Nature's Complaint: Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature, Part 5

RELEASED FROM HIS INTELLECTUAL DISEASE by his acceding to Nature's guidance, the poet in Alan de Lille's De Planctu Naturae sings a paean of praise to Nature in Sapphic meter.

O child of God, mother of creation, Bond of the universe and its stable link, Bright gem for those on earth, mirror for mortals, Light-bearer for the world. Peace, love, virtue, guide, power, order, law, end, way, leader, source, Life, light, splendour, beauty, form, Rule of the world: You, who by your reins guide the universe, Unite all things in a stable and harmonious bond and Wed heaven to earth in a union of peace; Who, working on the pure ideas of Nous, mould the species of all created things, Clothing matter with form and fashioning a mantle of form with your thumb: You whom heaven cherishes, air serves, Whom earth worships, water reveres; To whom, as mistress of the universe, Each and every thing pays tribute: You, who bind together day and night in their alternations, Give to day the candle of the sun, Put night's clouds to bed by the moon's bright, reflected light: You, who gild the sky with varying stars Illuming our ether's throne, fill heaven with The gems of constellations and a varied Complement of soldiers: You, who in a protean role, keep changing heaven's face with new shapes, Bestow a throng of birds on our expanse of air and control them by your law: You, at whose nod the world grows young again, The grove is frilled with foliage-curls, The land, clad in its garment of flowers, shows its pride: You, who lay to rest and raise on high the threatening sea as you cut short the course of the raging deep so that the ocean's waves may not entomb the sun's face.

O Dei proles, genitrixque rerum, Vinculum mundi, stabilisque nexus, Gemma terrenis, speculum caducis, Lucifer orbis. Pax, amor, virtus, regimen, potestas, Ordo, lex, finis, via, dux, origo, Vita, lux, splendor, species, figura Regula mundi. Quae tuis mundum moderas habenis, Cuncta concordi stabilita nodo Nectis et pacis glutino maritas coelica terris. Quae Noys plures recolens ideas Singulas rerum species monetans, Res togas formis, chlamidemque formae Pollice formas. Cui favet coelum, famulatur aer, Quam colit Tellus, veneratur unda, Cui velut mundi dominae, tributum Singula solvunt. Quae diem nocti vicibus catenans Cereum solis tribuis diei, Lucido lunae speculo soporans Nubila noctis. Quae polum stellis variis inauras, Aetheris nostri solium serenans Siderum gemmis, varioque coelum Milite complens. Quae novis coeli faciem figuris Protheans mutas aridumque vulgus Aeris nostri regione donans, Legeque stringis. Cujus ad nutum juvenescit orbis, Silva crispatur folii capillo, Et tua florum tunicata veste, Terra superbit. Quae minas ponti sepelis, et auges, Syncopans cursum pelagi furori Ne soli tractum tumulare possit Aequoris aestus.

After this hymn of praise, the poet asks Nature a series of questions, questions that Nature will later answer. Nature had her plaint, now the poet as a representative of mankind, has his own pleading. At this stage, he asks her a series of questions.

Do you in answer to my plea disclose The reason for your journey. Why do you, a stranger from heaven, Make your way to earth? Why do you offer the fit of your divinity to our lands? Why is your face bedewed with a flood of tears? What do the tears on your face portend?

Tu viae causam resera petenti, Cur petis terras, peregrina coelis? Cur tuae nostris deitatis offers Munera terris? Ora cur fletus pluvia rigantur? Quid tui vultus lacrymae prophetant?

We do not often see the results of our moral corruption to the order of Nature, or perhaps better said, we ignore them. And Nature gently chastises our poet for not knowing what he drawn her to the "common brothels of earth" (vulgaria terrenorum lupanaria). The moral corruption, specifically the homosexual activity witnessed by the poet with which the poem began, is an intrinsic disorder from the order of Nature, one that affects its workings every bit as much as if the earth deviated from its rotation. It bespeaks of carelessness on the part of the caretakers of the world, an act of injustice against justice. It ought to be no surprise to see Nature there wishing order to be be imposed, her law to be followed, her rule conformed to.

"Pasiphae" by André Masson (1896-1987)

All things, Nature explains, are under her rule. All but man is under a rule of strict compliance. Man alone has freedom and must freely or voluntarily submit to Nature's rule, the deviation from which he intrinsically finds noxious or injurious to him. Man is Nature's anomaly. He alone can deviate from Nature, even though it is noxious or injurious to him.

As all things by the law of their origin are held subject to my laws and are bound to pay me the tribute rightly imposed, practically all obey my edicts as a general rule, by bringing forward the rightful tribute in the manner appointed by law. However from this universal law man alone exempts himself by a nonconformist withdrawal. . . . Other creatures that I have equipped with lesser gifts from my bounty hold themselves bound in voluntary subjection to the ordinances of my decrees according to the rank of each's activity. Man, however, who has all but drained the entire treasury of my riches, tries to denature the natural things of nature and arms a lawless and solecistic Venus to fight against me. She how practically everything, obeying the edict I have promulgated, completely discharges the duties imposed by my law as the raison d'etre of its native condition demands.

Cum omnia lege suae originis meis legibus teneantur obnoxia, mihique debeant jus statuti vectigalis persolvere, fere omnia tributarii juris exhibitione legitima, meis edictis regulariter obsequuntur; sed ab hujus universitatis regula, solus homo anomala exceptione excluditur . . . . Caetera quibus meae gratiae humiliora munera commodavi, per suarum professionum conditionem subjectione voluntaria meorum decretorum sanctionibus alligantur; homo vero qui fere totum divitiarum mearum exhausit aerarium, naturae naturalia denaturare pertentans, in me scelestae Veneris armat injuriam. Attende, quomodo fere quaelibet juxta mei promulgationem edicti, prout ratio nativae conditionis expostulat, mei juris statuta persolvant.

Man is homo . . . naturae naturalia denaturare pertentans, a creature that can denature that which naturally pertains to his nature. It is the concomitant to his voluntary submission, the freedom of his powers, which are to be used by him in a manner compliant to Nature. Man, nevertheless, abuses these powers. So it is that: "He, stripping himself of the robe of chastity, exposes himself in unchastity for a professional male prostitute and dares to stir up the tumult of legal strife against the dignity of his queen, and, moreover, to fan the flame of civil war's rage against his mother." The planets, the sun and moon, the stars, the air and its birds, the waters and the fish they contain, the earth and its beasts, all follow Nature, and so all these cooperate in a harmonious pattern and are fruitful. None abuse sexuality in the way that man does.

Man alone turns with scorn from the modulated strains of my cithern and runs deranged to the notes of mad Orpheus' lyre. For the human race, fallen from its high estate, adopts a highly irregular (grammatical) change when it inverts the rules of Venus by introducing barbarisms in its arrangement of genders. Thus many, his sex changed by a ruleless Venus, in defiance of due order, by his arrangement changes what is a straightforward attribute of his. Abandoning in his deviation the true script of Venus, he is proved to be a sophistic pseudographer. Shunning even a resemblance traceable to the art of Dione's daughter, he falls into the defect of inverted order. While in a construction of this kind he causes my destruction, in his combination he devises a division in me.

Solus homo meae moderationis citharam aspernatur; et sub delirantis Orphei lyra delirat: humanum namque genus a sua generositate degenerans, in conjunctione generum barbarizans, venereas regulas immutando, nimis irregulari utitur metaplasmo: sicque homo a venere tiresiatus anomala, directam praedicationem in contrapositionem inordinate convertit. A Veneris igitur orthographia homo deviando recedens, sophista falsigraphus invenitur. Consequenter etiam Dioneae artis analogiam devitans, in anastrophem vitiosam degenerat.

"Pasiphae" by Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)

Man alone can corrupt his natural language, and so fall from moral orthographus or orthography to moral falsigraphus to heterography or falsigraphy. He alone is capable into falling into venereal anomaly, and so barbarizes and corrupts the sexual grammar which ought to govern the use of his sexual faculties. Man's accession to Venus's lawless ways seems almost endemic throughout his history. The abuse of the grammar of the sexual faculties is seen in historical or mythical figures: Helen defiles her marriage bed in her adulterous dalliance with Paris; Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, King of Crete, lusted after Poseidon's bull, and even had Daedalus build a shell in the form of a heifer so that she would trick the bull into having relations with her, falling into a gross bestiality and resulting in the Minotaur; Myrrha unnaturally incestuously desired her own father, Cinyras; similarly Medea killed the offspring of her own body in spiteful vengeance to her husband Jason who had abandoned her; Narcissus destroyed himself by his self-love. Of the men that fall into the hands of lawless Venus, the variety is legion:

Of those men who subscribe to Venus' procedures in grammar, some closely embrace those of masculine gender only, others, those of feminine gender. Some, indeed, as though belonging to the heteroclite class [showing more than one declension], show variations in deviation by reclining with those of female gender in Winter and those of masculine gender in Summer. There are some, who in the disputations in Venus' school of logic, in their conclusions reach a law of interchangeability of subject and predicate. There are those who take the part of the subject and cannot function as predicate. There are some who function as predicates only but have no desire to have the subject term duly submit to them. Others, disdaining to enter Venus' hall, practice a deplorable game in the vestibule of her house.

Eorum siquidem hominum qui Veneris profitentur grammaticam, alii solummodo masculinum, alii feminum, alii commune, sive promiscuum genus familiariter amplexantur: quidam vero quasi heterocliti genere, per hiemem in feminino, per aestatem in masculino genere irregulariter declinantur. Sunt qui in Veneris logica disputantes, in conclusionibus suis, subjectionis, praedicationisque legem relatione mutua sortiuntur. Sunt, qui vicem gerentes supposito, praedicari non norunt. Sunt, qui solummodo praedicantes, subjecti subjectionem legitimam non attendunt. Alii autem Diones regiam ingredi dedignantes, sub ejusdem vestibulo ludum lacrymabilem comitantur.

It is in view of the current abuses of the sexual faculties among men that Nature has traveled down from heaven to pay a visit to the poet, and which forms the central part of her complaint.

For this reason, then, did I leave the secreted abode of the kingdom in the heavens above and come down to this transitory and sinking world so that I might lodge with you, as my intimate and confidant, my plaintive lament for the accursed excesses of man, and might decide, in consultation with you, what kind of penalty should answer such an array of crimes so that conformable punishment, meting out like for like, might repay in kind the biting pain inflicted by tghe above-mentioned misdeeds.

Ideo enim a supernis coelestis regiae secretariis egrediens, ad hujus caducae terrenitatis occasum deveni, ut de exsecrabilibus hominum excessibus, tecum quasi cum familiari et secretario meo, querimoniale lamentum exponerem, tecumque decernerem, tali criminum oppositioni, qualis poenae debeat dari responsio: ut praedictorum facinorum morsibus coaequata punitio, poenae talionem remordeat.

(continued)

Nature's Complaint: Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature, Part 4

GRATIA SUPPONIT ET ELEVAT NATURAM, Grace supposes and elevates Nature. For all importance Nature has as the deputy of God, she recognizes that there is a greater reality beyond her. According to reliable testimony (fidele testimonium), the revealed Word of God, man is born by Nature, but is reborn by the power of God: homo mea actione nascitur, Dei auctoritate renascitur.

Through me he is called from non-being into being, through Him he is led from being to higher being; by me man is born for death, by Him he is reborn for life.

Per me, a non esse vocatur ad esse; per ipsum, ad melius esse perducitur. Per me enim homo procreatur ad mortem, per ipsum recreatur ad vitam.

Nature's services are "set aside," ablegatur, in this mystery of the second birth, secundae natitivatis mysterio. These mysteries are beyond Nature, beyond her ken, her spheres of knowledge. Indeed, the "entire reasoning process dealing with Nature is brought to a standstill," omnibus naturalis ratio langueat. Reason languishes. We are at that Wittgensteinian point of silence. And where Reason languishes, where the words of Nature and of Man fails us, Faith supplies the means to reach the arcane regions of mystery:

By the power of firm faith alone, pay homage to something so great and mysterious.

Sola fidei firmitate, tantae rei veneramur arcanum.

Here, again, Nature shows a dualism in man. Earlier, she had distinguished between reason and sensual desire. Now she distinguishes between the things of reason and the things of faith:

I establish truths of faith by reason, she establishes reason by the truths of faith. I know in order to believe, she believes in order to know. I assent from knowledge, she reaches knowledge by assent. It is with difficulty that I see what is visible, she in her mirror understands the incomprehensible. My intellect has difficulty in compassing what is very small, her reason compasses things immense. I walk around like a brute beast, she marches in the hidden places of heaven.

Ego ratione fidem, illa fide comparat rationem; ego scio, ut credam, illa credit ut sciat; ego consentio sciens, illa sentit consentiens; ego vix visibilia video, illa incomprehensibilia comprehendit in speculo; ego vix minima metior intellectu, illa immensa ratione metitur; ego quasi bestialiter in terra deambulo, illa vero coeli militat in secreto.

Nature then distinguishes three degrees of power, tres potestatis gradus possumus invenire, in God and Nature and Man.



God's power is superlative; Nature's power is comparative; Man's power is positive. There is no confusion of powers, though they clearly may cover the same subject: man. God's power is preeminent, Nature's relatively comparatively or relatively preeminent, man's is subordinate to both God and Nature. We are not dealing here with some sort of Spinozan pantheism. There is nothing of the sort of the Deus sive Natura of Baruch Spinoza in Alan of Lille. Alan of Lille neither deifies Nature, nor naturalizes God. There is no conflation of God and Nature.

Nature here ends her introduction, and it does the poet well, as he spews forth, vomiting as it were, the "dregs of phantasy" that had captured his mind. These are words we would want modern man to say: Omnes phantasiae reliquias quasi nauseans, stomachus mentis evomuit. The stomach of modern man's mind should vomit all the leavings, the residue, the remains of fantasy that give him la nausée de Sartre, the Sartrean nausea. Nature is just the thing that can take him away from existentialism to essentialism, from autonomy to physionomy and ultimately to theonomy. Man ought to do what the poet does once he upchucks falsehood:

I fell down at Nature's feet and marked them with the imprint of many a kiss to take the place of formal greeting. Then straightening up and standing erect, with humbly bowed head, I poured out for her, as for a divine majesty, a verbal libation of good wishes.

Salutationis vice, pedes osculorum multiplici impressione signavi. Tum me explicans erigendo, cum reverenti capitis humiliatione velut majestati divinae, ei voce viva salutis obtuli libamentum.

In such position of humility and submission, and his mind being clarified of the poisons that had made it sick, the poet asks his question of Nature: why is it that she has paid him such a extraordinary visit?

(continued)

Nature's Complaint: Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature, Part 3

NATURE’S BEAUTY WAS AFFLICTED, afflicted by sorrow, and no amount of encomia by the creation of which she was the foster mother (nutricis familiari) or deputy of the Creator God (Dei auctoris vicaria) could assuage it. The poet, unaccustomed to the purity of Nature’s ideal, swoons in delirium, a state of ecstasy between life and death. Nature, however, raised the poet up and strengthened the poet, and spoke to the poet in words archetypal, as if she spoke to him in the realm of the Ideal.

When she realized that I had been brought back to myself, she fashioned for me, by the image of a real voice, mental concepts and brought forth audibly what one might call archetypal words that had been preconceived ideally.

Quae postquam mihi me redditum intellexit, in mentali intellectu materialis vocis mihi depinxit imaginem, cum quasi archetypa verba idealiter percontexta, vocaliter produxit in actum.

Nature chastises our poet, severely yet gently, for having ignored her in his musings, thereby clouding up his mind, defrauding his reason, and banishing her from his memory. It is as if Nature informally sues the poet in a series of complaints, framed under one big cause of action Why?

Why do you force the knowledge of me to leave your memory and go abroad, you in whom my gifts proclaim me who have blessed you with the right bounteous gifts of so many favours?

Cur a tua memoria mei facis peregrinari notitiam, in quo mea munera me loquuntur, quae te tot beneficiorum praelargis beavi muneribus?

Who, acting by an established covenant as the deputy of God, the creator, have from your earliest years established the appointed course of your life . . .

Quae a tua ineunte aetate, Dei auctoris vicaria, rata dispensatione, legitimum tuae vitae ordinavi curriculum?

Who, of old brought your material body into real existence from the mixed substance of primordial matter . . .

Quae olim tui corporis materiam adulterina primordialis materiae essentia fluctuantem, in verum esse produxi?

Who, in pity for your ill-favoured appearance that was, so to speak, haranguing me continually, stamped you with the stamp of human species and with the improved dress of form brought dignity to that species when it was bereft of adornments of shape?

[Quae] cujus vultum miserata deformem, quasi ad me crebrius declamantem, humanae speciei signaculo sigillavi, eamque honestis figurarum orphanam ornamentis, melioribus formatis vestibus honestavi?

What sort of ingrate is man, that he forgets that Nature gave him his senses to protect him? That he forgets how well she him “adorned with the noble purple vestments of nature,” totius corporis materia nobilioribus naturae purpuramentis ornate, so that his body might, in a union analogous to marriage, join with the spirit in a sort of conjugal harmony? “I have blessed both parts of you,” Nature reminds man, but with a caveat:

But just as the above-mentioned marriage [between body and spirit] was solemnized by my consent, so, too, at my discretion this marital union will be annulled.

Sicut ergo praefatae nuptiae meo sunt celebratae consensu, sic pro meo arbitrio, eadem cessabit copula maritalis.

It is this marriage-like union between man’s spirit, his intellect, his reason, and his body that comes undone when Nature is not followed. And so it is that disobedience to Nature introduces a cacophonous divorce between the body and the spirit, and causes the mind to be darkened as the body pursues its unnatural loves. The poet's complaints against the sterile, homosexual love that prevailed around him, and with which the Planctus started, had already noticed the divorce between reason and desire.

Nature continues to expand on how man fits into the entirety of the cosmos, for her role with regard to man is not limited to the giving of his form, to the union between the spirit and matter, so uniquely his. She has also fitted him within the context of the greater macrocosmos. He is indeed, a microcosmos, a world in miniature. The macrocosmos is man writ large. There is an analogy between man and the cosmos. In a way, the one is in the other.

For I am the one who formed the nature of man according to the exemplar and likeness of the structure of the universe so that in him, as in a mirror of the universe itself, Nature’s lineaments might be there to see.

Ego sum illa, quae ad exemplarem mundanae machinae similitudinem, hominis exemplavi naturam; ut in eo velut in speculo, ipsius mundi scripta natura appareat.

Within himself, man experiences the same stresses as the cosmos:

For just as concord in discord, unity in plurality, harmony in disharmony, agreement in disagreement of the four elements unite the parts of the structure of the royal palace of the universe, so too, similarity in dissimilarity, equality in inequality, like in unlike, identity in diversity of four combinations bind together the house of the human body.

Sicut enim quatuor elementorum concors discordia, unica pluralitas, consonantia dissonans, consensus dissentiens, mundialis regiae structuras conciliat, sic quatuor complexionum compar disparitas, inaequalis aequalitas, deformis conformitas, divisa identitas, aedificium corporis humani compaginat.

Man mimics the retrograde motions of the planets, as he finds within himself “continual hostility between sensuousness and reason,” sensualitatis rationisque continua reperitur hostilitas. There is in him an eternal tug of war, a dualism, between reason and sense, body and spirit:

In this state [republic], then, God gives commands, the angels carries them out, man obeys. God creates man by his command, the angels by their operation carry out the work of creation, man by obedience re-creates himself. By his authority God decrees the existence of things, by their operation the angesl fashion them, man submits himself to the will of the spirits carrying out the operation. God gives orders by his magisterial authority, angels operate by ministerial administration, man obeys by the mystery of regeneration.

In hac ergo republica Deus est imperans; angelus operans, homo obtemperans. Deus operando hominem creat, angelus operando procreat; homo obtemperando se recreat. Deus rem auctoritate disponit; angelus actione componit; homo se operantis voluntati supponit. Deus imperat auctoritatis magisterio; angelus operatur actionis ministerio; homo obtemperat regenerationis mysterio.

Sheridan's translation cannot convey the tripartite verbal order between God, angels, and man. imperans, operans, obtemperans; creat, procreat; se recreat; disponit, componit, se supponit. Man is to follow God in a manner unique to himself. He has been given an active role in participation in God's eternal order, in his eternal law. This is what compliance with the natural law is all about. It is through Nature that man is created. It is through Nature that man is re-created. It is through Nature that man is regenerated. This order between God and angel and man is also found within man himself. Hujus ergo ordinatissimae reipublicae in homine resultat simulacrum.

Man's internal constitution thus mimics the universal constitution. He is a microcosmos. And this analogy goes far beyond the analogy between God and the Angelic and Human orders and the internal constitution of man regarding Wisdom/Mind and Heart [Magnaminity (magnanimitas)]/Body. "In other things, too, the form of the human body takes over the image of the universe." In aliis etiam corporis humani partibus, mundi figuratur effigies. Much of this analogy between the cosmos and the inner constitution of man is, however, shrouded in secrecy, and it goes beyond what words can express even if the concept could be grasped. This analogy between cosmos and man is veiled in secrecy so that it may not be cheapened by too vulgar a knowledge. Nature thus hides the secret things of God. But man is not to think that Nature arrogates to herself Divinity. God transcends Nature. Nature is not God, but under God.

But, lest by thus first canvassing my power, I seem to be arrogantly detracting from the power of God, I most definitely declare that I am but the humble disciple of the Master on High. For i my operations I have not the power to follow closely in the footprints of God in His operations, but with sighs of longing, so to speak, gaze on His work from afar. His operation is simple, mine is multiple; His work is complete, mine is defective; His work is the object of admiration, mine is subject to alteration. He is ungeneratable, I was generated; He is the creator, I was created; He is the creator of my work, I am the work of the Creator; He creates from nothing, I beg the material for my work from someone; He works by His own divinity, I work in His name; He, by His will alone, bids things come into existence, my work is but a sign of the work of God. You can realise that in comparison with God's power, my power is powerless; you can know that my efficiency is deficiency; you can decide that my activity is worthless.

Sed ne in hac meae potestatis praerogativa, Deo videar quasi arrogans derogare, certissime summi magistri me humilem profiteor esse discipulam. Ego enim operans, operantis Dei non valeo expresse inhaerere vestigiis, sed a longe, quasi suspirans, operantem respicio. Ejus operatio simplex, mea multiplex; ejus opus sufficiens, meum deficiens; ejus opus mirabile, meum opus mutabile. Ille innascibilis, ego nata; ille faciens, ego facta; ille mei opifex operis, ego opus opificis; ille operatur ex nihilo, ego mendico opus ex aliquo; ille suo operatur nomine, ego operor illius sub nomine; ille, rem solo nutu jubet existere, mea vero operatio nota est operationis divinae. Et ut, respectu potentiae divinae, meam potentiam impotentem esse cognoscas, meum effectum scias esse defectum, meum vigorem, vilitatem esse perpendas.

(continued)

Nature's Complaint: Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature, Part 2

NATURE IS LOVELY AS SHE APPEARS in Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature when the poet falls into a trance, a dream-like state while reciting his elegy at his fellows' rejection of Nature's guidance, especially in the area of the sexual faculties. Everywhere he sees abuse, a bad grammar and bad logic in sex, which manifests itself in a rejection of the human dignity and genius, and ultimately leads man into irrationality, a perverse sex transmutes itself into perverse thought. Corruptio optimi pessima. The poet is privileged to see Nature as she is, as she glides down from the inner palace of the impassible world. She contains the entirety of the cosmos cap-a-pie, from head to foot, galaxy to worm.

Nature

She comes from the heavens in a chariot of glass that is drawn by doves--Juno's birds. Above her was reason, appearing as a man above her head, and who gives her guidance as she steers the crystal chariot towards the entranced poet. Her beauty was too much for him:

When I was concentrating my rays of vision or, if I may say so, the troops of my eyes, to explore the glory of this beauty, my eyes, not daring to confront the splendour of such majesty and dulled by the impact of brilliance, in excessive fear, took refuge in the war-tents of my eyelids.

Ad cujus contemplandam pulchritudinem dignitatis, dum tanquam manipulos, oculorum radios conlegarem visibiles, ipsi tantae majestatis non audentes obviare decori, splendoris hebetati verberibus, nimis meticulosi ad palpebrarum contubernia refugerunt.

She is resplendent as the ideal. Nature is the ideal of which the individual things in nature are the individuation. As the ideal she possesses what appears to be a slate tablet upon which she calls up images with a clerk's stylus, which fade in and fade out, in a constant birth-and-death cycle, always striving for the ideal, yet never quite capturing it in toto.

In lateritiis vero tabulis arundinei styli ministerio, virgo varias rerum picturales sociabat imagines; pictura tamen subjacenti materiae familiariter non cohaerens, velociter evanescendo moriens, nulla imaginum post se relinquebat vestigia. Quas cum saepe suscitando puella crebro vivere faciebat, tamen in scripturae proposito, imagines perseverare non poterant.

When she neared, it was as if the visible world celebrated her coming. The firmament shone, the day turned bright, the moon became unnaturally brilliant. The air, the sea, and all the creatures they contained paid obeisance as it were, to the paradigm or exemplar of their nature. The earth and its inhabitants turned fruitful in her presence: "Thetis, too, marrying Nereus, decided to conceive a second Achilles." Thetis, etiam nuptias agens cum Nereo, Achillem alterum concipere destinabat. The naiades (water nymphs), the hamadryades (tree nymphs), and the napaeae (nymphs of the wooded vales) sprung forth from the streams, the trees, and the valleys of the earth to present the coming Nature with their various gifts, not to be outdone by the animals of the land. The world, as it were, experienced a re-birth, a new Spring, at Nature's coming. "Proserpine, disdaining the marital bed of the lord of Tartarus, returned to her home in the upper world, refusing to be cheated of a face-to-face meeting with her mistress." Proserpina, toro mariti fastidito tartarei, ad superna repatrians, suae imperatricis noluit defraudari praesentia.

Thus everything in the universe, swarming forth to pay court to the maiden, in wondrous contest toiled to win her favour.

Sic rerum universitas ad virginis fluens obsequium, miro certamine laborabat sibi virginis gratiam comparare.

Nature has as it were an aura, a halo, which shines around her and gives evidence of her supernatural origin. She bears the image, the likeness, the vestige of the God who created her, and so she shows the supernatural origins of her nature, the light, non similitudinarie radiorum repraesentans effigiem, not presenting an image of light rays by resemblance, sed eorum claritate nativa naturam praeveniens, but with that native clarity that precedes, that is, surpasses, the natural. Her head appears a virtual star-cluster, in stellare corpus caput effigiabat. Nature has a white, cruciform headband, which separates her lovely hair, which is held in place with a comb of gold that blends into her golden hair.

Her visage is the epitome of balance, of harmony, and of beauty. A lovely forehead, and brows, "starlike in their golden radiance, not thickened to bushiness nor thinned to over-sparseness, enjoyed a mean between both extremes," aureo stellata fulgore, non in silvam evagantia, nec in nimiam demissa pauperiem, inter utrumque medium obtinebant. Here eyes like stars; her nose "neither unduly small nor abnormally prominent," nec citra modum humilis, nec injuste prominens; her mouth, her lips, her teeth, her cheeks . . . all that which composed her face, both in color and in form, "showed the effects of a harmonious mixture," sentiebat temperiem. As God's creation, she is the epitome of harmony: ratio ordinis.

This harmonious balance is not limited to her countenance, and her body shares in it, as the poet in his trance describes seriatim Nature's neck, her shoulders, her breasts, her arms, her flanks, all bear the "stamp of due moderation," justae moderationis impressa sigillo, and "brought the beauty of her whole body to perfection," totius corporis speciem ad cumulum perfectionis eduxit. She is, in fine, altogether desirable in the beauty of her harmony, and in the harmony of her beauty. The poet implies that one would have to be a fool to shun her, not to desire her. And this just based upon her external features, for what realities she contained within her were sure to be more beautiful than what he saw:

Caetera vero quae thalamus secretior absentabat, meliora fides esse loquebatur.

As for the other things which an inner chamber hid from view, let a confident belief declare that they were more beautiful.

Patently apparent, Nature, though alluring, was wholly chaste in her fruitfulness. But though great her beauty, she bore the tears of sorrow, traces of the injuries she received at the hands of men who, despite her desirability, had abandoned her.

Nature was crowned with the aeviternal cosmos, with its recurring, circular paths, resplendent with jewels, representing the stars, all revolving around the fixed polar stars, and the constellations of the Zodiac: Leo, Cancer, and Gemini, with a certain pride of place, followed next in groups of threes, by Aquarius, Capricorn, and Sagittarius, Taurus, Aries, and Pisces, Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio: and the constellations without Zodiac, or part in part out, were also there. Below the Zodiac jewels of twelve organized in sets of three were other jewels, a set of seven, "forever maintaining a circular motion, in a marvellous kind of merriment busied themselves with a verisimilar dance," motum circularem perennans, miraculoso genere ludendi, choream exercebat plausibilem. Saturn was a diamond; Jupiter, an agate; Mars asterite; Venus sapphire, Mercury amethyst; the Sun a ruby, and the Moon a waxing and a waning pearl.

Nature's dress was a changing coat of many colors, multifario protecta colore, as it went from white, to red, to green. It was decorated with the birds of the air: the eagle, the hawk, the kite, the falcon, the heron, the ostrich, the swan, the peacock, the phoenix, the stork, the sparrow, the crane, the barnyard cock, "like a common man's astronomer, with his crow for a clock announces the hours," tanquam vulgaris astrologus, suae vocis horologio, horarum loquebatur discrimina. The wild cock, the horned and the night owl, the crow, the magpie, the jackdaw, the dove, the raven, the partridge, the duck and the goose, the turtle-dove, the parrot, the quail, the woodpecker, the meadow-pipit, the cuckoo, the swallow, the nightingale, the lark, all with their unique traits and features, and finally the bat, "a hermaphrodite among birds, held a zero rating among them," vespertilio avis hermaphroditica, cifri locum inter aviculas obtinebat.

Haec animalia, quamvis illic allegorice viverent, ibi tamen esse videbantur ad litteram.

These living things, although they had there a kind of figurative existence, nevertheless seemed to live there in the literal sense.

Nature also in a lovely shroud of muslin, that faded from white to a sea-like green, and contained in the middle portion, images of the creatures of the sea: the whale, the seal, the sturgeon, the herring, the plaice, the mullet, the trout, salmon, and dolphin, the sirenian. And lower down on this robe were the fresh water fish: pike, barbel, shad, lamprey, eel, perch, chub . . .

These figures, exquisitely imprinted on the mantle like a painting, seemed by a miracle to be swimming.

Hae sculpturae, tropo picturae, eleganter in pallio figuratae, natare videbantur pro miraculo.

Nature was clothed in tunic, embroidered with the beasts and creatures of the earth, above all man.

On the first section of this garment, man, divesting himself of the indolence of self-indulgence, tried to run a straight course through the secrets of the heavens with reason as charioteer.

In hujus vestis parte primaria, homo sensualitatis deponens segnitiem, ducta ratiocinationis aurigatione, coeli penetrabat arcana.

But this part of Nature's tunic was rent, torn, showing the effects of contumely and injury. Only man, it seems, can injure and offend Nature, as the other parts of this robe, which bore the other animals, was not so torn. "In these a kind of magic picture made land animals come alive," in quibus quaedam picturae incantatio, terrestria animalia vivere faciebat.

So the elephant, the camel, the buffalo, the bull, oxen, the horse, the ass, "offending our ears with his idle braying, as though a musician by antiphrasis, introduced barbarisms into music," clamoribus horridis aures fastidiens, quasi per antiphrasim organizans, barbarismum faciebat in musica. There also the unicorn, the lion, the bear, the wolf, the panther, the tiger, the wild ass and the tame, the boar, the dog, the stag and doe, the goat, the ram and his harem of ewes, the fox, the hare and his cousin the rabbit, the squirrel, beaver, lynx, marten, and sable.

Though hid from his sight, the poet surmised that the undergarments and shoes contained the vivid imagery of the herbs and trees, with their four-fold colors corresponding to the four-fold seasons, and the flowers: the rose, the thyme, the Narcissus, the columbine, the violet, the arbutus, the basilisca . . .

Hae sunt veris opes, et sua pallia, Telluris species, et sua sidera, Quae pictura suis artibus edidit, Flores effigians arte sophistica. His florum tunicis prata virentibus Veris nobilitat gratia prodigi. Haec byssum tribuunt, illaque purpuram; Quae texit sapiens dextra favonii.

These are the riches of Spring and her barb, The beauty of earth and its stars; These the picture brought forth by its powers, Giving an image of flowers by a skillfully deceptive art. Spring, lavish in favours, ennobles the meadows With these garments of flowers in bloom. These meadows give linen, these others give purple When the zephyr's right hand has clothed them.

And it was then that Nature began to speak . . .

Nature's Complaint: Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature, Part 1

ALAN DE LILLE (ca. 1116-ca. 1202 A.D.) will be the focus of our next several postings. Specifically, we will spend some time on his famous De Planctu Naturae or Plaint of Nature. Alain (or Alan) de Lille (Alanus ab Insulis) was born in Lille in Flanders sometime before 1128. Though not much is known of his personal life, Alan was a highly-reputed theologian who taught in the famous Paris schools, and attended the Third Lateran Council of 1179, an ecumenical council that repaired the breach in the Church caused by the schismatic election of antipope Callistus III. The Council, called by Pope Alexander III, instituted legal reforms to prevent such an incident from happening again. It also addressed issues arising out of the heretical Waldensians and Cathars. From Paris, Alan eventually lived and taught in Montpellier (which is why he is sometimes called Alanus de Montepessulano). Towards the end of his life he retired to the Cistercians in Citeaux, and it was there that he died sometime in between 1202-03. His epitaph reads, in part:

Short life brought Alan to a little tomb.
He knew the two,
He knew the seven,
He knew all that could be known . . . .

Sheridan,* 2-3. Alan of Lille's Plaint of Nature is a genre of literature called Menippean satire (from the Greek Cynic and satirist Menippus or Menippos of Gadara fl. 225 B.C.), and it is a combination of both prose and verse. The main argument of the Plaint is the writer's complaint of his contemporaries' contempt for the natural law. He is particularly upset at the disrespect for nature shown by homosexuality, which he sees rampant in society, and which he sees as symbolic of the intellectual and spiritual infertility that has also infected his society. As if seized by a trance, the writer enters a dream-like state, and a beautiful maiden,--a personification of Nature--visits him. She is beautiful, but she shows signs of great grief, and she shares with the dreaming poet the reasons why. Her garment is rent because man has appropriated to himself parts of her that he has no right to. Everywhere man acts against Nature, and, as a result, justice has disappeared, and crime and fraud everywhere abound. There is no more law, and man, from the dignity of rationality where Nature has placed him, has reached the nadir of irrationality. Though the vice of lust is everywhere prevalent, by disregarding Nature man also suffers from other vices, which Nature discusses with the poet. She shares with the poet some remedies to such vices in the forms of maxims. Then, during the course of the dream, comes Hymenaeus, representative of Christian marriage, and following close behind him, the virtues: Chastity, Temperance, Generosity, and Humility. Towards the end of the dream, Genius appears, and Truth, the daughter of Nature and Genius, shows herself opposite Falsehood, who is bald, and exceedingly ugly and rattily dressed. Eventually, the poet awakes from his trance-like state, and Alan of Lille's Mennipean ends.

Menippus by Diego Velázquez

The De Planctu Naturae begins with verse, as the poet expresses his sorrow at how Nature is disregarded by the mores of his time, most notably in the disregard of Nature in the area of sexual behavior. It is a plaint that well accords with the sentiments of any modern man who views the deviancy advanced as normative ushered by the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s: the rampant use of artificial contraception, of serial polygamy, of premarital sex and concubinage, of homosexuality, of abortion . . . some of which perversions are now classified as Constitutional in dignity, have now the protection of law, and are touted as being fundamental moral rights. Vices that cry out to heaven with a vengeance (cf. Gen. 18:20-21) are fundamental moral rights? O tempora! O mores!

In lacrymas risus, in fletum gaudia verto: In planctum plausus, in lacrymosa jocos, Cum sua naturam video secreta silere, Cum Veneris monstro naufraga turba perit. Cum Venus in Venerem pugnans, illos facit illas: Cumque suos magica devirat arte viros.

I turn from laughter to tears, from joy to grief, from merriment to lament, from jests to wailing, when I see that the essential decrees of Nature are denied hearing, while large numbers are shipwrecked and lost because of a Venus turned monster, when Venus wars with Venus and changes "hes" into "shes" and with her witchcraft unmans man.

"Hes" turned into "shes," and "shes" into "hes." If there was gender and sexual confusion in Alan's day, there is a fortiori such confusion in ours. And where there is gender and sexual confusion, there is sure to be intellectual confusion. Venery and the intellectual and the spiritual life do not mix, for her witchcraft unmans man, devirat arte viros. Man was meant for God, and an unmanned man, that is a man who tends towards another man's anus, is a man that does not tend toward his proper end.

Heu! quo naturae secessit gratia? morum Forma, pudicitiae norma, pudoris amor! Flet natura, silent mores, proscribitur omnis Orphanus a veteri nobilitate pudor.

Alas! Where has Nature with her fair form betaken herself? Where have the pattern of morals, the norm of chastity, the love of modesty gone? Nature weeps, moral laws get no hearing, modesty, totally dispossessed of her ancient high estate, is sent into exile.

What is the cause of the poet's lamentations? "The active sex shudders in disgrace as it sees itself degenerate into the passive sex." Activi generis sexus, se turpiter horret, sic in passivum degenerare genus. Homosexuality runs rampant, and it butchers nature as much as a barbarian butchers grammar. "Becoming a barbarian in grammar, he disclaims the manhood given him by nature." Se negat esse virum, naturae factus in arte Barbarus. A vice that lapses into natural fallacy, a natural illogic, a barren, futile, senseless, vain execrable act, that replaces man's natural desire for woman. "No longer does the Phrygian adulterer [i.e., Paris] chase the daughter of Tyndareus [i.e., Helen of Troy], but Paris with Paris performs unmentionable and monstrous deeds." Non modo Tyndaridem Phrygius venatur adulter, sed Paris in Paridem monstra nefanda parit. There is no excuse for it.

(One is reminded here of Hilaire Belloc's famous ditty:

The world is full of double beds
And most delightful maidenheads,
Which being so, there’s no excuse
For sodomy of self-abuse.)

Something is wrong in a world that lapses into sodomy and self-abuse, homosexuality and pornography, where, in a very vivid image, the "little cleft of Venus has no charm for him," huic Veneris rimula nulla placet. At its most fundamental, rejection of the natural role of man and woman, beginning in the area of the use of sexual faculties, is a rejection of the natural law, and with it the rejection of the one true God. It is a lapse into moral, intellectual, and spiritual darkness. It robs mankind of his Genius.

A Genii templo tales anathema merentur, Qui Genio decimas, et sua jura negant.

Men like these, who refuse Genius his tithes and rites, deserve to be excommunicated from the temple of Genius.

The invocation of "Genius" by Alain is intended to show the intricate relationship between homosexuality, the loss of reason, and the ultimate infertility in thought that results from an acceptance of such a vice as right, whether de facto or de jure. Etymologically, the word "genius" is related to gignere, to bring forth, to give birth to. Sheridan, 59-60. The word genius was frequently linked with the Greek word "daimon" (δαίμων), a lesser god, guiding spirit, or tutelary deity, unique to each man. The daimon, made famous by Socrates who followed it to his death, was, perhaps, the pagan precursor to the notion of a guardian angel.

Winged Genius from villa of P. Fannius Synistor in Boscoreale, near Pompeii.

The linkage of this intellectual component to the generative component in the notion of Genius may be seen in a fragment of Valerius Soranus that has been preserved by St. Augustine in his De Civitate Dei. Soranus describes a Genius as "a God who is in charge of, and has power over, the birth of all things." De civ. Dei, 7.13 (Quid est Genius? "Deus, inquit, qui praepositus est ac vim habet omnium rerum gignendarum.") Likewise, St. Isidore in his Etymologies describes "Genius" so as to make the relationship between intellectual and procreational fertility even more apparent. "They give him the name of Genius because, so to speak, he has power over the birth of all things, or from the fact that he brings about the birth of children. Thus the beds prepared for the newly-wed husband, were called 'genius' couches." Etym., 8.11.88-89 (Genium autem dicunt, quod quasi vim habeat omnium rerum gignendarum, seu a gignendis liberis; unde et geniales lecti dicebantur a gentibus, qui novo marito sternebantur.) Genius, then, had a double duty. It was charged with keeping the human race in existence, both in his body and in his spiritual soul. In assuring both the spiritual and the physical fertility of mankind. Genius was seen as intricately bound to Nature; indeed, Genius was Nature's great high priest.

It can easily be seen that Genius has a very close kinship with Nature, particularly with Nature as described by Alan in the De Planctu. Both have the same interests--that like shall produce like, that sexual relations shall follow the norms of Nature, that those born shall grow up to live a life in accord with Nature as understood by right reason, that the human race shall not die out. Nature may well call Genius her other self. Genius gives the final form to the things of Nature.

Sheridan, 61-62. One wonders whether Genius has departed from any country that has adopted homosexuality as a fundamental legal right, or has signed the United Nations declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity. Have we been excommunicated from the temple of Genius? Along with Alan of Lille, we have cause to issue our modern Plaint:

In lacrymas risus,
in fletum gaudia verto:
In planctum plausus, in lacrymosa jocos,
Cum sua naturam video secreta silere . . .

*Sheridan refers to James J. Sheridan, trans., Alan of Lille: The Plaint of Nature (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980). Translations of Alan of Lille's De Planctu are taken from this text.