25-03-2024, 03:11 PM
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?
* 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?