Theologia Poetica

Last updated February 28, 2019

Theologia Poetica ("poetic theology") was a designation adopted throughout the Renaissance for political philosophy independent of Biblical revelation. In Italy, discussions on "poetic theology" were articulated most notably by Boccaccio and Petrarch, both of whom promoted a philosophical life capable of withstanding the inquisitorial scrutiny of theological orthodoxy. [1]

The Renaissance is a period in European history, covering the span between the 14th and 17th centuries and marking the transition from the middle ages to modernity. The traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the middle ages.

Political philosophy, also known as political theory, is the study of topics such as politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of laws by authority: what they are, if they are needed and why, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should take and why, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may be legitimately overthrown, if ever.

Francesco Petrarca, commonly anglicized as Petrarch, was a scholar and poet of Renaissance Italy who was one of the earliest humanists. His rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Renaissance. Petrarch is often considered the founder of Humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri. Petrarch would be later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the Accademia della Crusca.

The Italian appeal to poetic theology finds its historical consummation in the works of Giambattista Vico, and most notably in his Scienza Nuova (1730 and 1744), where the political philosopher highlights the independence of pre-philosophical poetic theologians ("authors of gentile nations") from Biblical revelation, and thus too, Christianity's sacred history. [2] Vico argues at length that the "authors" (autori) of civil society preceded by far its "writers" (scrittori), so that a problematic hiatus separates the two, as it does things and the records we have of them in words. Vico's enterprise consists of discovering the inherence of order in things—and of "right in human nature"—lest order and right be conceived as merely imposed upon things by "writers" according to their whims (a placito), as is the case with all dogmatic theology, but also—so argues Vico already in his De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia—with modern "science," insofar as it identifies what is true with what is "most certain" (certissima). [3]

Giambattista Vico Italian philosopher, rhetorician, historian and jurist

Giambattista Vico was an Italian political philosopher and rhetorician, historian and jurist, of the Age of Enlightenment. He criticized the expansion and development of modern rationalism, was an apologist for Classical Antiquity, a precursor of systematic and complex thought, in opposition to Cartesian analysis and other types of reductionism, and was the first expositor of the fundamentals of social science and of semiotics.

While Vico's references to "poet theologians" (poeti teologi) point overtly to pre-philosophical authorities, Vico presents himself, if only tacitly or obliquely, as a poet theologian in his own right. In this respect, as Paolo Cristofolini [4] has shown, Vico recognizes himself as a "new Dante," or a poet theologian who is at once a philosopher. Vico's own Scienza Nuova presents itself—most notably in the first and last paragraphs of the work—as discovering the providence of a "metaphysical" human mind in the world of human wills (animi umani). If our own intellect (intelligenza) is at work in us prior to our recognizing it (indeed even when we live as brutes), [5] philosophy too must "covertly" precede sensory experience as the hidden author of our world (hence Vico's dictum, included in his De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia, Ch. VII.3, to the effect that just as God is the artifex of nature, so is man the God of artifices: ut Deus sit naturae artifex, homo artificiorum Deus). [6]

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References

↑ Stanley Meltzoff. 1987. Botticelli, Signorelli and Savonarola: "Theologia Poetica" and Painting from Boccaccio to Poliziano. Firenze: S. Olschki.
↑ G. B. Vico, Scienza Nuova (1744), "Of the Method," final paragraph.
↑ De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia, Ch. I.1.
↑ Paolo Cristofolini, "Da Dante a Omero, Da Gravina a Vico," in 2007. Giambattista Vico e l'Enciclopedia dei saperi. A. Battistini and P. Guaragnella, eds. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia.
↑ G. B. Vico, Scienza Nuova (1744), "Of the Method," par. 1-2.
↑ Marco Andreacchio. 2013. "Autobiography as History of Ideas: an Intimate Reading of Vico's Vita (from «Lord Vico» to «The Names of Law»)," in Historia Philosophica: An International Journal, Vol. 11.

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[1] Stanley Meltzoff. 1987. Botticelli, Signorelli and Savonarola: "Theologia Poetica" and Painting from Boccaccio to Poliziano. Firenze: S. Olschki.

[2] G. B. Vico, Scienza Nuova (1744), "Of the Method," final paragraph.

[3] De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia, Ch. I.1.

[4] Paolo Cristofolini, "Da Dante a Omero, Da Gravina a Vico," in 2007. Giambattista Vico e l'Enciclopedia dei saperi. A. Battistini and P. Guaragnella, eds. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia.

[5] G. B. Vico, Scienza Nuova (1744), "Of the Method," par. 1-2.

[6] Marco Andreacchio. 2013. "Autobiography as History of Ideas: an Intimate Reading of Vico's Vita (from «Lord Vico» to «The Names of Law»)," in Historia Philosophica: An International Journal, Vol. 11.