III
We
understand only the very smallest part of human history and of our own
life if we consider it in its external aspect, I mean in that aspect
which we see from the limited view-point of our earthly life between
birth and death. It is impossible to comprehend the inner motives of
history and life unless we turn our gaze to that spiritual background
which underlies the outer, physical happenings. Men do indeed describe
as history the events that take place in the physical world, and they
often say that this world-history represents causes and effects. Thus
they will approach the events of the second decade of the 20th century,
describing them as the effects of events in the first decade and so
forth. Yet how is so great an illusion possible? It is as though we saw
a running stream of water throwing waves up on to the surface and tried
to explain each successive wave as the result of the preceding one,
whereas the forces bringing forth the waves are really penetrating
upwards from below. So it is indeed. That which takes place at any point
of historic evolution or of human life in general is moulded out of the
spiritual world, and as to these events we can speak of causes and
effects only to a very slight extent.
I will show
you by a whole series of examples how we must include the spiritual
events along with the external happenings in order to gain a true
picture of what underlies the latter.
Our present
age in its spiritual aspects is connected, as you know, with what is
called in spiritual life, the dominion of Michael, and this dominion of
Michael is connected in turn with what the Anthroposophical Movement in
the deepest sense intends, with what this movement ought to be and do.
Thus the events of which I shall speak are not unconnected, as we shall
see next time, with the destiny, the karma of the Anthroposophical
Society, and hence too with the karma of the great majority of the
individual human beings who find themselves within this society.
[See Rudolf Steiner,
The Karmic Relationships of the Anthroposophical Movement, Volume III in this series.]
Some of the things on which I shall
touch this evening are already known to you from earlier lectures. But
to-day I wish to consider from a certain point of view the known and
the, as yet, unknown together. Since the Mystery of Golgotha we see a
continuous stream of Christian evolution passing through the civilised
world. I have often described the directions taken by this Christian
evolution in the successive centuries. But it is also not be denied that
many other influences entered into this stream of Christian evolution.
For had this not been so, the civilisation of our present time could not
be permeated by that intense materialism by which it is in fact
permeated.
True, it cannot be denied that the
Christian creeds and confessions themselves have contributed not a
little to this materialism. Yet they have done so not out of truly
Christian impulses but out of other impulses which entered the stream of
Christian evolution from altogether different
quarters.
Let us take
a certain period — the 8th and the beginning of the 9th century
A.D. We see the personality of Charlemagne, for
instance, carrying Christianity in all directions among the non-Christian
peoples who were still living in Europe at that time, though he does so
by methods of which we with our present humanitarian ideas cannot always
approve.
Now among the non-Christian people of that time those especially are
interesting who were influenced by the streams that came over from Asia
through northern Africa to Europe, proceeding from Arabism and
Mohammedanism. In this connection we must understand Mohammedanism in
the wider sense of the term.
Something over 500 years after the Mystery of Golgotha we see the
rise of all the old elements of Arabian world-conception in Arabism,
Mohammedanism and much that was connected with these. We see above all a
rich and varied scholarship, but a scholarship that was given an
unchristian shape. We see all this spread out of Asia by powerful and
warlike campaigns through northern Africa to the west and south of
Europe. Then gradually this stream dies away and is lost so far as the
more outer world is concerned. But it by no means dies away in the
inward development of the spiritual life. When the more external spread
of Arabism into Europe is already dying out, we see this same Arabism
continuing to spread in a more inward way. This is one of the places
where we have to look from external history towards the spiritual
background. You will remember what I said in our last lecture on karma,
that in considering the successive earthly lives of individual human
beings, we cannot draw conclusions from the external attitude and
features of a man as to the nature of his former life on earth. It is
the more deeply inward impulses that matter. Thus it is with the
important personalities of history — it is the more inward
impulses that matter.
We see the
results of former civilisation-epochs carried into later ones by the
personalities of history, i.e., by the human beings themselves, but we
also see them changing in the process. And by studying the external
aspect we may not immediately recognise these impulses in the new form
in which a human being carries and expresses them in a new incarnation.
Let us now consider a deeply inward stream of this kind.
When
Charlemagne was spreading Christianity — if we may say so, in a
somewhat primitive manner — in the then primitive civilisation of
Europe, there lived in the East a personality who stood really on a far
greater height of culture, I mean Haroun al Raschid.
At his court
in Asia Minor, Haroun al Raschid gathered the most eminent spiritual and
intellectual figures of his time. Illustrious was the court of Haroun al
Raschid, and held in high esteem even by Charlemagne himself.
Architecture, poetry, astrology, geography, history, anthropology
— all of these were brilliantly represented by the most
illustrious of men. Some of these men still carried in them much of the
knowledge of ancient Initiation-Science.
Haroun al
Raschid himself was an organiser in the grandest style. He was able to
make a kind of universal academy of his court where the several
departments of what the East at that time possessed in art and science
were joined into a great organic whole. And side by side with him there
stood above all one other personality, who truly bore within him the
elements of ancient Initiation.
It is indeed
not the case that an Initiate of a former incarnation must necessarily
appear as an Initiate in a later. You may indeed raise the question, my
dear friends, for it is suggested by many things that have been stated
in these lectures: Were there not Initiates in ancient time? Where then
have they gone? Have they not been reincarnated? Where are they to-day?
Where were they in recent centuries? They were here indeed but we must
bear in mind that one who was an Initiate in a former incarnation must
above all make use in a later incarnation of that external bodily nature
which the new age can provide. And the recent evolution of mankind
provides no bodies so plastic, so soft and mobile that that which lived
in such an individuality in a former incarnation can come to light in
them directly. Thus the Initiates receive quite different tasks in which
what they had in their former Initiation does indeed work unconsciously,
in the power of the impulses they give, but does not appear in the outer
form of the working of an Initiate.
Thus at the
Court of Haroun al Raschid there lived a certain counsellor, a second
organiser by his side, who possessed an extraordinarily deep insight,
though it was not in that incarnation the direct insight of an Initiate.
He rendered the very greatest service to Haroun al Raschid.
These two
men, Haroun al Raschid and his counsellor, went through the gate of
death, and having arrived yonder in the spiritual realm, they still
witnessed as it were the final phases of the spread of Arabism, on the
one hand through Africa to Spain and thence far into Europe, and on the
other hand into Central Europe. They were great powers, these two
individualities, and Haroun al Raschid did many things during that life
contributing to the spread of Arabism here in the physical world.
Indeed
Arabism had taken on a peculiar form at the court of Haroun al Raschid.
It was a form proceeding in its turn from many and varied formations
which art and science had received for a long time past in Asia. The
last great wave of evolution towards Asia had gone forth from the
preceding age of Michael. It was the Grecian spiritual life, the Grecian
spirituality and artistic sense, synthesised in the community of
Alexander the Great and Aristotle. The flower of the Grecian spiritual
life had been carried across to Asia and Africa by Alexander the Great
with extraordinary impetus and energy, yet at the same time in a way
that was exemplary for the spreading of a spiritual impulse. All this
was permeated with the spirit which found its scientific expression in
Aristotelianism in Asia Minor and Africa. Thus we may say in general
that the mind of Arabism and Orientalism was shaped and permeated by
those impulses which ancient Greece brought forth in Aristotle and which
were spread into the world so brilliantly by Alexander. We look back
even several centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha. We look back to
the campaigns of Alexander the Great where the treasures of wisdom to
which I just referred were spread far and wide. And from that time
throughout the centuries down to Haroun al Raschid who lived in the 8th
century
A.D.,
we find in Asia a mind and a
receptiveness for Grecian spiritual life in its Aristotelian form.
Nevertheless this spiritual life had taken on a peculiar shape there.
Powerful as it was, magnificent and penetrating, deeply united with
Arabism and permeating it, this Aristotelianism, this Alexandrianism
that flourished at the court of Haroun al Raschid and was cultivated by
him and his counsellor and those around them, nay more, that was even
permeated there by ancient oriental wisdom of Initiation, it was not
that genuine spiritual life which had been cultivated as between
Aristotle and Alexander themselves, for example. It had taken on forms
which were little inclined to enter into Christianity. Thus yonder in
Asia we see a certain Aristotelianism and Alexandrianism, brilliantly
cultivated under the aegis of Haroun al Raschid and his counsellor. It
represented one pole of Aristotle, that pole which is averse to
Christianity, which took on a spiritual form (above all a kind of
Pantheism), but which by its very essence never would nor could unite
with Christianity.
With this
tendency of an ancient spiritual life that would not enter into
Christianity, Haroun al Raschid and his counsellor went through the gate
of death. And having gone through the gate of death, all their effort,
all their longing, all their power was directed from the spiritual world
to continue as it were to play a part in historic evolution in the
spreading of the spiritual life of Arabism from Asia into Europe, thus
continuing what had formerly been achieved by warlike and other methods.
From the spiritual world after their death they sent down spiritual
rays, as it were, intended to penetrate Europe in its spiritual life
with Arabism.
Thus we see
Haroun al Raschid taking the following spiritual line of development
after his death, watching with interest all that took place for the
spread of Arabism from Asia Minor through the South of Europe and
through Spain — watching it and continuing it further. And
correspondingly (for the human being living in the spiritual world
partakes in a sense in what is here below in the physical) — the
other man took a different path in the spiritual world which in its
projection would appear as a more northerly line, from the Black Sea
towards Middle Europe. Thus, we may turn and look upward to these two
individualities, following them as it were in their spirit-wanderings
which may indeed be thus projected down on to the physical plane.
Now you know
how Aristotelianism, Alexandrianism, had spread and entered even
historically into Christianity. In the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th and even
into the 13th century, one of the most popular subjects of narrative
everywhere in Europe was that connected with Alexander the Great. Thus
we have the wonderful poem, the “Song of Alexander” by the
priest Lamprecht, extolling the works of Alexander but connecting them
everywhere with the spiritual world. He describes the education of
Alexander, his life, his campaigns into Asia, and everywhere he brings
out what was living spiritually in this earthly life of Alexander. For
as we know, all earthly life is connected with spiritual things, only
the ordinary consciousness does not see it. All these spiritual elements
were contained in the medieval treatment of the subject. So too,
Aristotelianism spread in Christian Europe even into scholasticism. We
find Aristotelian concepts everywhere, only it is the other pole of
Aristotelianism. Yonder in Asia it was in an Arabist form; here in
Europe, in a Christian. The “Song of Alexander” is permeated
through and through by a Christian spirit, and Aristotelianism too was
cultivated in Europe in an essentially Christian form.
Nay more, we
find this extraordinary process: the Christian doctors of the Church,
their souls equipped with Aristotle, battling against those who had
carried the other Aristotle across from Asia into Spain, spreading an
unchristian doctrine. On all hands we see the conflict of
Aristotelianism in the Christian fathers of the Church, we see it in the
pictures that were painted in a later time, the Church fathers holding
in their hand what they had gained from Aristotle, and treading under
foot Averröes and the others who stood for their kind of
Aristotelianism that had come through Alexandrianism into Europe. This
was taking place externally. But at the same time, if we may describe it
out of spiritual research, Haroun al Raschid and his counsellor lived
on, having passed through the gate of death as I just indicated, and
needless to say, Alexander and Aristotle themselves lived on. Once only
they paid as it were a fleeting visit to the earth in the first
Christian centuries in a district not without interest for the
Anthroposophical Movement. Then they returned again into the spiritual
world and they were together in the spiritual world at a certain time
after Haroun al Raschid and his counsellor had left the physical plane
once more. They themselves, the real individualities of Aristotle and
Alexander, took different paths from Haroun al Raschid and his
counsellor. For they went forward with the Christian evolution. They
went westward with the evolution of Christianity.
And now the
most important and essential events took place in the 9th century. And
this is the extraordinary thing.
The event
which from the spiritual world was of the greatest importance for the
spiritual development in Europe, coincided in the super-sensible worlds
with an external event in which it is by no means easy to recognise it.
Nevertheless it coincided. In the very year
A.D. 869
something of immense significance took place in the
spiritual worlds, while down below the 8th Œcumenical Council was
taking place in Constantinople where it was declared dogmatically that
one must not say, if one would be a true Christian, that man consists of
body, soul and spirit. Trichotomy, as it was called, was declared
heretical. I have often referred to this fact before and expressed it in
these words, that in the Council of
A.D. 869
the spirit was abolished. Thenceforth one was bound to say: man consists
of body and soul, and the soul has certain spiritual qualities. Now what
took place in this way down below in Constantinople was the earthly
projection of a spiritual event — an event which men do not
recognise but which was of immense significance for European spiritual
history, an event extending over many years, which can, however, be
dated to this very year.
In the 9th
century the time had already come when European humanity, even in its
spiritual life, had altogether forgotten what had been quite familiar to
the true Christians in the first Christian centuries, I mean that Christ
was a Being who had formerly been in the Sun, whose life had been
connected with the Sun, and who had then incarnated in the body of Jesus
of Nazareth, as we have often described at this place. This knowledge
was familiar to the earliest Christians, the knowledge of Christ as the
Sun Being, as a Being connected with the cosmic world through His
dwelling in the Sun before the Mystery of Golgotha: the Christ not only
as the Sun Being but as the Being united with all the planetary
existence that is connected with the Sun.
But this
cosmic origin of the Christ Impulse was no longer known in the 9th
century. The full greatness of the Christ Impulse had as it were been
put aside. Nearer and nearer men approached what was called the purely
human, that is to say, what takes place on the physical plane alone.
They no longer explained in the Gospels that which points out into the
Cosmos, but they took the content of the Gospels and told it like an
earthly epic narrative. Really to understand what this change signified
we must bear in mind that in the true evolution of mankind there was
indeed a Christianity before Christ, before the Mystery of Golgotha. We
must take in real earnestness such words as those of St. Augustine who
declared: Christianity was always there, only those who were Christians
before the Mystery of Golgotha were called by other names.
This saying
is indeed only the outer expression of something of immense and deep
significance. Everywhere in the true Mysteries, nay even in those places
which though not in themselves the Mysteries, were permeated by
knowledge and impulses from the Mysteries, there was indeed a
Christianity before the Mystery of Golgotha. Only they spoke of the
Christ Being as of a Being who is in the Sun, and whom one can behold
and with whom one can work when through the wisdom of Initiation one has
reached the point at which the real Sun life in its spiritual content is
actually present to one.
Thus in the
ancient Mysteries they spoke of the Christ who was to come. They spoke
not of an earthly Christ who had lived or who was present on the earth,
but they spoke of the Coming Christ who would be here in the future and
whom they still sought for in the Sun.
Now even in
later times such knowledge and tradition continued and entered into
certain places which Christianity had not yet reached even in the
centuries after the life of Christ.
During our
recent stay in England during the Summer Course
[See
True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigations
(Anthroposophical Publishing Co.).]
at Torquay in the West of England, not far from the place
[Tintagel, North Cornwall. See
Cosmic Christianity and the Impulse of Michael,
{also known as, Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume VIII – e.Ed}
notably Lectures III and VI (Anthroposophical Publishing Co.).]
where Arthur was with his
followers once upon a time (we were able to visit this actual place), a
result of spiritual research was given to me, pointing to a belated
working of this kind in a pre-Christian Christianity. For at this place
it had indeed been preserved into a far later time. The content of the
King Arthur Legend referred to later times by a scholarship which is not
at all scholarly in respect of the real facts, reaches back in reality
into a very early epoch, and it is indeed a deep impression which one
may receive when one stands at that place, looking down into the sea,
even as once upon a time the Knights of the Round Table looked out upon
the sea from there. Even to-day, if one is receptive to these things,
one receives a very real impression which tells one what it was that the
Knights of the Round Table of King Arthur did in their gigantic castle.
The last relics of the castle, the crumbling stones, the latest
witnesses to its existence, stand there to this day. Gigantic is the
impression of this place of ruins, entirely broken down as it is, and
from there one looks out into the ocean. It is a mountainous promontory
with the sea on either side. The weather changes almost hour by hour. We
look out into the sea and watch the glittering sunshine reflected in the
water. Then the next moment there is wind and tempest. Looking with
occult vision at what takes place there to this day, we receive a
magnificent impression. There live and weave the elemental spirits
evolving out of the activities of the light and air, and of the foaming
waves of the sea that turn and beat upon the shore. The life and
movement and interplay of these elemental spirits gives even to-day a
vivid and direct impression of how the sun works in its own nature in
the earth, and meets with that which grows forth from the earth below by
way of powers and spirits of the Elements. There we receive even to-day
the impression: such was the immediate original source of inspiration of
the twelve who belonged to King Arthur. We see them standing there,
these Knights of the Round Table, watching the play of the powers of
light and air, water and earth, the elemental spirits. We see too how
these elemental spirits were messengers to them, bringing to them the
messages from sun and moon and stars which entered into the impulses of
their work, especially in the more ancient time. And much of this was
preserved through the centuries of the post-Christian time, even into
the 9th century of which I was just speaking.
It was the task of the Order of King Arthur, founded
in that region by the instructions of Merlin, to cultivate and civilise
Europe at a time when all Europe in its spiritual life stood under the
influence of the strangest elemental beings. More than will be believed
to-day, the ancient life of Europe needs to be comprehended in this
sense. We must see in it on all hands the working of elementary
spiritual beings, right into the life of man.
The Arthurian life, as I said, goes back into
pre-Christian times, and before the Gospel came there, even in its
oldest forms, there lived in it the knowledge, at any rate the practical
instinctive knowledge of Christ as the Sun Spirit, before the Mystery of
Golgotha. And in all that the Knights of the Round Table of King Arthur
did, this same Cosmic Christ was living, the Christ
who though not under the name of Christ, was also living in the impetus
with which Alexander the Great had carried the Grecian culture and
spiritual life into Asia. There were, so to speak, later
‘campaigns of Alexander’ undertaken by the Knights of the Round
Table of King Arthur into Europe, even as the real campaigns of
Alexander had gone from Macedonia to Asia.
I mention
this as an example, which could be investigated in the most recent
times, to show how the worship of the sun, that is to say, the ancient
worship of the Christ, was cultivated in such a place, though needless
to say it was the Christ as He was for men before the Mystery of
Golgotha. There all things were cosmic, even to the transition of the
cosmos into the earthly Elements, the elemental spirits who lived in
light and air and water and in the earth, for even in these there lived
the cosmic forces. It was not possible at that time in the knowledge of
these Elements to deny the cosmic principle that they contained. Thus
even in the 9th century, in the paganism of Europe, there still lived
much of the pre-Christian Christianity. That is the remarkable fact.
Moreover even in that time the belated followers of European paganism
understood the Cosmic Christ far more worthily and truly than those who
received the Christ in the Christianity that was spread officially under
that name. Strangely we can see the life around King Arthur radiate into
the present time, continued even into our time, placed into the
immediate present by the sudden power of destiny. Thus I beheld in
seership a member of the Round Table of King Arthur, who lived the life
of the Round Table in a very deep and intense way, though he stood a
little aside from the others who were given more to the adventures of
their knighthood. This was a knight who lived a rather contemplative
life, though it was not like the Knighthood of the Grail, for this did
not exist in Arthur's circle. What the knights did in the fulfilment of
their tasks, which in accordance with that age were for the most part
warlike campaigns, was called by the name ‘Adventure’ (Aventure).
But there was one who stood out from among the others as I saw him,
revealing a life truly wonderful in its inspiration. For we must imagine
the knights going out on to the spur of land, seeing the wonderful play
of clouds above, the waves beneath, the surging interplay of the one and
the other, which gives a mighty and majestic impression to this very
day. In all this they saw the Spiritual and were inspired with it, and
this gave them their strength. But there was one among them who
penetrated most deeply into this surging and foaming of the waves, with
the spiritual beings wildly rising in the foam with their figures
grotesque to earthly sight. He had a wonderful perception of the way in
which the marvellously pure sun-influence played into the rest of
nature, living and weaving in the spiritual life and movement of the
surface of the ocean. He saw what lived in the light nature of the sun,
borne up as it were by the watery atmosphere as we can see to this day,
the sunlight approaching the trees and the spaces between the trees
quite differently than in other regions, glittering back from between
the trees, and playing often as in rainbow colours. Such a knight there
was among them, one who had a peculiarly penetrating vision of these
things. I was much concerned to follow his life into later time to see
the individuality again. For just in this case something would needs
enter into a later incarnation of a Christian life that was almost
primitive and pagan, that was Christian only to the extent that I have
just described. And this in fact was what appeared, for that Knight of
the Round Table of King Arthur was born again as Arnold Böcklin.
This riddle which had followed me for an immensely long time, can only
be solved in connection with the Round Table of King Arthur.
Thus you see
that we have a Christianity tangible with spiritual touch to this very
day, a Christianity before the Mystery of Golgotha which shed its light
even into the time that I have just outlined.
Now while
the 8th Œcumenical Council was being held in Constantinople, the
human beings who had gone through the gate of death, and who knew well
what had been the Christianity before the Mystery of Golgotha, met
together, if I may put it so, in a simultaneous heavenly council in
which Aristotle, Alexander, Haroun al Raschid and his counsellor, and
many of the circle of the Round Table of King Arthur, were
foregathered.
There they
were at pains to overcome the Arabism living in the individualities of
Haroun al Raschid and the other — to overcome it by the Christian
impulses that lived in the will of Alexander and Aristotle. But this did
not succeed. The individualities were ill-adapted to it.
There was,
however, another result of that heavenly council. Thenceforth the
ancient Cosmic Christianity lived still more deeply in the human beings
who came from the Round Table of King Arthur than in their former, more
rough-and-ready attitudes as Knights of King Arthur. And in that council
that was held above the earth, face to face with what was likely then to
happen in the future, which they could foresee through the Michael power
that was working with them, Alexander and Aristotle made their
resolutions so to speak, resolving how the spiritual life in Europe was
to receive the new impulses of a Christianised Aristotelianism. But
Haroun al Raschid and his counsellor adhered to their old ways. Now it
is of the greatest significance to trace the further development in
European spiritual history of what had taken place in that heavenly
council, if I may call it so. For looking at their further wanderings in
the spiritual life, we find that the great organiser Haroun al Raschid
who had lived so mightily on earth in the time of Charlemagne, returns
again. He appears at a later time in the very midst of Christendom, but
he has taken his Arabism with him through the life between death and a
new birth. Nor need it be outwardly similar to the Arabic element in its
outward configuration as it appears again in the physical world. It
clothes itself in the new forms, the while in these new forms it still
remains in essence the old, the Mohammedanism and Arabism. It appears
again, active and effective in the European spiritual life, inasmuch as
Haroun al Raschid is reincarnated in Francis Bacon of Verulam.
And it
appears once more in a different way, even very strangely permeated with
Christianity, inasmuch as Haroun al Raschid's counsellor is born again
in Central Europe, and carries his influence far and wide in Europe as
Amos Comenius.
Much in the spiritual life of Europe took place in connection with what
the resurrected spirits of the Court of Haroun al Raschid in these two
human figures founded in Europe.
All this had
first been prepared before it took place in actuality; for that which
afterwards came forth in Francis Bacon and Comenius had been working
spiritually from the spiritual world for a long time, and it had taken
on the most intense forms as a result of the heavenly council of 869.
And against it there now worked the other pole, the pole which had
accepted Alexandrianism and Aristotelianism for the stream of
Christianity. It was expressed in the most manifold influences which
worked themselves out in lonely centres of cultivation of Christian
spiritual life.
We recognise
one such centre especially in the School of Chartres
[See
The Karmic Relationships of the Anthroposophical Movement.]
to which I have now often referred in the hearing of some though not of
all who are present to-day. The School of Chartres which flourished
especially in the 12th century, contained a mighty spiritual impulse.
Sylvester of Chartres, Alanus ab Insulis and other spirits who taught
like these two, or who were otherwise connected with the school, had
very much in them of the ancient wisdom of Initiation. And though they
themselves could not be called Initiates in the full and true sense of
the word, nevertheless there was much within them of the old wisdom of
Initiation. The books which they produced look like long catalogues of
words, but at that time it was not possible to express in any other way
what one wished to give in fullness of life in books. It had to be in
the fullness of rhetoric as a kind of catalogue of words. He however who
knows how to read will perceive very much in these books of what was
taught in a most wonderful way to many pupils spiritually permeated by
the great teachers of Chartres.
Truly a wonderful spiritual star shone over the spiritual life of
Europe in that School of Chartres, where to this day there stand the
wonderful architectural forms of the Cathedral, revealing most
beautifully the work of many centuries. In other places too, this
spiritual life was living. It was a spiritual life working in spiritual
ways and giving an altogether different and more spiritual insight into
nature than that which afterwards came to take its place. It is
interesting to see the manifold ways in which that spiritual life rayed
out. In France, in one place after another we can see how even in the
teaching that was given, the spirit of Chartres lived on in the High
Schools carried over into Southern France, and even into Italy. But it
lived not only in the teachings, it lived on in an immediately spiritual
way. Interesting it is how Brunetto Latini, having been an Ambassador in
Spain during a certain time, returned to Florence, the city of his
fathers, heard of its misfortune even from a distance, and thus suffered
a powerful convulsion of his soul, to which was added a slight attack of
sunstroke. In this bodily condition the human being is easily accessible
to spiritual influences that work in a spiritual way. It is indeed well
known how Brunetto Latini on his way to Florence experienced what was
actually a kind of elementary initiation. Brunetto Latini became Dante's
teacher, and the spirituality of the Commedia proceeds from
the teachings which Brunetto Latini gave to his pupil Dante.
In all this
there lives what was agreed supersensibly, if I may put it so, in the
spiritual Council of 869. For the inspiration of the teachings of
Chartres, the inspiration of Brunetto Latini, and even the inspiration
of Dante, enabling cosmic things to live in Dante's poem — all
these things are connected with the impulse that proceeded from that
super-sensible Congress in the 9th century
A.D.
We must see
all these things together, the spiritual life of Europe from the old
time of Alexander, in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, in the time
of the School of Chartres; and we shall see how we can trace it still
farther into the later time. We must see in their mutual interplay that
which takes place in the super-sensible and its shadowed image down here
in the physical world. Then only do we really begin to understand what
must be called the stream of Michael to-day, and what this stream of
Michael to-day intends.
Then we can
penetrate and see what is the will of the Anthroposophical Movement
according to the stream of Michael. We shall say more of this in the
next lectures.
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