l'angelica natura, che é cosa intellettuale, e l'anima umana non sia grado alcuno, ma sia quasi l'uno a l'altro continuo per li ordini de li gradi” [Between the angelic nature, which is an intellectual thing, and the human soul there is no intermediate grade, but instead a kind of continuum from one to the other in the scale of grades] (Convivio 3.7.6).

Dante considers an intellectual light and recalls Albert the Great's De intellectu et de intelligibili. He therefore erases any metalepsis. The light acting directly on the soul is figured as the divine becoming of man, who has in himself a predisposed written truth. Love as a process of intelligence and education will be of great significance not only for Dante's Paradise but also for the history of Western ideas. But it is Guinizzelli's cosmological process in its guise of a physical process of love, together with the notion of intelligences as movers moved by God as light, that gives a new role to poetry.

Notes

1. “‘O frate, issa vegg' io,’ diss' elli ‘il nodo / che 'l notaro e Guittone e me ritenne / di qua dal dolce stil novo ch'i' odo.’” Dante, Purgatorio, canto 24, lines 55-57.

2. I follow Gianfranco Contini, ed., Poeti del duecento, vol. 2 (Naples, 1960), who prints mainly texts of certain attribution. All the attributed texts are contained in Luigi di Benedetto, Rimatori del dolce stil novo (Bari, 1939). For an English translation, see Robert Edwards, ed. and trans., The Poetry of Guido Guinizzelli (New York, 1987).

3. In Guinizzelli's time (1230?-76), the faculty of Arts in Bologna was frequented by physicians and notaries. For the connection between philosophers and notaries, see S. Stelling-Michaud, L'Université de Bologne et la pénétration des droits romains et canoniques en Suisse aux XIIIième et XIVième siècles (Geneva, 1955).

4. “il padre / mio e degli'altri miei miglior che mai / rime d'amor dolci e leggiadre.” Purgatorio, canto 26, lines 97-99.

5. See Contini, ed., pp. 481-83: “Bonagiunta da Lucca a Guinizzelli: ‘Voi, ch'avete mutata la mainera / de li plagenti ditti de l'amore / de la forma dell'esser la dov'era / per avanzare ogn'altro trovatore // avete fatto como la lumera / ch'a le scure partite dà sprendore, / ma non quine ove luce l'alta spera, / la quale avansa e passa di chiarore. // Così passate voi di sottiglianza / e non si può trovar chi ben ispogna, / cotant'è iscura vostra parlatura. // Ed è tenuta gran dissimiglianza / ancor che 'l senno vegna da Bologna / traier canson per forza di scrittura.’

   “Guinizzelli a Bonagiunta da Lucca: ‘Omo ch'e saggio non corre leggero, / ma a passo grada, sì com'vol misura / quand' ha pensato, riten su' pensero / infin a tanto che 'l ver l'asigura. // Foll' é chi crede sol veder lo vero / e non pensare che altri i pogna cura: / non se dev' omo tener troppo altero, / ma de guardar su' stato e sua natura. // Volan ausel' per air di straine guise / ed han diversi loro operamenti, / né tutti d'un volar né d'un ardire. // Dëo natura e 'l mondo in grado mise, / e fe' despari senni e intendimenti: / perzò ció ch'omo pensa non dé dire.’”

6. On dictamen in Bologna as connected with the study of law, see Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, rev. ed., 3 vols. (Oxford, 1936), 1:108-11: “Dictamen [in Bologna] may be described at pleasure as a branch of grammar or as a branch of law. … Dictamen was the link between technical legal education and general literary culture” (p. 108).

7. Dante, De vulgari eloquentia 2.6.6, in Dante Alighieri, Opere minori, vol. 2, ed. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo (Milan, 1979). Guinizzelli is indicated among “doctores” in De vulgari eloquentia 1.9.3; he is praised for his use of the hendecasyllable in 2.5.4, and his poem “Tegno de folle impresa” is proposed as an exemplum of suprema constructio in 2.6.6.

8. Gérard Genette, Figures, 3 vols. (Paris, 1972), 3:28-30.

9. See Contini, ed., p. 460.

10. Quoted in Dom Odon Lottin, Le droit naturel chez Thomas Aquinas et ses prédecesseurs, 12th ed. (Bruges, 1931), pp. 7-9.

11. See A. L. Richter, ed., Decretum magistri gratiani, Corpus iuris canonici 1 (Graz, 1959). Concordia discordantium canonum was the original title of Gratian's Decretum. For the relevance of the tradition of Gratian's Decretum in the University of Bologna, see Rashdall, 1:126-41 (chap. “Gratian and the Canon Law”). Gratian is in Dante's Paradiso, canto 10, lines 103-5: “Quell'altro fiammeggiar esce del riso / di Graziano, che l'un e l'altro foro / aiutó sí che piace in paradiso.”

12. Richter, ed., p. 1. Jean Gaudemet makes evident the long tradition which converges in Gratian from Roman law and from the field of Christian authors such as Augustine, Lactantius, and Ambrose, up until Isidore of Seville (“La doctrine des sources du droit dans le décret de Gratian,” in Jean Gaudemet, ed., La formation du droit canonique médiéval [London, 1980], p. 24). For Gratian's relationship to theology, see J. De Ghellink, Le mouvement théologique du XIIième siècle (Bruges, 1948), pp. 203-13, 465-72.

13. Dom Lottin, pp. 27-31; De Ghellink, pp. 133-48.

14. Robert Grosseteste, De cessatione legalium, ed. Richard C. Dales and Edward B. King, Auctores britannici medii aevii, no. 7 (London, 1986).

15. As his editors indicate, Grosseteste's main source appears to be Augustine. Another is Richard of Saint Victor; for discussion of this reference, see the chapter entitled “La notion de loi naturelle chez Robert Grosseteste,” in Pierre Michaud-Quantin's Etudes sur le vocabulaire philosophique du Moyen-Age (Rome, 1970), pp. 187-94.

16. “Primevi temporis homines propter cordium suorum mundiciam et conversacionis sanctitatem habuerunt Deum secum interius loquentem et in tabulis cordis eorum legem inscribentem” (Grosseteste, De cessatione legalium, pp. 35-36). “Rationalis igitur creatura, considerata in statu condicionis sue incorrupto, non eget aliqua lege exterius scripta, cum lex naturalis ductu propriae rationis menti sue inoblivisciter inscribatur” (p. 22).

17. Ibid., pp. 42-47.

18. Ibid., p. 137. In Grosseteste, the idea of God—natural law—is expressed through signs written in nature. For an introduction to this theory of signs, important in the Western Middle Ages, see Charles King McKeon, A Study of the “Summa philosophiae” of the Pseudo-Grosseteste (New York, 1948), pp. 24-48.

19. For Aristotle's theory of sensation based on the medium, see De anima 2.7.8, and De sensu et sensatu (Loeb Classical Library, vol. 8, On the Soul / Parva Naturalia / On Breath, trans. W. S. Hett [Cambridge, Mass., 1936]).

20. Grosseteste was the first medieval philosopher to connect light with the Physics of Aristotle, mostly in the Hexameron and in the commentary on Aristotle's Physics. See Robert Grosseteste, Hexameron, ed. Richard C. Dales and Servus Gieben (New York, 1982), and Commentarius in VIII Libros Physicorum Aristotelis, ed. Richard C. Dales (Boulder, Colo., 1963). Western optics was inaugurated by two shorter texts, De lineis, angulis et figuris and De iride, in which Grosseteste discussed how the mathematical laws of light's diffusion are determined by the physical medium (included in Ludwig Baur, ed., Die philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste Bischofs von Lincoln, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, vol. 9 [Münster, 1912]).

21. Gratian's Decretum became a textbook in the University of Bologna (and in Paris) in the 1230s; see Rashdall (n. 6 above), 1:137. For the connection between civil law and canon law in Bologna, see ibid., 1:126-41.

22. See A. G. Little, “The Franciscan School at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century,” Archivium Franciscanum Historicum 19 (1926): 803-74; and Stewart L. Easton, “Appendix A: The Lectures of Robert Grosseteste to the Franciscans,” in Roger Bacon and His Search for a Universal Science (New York, 1952), pp. 206-9.

23. Bonaventure's theory of light is mostly contained in his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sententiae; see Bonaventure, Opera omnia, vol. 2 (Quaracchi, 1885), pp. 317-23. See Étienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure (Paterson, N.J., 1965), pp. 245-64. See also Rev. Robert J. Henle, St. Thomas and Platonism: A Study of the “Plato” and “Platonici” Texts in the Writings of Saint Thomas (The Hague, 1956).

24. Dante Alighieri, Opere minori 1.2, ed. Cesare Vasoli and Domenico de Robertis (Milan, 1988), pp. 370-74.

25. Summa philosophiae Roberto ascripta, included in Baur, ed., 9:275-643. The pseudo-Grosseteste's theory of light is made most explicit in the chapter dedicated to the perspicuus: Tractatus 14: 531-43. On the pseudo-Grosseteste, see McKeon.

26. Baeumker's text of Liber de intelligentiis appears in Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, vol. 3 (Münster, 1908), p. 1-71. Baeumker's attribution to Witelo is now judged to have been incorrect, and the work is believed to have been written in the 1230s. See Étienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York, 1955), pp. 258-60.

27. See Tractatus de luce, ed. P. Irenaeus Squadrani, O.F.M., Antonianum 7 (April 1932): 227-38. The Tractatus starts with Christ's announcement, “Ego sum lux mundi.” The work shows a strong connection with Grosseteste's work and in particular with De cessatione legalium; see also P. Efrem Longpre, O.F.M., “Bartolommeo di Bologna, un Maestro Francescano del XIII secolo,” Studi francescani 9 (October-December 1923): 365-84. Bartolomeus—who was a student of Matteus of Acquasparta, the famous Italian disciple of Bonaventure and regent of the theological school of Bologna before him—has to be included in the Bonaventura school.

28. Aristotle's theory of the ‘diaphanous’ is in De anima 2.7.418a 27-419a 25, and in De sensu et sensatu. The word ‘perspicuum’ was still utilized after the thirteenth century, but it incorporated the notion of the diaphanous, i.e., the notions of potentiality and act so crucial to Aristotelian physics.

29. Alhazen, in Optica 1.22, writes, “Visibile per medium perspicuum videtur et iterum visum non comprehendit rem visam, nisi quando corpus quod est medium inter ea fuerit diaphanum … lux ergo et color rei vise non comprehendetur a visu … nisi quando corpus medium inter visum et rem visam fuerit diaphanum” (in Federico Risnero, ed., Alhazen, Opticae Thesaurus [Basel, 1572]); i.e., without the diaphanous, there is no sight.

30. As noted above, Grosseteste was not only a commentator and translator of the Pseudo-Dionysius but also a translator and scholar of Aristotle. Grosseteste's work shows that his philosophy of light is built on Dionysius and on the Neoplatonic tradition as modified by its encounter with the philosophy of Aristotle. Among Grosseteste's sources, there is the so-called Liber de causis and Aristotle's De anima and De sensu et sensatu. See Dorothea E. Sharp, Franciscan Philosophy at Oxford in the 13th Century (1930; New York, 1964), pp. 9-41; and the important work of James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford, 1982).

31. De lineis, angulis, et figuris, in Baur, ed. (n. 20 above), p. 60.

32. Convivio 3.7.

33. In 8.2 of De intelligentiis, we read: “unaquaeque substantia magis habens de luce quam alia etc., manifesta est per inductionem in omnibus corporibus primis, cum ad inuicem comparantur. Aqua enim magis habet de luce quam terra et in hoc dicitur nobilior ipsa, aer vero quam aqua, et ignis quam aer, et corpus quintum magis quam omnia alia, et propter hoc nobilissimum et primum dicitur inter ipsa. Hoc etiam in partibus elementorum considerando manifestum est. Quod enim in una parte magis habet de luce quam in alia; ut aqua in parti superiori quam inferiori, quantum ad hoc dicitur nobilius se ipso. Manifestari etiam potest per propositionem subsequentem, quia perfectio omnium eorum quae sunt, ut sunt partes universi, est lux. Nobilitas autem in unoquoque attenditur quantum ad illud quod est in ipso optimum et perfectum” (Baeumker, p. 10).

34. The relationship between sun and splendor suggests a connection with the speed of the diffusion of light; see Aristotle, De anima 2.7.418b 20-26, and De sensu et sensatu, 446b.27-447a.3; and Avicenna's De anima 3. To Avicenna we owe the distinction between lux ‘light’, lumen ‘splendor’, and radius ‘ray’. See Avicenna Latinus, Liber de anima seu sextus de naturalibus, ed. Simone van Riet, 3 vols. (Louvain, 1972), pp. 170-72.

35. In chap. 16 of De motu cordis, we find a passage devoted to clarifying the meaning of the word ‘virtus’ as it occurs in Aristotle's works on ethics and physics: “Oportet autem quod de virtutum origine omissum est, in presenti supplere. Est igitur virtus principium motus unius in aliud secundum quod est aliud. … Ethicus enim in anima tria fieri opinatur: potentiam, passionem, habitum quem et virtutem nominat; phisici vero virtutem, actum id est operationem, et ad hanc habitudinem. … Virtus, igitur, ad actum in materia adaptâ, potentia est” (De motu cordis, ed. Baeumker, in Beitrage zur Geschichte des Philosophie des Mittelalters, vol. 23 [Münster, 1923], pp. 90-91). According to Fernand van Steenberghen (La philosophie au XIIIième siècle, philosophes médiévaux, T. XXVIII [Louvain, 1991], p. 15), De motu cordis was a textbook in the University of Paris in the 1240s. See also Martin Grabmann, I divieti ecclesiastici di Aristotele sotto Innocenzo III e Gregorio IX (Rome, 1941), p. 121.

36. Guinizzelli seems aware of Abelard, whose name has been suggested as a source for Gratian's harmonization of discordances in his Decretum. Abelard utilized dialectic, showing, e.g., that the same word can have different meanings in different authors or in different contexts, but also that these differences could be erased and the meanings brought into concordance. For the importance of this tradition to theology and jurisprudence, see De Ghellink (n. 12 above), pp. 160-64 and 203 ff.; and Jean Jolivet, Arts du langage et théologie chez Abelard (Paris, 1969), pp. 238-51.

37. The notion of the natural movement of a moving body is explained in Aristotle, Physics 8.4. “Light and heavy things tend to their respective positions; the only answer is they are natured so” (254b). “Heavy and light as distinguished and defined is just this downward or upward tendency” (8.4, 255b, 15-20). In 255a, fire is defined as an element which moves itself naturally upward. See Physics 8.4, 254b 33-255a5 (Loeb Classical Library, vol. 5, Physics, vol. 2; trans. P. H. Wicksteed and F. M. Cornford [Cambridge, Mass., 1934]).

38. Aristotle's De anima 2 explains the theory of perception as a theory of “passion” (affection) in the Aristotelian sense of “to be acted upon.”

39. For the Dionysian tradition, see H. F. Dondaine, O.P., Le corpus Dionysien de l'Université de Paris au XIIIième siécle (Rome, 1953).

40. For “intende,” see Maria Corti, La felicità mentale (Turin, 1983), pp. 116 ff.; and Vasoli's note in Convivio (n. 24 above, section 1, part 2, pp. 529-31), which synthesizes a great debate on the word as it took place among Dante scholars.

41. De divinis nominibus: “God is all, inasmuch as he is the cause of all things. God as love is the unifying force of all.” I translate from Scotus Erigena's Latin rendering in Migne, Patrologia Latina, 122:135.

42. Aristotle, Metaphysics, book 12, section 8. For the medieval discussion of this topic, see James A. Weisheipl, “The Celestial Movers in Medieval Physics,” in Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages (Washington, D.C., 1985), pp. 143-75.

This text is one of the seven lectures I delivered in spring 1994 for a seminar entitled “Vision and Love: Medieval Optical Theory in Poetry” at the Institute for the Study of Science, Literature, and the Arts, Department of Italian, New York University. I am grateful to John Freccero, director of the institute, for his comments on this text.