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3. Harmony of the Cosmos
- Fordham University Press
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3 Harmony of the Cosmos THE INTERACTIVE UNION of male and female as specular reflection of God’s love for human beings inspires and animates Franciscanism and its theology according to the matrix of the Book of Genesis.Francis founded the First and Second Orders as two manifestations of the same spirituality in men and women respectively, and the foundation of the Franciscan Third Order cemented and confirmed a theological emphasis on the union and cooperation of the two human genders as forming the most perfect image of divine love in the created world. Nudity and the dynamics of two genders in one unit are complemented by a consonant interdependence of human beings and their living environment.The recovery of the harmony governing the universe at creation, which the Book of Genesis identifies with the specific locus of Earthly Paradise, represents one of the most significant spiritual goals for Franciscanism in its beginning stages. Franciscan emphasis on nature and the relation of human beings to creation as an earthly mirror of heavenly beauty confirms the binary structure of medieval philosophy, according to which the multiplicity of the physical world bears a mysterious correspondence to the oneness of divinity .1 Nature stands as the Second Book of God’s manifestation after the Bible: natural elements can be read and interpreted as testifying to God’s presence in the world, and the harmony that governs their interrelations, their cycles,and their beauty features as God’s tangible sign and sacrament, his stamp on the universe.2 Harmony distinguishes creation at its beginning and characterizes the biblical Earthly Paradise before the human Fall. In the post-Edenic world harmony may be perceived by human beings only after they purify their perception.The music of the spheres, the melody of the universe in motion, cannot be heard by human beings because of their involvement in worldly occupations, but it is audible to the attentive listener of godly matters. In medieval philosophy the concept of harmony occupies the space of music. Music and harmony are one and the same discipline , although they are articulated in a complex structure comprising numerous ramifications. In the Middle Ages, musica is a much more comprehensive discipline than present-day music. It is subdivided into various branches, one of which is melodic acoustic sound produced by musical instruments and voice,the others being more theoretical and philosophical conceptualizations linking musica to cosmic melodic harmony and human spiritual appeasement. According to Roger Dragonetti, in the Middle Ages musica signifies a transcendental order reachable through theoretical speculation ;it is a theoria in the true,strong sense of “contemplation.”3 Musica is a combination of different elements. It refers to the balanced interaction of divinity with nature and human beings, as well as to the realm of music as acoustic, melic sound.The name musica identifies one of the disciplines of the curriculum as it was established by the tradition of learning transmitted by Martianus Capella in his De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii . Harmony,or music,is the last of the seven artes.The three disciplines of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) constitute the “allegory of words”; the four of the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and harmony) allow a perspective of the created world as paralleling the divine world and constitute an “allegory of things.”4 Music as a quadrivium subject was not simply acoustic melody and enjoyable sound;it was primarily a mathematical science based on numbers and numerical correspondences.5 But as a medieval science,harmony so defined had no aspiration to literal exactness. It hinged on philosophical speculation and elaborate hypotheses, which were intended to establish symmetries between the physical and the meta-physical realms, physis and meta-physis, the world below and divinity above.The two realms specularly reflect each other, since God originated creation after impressing his mark on it.6 The oneness of God mirrors the multiplicity of creation.The Latin term uni-versus reproduces in its etymology the returning movement of all creation toward that single goal, the unicity from which it originated .7 One divinity created the multiplicity of the cosmos, which, in its turn, moves back to it. The ascending path of learning in the quadrivium leads from geometry, through the science of numbers (arithmetic), to the application of mathematical calculations to stars, planets, and celestial spheres (astronomy ),and finally reaches the most celestial and cosmic of all sciences (harmony ), a true match for divine perfection.8 Harmony occupies the last position in...