Mechanical Arts (Hugh #4)

with four-fold stroke

The recent movie Ford vs Ferrari began and ended with the essential question ‘who am I?’ The character of race driver and car designer Caroll Shelby relates that this question presents itself to a person as he artfully drives at high speed, entering a kind of union with a well-tuned automobile. It is related early in the film, as Shelby confronts his a weakness in his physical heart and must give up racing. The question returns as the character of Ken Lane test drives the vehicle that would bring his death. The film conveys a sense of tough yet tender friendship between these characters, of their care for one another. It conveys them holding their ground with detroit organization men. It shows them as highly skilled drivers and lovers of the mechanical arts. And it asks a basic question we all need ways to hear and keep hearing. 

Hugh of St Victor includes what he calls the ‘mechanical arts’ in the proper areas of consideration for philosophy. Hugh reminds the reader that the word means to love wisdom. Everyone can cultivate an attitude that is more loving and considerate of the wisdom God has plaited into all things. The mechanical arts broadly find their purpose in caring for the weakness of bodies that change, including the bodies we receive. They are moved by acquaintance with the ways of nature, and with a desire to love and care for life in the body. This intention must in some way draw us closer to a God who “knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:14)

That Hugh carefully fit the mechanical arts into his division of philosophy and plan for studies made him a bit of an outlier in his time. Jerome Taylor situates Hugh amidst curriculum battles of his day. The 12th century had their version of present day debates over skills/stem/employment oriented curriculum, outcomes and ambitions, the virtues and vices of liberal arts education, or how, when and why to teach reading, writing and mathematics. Socio-economic forces and basic, even theological visions of who we are and what we are made for, factor in to these. One contemporary critic of recent emphasis on “STEM” education asks whether the appropriate maths are being taught for what people will need in their life and work, or being sorted and selected even earlier than before. He also points out how a massive increase in university trained engineers favors controllers of the tech industry by increasing the labor supply beyond what is needed, thus favoring the management’s bargaining over the cost of labor, driving workers into even more heated competition. This is a dimension of life largely viewed as laudable within the dominant meritocratic vision shared by so-called progressives and conservatives.

Hugh sees things in a way we can’t. He can help us ask some basic questions about education and economy in relation to the deeper matters of life, including who we have been made to be and what we have been made to do by our creator. Hugh offers a more whole vision of learning and work. All human activities find their origin within God’s creative Wisdom. They all can lead us into loving union with God. Math, science, theology, music, writing, speaking, the arts of working with others, and the mechanical arts relate to the wholeness implanted within us. Studying them can help in the recovery process of our the eyes of our heart.

Upcoming posts will explore at what activities Hugh calls mechanical arts. In this post, I’ll tell how I see Hugh’s move to include the mechanical arts in philo-sophy standing in the christian tradition of manual labor as healing spiritual practice.

There is a long tradition of Christian’s pursuing a balanced life of prayer, study and manual labor. It is discipline chosen as a way to draw nearer to God, to grown in wholeness and holiness, and to live in solidarity with neighbors and the poor. In more recent centuries, one might think of the catholic worker, christian communalists and anabaptist communities, along with many monastic communities.

Following the monastic thread back in time, this pattern of life and prayer found renewed expression in Hugh (1096-1141) and his community, as well as in two of his contemporaries, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) and Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179). Bernard contributed to a reform movement in Benedictine life, with growth built in part on a recovery of the role of manual labor. Hildegard’s orthodoxy, visionary writing, and contributions in theology, the sciences of her day and music nestle within the Benedictine way as well.These and others less well known embody a tradition that goes back to the early Christians of the Egyptian desert, and before them to the apostles and first christian communities.

This tradition viewed manual labor as good for body, soul, and community. It enabled a community devoted to prayer and mission to support itself. It required the early monks to interact in the local community and economy, to ‘harvest the fruits of the local land.’ In the sayings of the fathers and the writings of John Cassian, we meet the fathers and mothers weaving mats and plaiting ropes from locally gathered palms and reeds.  And it gave them steady income from which to offer alms and other concrete aid to the poor and stranger.

not the desert fathers, but they are making rope

Along with a steadying means of self support and alms for others, manual labor is a practice to combat the demon/bad thought ‘acedia.’ In her book Acedia and Me, Kathleen Norris recounts a story from Cassian about Abba Paul’s practice of manual labor to drive away acedia. Every year he wove a large supply of mats, and without anyone around to buy them, he would then burn all the mats. Every year he wove new mats, resisting the nasty the temptation to not care about God, self, others, soul and body.

John Cassian travelled and lived among the desert fathers and mothers, and passes on the rich value they place on manual labor in a life of prayer and community to many others, including St Benedict of Nursia.  The Rule of Benedict condenses and hands-on wisdom from the desert monks about much, including manual labor:

Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore the brothers should have specified periods for manual labor as well as for prayerful reading. (RB 48)

And we can carry this complex emphasis on the place and value of manual labor back to the early christians. The Apostle Paul commends the christian community at Thessalonica to “study to be quiet” or as the NRSV puts it “to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you.” (1 Thessalonians 4:11) This pastoral counsel points to the work of the hands being a means to cultivate interior quiet or stillness, ‘hesychia’ in greek.

I know many people who head to the workshop or their sewing room for quiet.

3rd or 4th century CE Coptic textile, linen

Hugh stood in this monastic stream. Hugh was not a Benedictine, but a member of a shorter lived order who lived, studied and worked at the Abbey of St Victor. The Victorines chose the Rule of St Augustine for the community. Of course, Benedict drew in part on the Rule of Augustine as well. Like the Benedictines, the spiritual father Augustine wrote about the place of manual labor as well in community life and spiritual practice. The Victorines placed more emphasis on teaching, care of souls and sacramental ministry, their base camp being church and school more than monastery and its workshop. Hugh’s concern for careful learning and study is characteristic of his order. He contemplates the range of human occupations, and sees that they have their origin both in the divine Wisdom and in the whole human soul. The merciful work of God in us makes good use of manual labor and mechanical arts to help us grow in contemplative vision and loving activity.

Today manual labor and mechanical arts belong in our spiritual life, as well as in our congregations and mission efforts. We have spiritual fathers and mothers and many examples who can guide and inspire a pattern of life that includes putting our hand to these. This work helps us to hear essential questions, and to love the Wisdom who has made all things, including who you are.