Nature, Nation, and Folk Culture: Johann Gottfried Herder and the Birth of Middle-Class Self-conception

Paul Richard Blum

 

Abstract:

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) praised Benjamin Franklin for his 'sense of humanity' based on history and experience combined with practical reason. In fostering this sense of humaneness in the German people, Herder investigated cultural history, particularly folk poetry. Humanity is manifest in creativity, which pervades human history and aims at societal perfection. Human nature, hence, is both individual and expressed in folk culture that is equivalent with national culture. References like the one to Franklin show that Herder pursued an anti-feudal agenda and aimed at establishing civil pride in community and geniality, which was to become middle-class ideology.  

 

Foreword

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The poem continues describing the suffering of a black slave being hanged for having resisted his fiancé to be touched. Emmett Till in the 18^th century and in reverse. Now, in case the imagery sounds familiar – here is what we all know. 

 

 

Strange Fruit

By Abel Meeropol alias Lewis Allan

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

 

Pastoral scene of the gallant south

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

 

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop

 

The similarity between Billy Holiday’s famous song and this poem by Herder is most likely not a coincidence. The comparison is shocking, and meant to be so. What I could ascertain is, that the author, the Jewish poet, and teacher of James Baldwin and secret communist, Abel Meeropol from the Bronx was personally acquainted with two famous Germans of his time:  The communist composer Kurt Weill, who set The Three Pennies Opera of Bertolt Brecht to music, and the very bourgeois writer Thomas Mann. Incidentally, I will soon refer to Thomas Mann’s brother Heinrich Mann and to Bert Brecht. But for now, it is worth mentioning that Johann Gottfried Herder was engaged in the anti-slavery movement of the late 18^th century. The poem is part of a collection under the title “Neger-Idyllen” – idyllic Negro scenes – which he included in his collection of essays Letters for the Advancement of Humanity. One page before this poem Herder observes with sarcasm: “The negro depicts the devil as white, and the Latvian does not want to enter into heaven as soon as there are Germans there.”[1] What does it mean for a German intellectual and a Lutheran theologian to decry the cruelty of slavery? As the title of the essays claim: it’s about humanity. Now, the fact that some humans depict the others as devils and hate Germans does not abolish humanity – it rather calls for a theory of humanity that goes to its roots and explains the potential of inhuman behavior.

Introduction: Herder and Benjamin Franklin

Another occasion that may make it plausible to look into Herder from an American point of view is his appreciation of Benjamin Franklin. Herder was enchanted by Franklin’s autobiography (which he regretfully read in French). He praised Franklin’s sense “for the simple and eternal laws of nature, the unfailing practical rules, and the need and interest of humanity.”[2] Humanity is, in this note, reason, education, order, industriousness, common sense; in one word, Ben Franklin is a Volksschriftsteller, a folk writer in the best possible sense, that is, a writer who encourages ordinary people to obtain all the virtues that make a good citizen in a free nation. Herder attached to this essay his own translation of Franklin’s “Standing Queries for the Junto”, a questionnaire intended to guide active citizens of the “Club for mutual Improvement”. [3] Interestingly, to some of the topics Herder added his personal comments. Industry and “noble competition” are the best antidote against despotism and slavery. Herder terms Franklin’s ideal club a “society of humanity” – thus emphasizing his main agenda: humanity is the foundation of Volk.

Isn't it strange that in old and new times the highest and most fruitful wisdom always came from the people (Volk), always with knowledge of nature ... , always accompanied by a calm, unbiased spirit, accompanied by cheerful jest, and preferably dwelling under the rose?

Herder claims that Volk is nature, spirit, cheerfulness, and poetry (as exemplified in the rose). Volk is the opposite of tyranny. Here we have Herder’s program of anthropology of the naturally societal human being that is working, creative, and happy.

 

The downfall of the bourgeoisie: Heinrich Mann and Berthold Brecht

 

Now, since I am supposed to speak about the making of the middle-class, I should offer a few definitions of bourgeoisie, class, and folk culture as they feature in my presentation. To make a long story short: the middle-class evolved as that stratum in a modern society that was neither proletarian, fighting for plain survival in more or less forced labor, nor feudal leadership as it existed in Ben Franklin’s time and all over Europe until the collapse of monarchies as the result of the First World War. I want to illustrate this effect with a negative and a positive example in German literature, namely, Heinrich Mann and Bertolt Brecht.

At the dawn of WWI, which was the twilight of the German Empire, Heinrich Mann wrote his novel Der Untertan. The title is the program: what makes an Untertan? It is the bootlicking subject to the feudal powers that be, whereby the subject believes to be loyal, but is scorned by the authority whose boots require to be licked. This subject is the middle-class bourgeois.

This species is conscious of personal agency and at the same time subject to higher law and destiny, which supports and guarantees existence. The existence of the Untertan is dialectical insofar as on the one hand, he is not a slave in any sense and rather confident of his self-supporting prowess; on the other hand he can only exist by believing in the authority that gives life. In this perspective, the citizen is free and creative, but only in serving the protector. In one scene of the novel, the leader of the liberals expressly shifts his discourse from criticizing the Emperor to accusing the Untertan: “The average person with common intelligence depends on circumstances: lackluster when things are not favorable to him, and of great self-confidence when they turn around.” This ambiguity of self-confidence and dependency is what feeds the citizen: creativity still remains in the service of the superior. Heinrich Mann uses masochistic sex-play as an allegory of such decadent bourgeois consciousness. “His eyes were full of anxiety and desire,” he says of the citizen. And after this humiliation the Untertan “crawled on all four and sought refuge behind the bronze [statue of] the Emperor.” Heinrich Mann exhorts us not to cave in to despots and domination, lest we lose our power.

Thus, the atmosphere of WWI: the ideology of the middle-class collapses under the weight of the unresolved contradiction of the ordinary man who is proud and confident of his own devices and, at the same time, conscious of his dependence on the higher order that may smash him or elevate him anytime.

With Heinrich Mann we witness the end of Herder’s endeavor: the human being is by nature endowed with creativity and as such the independent burgher, the autonomous citizen. The loyal subject is that sort of citizen who originally and naturally is free but fell for authority. The Untertan indicates the downfall of middle-class and hence becomes subject of dictatorship.

Bert Brecht fought all his life against the temptations that authority and power offered to subjects in order to quell their autonomy and creativity. That’s why he was considered a communist, and sided with communists after the Second World War. When in 1953, the workers of the communist Eastern Germany revolted, and the government expressed sincere disappointment in the working class, Brecht commented dryly: Well, then the government should elect a different people. His emphasis on the capability of Volk to understand well what is and what is not their interest is also visible in a famous statement of his: Das Volk ist nicht tümlich. Brecht separated the qualifier from the noun: volkstümlich – volks-tümlich and insisted that folklore does not exist without folk. Even more, whoever is talking to the people has to acknowledge the intelligence and creativity of them, and especially of the lower classes.

 

Herder: Human nature and folk culture

As we saw, for Herder, ‘folk’ is shorthand for human nature, and humanity is co-extensive with societal life. In an age of populism and with our recent history of abuse of concepts like citizenship, nation, and patriotism we have to listen carefully to Herder’s ideas. Populism pitches common sense against reason while implying cynically that ordinary people are stupid enough to fall for propaganda. (That was Brecht’s critique of folksiness.) Some propagandists make their audience believe that citizenship is a birthright without challenge (and, consequently, also without merit); and that nation and fatherland come first, and humanity last. This is the opposite of Herder’s teaching about humanity and folk culture. In one of his essays, poetry is the touchstone.

Poetry is most effective when it depicts true morals and living nature; if the morals are good, and it depicts nature for good aims, poetry also effects good morals and maintains them.[4]

Herder has no illusions regarding the function of poetry at his times: it’s refined, decadent, ineffective regarding morality, and plainly serves entertainment. True poetry is educational, societal, political, provided poetry is rooted in human nature. In this concept, the people coincides with morality and humanity. Herder’s paradigm is the Bible.

One of his least known and – in my view – most important books is his study on Genesis by the title Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (The most ancient document of humankind). It reads the story of creation as God’s instruction to humans on nature, creation and human nature. Herder interprets the story of creation as Unterricht unter der Morgenröte – Instruction under the Aurora. The beginning of the world is the first and foremost education of humankind about being human. Therefore, talking about Sabbath, the moment God rested in His creation work, Herder calls it the “first, great, mystic sanctum” for humans:

To rest and having accomplished – is there any more simple and dignified idea of the purpose (chased by man in everything down here), of the beatitude, relish, and bliss?  … It is the eternal maxim of humankind present in hundreds of guises, disguises, and errors. 

Eternal rest, to be sure, is not what we get down here; but the Genesis sets the standard. For the Protestant theologian, the Bible is the revelation of human nature – and therefore it is also the first and foremost poetry. In a way, whatever comes after the First Book of Moses must be weaker and inevitably decadent. But it is also the standard, the first beginning which is the goal ingrained in human existence. Therefore, the variations of humanity over time are not simply lamentable errors; rather under whatever disguise, humans are human by way of struggling.

In a rather conventional way, Herder compares the ancient, medieval, and modern times with the phases of human life: childhood, adulthood, and old age. But this is not meant in any nostalgic way. While criticizing contemporary culture he does not give in to nostalgia and a call to return to the golden age. Rather, Herder sees the epochs in a truly historical sense. Humans evolve. Humanity changes aspect like fashions. The history of humanity is the continuous mutation of the same human essence and nature. The latest fad, however, is not what counts, but the “true morals and living nature” that takes on so many guises and fashions. If we look carefully, at any moment in history we are close to the golden age: “Tree top waving in heavenly air – the golden age is near.” That is, the fulfillment of the golden age is ever present. But how can we get hold of this human nature that appears to be elusive? In poetry, and particularly in the poetry of the original folk cultures.

An exemplary case is William Shakespeare. Herder joined the group of German intellectuals who rediscovered Shakespeare and his poetic power, particularly against the classicism of the French playwrights, which was perceived to be decadent. If it is true, Herder says, that in classical Greek dramaturgy, the most important features were simplicity, folk tradition, and life, then Shakespeare recovered that for the British:

Shakespeare found in front of him and all around nothing but simplicity of native morals, actions, inclinations, and historic traditions, as they made up Greek drama … And as a genius … he generated the very same effect [as the Greeks did], that is, fear and compassion …[5]

He calls Shakespeare “Sophocles’s brother”, because to him the whole world is one body: “Sophocles was faithful to nature” through the unity of action, place, and time, while Shakespeare was faithful to nature by “trundling world events and human fate through all places and all times.”[6] The emphasis is on nature, human nature; and with a stab at the French dramatists Herder makes clear, human nature has nothing to do with fashion or courtly entertainment.

Well, Shakespeare is no folk poet – or is he? In Herder’s reading he is. For he shares the fundamental qualities of true humane art: Hoheit, Unschuld, Einfalt, Tätigkeit, und Seligkeit (Loftiness, Innocence, Simplicity, Action, and Bliss), as we saw. 

Ein Dichter so voll Hoheit, Unschuld, Einfalt, Tätigkeit, und Seligkeit des menschlichen Lebens muß … gewiß wirken und die Herzen rühren, die auch in der armen Schottischen Hütte zu leben wünschen.
A poet – so full of loftiness, innocence, simplicity, activity, and bliss of human life ... –must certainly work and touch the hearts that also would wish to live in the poor Scottish hovel.[7]

However, the poet Herder is praising here is not Shakespeare but Ossian; and his exaltation of Ossian precedes that of Shakespeare in Herder’s essays Von deutscher Art und Kunst – On German Ways and Art. Ossian’s songs, only recently discovered – as everyone believed – or, rather, recently forged by a Scottish author, were intended to be, and were publicly received, as the very original and natural form of folk poetry that expressed human nature and natural community. They are, in Herder’s words, “songs, people’s songs, songs of an uneducated sensual folk that were sung on for so long in the tradition of the fathers” (448). “The more wild, that is, the more alive, the more freely working a folk … the more wild, that is, the more alive, free, sensual, lyrically working, must be its songs.” And he adds: “alive and freely working is the actual meaning of folk.” (452). The original folksong is the more authentic the wilder it is; or in other words: the more impressive and compelling its texts and its images the folksong testifies for the national character. The folksong is the conglomerate of emotions, sounds, letters, melodies, images that all melt into one living world, a song of adages and a national song that is the eternal heritage and joy of a people. (452). “Das sind die Pfeile dieses wilden Apoll, womit er Herzen durchbohrt, und woran er Seelen und Gedächtnisse heftet!” “These are the arrows of the wild Apollo, with which he transfixes the hearts and to which he fixes souls and memories!” (452)

 As I said before, Herder is not calling for a nostalgic return to the primitive state. He expressly ridicules Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his call to return back to the state of animals. Humankind does progress by situations, education, and traditions. But: “Woe to the philosopher of humanity and morals who considers his time to be the only one and misjudges the first times to be the worst! … Each and any of them show a remarkable trait of humanity.” (456)

 

Herder: From Volk to Nation

 

Ossian and folk poetry also play a role in Herder’s theory of language. In his famous Treatise on the Origin of Language, he places the Ossian poem next to Homer and to Celtic, Caribbean, Peruvian and other epics. All these songs represent the original language of each people; they preserve their treasure of language plus history plus poetry. Humanity equals the creativity of speaking, telling stories and singing.[8]

Interesting for our present topic is the set of four laws of nature established in this work 

1.                    Erstes Naturgesetz
Der Mensch ist ein freidenkendes, tätiges Wesen, dessen Kräfte in Progression fortwürken; darum sei er ein Geschöpf der Sprache!

2.                   Zweites Naturgesetz
Der Mensch ist in seiner Bestimmung ein Geschöpf der Herde, der Gesellschaft: die Fortbildung einer Sprache wird ihm also natürlich, wesentlich, notwendig.

3.                   Drittes Naturgesetz
So wie das ganze menschliche Geschlecht unmöglich eine Herde bleiben konnte, so konnte es auch nicht eine Sprache behalten. Es wird also eine Bildung verschiedner Nationalsprachen.

4.                   Viertes Naturgesetz
So wie nach aller Wahrscheinlichkeit das menschliche Geschlecht ein progressives Ganze von einem Ursprunge in einer großen Haushaltung ausmacht, so auch die Sprachen und mit ihnen die ganze Kette der Bildung.

1. “The human being is a freely thinking, active being, whose forces operate forth progressively. Therefore he must be a creature of language!”

2. “The human being is in his destiny a creature of the herd, of society. Hence the progressive formation of a language becomes natural, essential, necessary for him.”

3. “Just as the whole human species could not possibly remain one herd, likewise it could not retain one language either. So there arises a formation of different national languages.”

4. “Just as in all probability, humankind constitutes one progressive whole with one origin in one great household, likewise all languages, and with them the whole chain of civilization [Bildung].”

 

Here we have in a nutshell the interconnection of human nature, human culture, and human society. It is a unity in diversity.

 

 

 

Herder: From Universal to Civil Virtues

Leaving the linguistic theories aside, which are the core of this writing, we notice a social and political program in these laws of nature that shape humanity. As in Ben Franklin’s social thought, humanity manifests itself in activity, industry, and communication. The diversity of cultures is the fruit of human creativity and sociability. If humankind can be meaningful, then only as a huge household. Or, the other way round, the civic household is the core and paradigm of society. For us today, accustomed to democratic procedures and a republican constitution, that appears to be quite plausible. But let us think the opposite: As the medieval rebel John Ball had said:

When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?

Herder’s theory of poetry, language, and humanity has no space for nobility, no respect for feudal institutions. Occasionally, he pretended to appreciate a king, but in very ironic manner. In his already quoted Letters for the Advancement of Humanity, he quotes at length the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, known to some philosophy students as the author of Meditations in stoic mood. Herder introduces the excerpts as paradigmatic for the understanding of human nature, its strength and gifts, its vocation and duty. “The human being has will, is capable of law; reason is law to humans.”[9] Accordingly the excerpts from the Roman Emperor’s Meditations cover liberty, housekeeping, reasonability, community, and civility. The excerpts conclude with the praise:

Wir wollen nicht sagen: “Heiliger bitte für uns; sondern: menschlicher Kaiser, sei uns ein Muster.”[10]
Let us not say: Saint, pray for us; but, rather: humane Emperor, be our model.

It is unmistakable irony when Herder advertises bourgeois virtues under the guise of learning from an Emperor. The irony was certainly a ploy to circumvent censure from Prussian authorities. But as in many thinkers of the same time, irony was an art that promoted ideas not on billboards but by making people think.

Let me conclude our tour into the far distant origins of middle-class ideology with yet another piece of irony. Again, Herder publishes excerpts, this time from a speech delivered in 1792 on the occasion of the opening of a public library. It opens with a clear endorsement of the economic importance of civil engagement, and as such, it could be repeated at any present-day humanities symposium. And again, Herder finishes with a very ambiguous punch line. He cites a poem, an epitaph, by his contemporary Ewald von Kleist. It says, in my translation:

Wit, understanding and scholarship, taste, modesty, humaneness, and honesty and integrity,

The burgher's virtues, the finest man’s gifts,

Had he who was buried here.

He lived for his town; died with quiet courage.

Winds, breeze softly where his ashes are resting.

We may say, for a Lutheran pastor, praising education and then all the middle-class virtues that even today we recognize – that was acceptable, if not even his duty. However, his appendix is not a faithful transcription of the original.

Kleist’s epitaph, however, had been addressed to a fallen soldier, a field officer. Herder silently translated all references to the military into civilian, bourgeois features:

 

 

Herder's Version of Kleist's Poem

Witz, Einsicht, Wissenschaft, Geschmack, Bescheidenheit,

Und Menschenlieb' und Redlichkeit,

Des Bürgers Tugenden, des feinsten Mannes Gaben,

Besaß Er, den man hier begraben.

Er lebte seiner Stadt; er starb mit stillem Muth.

Ihr Winde, wehet sanft, wo seine Asche ruht.

Lebe wohl, geliebte, gutmüthige Seele!

 

Valor turns into integrity, virtues are civil virtues, dying for the fatherland is outdone by life in the town, and soldierly valor evolves into quiet courage. Herder adds the line: “Faire well, beloved good-natured soul!”

The history of human nature culminates in civility and humaneness.  

 

---

[1] Johann Gottfried Herder, Herder: Philosophical Writings, ed. Michael N. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 383.

[2] Briefe Humanität I 2: Und wie ſehr haͤlt er ſich allenthalben an die einfachen, ewigen Geſetze der Natur, an die unfehlbarſten praktiſchen Regeln, aus Beduͤrfniß und Intereſſe der Menſchheit!”

[3] Benjamin Franklin, “Standing Queries for the Junto - 1:255a,” Benjamin Franklin Papers, accessed March 24, 2019, http://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp; Benjamin Franklin, “Standing Queries for the Junto, 1732,” Founders Online, accessed March 31, 2019, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0088.

[4] Über die Wirkung der Dichtkunst auf die Sitten der Völker in alten und neuen Zeiten. Werke 4, 149-214; 213: “Denn ist die Dichtkunst am wirksamsten, wenn sie wahre Sitten, lebendige Natur darstellt; sind die Sitten gut, stellet sie die lebendige Natur zu guten Zwecken dar, so kann sie auch gute Sitten wirken, und lange erhalten.”

[5] Herders Werke Aufbau 2, p. 247.

[6] Ibid. 254.

[7] “Von deutscher Art und Kunst I: Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel über Ossian und die Lieder der Alten Völker”, Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke in Zehn Bänden, vol. 2 (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993), 447.

[8] Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke in zehn Bänden, vol. 1 (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985), 791.

[9] Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke in zehn Bänden, vol. 7 (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1991), 153.

[10] Herder, 7:157.

 

Epidemic and the Individual: Renaissance Understandings of the Plague in View of Modern Experiences

Paul Richard Blum (Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore)

 [Draft for Annals of Cultural Studies / Annales des Études Culturelles ISSN 2082-8578]

Now published at http://dx.doi.org/10.18290/rkult20113-5

Abstract

Epidemics are a challenge to individualism. While we tend to think of illnesses in terms of personal suffering and choices, plagues affect communities and societies over long times. Epidemics turn the perspective to the collective, the transcendent, and the external, and fear, therapy and care become universal, rather than individual. These are the lessons we can gather from Renaissance philosophers’ theories of epidemics. Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) gave “Advice against the pestilence” by emphasizing the harmony of body with the environment (air and the planets). Girolamo Fracastoro (1477-1553) produced the first description of “Syphilis,” both scientifically and poetically. He invented the name for that contagion. He saw sexual activity as one of the typical behaviors among fellow humans. Care for one’s health requires respect for the others; and blaming others (as in ‘French disease’) is useless. Jean Fernel (1497-1558) called for strictly medical research into epidemics; at the same time, he acknowledged the insufficiency of data; hence the title of his book “The hidden causes.” Thus, he explained the irrational behavior of populations and some scholars. The task is to live with uncertainty and to contain epidemics by containing the unknown. 

Key words: Plague, Syphilis, Marsilio Ficino, Girolamo Fracastoro, Jean Fernel

 

Epidemics, the pestilence or the plague, are illnesses that affect a great number of people simultaneously and over a long time. They are distinct from other diseases for that reason that they spread out and, thus, involve all who are affected and also every related person. For instance: high blood pressure, cancer, or diabetes are widely occurring medical problems, and yet, in our time we would call them epidemics only in a metaphorical sense; for many individuals are affected, but every patient is ill in individual terms and conditions. The plague, on the contrary, affects all, even the healthy ones, and therefore requires both a different kind of treatment and special communal consideration. Several years ago, the mayor of a metropolitan area decreed reducing salt and sugar in drinks for public consumption; the intent was to fight blood pressure and overweight disorders among the citizens. But the opponents decried this action as “nanny state” policy that deprives the citizens of their right to select their food. This shows, that health is a matter of individual choices, even if these choices are made in masses and fatally.

One example regarding the general and the personal outlook of diseases in our times is a linguistic detail. When the news reports a person has taken ill or died, we do not hear that person “suffered from cancer” (or diabetes or any other illness) or died of it or battled with it; rather the formula is: “suffered from his/her cancer” (etc.). The suffering is personal and owned by the suffering individual (something Stoicism would sternly refute), whereas medically speaking that individual was affected by an external attack and a disease, which would not even be treatable, if it were just individual rather than generic. In speaking in this sort of pattern, the community denies or veils the fact that all of those medical problems are rampant and, frequently enough, outcomes of the way of life in modern Western society that prides itself of being individualistic and global at the same time. In this perspective a periodical published recently, in Spring 2020, contains some responses to the crisis of the Corona Virus (Covid-19) by academic philosophers in Germany, and the result is symptomatic: the common denominator of the responses was Angst, i.e., the anxiety felt by individuals across the societal strata and public institutions, a psychological response of individuals to the general threat.[1] Although this was explained with reference to existentialist philosophies, precisely because existentialism frames the objective as rooted in the subject, the responses failed to understand that also this present-day plague is in and of itself not a personal human condition but a global and objective biological/medical condition that affects human beings exactly because it is external rather than something ghostly we have to live with. While taking recourse to the existentialist Angst, the backdoor opens to occultist threats. Evidence for this is an observation by Carlo Ginzburg who, as we know, is well familiar with the behavior of ordinary people. He detected elements of religious, Biblical, language in the formula “herd immunity”, as it is currently used in describing strategies to overcome the Corona pandemic, which is an obscure outreach to transcendent healing (the Savior caring for His herd) that evokes the perception of the suffering of the individual person as a sacrifice for the salvation of the masses. In present sanitary politics this amounts to “herd democracy” which is just another word for totalitarianism.[2]

This particular trait of epidemies, namely, their relevance for the community at large and their universal outlook, was known to the older theorists of medicine, and it appears to return in our age when the global interconnectedness of the political, physical, and mental order and disorder re-enter the stage. What is interesting, however, is the difference in approach in our times and in the Renaissance. In the past, the challenge of the plague as a universal threat was addressed in universalizing forms of reasoning.

Pestilence is a feverish infection, infested with dire sicknesses that come with it; it is contagious and fatal for most or at least many humans at one and the same time.[3]

This is how Georg Agricola (1494-1555), best known for his works on mining, but also trained as a medical doctor, defines the plague in his treatise On the Plague in 1554. This definition still holds true for what we call epidemic or pandemic, especially regarding the contagiousness and the spread. As a scientist, Agricola considers the causes and gently dismisses the theological and the astrological origin. He excuses himself that, as a scientist, he may not contradict the explanation according to which God uses the plague as a punishment, nor does he flatly deny the influence of astral constellation. Instead of taking recourse to abstract notions, as the philosopher does (including the author of this paper), Agricola investigates the “evident causes,” which consist in the fact that “the plague comes most frequently from heavy and pestilential air, less frequently from a long lasting intemperance of the air, and more rarely from food and drink that make body fluids prone to decay and fever.” The most common cause of plague, then, is air that has been made pestilential through festering and decaying corpses and their exhalations.[4] From a theoretical point of view, Agricola is reducing the overarching causality of divine intervention and celestial influx to the state of the air, which, on the other hand, is modified by death and rottenness of the organic life. He is claiming to argue empirically, and yet he cannot forego a systematic link between the surrounding element of air and the particular state of corrosion in that which is surrounded by air. The philosopher rises to the level of the metaphysically universal, the naturalist invokes overarching realities (including divine intervention and astral powers), but the empirical doctor establishes the interaction between the concrete life and death and the physical surrounding or environment to the extent that both the environment and the bodies are affecting each other mutually.

Renaissance scientists and philosophers were not at all working in a merely theoretical realm. Ficino’s treatise is intended to be an advice for his contemporaries, and the same is true for the books by Girolamo Fracastoro and Jean Fernel, which I will briefly introduce. As much as the current Corona crisis is for us, the plague and epidemies were a daily experience and danger for them. The bubonic plague kept persistently killing people ever since the famous plague of 1348 that remains associated with Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron.[5] What we should find out in the Renaissance authors are hints as to where to search for remedies, and not just treatments for individual sick persons but for the plague as a universal phenomenon that realizes itself in medical cases.

 

Marsilio Ficino

Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), known as the most important Platonist of the Renaissance, wrote in 1481 an Advice against the Plague responding to a recent outbreak and leaning on the practical experience of his father, Diotefeci, a practicing physician.[6] He defines the plague as “a poisonous vapor born in the air, inimical of the vital spirit” (ch. 1), and he explains the poisonousness by contrasting it with theriac. The vapor of the plague is inimical not because of its single properties like warm/cold and dry/humid (the basic properties of the four elements) but due to the specific proportion that is opposite the properties of the vital spirit in a human body. This is not present-day science, so a few explanations are in order. The vital spirit is that condition that keeps an animate body alive and is both spiritual and corporeal. A residue of that knowledge is present in the modern meaning of spirits for alcohol. The key theory, here, is that the pestilential vapor is of a composition that is opposed to the life of the body. In contrast, theriac is a medicine that works because it is proportionate to the vital spirit. Theriac, a medical concoction based on the poison of vipers (which is also entailed in its name derived from Greek therion), has been known from antiquity.[7] It is the paradigmatic antidote: healing poison with poison. In his other medical work, the more theoretical De vita, Ficino explains the effectiveness of theriac as follows: this medicine does not remove nor alter the poison, rather, it strengthens the tender and changeable vital spirit immediately through an appropriate proportion to the effect that the vital spirit can become an agent itself, with the theriac as a means, and thus overcome, modify, or fend off the poison from the vital parts. This proportionate power comes from Jove and the Sun (Jupiter and Phoebus). Therefore, Ficino continues, theriac is effective thanks to the celestial power; there is a different celestial power in the herbs and spices, and there are elemental powers, which all work together to fortify the vital spirit against the disease. This cooperation of celestial power acquired purposefully with naturally stored celestial properties and elements is what renders the medication effective.[8]

That sets the scene for a practical approach to the illness in the Advice: a living organism is deranged by an external unfitting air and may be cured by a medication that derives its powers from a particular poison. Ficino clarifies that the poisonousness of the air is generic, but it does not affect every person indistinctively but only those organisms that are already out of order for having certain putrefying or boiling humors. It is the condition of the body that invites the air to become infectious. We see a clear tension between the external world and the ailing body and an interaction of fighting back against the infection by strengthening itself.

When Ficino addresses the origin of the plague (ch. 2) he explains that all pestilences grow out of the air from the nocuous constellations, specifically Mars and Saturn, which then impact people and places with unlucky astrological positions.[9] In some epidemics the poison arises from winds and evil vapors, lakes, morasses, and earthquakes. Again, not every person is affected but only those that have a disposition which is key to the effect. Generally speaking, he explains, the medical rule holds: When the matter is so disposed the agent works effectively, even if it is weak; and vice versa, a highly potent agent is effective on the matter, even if that seems not disposed for it. The medical cures that follow regard conduct of life regarding food and drink (ch. 5); then follows medication, especially theriac but also pills according to precise recipes, liquid medicine, and bloodletting (ch. 6); then follow further prescriptions and cures that pertain to the practical expertise of physicians mostly geared at strengthening and restoring the patient. The book closes with the advice to keep cups, plates, and bedsheets clean, to be cautious with cattle, horses, and other animals, and with a prayer that God may reveal remedies. Are we surprised that these cautionary measures are valid even in the pandemic that started in the early 20^th century?

Those details are important for the history of medicine as a discipline and a practice; philosophically, this approach to the epidemy shows a form of thought that is certainly typically humanistic. Ficino addresses the endangerment from the outside, identifies its natural location in the totality of the environment, and then plays it off against the human individual. The patient is not helplessly suffering but has to search the remedy in the body and behavior as it is personally owned. The pest can only affect the body if is weak or at least weaker than the external infection. Therefore, protection and cure depend on both strengthening the body and weakening and reigning in of the inimical environment. The physician and the patient consider the place of the human being in the world, they observe and appraise the external conditions, and rearrange that constellation as best they can.

 

Girolamo Fracastoro

Girolamo Fracastoro (1477-1553) responded to a very new and threatening pestilence, namely the Syphilis. He created, indeed, the name for this disease in his poem Syphilis sive de morbo gallico. The poem in three books with 1346 hexameters offers medical and historical information combined with mythological traits. It opens with the consideration that this new affliction is actually not new but only resurgent from antiquity. The disease sure appears to have been brought from the West by Spaniards so that international trade (commercium) is supposed to cause it. However, relying on observation, Fracastoro points to the enormous speed of the circulation of the disease all over Europe. Hence follows the task to investigate the “order” (ordo) in which the illness has spread. This entails that the syphilis has been latent for a long time in history and is yet the same.[10] According to astro-medicine of the time, the illness spreads through the air under the constellation of the stars, which makes it understandable that the air can also carry new diseases and new contagions for a long stretch of times.[11] On the whole, this is a historicizing view on the pestilence, based on the observation of occurrences. It is surprising, then, that the poet turns to the suffering of a single case: he knew a handsome, athletic young man who was overly confident; the ruin seized him (perhaps cursed by a girl he had rejected) with all kinds of deformities and suffering.[12] From there follow considerations about the reasons that made Italy subject to the plague, including discord that had led to the French invasion of 1508-1511.

We see Fracastoro cast the plot in medical, empirical, ethical, and political terms. In the second book, he approaches therapy (avoiding contact, certain airs, diet) and narrates the discovery of quicksilver (mercury) in mythological key. In all this he keeps reminding the readers that he is speaking as a physician and advisor, thus relativizing the poetic appearance in favor of practice.

The third book offers yet another remedy, this time one that comes from the same place as the newly discovered plague, the new world. Guaiacum, a wood, was known to provide a therapeutic potion, and the poet explains the procedures, including the astro-medical conditions. Then follows a narration of the voyage of Columbus. The arrival of the explorers turns out to be an intrusion of religious proportions that deserve the curse with a new affliction pronounced by one bird of a swarm that had been frivolously attacked with guns by the Europeans.[13] Here we also learn the mythic origin of the pestilence as a vengeance of the gods and especially Apollo. A shepherd named Syphilus had decided to honor only the king rather than the gods and enticed his fellow rustics to do the same. For inventing rites and raising altars to the king he was the first to be afflicted by what then was named Syphilis.[14] Whenever people are faced with suffering and especially when its cause and scope is hard to fathom, punishment by God is one of the possible assumptions. Fracastoro’s poetical framing offers a rationalizable explanation: humans as active beings transgress boundaries in various ways, for instance, as they intrude a foreign civilization, violate the integrity of nature, and commit sacrileges against the divine order. That, we can assume, was true not only at this particular point in history, but is one of the weaknesses of human culture.

This consideration also helps interpreting why Fracastoro is rather silent about the fact that Syphilis is a venereal disease. In book II of the poem he mentions among the cautionary measures to “distrust” the bed and slumber because these are beguiling and foster the vice; rather, one should seek pleasure in songs and dances of boys and girls. However, avoid Venus and unmanly coitus, he warns, for Venus and tender girls hate the contact (contagem).[15] Evidently, sexual activity is just one detail of human behavior, so that, even if the illness is transmitted this way, it is still to be considered in the context of the overall attitude towards fellow humans and the care for personal health. In his later scientific book On Contagions, Fracastoro confirms the message of the poem Syphilis. Here he says clearly that bodily contact alone is not infectious but only when bodies are heated up as happens during coitus; he also observes that breastfed babies can be infected. Since the disease can spread without contact, and since pestilences come and go over long periods, it has to be classified as one of the plagues that depend on many factors, including astronomical situations.[16]

If there appears to be a tension between the universal occurrence of the disease – geographically and historically – and the narrative of an origin with a name and a place and a time, the message may be that all people are naturally inclined to blame a culprit. Fracastoro expresses this when he shifts the name from “French Disease” (morbus Gallicus) to Syphilis. Instead of accusing the above-mentioned French invasion (or, for that matter, the migrants to and from the New World) he shifts the culpability to a mythical character, Syphilus, who embodies the individual perpetrator as a representative of humankind. The question “Who done it?” and the accusation that follows from it is ingrained in human nature, so that the only remedy is to care for the individual through research that is based on scientific method. In the pandemic of the 20^th century it has become obvious that blaming one particular source is nothing but scapegoating without noticeable results, while the universal crisis can only be contained through responsible behavior of each and every person. The awareness of such responsibility, however, is dependent on the insight in into the universality of the individual hardship.

 

Jean Fernel

Jean Fernel (1497-1558), a French physician, supported the theory that the syphilis had its origin in Europe from Naples and was certainly introduced in the wake of the exploration of the New World. He rejected the theory that constellations caused the dissemination and extension of the illness all over Europe, rather he confirmed the observation that sexual intercourse, breastfeeding and other immediate bodily contacts were infectious. However, he also tried to dispel various rumors by stating that the origin of an epidemic is less important than information about the mechanisms and effects of the illness, from whence to derive appropriate therapies.[17] One remark in this context strikes as relevant also in present-day experience, namely, the expectation that plagues come and disappear in a short time. That is not the reality we need to face, he says. Rather, unless God extinguishes the disease or contains human libido, it will remain a “companion” to humanity and “immortal.”[18] (Talking of sexual desire and a deadly disease, this is certainly said tongue-in-cheek.) On the other hand, people tend to rush to all sorts of unapproved medications, for instance mercury and potions. It is not the illness but the anxiety that makes people do so, not knowing that this remedy only cures the symptoms and cures can have grave side effects like shooting with canons.[19] What needs to be done is knowing the essence and nature of the disease, as stated before. Fernel was not an existentialist as the philosophers mentioned at the beginning of this essay.

Lues is only one of many illnesses studied in Fernel’s book On the Hidden Causes of Things. The major principle and first task of medicine is to know the physiology of the human body, its parts and composition, and the operations; this is only done by conceptualizing observations regardless whether one ascribes the causes to their foundation and temperaments or to divine origin.[20] That has a skeptic ring, and an empirical one; or we might call it pragmatic. This also helps learning from his discussion of the plague.

Referring to the standard explanation that pestilences are airborne, he clarifies that air as such is clean, but once polluted it scatters the illness like seeds. Turned infectious, the air becomes endemic, as he terms it, and epidemic while spreading out universally. Pollutions from heaven then produce pestilences.[21] Not as a scientific explanation but as a feature of human experience, Fernel suggests that these huge developments in nature cannot be reduced to weather phenomena and therefore plausibly lead to assume a highest general cause from the sublime.[22] Evidently, the pestilence cannot be fully explained with putrefaction. In other words, the causes of pestilences are blind, obscure, and hidden (caeca, obscura et abdita) in being directly opposed to substance and destructive for the entire genus so that they cannot come from elements or their qualities. Hence, every cause of the pestilence is blind and destructive coming from somewhere else, namely from astral constellations. Whoever denies this explanation suffers from serious stupidity; given that stars take care of the salvation and conservation, they can also provide for downfall of a life that is in bad order.[23]

We may notice in this line of argument that Fernel as a scientist focuses on the phenomena as they are reported and observable; in that sense, he is an empiricist. At the same time he notices two limits of scientific treatment of plagues: human weakness and the deficiency of data. Humans not only have unhealthy conduct of life they also are scared and take resource to irrational measures. Even the level minded ones may refer to supernatural causation. The sober scientist, on the other hand, has to acknowledge the fact that some explanations escape empirical patterns. Pestilence is blind, that is, it works without an appreciable purpose, and its origin and mechanisms remain obscure. At this point we should remember that lues and plague are only exemplary cases and applications of the main topic of the book, namely, to integrate the study of medicine in a general theory of occult causes: On the Hidden Causes of Things. The entire first book is a philosophical study of the natural world in terms of substance, form, powers, generation, and spirits. In this metaphysical and empirical approach, Fernel re-discusses the existing theory of occult qualities and forces that was standard at his time. Occult qualities had always been shorthand for natural phenomena that escape physical explanation (think of magnetism). Inevitably, they could either point to supernatural interventions by angels or demons or serve as a subterfuge verging on occultism. It was Fernel in this book who refined the theory of occult powers as a methodical delineation of the limits and possibilities of scientific explanation and its desiderata.[24] Fernel defines occult causes as follows: any admirable performance, the cause of which is hidden, concealed, and occult and cannot be proven or definitely explained needs to be related to the divine. That includes whatever does not come out of the simple properties of things and transcends human understanding. To that he adds: well, if you recognize it to be divine, it is not anymore uncertain or hidden.[25] He might have said that with a hint of irony. For, that is precisely the role of this theory of hidden powers, to contain scientific uncertainty with method to the extent that recourse to divine or spiritual intervention loses the taste of spookiness or superstition.

 

Conclusion

The plague was not an individual disease, but an epidemic. And yet, it was no different from individual diseases, as throughout Christianity personal diseases were always seen embedded in the overall picture of the nature and activity of God. If up to the 17^th century the influences of certain planets and constellations were held responsible for the spread and intensity of a disease, then this means in the first place that the fate of the individual appeared accessible to the empathy of others; likewise, the individual has to orientate and position himself/herself towards the higher powers. Therefore, it is superfluous and useless to say that we have better knowledge thanks to modern medical science, but we may say – without rejecting modern medicine and natural science – that there are different patterns of interpretation when it comes to those irregularities that are manifest in a disease. These irregularities are either individual and therefore call for personal responsibility, or they are universal if not transcendent. Common to both astrological or supernatural and empirical medical interpretation is that we are looking for a horizon of meaning and a generalizable explanation that will make action possible in the individual case. Individual action is impossible without a sense-framework. If this framework does not exist, action is erratic or absurd or irrational. The rationality underlying both past and modern interpretations of pandemics, epidemics, plagues, or any other mass disease as such is that of searching for the causes.

In the early modern attempts to explain mass infections, the cause was sought outside, i.e., through scrutinizing which external forces may have caused the disorder inside, or whether the individual case was a deviation from the general norm. It is also important to note that the comets or the air or other influences from outside were not only seen as indicators or predictions but also had a causal meaning. The star of Bethlehem was always interpreted as an indication of a world historical event with theological significance. But otherwise, astrology was understood in such a way that one can read from the movement of the stars what will happen on earth, not only as parallel signification but in a cause-effect relationship. A further distinction to think about is the one between facilitating circumstances or conditions that promote illnesses and the direct influence on the illness or even the cause of the illness, which therefore becomes comprehensible.

One question that Ficino pursued, as we saw, was why the stars do not cause the same disease for all people at the same time, when they are the universal cause of what happens in this world. For this he has the explanation that the causative power of the spheres must correspond to a readiness in the individual, i.e., a disposition to be ill or a resistance to becoming ill. In this kind of medicine the relationship of the individual has to be put into relation with the universal so that the general power can be causally effective or, on the contrary, its deranging work can be constrained by good behavior on the side of the person. It is crucial that the doctor as well as the patient have to assess the relationship between the sick and the disease-causing phenomenon, and this creates a transcendental relationship to the overall environment. The higher powers are not cruel or benevolent but demand from the individual a sort of positioning in order to be favorable or unfavorable to the individual.

This necessary relationship between the universal (the divine or astral powers) and the individual is strengthened in Fracastoro’s mythical framing of the medical problem. Medicine is a story about sick people, about healers, sinners, and salvation. Mythology and poetry offer this ideal setting of a story that incarnates the failures, the suffering, and the battles of every individual person. Insofar as mythology is the shrouded intervention of the divine, it is also a reminder that every person has to take responsibility in the face of the Creator; and where the religious dimension is not convincing, Syphilus’ and the Spaniards’ actions remind the reader that personal pride feeds at the expenses of the society. Fernel appears the most secularized among the three authors studied here. And yet, with his theory of occult causation he leaves the door open to admit that every epidemy, in devastating peoples and individuals, remains unspeakable and thus is the embodiment of the human desire for knowledge of the unconcealed truth. When we wonder that Fernel made our ignorance – the occult forces – the methodical key to the cure, we see a parallel in the puzzlement of the general public, and even some officials, today, over the meaning of statistics. Most of the debates over the right actions against the Corona virus circle around the interpretation of data, which are all as uncertain as statistics are, because they are gathered from single cases but extrapolated into probabilities and generic prospects, in which the individual feels overlooked and lost. Disorientation, as we saw, induces to aimless finger-pointing, complottismo, as the Italians say: there is always someone to blame, instead of reflecting upon one’s behavior. The face mask that is becoming an everyday attribute of considerate demeanor is emblematic for this mutuality of the self and the surrounding: one takes care of oneself by protecting the others. The most important lesson we can learn from the Renaissance scholars is the awareness that any mass disease is neither individual nor blindly fatal and not reducible to physiology but the consequence and symptom of how societies and their members interact with each other, with their surrounding nature, and with the transcendent.

 

 

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Beecher, Donald. “Ficino, Theriaca and the Stars.” In Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, edited by Michael J. B. Allen, Valery Rees, and Martin Davies, 243–56. Leiden: Brill, 2001.

Beiweis, Susanne. “Saturn und Talisman: Die heterogenen Begriffe der Magie am Beispiel von Marsilio Ficinos ‘De vita libri tres.’” Phil. Diss., Wien, 2015.

Beiweis, Susanne K. “‘Naturam Ars Imitatur’: Magical Images within Marsilio Ficino’s De Vita Libri Tres.” Verbum - Analecta Neolatina 19, no. 1–2 (2018): 155–80. http://www.verbum-analectaneolatina.hu/en_issue.php?issue=XIX/2018/1-2.

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“Covid-19 und die PhilosophInnen. Eine Übersicht über die mediale Präsenz der Philosophie.” Information Philosophie, no. 2 (2020): 16–25.

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Ficino, Marsilio. Consilio contro la pestilenzia. Edited by Enrico Musacchio. Bologna: Cappelli, 1983.

———. Three Books on Life. Edited by Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1989.

Fracastorius, Hironymus. “De contagionibus et contagiosis morbis et eorum curatione.” In Opera omnia, 77r–110v. Venetiis: Iunta, 1584.

Fracastoro, Girolamo. “Syphilis sive de morbo gallico.” In Latin poetry, translated by James Gardner, 1–85. Cambridge, Mass.: The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press, 2013.

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———. Medical Humanism and Natural Philosophy: Renaissance Debates on Matter, Life and the Soul. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

———. “The New Astral Medicine.” In A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance, edited by Brendan Dooley, 267–86. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

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———. Medicina e filosofia in Marsilio Ficino: Il Consilio contro la pestilenza. Ed. di Storia e Letteratura, 2007.

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Müller-Jahncke, Wolf-Dieter. Astrologisch-magische Theorie und Praxis in der Heilkunde der frühen Neuzeit. Sudhoffs Archiv, Beiheft 25. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1985.

Palmer, Ada. “Black Death, COVID, and Why We Keep Telling the Myth of a Renaissance Golden Age and Bad Middle Ages – Ex Urbe.” Accessed July 14, 2020. https://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-telling-the-myth-of-a-renaissance-golden-age-and-bad-middle-ages/.

Pastore, Alessandro, and Enrico Peruzzi, eds. Girolamo Fracastoro fra medicina, filosofia e scienze della natura: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi in occasione del 450. anniversario della morte, Verona-Padova 9-11 ottobre 2003. Firenze: Olschki, 2006.

 

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[1] Bärbel Frischmann, “Das Virus und die Angst,” Information Philosophie, no. 2 (2020): 8–15; “Covid-19 und die PhilosophInnen. Eine Übersicht über die mediale Präsenz der Philosophie,” Information Philosophie, no. 2 (2020): 16–25.

[2] Carlo Ginzburg, “Une démocratie grégaire?,” En attendant Nadeau (blog), July 11, 2020, https://www.en-attendant-nadeau.fr/2020/07/12/democratie-gregaire-ginzburg/.

[3] Georg Agricola, De peste libri tres (Basel: Froben, 1554), 10: “pestis est lues febrilis, diris malis, quae simul cum ea incident, infesta, contagiosa, plurimis hominibus, aut certe multis uno eodemque tempore perniciosa.” – For the purpose of this paper I will refrain from identifying and comparing sources.

[4] Agricola, 10–11.

[5] Ada Palmer, “Black Death, COVID, and Why We Keep Telling the Myth of a Renaissance Golden Age and Bad Middle Ages – Ex Urbe,” accessed July 14, 2020, https://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-telling-the-myth-of-a-renaissance-golden-age-and-bad-middle-ages/. On epidemics and medicine at the time cf. Sabine Herrmann, Tomaso Rangone: Arzt, Astrologe und Mäzen im Italien der Renaissance (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017); for a list of occurrences of the plague see George Childs Kohn, Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence, 3rd ed. (New York: Facts On File, 2008), 475 f.

[6] Marsilio Ficino, Consilio contro la pestilenzia, ed. Enrico Musacchio (Bologna: Cappelli, 1983) (the introduction by Giampaolo Moraglia scetches the history of medical advice regarding the plague); Teodoro Katinis, Medicina e filosofia in Marsilio Ficino: Il Consilio contro la pestilenza (Ed. di Storia e Letteratura, 2007), also contains the text; for practical reasons I cite the former edition. For an interpretation in English see Teodoro Katinis, “A Humanist Confronts the Plague: Ficino’s Consilio Contro La Pestilentia,” MLN 125, no. 1 (2010): 72–83.

[7] An informative but dismissive explanation of theriac is Donald Beecher, “Ficino, Theriaca and the Stars,” in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J. B. Allen, Valery Rees, and Martin Davies (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 243–56.

[8] Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, ed. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1989), bk. III 12, p. 302.

[9] On Ficino’s medical theories in connection with astrology cf. Susanne Beiweis, “Saturn und Talisman: Die heterogenen Begriffe der Magie am Beispiel von Marsilio Ficinos ‘De vita libri tres’” (Phil. Diss., Wien, 2015); Susanne K. Beiweis, “‘Naturam Ars Imitatur’: Magical Images within Marsilio Ficino’s De Vita Libri Tres,” Verbum - Analecta Neolatina 19, no. 1–2 (2018): 155–80, http://www.verbum-analectaneolatina.hu/en_issue.php?issue=XIX/2018/1-2. On Renaissance astro-medicine Wolf-Dieter Müller-Jahncke, Astrologisch-magische Theorie und Praxis in der Heilkunde der frühen Neuzeit, Sudhoffs Archiv, Beiheft 25 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1985); Hiro Hirai, “The New Astral Medicine,” in A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance, ed. Brendan Dooley (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 267–86.

[10] Girolamo Fracastoro, “Syphilis sive de morbo gallico,” in Latin poetry, trans. James Gardner (Cambridge, Mass.: The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press, 2013), bk. I, 32–131. On Fracastoro see the comprehensive volume Alessandro Pastore and Enrico Peruzzi, eds., Girolamo Fracastoro fra medicina, filosofia e scienze della natura: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi in occasione del 450. anniversario della morte, Verona-Padova 9-11 ottobre 2003 (Firenze: Olschki, 2006).

[11] Fracastoro, “Syphilis,” bk. I, 83–85; 182–185. The constellations that facilitated the spread are discussed lines 197-260.

[12] Fracastoro, bk. I, 382–420.

[13] Fracastoro, bk. III, 174–193.

[14] Fracastoro, bk. III, 310–332.

[15] Fracastoro, bk. II, 105-115: “Tu lecto ne crede, gravi ne crede sopori, his alitur vitium … Parce tamen Veneri, mollesque ante omnia vita concubitus …” It is possible that molles concubitus refers to pederasty (cf. 1 Cor 6:10), abhorred by Venus and young girls – but that is not important here. On sexual transmission of syphilis in this and other passages see Ruth Monreal, “Eppur lo dice! Come si trasmette la sifilide nel poema didattico di Girolamo Fracastoro,” Studi Umanistici Piceni 23 (2003): 179–89.

[16] Hironymus Fracastorius, “De contagionibus et contagiosis morbis et eorum curatione,” in Opera omnia (Venetiis: Iunta, 1584), 77r–110v; bk. II, cap. 2, p. 91r and 92r. Book III, chapter 10 explains therapies. On the development of Fracastoro’s theories see Virginia Iommi Echeverría, “Girolamo Fracastoro y la invención de la sífilis,” História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos 17, no. 4 (December 2010): 877–84, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702010000400002.

[17] Jean Fernel, On the Hidden Causes of Things, ed. John Henry and John M. Forrester, trans. John M. Forrester, [De abditis rerum causis, Lat.-Engl.] (Leiden: Brill, 2005), bk. II, chap. 14, p. 614. On Fernel’s theory of medicine see “Jean Fernel and His Christian Platonic Interpretation of Galen” in Hiro Hirai, Medical Humanism and Natural Philosophy: Renaissance Debates on Matter, Life and the Soul (Leiden: Brill, 2011), chap. 2. And compared with Ficino and Fracastoro: Hiro Hirai, “Ficin, Fernel et Fracastor autour du concept de semence: Aspects platoniciens de seminaria,” in Girolamo Fracastoro fra medicina, filosofia e scienze della natura: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi in occasione del 450. anniversario della morte, Verona-Padova 9-11 ottobre 2003, ed. Alessandro Pastore and Enrico Peruzzi (Firenze: Olschki, 2006), 245–60.

[18] Fernel, On the Hidden Causes of Things, 620.

[19] Fernel, 620–22.

[20] Fernel, bk. II, chap. 8, pp. 510-512: “In medicinae physiologia satis quidem mihi esse duco, si humani corporis compositionem ac structuram singularumque partium functiones et usus mente consequar: parum curans, sive illarum causas rerum primordiis et temperament, sive diviniori origini attribuas.”

[21] Fernel, bk. II, chap. 12, pp. 562–564.

[22] Fernel, bk. II, chap. 12, p. 568.

[23] Fernel, bk. II, chap. 12, p. 572.

[24] The editors of the text appear to ridicule occult qualities disregarding their role as a prelude to empiricism: Fernel, 25. Cf. Paul Richard Blum, “Qualitas occulta,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 7 (Basel: Schwabe, 1989), 1743–47.

[25] Fernel, On the Hidden Causes of Things, bk. II, chap. 8, p. 496.