Transcript The Chain of Being

The Chain of Being
Chaos and Order in the
Renaissance Worldview
Shakespeare 207 (Spring 2002)
In the Beginning...
Biblical explanation for cosmology
 Designed by a benevolent deity
 Perfection and lack of change
 Perfect order and hierarchy from
God down to the most insignificant
creature or object

In Principio creatavit Deus
caelum et terram....
For Renaissance Christians, the act of
creation is an act of imposing
organization on raw chaos. For
them, orderliness is next to
Godliness.
The Great Chain of Being
Highest
 Creator
 beings of both spirit and physical body (humans)
below angelic beings.
 non-human mammals, fowl, fish, insects
◦ physical bodies and five senses, but lacking reason
animals with fewer than five senses or inanimate
bodies (oysters, barnacles, mollusks)
 Plant Life, inanimate and lacking in sensory
organs (trees, vegetables, shrubs)
 Minerals and inanimate objects
Lowest

Everything had a place in the hierarchy, and
all was well as long as each creature
behaved according to its station.
The Spheres
Robert Fludd,
"The Great Chain of Being"
1617
The Universe as We Know it
Versus the Ptolemaic Model
The Sun
•c. CE 90
Earth
The Moon
Planets
So What Went Wrong?
How did they explain the
existence of unpleasant evil
within a world that was thought
to have been created as an
ordered paradise?
All of creation was bound
together. Whatever affected one thing affected other things in
the Chain of Being. This was called a
“Correspondence.”
“What is below is like that which is
above. What is above is like what is
below. Thus is the miracle of the
One accomplished.”
--Paracelsus
“The Body is a Little World.”
Body is an allegorical chain of being
Created in God’s Own Image
Set in the very center of creation
Given the position of primate over the
animals
Given both soul and flesh.
Immortal, never dying....
Health and Balance
Health & happiness = balance of
humors / humours
Without balance? TROUBLE
...It leads to Disorder in Nature
Animals attacking people, eating their own
young, stealing grain or crops, all these
were signs of the fallen nature of the earth,
and corresponded to breaks in the Chain of
Being and disorder within the microcosm.
...And to disorder in the
heavenly constellations.
Something rotten in the
Sublunary Sphere
Most of creation = perfect, uncorrupt.
The effects of sin were limited to the earth and its
immediate atmosphere, i.e., everything beneath the
orbit of the moon.
Thus the references in Shakespeare to “the
sublunary sphere,” and “everything beneath the
moon.”
Within this boundary, the nature of the world
changed. It began to rot....
Mutability
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Old Age
Death
Erosion
Disease
Rain, Wind, and
Weather
Rust and Decay
Entropy
“God commanded us that we should
not eat the fruit; and that we should
not touch it, lest perhaps we die.”
(Gen 3:3)
God
The Supreme Primate
 King of Angels (Rex Angelorum)

The King and Nobility
Right to rule given by God, and
could only be removed by
Him.
Believed superior in his virtue,
wisdom, grace, and strength.
Ranks = the human chain
Ancient medieval model of Three Estates:
 Bellatores: Knights and royalty
 Oratores: The Clergy, the priests
 Labores: farmers and serfs
If those who protect the kingdom do their job, the people will
be safe. If those who work the fields do their job, all will be fed.
If those who tend to the soul do their job, all will have their
spiritual needs met. Refusing to keep one’s place damages the
Body Politic, society as a whole.
. . . Ruling over the Fields
and Floods
Just as God had authority over all kings,
and king had authority over men, lesser
men had dominion over animals and
plants.
Once again, this authority was believed to
be sanctioned by the Bible.
Each had its hierarchy.
“And God made the beasts of the earth
according to their kinds, and cattle, and
every thing that creepeth on the earth
after its kind. And God saw that it was
good.” --(Gen. 1:25)
This cosmology permeated
earlier medieval society in
Western Europe
Any educated person would be familiar with
these concepts in the days before the 1600s.
…even uneducated peasants would know
about the chain.
An Example: Hawking
Consider for example the sport of hawking (hunting small
animals with trained birds).
The great chain of Hawking
Each rank in society had a corresponding bird to use.
• Emperor: Golden Eagle,Vulture, & Merlin
 King: Gyrfalcon (male & female)
 Prince: Female Peregrine
 Duke: Rock Falcon (subspecies of the Peregrine)
 Earl: Peregrine
 Baron: Male peregrine
 Knight: Saker
 Squire: Lanner Falcon
 Lady: Female Merlin
 Yeoman: Goshawk or Hobby
 Priest: Female Sparrowhawk
 Holywater clerk: Male Sparrowhawk
 Knaves, Servants, Children: Old World Kestrel
To use a bird for the wrong rank was an act not just of
poor etiquette, but of subversion.
keeping a falcon above one's station was a felony
It was an act of rebellion against an inflexible social order.
The Boke of St. Albans relates that the typical punishment
of cutting off the hands of people who kept birds above
their social rank also served as an excellent deterrent to
the crime.
Ethical, Political and Literary
Ramifications?
Important to know one’s place, and not seek to rise above
it through unholy ambition.
Equally important to know one’s place, and not to sink
below it by neglecting one’s duties.
Important to balance physical and animal needs of the
body with divine reason.
Regicide: The Worst Act against
the order
“If I could find example
of thousands that had struck anointed kings
And flourish’d after, I’ld not do’t; but [. . .]
Nor brass nor stone nor parchment bears not one.”
--The Winter’s Tale I.ii. 357-360
King = God’s deputy
Overthrow him, and that is tantamount to overthrowing GOD
The result?
The unlawful death of kings always
causes disruption in the heavens
(stars fall from the sky, freakish
storms blow across the country) and
disruption in the world of nature
(famines, plagues, unnatural activity
among the animals, etc.)
Killing the King is attacking an emblem of
Godhead. It is worse than even killing a priest. For
he has two bodies, and injuring the head of the
state is a blow to the entire people.
Explicit Presentatio!
Works Consulted:
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. Richard Green. NY:
Macmillan Pub. Co., 1962.
Douay-Rheims Translation of the Bible.
Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King’s Two Bodies. NJ: Princeton UP, 1997.
Saintbury, George, ed. Elizabethan and Jacobean Pamphlets. NY:
Macmillan and Co., 1892.
Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture
•2002 © Dr. L. K. Wheeler