a difficult path: Hugh #8, on medicine and theatrics
Greetings on this 1st Sunday in Epiphany, the Baptism of our Lord. I’m sticking with my plan to resume a discussion of Hugh and the final two mechanical arts in his scheme:
Medicine & Theatrics
In the US the COVID-19 pandemic has taken upwards of 400,000 lives. We are a wealthy nation whose private healthcare systems are overwhelmed, the costs of which were already beyond the reach of many working people. This, along with recent intolerable national events at the Capitol, have resulted in great part due to a chaotic federal pandemic response, and powerful media interests that lack moral and political regulation. News and entertainment sow confusion, rage, and fear, and mis-direct legitimate grief and anger.
So, ‘Medicine and Theatrics’ describe some things that require attention and work in the coming weeks, months and years, in order to repair public life, serve the common good, and contribute to varieties of human health.
Now, let’s turn to Hugh’s 900 year-old voice on matters of human fragility, the medicine we need, the propriety of entertainments, and our at times difficult path of healing on earth.
Baptism of Christ in the Jordan
By Meister des Hitda-Evangeliars - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202. This version: original file cropped by User:AndreasPraefcke, 2005., PublicDomain,https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=173056
I’m back to reading and writing about Hugh of St Victor. As in past posts, I’ll try to offer you entry points into his writing, and some morsels to chew on further. For review, Hugh has ideas about human-kind’s place on earth and the meaning of arts and technology.
In the first chapter of the Didascalicon, Hugh locates humankind before God, and between heaven and earth. Images and frameworks for understanding our location have their limits, but they aid us in navigating the wilderness of the world. Many contemporary images of and frameworks for locating humans tend to be secular, sociological, agonistic and particularistic. Hugh’s image and location of human-kind is universalistic, cosmic, theological and spiritual. While holding our sin and woundedness in sight, Hugh orients us toward God and the many ways of healing that can bring peace.
Image of the Human, Book of Matthew, Echternach Gospels
By file: James Steakley; artwork: unknown - Jean Hubert et al., Europe in the Dark Ages (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969), p. 163., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6956629
Humans are made in the eternal image of God, and of the changing stuff of the universe. We are born and die, begin and end, receive and lose, like all bodies in the universe. Yet we bear a divine resemblance that destines us to live and work with our hearts eternally oriented, moment by moment in our earthly time. Life in body, soul and spirit is a fragile and risky existence, marked with humble promise and glory.
Elsewhere, Hugh describes this time of life on earth as a difficult passage. But this difficult passage also places us on a journey, a pilgrimage, a path. Along this path God promises many levels of healing. This journey can heal the ways we misdirect our love and life energy, and separate ourselves from God and neighbor. Healing happens as we work with better intention, feel and think with clearer appreciation of sane truth, and find the kind of unity and shalom within that equips us to see others and God with ever greater love and compassion. That is the way Hugh, along with the communion of saints, bids us run.
To live a human life on earth calls us to learn and grow in compassion and skill, in love and wisdom. For Hugh that includes the practice of what he calls “the mechanical arts,” what we might call arts and technology. Hugh distinguishes seven mechanical arts. Seven symbolizes several things, including the completion of creation in seven days by God, who lovingly sees it as good. Hugh roots the seven mechanical arts in the human creature, with its has notable abilities and notable needs.
Hugh has in mind such basic activities of life as travel, communication, and trade, building, shelter and protection, clothing, food collection, production and land stewardship. Hugh helps us to better see technology at a human scale, with respect to its proper cosmic, ecological, moral and spiritual purposes. Arts and technology involve the care of human needs in this life, on this earth.
And so for Hugh, I think it’s fair to say that arts and technology can be part of a spiritual path of love and wisdom. Through these, including medicine and theatrics, the 6th and 7th in Hugh’s scheme, we may grow more skillful and compassionate in the work of restoration and healing that finds its essential source in the work of Christ.
For Hugh, the mechanical art of medicine works to comfort, heal and strengthen the human being in body and mind. He even recognizes the need for mental health care and treatment. Hugh’s attention to medicine as a basic art for life on earth expresses his sense of who Christ is and what he does. In The Sacraments of the Christian Faith Hugh describes Christ as a remedy, medicine, healing for our fractured being and relationship to God.
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=351548
But what does Hugh mean by “theatrics”? I’m puzzling on that, please puzzle with me. Hugh is going against ancient writers like Tertullian who disapproved us entertainments like theater and sports. He stakes a subtle position here, seeing theater, sports, and other such entertainment as things that meet a need in our spirit and emotions. They can foster positive emotions and collective feelings, render stories imaginatively and dramatically, engage a healthy degree of competition within games of co-operative play, and even provide ease to people who just need a little levity at day’s end. Hugh might look on the moderate use of such things as modern sports, cinema, TV, and internet media as goods.
Moderate being a key qualifier for all of them. Hugh sees wisdom in providing public places for such activities, as it meets a basic need that can be both legitimate and healthy, but when unmet and unguided, or worse, misguided and exploited, leads to ‘lewd and criminal acts.’
…vel, quod magis videtur, quia necesse fuit populum aliquando ad ludendum convenire, voluerunt determinata esse loca ludendi, ne in diversoriis conventicula facientes probrosa aliqua aut facinorosa perpetrarent.
…or as is more likely, seeing that people necessarily gathered together for occasional amusement, they desired that places for such amusement might be established to forestall the people’s coming together in public houses, where they might commit lewd and criminal acts. (Didascalicon, Book 2, Ch 27. trans. Jerome Taylor)
Entertainments pursued for wrong ends can contribute to grave harm, mass delusion, and serious damage of the practices, arts and habits we need to cultivate and repair public life and the common good.
And good or bad, entertainments can distract us from the path God is calling us to see, to hear, and to follow while in this life.
early autumn, low tide, south puget sound, photo by Evan Clendenin
So much for the mechanical arts. Hugh then turns to grammar and logic to round out his scheme of the four areas of learning, those being theortical, practical, mechanical and logical. He’s concerned to help people learn, to enjoy and pursue learning according to their diverse abilities and needs.
Learning is a personal affair that requires the help, wisdom and love of many others. It requires discipline, practice and true-d intent. It requires delight and flow that engage our entire being. And it requires some kind of interior quiet. Interior quiet, peace, is a trustworthy sign by which to discerningly read the thickets, frays and confusions of the world for the path God wants each of us learn to walk.
Quiet of life-whether interior, so that the mind is not distracted with illicit desires, or exterior, so that leisure and opportunity are provided for creditable and useful studies-is in both senses important for discipline. Book 3, Ch 16, Tr. J. Taylor
I had been thinking of moving on to another writer for these posts in 2021, but I think I’ll continue on with Hugh. In chapters 5 and 6, Hugh discusses the sacred scriptures and how to prayerfully read them.
I find it a whole way of spiritual reading, a healing balance of head, hand and heart.
Initial Page, Lindisfarne Gospel, Luke the Evangelist and Physician
By Unknown but associated with Eadfrith of Lindisfarne - British Library Online Exhibit: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/illmanus/cottmanucoll/t/zoomify75396.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9511573