Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225 – 1274)
What Did St. Thomas Aquinas Believe about “Ensoulment?”
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Aquinas did say an unborn baby receives a soul 40 or 80 days after conception, depending on gender.
The 40/80-day view is based on the writings of Aristotle, who said a child becomes human at “formation,” the point at which it first “has a human form”–that is, when it looks human. He said this was 40 days for boys and 80 days for girls.
Ensoulment and the Courage of Pius IX
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chapter 18–22 outlines how the concept of ensoulment developed throughout the centuries starting with Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and his hypothesis of delayed animation as advanced in his theory of three types of souls. Aristotle discerned that human embryonic development came through a secession of souls. First, the vegetative soul followed by the animal soul and finally the rational soul. The third or rational soul was believed to come into existence roughly forty days for a male and eighty to ninety days for a female, after the time of conception. For Aristotle, ensoulment did not happen until the third or rational soul manifested—hence, his theory of delayed (or mediate) animation.
See You are not allowed to view links.
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I made some slides and uploaded them to YouTube. Sorry, no audio.
Ensoulment & the Voynich Manuscript, v 1.0 (no audio)
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I wonder about the origin of some of the things you write in the slides. Which aspects did you learn from sources and which ones did you make up?
* Preexistence of the soul: as far as I gather at first glance, medieval thinkers struggled with this concept. Officially, the Catholic Church seems to have rejected the concept very early on, but it did pop up from time to time in the context of (neo)Platonism.
* Souls as stars. I have written on previous occasions - and I am certainly not the first or only one - that the nymphs have their best parallels in depictions of souls. Most notably in the context of salvation and Resurrection. I won't get into that here since it does not relate to the concept of ensoulment. The thing is though, as far as I'm aware, souls were depicted in human form. Sometimes even men's souls would be drawn as young women ("anima" is female). Surely souls were believed to be governed or otherwise influenced by stars, but were they actually drawn as stars?
* Did they actually believe God assigned a societal class to the souls with him in heaven, or did you come up with this?
Lodi Nauta, The Preexistence of the Soul in Medieval Thought, in Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale 63, 1996, 93-135, p.8:
Quote:In the famous ninth metre in Book III (O qui perpetua), for example, Boethius wrote that God had each soul allotted to a star, a light chariot (a levis currus), for its companion from which it descended at its appropriate time into a body.
The star is the companion of the (anthropomorphic) soul.
The nymphs are from the male fluid. After the nymphs have prepared the female body, then the soul comes from heaven.
I was intrigued by Nauta's passage quoted by Koen and did some research. You are not allowed to view links.
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Tu causis animas paribus vitasque minores
Provehis et levibus sublimes curribus aptans
In caelum terramque seris, quas lege benigna
Ad te conversas reduci facis igne reverti.
You then bring forth, with the same bases, lesser living souls,
And giving them light chariots fitting their heavenly nature,
Broadcast them in the heavens and on earth, and by your bounteous law
Make them, turned towards you, with returning fire come back.
In another paper (Magis sit Platonicus quam Aristotelicus) Lodi Nauta provides more details:
Lodi Nauta Wrote:[William of Conches says] that some people have condemned Boethius, believing that he had said that God created all souls simultaneously and placed each of them on top of a companion star, whence they proceeded into human bodies. But here Boethius, as William notes correctly, is following Plato, and so one should first find out what Plato thought, bearing in mind, as William reminds his reader on several occasions, that Plato often spoke about philosophy through a veil. In fact, Plato does not seem to have said anywhere that all souls were created together, but what he did say was that souls were placed by God on top of the stars (Timaeus 41d-e).
William then offers two interpretations of this phrase ‘on top of the stars’:
(1) By the soul’s reason man transcends the stars and discovers the creator beyond them. Therefore, Plato said that God placed souls on top of stars (in the sense of above the stars), since man derives this power of transcendence from God.
(2) Alternatively, God placed the souls on the stars in the sense that He made souls in such a way that the influence of the stars enabled them to exist in human bodies. For stars cause warmth, chills, infirmities and the like in men.
Having seen what Plato meant, William continues, we can see that Boethius spoke according to one of these two understandings.
So it is Plato (You are not allowed to view links.
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Plato Wrote:And when He had compounded the whole He divided it into souls equal in number to the stars, and each several soul He assigned to one star, and setting them each as it were in a chariot He showed them the nature of the Universe, and declared unto them the laws of destiny
"Timaeus" was one of the few works by Plato known in medieval times (through a Latin translation by Cicero).
(25-03-2024, 03:38 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Lodi Nauta, The Preexistence of the Soul in Medieval Thought, in Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale 63, 1996, 93-135, p.8:
Quote:In the famous ninth metre in Book III (O qui perpetua), for example, Boethius wrote that God had each soul allotted to a star, a light chariot (a levis currus), for its companion from which it descended at its appropriate time into a body.
The star is the companion of the (anthropomorphic) soul.
(MarcoP was faster!)
The text of
De consolatione philosophiae does not actually mention stars. The "light" (meaning not heavy, or swift) chariots carry the souls and lesser lives (?) in heaven and earth:
"Tu causis animas paribus vitasque minores provehis et levibus sublimes curribus aptans in caelum terramque seris, quas lege benigna, ad te conversas reduci facis igne reverti."
Thanks, Marco! I hadn't gotten far into this, but just enough to learn a bit about how the soul's journey to earth could be imagined. The star companion is certainly interesting - there is even something chariot-like about some of the barrels around the zodiac. Why is it always Plato though...
(25-03-2024, 06:22 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Why is it always Plato though...
When it is not Plato it is Aristotle. The concept of
pneuma would fit very well with the tubes in Q13, both inside and outside the body...
Quote:The "connate pneuma" (symphuton pneuma) of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the warm mobile "air" that plays many roles in Aristotle's biological texts. It is in sperm and is responsible for transmitting the capacity for locomotion and certain sensations to the offspring. These movements derive from the soul of the parent and are embodied by the pneuma as a material substance in semen. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Why is it Plato? Because William of Conches had a thing for Plato. William lived around the time of the Aristotelian revival, but apparently, he wasn't quite with it.
I don't know about the original Greek version, but apparently (again), this seems to provide an early historical source for the idea of the soul to star connection. The problem is that this is a *literary* source. It is a written source, not a visual source.
WARNING: CODE SHIFT
Does the VMs express similar ideas? There seems to be evidence that it does. All those nymphs with stars. Yet there is nothing that we can read. We are now interpreting illustrations. And they certainly seem to be somewhat idiosyncratic illustrations making it more difficult to find relevant historical equivalents, shall we say. Not like medieval phlebotomy. If the VMs illustrations in some way represent ensoulment, then they are illustrations of an illusion, a personal vision, of a hypothesis based on false information. The artist would be free to present any sort of fabrication they were capable of creating - you name it. There is no comparison possible.
That being said, if the images of the ring and the cross on You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. are references to episodes in the life of Colette of Corbie, it turns out she is a patron saint - and you'll never guess what - okay, you guessed it.