^* This article was the subject of a paper read at the international conference on Technique and Casuistics, organized by the Istituto di studi filosofici in Rome in January 1964.

¹ For a whole German tradition göttliche Kunst established for a long time the highest wisdom of a being comparing itself to its Creator.

² These two levels are linked in a statement which Friedrich Heer, without revealing his source, attributes to a Franciscan monk of the 14th century, John of Rupescissa (Mittelalter, Zürich, 1961, p. 479), who spent a part of his life in prison: "It serves no purpose to aim at or to attain the heights of this art, if one does not purify his senses by leading a saintly life and by profound contem plation, in such a way so as not only to understand the inner being of nature but also to know how to modify what in nature can be altered, a secret held by very few men." Such a declaration might also have been made by another monk, Roger Bacon, who saw "the grace of God" in the invention of a living mirror, through which, repeating the exploit ascribed to Archimedes, the Christians could triumph over the Infidels with machines invented with competent knowledge once the mirabilia naturae had been fathomed and transformed into techniques for conquest.

³ These legends continue to circulate in present-day esoteric circles, where they are propagated in private.

⁴ In an improvised lecture at the Royaumont Abbey last year Louis Armand noted the role of the abbey in the development of "market-gardening" cultures, which came into being as a direct result of this "drainage" work. He saw in it the proof of a "technical" knowledge and a capacity for "looking ahead." But if the Cistercians, friends of King Louis IXth, thus contributed to changing the face of the great Paris suburbs, it does not appear that this labor left its imprint on their theoretical mystique.

⁵ G. Duby, L'economie rurale et la vie des campagnes dans L'Occident médiéval, 2 vols. Paris, 1962.

⁶ Ch. Südhof, "Die Stellung der Landwirtschaft im System der mittelalterlichen Künste," Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie, 1956.

⁷ As Professor Benz very opportunely recalled in the course of a private conversation that followed my lecture (and his), Saint Augustine examines in the last book of his Civitas Dei (XXII, 24) the damnatorum solatia which God squandered on "men of flesh." Their rhetorical enumeration serves mainly to set off, by a fortiori reasoning, the recompenses reserved for the "blessed" after the resurrection of the body (quae igitur illa sunt, si tot ac talia ac tanta sunt ista?). They are therefore hardly providential "remedies" comparable to those of wisdom and of virtue. Saint Augustine, who does not attempt to distribute them system atically, takes care to point out the "ambivalence" of these artes, partim necessariae, partim voluptuariae. Beside medicine, on the same level, he cites the art of making poisons, and on a very Platonic level, the technique of the cook who prepares the condimenta et gulae irritamenta. Of eloquence and dialectics, the only thing he maintains is that they served more illustrious philosophers to "defend their errors and falsehoods." Speaking of the marvelous complexity of the human body, he stresses that in order to know it, man must have recourse to the crudelis diligentia of those called anatomici. If it is true that God, in creating the world, prepared a marvelous environment for man, and that by endowing him with an erect position and hands, he placed at his disposal useful technical instruments, in a world of sin one can hardly expect from these potentialities anything but ill usage. If the Victorins were inspired by this text, it is clear that they interpreted it differently.

⁸ In the sermon on Martha and Maria, quoted above, Eckhart points out that from the admission of the Spirit, the Apostles worked ceaselessly to promote the kingdom of God, as Jesus himself had "worked" on earth for the salvation of men. He sees in it the justification of the "toil" of Martha in the service of Christ and his disciples. He does not go so far however as to magnify work that transforms matter as such.

⁹ Cusanus-Texte, I: Predigten, 1/5, Vier Predigten im Geiste Eckhardtr, publ. Koch, Heidelberg, 1937, p. 94 seq.

¹⁰ The fourth book of the Idiota (Dialogus de staticis experimentis, 1450) already specifically noted the cardinal's interest in the development of a science founded on mathematics and oriented toward the invention of practical tools for research and material progress.

¹¹ The dream of the Cusan is the moral and religious unification of humanity according to the doctrine of Christ as homo maximus. The Incarnation, which he believes to be indispensable to all philosophies, has its full meaning for him in the collective effort of humanity toward the progress of scientific knowledge, of the technique to master, of the concordia catholica and the pax fidei. In a book which has just been published, Karl Jaspers stresses the "setback" of what we have called elsewhere "semi-utopias," but he sees in this setback itself a "symbol" of success, the metaphysical sign of a lucid appeal to human freedom (Nicolaus Cusanus, Munich, 1964).