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Viator 45 No. 2 (2014) 149–172. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.103916

THE WONDER OF THE HEART: ALBERT THE GREATON THE ORIGIN OF PHILOSOPHY

Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle *

Abstract : This article introduces and interprets Albert the Great’s origin of philosophy in wonder as happening by a cardiac systole. It researches his comparative usage of the difficult terms of his definition ofcardiac wonder in his paraphrase on Aristotle’s Metaphysica and in his other writings. It relates Albert’scardiac wonder to the context of medieval philosophy on the physiological function of the heart in the pas-sions of the soul. It then documents Albert’s own cardiocentrism. Finally it coordinates his integration ofcardiac physiology with the physical qualities and humors to determine the nature of a philosopher.Keywords : heart, cardiocentrism, passions, wonder, ignorance, fear, philosophy, Albert the Great, Aristotle,

Nemesius of Emesa.

The conflation of philosophy and physiology in wonder was the invention of Albert

the Great, the medieval scholastic whose prodigious studies earned him the epithet“the universal doctor.” Since classical antiquity, those disciplines had allied in theinvestigation of animal nature, and Aristotle’s reasoning and research exemplified thatcollaboration. It was in Albert’s paraphrase on Aristotle’s Metaphysica that he pro-

posed his own interdisciplinary theory of wonder. Although some thinkers had enter-tained for wonder a cardiac psychology, Albert established it as the origin of philoso-

phy. Yet, what Albert wrote about philosophic wonder itself seems mystifying.The purpose of this article is to introduce and interpret the obscure function of the

heart in Albert’s definition of philosophic wonder. It begins with a statement of thatdefinition in his Metaphysica. It proceeds to document Albert’s comparative usage of

its difficult terms in his other writings. It then relates Albert’s cardiac wonder to thecontext of medieval Aristotelian philosophy on the function of the heart in the pas-sions of the soul. It then documents his own Aristotelian cardiocentrism. Finally itdocuments his integration of cardiac physiology with the qualities and humors to de-termine the nature of a philosopher.

WONDER This section introduces Albert the Great’s definition of philosophic wonder in his par-aphrase on Aristotle’s Metaphysica. As Albert there stated, the inactive, impracticalnature of philosophy was established and sustained by its single motive, wonder. “The

fact that this knowledge is not practical or active is plain from what moved those whofirst philosophized to philosophizing. For all men who, both now in our time and ini-tially before our time, have philosophized have not been moved to philosophizing ex-cept through wonder.” 1 His authorization repeated the opening of Aristotle’s text, “Allmen by nature desire to know.” 2 Albert thus determined, “We shall demonstrate thatall men by nature desire to know.” 3 Aristotle had stated that philosophy was not an

*Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 95 Normandy Boulevard, Toronto, ON, Canada M4L3K4.

1 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6, ed. Bernhard Geyer, Opera omnia, ed. Cologne Institute of Al- bert the Great (Monasterium Westfalorum 1951–) 16–1.23. All translations in this article are mine unlessotherwise noted.

2 Aristotle, Metaphysica 980a.3 Ibid. Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.1.4 (n. 1 above) 6–7. See also 1.1.5, p. 7; 1.2.4, p. 21.



150 MARJORIE O ’ROURKE BOYLE

active discipline because “on account of wonder ( propter admirationem) men bothnow and initially began to philosophize.” 4 Albert defined: “Now wonder we call anagonia and suspensio of the heart in insensibility at a great portent apparent to sense,thus so because the heart undergoes a systole. ( Admirationem autem vocamus agoniamet suspensionem cordis in stupore magni prodigii in sensu apparentis, ita quod cor systolen patitur .)”5

His Latinity is hardly transparent. Although his descriptive style can be plainenough, it has also been called “rather peculiar.” Albert was indeed “a clumsy word-smith,” denounced for “that barbarous Latin by which he distinguishes himself evenamong the other writers of his epoch” to an ungrammaticality that can be “disastrous.”Translators of his natural philosophy, wondering how Dante could have located Albertin paradise’s circle of lights, decided that Dante must not have read his Latin. 6 Al-

bert’s systolic wonder requires intensive interdisciplinary research in philology, psy-chology, and physiology to understand its origin of philosophy. Of his paired syno-nyms for wonder, the meaning of suspensio is the more apparent, even though it clas-sically meant an architectural vault or the mispronunciation of a letter of the alphabet. 7 Albert’s neologism suspensio meant a “hanging,” 8 from suspendere, literally “tohang.” It could refer to hung objects, from meat roasting over a fire to votive offeringsin a temple. 9 For humans, hanging in classical Latin denoted a capital punishment un-der Roman law, 10 and the hanging of criminals was also a medieval Germanic prac-tice. 11

A metaphorical suspension in wonder was, for Albert, the philosophic premise.Wonder was a defect of human nature, as properly defined by an Aristotelian desirefor knowledge. It was precisely because humans found themselves in a state of sus-

pension, which did not fulfill their nature or confer their dignity as stable and social

4 Aristotle, Metaphysica 982b. Cf. Plato, Phaedo 88e–89a.5 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6 (n. 1 above) 23. For context on motus and passio, see Ernest J.

McCullough, “St. Albert on Motion as forma fluens and fluxus formae,” Albertus Magnus and the Sciences:Commemorative Essays 1980, ed. James A. Weisheipl (Toronto 1980) 129–153; for sensory perception, see

Nicholas H. Steneck, “Albert on the Psychology of Sense Perception,” ibid. 263–290, although Gregory of Nyssa should be corrected to Nemesius as the author of De natura hominis at 274–276; Lawrence Dewan,“St. Albert, the Sensibles, and Spiritual Being,” ibid. 291–320.

6 Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven M. Resnick, “A Note on the Translation,” Albertus Magnus, On Ani-

mals: A Medieval “Summa zoologica,” trans. idem, 2 vols. (Baltimore 1999) 1. XXXIV – XXXV , “Introduc-tion” 1.34.7 A Latin Dictionary, ed. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (Oxford 1969) s.v. “suspensio.”8 F. Carl Riedel, Crime and Punishment in the Old French Romances (New York 1938) 80, citing

Charles Fresne Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis(Paris 1845) 5.551.9 Latin Dictionary (n. 7 above) s.v. “suspendere.”10 Theodor Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht (Leipzig 1899; repr. Graz 1955) 911–944; Ernst Levy, “Die

römische Kapitalstrafe,” Gesammelte Schriften, 2 vols. (Cologne 1963) 2.325–378. See also Biondo Biondi, Il diritto romano cristiano, 3 vols. (Milan 1952–1954) 3.501–518. Claire Saguez-Lovisi, Contributions àl’étude de la peine de mort sous la République romaine (509–149) av. J.-C. (Paris 1999) 161–162. See alsoJean-Louis Voisin, “Les Romains, chasseurs de têtes,” Du châtiment dans la cité: Supplices corporels et peine de mort dans le monde antique, ed. Yan Thomas (Rome 1984) 241–292.

11 Folke Ström, On the Sacral Origin of the Germanic Death Penalties (Stockholm 1942) 19–20, 28–29,35–38, 48–57, 115–116, 126 155–160; Karl von Amira, Die germanischen Todesstrafen: Untersuchung zur Rechts–und Religionsgeschichte, Abhandlung der Bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philoso- phische, philologische, und historische Klasse 51 (1922) nos. 3, 98, 100–101. See Glossarium mediae etinfimae latinitatis, ed. Charles Fresne Du Cange, 10 vols. (Paris 1937–1938) s.v. “suspensio.”



THE WONDER OF THE HEART 151

beings, that they sought to philosophize. That origin of philosophy was consistent withthe opening dictum of Aristotle’s Metaphysica, “All men desire to know.” Right fromthe very title of Albert’s paraphrase on that text, he declared his own task as stability.As he stated, “Here begins the first book of metaphysics, which is wholly about thestabilizing ( stabilimento) of this science and the stabilizing ( stabilimento) of the prin-ciples that are causal.” Again he proposed “the first tractate of which is about the sta-

bilizing ( stabilitione) and nobility of this science.” Those nouns—the classical but rare stabilimentumand the neologism stabilitio —and the verb, stabilire, repeated fre-quently in the pages before his sentence on the origin of philosophy in suspensefulwonder. 12 Their meaning was “a stay, support, stabiliment”; “to make firm, steadfast,or stable; to fix, stay, establish.” 13

For Albert, philosophy shared an origin in wonder with all the arts and sciences be-cause “they seek by wondering ( admirando) what is extraordinary in humans.” Thatorigin was common, whether sensible knowledge was received in a sense, or inmemory, or in experience. Among the theoretical sciences, metaphysics secured

physics and mathematics, but the investigation of all knowledge was wonderful. AsAlbert elaborated his definition about the philosophical investigation, “As we havealready said above, because its searching begins from wonder ( admiratione) abouteverything, just as the causes and the principles of universal being are investigated,certainly such wonder about everything is the cause of investigation in that science.”The investigator “is suspended in some agonia while he wonders ( agonia quadam suspenditur, dum admiratur ).”14 Such mental hanging was tropological suspension, inwhich the verb suspendere meant “to depend, rest.” Generally it meant to be “depend-ent upon externals,” particularly “to cause to be suspended,” that is, “to make uncer-tain or doubtful, to keep in suspense.” The adjective suspensus, literally “raised, ele-vated, suspended,” tropologically meant “uncertain, hovering, doubtful, wavering,hesitating, in suspense, undetermined, anxious.” 15

Albert’s Metaphysica amplified its definition of wonder as “an agonia and suspensio of the heart in insensibility at a great portent apparent to sense, thus so because theheart undergoes a systole. Therefore, the operation of wonder in an agoniaand systole of the heart is from the suspension of desire toward knowing the cause of its portentthat appears. ( Propter quod etiam admiratio aliquid simile habet timori in motucordis. Huius igitur motus admirationis in agonia et systole cordis est ex suspensionedesiderii ad cognoscendam causam eius quod apparet prodigii).” That version re-

placed his initial agoniam et suspensionem … cor systolenwith agonia et systolecordis… ex suspensione.16

12 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.1 (see n. 1 above) 1. The terminology was also noted by BenedictM. Ashley, “Albertus Magnus on Aristotle’s Metaphysics Bk. I, Tr. 1,” American Catholic PhilosophicalQuarterly 70 (1996) 139–140. “By these terms Albert means, it seems, the giving of a secure foundation tothe propositions of a science or art so that they can be known as certainly true.” For his summary of the firsttractate, see 139–149.

13 Latin Dictionary (n. 7 above) s.v. “stabilimentum.”14 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.1.10 (n. 1 above) 14–15; 1.2.10, p. 27; 1.1.11, p. 16.15 Latin Dictionary (n. 7 above) s.v. “suspensus.”16 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6 (n. 1 above) 23.




IGNORANCE This section documents Albert’s usage of agonia as the ignorance of a cause in his

paraphrase on Aristotle’s Analytica priora, then as involuntary ignorance of a cause asa type of fear in a commentary on Ethica nichomachea. Detached from the cardiac

physiology of his Metaphysica, Albert had earlier written some such words on theorigin of philosophy in wonder in his paraphrase on Aristotle’s Analytica posteriora.Albert there distinguished two kinds of questioning, for knowledge about the fact(quia) and knowledge about the reasoned fact ( propter quid ). In demonstration quia,“immediately, as Avicenna says, agoniamur et admiramur what might be the cause…and from that admiratione, agonia, sive suspensione toward the cause,” followeddemonstration propter quid . Albert added, “From that (as Averroes says) a human

begins to philosophize: first in fact because he lacks sensible and common knowledge; suspendi autem et admirari he effects to seek the cause: and this is to philosophize.” 17 The introductory clause was very close to Robert Grosseteste’s commentary, whichthen paralleled knowledge and ignorance ( sciri et ignorari).18 Latin translations ofAverroes’s commentary also attested to ignorance ( ignoraremus, ignoraverimus).19 Albert himself wrote in that same paraphrase about a lack ( deficit ) of knowledge, in anice mental-to-physical parallel with Aristotle’s example of an eclipse ( deficit ) of thesun. His neologism agoniamur was an odd, if alliterative, parallel to admiramur .20 Aristotle’s Analytica posteriora did not have ag nia or its forms. However, its firsttreatise defined a certain agnoia, “ignorance.” As he wrote, “Ignorance—what iscalled ignorance not in virtue of a negation but of a disposition—is error coming aboutthrough deduction.” 21 Albert’s paraphrase repeated ignorantia.22 He was writing on

Analytica posteriora about the ignorance of a cause and how to seek knowledge of it.That intention cohered with his presentation about a year later in Metaphysica of won-der as the origin of philosophy. There, wonder was “the suspension of the desire to-ward knowing the cause,” 23 which philosophy provided the logic to investigate.

Albert also wrote two commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethica nichomachea, whose in-fluence on his thought was strong and enduring. 24 Medieval translations multiple timesrendered Aristotle’s Greek agnoia, meaning “ignorance,” as Latin ignorantia. Aristo-tle’s text discoursed on the affects and actions of virtues, distinguishing the involun-tary from the voluntary. Involuntary passion occurred either under compulsion or fromignorance ( per ignorantiam). It happened precisely “on account of fear ( propter

17 Albertus Magnus , De demonstratione, id est, posteriorum analyticorum 2.1.1, Opera omnia, ed. Au-guste Borgnet, 38 vols. (Paris 1890–1899) 2.158. For the distinction, see also Albertus Magnus, Metaphysi-ca 1.1.10 (n. 1 above) 15. Cf. Aristotle, Analytica posteriora 72b–73a.

18 Robert Grosseteste, Commentarius in Posteriorum analyticorum libros, ed. Piero Rossi (Florence1981) 292.

19 Averroes, Posteriorum resolutionum libri duo, Aristoteles opera cum Averrois commentatoris, 12vols. in 14 (repr. Frankfurt 1962) 2.402.

20 Albertus Magnus, Analytica posteriora 2.1.1 (n. 17 above) 158.21 Aristotle, Analytica posterioria 79b, trans. Jonathan Barnes, 2nd ed. (Oxford 1994) 23. Grosseteste’s

Commentarius at chap. 15 states that in the next chapter (with 79b) Aristotle explains the causes of igno-rance ( ignorantia) (n. 18 above) 217.

22 Albertus Magnus, Analytica posterioria 1.4 (n. 17 above) 93.23 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6, (n. 1 above) 23.24 Stanley B. Cunningham, Reclaiming Moral Agency: The Moral Philosophy of Albert the Great

(Washington, DC 2008) 37–40, 25–27.




timorem).” Ignorance ( agnoia) meant that the motive principle for that affect was ex-ternal to the person who experienced it. He contributed nothing, just as if he were

blown about by tempests. 25 Albert’s paraphrase on Aristotle’s Ethica nicomachea enti-tled a chapter “on the involuntary through ignorance ( propter ignorantiam).” He re-

peated the phrase twice in the text. 26 For Aristotle, the lack of personal willful controlin undergoing an affect such as fear was from ignorance ( agnoia). Albert consistentlydefined wonder as a fear because the cause of a sensory apparition was unknown. Afrightful apparition to the mind caused wonder, from which philosophy originated. Hisnascent philosopher was struck by a great portent about whose cause he was involun-tarily suspended in ignorance. Albert’s philosophic wonder was intelligible: not to be

blessed in a desire to know was to suffer the fear that was the inability to know, orignorance. Albert’s Metaphysica thus defined philosophic wonder coherently. “There-fore, the motion of this wonder in ignorance and a systole of the heart is from the sus-

pension of the desire toward knowing the cause of the existence of the portent thatappears.” He explained that from the beginning uneducated people began to philoso-

phize, from wondering about certain debatable things they endeavored to solve, untilmore proficient philosophers undertook greater problems. “He who doubts and won-ders is seen as ignorant, for wonder is the impulse of the ignorant proceeding to in-quiry so that he might know the cause of what he wonders about ( est enim admiratiomotus ignorantis procedentis ad inquirendum, ut sciat causam ejus de quo miratur ).”27

FEAR Albert’s definition of philosophic wonder in Metaphysica then compared it to the pas-sion of fear. As he proposed, “Because of this, wonder has some likeness to fear in themotion of the heart, which is from suspension.” 28 This section documents Albert’scomparison of wonder with fear in his alliance of Aristotelian knowledge with Chris-tian tradition particularly with Nemesius of Emesa’s anthropology. Albert importedinto his paraphrase on Aristotle’s Metaphysica about wonder ( agonia) as ignorance(agnoia), supposed patristic sources about wonder as fear ( ag nia). Albert’s conceptand diction of agonia —without the cardiology—he repeated from De bono, composedtwo decades earlier on the good. With medieval translations of Aristotle, who consid-ered affects morally neutral, unlike Stoic or Christian asceticisms, theologians beganto deliberate about them using the neologism “passion ( passio).” Albert has been

praised for attempting a “systematic treatise” of the passions that was “logically coor-

25 Richard Burgundio of Pisa, trans., Aristotle, Ethica nicomachia 1110a, Aristoteles Latinus, ed. René

A. Gauthier (Leiden 1972–1974) 26–3.23. For Burgundio of Pisa as the translator of the Ethica vetus, see26–1. XVI – LVIII . Albert used Robert Grosseteste’s translation from the Greek, according to Weisheipl, “Ap-

pendix 1,” Albertus Magnus and theSciences (n. 3 above) 575. For ignorantia as Grosseteste’s translationof the anonymous scholia on the meaning and usage of book 3, see Robert Grosseteste, trans., The GreekCommentaries on the Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle: In the Latin Translation of Robert Grosseteste Bishop of London (1253), ed. H. Paul F. Mercken (Leiden 1973) ad loc. 236–249.

26 Albertus Magnus, Ethicorum libri X , Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 7.203, 205, dating to 1262. He com-mented earlier on the passions in Super ethica: Commentum et questiones libros VI–X , ed. Wilhelm Kübel,Opera omnia (n. 1 above) 14–1.849, “passio” s.v. The first full Latin commentary on Aristotle’s Ethicanichomachea, it dates to 1250–1252.

27 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6 (n. 1 above) 23.28 Ibid.




dinated.” 29 His several treatments of the passions were neither so organized nor socoherent, but they did interpret the cardiac wonder of his Metaphysica as a type offear. De bono was Albert’s initial treatment of fear, citing from Augustine a traditionaldefinition, “a flight from evil.” Whether flight from the evil of punishment or of guilt,the passion was divisible into bad fear, a vice, and good fear, a gift of the Holy Spirit.Albert also defined a natural fear, as tacitly derived from Aristotle’s Rhetorica. Thatfear was the expectation of punishment, from an impression of a future but impendingevil. 30

Albert then quoted the types of bad fear from Gregory of Nyssa’s De natura homi-nis, but without knowledge of its true author. Albert’s historical source on the divi-sions and definitions of fear was not that patristic authority but Nemesius of Emesa. Alate antique bishop of that Syrian city, Nemesius composed Peri physe s anthr pou,the first Christian anthropology. He has been regarded (if regarded) in modern schol-arship as a compiler, whose work is worthwhile for philology and for evidence of losttexts. 31 It was Nemesius’s medical knowledge that seemed extraordinary and thatmotivated the medieval preservation and translations of his book. Although he citedfifteen of Galen’s treatises, he was probably not a physician but a natural philosopherfor whom medicine was essential knowledge. 32 His importance has been reappraisedas original and philosophical, for he mediated to Plato, whom Christians embraced, theostracized Aristotle. Nemesius did so uniquely in concentrating philosophically on the

body-soul problem. He argued from a Platonist instrumentality of body to soul towardan Aristotelian unity of body and soul. 33 Since the relationship of body and soul was aquestion of scholastic philosophy, Nemesius’s argument belonged to its debates, albeit

by misattribution of the author. 34

29 Pierre Michaud-Quantin, La psychologie de l’activité chez Albert le Grand (Paris 1966) 116; idem,“Le traité des passions chez Albert le Grand,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 17 (1950) 90– 91, 99–100.

30 Albertus Magnus, De bono tr. 3, q. 5, a. 2, ed. Heinrich Kühle, Carl Feckes, Bernhard Geyer, and Wil-helm Kübel, Opera omnia (n. 1 above) 28.201. See also Michaud–Quantin, “Traité des passions” (n. 29above) 117–119; idem, Psychologie de l’activité (n. 29 above) 108–110. See Aristotle, Rhetorica 1382a. Forfear, see also David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Liter-ature (Toronto 2006) 130–155.

31

For a recent introduction, see R. W. Sharples and Philip van der Eijk, trans., Nemesius, On the Natureof Man (Liverpool 2008) 1–32.32 William Telfer, trans., Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemsius of Emesa (London 1955) 217–218, 206–208,

275, 370; Sharples and van der Eijk, Nature of Man (n. 31 above) 11–14, 20–21, 23–25; Eiliv Skard,“Nemesiosstudien,” Symbolae osloensis 17 (1937) 9–25; 18 (1938) 31–41; 19 (1939) 46–56; FriedrichLammert, “Hellenistische Medizin bei Ptolemaios und Nemesios: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der christ-lichen Anthropologie,” Philologus: Zeitschrift für klassische Altertum 94 (1940) 125–141, with Nemesius’s

pulse lore at 129–131; Alberto Siclari, L’antropologia di Nemesio di Emesa (Padua 1974) 149–180.33 Beatrice Motta, La mediazione estrema: L’antropologia di Nemesio di Emeso fra platonismo e artisto-

telismo (Padua 2004).34 E.g., see See Emil Dobler, Zwei Syrische Quellen der ‘Theologischen Summa’ des Thomas von Aquin,

Nemesios von Emesa und Johannes von Damaskus: Ihr Einfluss auf die anthropologischen Grundlagen der Moraltheologie (S. Th. I–II, qq. 6–17, 22–48) (Fribourg 2000); idem, Falsche Väterzitate bei Thomas von Aquin: Gregorius, Bischof von Nyssa oder Nemesius, Bischof von Emesa? Untersuchungen uber die Authentizität der Zitate Gregors von Nyssa in der gesamten Werken des Thomas von Aquin (Fribourg 2001);idem, Indireckte Nemesiuszitate bei Thomas von Aquin: Johannes von Damaskus als Vermittler von Neme- siustexten (Fribourg 2002).




Nemesius’s book was twice translated into medieval Latin. An incomplete versionwas Premnon physicon by Nicolo Alfano, a bishop of Salerno, site of the famousmedical school, and himself a writer on humoral theory. He translated Nemesius’s

ag nia, a type of fear, as fatigatio, “weariness.” As he rendered it, “fear from misfor-tune, that is, fear from opposition; for, fearing opposition to an operation that is tohappen, we are fatigued.” 35 Alfano’s poor translation of the book has been blamed onhis insufficient knowledge of Greek and his limited vocabulary, hampered further by

Nemesius’s philosophical terms—to the point sometimes of incomprehensibility. Nemesius’s book was then translated as De natura hominis by Richard Burgundio ofPisa, a professor of law at its university and an accomplished translator of Aristotle’s

philosophy. 36 It was Burgundio who mistakenly attributed Nemesius’s book to Greg-ory of Nyssa, a sainted authority. That was the translation Albert cited, perpetuatingthe misattribution of authorship .37 The Greek manuscript that either medieval transla-tor of Nemesius used is unknown. 38 The modern editions of its extant manuscripts,only one of which is medieval, repeat ag nia among the bad fears. 39

Albert’s De bono cited De natura hominis for the division of bad fear into sixtypes: withdrawal ( desidia); embarrassment ( erubescentia); shame ( verecundia); andthe neologisms, cataplexis, fear from a great imagination; explexis, fear from anunaccustomed imagination; and agonia. As it defined agonia in Burgundio’stranslation, “ Agonia, however, is the fear of being unsuccessful, of misfortune. For,fearing to be misfortunate in a passionate desire, we suffer an agonia (agonia vero esttimor non potiendi, infortunii: timentes enim non fortunari gestione, agoniam patimur .)”40 Albert repeated that definition of agonia without infortunii, but otherwiseexactly. “ Agonia, however, is the fear of being unsuccessful. For, fearing that to beunfortunate in a passionate desire, we suffer an agonia (agonia vero est timor non potiendi timentes enim non fortunari gestione agoniam patimur ).”41 Thatunderstanding of agonia corresponded to Albert’s paraphrase on Aristotle’s Ethicanichomachea about involuntary ignorance, agnoia.42 Albert’s agonia in De bono wassimilarly a failure to realize a passionate desire successfully. His cited term agonia climaxed a rhetorical series, an amplification of six associated types of fear. The final

35 Nemesius, Premnon physicon sive Peri physe s anthr pou liber , trans. Nicolo Alfano, ed. Carl

Burkhard, rev. Friedrich Lammert (Leipzig 1917) 105.36 Gérard Verbeke and J. R. Moncho, eds., De natura hominis: Némésius d’Emèse: Traduction de Burgundio de Pisa (Leiden 1975) LXXXVI – XCII .

37 Moreno Morani, La tradizione manoscritta del “De natura hominis” di Nemesio (Milan 1981) 39–40.He has drawn numerous parallels with the almost literal citations in Albert’s text, which my comparisonsconfirm. See Albertus Magnus, tr. 3, q. 5, a. 2 (n. 1 above) 2.201; Summa theologiae secunda pars tr. 22. q.132 (n. 17 above) 33.443. For the opinion that Albert used Alfano’s translation, see Telfer, trans., Nemesius(n. 32 above) 218; Motta, Mediazione(n. 33 above) 36.

38 Verbeke and Moncho, eds., De natura hominis (n. 36 above) LXXXVI – LXXXVII , LXXIX .39 Nemesius of Emesa, De natura hominis: Graece et latine, ed. Christian Frideric Matthaei (Halle

Magdeburg 1802) 7–9; Nemesius, De natura hominis, ed. Moreno Morani (Leipzig 1987) 81. The wordag nia appears in another compilation, Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum7.112, cited by Sharplesand van der Eijk, Nature of Man (n. 31 above) 142 n. 719.

40 Nemesius, De natura hominis 20, trans. Burgundio (n. 36 above) 103.41 Albertus Magnus, De bono tr. 3, q. 5, a. 2 (n. 1 above) 28.201. For Nemesius on the passions, see

Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford 2004) 103–110.42 See above.




three were epistemological, concerning the sensory fantasy that frightened the beholder.

Albert’s De bonothen compared those divisions of fear with John of Damascus’sdiscourse on the passions in De fide orthodoxa, an influential summary of Christiandoctrine. 43 It was a reference for fear that Albert had already used in his youthful aca-demic commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sententia and resorted to in later writings onthe gospel. 44 Richard Burgundio of Pisa’s translation of De fide orthodoxa reiteratedthe types of fear as slowness ( segnitia), embarrassment ( erubescentia), shame ( ver-ecundia), wonder ( admiratio), stupefaction ( stupor ), and agonia. As it distinguished,“ Agonia, however, is fear on account of mishap, undoubtedly on account of misfor-tune. For we are fearful when agonizamus to be unfortunate in an action.” 45 The Latinneologism agonizo manifested the translator’s struggle to make sense of the text. Al-

bert’s De bono explained further that Gregory’s Latinized cataplexis and explexis andJohn’s admiratio and stupor “are not species of fear ( timor ) because they do not existwith respect to evil but with respect to the great or the unusual.” Albert quoted fromJohn that “wonder is fear from a great fantasy; but stupefaction is fear from an unac-customed imagination ( admiratio est timor ex magna phantasia, stupor vero est timorex inassueta imaginatione).”46 To those opinions about fear as a passion and a habit,Albert responded with complex scholastic divisions of the argument. Relevant to hisdefinition of philosophic wonder in Metaphysica was his amplification in De bono that“wonder ( admiratio) is with respect to the difficulty wondered about, in which we areunable from its very magnitude to know or act.” Wonder was the inability to know thecause of a sensory apparition, and therefore to act upon it. Albert distinguished that“insensibility ( stupor ) is with respect to the wonderer because the insensible heart isunable in itself to act or know, not from the magnitude of the thing admired but be-cause it is unusual.” 47 Albert’s writings did not always observe the neat distinctions ofhis sources about fear into admiratio, stupor , and agonia since they could overlap.There could simultaneously be wonder at a great appearance and stupor at an also un-familiar one. His Metaphysica conflated those reactions in his definition, “wonder(admiratio) we call an agoniaand suspensio of the heart in insensibility ( stupor ).”48

Albert repeated agonia in De bono as the climax of epistemological fears: cataplexis, fear from a great imagination; explexis, fear from an unaccustomed imagina-tion; and agonia.49 Like explexis and cataplexis, that agonia was a neologism, a Lat-inized transliteration of a Greek term. It was not his native Latin agonia, which meanta “victim” in various classical etymologies. Ovid’s Fasti explained that the Agonalia,a festival in which the king immolated an enemy, was named because its mountainous

43 Albertus Magnus, De bono tr. 3 q. 5 a. 2 (n. 1 above) 2.202.44 Albertus Magnus , Commentarii in III Sententiarum, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 2.636; Super

Matthaeum, ed. Bernhard Schmidt, Opera omnia (n. 1 above) 21–2.272; Quaestiones super evangelium q.201, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 37.290.

45 Burgundio of Pisa, trans., John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 29, Saint John Damascene, De fideorthodoxa: Versions of Burgundio and Cerbanus, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert (St. Bonaventure 1955) 121. See

Nemesius, De natura hominis20..46 Albertus Magnus, De bono 3 q. 5 a. 2 (n. 1 above) 2.202.47 Ibid. 201–202, 205–206.48 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6 (n. 1 above) 23.49 Albertus Magnus, De bono tr. 3, q. 5, a. 2 (n. 1 above) 2.201.




to diastole, or expansion, Aristotle termed systole, or contraction. Just as he identifiedcardiac expansion with heating, he identified its contraction with cooling. In humanscardiac heat was the purest, accounting for their intelligence above all other animals.Cardiac cooling marked a failure of human intelligence as the operation of a bodily

part was damaged, resulting in deformity or disease. 61 For Albert, that systole caused philosophic wonder, a failure of knowledge.

It seems plausible that systole was posited to account for the pause between the palpable beats of the heart. Albert reported the medical diagnostic practice of takingthe pulse “between its two reflexive movements, which are diastole and systole.”62 Heexplained those terms in yet another Aristotelian paraphrase, De anima, concerningthe reason for all animals having a heart or a substitute organ. “By this movement of systole and diastole it blows from itself the vital spirit, and thus it is kindled lest thespirit cool off.” The systole and diastole functioned as “the heart is moved in placecontracting and opening.” Cardiac physiology happened by an “alteration, just like themovement that is in the passions themselves, by a heating or cooling of the blood.” 63 That association of the cardiac rhythm of systole and diastole with the passions antici-

pated Albert’s comparison of philosophic wonder as a cardiac systole to the passion offear. 64

His paraphrase on Aristotle’s three books on animals as De animalibus asserted thecontinuous cooperation of systole and diastole to circulate the vital spirit in the body.“The exit of the spirit from the heart does not happen except by the motion of the heartthrough systole and diastole.” Albert explained the continuous and circular function ofthose alterations to expel the vital spirit from the heart through the veins to heat the

bodily members, then to attract the cooled spirit back to the heart for restoking. Indiastole “the spirit is moved by dilating itself to the circumference,” and in systole “byconstricting itself to the center,” that is, the heart. 65 In De animalibus he reiterated hisAristotelian knowledge of systole and diastole as the essential cardiac movements. Hedefined the pulsating veins, called arteriae “as if narrow passageways for air.” Arisingin the heart, the arteries served as pipelines for the vital powers and operations. Theairy spirit pulsed within them, “as beaten by the diastole and systole of the heart.” 66 The heart, the initial and primary bodily organ, was observed to be formed in a hen’segg from a bloodlike drop deposited on its white. The heart was fully spirituous, andits spirit was the formative power for the other bodily members. The departure of spirit

Shaw, “Models for Cardiac Structure and Function in Aristotle,” Journal for the History of Biology 5 (1972)355–388, esp. 381–388 for the “physiology.”

61 Aristotle, De generatione animalium 744a, 784b. For his basic description of the heart, see Historiaanimalium 496a; for the heart as the first principle of animals, thus the first part formed in the fetus, see De generatione animalium 738b, 740a, 741b, 742b, 743b.

62 See also Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, “Aquinas’s Natural Heart,” Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013)267–268. Albertus Magnus, Physicorum libri VIII 8.3, Opera omnia(n. 17 above) 3.606. See also AlbertusMagnus, Liber topicorum 1.5, Opera omnia, (n. 17 above) 2.283.

63 Albertus Magnus, De anima 1.2.1, ed. Clemens Stroick, Opera omnia (n. 1 above) 7–1.18; 1.2.9, p.41.

64 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6 (n. 1 above) 23.65 Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 4.12.4 (n. 53 above) p. 1.453; 8.32.4, p. 906; 14.44.3, p. 2.1278;

14.44.5, p. 1285; 14.45.3, p. 1313.66 Ibid. 13.1.4, pp. 2.906, 907; 1.2.20, p. 1.135.




from the heart occurred “only through the movement of the systole and diastole of theheart.” The generation of the uniform bodily members was from the heart as the vesselof the blood, which it distributed through the veins. 67

The terms systole and diastole also appeared in a book of De animalibus unat-tributable to any identified text and considered Albert’s singular contribution to anat-omy. 68 Albert stated that the soul conveyed powers and forms—life, then sensation— into the bodily members through cardiac diastole and systole by pulsation. The spiritexited from the point of the heart into the entire body by “the movement of the heart in systole and diastole. While continually blowing out spirit, the heart moves by dilatingitself toward its circumference and by contracting itself toward its center.” The sub-stance of spirit, which was light as a fifth body, was in the body midway between thesoul and elemental matter. It contracted to a single point in the apex of the heart in systole, and it expanded to the dilation of all members in diastole. Because this con-traction and expansion could not occur frequently and suddenly in an elemental body,there was needed above the four elements and above all elements the fifth body, Avi-cenna’s light. Albert concluded there on cardiac movement by affirming that all pow-ers, natural and animal, originated from the heart. The entire body “participates in themovement of the heart, which is according to diastole and systole, because, without it,it would have neither life nor vital spirit.” 69

Albert’s De motibus animalium confirmed that the heart in diastole sent the spiritand the blood throughout the body, and in systole returned them to itself. 70 He wrotefurther in De spiritu et respiratione about the two-fold cardiac movement of diastole,or pulsus, and systole, or tractus. By dilation ( diastole) the heart expelled and ex-

panded spirit into the entire body, then by contraction ( systole) the heart attractedspirit it back to itself. 71 Albert’s descriptions consistently identified systole as passive,the contraction of action. There was no contest or struggle ( ag nia), with extension toactive psychological movement. The systole was the heart’s involuntary rest. Those

67 Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 6.1.4 (n. 53 above) 1.453. The work paraphrased Aristotle’s Historiaanimalium, De partibus animalium, and De generatione animalium. For those writings as philosophical, seeAndrew Cunningham, “Aristotle’s Animal Books: Ethology, Biology, Anatomy, or Philosophy?” Philo- sophical Topics 27 (1999) 17–41. For Albert’s embryology, see Luke Demaitre and Anthony A. Travill,

“Human Embryology and Development in the Works of Albertus Magnus,” Albertus Magnus and the Sci-ences (n. 5 above) 405–440. For the translation of Aristotle’s De partibus animalium that Albert used, seeAristotle, De animalibus: Michael Scot’s Arabic-Latin Translation: Part Two: Books XI–XVI , ed. Aafka M.I. Van Oppenraaij (Leiden 1998). He may also have consulted Robert Grosseteste’s translation from theGreek. Kitchell and Resnick, “Introduction,” On Animals (n. 6 above) 40. Albert’s paraphrase on Aristotle’s Historia animalium used Michael Scot’s translation from the Arabic, with explanations gleaned from Avi-cenna’s De animalibus and other sources, including his own knowledge.

68 See Weisheipl, “Appendix 1,” Albertus Magnus and the Sciences (n. 3 above) 573.69 Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 20.1.3 (n. 53 above) 2.1278–1280; 20.1.5, pp. 1284–1288; 20.2.3, p.

1313.70 Albertus Magnus, De motibus animalium 1.2.4, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 9.275. See also Michaud-

Quantin, Psychologie de l’activité (n. 29 above) 93. However, his designation of Albert’s cardiac functionas “a pump” is anachronistic. Even William Harvey’s discovery of the blood’s circulation in Exercitatio demotu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (Frankfurt 1628) did not explicate that model. Marjorie O’RourkeBoyle, “Harvey in the Sluice: From Hydraulic Engineering to Human Physiology,” History and Technology 24 (2008) 2.

71 Albertus Magnus, De spiritu et respiratione 1.9, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 9.227.




Aristotelian paraphrases all predated that of his Metaphysica, so that Albert’s use thereof systole as inaction was already well established.

Beyond his philosophical writings, Albert’s biblical exegesis offered examples ofwonder as a passive, insensible standstill ( agonia). He evoked Nebuchadnezzar’s be-numbing ( obstupuit ) at the marvelous survival of the boys he had cast into the fieryfurnace. “Thus an insensate member is said lacking in sense and movement when it isstruck by such a great agonia of wonder that it can neither by sense nor by faculty[act] toward that which it wonders about.” 72 Albert also wrote about the frightenedwomen of the gospel wondering at the stone rolled away from Jesus’s tomb. “Therethey stood in the agonia of a stupefied mind ( stabant in mentis agonia stupefacte).”He glossed the verse with the crowd’s reaction “in stupor and amazement” ( in stuporeet extasi) to the apostle Peter’s cure of a lame man. 73 The crowd’s reaction of wonderto Jesus’s sermon on the mount occasioned fuller comment. “Wonder is the suspen-sion and agonia of the heart respecting some great apparition that the heart cannottouch or conceive fully, nor can it nevertheless deny.” Albert quoted, from John Dam-ascene’s De fide orthodoxa, Nemesius’s definition that “wonder is a stupor respectinga great fantasy.” Albert commented on “this wonder not yet of the believer but of onetrying to come to faith and seeking the cause of an apparition.” 74

Albert’s wonder as not yet believing by faith paralleled his wonder as not yetknowing by philosophy. It was a lack of knowledge about the cause or truth of an ap-

pearance that impinged on the mind. Albert noted Jesus’s discourse to the crowd that promised a display of works from the Father to the Son “so that you might marvel.”Then he commented, “May you be drawn ( trahamini) in wonder.” Albert’s trahere was the verb for the noun tractus as Latin systole, and he used it passively. As he con-tinued, “For he who wonders is suspended in something lofty, which he does notknow. And while he is in the agonia of wonder he begins to seek.” Albert concluded,“And thus by the effect of divine power he comes to faith.” He added that it was use-ful “to draw ( trahere)” humans into wonder to build up faith. The initiative to wonderfor that end of faith was an act of divine power by which humans were drawn. 75 Al-

bert’s understanding of wonder was thus consistent and coherent, a lack of causalknowledge whether by reason or by faith.

Wonder as an ignorance of causes Albert also treated in his Summa theologiae. Itmarveled in its first part at God’s wise providence, for “he is the cause of those thingsthat he provides, which cause is the highest; and wonder, as the Philosopher says, is asuspended agonia toward the highest cause.” Albert concluded that it was necessary towonder at God’s works as marvelous. 76 However, the Philosopher, that is Aristotle inLatin translation, did not write agonia. Albert himself wrote that word, which his par-aphrases on Aristotle’s Analytica posterioraand Metaphysica defined as a suspen-

72 Albertus Magnus , Commentarii in Danielis, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 18.505.73 Albertus Magnus, Enarrationes in secundam partem evangelium Luce, Opera omnia (n. 17 above)

23.747.74 Albertus Magnus, Super Matthaeum (n. 1 above) 21–2.20.75 Albertus Magnus, In evangelium secundum Joannem (n. 17 above) 24.214.76 Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae pars prima tr. 17, q. 67, Opera omnia (n. 17 above) 31.679–680.




sion. 77 Albert’s question in Summa theologiae on whether the miraculous was marvel-ous cited from John Damascene that the marvelous “suspends a human in his heightand places him in an agonia of wonder ( altitudine sua suspendit hominem, et ponit inagonia admirationis).”78 Albert’s formal treatment of the passion of fear in the second

part of his Summa theologiae considered its cause, whether from evil or from love. He began with two distinct ideas, Augustine’s notion that “fear is a disturbance of the soulin expectation of evil,” and John’s notion that “fear is beyond nature an irrational sys-tole, that is a contraction ( timor est praeter naturam irrationalis systole, id est, con-tractio).” Albert posed the objection against John that “ systole and diastole are amovement of the heart caused from natural passions, which are four, as Boethius says,hope, fear, sadness, and joy.” He reasoned, “Therefore, systole is not anything of fear

but from its effect; and thus it is badly defined through systole.” Albert’s solution wasthat the distinct ideas of Augustine and John were not true definitions but different

perspectives. John wrote about the proper effect of fear, for “when the heart flees evil,it is drawn into itself according to a systole ( in seipsum trahitur secundum sys-tolem).”79 However, cardiac systole was a relaxation, inconsistent with his ag nia,which meant its opposite, a “struggle.”

At length, about a decade after his Metaphysica,80 with its definition of wonder asagonia, Albert tried to explain the etymology of John Damascene’s ag nia, Latinizedas agonia. Albert began with a basic division of fear, according to evil or to greatness.The latter type John divided, after Nemesius, into the six types that Albert quoted.“Wonder ( admiratio) is fear from a great fantasy or imagination.” Then Albert ex-

plained, “But agonia is fear through an accident and misfortune. For, fearing to bemisfortunate in an action, agoniamur .”81 He repeated the neologism agoniamur fromhis paraphrase on Aristotle’s Analytica posteriora on wonder as the origin of philoso-

phy. 82 Albert explained that John Damascene so divided fears “because he defined fearaccording to the fact that it is a flight of the heart according to a systole. Whence eve-rything that makes the heart retreat ( resilere) to its own slightness he calls ‘fear.’” Asfor fear as wonder, “If it is from a suspension toward a cause that is exceedingly ele-vated above us, then it is called wonder ( admiratio).” That was its sense in Albert’s Metaphysica as the origin of philosophy toward knowledge, and previously in his An-alytica posteriora about the specific knowledge of causes. In his Summa theologiae Albert tried unsuccessfully to reconcile wonder by a passive systole, a relaxation, withactive ag nia, a contest. He distinguished a seventh fear. “If moreover it happens thatwe imagine the greatest misfortune, whether in life or affairs, in which it is necessarythat we are set as if in a contest and wrestle ( quasi in agone… luctari) whether or not

77 Albertus Magnus, Analytica posteriora 2.1.1 (n. 17 above) 2.158; Metaphysica 1.2.6 (n. 1 above) 23. 78 Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae pars secunda tr. 16, q. 104 (n. 17 above) 33.267.79 Ibid. tr. 22, q. 132, pp. 440–441.80 Dionysius Siedler, ed., Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae sive de mirabili scientia Dei, libri 1 pars

1 quaestiones 1–50A, Opera omnia(n. 1 above) 34.XVI–XVII, dating the first part to after 1265 and thesecond to not before 1274.

81 Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae pars secunda tr. 22, q. 132 (n. 17 above) 33.440–441.82 Albertus Magnus, Analytica posteriora 2.1.1 (n. 17 above) 2.158.




we can win, it is called agonia.”83 There agonia was quasi, “as if,” a sporting match, acontest ( ag nia) that was vehemently active. Albert’s interpretation did not squarewith Nemesius’s divisions of fear according to a cardiac systole, which was passive.

Nor did it square with Albert’s tradition from Aristotle’s natural philosophy that car-diac systole was passive. Further, agonia as derived from ag nia, “contest,” did notappear in Albert’s paraphrases on Aristotle’s Metaphysica, Ethica, or Analytica posteriora concerning the origin of philosophy in wonder.

Albert’s context for philosophic wonder in his paraphrase on Metaphysica was the polarity of ignorance and knowledge, as his paraphrase on Analytica posteriora hadestablished. Specifically, Albert had treated involuntary ignorance in his paraphrase on Ethica nichomachea. The meaning of Albert’s agonia as Aristotle’s agnoia, “igno-rance,” he clarified in Metaphysica as the wonder from which philosophy originated.“Truly he who doubts and wonders is seen to be ignorant ( Qui vero dubitat etadmiratur, ignorare videtur ).” Therefore, he reasoned, “It was to flee ignorance thatthey philosophized ( Quare si ad ignorantiam effugiendam philosophati sunt ).”84 Philosophic wonder was not agonia as a Latin “victim” or a Greek “contest,” butagnoia as “ignorance.” Albert assumed from his sources that Latin agonia translated aGreek word for ignorance. Nemesius’s De natura hominis was the text from whichtheir types of fear were abstracted. Its context of the physiology of the passions clari-fied Albert’s definition of wonder by a cardiac systole.

PHYSIOLOGY This section documents Nemesius’s cardiac physiology as seminal and Avicenna’s asinfluential for Albert’s development of philosophic wonder by systole. Nemesius’s Denatura hominis discussed the passions, such as fear, as the irrational part of the soul.“Passion is a movement of the concupiscible sensible power, in the imagination ofgood or evil,” or “passion is an irrational movement of the soul on account of theapprehension of good or evil.” Or, although an act is according to nature, “passion iscontrary to nature.” Nemesius then introduced the Galenic cardiology on which Al-

bert’s definition of wonder as a “suspension” itself hung. “Therefore, according to thisreasoning, an act is called a passion when it is not moved according to nature, whetherit is moved from itself or from something else. Then, the movement of the heart that isaccording to pulsation is an act; but, what is according to palpitation is a passion.” 85 Those cardiac oppositions corresponded to diastole and systole. John Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa reported it as, “Therefore, the movement of the heart that is accordingto pulsation is an operation, as existing naturally; however, that according to a leap( saltus), as existing immoderately, and not according to nature, is a passion and not an

83 Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae pars secunda tr. 22, q. 132 (n. 17 above) 33.443. Cf. stupor“quasi” the heart stood in insensibility.

84 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.2.6 (n. 1 above) 23 n. For the medieval translations of Aristotle’s Metaphysica, see Geyer, ed. X – XIII .

85 Nemesius, De natura hominis15, citing Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 6.1; 23; trans. Bur-gundio (n. 36 above) 93, 94, 107. See also Burgundio, trans., John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 26 (n.45 above) 119.




operation.” 86 Pulsatile movement Nemesius thought the vital force, arising from theleft ventricle of the heart and distributing the vital heat by the arteries, as air pipes,throughout the body. “In sum, when the heart is heated according to nature, immedi-ately the whole animal heats up according to nature; and when it becomes cold, sodoes the whole.” 87 The cardiac physiology for wonder as a type of fear Albert owed tohis explanation. As Nemesius wrote, “Fear happens according to an all-around cool-ing, with all the heat rushing to the heart, to the principle, just as when frightenedcommoners flee for refuge to the prince.” 88 Nemesius’s discussion of the vital bodily

processes, including the passions such as fear, then treated the faculties of the soul asvoluntary or involuntary. Repeating Aristotle’s Ethica nichomachea, Nemesius de-fined involuntary acts as done either by constraint or from ignorance ( per igno-rantiam). Nemesius then distinguished involuntary acts through ignorance ( propterignorantiam) from acts by force ( secundum vim), such as enraged or intoxicateddeeds, which he judged basically voluntary. Involuntary acts through ignorance re-quired a first cause external to the self, the ignorance of which cause was not a per-sonal fault. 89 That notion of involuntary ignorance based the apprehension of a great

portent whose cause was unknown, and therefore evoked a fearful wonder. Nemesius’s association of ignorance and systole was known to Albert not only

through De natura hominisas misattributed to Gregory of Nyssa but also through JohnDamascene’s development in De fide orthodoxaof the passion of fear. As John inter-

preted, natural fear pertained to the soul’s unwillingness to be separated from the body because of the fellow feeling the Creator imposed upon their unity. He cited the defi-nition of Maximus the Confessor, who had first mentioned Nemesius, that “naturalfear is the desiderative power according to a systole (that is contraction) of the es-sence.” That fear Latinized as timor, pavor, agonia belonged to the passions that were,in a neologism, indetractibilum, and sinless. Another fear “consists in the ruin of theability to think and in disbelief ( ex perditione cogitationum consistit et incredulitate).”Examples were fear arising from ignorance ( in ignorando) of the hour of death or of asound at night. John further defined from Maximus that “unnatural fear is an irrational systole (that is, a contraction).” 90 The manuscripts of John’s De fide orthodoxa variedgreatly, and the modern editor of Burgundio of Pisa’s translation of its Greek text intoLatin has freely acknowledged the obscurity and even oddity of some medieval read-ings. The reason for the textual disparities has been attributed to the very early corrup-tion of the manuscript tradition, to which numerous copyists added personal errors.Burgundio of Pisa translated John’s De fide orthodoxa several years before he trans-lated Nemesius’s De natura hominis.91 He preserved a remnant of Aristotelian “igno-rance” in his translation of John’s example of systole as an unnatural fear from igno-

86 Burgundio, trans., John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 36 (n. 45 above) 132–133. For saltus as ago-

nia because systole broke the continuity of cardiac movement in diastole, see also Albertus Magnus, Deanimalibus 14.44.5 (n. 53 above) 2.1287.

87 Nemesius, De natura hominis15, citing Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 6.1; 23; trans. Bur-gundio (n. 36 above) 93, 94, 107.

88 Nemesius, De natura hominis 20, trans. Burgundio (n. 36 above) 103.89 Ibid. 20, 29, 30; trans. 103–104, 119–122, 122–124.90 John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 67, trans. Burgundio (n. 45 above) 265, 266.91 Buytaert, ed., Burgundio trans., De fide orthodoxa (n. 45 above) V, VIII , IX – XV .




rance ( in ignorando). It also transmitted agonia as a type of natural fear from systole. Albert’s development of Aristotle’s philosophic wonder as a type of fear by a cardiac systole thus owed to Nemesius’s De natura hominis, through its misattribution toGregory of Nyssa and through John of Damascus’s citation and comment on it.

Albert’s initial treatment of the passions in De bono had also associated systole with passion from Avicenna’s De anima. Albert’s reference to it did not appear in hisdiscussion of the passion of fear, however, but of sadness ( tristitia). There he inquiredabout a concomitant loss of voice. “For, since sadness is caused from a motion of theheart according to a systole, as Avicenna says, it is seen that in every sadness the spiritand even the blood return to the heart.” The recurrence caused the voice to weaken. 92 Albert’s source was not truly Avicenna but a physician collaborating on a Latin trans-lation of his De anima from Arabic. That text passed through a Castilian intermediate,Johannes Hispanus, or Avendeath, who appended to it some chapters of his own. Onthe cardiac dispositions he wrote of sadness occurring with “a compression of the

breast” that “followed thickness of the spirit and the heat of its complexion.” 93 DespiteAlbert’s misattribution of that notion to Avicenna, he possessed an exceptional under-standing of his philosophy. 94 For Avicenna, bodily alteration was consequential, notcausal, of soulful affect. He argued in De anima seu sextus de naturalibus, the trans-lated sixth part of his Kitab al-Shifa’ , that an affect of the soul happened principallyfrom imagination, fear, grief, or wrath. As a consequence, bodily heat was either kin-dled or extinguished. That was not a natural cause, on account of which the complexought to alter the heat, or add or generate the vapor diffused in the body, so that itspread. Rather, since the form was held in the value, it happened that alteration fol-lowed in the association, and also the heat, and humidity, and spirit. 95

Avicenna’s interpretation of the soul influenced philosophers early in the thirteenthcentury to explore how its concupiscible and irascible powers, as generating passions,related to the heart and the spirit. Their common facultative psychology posited thatexternal objects, through the evaluation of the uniquely human estimative power,caused acts of the motive power in the sensitive soul. Those psychological movementswere believed to be accompanied necessarily by cardiac and spiritual movements. Al-

bert has been said to concur with Jean de Rochelle’s summary interpretation of Avi-cenna that affective acts altered the heart. Decisively the soul moved the body, not the

body the soul. In particular, the frigidity that resulted from soulful fear was caused byan imagination of losing strength, so that heat and spirit were deflected from the heart.

92 Albertus Magnus, De bono 3 q. 5 a. 2 (n. 17 above) 2.202.93 Johannes Hispanus/Hispalensis, ibn Daud, known as Avendahut/Avendeath, “De additione Avoha-

veth,” in Avicenna, De anima, liber exceptus ex editione Venice 1508, ed. George P. Klubertanz (St. Louis1949) 106, 107. The author is misidentified as Avicenna by the critical edition of Albertus Magnus, De bono (n. 17 above) 2.201 n. 42, which gives part 4, chapter 6. The critical edition of Avicenna’s De anima partfour ends at chapter 4. For Avendauth, see Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Avicenna’s “De anima” in the Latin West:The Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of the Soul, 1160–1300 (London 2000) 4–8.

94 See Haase, Avicenna’s “De anima” 69. See also Jon McGinnis, Avicenna(New York 2009) 251.95 Avicenna, De anima 4.4 (n. 95 above) 61–62. See also his “De medicinis cordialibus: Fragmentum,”

Appendix to his De anima 187–210. For the heart, see also De anima 5.5.8, pp. 176, 178–181. For Avicennaon the passions, see Knuuttila, Emotions(n. 41 above) 218–226.




The passion of fear caused a general bodily withdrawal. 96 That appraisal of Albert’s psychology consulted De bono and his commentary on Liber de sex principiis, worksearlier than his Metaphysica with its philosophic wonder.

PSYCHOLOGY This section documents the relevant cardiac physiology of the passions in medieval

psychology as scholastic context for Albert’s philosophic wonder. Medieval “passion”was not modern “emotion.” That word and concept dated to late nineteenth-centurymedicine. Emotion displaced, not derived from, ancient and medieval soulful “mo-tion” to or from objects sensed and/or judged as good or evil. Modern emotion specifi-cally collapsed a traditional Christian distinction between sensory passions and voli-tional affections. 97 The relation of bodily movement and soulful passion was a largetopic that had engaged ancient philosophers and physicians in discussions about causeand effect. Which movement originated a passion, of the body or of the soul? The de-

bate was practical, therapeutically motivated either to evaluate affect, as Stoics in-tended, or to moderate affect, as Aristotelians advocated. 98 The Stoics held that affectwas judgmental, doubly so: the judgment of apprehended good or bad, and the judg-ment of considered reaction to that situation. Affect was a soulful fluttering or mentaloscillation in conflict between the judgments of good or bad. For the Stoics, affectcould cause bodily change, as in Zeno’s belief in a contraction or expansion felt in thechest. Or it could precede bodily change, as in Seneca’s belief in physical first move-ments, such as a shudder or elation, impinging on the body. 99 Albert further owed hisdefinition of cardiac wonder to the Stoics, who as materialists not only associated theaffects with the heart, as had Aristotle, but also specified the heart’s movement in systole and diastole. For, the second Stoic judgment, that of an appropriate reaction tothe initial judgment, was conceived as an internal contraction or expansion of themind. The appropriate reaction of distress, for beginners, was a contraction, systole.Because the Stoics were materialists, the mind that experienced a contraction was a

physical spirit. And mind, for the Stoics, was seated in the heart. Stoic contraction has been interpreted variously as an impulse, reaction, compunction, affliction, or sinking.Galen, whose writings ruled medieval medicine as Galenism, understood the Stoicdoctrine of contraction and expansion physiologically. So did Nemesius, 100 on whomAlbert relied through his patristic authorities.

96 Knuuttila, Emotions (n. 41 above) 239. For Albert, see 236–239. Jean de la Rochelle also followedJohn Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa 29 in his Summa de anima 2.77, ed. Jacques G. Bougeral (Paris 1996)210–211.

97 Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge 2003). See also Robert Miner, Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of “Summa Theologiae,”1a2ae 22–48 (Cambridge 2009) 4, 29–46.

98 See Richard J. Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford 2000) 194–210. However, for the revision of Stoic philosophy as not the eradication but the evalu-ation of passion, see Margaret R. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago 2007).

99 Sorabji, Emotion and Peace (n. 100 above) 34, 45, 56–57, 313–314, 2–3. See also Christopher Gill,“Did Galen Understand Platonic and Stoic Thinking on Emotions?” The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy,ed. Juha Sihvola and Troels Engberg-Pedersen (Dordrecht 1998) 118, citing Galen, De placitis Hippocratiset Platonis 3.3.14–16.

100 Sorabji, Emotion and Peace (n. 100 above) 31–41.




Although Albert’s scholarship was unique for its paraphrase or commentary on allof Aristotle’s available works, it belonged to a scholastic revival to which natural

philosophers and physicians contributed. 101 A notable reception of Aristotle’s psychol-ogy had been the Tractatus de anima of John Blund, a master of arts at Paris. His ex-amination of the soul situated it in the heart and associated its physiology with the

passions, as Albert’s own De anima later would. Blund deferred to the testimony ofvery many authors that pain came from a cardiac constriction, joy from a cardiac dila-tion. Then he argued, “But pain is in the soul on account of an obstruction of the heart,

because it is considered to govern. Similarly joy is in the soul. It is proof, therefore,that the soul is in the heart, because from a constriction of the heart comes pain andfrom a dilation, joy.” Concerning human fear, which Albert allied with philosophicwonder, Blund thought that in fear the blood rushed to the heart to console it, so that itmight not be lacking. Further, “Pain comes from a constriction of the heart because theheart is one of the principal members. And for that reason, since the soul strives to bein the body, the soul strives that the heart emerge in the required disposition. Whence,if a constriction happens, the soul itself is troubled, because now the heart recedesfrom the owed organ. And for that reason, from a constriction of the heart comes painin the soul, lest the heart be lacking through the constriction.” Contrarily, joy of soulcame from a dilation of the heart because the heart was naturally warm, and warmthdilated. That heated state ensured the proper rule of the soul in the body. Blund thusassociated fear with the dissipation of natural cardiac heat. 102

Although the consensus of scholastic philosophers originated the passions in themovements of the soul, as situated in the heart, an opposing opinion was aired at Parisamong its masters of arts. That was the argument of David of Dinant, a physician, whooriginated the passions in the movements of the heart. He wrote that cardiac sufferingand change caused the soul to form an affect, although cognitive intentionality wasderived from estimation. 103 His interpretation of Aristotle’s question “whether any-thing concerning the soul may be separable from the body” made it the chief problemof medieval natural philosophy. 104 David answered that neither sense nor image couldhappen “without a passion of the body, or without a systole and diastole of theheart.” 105 His notebooks recorded that “every affect happens with a fellow suffering ofthe heart, nor can an affect occur in the soul without a passion of the heart.” It wasdebatable, he considered, whether the soul’s affect was caused by the heart’s passion,or the reverse. On fear he wrote that it happened from a large and cold heart, or from acold humor or smoke in the heart, which conditions could result in disease or evendeath. “It is obvious, therefore,” David argued, “that a passion of the heart and an af-

101 See Aleksander Birkenmajer, “Le rôle joué par les médicins et les naturalistes dans la réception

d’Aristotle aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” idem, Études d’histoire des sciences et de philosophie du Moyen Age (Wroç aw 1970) 73–87.

102 John Blund, Tractatus de anima 24.2, ed. Daniel A. Callus and Richard W. Hunt (London 1970)104–105.

103 Knuuttila, Emotions (n. 41 above) 26–27. For Blund, see 227–229.104 Marian Kurdzia ek, “David von Dinant als Ausleger der aristotelischen Naturphilosophie,” Die

Auseinandersetzungen an der Pariser Universität im XIII. Jahrhundert (Berlin 1976) 192.105 David of Dinant, [Fragmenta] in I testi di David di Dinant: Filosofia della natura e metaphysica a

confronto col pensiero antico, ed. Elena Casadei (Spoleto 2008) (P) 297.




fect can occur at the same time. Nevertheless,” he decided, “the passion of the heart isthe cause of the affect, which is in the soul.” Further, “I say that passion is an ex-change ( immutatio) of the diastole and systole of the heart. So that lo!, if the diastole of the heart is greater and thinner, it effects joy; if on the other hand it is lesser andthinner, it effects sadness; and if it is greater and thicker, it effects wrath.” Passionsdisplayed in the body. Facial pallor was a manifestation of fear because the movementof the heart was slight. Since the heart retained bodily heat interiorly, its exterior froze.Great dryness also accompanied fear. After commenting generally on Aristotle’s car-diology, David added that an exchange in the movement of the heart created a greateror lesser heating or freezing of the spirit of the blood, or of the spirit in the heart,which Aristotle posited as the cause of the soulful affect. 106

David’s fundamental identification of prime matter with God was condemned asheresy. A provincial synod decreed that his writings were to be surrendered to the

bishop of Paris for burning, and it threatened the excommunication of anyone whoretained them. It also prohibited the public or private reading, in the arts faculty atParis, of Aristotle’s natural philosophy or any commentaries on it. A penalty of ex-communication applied. Nevertheless, Albert’s refutation of David’s writings pre-served, directly and indirectly, substantial portions of them. 107 As orthodox, Albertnecessarily refuted David’s material God, a single substance who comprised all bodiesand souls. 108 Yet, he was indebted to David for knowledge of several of Aristotle’sworks of natural philosophy and for the misattributed Problemata, the manuscript ofwhich David introduced to Latin readers. For example, Aristotle’s claim in De somnoet vigilia that the heart is the principle of sense and motion Albert knew directly fromDavid. 109 The information contributed to Albert’s conciliatory development of Aristo-tle’s controversial origin of sensory perception in the heart. 110

106 Ibid. (G) 238–242, (P) 293–295. See also Tristan Dagron, “David de Dinant: Sur le fragment ‘Hyle,Mens, Deus’ des Quaternuli,” Revue de metaphysique et de morale 4 (2003) 428. The smokiness owed tothe extinguishing of cardiac fire. Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione 2.4.9; Nemesius, De natura homi-nis 5.

107 Gabriel Théry, Autour du décret de 1210: David de Dinant: Étude sur son panthéisme matérialiste (Le Saulchoir, Kain, Belgium 1925) 5, 7, 13–15.

108 Ibid. 5–10, 13–15, 85–86, 45. For Albert’s citations, see Henryk Anzulewicz, “Person und Werk des

David von Dinant im literarischen Zeugnis Alberts des Grossen,” Mediaevalia philosophica polonorum 34(2001) 46–47; idem, “David von Dinant und die Anfänge der aristotelischen Naturphilosophie imLateinischen Westen,” Albertus Magnus und die Anfänge der Aristoteles–Rezeption im lateinischen Mit-telalter: von Richardus Rufus bis zu Franciscus de Mayronis, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood,Mechthilde Dreyer, and Marc-Aeilko Aris (Münster 2005) 71–112; Casadei, ed., David of Dinant, Testi (n.107 above) 4–19. For the manuscripts, see also ibid. 3, and Elena Casadei, “Il corpus dei testi attribuibili aDavid di Dinant,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 48 (2001) 87–124; Martin Pickavé,“Zur Verwendung der Schriften des Aristoteles in der Fragmenten der Quaternuli des David von Dinant,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 64 (1997) 199–221; Gudrun Vuillemin-Diem, “Zum Aristoteles latinus in den Fragmenten der Quaternuli des David von Dinant,” Archives d’histoire doctrinaleet littéraire du moyen âge” 70 (2003) 27–136.

109 Kurdzia ek, “David von Dinant als Ausleger” (n. 106 above) 192, 185. For Albert’s Metaphysica 1.4.7–8 (n. 1 above) 54–59, see also Andreas Speer, “Von Plato zu Aristoteles: Zur Prinzipienlehre beiDavid von Dinant,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 47 (2000) 336–341. See in generalMarian Kurdzia ek, “L’Idée de l’homme chez David de Dinant,” Images of Man in Ancient and MedievalThought: Studia Gerardo Verbeke, ed. F. Bossier et al. (Leuven 1976) 311–322.

110 Steneck, “Psychology of Sense Perception,” (n. 5 above) 283–285.




CARDIOCENTRISM This section documents Albert’s own Aristotelian cardiocentrism. 111 Albert’s study ofAristotle’s natural philosophy on animals was focused by its cardiocentrism, which

based his philosophic wonder as happening by a systole. Philosophers and physicianshad since antiquity divided over the seat of consciousness, whether in the brain or inthe heart. Prominent among the cardiocentrists were the author of the De corde in-cluded among the Hippocratic writings, although inauthentic; Diogenes and Praxago-ras, as influenced by Stoic philosophers; and Aristotle. 112 Aristotle’s examination of

bodily parts emphasized the heart as the first organ formed in the fetus or the egg of blooded animals, and visible by even the third day. The heart was nobly centered inthe body because it was the vessel and font of the vital blood. As such, the heart wasthe seat and source of sensation. 113 From the importance and accessibility of the heart,Aristotle deduced that “all motions of sensation, including those produced by what is

pleasant and painful, undoubtedly begin in the heart and have their final endingthere.” 114

Albert’s cardiocentric reasoning was: the soul is in the heart, a contraction of theheart causes cold passions, a type of such passion is fear, a type of fear is wonder,therefore wonder is a passion caused by a contraction of the heart. His classicalsources were eclectic. Cardiocentrism was both Aristotelian and Stoic; so was the be-lief that the passions of the soul owed to cardiac contraction or dilation, although itwas the Stoics who canonized it. Albert’s definition of cardiac wonder aligned withAristotle’s philosophy, which posited a physiology of passion in which the heart wasmoved by a sensory apparition, without Stoic mental assent. 115 Albert’s addition ofwonder to the classical types of fear was Christian, owing to Nemesius’s anthropol-ogy, particularly as authorized by John Damascene’s theology. Albert thus blended achristened Aristotelian wonder as the origin of philosophy with the medieval debatesabout passionate causality, whether originating from the body or the soul. In Albert’sdefinition in Metaphysica of the origin of philosophy in wonder, the apparition of asensory portent effected an ignorance and suspension caused by the heart undergoing a systole.

Albert’s prior paraphrase on Aristotle’s De anima116 had treated the passionscardiocentrically. “All the passions of the soul communicate with the heart,” albeitvariably, because “they do not occur without a movement of the body, and by physicalalteration they completely change bodies or bodily parts.” Passions did not occurwithout local motion of bodily parts and without their physical change, without thereception of the form or the intention of the form, commonly called “change.” Withsuch motion and alteration of the body occurred desire, gentleness, fear, confidence,

joy, love, and hatred. “For in all these the heart is moved according to diastole or sys-

111 For Albertus Magnus on the heart in the body-soul relationship, see Boyle, “Aquinas’s NaturalHeart” (n. 62 above) 268, 276, 277, 284–85.

112 For a history, see Harris, Heart and Vascular System(n. 59 above) 7, 14, 19, 34, 35, 38, 99, 104–105,113–114, 121, 167–168, 236.

113 Aristotle, De partibus animalium 665a–b, 656a, 666a.114 Aristotle, De partibus animalium 666a; Parts of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck (London 1968) 237.115 For Aristotle, see Sorabji, Emotion and Peace, (n. 100 above) 23, 71, 25.116 For the earlier date, see Weisheipl, “Appendix 1” (n. 5 above) 568.




tole, and the body undergoes with ( compatitur ) the soul.” Human diversity was dis- played in the passions according to temperament. Those who were fearless in the faceof danger had “much blood and a hot heart.” However, “In those who become fearful

because of their bodily dispositions, when no cause for their terror lay in the passions,as happens to melancholy men, who are dry and cold, they have little spirit and littleheat in their heart.” Albert thought it obvious that “the passions are certain reasons andintentions that are moved in physical matter and are changed by physical movementand change.” He cited from Aristotle bodily movement in wrath according to systole when it was disturbed, but diastole when it sought revenge. 117

Albert’s comparison of wonder with fear in Metaphysica also depended on the car-diocentrism of his De animalibus, another Aristotelian paraphrase. Although he intro-duced Aristotle’s three books on animals to Latin scholars, he made their subject hisown, for his paraphrases were more than restatements or commentaries. Albert’sachievement was an empiricism beyond allegorization that legitimated for Christiansnature as science. 118 De animalibus acknowledged the divergent opinions that situatedthe animal principle in the heart or in the brain. Albert was a cardiocentrist, who af-firmed Aristotle’s belief in the primacy and centrality of the heart in blooded ani-mals. 119 As Albert differentiated their bodily parts, “The brain is the member of theanimal power; the heart, of the vital power.” All the bodily members were directed toand converged upon one member, the heart in blooded animals or its equivalent inunblooded animals. For, “The substance of the soul is one, whose act is the life of theheart, and it exercises its powers in the other members.” The essential act of the soulwas to live, and the entire soul breathed this act into the body that it animated from the

principal bodily member, the heart or its equivalent. The soul was more powerfully inthe heart than in the other members because the heart was its deputized organ. All

powers united in the substance of the soul, which was in the heart, and all powers ofthe soul were directed to the heart, just as all bodily organs were connected to theheart. 120 Albert specified for the passions of the soul their cardiac origin in diastole and systole. In the generation of the heart, “by its movements first appear delightfuland saddening things through its dilation and contraction ( per sui dilationem et con-tractionem).”121

PHILOSOPHY This section documents Albert’s integration of that cardiac physiology not only withthe medieval passions of the soul but also with the classical qualities and humors ofthe body. It concludes this article with an interpretation of how his coordinated

117 Albertus Magnus, De anima 1.1.6 (n. 1 above) 7–1.13, commenting on Aristotle, De anima 403a.118 See Kitchell and Resnick, “Introduction: The Life and Works of Albert the Great,” On Animals (n. 6

above) 1.42. See also Henryk Anzulewicz, “Die aristotelische Biologie in der Frühwerken des AlbertusMagnus,” Aristotle’s Animals in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Carlos Steel, Guy Guldentops,and Pieter Beullens (Leuven 1999) 159–188.

119 Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 13.1.4 (n. 53 above) 2.903.120 Ibid. 5.1.1, p. 2.208; 2.27, p. 1.91; 1.2.15, p. 16; 2.1.6, pp. 73–74; 2.1.7. p. 75. See also Steven Bald-

ner, “St. Albert the Great on the Union of the Human Soul and Body,” American Catholic PhilosophicalQuarterly 70 (1996) 111–113.

121 Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 13.1.4 (n. 53 above) 2.904.




knowledge understood the nature of a philosopher. Physics had established the ele-ments as air, fire, earth, and water; their qualities were hot and cold, dry and wet. 122 From those classifications developed the medical theory of the humors—sanguine,

phlegmatic, bilious, and atrabilious—which constituted animal temperaments. 123 Hu-moral compositions were basic to medieval medicine from Galenism, which theoryAlbert knew from various sources. 124 His De anima acknowledged human diversityaccording to temperament, with abundant blood and heat characterizing the coura-geous person, but their privation in dryness and cold characterizing the fearful per-son. 125 His De animalibus typed animals with earthy, dry blood—such as bulls and

pigs—as irritable, angry, and bold. Because of their appetite for vengeance, theirwrath moved their heat. Their heart expanded in a diastole, blowing away from itselfheat, blood, and spirit. On the contrary he characterized animals whose natural humorwas very wet and easily cooled as quite timid. That opinion followed Aristotle, forwhom timidity was a disposition of blood that was too watery because cold froze wa-ter naturally, so that fear froze the body. Bloodless animals were more timorous than

blooded ones, and fear rendered them motionless. 126 For Albert, timidity happened because “fear, due to the rush of blood, heat, and spirit to the heart, cools the body.” Ifthe moisture of such animals congealed, they remained fearful and motionless for along while. Animals with that humoral mixture of cold and wet were very prone tosuch an accident of fear. Albert’s De animalibusdid not associate such fear with car-diac systole, as his Metaphysica would later compare them. However, his amplifica-tion of fear indicated a physical, if not cardiac, contraction. “For cold water, especiallyviscous water, congeals quickly.” 127

Albert’s account of animal passions assessed negatively the cardiac systole that helater in Meataphysica determined the cause of philosophic wonder. De animalibus

122 G. E. R. Lloyd, “The Hot and the Cold, the Dry and the Wet in Greek Philosophy,” Journal of Hel-lenic Studies 84 (1964) 92–106.

123 Rudolph E. Siegel, Galen’s System of Physiology and Medicine: An Analysis of His Doctrines andObservation on Bloodflow, Respiration, Humors, and Internal Diseases (Basel 1968) 209; idem, Galen on Psychology, Psychopathology, and Function and Diseases of the Nervous System: An Analysis of His Doc-trines, Observations, and Experiments (Basel 1973), 185–197. For the medieval fortune, see Nancy Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago 1990)79–80. See also Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind (n. 100 above) 253–260; Knuuttila, Emotions(n. 41above) 93–98; James R. Irwin, “Galen on Temperaments,” Journal of General Psychology 36 (1947) 45–64.

124

See Nancy Siraisi, “The Medical Learning of Albertus Magnus,” Albertus Magnus and the Sciences (n. 5 above) 385, 390–392. See in general Heinrich Schipperges, “Das medizinisiche Denken bei AlbertusMagnus,” Albertus Magnus: Doctor universalis 1280/1290, ed. Gerbert Meyer and Albert Zimmerman(Mainz 1980) 279–294; Peter Theiss, Die Wahrnehumngspsychologie und Sinnespsychologie des Albertus Magnus: ein Modell des Sinnes–und Hirnfunktion aus der Zeit des Mittelalters (Frankfurt 1997). BeyondAvicenna, an important source of Galenic medicine was Nemesius’s De natura hominis. For Albert’s syn-thesis of Galenic humors with Aristotle’s philosophy, see Miguel De Asúa, “The Organization of Discourseon Animals in the Thirteenth Century: Peter of Spain, Albert the Great, and the Commentaries on De ani-malibus” (PhD Diss. Notre Dame 1991, cited by William J. Wallace, “Foreword,” Albertus Magnus and theSciences (n. 5 above) xviii–xix.

125 Albertus Magnus, De anima 1.2.1 (n. 1 above) 7–1.18; 1.2.9, p. 41. 126 Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 12.2.1 (n. 53 above) 2.838. Cf. Aristotle, De anima 403a; De parti-

bus animalium 650b. See also 651b, 698a, 667a; De motibus animalium 701b, 702a.127 Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 12.2.1 (n. 53 above) 1.838. It repeated an error of Greek physics,

for freezing water expands. See F. M. Cornford, “Was the Ionian Philosophy Scientific?” Journal of Hel-lenic Studies 62 (1942) 1–2; Aristotle, Meterologica 347a. See Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 12.1.3 (n.53 above) 1.237; Keith J. Laidler, The World of Physical Chemistry (Oxford 1993) 84.




affirmed that all animals possessed natural powers, called “passions,” to express theworkings and accidents of their souls. They were accidentals, such as knowledge; orcustoms and habits of good and evil; and fear or courage; and other habits and pas-sions to which animals were disposed, such as concupiscence and desire, and anger.The natural distinction between male and female established the difference in the pas-sions among gendered animals of the same species. This fact was more obvious inhumans than in other animals, he thought, because humans more closely attained natu-ral perfection. 128 Relating the passions to the physical elements, Albert honoredAristotle’s unempirical characterization of the male gender as hot. 129 Albert character-ized the female gender as retaining “freezing coldness” and “cold compression.” Heinferred that “because her body does not expel from it superfluity, it is sluggish andinactive.” Indeed, “The female universally is heavy of movement.” On the contrary themale was more mobile, and more confident, bold, and virile. 130 Albert’s gendered de-scriptions from those elemental qualities further interpreted his wonder as the origin of

philosophy.Wonder, as a suspension in ignorance by a cardiac contraction, was a cold passiv-

ity, like the passion of fear. To philosophize was not to wonder at but to know thecause of a sensory perception originating in the heart as the seat of the soul. To philos-ophize was to overcome cold passivity by hot activity, to overcome suspension inwonder. To philosophize was to attain figuratively the male constitution that for Aris-totle was hot, ablaze with the vital spirit. To philosophize, surpassing wonder byknowledge, was to move physically beyond cardiac systole, contraction, to cardiacdiastole, expansion. That expansion of hot blood from the heart to the other bodilymembers, principally the brain, distributed the spirituous substance in the body for itsoptimal operation by the soul’s powers. Albert predicted that men possessed of a sim-

ple and pure intellect, with a physical constitution of refined spirit, heat, and luminoushumor—undisturbed by a freezing cold—would study well and freely in divine, great,and subtle matters. 131 They would be philosophers.

Albert ingeniously coordinated his medieval knowledge about the wonder of theheart. His own wonder about its origin of philosophy was an achievement in the medi-eval aspiration to understand knowledge itself. For his era, his student Ulrich of Stras-

bourg lauded him by a passion. Albert was “a man in every knowledge so divine thathe can fittingly be called the stupor and miracle of our age.” 132 As Albert taught him,

128 Albertus Magnus, De animalibus12.1.3 (n. 53 above) 1.810.129 For Aristotle, see Lloyd, “Hot and Cold, Dry and Wet” (n. 124 above) 101–104. See also Prudence

Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750 BC – AD 1250 (Montreal 1985). For a defenseof Aristotle as not ideological, see Robert Mayhew, The Female in Aristotle’s Biology: Reason or Rationali- zation (Chicago 2004) 40–41, 92–113.

130 Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 8.1.1 (n. 53 above) 1.573. For gendered differences due tocomplexion, especially to heat, see Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine,Science, and Culture (Cambridge 1995) 170–177. For Galen on the physiology of the passions, see Sorabji, Emotion and Peace (n. 100 above) 253–260; Knuuttila, Emotions (n. 41 above) 93–98.

131 Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica 1.1.5 (n. 1 above) 8. See also Boyle, “Aquinas’s Natural Heart” (n. 62above) 268.

132 Ulrich of Strasbourg, Summa de bono 4.3.9, cited by Edward A. Synan, “Introduction: Albertus Mag-nus and the Sciences,” Albertus Magnus and the Sciences (n. 5 above) 5; and James A. Weisheipl, “The Lifeand Works of St. Albert the Great,” ibid. 46, translation mine.




stupor was the type of fear evoked by a portent of uncustomary magnitude that wasliterally breathtaking.

boyle2014 the wonder of the heart _ albert the great on the origin of philosophy

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