Saint Augustine and the definition of Music as Scientia (De Musica I, IV, 5)
Luís Carlos Silva de SOUSA
Original title: Santo Agostinho (354-430) e a definição de Música como Scientia (De Musica I, IV, 5)
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Modulation, Music, Order, Reason, Saint Augustine, Scientia, Transcendence.
The objective of this work is to analyse the use of the term Scientia in the definition of Music proposed by Saint Augustine in the work De Musica (I, IV, 5). The Music, one of the seven Liberal Arts, was understood by Augustine as a manifestation of th order of audible realities. The Music had as its object not exactly modulatio, but bona modulatio. Many animals are capable of modulation, they fellow numerical laws: but, for Saint Augustine, the Music was a Scientia bene modulandi, and it assumed a specific, transcendent telos (τέλος). The term Scientia could not be dispensed with, since ignorance of the bona modulatio, as an exercise of Reason, could cause disorder in the use of song.
The role of the Philosophy and Jesuit imagery in the Portuguese missions (1500-1597)
Humberto Schubert COELHO
Original title: O papel da Filosofia e do imaginário jesuítico nas missões portuguesas (1500-1597)
Published in The World of Tradition
Keywords: Cultural Imagery, Jesuit Education, Jesuit Mission, Philosophy, Portuguese Thought, Transcendence.
As the importance of the Society of Jesus in the Portuguese colonizing process is indisputable, the specificities of Jesuit cultural imagery were equally decisive to define several elements in the cultural formation of the colonies. Often centred on literature at many points of its historical development, Portuguese thought of the time was heavily determined by philosophy. Particularly in the sixteenth century, the first century of global colonization, the evangelizing impetus of the Society of Jesus acted as a main existential drive in both cultural and political process of sending missionaries abroad. This paper emphasizes the capital relevance of transcendent beliefs and values in the worldview of such missionaries, and how they shaped the missionary ethos in the daily life, the educational initiatives and the first reports of Jesuit authors.