assembly and finishes (Hugh #5)
With Mr. J’s supervision, joinery completed, now it’s time to varnish, paint and stencil.
And reading along in Hugh’s Didascalicon. I’m at the conclusion of book 2, where he talks about the seven mechanical arts. In books 3-6, Hugh will discuss good way to go about learning and instruction, and how to begin reading sacred scripture in an orderly way. I love that Hugh treats a good grounding in both mental and manual learning as preparation for the spiritual activity of reading scripture. There is much in scripture that makes more sense after you’ve gleaned grain by hand, watched grass grow green and wither, or seen a large bird spread her wings over the nest.
The next two blog posts will be by guests, which will be good. Then I’ll have some fun exploring Hugh’s passages on each mechanical art. That will bring us to Advent.
He divides the mechanical arts into the following:
Fabric-making Armament Commerce Agriculture
Hunting Medicine Theatrics
And he writes further,
“Of these, three pertain to external cover for nature, by which she protects herself from harms, and four to internal, by which she feeds and nourishes herself. In this division we find a likeness to the trivium and quadrivium, for the trivium is concerned with words, which are external things, and the quadrivium with concepts which are internally conceived.”
Ch. 20, Book 2, Didascalicon
As I’ve mentioned, Hugh seems to be engaged in conversations with many influences and contemporaries about the areas of arts and knowledge, and how these are best ordered and pursued. Reading Hugh, (and Taylor’s endnotes) is opening quite a world to me. Hugh talks with saints and contemporaries like Augustine, Boethius, Eriugena, William of Conches, Bernard, and others. More fun for the bookish among us!
This all started for me with inquiring into the older distinction between the liberal arts and the mechanical arts. In Hugh’s day, the liberal arts were divided into the ‘Trivium’ of rhetoric, grammar and logic, and the ‘Quadrivium’ of astronomy, music, geometry and arithmetic. The first could be called the arts of eloquence, the second the arts of wisdom. Hugh builds on other scholars in stating that the mechanical arts, by comparison, are also seven, and form a ‘likeness’ to the trivium and quadrivium. Echoes here of the human being formed in the likeness of God. Or that while humans possess the form of wisdom, God possesses the nature of wisdom. Similarly, the liberal arts contemplate the causes of things in nature and the divine, while the mechanical arts skillfully elaborate the forms already made there by uncreated powers. Mechanical Arts are to Liberal Arts as Humankind is to Divine Wisdom/God.
Not how we think today about God, the world, who we are and what we do.
As I continue to listen appreciatively to Hugh and his worldview, I wonder at how Wisdom works intimately within the mechanical arts as he understood them, and how these might relate to what we do today for work and recreation. How are body & soul-ful places like a workshop, a garden, or shop class, or activities like sewing, machine maintenance, fishing or archery venues of contemplation? How does a deeper mind repair and restore us through such places and arts? How does hand work help one along the road sometimes described as purgation, illumination and union with God? These questions explore what I know from my own experience to be true and real.
This is worth pondering in relation to Hugh’s comments on music:
The varieties of music are three: that belonging to the universe, that belonging to man, and that which is instrumental. …
…Of the music of man, some is characteristic of the body, some of the soul, and some of the bond between the two. It is characteristic of the body partly in the vegetative power by which it grows…and partly in those activities (the foremost among them are the mechanical) which belong above all to rational beings and which are good if they do not become inordinate, so that avarice or appetite are not fostered by the very things intended to relieve our weakness. …
…Music is characteristic of the soul partly in its virtues,…and partly in its powers….
…The music between the body and soul is that natural friendship by which the soul is leagued to the body, not in physical bonds, but in certain sympathetic relationships for the purpose of imparting motion and sensation to the body. Because of this friendship it is written “No man hates his own flesh.” The music consists in loving one’s flesh, but one’s spirit more; in cherishing one’s body, but not in destroying one’s virtue. …
Ch. 12 ‘On Music,’ Book 2, Didascalicon
The Glory of Angels, Gaudenzio Ferrari, c. 1471-1546