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reading to capture the meaning of the text (spiritualis) and reading to focus on the material, sonic or graphical form (corporealis, carnalis). Augustine believes that understanding does not take place where the reader overestimates the literal meaning at the expense of the figurative (intellegentia … carni subicitur sequendo litteram, 3.5.9). This does not mean that literal meaning should not be considered important, on the contrary, the path to revealing the true meaning starts with the letters, words and sentences bound in the text. Over a thousand years later, this postulation was expounded by Luther, who adhered to the sensus litteralis, believing that the spirit of the Scripture springs only from the correct and literal understanding of the text. According to Augustine’s doctrine, a language sign contains two oppositions. The first is based on the relation between spiritual (voluntas) and material (vox/scriptum) elements, while the second is dictated by the relation between the signifier (verba) and the signified (res). If the essential symmetry of these relations is broken, the text loses its ability to communicate. However, even the ambiguity of the message, obscuritas, may reflect divine will, as it restrains human pride and brings the joy of overcoming obstacles on the difficult path to understanding. This difficulty is especially due to less familiar (ignota) or ambiguous (ambigua) words. In order to understand, we must familiarize ourselves with the issue at hand (res), the circumstances of its origin (cognitio historiarum) and the author’s intention (scriptorum intentio). Interpretation-related difficulties are also the result of the contradiction between words used literally (proprie) and figuratively (figurate). While Augustine cautions against understanding figurative expressions literally, he issues far sterner warnings against understanding what is meant literally as figurative or allegorical. Augustine’s fear of distorting the meaning a text should fully convey is strongly linked to his conception of a language style, elaborated in Book 4 of On Christian Doctrine, which is based on the vertical division of style into high, middle and low. For all of these, Augustine unearthed models for imitation, imitatio, in the Bible, particularly in David’s Psalms and Paul’s Epistles. The high style is to be used whenever the preacher wants to move his audience to act or to inspire them to adopt a new stance on an issue of belief; the middle style is employed when he intends to delight and captivate, and, finally, the low style is used in instruction. Christian preachers should, therefore, master all three styles (ut doceat, ut delectat, ut flectat, 4.17.34).
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Unlike Cicero, who associated great themes with only the high style, Augustine is convinced that for a disseminator of faith, no theme is little or lowly. Whether the facts of divine law are discussed in public or in private, whether we talk to a community or to our closest friends, whether it is a monologue or a dialogue, an independent interpretation or a polemic treatise, all words used by the speaker regarding faith are equally important. This, however, ought not to imply that only the high style should be employed in such instances as these. The style does not depend on the theme, but rather on the speech’s purpose. A preacher should, therefore, choose a subdued style when he wants to teach, a moderate one when he is giving praise or blame, or a style suffused with emotions and imagery when he wants to persuade and to induce his audience to act (4.19.38). As a discourse usually features all these functions, the use of stylistic means alternates, just as the sea ebbs and flows (sicut maris aestus alternet, 4.22.51). Book 4 of Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine, for many centuries an essential handbook for preachers’ rhetoric, significantly contributed to maintaining Cicero’s authority in the Christian world. The ideas included in this work’s four books, however, continue to serve as inspiration for modern philology in language, semiotics and hermeneutics. TOPICA BOETII – RHETORIC IN THE SERVICE OF DIALECTICS
When Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (ca. 480–524 CE) held high office in the court of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, he received a letter from the king, written on the king’s behalf by his friend, and possibly pupil, Cassiodorus, which contained the following words of praise: “I have learnt that you, clothed in your great learning, are so knowledgeable in this art which men practise in customary ignorance, you have drunk from the very spring of science. For, at long distance, you so entered the schools of Athens, you so mingled in your toga among their cloaked assemblies, that you turned Greek theories into Roman teaching. For you have discovered with what deep thought speculative philosophy, in all its parts, is pondered, by what mental process practical reasoning, in all its divisions, is learnt, as you transmitted to Roman senators every wonder that the sons of Cecrops [Athenians] have given the world. For it is in your translation that Pythagoras the musician and Ptolemy the astronomer are read as Italians; that Nicomachus on arithmetic and Euclid on geometry are heard as Ausonians [Italians]; that Plato debates on metaphysics and Aristotle
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on logic in the Roman tongue; you have even rendered Archimedes the engineer to his native Sicilians in Latin dress. And all the arts and sciences which Greek eloquence has set forth through separate men, Rome has received in her native speech by your sole authorship. Your verbal splendour has given them such brightness, the elegance of your language such distinction, that anyone acquainted with both works would prefer yours to the original.”You have entered a glorious art, marked out among the noble disciplines, through the four gates of learning. Drawn in by authors’ works, you have come to know it where it sits in the inner shrine of nature, through the light of your own genius; it is your practice to understand its problems, your purpose to demonstrate its wonders.”28 It is unlikely that we will ever fully understand why Theodoricus, the otherwise equable King of the Ostrogoths, who supported Roman education, sent Boethius, a former consul and the highest officer within his administration (magister officiorum) into exile and later, according to legend, had him executed on October 23, 524. Sources concerning this tragic event, which was undoubtedly related to the king’s court in Ravenna and the powerful Emperor of Byzantium, lead only to speculation. However, the ethos of Boethius’s last work, Consolatio philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy), written in prison, continues to appeal to readers fifteen hundred years after it was written. We shall now return to the quotation from the king’s letter. It not only praises the addressee’s merit in elaborating the quadrivium disciplines, the four gates of learning, but also his role as an interpreter of and commentator on Greek learning in general. This was all the more valuable as this knowledge was somewhat unique in the western part of the country. The idea that philosophy and dialectics cannot exist without paying attention to language (rhetoric), and that rhetoric cannot function without a logical arrangement in speech, was particularly topical in the 4th and 5th centuries. These were the decisive years concerning what was to be adopted from ancient culture, what should be opposed and what should be left to slide into oblivion’s shadow. Boethius devoted his entire life to this task, suggesting a solution in several works, divided according to the expected erudition and understanding of readers. The first of these is a translation of and commentary on Plotinus’s pupil, Porphyry (2nd half of the 3rd century), entitled In Isagogen Porfyrii commenta, which contains an introduction to Aristotle’s dialectical terminology. Another text, a translation of Aristotle’s entire Organon, was followed by his
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