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The Medieval Fortunes of ‘Theatrica’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Glending Olson
Glending Olson*
Affiliation:
Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio
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Extract

Early in the twelfth century, Hugh of St. Victor in his Didascalicon divided philosophical knowledge into four areas: theoretical, practical (i.e., moral), mechanical, and logical. He further divided mechanical knowledge into seven arts, parallel to the liberal arts, giving last place to theatrica, which he defined briefly as ‘scientia ludorum.’ It proved to be the most controversial of his seven categories. Some twenty years ago W. Tatarkiewicz studied Hugh's idea, its sources, and its appearance in a few subsequent texts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance; later Nancy Howe added a reference from Petrarch. Since then, the concept of theatrics has seldom been treated in itself, although we now have substantially more evidence of its pervasiveness in medieval thinking, as a result of further scholarship on the Didascalicon and on the history of the mechanical arts. Drawing on these sources and on previously unreported material, this study attempts to describe in some detail the progress of theatrica during roughly the first three hundred years after its appearance in the works of Hugh. The medieval history of this idea does not tell us much about the theater, but it does tell us quite a lot about medieval attitudes toward play, entertainment, and performance, topics that learned circles did not often discuss extensively or dispassionately.

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Articles
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Traditio , Volume 42 , 1986 , pp. 265 - 286
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Copyright © The Fordham University Press 

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References

1 Tatarkiewicz, W., ‘Theatrica, the Science of Entertainment,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 26 (1965) 263–72; Howe, N., ‘A Further Occurrence of Theatrica: 1353,’ ibid. 28 (1967) 603–5.Google Scholar

2 Hugh of St. Victor, Opera propaedeutica (ed. Baron, R.; Notre Dame 1966) 220–21, in regard to Hugh's briefer mention of the seven mechanical arts in his Epitome Dindimi in philosophiam; Valiin, P., ‘“Mechanica” et “Philosophia” selon Hugues de Saint-Victor,’ Revue d'histoire de la spiritualité 49 (1973) 286–88; Alessio, F., ‘La filosofia e le “artes mechanicae” nel secolo xii,’ Studi medievali (Spoleto) 3 (1965) 71–161; Sternagel, P., Die artes mechanicae im Mittelalter (Kalimünz 1966) esp. 85–102; Les Arts mécaniques au moyen âge (edd. Allard, G. H. and Lusignan, S., Cahiers d'études médiévales 7; Montreal 1982).Google Scholar

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15 E.g., da Pisa, Guido, Expositiones et glose super Comediam Dantis (ed. Cioffari, V.; Albany 1974) 208: ‘ab arte vero habemus scientias et maxime mechanicas, ut agriculturam, lanificium, et huiusmodi.’ Google Scholar

16 The full text from Hartmann is printed at the end of von Schlosser, J., ‘Giusto's Fresken in Padua und die Vorläufer der Stanza della Segnatura,’ Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 17 (1896) 96–100; discussed on 84–86. See also Sternagel, , Artes mechanicae (above, n. 2) 121. Hartmann, describes the painting representing theatrics as follows: ‘Hic saltant cum falanga; unus ponit metam. Hic proiciunt lapidem. Hic falangam in longum eiiciunt. Hic fistulatores et buccinatores in loco alto stant fistulantes. Hic pulcerrima corea; primus affert in manu duo candelebra accensa; pulchrum satis cum virginibus et mulieribus exornatum. Hic fiunt hastiludia; certi prosternuntur, alii vincunt’ (100).Google Scholar

17 Ed. Dahan, , ‘Une introduction’ (above, n. 6) 188–89 and Alessio, , ‘Lafilosofia’ 156–57. Cf. Dahan's discussion on 167–68 of various twelfth-century lists of mechanical arts; as subsequent evidence will confirm, the fate of theatrica in the thirteenth century is more complicated than he indicates.Google Scholar

18 Écrits théologiques de l'école d'Abélard (ed. Landgraf, A.; Louvain 1934) 72–73. The Ysagoge lists only five mechanical arts, omitting also medicine and substituting architectona for armatura (Hugh had treated architectonica as a subdivision of armatura). A marginal gloss offers another schema: it restores armatura and medicina, keeps architectorica, and adds, surprisingly, magica, a discipline Hugh had denied as philosophical in a subsequent chapter of the Didascalicon (Taylor, [above, n. 3] 154–55). This eight-part grouping, which disenfranchises theatrics while legitimizing what Hugh had considered false and impious knowledge, also appears in the commentary on Martianus Capella attributed to Bernardus Silvestris, edd. Jones, and Jones, (above, n. 14) 132–33. On the dating of the Ysagoge see Luscombe, D. E., ‘The Authorship of the Ysagoge in theologiam,’ Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 35 (1968) 7–16. Magica also appears in a late twelfth-century poem on the sciences, as part of a list of mechanical arts that includes a wide variety of activities but nothing related to play or recreation. See Gompf, Ludwig, ‘Der Leipziger “Ordo artium,”’ Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 3 (1966) 100–1 and 113–14.Google Scholar

19 Microcosmos (ed. Delhaye, P.; Lille 1951) 74.Google Scholar

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22 De ortu scientiarum (ed. Judy, A. G.; Toronto 1976) 129–33. On the logic of grouping musical performance within the art of medicine, see Olson (above, n. 4) 72.Google Scholar

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25 See Olson, (above, n. 4) 94–99. For a recent survey of medieval commentaries on the Ethics see Wieland, G., ‘The Reception and Interpretation of Aristotle's Ethics,’ in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (edd. Kretzmann, N. et al.; Cambridge 1982) 657–72. I am working on a study of the first fragment of the Canterbury Tales that will document widespread familiarity with the idea of εὐτϱα#x03A0;ελία during the later Middle Ages.Google Scholar

26 Communiloquium 1.10.7. Early editions that have the fuller version of this chapter include [Cologne 1470], [Cologne] 1472, and Strasburg 1489, which Pratt, Robert A. used in arguing for parallels between this chapter and sections of the Pardoner's Tale , ‘Chaucer and the Hand that Fed Him,’ Speculum 41 (1966) 631–34. The first and third of these also include a well–known passage comparing life to a chess game. The shorter version of the chapter may be found in the editions of Augsburg 1475, Ulm 1481, and Venice 1496. On the history of all these editions, see the article by Scholderer, V. cited in Pratt 619 n. 2. Pantin, W. A., ‘John of Wales and Medieval Humanism,’ in Medieval Studies Presented to Aubrey Gwynn, S.J. (edd. Watt, J. A. et al.; Dublin 1961) 297–319, provides a good introduction to John's work.Google Scholar

27 Davis, C. T., preface to Contra falsos ecclesie professores (ed. Tamburini, F.; Rome 1981) viii. He discusses Remigio's method as an extension of the procedures of biblical distinctiones. For more general background on Remigio see Davis, , ‘An Early Florentine Political Theorist: Fra Remigio de' Girolami,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 104 (1960) 662–76.Google Scholar

28 MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Conv. Soppr. C.4.940 fol. 4r-v. On Remigio's treatment of the mechanical arts see Panella, E., Per lo studio di Fra Remigio dei Girolami († 1319) (Pistoia 1979) 43–53, who also prints the chapter on theatrics, 172–73.Google Scholar

29 Cf. Remigio's sermon on St. Louis, whose name in Latin, Ludovicus, gives him much room for etymological elaboration. He develops a different set of divisions of ludus, beginning with a distinction between ludus vituperabilis and laudibilis and working through subdivisions of each type: MS Florence, Bib. Naz. Conv. Soppr. D.1.937 fol. 272r-v, which came to my attention in Panella 173 n. 61. Given the purpose of the Contra falsos, Remigio would naturally construct divisions of play in bono only.Google Scholar

30 See Davis, , ‘An Early Florentine Political Theorist’ (above, n. 27) 663.Google Scholar

31 Summa de exemplis ac similitudinibus rerum (Venice 1497) fols. 1r–2v. For a list of manuscripts (more than forty, though many are incomplete) and early editions (six before 1500), see Kaeppeli, T., Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum medii aevi II (Rome 1975) No. 2642. On John and his works see Dondaine, A., ‘La Vie et les œuvres de Jean de San Gimignano,’ Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 9 (1939) 128–83, esp. 157–64 on the Liber de exemplis. Google Scholar

32 Opera omnia (Basel 1554) 1147–48. Trans. Nachod, H., in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man , edd. Cassirer, E., Kristeller, P. O., and Randall, J. H. Jr. (Chicago 1948) 67–70, who cites the source in Macrobius.Google Scholar

33 De vita solitaria 1.6 in Prose (edd. Martellotti, G. et al.; Milan 1955) 360. Trans. Zeitlin, J., The Life of Solitude (Urbana, Illinois 1924) 152.Google Scholar

34 Philobiblon (ed. and tr. Thomas, E. C.; Oxford 1960) 166; cf. ibid. 8–10, 46.Google Scholar

35 The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley, 1981).Google Scholar

36 See the article by Allard, G. H. in Les Arts mécaniques (above, n. 2) 13–31, and Ovitt, G. Jr., ‘The Status of the Mechanical Arts in Medieval Classifications of Learning,’ Viator 14 (1983) 89–105.Google Scholar

37 There is other evidence associating performers, especially musicians, with the mechanical arts. Chambers, , The Mediaeval Stage (London 1903; repr. London 1967) I 49 n. 8, cites a chronicle reference to Edward II's interest in ‘cantoribus, tragoedis, aurigis, navigiis et aliis huiuscemodi artificiis mechanicis.’ In the Miroir de mariage, Eustache Deschamps unrolls a long list of people's occupations: one is a carpenter, another a butcher, and so on, concluding: ‘L'un se duit a faire les chans \ Et a chanter par art musique; \ Chascuns a son art mechanique \ En ce monde pour en servir.’ Œuvres complètes (ed. Raynaud, G. 1894; repr. New York 1966) 9.299. But there is no reason to see Hugh's categories at work here. Minstrels, whose name is etymologically related to ministerium, ‘service’ or ‘labor,’ were seen as workers in one craft among many, and thus were included in conceptions of the mechanical arts other than the Didascalicon's. Such references probably involve a view of entertainment much like that implied in the idea of theatrica, but we cannot say that they stem directly from Hugh's seventh art.Google Scholar

38 I thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for a Fellowship for College Teachers in 1983–84 that enabled me to complete work on this article.Google Scholar