Grasping the Divine essence: Cusanus (1401-1464) and Wenck (†1460)
Marica COSTIGLIOLO
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Dialogue, Difference, Nicholas of Cusa, Transcendence.
In this aim, I analyse some theories of De docta ignorantia (1440) of Nicholas of Cusa, criticized by Johannes Wenck. Some interesting themes emerge from the dispute between Cusanus and Wenck: for example, on the threshold of modernity the way thinkers use concepts and words to define transcendence, time, difference. Through this dispute, the end of the Middle Ages appears as a rich intellectual period and a harbinger of continuous insights and new interpretations.
Music, Liberal Arts, and transcendence in Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
Luiz Cláudio Luciano França GONÇALVES
Original title: Música, Artes Liberais e transcendência em Agostinho de Hipona (354-430)
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Liberal Arts, Music, Transcendence.
The dialogue De musica (387/391) is part of the unfinished project of the Disciplinarum libri, undertaken by Augustine of Hippo (354-430) on the liberal arts. At the time, the author conceives the musical discipline as scientia bene modulandi, kind of knowledge that has as its goal the understanding of the transcendent signs that underlies and governs the corporeal world. Taken in its proper and worthy sense – as a science that rises beyond the sensitive sphere –, the art of music is dedicated to the revelation of the incorporeal nature that sustains the modus and, at the end, leads to contemplation of its transcendent source. It is an anagogical path, by which the soul, turned to its noblest activity, deciphers, through reason, the divine order inscribed in proportion and measure of the material world.
Saint Augustine and the definition of Music as Scientia (De Musica I, IV, 5)
Luís Carlos Silva de SOUSA
Original title: Santo Agostinho (354-430) e a definição de Música como Scientia (De Musica I, IV, 5)
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Modulation, Music, Order, Reason, Saint Augustine, Scientia, Transcendence.
The objective of this work is to analyse the use of the term Scientia in the definition of Music proposed by Saint Augustine in the work De Musica (I, IV, 5). The Music, one of the seven Liberal Arts, was understood by Augustine as a manifestation of th order of audible realities. The Music had as its object not exactly modulatio, but bona modulatio. Many animals are capable of modulation, they fellow numerical laws: but, for Saint Augustine, the Music was a Scientia bene modulandi, and it assumed a specific, transcendent telos (τέλος). The term Scientia could not be dispensed with, since ignorance of the bona modulatio, as an exercise of Reason, could cause disorder in the use of song.
The Notion of Excessus in Saint Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274)
Luís Carlos Silva de SOUSA
Original title: A noção de Excessus em Santo Tomás de Aquino (1224-1274)
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Deus, Excessus, Knowledge, Metaphysics, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Thomas Aquinas, Transcendence, Triplex via.
The aim of this paper is to analyse the notion of excessus in St. Thomas Aquinas (Sth. Iª, q. 84, a. 7 ad 3). We will highlight the influence of the negative way of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite on human intellectual knowledge about God. The term excessus indicates the way of eminence (via eminentiae, per excessum) of our knowledge of the fullness of God’s perfections, that is, of his transcendence.
The role of the Philosophy and Jesuit imagery in the Portuguese missions (1500-1597)
Humberto Schubert COELHO
Original title: O papel da Filosofia e do imaginário jesuítico nas missões portuguesas (1500-1597)
Published in The World of Tradition
Keywords: Cultural Imagery, Jesuit Education, Jesuit Mission, Philosophy, Portuguese Thought, Transcendence.
As the importance of the Society of Jesus in the Portuguese colonizing process is indisputable, the specificities of Jesuit cultural imagery were equally decisive to define several elements in the cultural formation of the colonies. Often centred on literature at many points of its historical development, Portuguese thought of the time was heavily determined by philosophy. Particularly in the sixteenth century, the first century of global colonization, the evangelizing impetus of the Society of Jesus acted as a main existential drive in both cultural and political process of sending missionaries abroad. This paper emphasizes the capital relevance of transcendent beliefs and values in the worldview of such missionaries, and how they shaped the missionary ethos in the daily life, the educational initiatives and the first reports of Jesuit authors.
Transcendência e Imanência – dois aspectos da música na vida monástica de Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
Antonio Celso RIBEIRO
Original title: Transcendence and Immanence – two aspects of music in the monastic life of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Immanency, Middle Ages, Monastery, Music, Transcendence.
The present work intends to analyze the role of the music in the everyday life inside the women monasteries in the Middle Ages. Exploring the dichotomies between some aspects of music in medieval thinking like it being corruptive or regenerative and belonging to the realm of musica mundane, musica humana, musica instrumentalis, or musica celestis, as stated by Boethius and complemented by Jacobus Leodiensis, the paper intends to take a glimpse on music usage at the monasteries focusing specially on Hildegard von Bingen’s Works and Philosophy.
