The religion of technology
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Posted on November 1, 2020 by Elements of Racial Education

Preface

Chicago physicist Richard Seed caused a media sensation in early 1998 when he proclaimed he would conduct human cloning experiments despite public concerns about the human and social implications of such research. His bold announcement sparked heated debate around the world and even sparked political efforts to legislate against these scientific schemes. Entirely ignored in all the clamor, however, was the religious motivation at the heart of Seed's provocative statement which, in his view, placed his project above social concerns.

"God made man in his own image," Seed explained in a January 7 interview on Morning Edition.of the national public radio. “God intended for man to be one with God. We will no longer be one with God. We're going to have almost as much knowledge and almost as much power as God. DNA cloning and reprogramming is the first serious step to “being one with God”. In these words, Seed succinctly echoed the central refrain of the religion of technology, a faith that has ignited the Western technological imagination for a millennium. No doubt this supernatural mythology has inspired great works in the service of humanity, but as Seed's announcement attests, it may well turn out to be more of a threat than a blessing. Sadly, Seed's religious message was not heard and ignored,and thus failed to provoke any reflection about the deeper motivations underlying the science and technology enterprise. It confirms, however, the central thesis of this book.

Introduction: Technology and religion

We confront ourselves in the West at the end of the second Christian millennium in the same way we started it, in a pious anticipation of our destiny and our deliverance, except that henceforth our medieval expectations assume a more modern, technological expression. . The purpose of this book is to demonstrate that the current enchantment with things technological - the very measure of modern Enlightenment - is rooted in religious myths and ancient imaginaries. Although contemporary technologists, in their sober pursuit of utility, power, and profit, seem to set society's standards for what is rational, they are also driven by distant dreams, spiritual aspirations of supernatural redemption.No matter how dazzling and intimidating their display of worldly wisdom is, their true inspiration lies elsewhere, in a supernatural quest for transcendence and salvation.

As the new millennium approaches, we are witnessing two seemingly incompatible enthusiasms, on the one hand a widespread infatuation with technological progress and a confidence in the ultimate triumph of reason, on the other a resurgence of a faith. fundamentalist which takes from a religious revival. The coincidence of these two developments seems strange, however, this is simply because we mistakenly assume them to be opposite and opposing historical trends.

Since the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, which proclaimed the inevitable "secularization" of society, it has generally been assumed that the first of these trends would historically replace the second, that the progress of scientific technology with its rational rigor based on practical experience and material knowledge, signaled the disappearance of religious authority and enthusiasm based on blind faith and superstition. Religion, presumably, belonged to the primitive past, secular science and technology to a mature future. However, nowadays we observe that both flourish simultaneously, not only side by side but also hand in hand.As religious leaders promote their revival of the spirit through avid and accomplished use of the latest technological advances, scientists and technologists are increasingly publicly attesting to the value of their work in the pursuit of divine knowledge (1).

Seen from a broader historical perspective there is nothing particularly special about this contemporary coincidence, as the two trends have in fact never been far from each other. What we experience today is neither new nor unique but, rather, a continuation of a millennial Western tradition in which the advancement of the useful arts was inspired by and based on religious expectations. This tradition was temporarily interrupted - or, rather, obscured - only for the last century and a half or so by a secular controversy and ideology that greatly exaggerated the supposedly fundamental conflict between science and religion. What we are dealing with today, therefore, is only a renewal and reaffirmation of a much older historical tradition.

Contemporary observers have argued, echoing generations of religious apologists, that the resurgence of religious expression testifies to the spiritual sterility of technological rationality, that religious faith renews itself as a necessary complement to reason. instrumental because it provides the spiritual substance that technology lacks. There may be some truth to this assertion, but it still presupposes the mistaken assumption of a fundamental opposition between these two phenomena and ignores what they have in common. For modern technology and modern faith are neither complements nor opposites, nor do they represent successive stages of human development. They are linked and always have been, the technological company being, at the same time,an essentially religious approach.

This is not said in a purely metaphorical sense, to suggest that the technology is similar to religion in that it evokes religious emotions of omnipotence, devotion and reverence, or that it has become a new one. religion (secular) in and of itself, with its own priestly caste, its esoteric rites and its articles of faith. Rather, it is said literally and historically, to indicate that modern technology and religion have evolved together, and therefore the technological enterprise has been and remains steeped in religious faith.

The close connection between religion and technology is probably nowhere more evident than in the United States, where an unmatched popular delight with progress matches an equally fervent popular expectation of the return of Jesus Christ. What has typically been overlooked by most observers of these phenomena is that the two obsessions are often found in the same individuals, many of them among them who are themselves technologists. If we take a close look at some of the hallmarks of contemporary tech companies, we can see the devotee not only in the ranks but in the driver's seat as well. Religious concerns permeate the space program at all levels, and are a major motivation behind space travel and space exploration.Artificial intelligence eloquently advocates the possibilities of machine-based immortality and resurrection, and their followers, the architects of virtual reality and cyberspace, exult in their expectation of ubiquity and perfection. disembodied like those of God. Genetic engineers imagine themselves as divinely inspired participants in a new creation. All of these pioneering technologists hold deep-rooted beliefs that are variations of familiar religious themes.exult in their expectation of a disembodied omnipresence and perfection similar to that of God. Genetic engineers imagine themselves as divinely inspired participants in a new creation. All of these pioneering technologists hold deep-rooted beliefs that are variations of familiar religious themes.exult in their expectation of a disembodied omnipresence and perfection similar to that of God. Genetic engineers imagine themselves as divinely inspired participants in a new creation. All of these pioneering technologists hold deep-rooted beliefs that are variations of familiar religious themes.

Beyond professed believers and those who employ explicitly religious language are countless other individuals for whom the religious impulse is largely unconscious, obscured by secularized yet operational vocabulary. For they are also the heirs and bearers of a lingering ideological tradition that has defined the dynamic Western technological enterprise from its inception. In the United States, for example, it must be remembered that industrialization and the associated enthusiasm for technological progress emerged in the context of the religious revival of the Second Great Awakening. As historian Perry Miller explained, “It was not only in religious revival that a doctrine of 'perfectionism' emerged. The mentality of renewal was a sister of the technological one. "(2)

But the connection between religion and technology was not made in the workshops and churches of the new world. Rather, the religious roots of modern technological enchantment can be traced back a millennium to the formation of Western consciousness, when the useful arts first became involved in the Christian project of redemption. The earthly means of survival were now turned to the supernatural end of salvation, and over the next millennium the hitherto most material and humble human activities came to be increasingly invested with spiritual significance and meaning. transcendent meaning - the restoration of the lost divinity of mankind.

The legacy of the religion of technology is still found among us, among all of us. Just like technologists, we regularly expect much more from our artificial inventions than mere convenience, comfort, or mere survival. We ask for deliverance. This shows in our near-obsession with technological progress, in our wild anticipations of any further technical advancement - no matter how badly each fails to keep their promise - and, more importantly, in our utter inability to think and act rationally about it. to this apparently most rational approach.

Human beings have always created collective myths, in order to give consistency, a sense of meaning and control, to their shared experience. Myths guide and inspire us, and allow us to live in a world that is ultimately uncontrollable and mysterious. But while our myths help us, over time they can also hurt us by blinding us to our real and imperative needs. This book describes the history of such a myth: the religion of technology. It is offered in the hope that we can learn to disillusion ourselves with the supernatural dreams that reside at the heart of our tech enterprise, in order to begin redirecting our amazing abilities to more mundane and human ends.

Part I: Technology and transcendence

Chapter 1: Divine Likeness

The dynamic project of Western technology, the mark defining modernity, is in fact of medieval origin and spirit. A pattern of coherent, continuous and cumulative progress in the useful arts, opposing a slow, haphazard accumulation of specific isolated inventions, emerged only in medieval Europe. This unprecedented undertaking reflected a profound cultural shift, a departure from both classical Christian beliefs and orthodox ones whereby humble activities heretofore despised because of their association with manual labor, bondage, women or worldliness. came to be dignified and worthy of the attention and devotion of the elite. And this change in the social status of the arts, if not of the craftsmen,was rooted in an ideological innovation which invests the useful arts with a meaning that goes beyond their mere utility. Technology came to be identified with transcendence, involved as never before in the Christian idea of ​​redemption. The worldly means of survival were henceforth directed towards the supernatural end of salvation. The emergence of Western technology as a historical force and the emergence of the religion of technology were thus two aspects of the same phenomenon (3).The emergence of Western technology as a historical force and the emergence of the religion of technology were thus two aspects of the same phenomenon (3).The emergence of Western technology as a historical force and the emergence of the religion of technology were thus two aspects of the same phenomenon (3).

The supernatural roots of the religion of technology were distinctly Christian. For only Christianity blurred the distinction and built a bridge between the human and the divine. Only in Christianity did salvation come to mean the restoration of mankind to its original likeness to God.

The Jews who were uncompromisingly monotheistic believed that they were the chosen people of the one and only God, and thus blessed with the burden of morality. However, it was always clear to them what God was and what man was, a point supported by the story of Genesis. In times of great trial, it is true, the Jewish prophets resorted to excess rhetoric in which their warlike Messiah, who came to conquer their enemies, deliver them from oppression, and rebuild Jerusalem, assumes a supernatural dimension. Thus, in the second century BC. AD, the prophet Daniel had a vision according to which the "Son of man... Came with the clouds of the heavens" to establish "an everlasting reign". And in the Apocalypses of Baruch and Ezra of the first century AD. AD,the Messiah was endowed with miraculous powers allowing him to completely eliminate all struggle, all violence, all lack and all untimely death (but not death itself). But the Jews ignored such hopes and soon abandoned them. Now, as Norman Cohn noted, "it was no longer the Jews but the Christians who cherished and developed prophecies according to the tradition of Daniel's vision" (4).

In its resolutely supernatural reinterpretation of the prophecy of the Old Testament, as the great sociologist of religions Max Weber noted, the Christian Trinitarianism in force renewed Roman polytheism (5), this time giving men a place in the divine pantheon. "The incarnation of God gave men the opportunity to be a meaningful part of God," Weber observed, "or, as Irenaeus had already put it," allowed men to become gods. " According to Augustine, the original Adam, having been created in the image of God, was immortal, a distinctly divine character lost with the Fall. Christ, the “Son of man… [who] is to come in the glory of his Father with his angels”, was identified by Paul with the “last Adam”, whose true divinity and immortality were revealed with the Resurrection ,and whose immortality was made symbolically accessible to his disciples through the ritual of baptismal regeneration. Recalling the divine likeness of the first Adam, the coming of Christ promised the same fate to redeemed humanity. This was made explicit in The Apocalypse of John, which prophesied a happy ending to biblical history where all the righteous would recover their divinity in a succession of resurrections. “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more. "(6)who prophesied a happy ending to biblical history where all the righteous would recover their divinity in a succession of resurrections. “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more. "(6)who prophesied a happy ending to biblical history where all the righteous would recover their divinity in a succession of resurrections. “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more. "(6)

"By means of interpretation, therefore, by a definition of the notion of Christianity", wrote Gregory of Nazianz in the fourth century, "we must affirm that Christianity is the imitation of the divine nature [...] For the first creation of man was made in imitation of the appearance of God […] and the promise of Christianity is that man will be restored to original happiness. So, for Christians, human efforts to regain Adamic perfection and imitate the life of Christ were one and the same: the search for divinity. By piety and asceticism the saints strove to join the angels, and by their devout efforts probably went at least half the way. Under their aegis the advancement of the arts eventually became yet another means to the same exalted end (7).

During the first Christian millennium technology and transcendence belonged to two entirely different fields. Although Christ and Paul were artisans, and many early adherents of the faith came from the working classes, including women, the Church's elite inherited a classical disdain for the useful arts. Moreover, after the fourth century, orthodox dogma, while recognizing the importance of such activities in alleviating the plight of fallen humanity, explicitly denied that they had any value as a means of redemption, that only grace could assure.

"Besides the art of living well and arriving at immortal felicity, a sublime art which is called virtue, and which the only grace of God in Jesus Christ gives to the children of the promise and of the kingdom", writes Augustine , the main author of Christian orthodoxy, in The City of God, “Were discovered and perfected, by the natural genius of man, innumerable arts and techniques at the service not only of the necessities of life but also of human entertainment. Augustine recognizes the "astonishing achievements" which had taken place in the manufacture of clothing, navigation, architecture, agriculture, ceramics, medicine, armament and fortifications, breeding and preparation of food ; in mathematics, astronomy and philosophy; as well as in languages, writing, music, theater, painting and sculpture. But he emphasizes once again that “in saying this, of course, I am only thinking of the nature of the human spirit as the glory of this mortal life, not of faith and the path of truth which leads to eternal life […] And, remember,all these achievements taken together are but the consolation which is permitted to us in a life condemned to misery. "(8)

As Jacques Ellul, the theologian and philosopher of technology, argued, echoing Augustine, technology existed only for a fallen humanity, and had no meaning beyond that. In its prelapsed state of perfection, humanity did not need such a device, any more than it would need in the reestablishment of that perfect state. So from the Augustan point of view, technology had nothing to do with transcendence; indeed, it signified the denial of transcendence. Transcendence, the recovery of lost perfection, could only be achieved by the grace of God. Moreover, those thus blessed, says Augustine, would participate in a “universal knowledge” far beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals. "Think how great, beautiful, certain, infallible this knowledge will be,easily acquired. And what a body, too, shall we have, a body entirely subject to our spirit and kept so alive by the spirit that it will not need any other nourishment. "(9)

In the early Middle Ages, for reasons that remain unclear, the relationship between technology and transcendence began to change. Over time, technology came to be identified more closely with both the lost perfection and the possibility of a restoration of perfection, and the advancement of the arts took on new significance, not only as evidence of grace, but as a means of preparation for and a sure sign of imminent salvation. Historian Lynn White suggests that this change in attitude towards technology may have started with the introduction of the heavy plow into the Frankish Empire. This major technological innovation radically reversed the relationship between man and nature by making machine capacity rather than human need the criterion for dividing the earth:“He had previously been a part of Nature; henceforth he became an exploiter of Nature. Soon after, around 830, a new kind of calendar illustration began to appear among the Franks which reflected this new attitude towards Nature. Images of plowing, haymaking and harvesting depicted an active, coercive and dominant posture: “Man and Nature are two things, and man is master. At the same time, during the Carolingian era, what White describes as "the first indication that men thought of technological progress to be an aspect of Christian virtue arose. "(10)a new kind of calendar illustration began to appear among the Franks which demonstrated this new attitude towards Nature. Images of plowing, haymaking and harvesting depicted an active, coercive and dominant posture: “Man and Nature are two things, and man is master. At the same time, during the Carolingian era, what White describes as "the first indication that men thought of technological progress to be an aspect of Christian virtue arose. "(10)a new kind of calendar illustration began to appear among the Franks which demonstrated this new attitude towards Nature. Images of plowing, haymaking and harvesting depicted an active, coercive and dominant posture: “Man and Nature are two things, and man is master. At the same time, during the Carolingian era, what White describes as "the first indication that men thought of technological progress to be an aspect of Christian virtue arose. "(10)What White describes as "the first indication that men thought of technological progress to be an aspect of Christian virtue arose." "(10)What White describes as "the first indication that men thought of technological progress to be an aspect of Christian virtue arose." "(10)

In the Utrecht Psalter, illuminated near Reims around 830, there is an illustration from Psalm 63 which gives a technological advantage to those who are on God's side. The army of the righteous faces a much larger ungodly army. “In each camp a sword is conspicuously sharpened. The ungodly just use an obsolete whetstone. The piles, however, use the first known crank outside of China that spins the first known grinding wheel. The artist obviously tells us that technological progress is the will of God. "(11)

This innovative ideological illustration was produced, according to White, "almost certainly by a Benedictine monk," an inference which is no doubt based on the fact that the Benedictine monks were not only prodigious illuminators but also fervent supporters of the arts in the service of a spiritual end. In the sixth century, Benedict of Nursia made practical arts and manual labor in general vital elements of monastic devotion, alongside liturgical praise to God and meditative reading of the Scriptures. Whatever its practical result - and the monastic achievements in this regard were monumental - the real purpose of such efforts was always, as George Ovitt pointed out,the pursuit of perfection - "Monastic theorists favored manual labor but always as a means to a spiritual end" - and it was this overarching spiritual motivation that inspired such unprecedented results. “It is one of the most astonishing facts in Western cultural history,” notes Ernst Benz, “that the startling acceleration and intensification of technological progress in post-Carolingian Europe emanated from contemplative monasticism. "(12)“That the startling acceleration and intensification of technological progress in post-Carolingian Europe emanated from contemplative monasticism. "(12)“That the startling acceleration and intensification of technological progress in post-Carolingian Europe emanated from contemplative monasticism. "(12)

It was under the imperial aegis of the Carolingians that the Benedictine order first became hegemonic in Western Europe. Charlemagne imposed the Benedictine Rule on all religious areas of his kingdom, and his son Louis the Pious, a fervent supporter of useful innovation, was the original patron of the monastic reform movement that spread across Europe to the tenth and eleventh centuries. Under imperial, then feudal and papal auspices, the Benedictines eventually turned their religious devotion to the useful arts into a medieval industrial revolution, pioneering the enthusiastic use of water and windmills and new farming methods. The monastic elevation of technology as a means to a transcendent end made it gain popularity in the process.

By investing them with spiritual significance, the Benedictines granted a new dignity to the useful arts, which was reflected in the illustrations and illuminations of the Carolingian calendar. And as these illustrations indicate, this social elevation of the arts meant at the same time an ideological elevation of humanity above Nature. In ideological terms, this exalted stance vis-à-vis Nature represented a vigorous reaffirmation of a central early Christian belief in the possibility of restoring humanity to its original likeness to God, the our image after our likeness ”in Genesis (1:26), which had been compromised by sin and lost with the Fall (13).

In monasticism, in particular, the Christian search for this restoration of man in the likeness of the image of God became collective rather than a merely personal obligation - this stated objective appears in the charters of protection and exemption of monasteries. At the height of the Carolingian Renaissance, which was deeply influenced by monasticism, Alcuin, the head of the famous Charlemagne Palace School, used such a notion to express his hope that a revival of wisdom and knowledge had begun in the empire of Charlemagne. And as Gerhart Ladner noted, subsequently “the idea of ​​the reform of man in the image and likeness of God became the inspiration for every reform movement in […] medieval Christianity. "(14)

In addition, the conception of the likeness of the image of God also began to undergo a significant change during this period. The patristic view that had hitherto prevailed was that the divine image of man was purely spiritual in nature, abiding in the rational soul. The restoration of this original image therefore entailed a necessary abandonment of the body, of matter. In the Carolingian period, particularly in the influential work of Jean Scot Érigène, the court philosopher of Charlemagne's grandson Charles the Bald, the notion of resemblance to the image of God incorporated for the first time the bodily - the body and the external senses - as a necessary correlative of reason and spirit. If the mind requires the bodily, from this new point of view,the bodily was in turn spiritualized, and matter became related to the transcendent. It is likely that Carolingian advances in and high esteem for the useful arts reflected and reinforced such a shift in the conception of the likeness of the image of God. In the opinion of historian Ernst Benz, this belief eventually became "one of the strongest impulses for the technological development and realization of man [...]" "Significantly", writes Benz, "the founders of modern technology sensed that the justification for the far-reaching goals of their technological endeavors lay in the very thought of the fate of man asIt is likely that Carolingian advances in and high esteem for the useful arts reflected and reinforced such a shift in the conception of the likeness of the image of God. In the opinion of historian Ernst Benz, this belief eventually became "one of the strongest impulses for the technological development and realization of man [...]" "Significantly", writes Benz, "the founders of modern technology sensed that the justification for the far-reaching goals of their technological endeavors lay in the very thought of the fate of man asIt is likely that Carolingian advances in and high esteem for the useful arts reflected and reinforced such a shift in the conception of the likeness of the image of God. In the opinion of historian Ernst Benz, this belief eventually became "one of the strongest impulses for the technological development and realization of man [...]" "Significantly", writes Benz, "the founders of modern technology sensed that the justification for the far-reaching goals of their technological endeavors lay in the very thought of the fate of man asthis belief eventually became "one of the strongest impulses for the technological development and realization of man [...]" "Significantly," writes Benz, "the founders of modern technology sensed that the rationale for goals of most considerable of their technological efforts lay in the very thought of the fate of man asthis belief eventually became "one of the strongest impulses for the technological development and realization of man [...]" "Significantly," writes Benz, "the founders of modern technology sensed that the rationale for goals of most considerable of their technological efforts lay in the very thought of the fate of man asimago dei and in his vocation as a fellow worker of God […] in his cooperation with God in establishing his Kingdom and […] in sharing the reign of God on Earth. "(15)

The new conception of the useful arts as distinct, dignified, divinely inspired and valid for salvation, was for the first time fully formulated in the ninth century in the work of the Carolingian philosopher Erigene. By this time, the growing attention given to the various technical arts and crafts by medieval observers had culminated in the formulation of a new umbrella term, the "mechanical arts", to refer to them collectively as a separate category of activity. human - pioneer of later expressions of "useful arts" and "technology". Augustine, for example, did not have such a vocabulary at his disposal, and rather referred the reader to "innumerable arts and techniques", to "astonishing achievements",to "inventions" or to each particular trade in turn - making clothes, sailing, etc. According to recent studies, the first known use of the expressionartes mechanicae to describe the arts collectively appears in Erigene's work, subsequently, as interest in craftsmanship grew, the expression came into common use. Borrowed from Érigène, it was later used by Hugues de Saint-Victor in his immensely influential classification of knowledge. By the end of the twelfth century the rubric had been fully assimilated into the mainstream of medieval thought and became the normal expression for the technological arts, used by philosophers such as Abelard, Jean Duns Scot, Bonaventure, Albert the Great. and Raymond Lulle (16).

Erigene formulated the expression "mechanical arts" in his commentary on the fifth century work Marriage of Philology and Mercuryby Martianus Capella. Not only did he recognize the various useful arts as constituting a distinct class of activities, but also, unlike Capella, accorded them an unprecedented status equal to that of the seven liberal arts. In Capella's work, Mercury gives his wife the gift of these seven arts - grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and harmony - each represented in its execution by a young lady. Capella ostensibly omits from this nuptial execution the two mechanical disciplines of medicine and architecture, because of their "baseness" and their "unworthiness". "Since these ladies are preoccupied with mortal matters, their skill lies in worldly matters, and they have nothing in common with heavenly deities," writes Capella,“It will not be inappropriate to despise and reject them. "(17)

In a radical break with tradition, Erigena rewrites Capella's allegory to include the mechanical arts hitherto disdained. In her new version, the young philology girl, after having received the gift of the liberal arts from Mercury, in return gives her the analogous gift of the seven mechanical arts, including medicine and architecture. Thus the mechanical arts, although not really included among the liberal arts, are nevertheless represented as having equal importance.

In giving the mechanical arts such status, Erigene insinuated that while there was no doubt that they were preoccupied with "worldly things", they nevertheless shared something "in common with the heavenly deities". There was a connection between the terrestrial and the celestial, between technology and transcendence. Just as he insisted on the importance of the bodily, the physical element of the likeness of man to the image of God, in the service of the spiritual, he likewise insisted on the importance of the arts in the restoration of this image, in the service of salvation. Departing from the Augustinian point of view, Erigene argued that the useful arts were indeed part of mankind's original heritage, of his likeness to the image of God, rather than a mere necessary product of his state of being. forfeiture.Thus the mechanical arts rightly had a place of honor in divine creation. Erigene insisted that knowledge of the arts is innate in man, an aspect of his original heritage, but that it had come to be obscured by sin since the Fall of man, and was now not more than an obscure vestige of its original perfection. He believed, however, that through study and practical effort the prelapsary powers of mankind could be at least partially recovered and could, in the process, contribute to the restoration of perfection. In other words, Erigene invested the arts with spiritual meaning, as part of man's likeness to the image of God, and identified them with the vehicles of redemption. According to the thought of Erigene, summed up by an academic,“By undertaking the study of the arts […] one progresses towards perfection since the arts are innate in man. Their knowledge was obscured by the Fall. Their recovery through study helps restore man to his primordial state. "(18)

The arts, writes Érigène, are “the links of man with the divine, their culture a means of salvation. He declares that "all natural art is found materially in human nature," and maintains that "it follows that all men inherently possess the natural arts, but, because of the punishment for the sin of the first man, they are obscured in the soul of man and are buried in deep ignorance, in studying we do nothing but recall to our present understanding the same arts which are preserved deep in our memory. The boldly innovative and spiritually promising reconceptualization of the Erigene arts signaled a turning point in the ideological history of technology. As one scholar notes, “It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this development.The new emphasis on the place of the arts in Christian education must be seen as one of the main factors animating the intense interest of the ninth century in the arts. This new "Christianization of the arts" for the first time gave the mortal means of survival a crucial role in the achievement of immortal salvation (19).

Legend has it that at an advanced age Erigene became abbot of a Benedictine monastery in England. Whether this is true or not, there is little doubt that Erigene's new conception of the useful arts was supported by the monastic community that inspired him. His use of the expression “mechanical arts” reappears, for example, in a later monastic commentary on Capella by Remi d'Auxerre. His notion that the mechanical arts had been divinely inspired is exemplified in a new iconography of the Creator God as a master craftsman, which first appears at the end of the tenth century in Winchester, an important site of monastic reform inspired by the Carolingians. The monastic illuminator of a gospel book here did what Lynn White describes as a "great innovation",making for the first time the portrait of the hand of God holding a scale, a set square and a pair of compasses - which would later become the symbol of the engineer of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Around the same time, the Benedictines of Winchester Cathedral installed the first giant organ, the most complex machine known before the invention of the mechanical clock (20).

But it was in the world of the twelfth-century "mechanism mentality" that the new exalted and spiritualized view of the useful arts really became the norm, especially among innovative Cistercians and Benedictines. The proliferation of new devices - the water and windmills, the mechanisms for forging metal and crushing minerals, the mechanical clock, the spectacles, the spring wheel - reflected and reinforced this new sensibility (21).

In the first half of this century, the monastic technical tradition found its most important written expression in a technical treatise by the German Theophilus the monk. Skillful metallurgist and general craftsman as well as monk, Théophile was "the first man in history to record in writing anything approaching a circumstantial detail of a technique based on his own experience", according to the metallurgist and technology historian Cyril Stanley Smith. Théophile's book, De Diversis Artibus, was "a religiously motivated codification of all existing techniques for the beautification of a church," including machine design, metal smelting, enamelling, painting, glassmaking, wire drawing and painting. 'tinning. His reverence for such crafts was notable, especially in a world in which most artisans were either slaves or state serfs. Goldsmiths and blacksmiths had sometimes enjoyed relatively privileged status because of the honorary rather than productive value of their work, such as the making of coins, jewelry, and weapons. The arts were exalted here because of their association with spiritual devotion. For Théophile also,George Ovitt notes that “the spiritual ends were primary […] the practical aspects were pursued for the glory of God and the perfection of oneself. "(22)

In the manner of Théophile, Father Arnaud de Bonneval marveled at the technical innovations introduced by the reconstruction of Clairvaux, the great abbey mother of the Cistercians, devoting detailed attention in particular to the machinery driven by the water from milling, fulling, tanning and forging, which constituted what has been described as a veritable medieval industrial revolution. Another monastic observer from Clairvaux describes an automatic flour sifter and fulling mill and, marveling at the "abstract power of water flowing through the abbey and seeking every task", thanks God for such technology lightening the work. The monastic mechanization of trades, as well as major construction projects such as the construction of churches and aqueducts, had indeed become,and were clearly recognized as, a "sacred task" (23).

The spiritualization and consequently the elevation of such practical activities in the twelfth century was fully recognized and powerfully reinforced in the extremely influential work of the Augustinian canon Hugh of St. Victor. In its innovative classification of knowledge, the Didascalicon, Hugues grants “a psychic dignity and an unprecedented speculative interest in the mechanical arts. Greatly inspired by Erigene's commentary on Capella, Hugues borrowed the rubric "mechanical arts" from Erigene as "generic expression of all manual trades." In addition, he elaborated on the creative overhaul of Erigena from Capella's allegory by specifying in detail the seven mechanical arts offered by Philology to Mercury in exchange for the seven liberal arts. These included the manufacture of clothing, weaponry and construction, commerce, agriculture, hunting and food preparation, medicine, and theater (24).

Inspired by the ideas of Erigene, Hugues, likewise, “linked the mechanical as well as the liberal arts directly to the salvation and restoration of fallen man. Although as an Augustinian Hugues identified technology exclusively with the fallen world (and with the first act of fallen man, the making of clothing), he nevertheless maintained, in marked departure from Augustine, that the useful arts constituted a means of restoring the perfection of humanity, its original divine image. Following Érigène, Hugues believed that this pre-prelapse perfection was not only spiritual, as Augustine had maintained, but also physical. He therefore argued that “the work of restoration includes the repair of man's physical life” as well as the spiritual one. For Hugues, according to the medievalist Elspeth Whitney,“The mechanical arts provide all the remedies for our physical weakness, a consequence of the Fall, and, like other branches of knowledge, ultimately find themselves subsumed in the religious task of restoring our true prelapse nature. Consequently, "by its relation to the ultimate end of man, the research of the mechanical arts acquired a religious and moral sanction", writes Hugues de Saint-Victor, "it is what they propose, namely to restore in us the divine likeness. "(25)the research of the mechanical arts acquired a religious and moral sanction ", writes Hugues de Saint-Victor," it is what they propose, namely to restore in us the divine resemblance. "(25)the research of the mechanical arts acquired a religious and moral sanction ", writes Hugues de Saint-Victor," it is what they propose, namely to restore in us the divine resemblance. "(25)

With Hughes the monastic redesign of the useful arts was fully articulated as a means of reunion with God, a theme supported in the thirteenth century by Michael Scot, who argued that "the primary objective of the human sciences is to restore fallen man to his prelapsary position ”, and by the Franciscan monk Bonaventure, who, likewise,“ sanctified the mechanical arts and placed them within the framework of knowledge whose source and end is the light of God ”. Such a work - by a canon, a layman and a beggar monk - not only ratified the moral virtue of the useful arts but also helped spread such monastic ideas beyond the cloister, fostering in Europe a unique emotional commitment to the machine, was rooted in an “acceptance of mechanisms as aids for spiritual life” (26).

Chapter 2: The Millennium: The Promise of Perfection

Although successive generations of monks had dedicated themselves anew to the restoration of the divinity of mankind, their pious efforts had lacked any tangible record of their cumulative accomplishments. With the identification of the advancement of the useful arts as a means to this exalted end, however, their efforts came to concrete expression, and therefore clear evidence of their progress towards perfection. The development of technology now gave some assurance that humanity was indeed on the path to restoration. Therefore, the technological invention was duly incorporated into the biblical commentary and thus into Christian history.

At the same time, from the middle of the twelfth century there emerged from the monastic world a radically renewed millenarian conception of Christian history, a dynamic and teleological sense of time which would deeply excite Christian hope and accelerate the technological progress which was henceforth bound to it. . For Augustine, the historical epoch, the tiresome and painful occupation of man, was homogeneous and invariable; the resurrection of Christ was certainly a sign of promise, but history presented no other indication of a movement towards a restoration of perfection. Only God knew the agenda, which was hidden from man; if any correlation existed between human events and the divine end, it could never be known. The new millennial mindset changed all that.Revitalizing the elite and reinterpreting the beliefs of early Christianity, she placed the restoration process in the context of human history and redefined it as active and conscious pursuit rather than just passive and blind hope. In addition, she broke the divine code regarding human destiny, the true relationship between the temporal and the transcendent, thus offering proof of past progress and the direction of the future. The restoration of the divine likeness of humanity, the transcendent trajectory of Christianity, thus became at the same time an immanent historical project. Consequently, the search for a renewed perfection - by a myriad of means which henceforth included the advancement of the arts - acquired a coherence, a confidence,a sense of mission and impetus. This historicized new millenarianism would have an enormous and lasting influence on the European psyche and it encouraged as never before the ideological union of technology and transcendence. Technology now at the same time became eschatology (27).

The Christian notion of the millennium is based on the prophecy of Revelation of John, the last book of the Bible, which itself originated from an ancient Hebrew prophecy. In his vision, John of Patmos foretells a thousand-year reign on Earth of the returned Messiah, Christ, with an elite body of the elect. Indeed, this last book of the Bible is a return to the first book, Genesis, but now with a happy ending. The outcome of the Fall is here reversed, the curse is lifted, and a redeemed humanity is allowed to return to paradise, to eat from the tree of life, and to regain Adam's original perfection, immortality and holiness. .

“Remember therefore from where thou hast fallen, and repent, and do the first works […] To him who overcomes, I will give him to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God [… ]
And I saw: and behold the Lamb standing on mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand, having his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads […] and they sing a new song before the throne […] And he that sat on the throne said: Behold, I am making all things new […]
And he said unto me, It is done. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. To him who is thirsty, I will give freely from the fountain of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be God to him, and he will be my son […]
And he showed me a river of living water, shining like crystal, coming out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of his street, and of the river, here and there, was the tree of life […] And there will be no more curse […]
Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection [… ] They will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him a thousand years. "(28)

Millennialism is, in essence, the hope that the end of the world is near and, therefore, a new earthly paradise is at hand. In the early centuries of the Christian era a myriad of millennial voices heralded the imminent advent of the Kingdom of God, which drew its inspiration from Bible prophecy and a mystical vision. But these voices were quickly marginalized by the priestly caste which embodied the power and authority of the Church. From the perspective of this emerging elite, the millennium had already started with the establishment of the Church and they were the earthly saints. For them, a belief in a yet-to-come millennium was subversive because it suggested that the Kingdom of God had not yet arrived but belonged to a future epoch beyond the Church. So,although at the end of the second century Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons could easily sanction and personally support the millennial hope, his writings on such a subject were ultimately destroyed; in 431, the Council of Ephesus formally condemned the millenarian belief as heresy (29).

Despite the official condemnation, belief in a future millennium continued to spread, mainly as an expression of popular desperation and contestation. The medieval ecclesiastical elite neither offered nor entertained the hope of an earthly paradise beyond the Church. In the early Middle Ages, however, as a result of religious revival, a movement of rigorous reform of the Church, crusades and renewed external threats against Christendom, millennialism regained a certain degree of respectability among the elite, in particular among the new religious orders, which made use of an apocalyptic mythology in order to validate their identity and their destiny, and thus magnified their importance (30).

The founding prophet of this renewed hope was a Cistercian abbot from Calabria, Joachim de Flore. In search of the most perfect form of monasticism, this ardent reformer, rigorously monastic and ascetic finally left the Cistercian order in order to establish his own monastery at Flore, which he named after Saint John. Joachim had been greatly influenced by the monastic and Church reform movements, by the Crusades, and by the seemingly apocalyptic conflicts between popes and emperors, Christianity and Islam. For Joachim, the Antichrist appeared in human form in Saladin, who conquered Jerusalem in 1187, meaning that the Millennium was at hand. From his point of view, the Reformed monks constituted the holy guard of redeemed humanity,prepared not to challenge but to defend the established order of Christendom.

Inspired by a vision as he read the Apocalypse of John, Joachim formulated what has been described as the "most influential prophetic system known in Europe until Marxism", which "sparked the greatest spiritual revolution of the Middle Ages ". In his vision, writes Joachim, the millennial meaning of history, God's plan for mankind, was revealed to him. He taught that the divinely predetermined structure of history could be known through the study of Bible prophecy, particularly the prophecy of Saint John. From this perspective, there was a discernible pattern in history; it had an impulse, direction and meaning based on the final events towards which it was moving - the millennial reunification of man with God. In his Exposure of the Apocalypse, Joachim declares that the prophecy of Saint John is “the key to things of the past, the knowledge of things to come; the opening of what has been sealed; the discovery of what is hidden ”. Through his new insight into the meaning of Bible prophecy, he claimed to be able not only to interpret the meaning of human events thus far but, more importantly, to read the signs of, and thus predict, events to come. Armed with such prior knowledge, which included an anticipation of their own determined role, elected officials no longer needed to wait passively for the millennium; they could henceforth actively work towards its accomplishment (31).

Joachim described the historical movement towards the millennium as a succession of three stages, each representing an element of the trinity. The first step, that of the Father, is the ordo conjugatorum , initiated by Adam and symbolized by the family and the marital state. The second, that of the Son, is the ordo clericum , initiated by Christ and embodied by the priesthood. The third and final stage of History, that of the Holy Spirit, is the ordo monachorum , initiated by Saint Benedict and represented by the monk. This third stage, a period of transition that Joachim believed to be in its final phase of millennial preparation, was a time marked by the appearance of viri spirituales., the spiritual men who constituted the holy vanguard of redeemed humanity. For Flore, these were "the order of monks to whom the last good times are granted". Through spiritual contemplation and preaching, they would bring about general spiritual enlightenment and free humanity from its misery (32).

Joachim, who became the apocalyptic advisor to three popes as well as to the most powerful rulers of his day, believed that the millennium, anticipated in the devotion of his monastic followers, was to begin in 1260. Soon after his death in 1202, however, the torch of the third stage was taken up by a new kind of spiritual men, the mendicant monks. The Franciscans, especially the more radical or “spiritual” supporters of Saint Francis of Assisi, emphasized their transitional role as preachers in the world rather than as mere contemplatives in the cloister. The millennial prophecy of Joachim de Flore provides these reformers with an understanding of their historical mission in the world; they enthusiastically edited and commented on his writings,which seemed to confirm their preeminent and predestined role in the search for the millennium. Thus, despite a permanent official condemnation, which still put even the elite of the millenarians in peril, the prophetic teachings of Joachim de Flore were regularly part of the "common stock of European social mythology" (33).

The beggars were succeeded as carriers of the third stage by centuries of self-proclaimed successors, who each in turn added new dimensions to the millennial preparation. The Franciscans themselves, having emphasized evangelization over contemplation, also recognized another means of millennial anticipation: the progress of the arts. By the thirteenth century, this millennial inspiration behind technological progress was already represented anonymously in the work of countless cathedral builders, the most advanced craftsmen of their time, whose silent stone depictions suggest a preoccupation with divine judgment and by the end of the world.Their efforts to improve technical skills were not conceived as a means of improving the condition of man in the present order of things, says Arnold Pacey. “Rather, they were moving forward to meet an eternal order, a New Jerusalem, which the cathedral itself symbolized. "(34)

At the same time, some of the more radical Franciscans began to give voice to this new artistic mentality, none with more force than Roger Bacon. Having inherited the new medieval view of technology as a means of restoring humanity's original perfection, Bacon now placed it in the context of millennial prophecy, prediction, and promise. If Bacon, following Érigène and Hugues de Saint-Victor, perceived the progress of the arts as a means of restoring the lost divinity of humanity, he now perceived it at the same time, according to Joachim de Flore, as a means of anticipating and to prepare the Kingdom to come, and as a sure sign in and of himself that this Kingdom was at hand.

Joachimite millennialism linked the events of history to the end of history. Roger Bacon, the legendary Franciscan scholar who studied and taught at the universities of Oxford and Paris during the thirteenth century, was imbued with this new medieval tradition. Typically described as a visionary of modern technological progress, Bacon was in fact anchored in his own millennial milieu. If he recognized the practical potential of natural philosophy, he urged for a greater development of the arts and imagined modern inventions such as cars, boats, submarines and motor planes, he did so only by reference. at the end of time, which he believed to be within reach (35).

“All wise men believe that we are not very far from the time of Antichrist,” wrote Bacon, who was greatly influenced by the legacy of Joachim de Flore. Bacon cites Joachim's authority in suggesting that contemporary Tatar invasions signaled the arrival of the Antichrist. Like Joachim, Bacon was himself an ascetic reformer who condemned the decadence of the world, the corruption of the Church, and quarrels between religious orders, and also saw them as signs of the coming of the Antichrist. He exhorted his fellow Franciscans and the Church to study Joachimite prophecy in order to be forewarned about the final events of history; he continually referred to the 144,000 elect of the Apocalypse of John who would lead the battle against Satan, was obsessed with the specter of the Antichrist,and invoked the idea of ​​an angelic pope as a symbol of the third stage of Joachim (36).

It was in this apocalyptic spirit that Bacon advised the Pope to develop the useful arts. He warned that "the Antichrist will use all these means freely and effectively in order to crush and confuse the power of this world," and urged that "the Church consider the use of these inventions [...] for the sake of the future perils of the time of Antichrist which, with the grace of God, it would be easy to face if prelates and princes promote the study of and investigate the secrets of Nature and the arts. "(37)

At that time, Bacon believed, following the tradition of Erigene and Hugh of St. Victor, that the arts were the heritage of the "sons of Adam", which they had once been fully known when humanity reflected still the image of God, that they had been lost due to sin but had already been partly recovered, and could again be fully recovered as part of the restoration of original perfection, by an effort diligent and devout. In his Opus MajusBacon declared that "philosophy in its perfection" was originally granted to man by God, especially to "the saints of the beginnings". He identified the causes of the error of human knowledge at the Fall: "Due to original sin and the particular sins of individuals, parts of the image have been damaged because reason is blind, memory weak and will depraved. . "And yet he maintained that" the truth is strengthened and will continue thus until the day of Antichrist. Philosophy, Bacon writes, "is only the unfolding of divine wisdom through learning and art," the "whole purpose," which "is that the Creator be known through the knowledge of the creature. His manuscript ends with the promise of the restoration of the divinity of mankind through reunification with God:“By participating in God and in Christ we become one with him and one in Christ and are gods […] And what more can a man seek in this life? "(38)

Although Bacon emphasizes the utility of knowledge, his notion of utility was decidedly supernatural. He defiantly declared his contempt for the world and rather concerned himself with "the things that lead to bliss in the life after." For Roger Bacon, the progress of technology was doubly dedicated to transcendence and salvation: on the one hand, as a means of recovering the knowledge of Nature which was part of the divine heritage of humanity, its original likeness in the image of God, and, on the other hand, as a means of triumphing over the Antichrist in anticipation of the millennium. If the monastics had elevated the useful arts as a means of restoring their own original perfection,henceforth beggars like Bacon dignified them more by proclaiming their providential use in the historical search for this perfection, as a preparation for the millennial redemption of humanity (39).

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, other radical Franciscans in favor of the arts followed the initiative of Bacon, among them the famous triumvirate of Catalan science, Raymond Lully, Arnaud de Villeneuve and Jean de Roquetaillade. Lully, a Franciscan superior, was a practicing physician as well as an astrologer and was renowned for his knowledge of chemistry and metallurgy. Like Bacon, he was also steeped in the prophetic tradition. In his Ars Magnus, he claimed that his "Art", which he hoped to be used to convert Arabs to Christianity, had come to him through divine enlightenment. He wrote a voluminous commentary on Joachim as well as his own prophecies about the coming of the Antichrist, drawing on the Bible prophecies of Ezekiel, Daniel, and in particular the Revelation of John. Like Bacon, Arnaud de Villeneuve was very close to the Franciscan spiritual movement as well as a fervent supporter of natural science. He was known for medical and alchemical works in which criticism of the Church combined with Joachimite ideas of a swift end of the world and the coming of the Antichrist. "(40)

Jean de Roquetaillade, another Franciscan superior, was recognized as the true founder of medical chemistry, whose work, particularly concerning the distillation and the medical efficacy of alcohol, signaled a shift from chemistry to qualitative methods of 'investigation with quantitative methods. Much of this effort, however, was devoted to theological and especially prophetic writings. He was known to his contemporaries for his apocalyptic preaching, for which he spent a considerable part of his life in prison. As evangelists and missionaries to the world, Joachimite Franciscans carried the millennial message beyond the cloister. At the same time, they formulated in their preaching and writings what would become an extremely influential and enduring eschatology of technology,a perception of the progress of the useful arts both as a rough anticipation of, an apocalyptic sign of, and a practical preparation for the prophesied restoration of perfection (41).

If some Franciscans directly promoted the arts, like Bacon and his Catalan successors, most did so indirectly, through their primary evangelical mission, the conversion of all races to Christianity. According to Biblical and Joachimite prophecy, particularly the Apocalypse of John, such a world conversion was a prerequisite for and an unmistakable indication of the coming of the millennium. “God called all the peoples of the Earth to hasten to prepare to enter and enjoy this eternal feast,” writes sixteenth-century Franciscan missionary Gerónimo de Mendieta to the New World. "This vocation of God must not cease until the number of predestined is reached, which according to the vision of Saint John must include all nations, all languages ​​and all peoples" (42).

The evangelical effort to extend the reach of Christianity according to its universalist claims and eschatological expectations, moreover, encouraged the exploration, and therefore the advancement of the arts upon which such exploration depended, including geography, astronomy and navigation. , as well as shipbuilding, metallurgy and, of course, armaments. “The efforts to fulfill prophecy on a cosmic or global scale were a major stimulus for exploration and discovery, from the first Franciscan missions in Asia to the undertaking of Columbus in India,” notes historian Pauline Moffitt Watts . And this "apocalypticism" of the explorers, she underlines, in particular on the part of Columbus, "must be recognized as inseparable" from their "geography and cosmology",because it shaped their scientific understanding and inspired their technological achievement (43).

The era of the great discoveries truly begins in the mid-thirteenth century, when beggar monks (and merchants) traveled by road to Central and East Asia. The road to the Far East was opened at this time by the Franciscan monk Jean de Plan Carpin. One of the first authors "to integrate into an apocalyptic plan the possibility of converting all the peoples of Asia, namely all the rest of the known world", was Jean de Roquetaillade. Roquetaillade prophesied that the Tatar dynasty of Genghis Khan would be converted to Christianity (along with the Jews) and would subsequently join forces with the Christians for the final defeat of Islam. However, such evangelical expectations were fleeting: by the middle of the fourteenth century, "Islam had won the soul of the Tatars" and "the road to Asia was closed" (44).

Portuguese explorations of Africa at the beginning of the fourteenth century initiated the ocean phase of the era of the great discoveries, and inspired evangelical hopes for an alternative sea route to Asia. They were finally carried out by the messianic sailor and "millennial crusader" Christopher Columbus, who himself believed he had been divinely sent to open a new path for the monks to fulfill the prophecies of the apocalypse, convert the pagans and hasten the millennium. .

The image of Christopher Columbus that emerges from most historical accounts is that of an intrepid, modern-minded sailor, armed with new scientific knowledge and new rational methods, as well as practical experience as a navigator, cartographer and sailor acquired throughout his life, which enabled him to challenge and overcome the ignorance and superstition of his contemporaries. There is no doubt about his technical prowess. "When I was very young I went to the sea to sail and I continue to do so today", writes Christopher Columbus in the preface to his Book of Prophecies. Over the years God "has endowed me abundantly with the marine arts and with what I need in astrology, geometry and arithmetic. He endowed my soul and my able hands with the right ingenuity. But, from Christopher Columbus' point of view, these technical abilities alone were not enough to inspire him to undertake, or enable him to perform, the great acts for which he is known. Rather, such skills joined with another kind of gift, without which they would not have produced anything.

"This art of navigation predisposes the one who exercises it to the desire to know the secrets of the world", explains Christopher Columbus, which led him in his life to seek and obtain an understanding of prophecy and its assigned role in it. this. "Reason, mathematics and the world map were of no use to me in the execution of the Indian enterprise", he insists, without such divine inspiration and guidance; its accomplishment was, in fact, "a very obvious miracle" (46).

While his travels carried the world into modern times, Columbus' own mentality reflected the medieval millennial hopes of fifteenth century Spain. In this charged spiritual context, the Spanish monarchs took up the torch of the Joachimite messiah-emperors of the third stage, leading the righteous into the millennium. According to the Franciscan monk Gerónimo de Mendieta, for example, “the Spanish race, under the leadership of their“ blessed kings ”, was chosen to undertake the final conversion of Jews, Muslims and pagans […] an event which announces the end of the world approaching quickly. (The final defeat of the Moors in Granada in 1492 and the forced conversion, or expulsion, of the Jews in the same year were seen in this light.) (47)

That Christopher Columbus dedicated his life to this evangelical challenge is evident from the first entry in his journal of his 1492 expedition. “Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians and princes who love and promote the Christian faith, and are enemies of the doctrine of Muhammad and all the idolatries and heresies, have decided to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the aforementioned countries of India, in order to see the said princes, peoples and territories, and to learn of their disposition and of the appropriate means of convert them to the holy faith; and, moreover, given that I must not proceed by land to the east, as usual, but by a road to the west, in the direction of which we have so far no evidence that anyone one has already gone. So after expelling the Jews from your domain,your Highness […] ordered me to proceed. "(48)

Quite a product of his time and his culture, the great explorer was spiritually and intellectually well prepared for this challenge. According to his son Ferdinand, he lived a pious and ascetic life sufficiently rigorous to "be able to pass for a member of a religious order". His closest companions were monks and brothers, especially Franciscans, with whom he associated and identified. He spent considerable time and prepared for his expeditions to monasteries. After his second trip, he walked the streets of Seville and Cadiz dressed in a penitent's hair shirt and appeared indistinguishable from his Franciscan friends. On his deathbed, he took the habit of a Franciscan superior, and he was buried in a Carthusian monastery (49).

Intellectually, Columbus was strongly influenced by medieval millennialism and scientific traditions, primarily by the work of Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly. Neither an innovative thinker nor a Franciscan himself, Pierre d'Ailly was nevertheless an expert exegete of the medieval masters whose work he describes in detail in Imago Mundi.. Published in 1410, this compendium of ancient and medieval cosmology and geography circulated widely in Western Europe in the fifteenth century. Pierre d'Ailly here combines the study of geography, astronomy, meteorology and calendar reform in a fervent plea for natural science in general. He shared with Roger Bacon, from whom he borrowed largely from the latter's work, an equally fervent interest in the use of astrology as a guide to the interpretation of prophecies, defending Bacon's advice to Pope Clement IV on this subject, and was himself "particularly interested in the coming of the Antichrist and the end of the world, which he believed could be astrologically conjectured" (50).

Pierre d'Ailly was the main source of Christopher Columbus, both of his scientific geography and his apocalyptic perspective. Columbus carefully read and annotated Imago Mundi , and used the knowledge he imparted both to guide him in his explorations and to situate them in the divine millennial plan. Through Pierre d'Ailly, Columbus learned of the writings of Roger Bacon and the prophecies of Joachim de Flore, which shaped his own reading of events.

Columbus saw himself as a “divinely inspired prophecy-maker”. He firmly believed that the world would end in about a century and a half, based on calculations by Pierre d'Ailly, and that in the meantime all prophecies would be fulfilled, including the conversion of all peoples and the resumption of Mount Zion (Jerusalem). According to his son, the name given to Columbus, Christoferens (the bearer of Christ), symbolized by the dove of the Holy Spirit, signified that, like his namesake Saint Christopher, he had been chosen to carry the infant Christ to through the waters. Columbus himself later called his efforts a “Jerusalem enterprise” and insisted that his expeditions to the New World should be crowned with a crusade to recapture the Holy Land and rebuild the Temple on Mount Zion.Columbus believed himself above all to be guided by divine prophecy, which was the secret of his sublime confidence. “Who would doubt […] this light, which comforted me with a gleam of marvelous clarity […] and pushed me continuously forward in great haste without a moment's respite,” he wrote to his protectors. He proclaimed to be the Joachimite Messiah sent by God to prepare the world for its glorious end and new beginning. He was assured, in this, by a prophecy of Arnaud de Villeneuve, which he wrongly attributed to Joachim, that "he who will restore the Ark of the Covenant will come from Spain" (51).which comforted me with a gleam of a marvelous clarity […] and pushed me continuously forward in great haste without a moment's respite, ”he wrote to his protectors. He proclaimed to be the Joachimite Messiah sent by God to prepare the world for its glorious end and new beginning. He was assured, in this, by a prophecy of Arnaud de Villeneuve, which he wrongly attributed to Joachim, that "he who will restore the Ark of the Covenant will come from Spain" (51).which comforted me with a gleam of a marvelous clarity […] and pushed me continuously forward in great haste without a moment's respite, ”he wrote to his protectors. He proclaimed to be the Joachimite Messiah sent by God to prepare the world for its glorious end and new beginning. He was assured, in this, by a prophecy of Arnaud de Villeneuve, which he wrongly attributed to Joachim, that "he who will restore the Ark of the Covenant will come from Spain" (51).

In his unfinished Book of Prophecies , Columbus elaborated on and explained his role in his Millennial aspiration, supported by the prophecies of Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah and, in particular, John of Patmos. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were gone, and the sea was no more. », Writes John in the Apocalypse of John (21: 1). "God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which he speaks in the Revelation of John after having spoken of them through Isaiah," writes Columbus, "and he showed me the place where to find them "(52).

Christopher Columbus, masters of the maritime arts, identified his technical feat which marked the ultimate destiny of humanity. For him the discovery of the New World signaled the imminent end of the world, and thus the restoration of the promised perfection. Identifying the Orinoco with one of the four rivers in the Garden of Eden, Christopher Columbus repeatedly claimed that he had indeed discovered earthly paradise. “I am completely convinced in my mind,” he wrote, “that heaven on earth is the place I have described. And like a new Adam, he systematically named everything he walked through, confident in his hope that the original reign of mankind would soon be restored (53).

Chapter 3: Visions of Heaven

If the millenarian hopes inspired openness to the new world, this openness further excited and confirmed such hopes, in particular on the part of those humanists and magi of the Renaissance who, in the name and in the interest of religious renewal, will promote the progress of science and the useful arts.

These new spiritual men of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, heirs of medieval millennialism and precursors and of the Reformation, sought in the study of Nature and the recovery of ancient knowledge about the natural world the means of rekindling the true light of early Christianity. . Thus the great humanist scholars Marsile Ficino and Pic de la Mirandole worked to discover the lost secrets of hermetic natural philosophy and the occult arts, from the perspective of the Augustinian abbot Joachimite Gilles de Viterbe, as “messenger [s] of divine providence which had been sent to show that mystical theology concurred everywhere with our holy institutions and was their precursor. Both seriously studied occult predictions and sought to align them with Bible prophecy.Pic was an admirer of the great Florentine prophet Savonarola, a disciple of Joachim de Flore (54).

The alchemists and the illuminated of the Renaissance who followed in the wake of these humanist pioneers continued their marvelous work in the same spirit. Cornelius Agrippa, for example, drew inspiration from the Joachimite commentary and identified Joachim as an example of one who had acquired prophetic knowledge of occult number sense. "Because of the darkness caused by the sin of Adam," writes Agrippa, "the human mind cannot know the true nature of God by reason, but only by esoteric revelation." Regarding the knowledge of the useful arts, Agrippa echoed the now conventional medieval monastic themes about Adam's divine gift and the possibility of restoring humanity to its original and righteous reign.“It was precisely this power over Nature that Adam lost through original sin, but that the purified soul, the magus, could henceforth recover. "Once the soul has attained enlightenment," he argues, "it returns to something like the condition before the Fall of Adam, when the seal of God was upon it and all creatures feared and revered the man ”(55).

This medieval heritage also inspired the legendary alchemist Paracelsus, founder of the practical medical science of pharmacology. Paracelsus was immersed in the eschatological ethos of his time, and joined forces with “spiritualist” millenarian friends. Like them, he “predicted the dawn of the Joachimite era of the Holy Spirit in which nothing would remain hidden and in which the arts and sciences would reach their greatest perfection. For him, the alchemist belonged to the spiritual avant-garde, as "the one who brings things to their perfection". “Human nature,” Paracelsus writes, “is unlike any other animal nature. She is gifted with divine wisdom, gifted with divine arts. We are therefore rightly called gods and sons of the Supreme Being. Because the light of Nature is in us,and that light is God. "Each art", he explains, "is dual: on one side is the knowledge that we learn from men, on the other the knowledge that we learn from the Holy Spirit. "" Study without respite, "he urged his comrades," that art may come to perfection in us "(56).

Seen by many as a prophet himself, Paracelsus studied Bible prophecy and wrote an admirable treatise on a pseudo-Joachimite manuscript in which he deals with a millennial subject such as the sins of the Church and the expectation of the coming. of the Antichrist and the angelic popes. He also wrote his own book of prophecies, Prognosticato, which ends with the Edenic image of a man resting at ease under a tree with the sun of divinity shining above him. “When the end of the world will draw near,” says Paracelsus, in an eager expectation of millennial redemption and restored perfection, “all things will be revealed. From lowest to highest, from first to last - what each thing is, and why it existed and ended, what causes and what meaning it had. And all that's in this world will be revealed and revealed. "Then," he warns, "the true scholars and idle talkers will be recognized - those who have written honestly and those who have exchanged lies […] Blessed are those men who will be revealed to be right. "(57)

Paracelsus' apocalyptic vision was shared by his contemporary, the great Nuremberg artist Albrecht Dürer, who also shared his enthusiasm for the arts. Nuremberg was a famous center of the mechanical arts, a center for many masters of metallurgy, from gunsmiths to makers of scales, measuring instruments and compasses. Dürer himself was born of a long line of goldsmiths; under the tutelage of his father he became an accomplished craftsman and he then sprinkled tools of the trades in his masterpieces (such as Melancholia ). All his life he researched the arts and the secrets of Nature and worked to raise the social position of artisans and artists.

But, as with Paracelsus, religious hope was the essence of Dürer. “If we search the depths of Dürer's soul,” wrote one biographer, “we find that the most noble and essential element of his character was religious need […] Religious need is the unifying element of 'being of Dürer, from which his genius developed ”. For Dürer, his workshop was his monastery, “the area in which the struggle of his struggling and tormented soul was waged. According to Marsilio Ficino, he believed that “art comes from divine inspiration”, and he “considered his artistic activity as a call to serve God”. Dürer was a fervent believer in astrology and in prophecy; his "apocalyptic state of mind" reflects the revival of popular millenarianism, then concentrated in Bohemia,as well as the early rumblings of the Reformation. (A Catholic all his life, Dürer nonetheless had hopes of a reform of the Church and followed Luther's career with great sympathy.) His "first great work", which no one commanded him to do, was a series of engravings on remarkably vivid wood illustrating the Apocalypse of John. Completed in 1498, six years after the first Messianic expedition of Christopher Columbus, it brought to life as never before the promise of the redemption of humanity (58).six years after the first Messianic expedition of Christopher Columbus, she brought to life as never before the promise of the redemption of humanity (58).six years after the first Messianic expedition of Christopher Columbus, she brought to life as never before the promise of the redemption of humanity (58).

The discovery of the New World caused impatience from the Old. By greatly extending the reach of the Renaissance imagination, it made Europe appear even more despoiled, damned and doomed, and awakened millennial dreams of leaving this declining world in search of a new beginning. In the New World, eschatological expectations of restored perfection focused on earthly purposes.

After Columbus, paradise became more than just a vision; it became a place. Columbus identified the New World as the Garden of Eden. The Franciscan mystic Gerónimo de Mendieta described New Spain as a future site of the Kingdom of God. Here the worldly and the supernatural, the present and the future, converged, giving birth to a new kind of apocalyptic vision of salvation which was as much the result of human ingenuity as of faith: utopia. The utopias of Thomas More, Miguel de Cervantes and Francis Bacon, for example, were all special places, though difficult to locate - remote islands protected by an endless sea. And the blessed inhabitants of these islands of perfection - Utopia, Barataria and New Atlantis - had themselves created their paradise, by their piety, their monastic discipline,their fraternal communalism and their devotion to the useful arts.

“The [utopian] aspiration to bring heaven down to Earth,” as John Phelan writes, was greatly stimulated by the Reformation. A religious revival of unprecedented proportions, the Reformation stimulated and legitimized millennial hopes like never before and made them more respectable. The millennial writings of the second century of Irénée de Lyon, until now condemned, were henceforth restored and included among his works. Martin Luther, who had studied Joachimite Franciscan prophecy, “restores the apocalypse as a motif of history, an illumination of past events and […] prophecy of events to come,” while identifying the reformers as elected officials facing persecution but destined to ultimately triumph; in the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe identified the papacy with the Antichrist;and in the fifteenth century, the Cambridge monk John Bale "identified the Antichrist with the papacy in the historical pattern influenced by Joachim and based on the Apocalypse of John". For many in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the rupture within the Church signaled the arrival of the apocalypse, the prophesied end of the world, and the restoration of paradise. The reformers' emphasis on the literal interpretation of Scripture, in addition, as well as the development and distribution of printing, made the prophetic books of the Bible, and thus apocalyptic speculation, more accessible. The writings of Joachim de Flore were first printed in Venice at the beginning of the sixteenth century, at the same time as Luther's break with the Church, and at that time of cataclysm,his apocalyptic vision achieved new popularity and wide dissemination among revolutionaries as well as the reforming elite (59).

In this world saturated with apocalypse, utopian speculation about the coming kingdom took on an air of imminence. And, in this context, the medieval millennial project of technological progress became more pressing. Even Thomas More's original Utopia, founded on an essentially monastic vision of an austere, pious and equally disciplined community, reflected the already elevated conception of the useful arts as a means of salvation; in Utopia, every man had to practice a manual trade. For the utopians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the spiritual emphasis on the useful arts and technical progress became central. "The gods gave man intelligence and hands, and made it in their image, endowing him with a capacity superior to other animals", declared Giordano Bruno at the end of the sixteenth century.“This capacity consists not only of being able to work in accordance with Nature and with the usual course of things, but beyond that and outside its laws, that by shaping, or having the power to shape, to other natures, other terrains, other orders by means of his intelligence, with that freedom without which his resemblance to the deity would not exist, he could ultimately make himself god of the Earth. "" Providence has decreed ", maintains Bruno, anticipating Francis Bacon," that man should occupy himself in action by the hands and in contemplation by the intellect, but in such a way that he can not contemplate without action or work without contemplation. [And so] by emulating the actions of God and under the direction of spiritual impetus [men] sharpened their understanding,invented industry and discovered art. And always, day after day, by the force of necessity, new and wonderful inventions spring from the depths of the human mind. By this means, separating themselves more and more from their animal nature by their busy and zealous work, they came closer to the divine being. "(60)

The Dominican monk Tommaso Campanella was, like Joachim de Flore, a native of Calabria and “his enthusiastic expectation of a new world was based on a Joachimite structure of history”. At the turn of the seventeenth century, Campanella led an abortive rebellion in an effort to "precipitate the inevitable apotheosis of history" and establish her ideal city on Earth. Facing his inquisitors, he explicitly identified himself as the third age incarnation of Joachim. Campanella's utopian “City of the Sun” “enshrined the cult of science and technology as principles of social progress and moral perfection”. In its fraternal community, a Christian republic whose origins can be traced back to the similar musings of Raymond Lully, Francis Bacon and Giordano Bruno,every citizen is required to master at least one mechanical art, and unusual respect is accorded to the accomplished craftsman. The Solarian education system, moreover, which combines training in the mechanical arts with training in the liberal arts, was "intended to give them the wisdom necessary to understand and live in harmony with God's creation" (61) .

The utopian enthusiasm of continental reformers Johann Andreæ and Comenius also reflects the revival of millennialism - and thus the medieval millennial hopes that it radically revived. As historian PM Rattansi has noted, “their social, religious and educational reform was based on the conviction that the millennium was at hand and that it would be marked by the recovery of the knowledge of creatures that Adam had. possessed in her innocence, and of the Adamic language which had given her power over everything ”. In the opinion of this last generation of determined dreamers, like that of their medieval forerunners, the goal of science and the arts was the restoration of the primitive knowledge of humanity, shared with God in the beginnings but lost in the Fall. (62).

Johann Andreæ had studied the prophecies of Joachim de Flore as well as those of Paracelsus and other enlightened ones, and he fervently believed that the millennium, and thus the prophesied restoration of perfection, was imminent, and that the progress of science and of the arts was an essential preparation for it. In the utopia of Johann Andreæ, Christianopolis, the mechanical arts must be assiduously practiced by its four hundred inhabitants. “All of these [arts] are not always done out of necessity,” he explains, echoing Erigene, “but […] so that the human soul can have a means by which it, so that the highest prerogative of the spirit, can be revealed by different types of machinery, or by which, rather, the little glimmer of divinity remaining in us can shine in any material. "We have the greatest need to come to ourselves as often as possible and to shake off the dust of the Earth," says Johann Andreæ. The practice of useful arts, among other activities, allows men to "come back to themselves." In its effort to reform education,the millenarian Moravian bishop Comenius promoted the learning of the arts for the same exalted, essentially spiritual ends (63).

The continental utopianism of Comenius and Andreæ reaches its fullest and most influential expression in the millennial manifestos of the mysterious Rosicrucian fraternity, which were probably written by Andreæ. According to these intrepid apocalyptic proclamations, the Rosicrucians aimed at nothing less than "the reform of all mankind" through the purification and reunification of Christianity and the cooperative advancement of scientific and technological knowledge. The advent of the Rosicrucian revival was marked by the sudden appearance of this new spiritual order, surpassing in erudition even the Jesuits, who were also devoted to the study of science and the arts. The new fraternity saw itself as the last incarnation of the viri spiritualesjoachimite, the "new voice" of "a new rising sun" determined and destined to establish a "third reform of religion". And their daring and alarming manifestos (the Confessio and the Fama Fraternitatis ), which were described by their author, in the terms of the Apocalypse of John, as "our trumpets", indeed had a profound and lasting influence on the imagination. modern European (64).

The manifestos highlight the advancement of useful knowledge in a way that reflects both monastic and millennial traditions. Renaissance scholarship, according to the Rosicrucians, signaled the beginning of a new era of light, in anticipation of the millennium, which at the same time constituted a recovery of the divine powers of Adam. The Rosicrucians saw themselves as the embodiment and vanguard of this last great age of divine enlightenment. The Fama Fraternitatis proclaims that God “has uplifted man, endowed him with great wisdom, which could in part bring and reduce all the arts (in our stained and imperfect times) to perfection; so that finally man can thus understand his own nobility and worth. »The Confessioalso states that "God has certainly and most assuredly decided to send a gift to the world before its end, which should soon ensure such truth, light, life and glory as that of Adam, which he lost in paradise, after which his successors were led with him into misery. For this reason, all bondage, all falsehood, all lies and all obscurity will have to cease, which little by little [...] were introduced into all the arts, works and governments, and obscured most of them [...] When it will eventually be done away with and eliminated, and instead a just and true reign instituted, one will be indebted to those who have employed it. But the work itself is to be attributed to the blessing of our day. "(65)

The Rosicrucian manifestos urge scholars across Europe to respond to the order's fraternal invitation and cooperate with it in its providentially inspired endeavor. "The reader is adjured", advises the Rosa Florescens, a later Rosicrucian manuscript, “to study with the Rosicrucian brothers the Book of Nature, the Book of the World, and to return to the paradise that Adam lost. The Rosicrucian appeal aroused "frenzied interest" across Europe and in response sparked a "torrent of literature", a "river of printed works". On the continent, however, such apparently revolutionary proclamations met mainly with distrust, fear, hostility and repression. In contrast, the pressing millennial message found more favorable reception in seventeenth-century England, where it had its most lasting effect (66).

David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology , Penguin Books, 1999, translated from English by JB

(1) See Mary Midgley, Science as Salvation (London: Routledge, 1992) and Margaret Wertheim, Pythagoras' Trousers (New York: Times Books, 1995).
(2) Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1960), p. 274.
(3) Lynn White, Jr., “Cultural Climates and Technological Advance in the Middle Ages”, Viator , vol. 2 (1971), pp. 172-73.
(4) Normann Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 19, 22, 125.
(5) The Christian trinity is of Jewish origin. See Yoel Natan, The Jewish Trinity , https://books.google.fr/books?id=QNm08LuMOosC ;The Jewish Trinity Sourcebook , https://books.google.fr/books?id=jwWGCwAAQBAJ . (N. d. T.)
(6) Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), pp. 138, 185.
(7) Gerhart B. Ladner, The Idea of ​​Reform (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 91, 163, 69, 32.
(8) Saint Augustin, The City of God (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958), pp. 526, 527.
(9) Ibid., P. 530; Jacques Ellul, “Technique and the Opening Chapters of Genesis”, in Carl Mitchum and Jim Grote, eds., Theology and Technology (Lanham, Md .: University Press of America, 1984), p. 135.
(10) White, “Cultural Climates”, pp. 198-200.
(11) Ibid., P. 198.
(12) Ibid., P. 198; George Ovitt, The Restoration of Perfection (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), p. 106; Ernst Benz, Evolution and Christian Hope (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), p. 128.
(13) White, “Cultural Climates”, p. 198; see also David F. Noble, A World Without Women, The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), chap. 4.
(14) Ladner, The Idea of ​​Reform , pp. 2, 3.
(15) Benz, Evolution , pp. 123-25; see also Gerhart B. Ladner, Ad Imaginem Dei: The Image of Man in Medieval Art (Latrobe, Pa .: Arch Abbey Press, 1965), pp. 32-34, 55.
(16) Elspeth Whitney,Paradise Restored: The Mechanical Arts from Antiquity Through the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1990), pp. 69, 18, 70, 71, 72, 76, 101; Ovitt, Restoration , p. 112; Petr Sternagel, Die Artes Mechanicae im Mittelalter , cited in Whitney, Paradise , p. 18.
(17) Martianus Capella, “The Marriage of Philology and Mercury”, in William Harris Stahl and Richard Johnson, eds., Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), vol. 2, p. 346.
(18) John J. Contreni, “John Scotus, Martin Hiberniensis: The Liberal Arts and Teaching”, in Michael W. Herren, ed., Insular Latin Studies(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies), vol. 1, p. 25.
(19) Ibid, p. 26; Whitney, Paradise , pp. 70-72.
(20) Whitney, Paradise , p. 72; White, “Cultural Climates”, pp. 189, 197.
(21) Marie-Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 43; see also Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (London: Penguin, 1977).
(22) White, “Cultural Climates”, pp. 194-95; Cyril Stanley Smith, cited in Lynn White, Medieval Religion and Technology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 322; Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 78; Ovitt, Restoration , p.171.
(23) White, “Cultural Climates”, p. 195; Whitney, Paradise , pp. 78, 72, 90.
(24) Whitney, Paradise , pp. 72, 93, 90, 81.
(25) Ibid., P. 81; Hugues de Saint-Victor, cited in Ovitt, Restoration , p. 120.
(26) Whitney, Paradise , p. 76; Ovitt, Restoration , pp. 121, 127; White, “Cultural Climates,” p. 195.
(27) Reinhart Maurer, “The Origins of Modern Technology in Millenarianism”, in Paul T. Durbin and Friedrich Rapp, eds., Philosophy and Technology (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983), pp. 253-65.
(28) Apocalypse de Jean, New Testament.
(29) Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), passim.
(30) See Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbott: Joachim of Flore in the History of Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1985); Bernard McGinn, “Apocalyptic Traditions and Spiritual identity in Thirteenth Century Religious Life”, in E. Rozanne Elder, ed., The Roots of the Modern Christian Tradition (Kalamazoo, Mich .: Cistercian Publications, 1984).
(31) Ernst Benz, Evolution and Christian Hope (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), p. 36.
(32) Frank E. Manuel, Freedom from History(New York: New York University Press, 191), p. 127; see also Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969); Richard K. Emerson and Bernard McGinn, eds., The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1922).
(33) Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium , pp. 108-11.
(34) Arnold Pacey, The Maze of Ingenuity: Ideas and Idealism in the evelopment of Technology (Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 1976), p. 58.
(35) Wil Durant, The Age of Faith (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950), p. 1010; JB Bury, The Idea of ​​Progress(London: Macmillan, 1928), p. 26.
(36) Roger Bacon, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962), p. 417 and passim; Stewart C. Easton, Roger Bacon and His Search for a Universal Science (New York: Russel and Russel, 1971), passim; Pacey, Maze of Ingenuity , pp. 56-57.
(37) Bacon, Opus Majus , pp. 633-34.
(38) Ibid., Pp. 52, 65.
(39) Bacon, cited in JB Bury, The Idea of ​​Progress (London: Macmillan, 1928), p. 26.
(40) Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), vol. 2, pp. 863-65, 842.
(41) Ibid., Vol. 3, pp. 347-55; Robert P. Multhauf, “John of Rupescissa and the Origins of Medical Chemistry”, Isis , vol. 45 (1954), pp. 359-66.
(42) John Leddy Phelan, (43) Pauline Moffitt Watts, “Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual Origins of Christopher Columbus' Enterprise of the Indies”, American Historical Review , vol. 90 (1985), pp. 73-102. (44) Leonard I. Sweet, “Christopher Columbus and the Millennial Vision of the New World”, Catholic Historical Review , vol. 72 (July 1986), pp. 369-82; Thorndike, History of Magic , vol. 3, p. 842. The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 1.

(45) Watts, “Prophecy and Discovery”, passim. (47) Phelan, Millennial Kingdom , passim. (48) Ibid. (49) Ibid. (50) Thorndike, History of Magic The Conquest of Paradise , pp. 188, 190. (53) Ibid., P. 175. (54) Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Oxford university Press, 1969), pp. 174, 268, 431, 438. (55) Charles G. Nauert, Jr.,
(46) Ibid. , flight. 4, p. 107. (51) Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of paradise (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), p. 190; Watts, “Prophecy and Discovery”, p.73. (52) Sale, Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), pp. 48, 49, 284; see also Frances Yates,

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Boulder, Shambala Press, 1978), p. 119, and Reeves, Prophecy , p. 102.
(56) Reeves, Dürer and His TimeProphecy , p. 454; PM Rattansi, “The Social Interpretation of Science in the Seventeenth Century”, in Peter Mathias, ed., Science and Society, 1600-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 11; Jolande Jacobi, ed., Paracelsus, Selected Writings (New York: Pantheon, 1951), pp. 201, 257.
(57) Ibid., P. 296.
(58) Wilhelm Waetzgoldt, (London: Phaison Press, 1950), pp. 15, 32.
(59) John Leddy Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), pp. 70-72; Frank E. Manuel, Freedom from History (New York: New York University Press, 1971), p. 91; Ernest Lee Tuveson,Millennium and Utopia (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 22-30; Katherine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition: Reformation Britain, 1530-1645 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 248.
(60) Giordano Bruno, “The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast”, cited in Benjamin Farrington, The Philosophy of Francis Bacon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 27.
(61) George Ovitt, “Critical Assessments of Technology from Campanella to the Harringtonians”, unpublished manuscript, 1989.
(62) Manual, Freedom from History , p. 91: Rattansi, “Social Interpretation”, p. 12.
(63) Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment , passim.
(64) Ibid.
(65) Ibid.
(66) Ibid.