Boyle2014 THE WONDER OF THE HEART - ALBERT THE GREAT ON THE ORIGIN OF PHILOSOPHY PDF

THE WONDER OF THE HEART: ALBERT THE GREAT
ON THE ORIGIN OF PHILOSOPHY
Marjorie ORourke Boyle*
Abstract: This article introduces and interprets Albert the Greats origin of philosophy in wonder as hap-
pening by a cardiac systole. It researches his comparative usage of the difficult terms of his definition of
cardiac wonder in his paraphrase on Aristotles Metaphysica and in his other writings. It relates Alberts
cardiac wonder to the context of medieval philosophy on the physiological function of the heart in the pas-
sions of the soul. It then documents Alberts own cardiocentrism. Finally it coordinates his integration of
cardiac physiology with the physical qualities and humors to determine the nature of a philosopher.
Keywords: heart, cardiocentrism, passions, wonder, ignorance, fear, philosophy, Albert the Great, Aristotle,
Nemesius of Emesa.
The conflation of philosophy and physiology in wonder was the invention of Albert
the Great, the medieval scholastic whose prodigious studies earned him the epithet
the universal doctor. Since classical antiquity, those disciplines had allied in the
investigation of animal nature, and Aristotles reasoning and research exemplified that
collaboration. It was in Alberts paraphrase on Aristotles Metaphysica that he pro-
posed his own interdisciplinary theory of wonder. Although some thinkers had enter-
tained for wonder a cardiac psychology, Albert established it as the origin of philoso-
phy. Yet, what Albert wrote about philosophic wonder itself seems mystifying.
The purpose of this article is to introduce and interpret the obscure function of the
heart in Alberts definition of philosophic wonder. It begins with a statement of that
definition in his Metaphysica. It proceeds to document Alberts comparative usage of
its difficult terms in his other writings. It then relates Alberts cardiac wonder to the
context of medieval Aristotelian philosophy on the function of the heart in the pas-
sions of the soul. It then documents his own Aristotelian cardiocentrism. Finally it
documents his integration of cardiac physiology with the qualities and humors to de-
termine the nature of a philosopher.
WONDER
This section introduces Albert the Greats definition of philosophic wonder in his par-
aphrase on Aristotles Metaphysica. As Albert there stated, the inactive, impractical
nature of philosophy was established and sustained by its single motive, wonder. The
fact that this knowledge is not practical or active is plain from what moved those who
first philosophized to philosophizing. For all men who, both now in our time and ini-
tially before our time, have philosophized have not been moved to philosophizing ex-
cept through wonder.1 His authorization repeated the opening of Aristotles text, All
men by nature desire to know.2 Albert thus determined, We shall demonstrate that
all men by nature desire to know.3 Aristotle had stated that philosophy was not an
*
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 95 Normandy Boulevard, Toronto, ON, Canada M4L
3K4.
1
Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6, ed. Bernhard Geyer, Opera omnia, ed. Cologne Institute of Al-
bert the Great (Monasterium Westfalorum 1951) 161.23. All translations in this article are mine unless
otherwise noted.
2
Aristotle, Metaphysica 980a.
3
Ibid. Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.1.4 (n. 1 above) 67. See also 1.1.5, p. 7; 1.2.4, p. 21.
Viator 45 No. 2 (2014) 149172. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.103916

150 MARJORIE OROURKE BOYLE
active discipline because on account of wonder (propter admirationem) men both

now and initially began to philosophize.4 Albert defined: Now wonder we call an
agonia and suspensio of the heart in insensibility at a great portent apparent to sense,
thus so because the heart undergoes a systole. (Admirationem autem vocamus agoniam
et suspensionem cordis in stupore magni prodigii in sensu apparentis, ita quod cor
systolen patitur.)5
His Latinity is hardly transparent. Although his descriptive style can be plain
enough, it has also been called rather peculiar. Albert was indeed a clumsy word-
smith, denounced for that barbarous Latin by which he distinguishes himself even
among the other writers of his epoch to an ungrammaticality that can be disastrous.
Translators of his natural philosophy, wondering how Dante could have located Albert
in paradises circle of lights, decided that Dante must not have read his Latin.6 Al-
berts systolic wonder requires intensive interdisciplinary research in philology, psy-
chology, and physiology to understand its origin of philosophy. Of his paired syno-
nyms for wonder, the meaning of suspensio is the more apparent, even though it clas-
sically meant an architectural vault or the mispronunciation of a letter of the alphabet.7
Alberts neologism suspensio meant a hanging,8 from suspendere, literally to
hang. It could refer to hung objects, from meat roasting over a fire to votive offerings
in a temple.9 For humans, hanging in classical Latin denoted a capital punishment un-
der Roman law,10 and the hanging of criminals was also a medieval Germanic prac-
tice.11
A metaphorical suspension in wonder was, for Albert, the philosophic premise.
Wonder was a defect of human nature, as properly defined by an Aristotelian desire
for knowledge. It was precisely because humans found themselves in a state of sus-
pension, which did not fulfill their nature or confer their dignity as stable and social
4
Aristotle, Metaphysica 982b. Cf. Plato, Phaedo 88e89a.
5
Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6 (n. 1 above) 23. For context on motus and passio, see Ernest J.
McCullough, St. Albert on Motion as forma fluens and fluxus formae, Albertus Magnus and the Sciences:
Commemorative Essays 1980, ed. James A. Weisheipl (Toronto 1980) 129153; for sensory perception, see
Nicholas H. Steneck, Albert on the Psychology of Sense Perception, ibid. 263290, although Gregory of
Nyssa should be corrected to Nemesius as the author of De natura hominis at 274276; Lawrence Dewan,
St. Albert, the Sensibles, and Spiritual Being, ibid. 291320.
6
Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven M. Resnick, A Note on the Translation, Albertus Magnus, On Ani-
mals: A Medieval Summa zoologica, trans. idem, 2 vols. (Baltimore 1999) 1.XXXIVXXXV, Introduc-
tion 1.34.
7
A Latin Dictionary, ed. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (Oxford 1969) s.v. suspensio.
8
F. Carl Riedel, Crime and Punishment in the Old French Romances (New York 1938) 80, citing
Charles Fresne Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Paris 1845) 5.551.
9
Latin Dictionary (n. 7 above) s.v. suspendere.
10
Theodor Mommsen, Rmisches Strafrecht (Leipzig 1899; repr. Graz 1955) 911944; Ernst Levy, Die
rmische Kapitalstrafe, Gesammelte Schriften, 2 vols. (Cologne 1963) 2.325378. See also Biondo Biondi,
Il diritto romano cristiano, 3 vols. (Milan 19521954) 3.501518. Claire Saguez-Lovisi, Contributions
ltude de la peine de mort sous la Rpublique romaine (509149) av. J.-C. (Paris 1999) 161162. See also
Jean-Louis Voisin, Les Romains, chasseurs de ttes, Du chtiment dans la cit: Supplices corporels et
peine de mort dans le monde antique, ed. Yan Thomas (Rome 1984) 241292.
11
Folke Strm, On the Sacral Origin of the Germanic Death Penalties (Stockholm 1942) 1920, 2829,
3538, 4857, 115116, 126 155160; Karl von Amira, Die germanischen Todesstrafen: Untersuchung zur
Rechtsund Religionsgeschichte, Abhandlung der Bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philoso-
phische, philologische, und historische Klasse 51 (1922) nos. 3, 98, 100101. See Glossarium mediae et
infimae latinitatis, ed. Charles Fresne Du Cange, 10 vols. (Paris 19371938) s.v. suspensio.
THE WONDER OF THE HEART 151
beings, that they sought to philosophize. That origin of philosophy was consistent with
the opening dictum of Aristotles Metaphysica, All men desire to know. Right from
the very title of Alberts paraphrase on that text, he declared his own task as stability.
As he stated, Here begins the first book of metaphysics, which is wholly about the
stabilizing (stabilimento) of this science and the stabilizing (stabilimento) of the prin-
ciples that are causal. Again he proposed the first tractate of which is about the sta-
bilizing (stabilitione) and nobility of this science. Those nounsthe classical but rare
stabilimentum and the neologism stabilitioand the verb, stabilire, repeated fre-
quently in the pages before his sentence on the origin of philosophy in suspenseful
wonder.12 Their meaning was a stay, support, stabiliment; to make firm, steadfast,
or stable; to fix, stay, establish.13
For Albert, philosophy shared an origin in wonder with all the arts and sciences be-
cause they seek by wondering (admirando) what is extraordinary in humans. That
origin was common, whether sensible knowledge was received in a sense, or in
memory, or in experience. Among the theoretical sciences, metaphysics secured
physics and mathematics, but the investigation of all knowledge was wonderful. As
Albert elaborated his definition about the philosophical investigation, As we have
already said above, because its searching begins from wonder (admiratione) about
everything, just as the causes and the principles of universal being are investigated,
certainly such wonder about everything is the cause of investigation in that science.
The investigator is suspended in some agonia while he wonders (agonia quadam
suspenditur, dum admiratur).14 Such mental hanging was tropological suspension, in
which the verb suspendere meant to depend, rest. Generally it meant to be depend-
ent upon externals, particularly to cause to be suspended, that is, to make uncer-
tain or doubtful, to keep in suspense. The adjective suspensus, literally raised, ele-
vated, suspended, tropologically meant uncertain, hovering, doubtful, wavering,
hesitating, in suspense, undetermined, anxious.15
Alberts Metaphysica amplified its definition of wonder as an agonia and suspen-
sio of the heart in insensibility at a great portent apparent to sense, thus so because the
heart undergoes a systole. Therefore, the operation of wonder in an agonia and systole
of the heart is from the suspension of desire toward knowing the cause of its portent
that appears. (Propter quod etiam admiratio aliquid simile habet timori in motu
cordis. Huius igitur motus admirationis in agonia et systole cordis est ex suspensione
desiderii ad cognoscendam causam eius quod apparet prodigii). That version re-
placed his initial agoniam et suspensionem cor systolen with agonia et systole
cordis ex suspensione.16
12
Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.1 (see n. 1 above) 1. The terminology was also noted by Benedict
M. Ashley, Albertus Magnus on Aristotles Metaphysics Bk. I, Tr. 1, American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 70 (1996) 139140. By these terms Albert means, it seems, the giving of a secure foundation to
the propositions of a science or art so that they can be known as certainly true. For his summary of the first
tractate, see 139149.
13
Latin Dictionary (n. 7 above) s.v. stabilimentum.
14
Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.1.10 (n. 1 above) 1415; 1.2.10, p. 27; 1.1.11, p. 16.
15
Latin Dictionary (n. 7 above) s.v. suspensus.
16
Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6 (n. 1 above) 23.
IGNORANCE
This section documents Alberts usage of agonia as the ignorance of a cause in his
paraphrase on Aristotles Analytica priora, then as involuntary ignorance of a cause as
a type of fear in a commentary on Ethica nichomachea. Detached from the cardiac
physiology of his Metaphysica, Albert had earlier written some such words on the
origin of philosophy in wonder in his paraphrase on Aristotles Analytica posteriora.
Albert there distinguished two kinds of questioning, for knowledge about the fact
(quia) and knowledge about the reasoned fact (propter quid). In demonstration quia,
immediately, as Avicenna says, agoniamur et admiramur what might be the cause
and from that admiratione, agonia, sive suspensione toward the cause, followed
demonstration propter quid. Albert added, From that (as Averroes says) a human
begins to philosophize: first in fact because he lacks sensible and common knowledge;
suspendi autem et admirari he effects to seek the cause: and this is to philosophize.17
The introductory clause was very close to Robert Grossetestes commentary, which
then paralleled knowledge and ignorance (sciri et ignorari).18 Latin translations of
Averroess commentary also attested to ignorance (ignoraremus, ignoraverimus).19
Albert himself wrote in that same paraphrase about a lack (deficit) of knowledge, in a
nice mental-to-physical parallel with Aristotles example of an eclipse (deficit) of the
sun. His neologism agoniamur was an odd, if alliterative, parallel to admiramur.20
Aristotles Analytica posteriora did not have agnia or its forms. However, its first
treatise defined a certain agnoia, ignorance. As he wrote, Ignorancewhat is
called ignorance not in virtue of a negation but of a dispositionis error coming about
through deduction.21 Alberts paraphrase repeated ignorantia.22 He was writing on
Analytica posteriora about the ignorance of a cause and how to seek knowledge of it.
That intention cohered with his presentation about a year later in Metaphysica of won-
der as the origin of philosophy. There, wonder was the suspension of the desire to-
ward knowing the cause,23 which philosophy provided the logic to investigate.
Albert also wrote two commentaries on Aristotles Ethica nichomachea, whose in-
fluence on his thought was strong and enduring.24 Medieval translations multiple times
rendered Aristotles Greek agnoia, meaning ignorance, as Latin ignorantia. Aristo-
tles text discoursed on the affects and actions of virtues, distinguishing the involun-
tary from the voluntary. Involuntary passion occurred either under compulsion or from
ignorance (per ignorantiam). It happened precisely on account of fear (propter
17
Albertus Magnus, De demonstratione, id est, posteriorum analyticorum 2.1.1, Opera omnia, ed. Au-
guste Borgnet, 38 vols. (Paris 18901899) 2.158. For the distinction, see also Albertus Magnus, Metaphysi-
ca 1.1.10 (n. 1 above) 15. Cf. Aristotle, Analytica posteriora 72b73a.
18
Robert Grosseteste, Commentarius in Posteriorum analyticorum libros, ed. Piero Rossi (Florence
1981) 292.
19
Averroes, Posteriorum resolutionum libri duo, Aristoteles opera cum Averrois commentatoris, 12
vols. in 14 (repr. Frankfurt 1962) 2.402.
20
Albertus Magnus, Analytica posteriora 2.1.1 (n. 17 above) 158.
21
Aristotle, Analytica posterioria 79b, trans. Jonathan Barnes, 2nd ed. (Oxford 1994) 23. Grossetestes
Commentarius at chap. 15 states that in the next chapter (with 79b) Aristotle explains the causes of igno-
rance (ignorantia) (n. 18 above) 217.
22
Albertus Magnus, Analytica posterioria 1.4 (n. 17 above) 93.
23
Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6, (n. 1 above) 23.
24
Stanley B. Cunningham, Reclaiming Moral Agency: The Moral Philosophy of Albert the Great
(Washington, DC 2008) 3740, 2527.
timorem). Ignorance (agnoia) meant that the motive principle for that affect was ex-
ternal to the person who experienced it. He contributed nothing, just as if he were
blown about by tempests.25 Alberts paraphrase on Aristotles Ethica nicomachea enti-
tled a chapter on the involuntary through ignorance (propter ignorantiam). He re-
peated the phrase twice in the text.26 For Aristotle, the lack of personal willful control
in undergoing an affect such as fear was from ignorance (agnoia). Albert consistently
defined wonder as a fear because the cause of a sensory apparition was unknown. A
frightful apparition to the mind caused wonder, from which philosophy originated. His
nascent philosopher was struck by a great portent about whose cause he was involun-
tarily suspended in ignorance. Alberts philosophic wonder was intelligible: not to be
blessed in a desire to know was to suffer the fear that was the inability to know, or
ignorance. Alberts Metaphysica thus defined philosophic wonder coherently. There-
fore, the motion of this wonder in ignorance and a systole of the heart is from the sus-
pension of the desire toward knowing the cause of the existence of the portent that
appears. He explained that from the beginning uneducated people began to philoso-
phize, from wondering about certain debatable things they endeavored to solve, until
more proficient philosophers undertook greater problems. He who doubts and won-
ders is seen as ignorant, for wonder is the impulse of the ignorant proceeding to in-
quiry so that he might know the cause of what he wonders about (est enim admiratio
motus ignorantis procedentis ad inquirendum, ut sciat causam ejus de quo miratur).27
FEAR
Alberts definition of philosophic wonder in Metaphysica then compared it to the pas-
sion of fear. As he proposed, Because of this, wonder has some likeness to fear in the
motion of the heart, which is from suspension.28 This section documents Alberts
comparison of wonder with fear in his alliance of Aristotelian knowledge with Chris-
tian tradition particularly with Nemesius of Emesas anthropology. Albert imported
into his paraphrase on Aristotles Metaphysica about wonder (agonia) as ignorance
(agnoia), supposed patristic sources about wonder as fear (agnia). Alberts concept
and diction of agoniawithout the cardiologyhe repeated from De bono, composed
two decades earlier on the good. With medieval translations of Aristotle, who consid-
ered affects morally neutral, unlike Stoic or Christian asceticisms, theologians began
to deliberate about them using the neologism passion (passio). Albert has been
praised for attempting a systematic treatise of the passions that was logically coor-
25
Richard Burgundio of Pisa, trans., Aristotle, Ethica nicomachia 1110a, Aristoteles Latinus, ed. Ren
A. Gauthier (Leiden 19721974) 263.23. For Burgundio of Pisa as the translator of the Ethica vetus, see
261.XVILVIII. Albert used Robert Grossetestes translation from the Greek, according to Weisheipl, Ap-
pendix 1, Albertus Magnus and the Sciences (n. 3 above) 575. For ignorantia as Grossetestes translation
of the anonymous scholia on the meaning and usage of book 3, see Robert Grosseteste, trans., The Greek
Commentaries on the Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle: In the Latin Translation of Robert Grosseteste
Bishop of London (1253), ed. H. Paul F. Mercken (Leiden 1973) ad loc. 236249.
26
Albertus Magnus, Ethicorum libri X, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 7.203, 205, dating to 1262. He com-
mented earlier on the passions in Super ethica: Commentum et questiones libros VIX, ed. Wilhelm Kbel,
Opera omnia (n. 1 above) 141.849, passio s.v. The first full Latin commentary on Aristotles Ethica
nichomachea, it dates to 12501252.
27
28
Ibid.
dinated.29 His several treatments of the passions were neither so organized nor so
coherent, but they did interpret the cardiac wonder of his Metaphysica as a type of
fear. De bono was Alberts initial treatment of fear, citing from Augustine a traditional
definition, a flight from evil. Whether flight from the evil of punishment or of guilt,
the passion was divisible into bad fear, a vice, and good fear, a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Albert also defined a natural fear, as tacitly derived from Aristotles Rhetorica. That
fear was the expectation of punishment, from an impression of a future but impending
evil.30
Albert then quoted the types of bad fear from Gregory of Nyssas De natura homi-
nis, but without knowledge of its true author. Alberts historical source on the divi-
sions and definitions of fear was not that patristic authority but Nemesius of Emesa. A
late antique bishop of that Syrian city, Nemesius composed Peri physes anthrpou,
the first Christian anthropology. He has been regarded (if regarded) in modern schol-
arship as a compiler, whose work is worthwhile for philology and for evidence of lost
texts.31 It was Nemesiuss medical knowledge that seemed extraordinary and that
motivated the medieval preservation and translations of his book. Although he cited
fifteen of Galens treatises, he was probably not a physician but a natural philosopher
for whom medicine was essential knowledge.32 His importance has been reappraised
as original and philosophical, for he mediated to Plato, whom Christians embraced, the
ostracized Aristotle. Nemesius did so uniquely in concentrating philosophically on the
body-soul problem. He argued from a Platonist instrumentality of body to soul toward
an Aristotelian unity of body and soul. 33 Since the relationship of body and soul was a
question of scholastic philosophy, Nemesiuss argument belonged to its debates, albeit
by misattribution of the author.34
29
Pierre Michaud-Quantin, La psychologie de lactivit chez Albert le Grand (Paris 1966) 116; idem,
Le trait des passions chez Albert le Grand, Recherches de thologie ancienne et mdivale 17 (1950) 90
91, 99100.
30
Albertus Magnus, De bono tr. 3, q. 5, a. 2, ed. Heinrich Khle, Carl Feckes, Bernhard Geyer, and Wil-
helm Kbel, Opera omnia (n. 1 above) 28.201. See also MichaudQuantin, Trait des passions (n. 29
above) 117119; idem, Psychologie de lactivit (n. 29 above) 108110. See Aristotle, Rhetorica 1382a. For
fear, see also David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Liter-
ature (Toronto 2006) 130155.
31
For a recent introduction, see R. W. Sharples and Philip van der Eijk, trans., Nemesius, On the Nature
of Man (Liverpool 2008) 132.
32
William Telfer, trans., Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemsius of Emesa (London 1955) 217218, 206208,
275, 370; Sharples and van der Eijk, Nature of Man (n. 31 above) 1114, 2021, 2325; Eiliv Skard,
Nemesiosstudien, Symbolae osloensis 17 (1937) 925; 18 (1938) 3141; 19 (1939) 4656; Friedrich
Lammert, Hellenistische Medizin bei Ptolemaios und Nemesios: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der christ-
lichen Anthropologie, Philologus: Zeitschrift fr klassische Altertum 94 (1940) 125141, with Nemesiuss
pulse lore at 129131; Alberto Siclari, Lantropologia di Nemesio di Emesa (Padua 1974) 149180.
33
Beatrice Motta, La mediazione estrema: Lantropologia di Nemesio di Emeso fra platonismo e artisto-
telismo (Padua 2004).
34
E.g., see See Emil Dobler, Zwei Syrische Quellen der Theologischen Summa des Thomas von Aquin,
Nemesios von Emesa und Johannes von Damaskus: Ihr Einfluss auf die anthropologischen Grundlagen der
Moraltheologie (S. Th. III, qq. 617, 2248) (Fribourg 2000); idem, Falsche Vterzitate bei Thomas von
Aquin: Gregorius, Bischof von Nyssa oder Nemesius, Bischof von Emesa? Untersuchungen uber die
Authentizitt der Zitate Gregors von Nyssa in der gesamten Werken des Thomas von Aquin (Fribourg 2001);
idem, Indireckte Nemesiuszitate bei Thomas von Aquin: Johannes von Damaskus als Vermittler von Neme-
siustexten (Fribourg 2002).
Nemesiuss book was twice translated into medieval Latin. An incomplete version
was Premnon physicon by Nicolo Alfano, a bishop of Salerno, site of the famous
medical school, and himself a writer on humoral theory. He translated Nemesiuss
agnia, a type of fear, as fatigatio, weariness. As he rendered it, fear from misfor-
tune, that is, fear from opposition; for, fearing opposition to an operation that is to
happen, we are fatigued.35 Alfanos poor translation of the book has been blamed on
his insufficient knowledge of Greek and his limited vocabulary, hampered further by
Nemesiuss philosophical termsto the point sometimes of incomprehensibility.
Nemesiuss book was then translated as De natura hominis by Richard Burgundio of
Pisa, a professor of law at its university and an accomplished translator of Aristotles
philosophy.36 It was Burgundio who mistakenly attributed Nemesiuss book to Greg-
ory of Nyssa, a sainted authority. That was the translation Albert cited, perpetuating
the misattribution of authorship.37 The Greek manuscript that either medieval transla-
tor of Nemesius used is unknown.38 The modern editions of its extant manuscripts,
only one of which is medieval, repeat agnia among the bad fears.39
Alberts De bono cited De natura hominis for the division of bad fear into six
types: withdrawal (desidia); embarrassment (erubescentia); shame (verecundia); and
the neologisms, cataplexis, fear from a great imagination; explexis, fear from an
unaccustomed imagination; and agonia. As it defined agonia in Burgundios
translation, Agonia, however, is the fear of being unsuccessful, of misfortune. For,
fearing to be misfortunate in a passionate desire, we suffer an agonia (agonia vero est
timor non potiendi, infortunii: timentes enim non fortunari gestione, agoniam
patimur.)40 Albert repeated that definition of agonia without infortunii, but otherwise
exactly. Agonia, however, is the fear of being unsuccessful. For, fearing that to be
unfortunate in a passionate desire, we suffer an agonia (agonia vero est timor non
potiendi timentes enim non fortunari gestione agoniam patimur).41 That
understanding of agonia corresponded to Alberts paraphrase on Aristotles Ethica
nichomachea about involuntary ignorance, agnoia.42 Alberts agonia in De bono was
similarly a failure to realize a passionate desire successfully. His cited term agonia
climaxed a rhetorical series, an amplification of six associated types of fear. The final
35
Nemesius, Premnon physicon sive Peri physes anthrpou liber, trans. Nicolo Alfano, ed. Carl
Burkhard, rev. Friedrich Lammert (Leipzig 1917) 105.
36
Grard Verbeke and J. R. Moncho, eds., De natura hominis: Nmsius dEmse: Traduction de
Burgundio de Pisa (Leiden 1975) LXXXVIXCII.
37
Moreno Morani, La tradizione manoscritta del De natura hominis di Nemesio (Milan 1981) 3940.
He has drawn numerous parallels with the almost literal citations in Alberts text, which my comparisons
confirm. See Albertus Magnus, tr. 3, q. 5, a. 2 (n. 1 above) 2.201; Summa theologiae secunda pars tr. 22. q.
132 (n. 17 above) 33.443. For the opinion that Albert used Alfanos translation, see Telfer, trans., Nemesius
(n. 32 above) 218; Motta, Mediazione (n. 33 above) 36.
38
Verbeke and Moncho, eds., De natura hominis (n. 36 above) LXXXVILXXXVII, LXXIX.
39
Nemesius of Emesa, De natura hominis: Graece et latine, ed. Christian Frideric Matthaei (Halle
Magdeburg 1802) 79; Nemesius, De natura hominis, ed. Moreno Morani (Leipzig 1987) 81. The word
agnia appears in another compilation, Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 7.112, cited by Sharples
and van der Eijk, Nature of Man (n. 31 above) 142 n. 719.
40
Nemesius, De natura hominis 20, trans. Burgundio (n. 36 above) 103.
41
Albertus Magnus, De bono tr. 3, q. 5, a. 2 (n. 1 above) 28.201. For Nemesius on the passions, see
Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford 2004) 103110.
42
See above.
three were epistemological, concerning the sensory fantasy that frightened the
beholder.
Alberts De bono then compared those divisions of fear with John of Damascuss
discourse on the passions in De fide orthodoxa, an influential summary of Christian
doctrine.43 It was a reference for fear that Albert had already used in his youthful aca-
demic commentary on Peter Lombards Sententia and resorted to in later writings on
the gospel.44 Richard Burgundio of Pisas translation of De fide orthodoxa reiterated
the types of fear as slowness (segnitia), embarrassment (erubescentia), shame (ver-
ecundia), wonder (admiratio), stupefaction (stupor), and agonia. As it distinguished,
Agonia, however, is fear on account of mishap, undoubtedly on account of misfor-
tune. For we are fearful when agonizamus to be unfortunate in an action.45 The Latin
neologism agonizo manifested the translators struggle to make sense of the text. Al-
berts De bono explained further that Gregorys Latinized cataplexis and explexis and
Johns admiratio and stupor are not species of fear (timor) because they do not exist
with respect to evil but with respect to the great or the unusual. Albert quoted from
John that wonder is fear from a great fantasy; but stupefaction is fear from an unac-
customed imagination (admiratio est timor ex magna phantasia, stupor vero est timor
ex inassueta imaginatione).46 To those opinions about fear as a passion and a habit,
Albert responded with complex scholastic divisions of the argument. Relevant to his
definition of philosophic wonder in Metaphysica was his amplification in De bono that
wonder (admiratio) is with respect to the difficulty wondered about, in which we are
unable from its very magnitude to know or act. Wonder was the inability to know the
cause of a sensory apparition, and therefore to act upon it. Albert distinguished that
insensibility (stupor) is with respect to the wonderer because the insensible heart is
unable in itself to act or know, not from the magnitude of the thing admired but be-
cause it is unusual.47 Alberts writings did not always observe the neat distinctions of
his sources about fear into admiratio, stupor, and agonia since they could overlap.
There could simultaneously be wonder at a great appearance and stupor at an also un-
familiar one. His Metaphysica conflated those reactions in his definition, wonder
(admiratio) we call an agonia and suspensio of the heart in insensibility (stupor).48
Albert repeated agonia in De bono as the climax of epistemological fears: cata-
plexis, fear from a great imagination; explexis, fear from an unaccustomed imagina-
tion; and agonia.49 Like explexis and cataplexis, that agonia was a neologism, a Lat-
inized transliteration of a Greek term. It was not his native Latin agonia, which meant
a victim in various classical etymologies. Ovids Fasti explained that the Agonalia,
a festival in which the king immolated an enemy, was named because its mountainous
43
Albertus Magnus, De bono tr. 3 q. 5 a. 2 (n. 1 above) 2.202.
44
Albertus Magnus, Commentarii in III Sententiarum, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 2.636; Super
Matthaeum, ed. Bernhard Schmidt, Opera omnia (n. 1 above) 212.272; Quaestiones super evangelium q.
201, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 37.290.
45
Burgundio of Pisa, trans., John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 29, Saint John Damascene, De fide
orthodoxa: Versions of Burgundio and Cerbanus, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert (St. Bonaventure 1955) 121. See
Nemesius, De natura hominis 20..
46
Albertus Magnus, De bono 3 q. 5 a. 2 (n. 1 above) 2.202.
47
Ibid. 201202, 205206.
48
49
Albertus Magnus, De bono tr. 3, q. 5, a. 2 (n. 1 above) 2.201.
sites were agones; thus the hostile victim became agonia.50 Medieval texts continued
agonia as enemy, with extension in martyrologies to agony, suffering.51 Alberts
writings noted Jesuss agonia in the garden of Gethsemane during which he sweat
blood, although he promoted not that phenomenon but the model of persistent
prayer.52 Alberts exegesis of Lukes verse in the Vulgate translation of agnia as ago-
nia derived that Latin agonia from Greek agn. As he wrote, agn is the same as
pugna (fight), in which a man exercises his powers, and therefore it is said from
acting.53 His paraphrase on Aristotles Politica also acknowledged the derivation of
Greek agnia from agn, meaning a contest or struggle for victory.54 Alberts ago-
nia of philosophic wonder in his Aristotelian paraphrases was also a Latin translitera-
tion from Greek, which he copied from Burgundios translations. The term certainly
did not derive from Aristotles agonia, sterility,55 which Albert translated correctly
as sterilitas and sterile.56 Yet, it did not coherently derive from agnia either, as a
contest, struggle for victory, extending to an anxious or distressed mind.57 Activity,
and vigorous activity, was the opposite of Alberts consistent pairing of philosophic
agonia with suspensio, an inaction. Although literal suspension as hanging could
extend tropologically to wavering, with a to-and-fro connotation, Albert meant a
rest. Nor did a contest agree with Alberts pairing of philosophic wonder as an
agonia with a systole, a contraction, not an action.
SYSTOLE
This section documents Alberts adoption of the physiological cause of the agonia et
suspensio of wonder as cardiac systole, or contraction.58 Because Aristotles cardiac
physiology was largely erroneous, so was its tradition in which Albert labored. The
errors were based on a caloric principle of animation. Aristotle situated the vital innate
heat of the body principally in the heart, as if flames.59 He designated the heart not
only the seat of the vital heat but also the vessel of the blood, which was concocted
there. As its heated liquid vigorously bubbled up, it struck the cardiac walls causing
them to expand and make a beat. That expansion he termed diastole.60 The alternative
50
Latin Dictionary (n. 7 above) s.v. agonia. Bernadette Liou-Gille, Les Agonia, le rex sanctorum, et
lorganisation du calendrier, Euphrosyne: Revista de filologia clssica 28 (2000) 4345.
51
Du Cange, Glossarium (n. 11 above) s.v.; agonia; R. E. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List:
From British and Irish Sources (London 1965) 12.
52
Albertus Magnus, Sermones, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 13.46, 213, 573; Commentarii in Psalmos (n.
17 above) 15.277, 16.111; Liber de muliere forti 12.1 (n. 17 above) 18.90; Enarrationes in prophetas mi-
nores (n. 17 above) 19.104; Enarrationes in evangelium Matthaei (n. 17 above) 21.174; Enarrationes in
evangelium Luce (n. 17 above) 23.692; In evangelium secundum Iohannem (n. 17 above) 24.487, 735.
53
Albertus Magnus, In Lucam (n. 17 above) 23.691692. For agonia as the death throes, see also De
animalibus 20.1.5, ed. Hermann Stadler, 2 vols. (Munich 19161920) 2.1287.
54
Albertus Magnus, Politicorum libri, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 8.198.
55
Aristotle, De generatione animalium 747a.
56
Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 16.2.810 (n. 53 above) 2.11331141.
57
A Greek-English Lexicon with a Supplement, ed. Henry G. Liddell and Robert T. Scott, rev. Henry S.
Jones with Roderick McKenzie (Oxford 1968) s.v. agnia.
58
59
C. R. S. Harris, The Heart and the Vascular System in Ancient Greek Medicine: From Alcmeon to Ga-
len (Oxford 1973) 170172. See also Gad Freudenthal, Aristotles Theory of Material Substance: Heat and
Pneuma, Form ad Soul (Oxford 1995) 1935, 130134, 182.
60
For a survey of his writings and modern difficulties in understanding them, see James Rochester
to diastole, or expansion, Aristotle termed systole, or contraction. Just as he identified

cardiac expansion with heating, he identified its contraction with cooling. In humans
cardiac heat was the purest, accounting for their intelligence above all other animals.
Cardiac cooling marked a failure of human intelligence as the operation of a bodily
part was damaged, resulting in deformity or disease.61 For Albert, that systole caused
philosophic wonder, a failure of knowledge.
It seems plausible that systole was posited to account for the pause between the
palpable beats of the heart. Albert reported the medical diagnostic practice of taking
the pulse between its two reflexive movements, which are diastole and systole.62 He
explained those terms in yet another Aristotelian paraphrase, De anima, concerning
the reason for all animals having a heart or a substitute organ. By this movement of
systole and diastole it blows from itself the vital spirit, and thus it is kindled lest the
spirit cool off. The systole and diastole functioned as the heart is moved in place
contracting and opening. Cardiac physiology happened by an alteration, just like the
movement that is in the passions themselves, by a heating or cooling of the blood. 63
That association of the cardiac rhythm of systole and diastole with the passions antici-
pated Alberts comparison of philosophic wonder as a cardiac systole to the passion of
fear.64
His paraphrase on Aristotles three books on animals as De animalibus asserted the
continuous cooperation of systole and diastole to circulate the vital spirit in the body.
The exit of the spirit from the heart does not happen except by the motion of the heart
through systole and diastole. Albert explained the continuous and circular function of
those alterations to expel the vital spirit from the heart through the veins to heat the
bodily members, then to attract the cooled spirit back to the heart for restoking. In
diastole the spirit is moved by dilating itself to the circumference, and in systole by
constricting itself to the center, that is, the heart.65 In De animalibus he reiterated his
Aristotelian knowledge of systole and diastole as the essential cardiac movements. He
defined the pulsating veins, called arteriae as if narrow passageways for air. Arising
in the heart, the arteries served as pipelines for the vital powers and operations. The
airy spirit pulsed within them, as beaten by the diastole and systole of the heart.66
The heart, the initial and primary bodily organ, was observed to be formed in a hens
egg from a bloodlike drop deposited on its white. The heart was fully spirituous, and
its spirit was the formative power for the other bodily members. The departure of spirit
Shaw, Models for Cardiac Structure and Function in Aristotle, Journal for the History of Biology 5 (1972)
355388, esp. 381388 for the physiology.
61
Aristotle, De generatione animalium 744a, 784b. For his basic description of the heart, see Historia
animalium 496a; for the heart as the first principle of animals, thus the first part formed in the fetus, see De
generatione animalium 738b, 740a, 741b, 742b, 743b.
62
See also Marjorie ORourke Boyle, Aquinass Natural Heart, Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013)
267268. Albertus Magnus, Physicorum libri VIII 8.3, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 3.606. See also Albertus
Magnus, Liber topicorum 1.5, Opera omnia, (n. 17 above) 2.283.
63
Albertus Magnus, De anima 1.2.1, ed. Clemens Stroick, Opera omnia (n. 1 above) 71.18; 1.2.9, p.
41.
64
65
Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 4.12.4 (n. 53 above) p. 1.453; 8.32.4, p. 906; 14.44.3, p. 2.1278;
14.44.5, p. 1285; 14.45.3, p. 1313.
66
Ibid. 13.1.4, pp. 2.906, 907; 1.2.20, p. 1.135.
from the heart occurred only through the movement of the systole and diastole of the
heart. The generation of the uniform bodily members was from the heart as the vessel
of the blood, which it distributed through the veins.67
The terms systole and diastole also appeared in a book of De animalibus unat-
tributable to any identified text and considered Alberts singular contribution to anat-
omy.68 Albert stated that the soul conveyed powers and formslife, then sensation
into the bodily members through cardiac diastole and systole by pulsation. The spirit
exited from the point of the heart into the entire body by the movement of the heart in
systole and diastole. While continually blowing out spirit, the heart moves by dilating
itself toward its circumference and by contracting itself toward its center. The sub-
stance of spirit, which was light as a fifth body, was in the body midway between the
soul and elemental matter. It contracted to a single point in the apex of the heart in
systole, and it expanded to the dilation of all members in diastole. Because this con-
traction and expansion could not occur frequently and suddenly in an elemental body,
there was needed above the four elements and above all elements the fifth body, Avi-
cennas light. Albert concluded there on cardiac movement by affirming that all pow-
ers, natural and animal, originated from the heart. The entire body participates in the
movement of the heart, which is according to diastole and systole, because, without it,
it would have neither life nor vital spirit.69
Alberts De motibus animalium confirmed that the heart in diastole sent the spirit
and the blood throughout the body, and in systole returned them to itself.70 He wrote
further in De spiritu et respiratione about the two-fold cardiac movement of diastole,
or pulsus, and systole, or tractus. By dilation (diastole) the heart expelled and ex-
panded spirit into the entire body, then by contraction (systole) the heart attracted
spirit it back to itself.71 Alberts descriptions consistently identified systole as passive,
the contraction of action. There was no contest or struggle (agnia), with extension to
active psychological movement. The systole was the hearts involuntary rest. Those
67
Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 6.1.4 (n. 53 above) 1.453. The work paraphrased Aristotles Historia
animalium, De partibus animalium, and De generatione animalium. For those writings as philosophical, see
Andrew Cunningham, Aristotles Animal Books: Ethology, Biology, Anatomy, or Philosophy? Philo-
sophical Topics 27 (1999) 1741. For Alberts embryology, see Luke Demaitre and Anthony A. Travill,
Human Embryology and Development in the Works of Albertus Magnus, Albertus Magnus and the Sci-
ences (n. 5 above) 405440. For the translation of Aristotles De partibus animalium that Albert used, see
Aristotle, De animalibus: Michael Scots Arabic-Latin Translation: Part Two: Books XIXVI, ed. Aafka M.
I. Van Oppenraaij (Leiden 1998). He may also have consulted Robert Grossetestes translation from the
Greek. Kitchell and Resnick, Introduction, On Animals (n. 6 above) 40. Alberts paraphrase on Aristotles
Historia animalium used Michael Scots translation from the Arabic, with explanations gleaned from Avi-
cennas De animalibus and other sources, including his own knowledge.
68
See Weisheipl, Appendix 1, Albertus Magnus and the Sciences (n. 3 above) 573.
69
Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 20.1.3 (n. 53 above) 2.12781280; 20.1.5, pp. 12841288; 20.2.3, p.
1313.
70
Albertus Magnus, De motibus animalium 1.2.4, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 9.275. See also Michaud-
Quantin, Psychologie de lactivit (n. 29 above) 93. However, his designation of Alberts cardiac function
as a pump is anachronistic. Even William Harveys discovery of the bloods circulation in Exercitatio de
motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (Frankfurt 1628) did not explicate that model. Marjorie ORourke
Boyle, Harvey in the Sluice: From Hydraulic Engineering to Human Physiology, History and Technology
24 (2008) 2.
71
Albertus Magnus, De spiritu et respiratione 1.9, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 9.227.
Aristotelian paraphrases all predated that of his Metaphysica, so that Alberts use there
of systole as inaction was already well established.
Beyond his philosophical writings, Alberts biblical exegesis offered examples of
wonder as a passive, insensible standstill (agonia). He evoked Nebuchadnezzars be-
numbing (obstupuit) at the marvelous survival of the boys he had cast into the fiery
furnace. Thus an insensate member is said lacking in sense and movement when it is
struck by such a great agonia of wonder that it can neither by sense nor by faculty
[act] toward that which it wonders about.72 Albert also wrote about the frightened
women of the gospel wondering at the stone rolled away from Jesuss tomb. There
they stood in the agonia of a stupefied mind (stabant in mentis agonia stupefacte).
He glossed the verse with the crowds reaction in stupor and amazement (in stupore
et extasi) to the apostle Peters cure of a lame man.73 The crowds reaction of wonder
to Jesuss sermon on the mount occasioned fuller comment. Wonder is the suspen-
sion and agonia of the heart respecting some great apparition that the heart cannot
touch or conceive fully, nor can it nevertheless deny. Albert quoted, from John Dam-
ascenes De fide orthodoxa, Nemesiuss definition that wonder is a stupor respecting
a great fantasy. Albert commented on this wonder not yet of the believer but of one
trying to come to faith and seeking the cause of an apparition.74
Alberts wonder as not yet believing by faith paralleled his wonder as not yet
knowing by philosophy. It was a lack of knowledge about the cause or truth of an ap-
pearance that impinged on the mind. Albert noted Jesuss discourse to the crowd that
promised a display of works from the Father to the Son so that you might marvel.
Then he commented, May you be drawn (trahamini) in wonder. Alberts trahere
was the verb for the noun tractus as Latin systole, and he used it passively. As he con-
tinued, For he who wonders is suspended in something lofty, which he does not
know. And while he is in the agonia of wonder he begins to seek. Albert concluded,
And thus by the effect of divine power he comes to faith. He added that it was use-
ful to draw (trahere) humans into wonder to build up faith. The initiative to wonder
for that end of faith was an act of divine power by which humans were drawn.75 Al-
berts understanding of wonder was thus consistent and coherent, a lack of causal
knowledge whether by reason or by faith.
Wonder as an ignorance of causes Albert also treated in his Summa theologiae. It
marveled in its first part at Gods wise providence, for he is the cause of those things
that he provides, which cause is the highest; and wonder, as the Philosopher says, is a
suspended agonia toward the highest cause. Albert concluded that it was necessary to
wonder at Gods works as marvelous.76 However, the Philosopher, that is Aristotle in
Latin translation, did not write agonia. Albert himself wrote that word, which his par-
aphrases on Aristotles Analytica posteriora and Metaphysica defined as a suspen-
72
Albertus Magnus, Commentarii in Danielis, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 18.505.
73
Albertus Magnus, Enarrationes in secundam partem evangelium Luce, Opera omnia (n. 17 above)
23.747.
74
Albertus Magnus, Super Matthaeum (n. 1 above) 212.20.
75
Albertus Magnus, In evangelium secundum Joannem (n. 17 above) 24.214.
76
Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae pars prima tr. 17, q. 67, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 31.679680.
sion.77 Alberts question in Summa theologiae on whether the miraculous was marvel-
ous cited from John Damascene that the marvelous suspends a human in his height
and places him in an agonia of wonder (altitudine sua suspendit hominem, et ponit in
agonia admirationis).78 Alberts formal treatment of the passion of fear in the second
part of his Summa theologiae considered its cause, whether from evil or from love. He
began with two distinct ideas, Augustines notion that fear is a disturbance of the soul
in expectation of evil, and Johns notion that fear is beyond nature an irrational sys-
tole, that is a contraction (timor est praeter naturam irrationalis systole, id est, con-
tractio). Albert posed the objection against John that systole and diastole are a
movement of the heart caused from natural passions, which are four, as Boethius says,
hope, fear, sadness, and joy. He reasoned, Therefore, systole is not anything of fear
but from its effect; and thus it is badly defined through systole. Alberts solution was
that the distinct ideas of Augustine and John were not true definitions but different
perspectives. John wrote about the proper effect of fear, for when the heart flees evil,
it is drawn into itself according to a systole (in seipsum trahitur secundum sys-
tolem).79 However, cardiac systole was a relaxation, inconsistent with his agnia,
which meant its opposite, a struggle.
At length, about a decade after his Metaphysica,80 with its definition of wonder as
agonia, Albert tried to explain the etymology of John Damascenes agnia, Latinized
as agonia. Albert began with a basic division of fear, according to evil or to greatness.
The latter type John divided, after Nemesius, into the six types that Albert quoted.
Wonder (admiratio) is fear from a great fantasy or imagination. Then Albert ex-
plained, But agonia is fear through an accident and misfortune. For, fearing to be
misfortunate in an action, agoniamur.81 He repeated the neologism agoniamur from
his paraphrase on Aristotles Analytica posteriora on wonder as the origin of philoso-
phy.82 Albert explained that John Damascene so divided fears because he defined fear
according to the fact that it is a flight of the heart according to a systole. Whence eve-
rything that makes the heart retreat (resilere) to its own slightness he calls fear. As
for fear as wonder, If it is from a suspension toward a cause that is exceedingly ele-
vated above us, then it is called wonder (admiratio). That was its sense in Alberts
Metaphysica as the origin of philosophy toward knowledge, and previously in his An-
alytica posteriora about the specific knowledge of causes. In his Summa theologiae
Albert tried unsuccessfully to reconcile wonder by a passive systole, a relaxation, with
active agnia, a contest. He distinguished a seventh fear. If moreover it happens that
we imagine the greatest misfortune, whether in life or affairs, in which it is necessary
that we are set as if in a contest and wrestle (quasi in agone luctari) whether or not
77
Albertus Magnus, Analytica posteriora 2.1.1 (n. 17 above) 2.158; Metaphysica 1.2.6 (n. 1 above) 23.
78
Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae pars secunda tr. 16, q. 104 (n. 17 above) 33.267.
79
Ibid. tr. 22, q. 132, pp. 440441.
80
Dionysius Siedler, ed., Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae sive de mirabili scientia Dei, libri 1 pars
1 quaestiones 150A, Opera omnia (n. 1 above) 34.XVIXVII, dating the first part to after 1265 and the
second to not before 1274.
81
Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae pars secunda tr. 22, q. 132 (n. 17 above) 33.440441.
82
Albertus Magnus, Analytica posteriora 2.1.1 (n. 17 above) 2.158.
we can win, it is called agonia.83 There agonia was quasi, as if, a sporting match, a
contest (agnia) that was vehemently active. Alberts interpretation did not square
with Nemesiuss divisions of fear according to a cardiac systole, which was passive.
Nor did it square with Alberts tradition from Aristotles natural philosophy that car-
diac systole was passive. Further, agonia as derived from agnia, contest, did not
appear in Alberts paraphrases on Aristotles Metaphysica, Ethica, or Analytica
posteriora concerning the origin of philosophy in wonder.
Alberts context for philosophic wonder in his paraphrase on Metaphysica was the
polarity of ignorance and knowledge, as his paraphrase on Analytica posteriora had
established. Specifically, Albert had treated involuntary ignorance in his paraphrase on
Ethica nichomachea. The meaning of Alberts agonia as Aristotles agnoia, igno-
rance, he clarified in Metaphysica as the wonder from which philosophy originated.
Truly he who doubts and wonders is seen to be ignorant (Qui vero dubitat et
admiratur, ignorare videtur). Therefore, he reasoned, It was to flee ignorance that
they philosophized (Quare si ad ignorantiam effugiendam philosophati sunt).84
Philosophic wonder was not agonia as a Latin victim or a Greek contest, but
agnoia as ignorance. Albert assumed from his sources that Latin agonia translated a
Greek word for ignorance. Nemesiuss De natura hominis was the text from which
their types of fear were abstracted. Its context of the physiology of the passions clari-
fied Alberts definition of wonder by a cardiac systole.
PHYSIOLOGY
This section documents Nemesiuss cardiac physiology as seminal and Avicennas as
influential for Alberts development of philosophic wonder by systole. Nemesiuss De
natura hominis discussed the passions, such as fear, as the irrational part of the soul.
Passion is a movement of the concupiscible sensible power, in the imagination of
good or evil, or passion is an irrational movement of the soul on account of the
apprehension of good or evil. Or, although an act is according to nature, passion is
contrary to nature. Nemesius then introduced the Galenic cardiology on which Al-
berts definition of wonder as a suspension itself hung. Therefore, according to this
reasoning, an act is called a passion when it is not moved according to nature, whether
it is moved from itself or from something else. Then, the movement of the heart that is
according to pulsation is an act; but, what is according to palpitation is a passion.85
Those cardiac oppositions corresponded to diastole and systole. John Damascenes De
fide orthodoxa reported it as, Therefore, the movement of the heart that is according
to pulsation is an operation, as existing naturally; however, that according to a leap
(saltus), as existing immoderately, and not according to nature, is a passion and not an
83
Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae pars secunda tr. 22, q. 132 (n. 17 above) 33.443. Cf. stupor
quasi the heart stood in insensibility.
84
Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6 (n. 1 above) 23 n. For the medieval translations of Aristotles
Metaphysica, see Geyer, ed. XXIII.
85
Nemesius, De natura hominis 15, citing Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 6.1; 23; trans. Bur-
gundio (n. 36 above) 93, 94, 107. See also Burgundio, trans., John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 26 (n.
45 above) 119.
operation.86 Pulsatile movement Nemesius thought the vital force, arising from the
left ventricle of the heart and distributing the vital heat by the arteries, as air pipes,
throughout the body. In sum, when the heart is heated according to nature, immedi-
ately the whole animal heats up according to nature; and when it becomes cold, so
does the whole.87 The cardiac physiology for wonder as a type of fear Albert owed to
his explanation. As Nemesius wrote, Fear happens according to an all-around cool-
ing, with all the heat rushing to the heart, to the principle, just as when frightened
commoners flee for refuge to the prince.88 Nemesiuss discussion of the vital bodily
processes, including the passions such as fear, then treated the faculties of the soul as
voluntary or involuntary. Repeating Aristotles Ethica nichomachea, Nemesius de-
fined involuntary acts as done either by constraint or from ignorance (per igno-
rantiam). Nemesius then distinguished involuntary acts through ignorance (propter
ignorantiam) from acts by force (secundum vim), such as enraged or intoxicated
deeds, which he judged basically voluntary. Involuntary acts through ignorance re-
quired a first cause external to the self, the ignorance of which cause was not a per-
sonal fault.89 That notion of involuntary ignorance based the apprehension of a great
portent whose cause was unknown, and therefore evoked a fearful wonder.
Nemesiuss association of ignorance and systole was known to Albert not only
through De natura hominis as misattributed to Gregory of Nyssa but also through John
Damascenes development in De fide orthodoxa of the passion of fear. As John inter-
preted, natural fear pertained to the souls unwillingness to be separated from the body
because of the fellow feeling the Creator imposed upon their unity. He cited the defi-
nition of Maximus the Confessor, who had first mentioned Nemesius, that natural
fear is the desiderative power according to a systole (that is contraction) of the es-
sence. That fear Latinized as timor, pavor, agonia belonged to the passions that were,
in a neologism, indetractibilum, and sinless. Another fear consists in the ruin of the
ability to think and in disbelief (ex perditione cogitationum consistit et incredulitate).
Examples were fear arising from ignorance (in ignorando) of the hour of death or of a
sound at night. John further defined from Maximus that unnatural fear is an irrational
systole (that is, a contraction).90 The manuscripts of Johns De fide orthodoxa varied
greatly, and the modern editor of Burgundio of Pisas translation of its Greek text into
Latin has freely acknowledged the obscurity and even oddity of some medieval read-
ings. The reason for the textual disparities has been attributed to the very early corrup-
tion of the manuscript tradition, to which numerous copyists added personal errors.
Burgundio of Pisa translated Johns De fide orthodoxa several years before he trans-
lated Nemesiuss De natura hominis.91 He preserved a remnant of Aristotelian igno-
rance in his translation of Johns example of systole as an unnatural fear from igno-
86
Burgundio, trans., John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 36 (n. 45 above) 132133. For saltus as ago-
nia because systole broke the continuity of cardiac movement in diastole, see also Albertus Magnus, De
animalibus 14.44.5 (n. 53 above) 2.1287.
87
Nemesius, De natura hominis 15, citing Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 6.1; 23; trans. Bur-
gundio (n. 36 above) 93, 94, 107.
88
Nemesius, De natura hominis 20, trans. Burgundio (n. 36 above) 103.
89
Ibid. 20, 29, 30; trans. 103104, 119122, 122124.
90
John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 67, trans. Burgundio (n. 45 above) 265, 266.
91
Buytaert, ed., Burgundio trans., De fide orthodoxa (n. 45 above) V, VIII, IXXV.
rance (in ignorando). It also transmitted agonia as a type of natural fear from systole.
Alberts development of Aristotles philosophic wonder as a type of fear by a cardiac
systole thus owed to Nemesiuss De natura hominis, through its misattribution to
Gregory of Nyssa and through John of Damascuss citation and comment on it.
Alberts initial treatment of the passions in De bono had also associated systole
with passion from Avicennas De anima. Alberts reference to it did not appear in his
discussion of the passion of fear, however, but of sadness (tristitia). There he inquired
about a concomitant loss of voice. For, since sadness is caused from a motion of the
heart according to a systole, as Avicenna says, it is seen that in every sadness the spirit
and even the blood return to the heart. The recurrence caused the voice to weaken.92
Alberts source was not truly Avicenna but a physician collaborating on a Latin trans-
lation of his De anima from Arabic. That text passed through a Castilian intermediate,
Johannes Hispanus, or Avendeath, who appended to it some chapters of his own. On
the cardiac dispositions he wrote of sadness occurring with a compression of the
breast that followed thickness of the spirit and the heat of its complexion.93 Despite
Alberts misattribution of that notion to Avicenna, he possessed an exceptional under-
standing of his philosophy.94 For Avicenna, bodily alteration was consequential, not
causal, of soulful affect. He argued in De anima seu sextus de naturalibus, the trans-
lated sixth part of his Kita
b al-Shifa, that an affect of the soul happened principally
from imagination, fear, grief, or wrath. As a consequence, bodily heat was either kin-
dled or extinguished. That was not a natural cause, on account of which the complex
ought to alter the heat, or add or generate the vapor diffused in the body, so that it
spread. Rather, since the form was held in the value, it happened that alteration fol-
lowed in the association, and also the heat, and humidity, and spirit.95
Avicennas interpretation of the soul influenced philosophers early in the thirteenth
century to explore how its concupiscible and irascible powers, as generating passions,
related to the heart and the spirit. Their common facultative psychology posited that
external objects, through the evaluation of the uniquely human estimative power,
caused acts of the motive power in the sensitive soul. Those psychological movements
were believed to be accompanied necessarily by cardiac and spiritual movements. Al-
bert has been said to concur with Jean de Rochelles summary interpretation of Avi-
cenna that affective acts altered the heart. Decisively the soul moved the body, not the
body the soul. In particular, the frigidity that resulted from soulful fear was caused by
an imagination of losing strength, so that heat and spirit were deflected from the heart.
92
Albertus Magnus, De bono 3 q. 5 a. 2 (n. 17 above) 2.202.
93
Johannes Hispanus/Hispalensis, ibn Daud, known as Avendahut/Avendeath, De additione Avoha-
veth, in Avicenna, De anima, liber exceptus ex editione Venice 1508, ed. George P. Klubertanz (St. Louis
1949) 106, 107. The author is misidentified as Avicenna by the critical edition of Albertus Magnus, De bono
(n. 17 above) 2.201 n. 42, which gives part 4, chapter 6. The critical edition of Avicennas De anima part
four ends at chapter 4. For Avendauth, see Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Avicennas De anima in the Latin West:
The Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of the Soul, 11601300 (London 2000) 48.
94
See Haase, Avicennas De anima 69. See also Jon McGinnis, Avicenna (New York 2009) 251.
95
Avicenna, De anima 4.4 (n. 95 above) 6162. See also his De medicinis cordialibus: Fragmentum,
Appendix to his De anima 187210. For the heart, see also De anima 5.5.8, pp. 176, 178181. For Avicenna
on the passions, see Knuuttila, Emotions (n. 41 above) 218226.
The passion of fear caused a general bodily withdrawal.96 That appraisal of Alberts
psychology consulted De bono and his commentary on Liber de sex principiis, works
earlier than his Metaphysica with its philosophic wonder.
PSYCHOLOGY
This section documents the relevant cardiac physiology of the passions in medieval
psychology as scholastic context for Alberts philosophic wonder. Medieval passion
was not modern emotion. That word and concept dated to late nineteenth-century
medicine. Emotion displaced, not derived from, ancient and medieval soulful mo-
tion to or from objects sensed and/or judged as good or evil. Modern emotion specifi-
cally collapsed a traditional Christian distinction between sensory passions and voli-
tional affections.97 The relation of bodily movement and soulful passion was a large
topic that had engaged ancient philosophers and physicians in discussions about cause
and effect. Which movement originated a passion, of the body or of the soul? The de-
bate was practical, therapeutically motivated either to evaluate affect, as Stoics in-
tended, or to moderate affect, as Aristotelians advocated.98 The Stoics held that affect
was judgmental, doubly so: the judgment of apprehended good or bad, and the judg-
ment of considered reaction to that situation. Affect was a soulful fluttering or mental
oscillation in conflict between the judgments of good or bad. For the Stoics, affect
could cause bodily change, as in Zenos belief in a contraction or expansion felt in the
chest. Or it could precede bodily change, as in Senecas belief in physical first move-
ments, such as a shudder or elation, impinging on the body.99 Albert further owed his
definition of cardiac wonder to the Stoics, who as materialists not only associated the
affects with the heart, as had Aristotle, but also specified the hearts movement in
systole and diastole. For, the second Stoic judgment, that of an appropriate reaction to
the initial judgment, was conceived as an internal contraction or expansion of the
mind. The appropriate reaction of distress, for beginners, was a contraction, systole.
Because the Stoics were materialists, the mind that experienced a contraction was a
physical spirit. And mind, for the Stoics, was seated in the heart. Stoic contraction has
been interpreted variously as an impulse, reaction, compunction, affliction, or sinking.
Galen, whose writings ruled medieval medicine as Galenism, understood the Stoic
doctrine of contraction and expansion physiologically. So did Nemesius,100 on whom
Albert relied through his patristic authorities.
96
Knuuttila, Emotions (n. 41 above) 239. For Albert, see 236239. Jean de la Rochelle also followed
John Damascenes De fide orthodoxa 29 in his Summa de anima 2.77, ed. Jacques G. Bougeral (Paris 1996)
210211.
97
Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category
(Cambridge 2003). See also Robert Miner, Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologiae,
1a2ae 2248 (Cambridge 2009) 4, 2946.
98
See Richard J. Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation
(Oxford 2000) 194210. However, for the revision of Stoic philosophy as not the eradication but the evalu-
ation of passion, see Margaret R. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago 2007).
99
Sorabji, Emotion and Peace (n. 100 above) 34, 45, 5657, 313314, 23. See also Christopher Gill,
Did Galen Understand Platonic and Stoic Thinking on Emotions? The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy,
ed. Juha Sihvola and Troels Engberg-Pedersen (Dordrecht 1998) 118, citing Galen, De placitis Hippocratis
et Platonis 3.3.1416.
100
Sorabji, Emotion and Peace (n. 100 above) 3141.
Although Alberts scholarship was unique for its paraphrase or commentary on all
of Aristotles available works, it belonged to a scholastic revival to which natural
philosophers and physicians contributed.101 A notable reception of Aristotles psychol-
ogy had been the Tractatus de anima of John Blund, a master of arts at Paris. His ex-
amination of the soul situated it in the heart and associated its physiology with the
passions, as Alberts own De anima later would. Blund deferred to the testimony of
very many authors that pain came from a cardiac constriction, joy from a cardiac dila-
tion. Then he argued, But pain is in the soul on account of an obstruction of the heart,
because it is considered to govern. Similarly joy is in the soul. It is proof, therefore,
that the soul is in the heart, because from a constriction of the heart comes pain and
from a dilation, joy. Concerning human fear, which Albert allied with philosophic
wonder, Blund thought that in fear the blood rushed to the heart to console it, so that it
might not be lacking. Further, Pain comes from a constriction of the heart because the
heart is one of the principal members. And for that reason, since the soul strives to be
in the body, the soul strives that the heart emerge in the required disposition. Whence,
if a constriction happens, the soul itself is troubled, because now the heart recedes
from the owed organ. And for that reason, from a constriction of the heart comes pain
in the soul, lest the heart be lacking through the constriction. Contrarily, joy of soul
came from a dilation of the heart because the heart was naturally warm, and warmth
dilated. That heated state ensured the proper rule of the soul in the body. Blund thus
associated fear with the dissipation of natural cardiac heat.102
Although the consensus of scholastic philosophers originated the passions in the
movements of the soul, as situated in the heart, an opposing opinion was aired at Paris
among its masters of arts. That was the argument of David of Dinant, a physician, who
originated the passions in the movements of the heart. He wrote that cardiac suffering
and change caused the soul to form an affect, although cognitive intentionality was
derived from estimation.103 His interpretation of Aristotles question whether any-
thing concerning the soul may be separable from the body made it the chief problem
of medieval natural philosophy.104 David answered that neither sense nor image could
happen without a passion of the body, or without a systole and diastole of the
heart.105 His notebooks recorded that every affect happens with a fellow suffering of
the heart, nor can an affect occur in the soul without a passion of the heart. It was
debatable, he considered, whether the souls affect was caused by the hearts passion,
or the reverse. On fear he wrote that it happened from a large and cold heart, or from a
cold humor or smoke in the heart, which conditions could result in disease or even
death. It is obvious, therefore, David argued, that a passion of the heart and an af-
101
See Aleksander Birkenmajer, Le rle jou par les mdicins et les naturalistes dans la rception
dAristotle aux XIIe et XIIIe sicles, idem, tudes dhistoire des sciences et de philosophie du Moyen Age
(Wroaw 1970) 7387.
102
John Blund, Tractatus de anima 24.2, ed. Daniel A. Callus and Richard W. Hunt (London 1970)
104105.
103
Knuuttila, Emotions (n. 41 above) 2627. For Blund, see 227229.
104
Marian Kurdziaek, David von Dinant als Ausleger der aristotelischen Naturphilosophie, Die
Auseinandersetzungen an der Pariser Universitt im XIII. Jahrhundert (Berlin 1976) 192.
105
David of Dinant, [Fragmenta] in I testi di David di Dinant: Filosofia della natura e metaphysica a
confronto col pensiero antico, ed. Elena Casadei (Spoleto 2008) (P) 297.
fect can occur at the same time. Nevertheless, he decided, the passion of the heart is
the cause of the affect, which is in the soul. Further, I say that passion is an ex-
change (immutatio) of the diastole and systole of the heart. So that lo!, if the diastole
of the heart is greater and thinner, it effects joy; if on the other hand it is lesser and
thinner, it effects sadness; and if it is greater and thicker, it effects wrath. Passions
displayed in the body. Facial pallor was a manifestation of fear because the movement
of the heart was slight. Since the heart retained bodily heat interiorly, its exterior froze.
Great dryness also accompanied fear. After commenting generally on Aristotles car-
diology, David added that an exchange in the movement of the heart created a greater
or lesser heating or freezing of the spirit of the blood, or of the spirit in the heart,
which Aristotle posited as the cause of the soulful affect.106
Davids fundamental identification of prime matter with God was condemned as
heresy. A provincial synod decreed that his writings were to be surrendered to the
bishop of Paris for burning, and it threatened the excommunication of anyone who
retained them. It also prohibited the public or private reading, in the arts faculty at
Paris, of Aristotles natural philosophy or any commentaries on it. A penalty of ex-
communication applied. Nevertheless, Alberts refutation of Davids writings pre-
served, directly and indirectly, substantial portions of them.107 As orthodox, Albert
necessarily refuted Davids material God, a single substance who comprised all bodies
and souls.108 Yet, he was indebted to David for knowledge of several of Aristotles
works of natural philosophy and for the misattributed Problemata, the manuscript of
which David introduced to Latin readers. For example, Aristotles claim in De somno
et vigilia that the heart is the principle of sense and motion Albert knew directly from
David.109 The information contributed to Alberts conciliatory development of Aristo-
tles controversial origin of sensory perception in the heart.110
106
Ibid. (G) 238242, (P) 293295. See also Tristan Dagron, David de Dinant: Sur le fragment Hyle,
Mens, Deus des Quaternuli, Revue de metaphysique et de morale 4 (2003) 428. The smokiness owed to
the extinguishing of cardiac fire. Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione 2.4.9; Nemesius, De natura homi-
nis 5.
107
Gabriel Thry, Autour du dcret de 1210: David de Dinant: tude sur son panthisme matrialiste
(Le Saulchoir, Kain, Belgium 1925) 5, 7, 1315.
108
Ibid. 510, 1315, 8586, 45. For Alberts citations, see Henryk Anzulewicz, Person und Werk des
David von Dinant im literarischen Zeugnis Alberts des Grossen, Mediaevalia philosophica polonorum 34
(2001) 4647; idem, David von Dinant und die Anfnge der aristotelischen Naturphilosophie im
Lateinischen Westen, Albertus Magnus und die Anfnge der AristotelesRezeption im lateinischen Mit-
telalter: von Richardus Rufus bis zu Franciscus de Mayronis, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood,
Mechthilde Dreyer, and Marc-Aeilko Aris (Mnster 2005) 71112; Casadei, ed., David of Dinant, Testi (n.
107 above) 419. For the manuscripts, see also ibid. 3, and Elena Casadei, Il corpus dei testi attribuibili a
David di Dinant, Freiburger Zeitschrift fr Philosophie und Theologie 48 (2001) 87124; Martin Pickav,
Zur Verwendung der Schriften des Aristoteles in der Fragmenten der Quaternuli des David von Dinant,
Recherches de thologie et philosophie mdivales 64 (1997) 199221; Gudrun Vuillemin-Diem, Zum
Aristoteles latinus in den Fragmenten der Quaternuli des David von Dinant, Archives dhistoire doctrinale
et littraire du moyen ge 70 (2003) 27136.
109
Kurdziaek, David von Dinant als Ausleger (n. 106 above) 192, 185. For Alberts Metaphysica
1.4.78 (n. 1 above) 5459, see also Andreas Speer, Von Plato zu Aristoteles: Zur Prinzipienlehre bei
David von Dinant, Freiburger Zeitschrift fr Philosophie und Theologie 47 (2000) 336341. See in general
Marian Kurdziaek, LIde de lhomme chez David de Dinant, Images of Man in Ancient and Medieval
Thought: Studia Gerardo Verbeke, ed. F. Bossier et al. (Leuven 1976) 311322.
110
Steneck, Psychology of Sense Perception, (n. 5 above) 283285.
CARDIOCENTRISM
This section documents Alberts own Aristotelian cardiocentrism.111 Alberts study of
Aristotles natural philosophy on animals was focused by its cardiocentrism, which
based his philosophic wonder as happening by a systole. Philosophers and physicians
had since antiquity divided over the seat of consciousness, whether in the brain or in
the heart. Prominent among the cardiocentrists were the author of the De corde in-
cluded among the Hippocratic writings, although inauthentic; Diogenes and Praxago-
ras, as influenced by Stoic philosophers; and Aristotle.112 Aristotles examination of
bodily parts emphasized the heart as the first organ formed in the fetus or the egg of
blooded animals, and visible by even the third day. The heart was nobly centered in
the body because it was the vessel and font of the vital blood. As such, the heart was
the seat and source of sensation.113 From the importance and accessibility of the heart,
Aristotle deduced that all motions of sensation, including those produced by what is
pleasant and painful, undoubtedly begin in the heart and have their final ending
there.114
Alberts cardiocentric reasoning was: the soul is in the heart, a contraction of the
heart causes cold passions, a type of such passion is fear, a type of fear is wonder,
therefore wonder is a passion caused by a contraction of the heart. His classical
sources were eclectic. Cardiocentrism was both Aristotelian and Stoic; so was the be-
lief that the passions of the soul owed to cardiac contraction or dilation, although it
was the Stoics who canonized it. Alberts definition of cardiac wonder aligned with
Aristotles philosophy, which posited a physiology of passion in which the heart was
moved by a sensory apparition, without Stoic mental assent.115 Alberts addition of
wonder to the classical types of fear was Christian, owing to Nemesiuss anthropol-
ogy, particularly as authorized by John Damascenes theology. Albert thus blended a
christened Aristotelian wonder as the origin of philosophy with the medieval debates
about passionate causality, whether originating from the body or the soul. In Alberts
definition in Metaphysica of the origin of philosophy in wonder, the apparition of a
sensory portent effected an ignorance and suspension caused by the heart undergoing a
systole.
Alberts prior paraphrase on Aristotles De anima116 had treated the passions
cardiocentrically. All the passions of the soul communicate with the heart, albeit
variably, because they do not occur without a movement of the body, and by physical
alteration they completely change bodies or bodily parts. Passions did not occur
without local motion of bodily parts and without their physical change, without the
reception of the form or the intention of the form, commonly called change. With
such motion and alteration of the body occurred desire, gentleness, fear, confidence,
joy, love, and hatred. For in all these the heart is moved according to diastole or sys-
111
For Albertus Magnus on the heart in the body-soul relationship, see Boyle, Aquinass Natural
Heart (n. 62 above) 268, 276, 277, 28485.
112
For a history, see Harris, Heart and Vascular System (n. 59 above) 7, 14, 19, 34, 35, 38, 99, 104105,
113114, 121, 167168, 236.
113
Aristotle, De partibus animalium 665ab, 656a, 666a.
114
Aristotle, De partibus animalium 666a; Parts of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck (London 1968) 237.
115
For Aristotle, see Sorabji, Emotion and Peace, (n. 100 above) 23, 71, 25.
116
For the earlier date, see Weisheipl, Appendix 1 (n. 5 above) 568.
tole, and the body undergoes with (compatitur) the soul. Human diversity was dis-
played in the passions according to temperament. Those who were fearless in the face
of danger had much blood and a hot heart. However, In those who become fearful
because of their bodily dispositions, when no cause for their terror lay in the passions,
as happens to melancholy men, who are dry and cold, they have little spirit and little
heat in their heart. Albert thought it obvious that the passions are certain reasons and
intentions that are moved in physical matter and are changed by physical movement
and change. He cited from Aristotle bodily movement in wrath according to systole
when it was disturbed, but diastole when it sought revenge.117
Alberts comparison of wonder with fear in Metaphysica also depended on the car-
diocentrism of his De animalibus, another Aristotelian paraphrase. Although he intro-
duced Aristotles three books on animals to Latin scholars, he made their subject his
own, for his paraphrases were more than restatements or commentaries. Alberts
achievement was an empiricism beyond allegorization that legitimated for Christians
nature as science.118 De animalibus acknowledged the divergent opinions that situated
the animal principle in the heart or in the brain. Albert was a cardiocentrist, who af-
firmed Aristotles belief in the primacy and centrality of the heart in blooded ani-
mals.119 As Albert differentiated their bodily parts, The brain is the member of the
animal power; the heart, of the vital power. All the bodily members were directed to
and converged upon one member, the heart in blooded animals or its equivalent in
unblooded animals. For, The substance of the soul is one, whose act is the life of the
heart, and it exercises its powers in the other members. The essential act of the soul
was to live, and the entire soul breathed this act into the body that it animated from the
principal bodily member, the heart or its equivalent. The soul was more powerfully in
the heart than in the other members because the heart was its deputized organ. All
powers united in the substance of the soul, which was in the heart, and all powers of
the soul were directed to the heart, just as all bodily organs were connected to the
heart.120 Albert specified for the passions of the soul their cardiac origin in diastole
and systole. In the generation of the heart, by its movements first appear delightful
and saddening things through its dilation and contraction (per sui dilationem et con-
tractionem).121
PHILOSOPHY
This section documents Alberts integration of that cardiac physiology not only with
the medieval passions of the soul but also with the classical qualities and humors of
the body. It concludes this article with an interpretation of how his coordinated
117
Albertus Magnus, De anima 1.1.6 (n. 1 above) 71.13, commenting on Aristotle, De anima 403a.
118
See Kitchell and Resnick, Introduction: The Life and Works of Albert the Great, On Animals (n. 6
above) 1.42. See also Henryk Anzulewicz, Die aristotelische Biologie in der Frhwerken des Albertus
Magnus, Aristotles Animals in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Carlos Steel, Guy Guldentops,
and Pieter Beullens (Leuven 1999) 159188.
119
120
Ibid. 5.1.1, p. 2.208; 2.27, p. 1.91; 1.2.15, p. 16; 2.1.6, pp. 7374; 2.1.7. p. 75. See also Steven Bald-
ner, St. Albert the Great on the Union of the Human Soul and Body, American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 70 (1996) 111113.
121
knowledge understood the nature of a philosopher. Physics had established the ele-
ments as air, fire, earth, and water; their qualities were hot and cold, dry and wet.122
From those classifications developed the medical theory of the humorssanguine,
phlegmatic, bilious, and atrabiliouswhich constituted animal temperaments.123 Hu-
moral compositions were basic to medieval medicine from Galenism, which theory
Albert knew from various sources.124 His De anima acknowledged human diversity
according to temperament, with abundant blood and heat characterizing the coura-
geous person, but their privation in dryness and cold characterizing the fearful per-
son.125 His De animalibus typed animals with earthy, dry bloodsuch as bulls and
pigsas irritable, angry, and bold. Because of their appetite for vengeance, their
wrath moved their heat. Their heart expanded in a diastole, blowing away from itself
heat, blood, and spirit. On the contrary he characterized animals whose natural humor
was very wet and easily cooled as quite timid. That opinion followed Aristotle, for
whom timidity was a disposition of blood that was too watery because cold froze wa-
ter naturally, so that fear froze the body. Bloodless animals were more timorous than
blooded ones, and fear rendered them motionless.126 For Albert, timidity happened
because fear, due to the rush of blood, heat, and spirit to the heart, cools the body. If
the moisture of such animals congealed, they remained fearful and motionless for a
long while. Animals with that humoral mixture of cold and wet were very prone to
such an accident of fear. Alberts De animalibus did not associate such fear with car-
diac systole, as his Metaphysica would later compare them. However, his amplifica-
tion of fear indicated a physical, if not cardiac, contraction. For cold water, especially
viscous water, congeals quickly.127
Alberts account of animal passions assessed negatively the cardiac systole that he
later in Meataphysica determined the cause of philosophic wonder. De animalibus
122
G. E. R. Lloyd, The Hot and the Cold, the Dry and the Wet in Greek Philosophy, Journal of Hel-
lenic Studies 84 (1964) 92106.
123
Rudolph E. Siegel, Galens System of Physiology and Medicine: An Analysis of His Doctrines and
Observation on Bloodflow, Respiration, Humors, and Internal Diseases (Basel 1968) 209; idem, Galen on
Psychology, Psychopathology, and Function and Diseases of the Nervous System: An Analysis of His Doc-
trines, Observations, and Experiments (Basel 1973), 185197. For the medieval fortune, see Nancy Siraisi,
Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago 1990)
7980. See also Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind (n. 100 above) 253260; Knuuttila, Emotions (n. 41
above) 9398; James R. Irwin, Galen on Temperaments, Journal of General Psychology 36 (1947) 4564.
124
See Nancy Siraisi, The Medical Learning of Albertus Magnus, Albertus Magnus and the Sciences
(n. 5 above) 385, 390392. See in general Heinrich Schipperges, Das medizinisiche Denken bei Albertus
Magnus, Albertus Magnus: Doctor universalis 1280/1290, ed. Gerbert Meyer and Albert Zimmerman
(Mainz 1980) 279294; Peter Theiss, Die Wahrnehumngspsychologie und Sinnespsychologie des Albertus
Magnus: ein Modell des Sinnesund Hirnfunktion aus der Zeit des Mittelalters (Frankfurt 1997). Beyond
Avicenna, an important source of Galenic medicine was Nemesiuss De natura hominis. For Alberts syn-
thesis of Galenic humors with Aristotles philosophy, see Miguel De Asa, The Organization of Discourse
on Animals in the Thirteenth Century: Peter of Spain, Albert the Great, and the Commentaries on De ani-
malibus (PhD Diss. Notre Dame 1991, cited by William J. Wallace, Foreword, Albertus Magnus and the
Sciences (n. 5 above) xviiixix.
125
Albertus Magnus, De anima 1.2.1 (n. 1 above) 71.18; 1.2.9, p. 41.
126
Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 12.2.1 (n. 53 above) 2.838. Cf. Aristotle, De anima 403a; De parti-
bus animalium 650b. See also 651b, 698a, 667a; De motibus animalium 701b, 702a.
127
Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 12.2.1 (n. 53 above) 1.838. It repeated an error of Greek physics,
for freezing water expands. See F. M. Cornford, Was the Ionian Philosophy Scientific? Journal of Hel-
lenic Studies 62 (1942) 12; Aristotle, Meterologica 347a. See Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 12.1.3 (n.
53 above) 1.237; Keith J. Laidler, The World of Physical Chemistry (Oxford 1993) 84.
affirmed that all animals possessed natural powers, called passions, to express the
workings and accidents of their souls. They were accidentals, such as knowledge; or
customs and habits of good and evil; and fear or courage; and other habits and pas-
sions to which animals were disposed, such as concupiscence and desire, and anger.
The natural distinction between male and female established the difference in the pas-
sions among gendered animals of the same species. This fact was more obvious in
humans than in other animals, he thought, because humans more closely attained natu-
ral perfection.128 Relating the passions to the physical elements, Albert honored
Aristotles unempirical characterization of the male gender as hot.129 Albert character-
ized the female gender as retaining freezing coldness and cold compression. He
inferred that because her body does not expel from it superfluity, it is sluggish and
inactive. Indeed, The female universally is heavy of movement. On the contrary the
male was more mobile, and more confident, bold, and virile.130 Alberts gendered de-
scriptions from those elemental qualities further interpreted his wonder as the origin of
philosophy.
Wonder, as a suspension in ignorance by a cardiac contraction, was a cold passiv-
ity, like the passion of fear. To philosophize was not to wonder at but to know the
cause of a sensory perception originating in the heart as the seat of the soul. To philos-
ophize was to overcome cold passivity by hot activity, to overcome suspension in
wonder. To philosophize was to attain figuratively the male constitution that for Aris-
totle was hot, ablaze with the vital spirit. To philosophize, surpassing wonder by
knowledge, was to move physically beyond cardiac systole, contraction, to cardiac
diastole, expansion. That expansion of hot blood from the heart to the other bodily
members, principally the brain, distributed the spirituous substance in the body for its
optimal operation by the souls powers. Albert predicted that men possessed of a sim-
ple and pure intellect, with a physical constitution of refined spirit, heat, and luminous
humorundisturbed by a freezing coldwould study well and freely in divine, great,
and subtle matters.131 They would be philosophers.
Albert ingeniously coordinated his medieval knowledge about the wonder of the
heart. His own wonder about its origin of philosophy was an achievement in the medi-
eval aspiration to understand knowledge itself. For his era, his student Ulrich of Stras-
bourg lauded him by a passion. Albert was a man in every knowledge so divine that
he can fittingly be called the stupor and miracle of our age.132 As Albert taught him,
128
129
For Aristotle, see Lloyd, Hot and Cold, Dry and Wet (n. 124 above) 101104. See also Prudence
Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750 BCAD 1250 (Montreal 1985). For a defense
of Aristotle as not ideological, see Robert Mayhew, The Female in Aristotles Biology: Reason or Rationali-
zation (Chicago 2004) 4041, 92113.
130
Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 8.1.1 (n. 53 above) 1.573. For gendered differences due to
complexion, especially to heat, see Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine,
Science, and Culture (Cambridge 1995) 170177. For Galen on the physiology of the passions, see Sorabji,
Emotion and Peace (n. 100 above) 253260; Knuuttila, Emotions (n. 41 above) 9398.
131
Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.1.5 (n. 1 above) 8. See also Boyle, Aquinass Natural Heart (n. 62
above) 268.
132
Ulrich of Strasbourg, Summa de bono 4.3.9, cited by Edward A. Synan, Introduction: Albertus Mag-
nus and the Sciences, Albertus Magnus and the Sciences (n. 5 above) 5; and James A. Weisheipl, The Life
and Works of St. Albert the Great, ibid. 46, translation mine.
stupor was the type of fear evoked by a portent of uncustomary magnitude that was
literally breathtaking.

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Boyle2014 THE WONDER OF THE HEART - ALBERT THE GREAT ON THE ORIGIN OF PHILOSOPHY PDF

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THE WONDER OF THE HEART: ALBERT THE GREAT

ON THE ORIGIN OF PHILOSOPHY

Marjorie ORourke Boyle*

Viator 45 No. 2 (2014) 149172. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.103916

active discipline because on account of wonder (propter admirationem) men both

to diastole, or expansion, Aristotle termed systole, or contraction. Just as he identified

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