the construction of “laboratory instruments” called monochords (later to be described in more detail) for
demonstrating number audibly, as sound.
FIG. 3-1 St. Augustine, depicted in an eleventh-century French manuscript of his treatise “On Baptism,” disputing in 411 with
Felicianus of Musti, a Donatist bishop, who represented a schismatic sect that practiced rebaptism of the righteous (comparable
to the “rebirth” of Protestant fundamentalists in later periods).
While Greek music theory still involved practical music for Nicomachus and Ptolemy (who lived in
the second century CE in Arabia and Egypt, respectively), by the time of Boethius the actual music
practiced by the ancient Greeks had fallen into oblivion, along with its notation. Accordingly, Boethius’s
treatise concerns not practical music but abstract Musica, as the author declares quite explicitly.
Boethius inherited two transcendent ideas from the Neoplatonists: first, that Musica mirrored the
essential harmony of the cosmos (an idea we have already encountered in Augustine); and, second, that
owing to this divine reflection it had a decisive influence on human health and behavior. This was known
as the doctrine of ethos, from which the word “ethics” is derived. Audible music (musica instrumentalis,
“music such as instruments produce”) is thus only a gross metaphor for the two higher and “realer” levels
of Musica, perhaps best translated in this context as “harmony.” At the top there was the harmony of the
cosmos (musica mundana), and in the intermediate position there was the harmony of the human
constitution (musica humana), which musica instrumentalis—depending on its relationship to musica
mundana—could either uplift or put awry. All of this is most effectively expressed not in words but in a
famous manuscript illumination of the thirteenth century, fully seven hundred years after Boethius (Fig. 3-
2 ). In each of the three panels of this illumination, “Musica” points to a different level of her
manifestation. In the top panel Musica points to a representation of the universe with its four elements:
earth, air, fire (the sun), and water. The sun and moon further represent the periodic movements of the
heavens, an aspect of measurable “harmony.” In the middle panel Musica points to four men representing
the four “humors,” temperaments, or basic personality types—that is, the four types of “human harmony.”
The proportions of these humors were thought to determine a person’s physical and spiritual constitution:
the “choleric” temperament was ruled by bile, the “sanguine” by blood, the “phlegmatic” by phlegm, and
the “melancholic” by black bile. The four humors mirror the four elements; thus, human harmony is a
function of the celestial. In the bottom panel we find musica instrumentalis, the music that we actually
hear. Musica is reluctant to point; instead, she raises an admonishing finger at the fiddle player, obviously
no disciple of hers but a mere sensory titillator. Whatever its relation to actual sounding music, the idea of
Musica had remarkable staying power.