Medieval Sciences of Emotions during the Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries: An Intellectual History

The standard narrative of the development of Western thinking about emotions is that the concept of emotions emerged alongside the secularization of European society and thought and was linked to the emergence of psychology as a discipline. This essay argues that a systematic psychology of affectivity emerged far earlier and can be found in Western Christian thought. In the context of the cultural renewal of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, Christian anthropology—the conception of the human being—was totally reshaped. We would like to trace the steps of this development. The shift took place gradually from the end of the eleventh century onward, both in the monastic context and in the new scholastic milieu. In earlier medieval times, emotions were understood in terms of the dual moral perspective of vices and virtues, as defined by the parameters of the Fall and Salvation: affective life was largely reduced either to negative disturbances of the soul that a Christian should resist or to a positive love of God that one should cultivate. From the beginning of the twelfth century onward, Western thinking about affective life began to engage new questions. Emotions both positive and negative came to be regarded as important aspects of a more complex picture of human nature and attracted growing attention as such. Without departing from the Christian framework, which remained the basis of the growing, psychologically oriented literature, emotions came to be described in relation to the powers of the soul, and their sensory and bodily dimensions, as well as their cognitive, rational, and volitional functions, were increasingly considered in an integrated way. Our essay analyzes the medieval psychology of emotions from a fresh perspective.