The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [26]
Aristotelian teaching held that at Creation the Prime Mover, God, had set the heavens in perfect and eternal circular movement. There was no such thing as empty space, since even the apparent emptiness was filled by God’s presence. Everything existed only to glorify God. Paintings told stories from the Bible, and theological considerations limited the depiction of the protagonists to whatever size demanded by their liturgical importance in the story. With the prevailing medieval lack of interest in earthly things, no attempt was made to illustrate the world which surrounded the figures in the paintings. Gold paint was used to fill the spaces between the figures, to indicate God’s ubiquitous involvement.
Art also reflected the symbolism of the universe. Nothing was what it appeared. The universe was organic, living, and each part of it had moral worth: it was better to be high than low, constant than changing, at rest than moving. The hierarchy of relative value placed everything in nature. A noble was better than an ordinary man, below whom was woman, then came animals, then plants, then stones. This great ‘chain of being’ was subdivided into separate categories, each with their own hierarchy. Thus the king of beasts was the lion, the ruler of birds the eagle.
Magic was popular. Witches were consulted for medical treatment by the population at large. Alchemists sought the philosopher’s stone, the mysterious catalyst that would turn all to gold. Talismans, exorcism, tricks, symbols, cabalistic incantations were in widespread use. To the modern eye the world would have seemed filled with stage effects. But the people of the time believed in them. Demons, nymphs and fairies were real; they waited for children in the darkness at night.
Everything was made of the four elements: earth, water, air, fire. The four seasons corresponded to this fourfold division of the universe, as did everything in existence: four winds, four directions, the four ages of man. There was a relationship among all things, between the macrocosm in the sky and the microcosm on earth. For those who believed in this relationship, a building could be seen as a body, God was represented as the head of a large corporation, and men were capable, like laurel trees, of repelling lightning.
These relationships also ruled numbers, which themselves had magical properties. God had created the world in six days because 6 is the product of the adding, or multiplying together, of 1, 2 and 3. The number 7 was magic because of the seven heavenly crystal spheres, and because it was formed from 3 (the Trinity) and 4 (the elements). Its multiplicands (3, 4) also produced 12 (the Apostles).
Medieval doctors made their diagnosis according to the patient’s ‘humour’, or temperament, illustrated here in association with the elements of all matter. Left to right: phlegmatic (placid, sleepy), water; melancholic (serious, ingenuous), earth; sanguine (quiet, loving), air; and choleric (proud, angry), fire.
This familiarity with numbers also had a practical value. At the time there were no standard measures. When commercial goods arrived at a market, the units of measure in which they had been described at their point of origin might well have no meaning to the potential buyer. So people were experienced in estimating size. In schools pupils were taught to gauge scales and sizes. Stock objects were used as teaching aids. A tent could also be seen as a truncated cone - so how much cloth would be needed to make the tent? Barrels were used to find the value of pi.
Commercial arithmetic also used relationships, such as that employed in the well-known ‘rule of three’ (also called the ‘golden rule’ and the ‘merchant’s key’). To work out the cost of 5 units of cloth when 7 units cost 9 lire, you ‘multiply the thing you want to know by the similar thing, and divide the product by the