MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY AND THE RENAISSANCE CONCEPT OF LANDSCAPE

There is an historical connection between the modern concept of landscape as an object greater than the sum of its parts and Medieval theological/ philosophical dialogue on God and nature. The former emerged in the Renaissance as an outgrowth of discussion spanning the Classical period and Middle Ages and which was devoted to reconciling Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology.

In Jungian terms there is a cultural phylogeny that is analogous to the ontogenetic development of the psyche. The first stage is animism (spirits perceived everywhere, in trees, rivers, places, etc). The last is individuation (origin of subjectivity, differentiation of the inner “self” from the environment, use of innate forms of perception (space and time) to structure information from the external environment, and awareness of the psyche = soul = collective self = God-image).

Influenced by Aristotle, theologians in the early Middle Ages conceived the soul as uniting with the form and substance of that which was sensed in nature, including God who, for many, had a material presence. Later, theologians perceived a difference between the external world and internal vision of it. God physically separated from man and nature. Thomas Aquinas, for example, held that while God created the material world and declared it “good” as per Genesis, God’s presence was metaphorical and not corporeal; to insist otherwise would be to trivialize him.

God’s corporeal extension in nature condensed in the Eucharist. The host is literally the body of Christ (the new Adam, which means “earth”) and the body of the church. The individual receiving the host unites with God and earth. The conceptual change is seen when Opicinus de Canistris’ (1296- ca 1354) drawings of the universal church and other Medieval explorations of connections between the cosmic, earthly, and bodily are contrasted with “astrological landscapes” in illuminated manuscripts such as the Très Riches Heures. The residual is landscape as anatomical object greater than the sum of its parts, absent God's material presence.

Medieval theology may at first glance seem antithetical to modern geology but in the light of historical perspective it illuminates its origin, an idea consistent with Galileo's philosophy, "il lume naturale," meaning common sense or divine insight.