Chapter 20 - Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in late antiquity and the Middle Ages

Summary

Introduction and overview

Pitagoras, id est non indigens interrogationis vel interrogationis cumulus. ΠΥΘΟC enim interrogatio, ΑΓΟΡΑ cumulus.

Pythagoras, i.e., one who needs no questioning, or the culmination of questioning. For ΠΥΘΟC means questioning, ΑΓΟΡΑ means culmination.

This creative etymology, variations on which are employed by Carolingian scholars to annotate (or “gloss”) mentions of Pythagoras in both Boethius’ Fundamentals of Music (De institutione musica) and Martianus Capella's On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury (De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii), neatly encapsulates the medieval use of Pythagoras. In line with a tradition long established in the late ancient Latin texts that provided exclusive access to “Pythagorean” teachings, the medieval Pythagoras functioned as a “first principle”: to invoke his authority was to invoke the icon of Greek wisdom traditions. This gloss's etymological assertion of Pythagorean authority resonates with late ancient and medieval accounts of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans on multiple levels. First, it well accords with the method of instruction ascribed to the Pythagoreans. According to Boethius, “it was customary for the Pythagoreans, whenever Master Pythagoras said something, that no one thereafter dare to challenge his reasoning; rather the reasoning of the teacher was their authority” (Inst. mus. 1.33 [223.4–7 Friedlein]; cf. Valerius Maximus 8.15.ext.1). By the twelfth century, this account of the Pythagorean method of instruction (Pythagorica doctrina) had codified into a supposed imposition of seven years of silence “according to the number of the seven liberal arts” (as Hugh of St. Victor explains: Didascalicon 3.3), during which Pythagorean disciples were allowed only to listen and believe; not until the eighth year were they allowed to broach questions (William of Conches Dragmaticon 1.1.3). Second, it echoes the common view of Pythagoras as both the inaugurator of the Greek philosophical tradition and its consummate practitioner, a view exemplified by Boethius’ equation of “Pythagorean knowledge” (scientia Pythagorica) with “perfect teaching” (perfecta doctrina: On the Categories 160B; see Ebbesen 1990: 387–91; Asztalos 1993: 379–88), a loftier mode of philosophizing suited only to those who have already mastered the beginning and intermediate stages of philosophy.