Dear Hannah,
The Peter Damiani-like objections against the liberal arts appear again
and again in the "Deliberatio" of Gerard of Csanad. It is exactly this
frequency which makes his statements a little bit self-contradictory? Why
would you refer to the seven liberal arts so many times if you generally
despise them? Nevertheless, I would not say that this phenomenon has
social or political implications in Gerard's work. Writing in Hungary in
the 1040s surrounded by mostly pagan Hungarians, Gerard's environment
could not have too much in common with that of Peter Damiani's Italy. One
should also consider the fact, however, that Gerard had been a Benedictine
monk in Venice before he went to Hungary. Thus, his statements might
reflect a traditional monastic attitude towards the liberal arts and the
Latin classics. After all, this attitude is very similar to that of Peter
Damiani.
In my opinion, the most promising way to dig deeper in this issue is to
examine what kind of classical and relevant patristic works these monks
had in their libraries. To my knowledge, Bernhard Bischoff's studies did a
lot to illuminate this background in the case of the St. Emmeram
monastery. Peter Damiani's readings and the library at Fonte Avellana have
also been discussed already. The bad thing is that apart from the
liturgical books, nothing is known about the library of the monastery of
St. George on the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice where Gerard
came from.
His numerous word by word quotations from the "Etymologiae" of Isidore of
Seville, especially the ones from the first three books where the seven
liberal arts are treated in detail, can at least help establish the
patristic background of his way of treating the liberal arts in particular
and the secular (shall we say classical?) education in general.
Yours,
Elod Nemerkenyi
Rutgers University
Department of Classics
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