The Discarded Image

Lewis begins with Cicero’s Republic, which dates from approximately 50 BCE. The Republic contains a dream sequence that many medieval writers referenced. It can be found in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess and Dante’s Paradiso. Other writers also took the idea of a protagonist’s ascent to the celestial sphere from Cicero. The concept of the “celestial sphere” predates Christianity but aligns well with Christian ideas about heaven. Cicero’s works also popularized the prohibition of suicide (referenced in Donne and Spenser), which Cicero in turn took from Plato. Medieval literature owes credit to Cicero for his conception of the Earth as cosmically insignificant in comparison to the entire universe.

Cicero’s ideas often aligned with Christian philosophy, but he primarily espoused pagan philosophies. For example, he described a heaven for statesmen, an idea that runs directly counter to Christian ideas about what heaven is and who it is for. Cicero ordered the world into five zones with a “torrid zone, uninhabitable through heat” (28) at the center, and he discouraged exploration on the assumption that it was impossible to cross the torrid zone (the equator). Reference to the Five Zones can be found in George Best’s A True Discourse. Lastly, Cicero gave medieval people the idea that the planets have influence over the fortunes of mortals, while reaffirming that the moon marked the boundary between the mortal and immortal realms.

Though Lucan’s literary style was not imitated in the medieval period, his ideas were greatly respected. Some of his characters (Amyclas, Julia, and Marcia) appear in Dante’s works as allegories for virtues or failings. Dante references Lucan (and by extension, Cicero) with his assertion that it is impossible to reach the Antipodes, the other inhabited area of the world, because of the uninhabitable torrid zone. Dante cites Lucan alongside Albertus Magnus when discussing the Antipodes, but Magnus was a scientist, not a writer. Dante here demonstrates an “astonishing failure or refusal to distinguish” (30) between science and fictional literature. 

Lucan’s primary influence on medieval literature is his expansion of the hero’s ascent into heaven. He locates the heavens directly between Aristotle’s Nature and Sky. In this view, the ghost of the hero becomes a demigod and looks down on the Earth (Nature). He is not quite in the Sky, the realm of the eternal; instead, he inhabits the space in between.

Statius, who wrote in the first century CE, was not Christian but presented a worldview that resonated with many medieval Christians. His Jupiter was “more like the God of monotheism,” and his fiends “were more like the devils” (32) of Christianity. He also personified virtues and the natural world, as occurs in many Christian allegories. His Natura, the female personification of the natural world, is of particular note to Lewis. Natura is present in medieval literature in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Chaucer’s Parlement, Deguileville’s Pèlerinage, and Bernardus Silvestris’ De Mundi Universitate. The figure of Natura is a relatively late classical invention that is usually attributed to Statius and Claudian. Earlier writers divided the natural world into many deities (the sky, the Earth, rivers, the sun, and so on). As understandings of nature became more abstract, writers collapsed these deities into one. Natura was placed in contrast with God in heaven, with late classical and medieval writings relying heavily on sexual metaphors about fertility to describe her.

Apuleius, born 125 CE, is known for writing On the God of Socrates. This text brought some of Plato’s ideas to medieval audiences, particularly Plato’s ideas about “daemons.” In Plato’s Symposium, daemons are creatures situated between the gods and humanity. Apuleius says that daemons inhabit the middle region between nature and sky: the aether. Daemons are invisible, rational, and immortal beings, and some of them were once human.

Without Apuleius, many of Plato’s ideas might have been lost to history. Apuleius wrote about Plato’s concept of the Triad, which dictates that “it is impossible that two things only should be joined together without a third” (37-38). Accordingly, this theory contends that humans never come into contact with God directly; a daemon must be the intermediary. Apuleius also described the principle of Plenitude, which suggests that just as humans inhabit the Earth and the heavenly spheres inhabit the sky, so too must the aether be inhabited by daemons. In this way, no part of the universe goes to waste.

Lewis turns from the pagan works of antiquity to what he calls “the transitional period” (39), beginning approximately in 205 CE and ending in 533 CE. This era was one of great change, as pagan ideas gradually gave way to Christian ones. Both pagan and Christian ideas had a significant influence on the Medieval Model; it is not always possible to fully separate them. Lewis cautions against assuming that pagans and Christians were wholly unlike one another. The similarities between the two groups allowed writers of the time to appeal to both audiences, as long as their work did not engage with religion explicitly. Many late pagan writers were neo-Platonists. They had a lasting impact on medieval literature that many people have failed to notice and that some Christian writers have tried to deny.

It is unclear whether Chalcidius, a fourth-century writer, was Christian or pagan. Lewis suspects that he was Christian. Chalcidius translated and commented on many of Plato’s works, suggesting that Plato’s writings on reincarnation were not to be taken literally. He affirmed principles of cosmic insignificance and understood the universe to be geocentric. In Chalcidius’s view, Apuleius was wrong about daemons; they were never human. He agrees with Apuleius about the Triad and Plenitude. Later translations of and additions to Chalcidius’s writing suggest that the universe is like a city. God sits at its center like an emperor, while angels are within the city walls, close to God, and humans are outside the city walls entirely. This view informed the Medieval Model, which may have been geocentric but was nevertheless “anthropoperipheral,” presenting humans as “creatures of the Margin” (47).

Macrobius lived during the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Lewis believes that he was a pagan, though he moved in circles where Christians and pagans interacted freely. In his commentary on Cicero’s dream sequence in the Republic, Macrobius reiterated his ideas about the Five Zones. He also brought forward Plato’s ideas about the rise and fall of civilizations. He described the formation of the universe, where the purest liquid rose to the aether and the least pure liquid “sank down and settled at the lowest point, plunged in binding and unending cold” (50). In this cosmology, Earth is merely an impure byproduct of creation. These ideas can later be seen in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Macrobius described five types of dreams, three of which were prophetic. These were somnium, visio, and oraculum; the other two were insomnium and visum. Macrobius’s treatment of Cicero’s dream sequence legitimized Cicero’s choice to blend fiction with philosophy. He also recontextualized Cicero’s system of ethics. Cicero recognized four virtues: Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, and Justice. Macrobius made these virtues more granular, claiming that each one existed on four different levels, each more transcendent than the last.

Several works originally attributed to Dionysius, a first-century Christian convert, were later found to have been written by someone else. This second writer is known therefore as “Pseudo-Dionysius,” and he probably lived in Syria in the sixth century CE. Pseudo-Dionysius wrote about hierarchies of angels, a concept that later became thoroughly integrated into mainstream Christian theology. Pseudo-Dionysius described three upper species of angels (those closest to God): Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. The middle hierarchy of angels includes Dominations, Powers, and Virtues. The third and lowest tier of angels includes Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. 

These last three are the only angels who communicate directly with humans. Pseudo-Dionysius was invested in the idea that God is unknowable; he explained that God’s voice was only ever mediated through angels. In his view, this was why even the Annunciation was carried out via an Archangel. It is hard to overstate the impact that this hierarchy had on the medieval (and even the modern) mind and literary sphere. Countless authors have referenced Pseudo-Dionysius’s ideas, including Chaucer, Pope, Milton, and Dryden.

Boethius (480-524 CE) was immensely popular, and his works were often translated into other languages. He was eventually arrested for treason, tortured, and killed. Boethius wrote one of his major works, De Consolatione Philosophiae, while in prison. Although Boethius was Christian, he wrote little about religion in this work, either because his faith wavered or because it was very solid and did not need to be discussed. His work reached “conclusions acceptable to Christianity from purely philosophical premises” (60), possibly reflecting the fact that despite his Christianity, he retained some pagan sensibilities and loyalties. 

In his writing, Boethius personifies Philosophia in much the same way that other writers personify Natura. Many later writers, including Dante, Tennyson, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, all reference his work, though these references are often obscure. One of the major concepts that Boethius popularized in the medieval mind is the idea that the perfect comes before the imperfect. This is why humans are descended from God, in contrast to modern ideas about humans evolving from less sophisticated creatures. Boethius depicted the universe as a series of concentric circles (or spheres).