defectus solis
Defectus solis
Mente sua enim quaerunt ista [discere de stellis et sidereis plagis et viis astrorum] et ingenio quod tu dedisti eis et multa invenerunt et praenuntiaverunt ante multos annos defectus luminarium solis et lunae, quo die, qua hora, quanta ex parte futuri essent, et non eos fefellit numerus. et ita factum est ut praenuntiaverunt, et scripserunt regulas indagatas, et leguntur hodie atque ex eis praenuntiatur quo anno et quo mense anni et quo die mensis et qua hora diei et quota parte luminis sui defectura sit luna vel sol: et ita fiet ut praenuntiatur.(Confessionum Lib. V.iii.4).
FOR THE CURIOUS
“Only in dark the light.” Ursula LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea
Today is such a big day in the United States. Our professional talkers haven’t been able to stop talking about and making us anticipate it. Given the other things in our common life for us to discuss, an eclipse can seem like a distraction, but it is a truly marvellous time, a convergence of turnings that marries night in midday, darkness in light.
I figured it only appropriate to write a little more than I usually have or will. I have been thinking of how darkness stands prior not only in our storytelling, but in our everyday equation of knowing with seeing or having clarity. Unless my memory is tricking me, Cicero says somewhere that ignorance is our greatest misery, out of which we have to crawl with effort of mind and into which we so easily err. We hate being, metaphorically, in the dark, and we are inclined to hang in the shadows when we are afraid of not knowing an answer. And the hardest learning is learning to see the darkness, our darkness, as did Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea, and to own it and embrace it lest it destroy us. I wish I knew how we could do that in the United States as easily as the Sun and Moon do it in the heavens. Conversion is often one of turning from darkness to light, but it only happens when we realize that we have been mistaking the darkness for light, and yet it can become so easy to hate what we were and be impatient with those seeming to refuse to see, especially when we are tired and can only cry, “How long, oh Lord?”
In this passage from the Confessions, Augustine is recounting a moment in his finding of the way, The Word (V.iii.5), while those learned in the ways of the stars and the lights of heaven (V.iii.3-4) were in the dark.
And Augustine does not do a good job of hiding his hatred of what he once was. At times, he can come across as harsh and dismissive of learning. To anyone slightly familiar with the history of humanity, this will come as no surprise, but it is especially difficult for a religious tradition whose thirteenth apostle wrote “Knowledge puffs up” (I Cor. 8.1b) – a medical metaphor suggesting that scientia or γνῶσις causes swelling like an infection.
Here, Augustine is dealing with the difficulties that the “vices of learning” can cause as he beholds it in the Manichean bishop Faustus. Consequently, the context of these words – in which he recounts his final days with the Manicheans – is not cheerful, which partly explains his disdainful “mente sua… et ingenio quod tu dedisti eis.”
But only partly, for, as is clear from the preceding and the following sections (V.iii.3 and V.iii.5) they also develop a theme found in Jewish and Christian scriptures, that of the error of the gentiles, a way of explaining away more than of explaining other cultures. Paul develops the theme in Romans 1.18-32 in a notorious way and expands its orbit to include his contemporary, unpersuaded Jews when he wrote to quell the proto-gnostic tumescence (1. Cor. 8.1b) in the Corinthian Church with his message of the cross and charity:
It’s a magnificent passage: first, as God planned, the world by its wisdom did not find God; then came the foolishness of preaching – no miracles or signs, no science or wisdom. Just the Christ crucified. (That line about the miracles gets overlooked a lot).
In researching the passage for today, I found that Augustine often speaks of those who discovered these calculations in terms he found in Wisdom 13, a locus classicus for the “error of the gentiles.” (see Sermo LXVIII.1.2). He likes to remind his congregation that the worldly-wise who have discovered so much about the heavens and can tell so accurately when the eclipses will happen have no excuse and is fond of referencing verses 8 and 9:
Augustine’s critical tone carries over when he discusses, not just eclipses, but a lot of what we would just say is wonderful and wondrous learning. His decade of wandering among the Manichees left him very critical towards himself and his own motives and his youthful ambition. Just read the beginning of his harsh letter 118 to poor Dioscorus whom Augustine seems to give the scolding he wishes he had received before he set out for the glory of being an imperial rhetor in Milan and of nearly marrying into a rich and noble line. Dioscurus just wanted to understand some things about Cicero so he’d be ready for his studies somewhere in the eastern empire – most likely Athens. Was it really so wrong for Dioscorus not to want to look silly and uneducated? For Augustine, the Christian needs to be like Mary, not like Martha. It does no good to know everything and not know the origin of everything – and damned be the opinions of others!
Augustine can be much less critical elsewhere, but this is enough to chew on for today. I hope that, if you can, you all enjoy the eclipse.
If you can’t be there, NASA is streaming it live:
A short and fun video on eclipses (It’s disappointing that there is no mention of Aristarchus’ On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon, which precedes Hipparchus’ work by at least a century and used both solar and lunar eclipses).
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