The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages by Robert Bartlett (review)

REVIEWS 265 Robert Bartlett, The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008) x + 170 pp. Theologians invented the supernatural in the mid-thirteenth century. At least, according to Robert Bartlett, that was when the word “supernatural (supernaturalis )” made a strong appearance in European theological writings and saints’ vita. He notes that the word’s growing popularity from this period on indicates the desire of Europeans to discuss the supernatural more often and more conveniently (13). However, increased usage of the word did not necessarily translate to a clearer understanding of the differences between the supernatural and its “twin,” the natural, in the Middle Ages. Robert Bartlett’s book reveals how language and discussions about the divine inevitably entailed marking the boundaries of the natural, but that the borders between these two categories were murky indeed. This book is comprised of four papers first given under the auspices of the Wiles Lectures, an historical lecture series given at the Queen’s University of Belfast. As a collection of essays, Bartlett makes no attempt at comprehensiveness on his vast subject, but seeks to provide “illuminating examples and general considerations” (x). The issue at the heart of this work is the difficulty, perhaps impossibility, of clearly delineating boundaries between the natural and the supernatural in the Middle Ages. His first three chapters trace this single theme across three categories. The first considers social practices (such as practical magic and ordeal), the second takes up various structures of the physical world (such as geography or movements of the heavens), and the third investigates medieval statements about the world’s inhabitants. Each of these themes reveals the problems of classifying such practices, knowledges, or inhabitants as either strictly natural or supernatural. The final chapter presents the life and thought of a single character, Roger Bacon, as the embodiment of the fluidity of medieval attitudes toward these two apparent discrete conceptual categories. The soft line between the divine and mundane, however, does not surprise Bartlett. He notes that the search for coherent “belief-systems” among people of the past (and present) is misdirected (2). Instead, following the work of Thomas A. Kuhn, Bartlett searches for medieval tensions and “intellectual discomforts” as surer indicators of genuine historical practice and change. Bartlett notes that commentaries on the Old Testament book Genesis provided some early medieval reflections on themes of the natural and the supernatural . The biblical accounts of creation provided opportunities for theologians , such as Peter Lombard, to ask questions about the generation of things in the natural world. They especially wondered about cause and necessity in creation . Did Eve have to be born from Adam’s rib, or could things have happened otherwise (4)? In the processes of fleshing out such queries, the Lombard distinguished different kinds of causes. Medieval theologians knew that God was ultimately the cause of all things; however, his causes were revealed to humans in different ways. Those that come from God directly have no natural intermediary steps detectable to human sight or reason. “Seminal” causes, on the other hand, are grounded in other creating things, such as humans, plants, and elements of the world. Theologians labeled divine causes “against” or “above” nature because they skipped those seminal causal steps expected of natural things, and in the process astonished observers. REVIEWS 266 Now all miracles rightly cause astonishment, but not all astonishment indicates the miraculous. According to Bartlett, this became clearer after the “translation movement” of the twelfth century, when Greek and Arabic scientific texts filtered into the West and slowly formed the foundation of the bourgeoning university arts curriculum. These texts, especially Aristotle’s libri naturals (or books on natural things), revealed otherwise unknown and unexamined natural causes to communities of academic elites. Following theses changes, academics routinely criticized ignorant people in sermons and scientific works who mistook natural for supernatural events because of their lack of knowledge of the world (22). Bartlett shows the subject matter of “the natural” seemed to grow in this period, as it was largely defined according to what it did not contain, namely divine causes. Thus the mischief of demons, the use of nature’s causes for good or ill...