Encountering Water in Early Modern Europe and Beyond Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Why Water?
- 1 Athens and Jerusalem on Water
- Part I Water in Exegetical, Natural Philosophical, Cosmographical, and Geographical Texts of c.1000–1600
- Part II Why Water
- Afterword : The Redefinition of the Universe and the Twenty-First-Century Water Crisis
- General Bibliography
- Index
1 - Athens and Jerusalem on Water
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Why Water?
- 1 Athens and Jerusalem on Water
- Part I Water in Exegetical, Natural Philosophical, Cosmographical, and Geographical Texts of c.1000–1600
- Part II Why Water
- Afterword : The Redefinition of the Universe and the Twenty-First-Century Water Crisis
- General Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter examines European conceptions of water and its relationship to the earth in the classical and patristic periods. It argues that these texts provided the dual heritage from which medieval and sixteenth-century Europeans drew in order to develop their own notions of water and why it did not flood the earth. This chapter ultimately argues that though no two authors writing during this time period had exactly the same conception of water's relationship to the earth and the layout of the world's landmasses and waterways, most classical and patristic authors viewed water's failure to flood the earth, the resulting existence of the dry land, and the locations of that earth and water as natural occurrences.
Keywords: Augustine of Hippo; Aristotle; four elements; Plato; Bede; Isidore of Seville
Any statements by those who are called philosophers, especially the Platonists, which happen to be true and consistent with our faith should not cause alarm, but be claimed for our own use, as it were from owners who have no right to them.
‒ Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina christiana 2.144 (c.397 CE)Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) provided an influential discussion of the relationship between pre-Christian learning and the study of the Christian scriptures in the second book of his fourth-century De doctrina christiana. In this work, he argued at length that the study of pre-Christian or “pagan” learning was permissible even encouraged, provided Christians used it to understand the scriptures. Noting the various dangers associated with pagan learning such as the threat of idolatry or the wasting of one's time on education ultimately irrelevant, Augustine nevertheless argued that there were some treasures in these pagan works that Christians must dig out and use for their true function of understanding scripture and preaching the Gospel. Though certainly not uncontested in Augustine's day and into the sixteenth century, this notion of the study of secular subjects as handmaids to the study of scripture and theology became a dominant strain in the development of education in the Latin West.
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- Encountering Water in Early Modern Europe and BeyondRedefining the Universe through Natural Philosophy, Religious Reformations, and Sea Voyaging, pp. 23 - 58Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020