The Sense of Smell in the Middle Ages

A Source of Certainty

Katelynn Robinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429815935
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Odors, including those of incense, spices, cooking, and refuse, were both ubiquitous and meaningful in central and late medieval Western Europe. The significance of the sense of smell is evident in scholastic Latin texts, most of which are untranslated and unedited by modern scholars. Between the late eleventh and thirteenth century, medieval scholars developed a logical theory of the workings of the sense of smell based on Greek and Arabic learning. In the thirteenth through fifteenth century, medical authors detailed practical applications of smell theory and these were communicated to individuals and governing authorities by the medical profession in the interests of personal and public health. At the same time, religious authors read philosophical and medical texts and gave their information religious meaning. This reinterpretation of scholastic philosophy and medicine led to the development of what can be termed a medically aware theology of smell that was communicated to popular audiences alongside traditional olfactory theory in sermons. Its impact on popular thought is reflected in late medieval mystical texts. While the senses have received increasing scholarly attention in recent decades, this volume presents the first detailed research into the sense of smell in the later European Middle Ages.

Part 1

The anatomy and physiology of olfaction

1“A smell is always a ‘half-breed’”

Greek and Arabic discussions of smell¹

Greek philosophers and medical authors wrote far more about the sense of smell than reached the medieval world, as recent research has attested.² Texts from the Hippocratic Corpus, Empedocles, Hellenistic doctors, and Theophrastus all discussed the mechanism and uses of the human sense of smell. While most of these sources made little impact on thinking about the senses in medieval Europe, there are two general groupings of Greek theories on smelling that were important to scholastic thought on the sense of smell: the Aristotelian and the Galenic.³ Medieval scholars received the theories of Galen and Aristotle first through Arabic medicine and later directly. The Arabic-language authors who are cited most often in European discussions of smell are Isaac Israeli, Avicenna, Averroes, Haly Abbas, and Constantine the African. These authors were primarily medical authorities, so it is unsurprising that their main intellectual loyalty on the subject of olfaction lay with the physician Galen rather than the philosopher Aristotle. However, many of these writers, the most influential of whom was Avicenna, fused aspects of Aristotelian thought with Galenic medicine to form a new Galenic-Arabic theory of the sense smell. It is this Galenic-Arabic theory that became the starting point for medieval European smell theories.

Greek authors who considered the sense of smell defined the sense organ, the nature of odor, the types of odors, and the effects of odors on the body. Although Plato (429?–347 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC) agreed that the nose was the sense organ of smelling and that odor had a general balancing effect on the human body, the nature of odor—what odor physically “is”—was a source of disagreement. Plato classified odor as a vapor that was made of water and air. He also explained that there were two main types of odors—good and bad—and that they could heal or harm the entire body. Aristotle maintained that odor did not reach the sense in its physical form. Rather, the odor information was carried to the sense without matter. However, he considered fume to be the physical carrier of odor. Aristotelian fume had specific qualities. It was made of earth and air that had been elevated by heat. Therefore, it was hot and dry and could not contain cold or moist qualities—precisely the opposite of Platonic vapor. Even though odorous fume did not touch the sense itself, it played an important role as a carrier of odor and a determiner of its qualities. Because Aristotle’s odor was partially composed of earth, he was able to link odor and flavors, which the ancient Greeks widely believed were made up of earth particles. In this way, Aristotle added flavor-like odors to the two basic types defined by Plato and other early philosophers. Much later, Galen (Claudius Galenus; 129–c. 200 AD) drew on both Platonic and Aristotelian theories to develop his medical theory of smell, which changed the sense organ to the brain and redefined Platonic vapor so that it could be made of any element and carry any quality. Because he was a physician, Galen emphasized the abilities of odors to heal or harm the brain more than Platonic and Aristotelian authors had.

In the early Middle Ages, some ancient theories of the senses were acquired through surviving pagan works by authors such as Cicero and the works of early Christian writers such as Ambrose, Augustine, Cassiodorus, and Gregory the Great.⁴ These sources provided a bridge between lost texts from the ancient and late antique Mediterranean and the Middle Ages. Although early Christian authors were more typically used as theological sources, central and late medieval philosophical texts did sometimes refer to them as philosophical authorities.⁵ However, the ideas that began to be available through Latin translations from Arabic and Greek in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries were the real authorities to which central and late medieval scholars turned for information about the senses. Beginning in the late eleventh century, there were a large number of translations from Arabic or Greek to Latin following the beginning of the series of wars known as the Crusades and, especially, after the conquests of parts of Muslim-ruled Spain and Sicily earlier in the same century. Some of the most important works that came out of the translation movement were Constantine the African’s eleventh-century translations of Arabic medical works in Italy, which subsequently led to the rise of the medical school at nearby Salerno; the translations made from Arabic in twelfth-century Spain by the circles of Gerard of Cremona and Dominicus Gundisalvi, including works of Aristotle, Galen, and Avicenna; Burgundio of Pisa’s translations of Galen from Greek, also in the twelfth century; and the fresh translations of Aristotle from Greek made by William of Moerbeke in the late thirteenth century.⁶

As this survey of translations suggests, even though the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and Galen were the roots of many medieval European understandings of the senses, a number of these influential authors’ texts were not read directly. Although Plato’s Timaeus was partially translated in the Middle Ages, the text ended before his discussion of smell.⁷ Therefore, medieval philosophers knew Plato’s ideas on smell wholly through other ancient authors, early Christian writers, and Arabic texts. In any case, Plato’s discussion of smell is most important for its influence on Galen. Galen’s opinions on the anatomy and physiology of olfaction were, however, initially known through the interpretations of Arabic-language authors. Even when Galen’s works began to be translated in larger numbers in the fourteenth century, the information on smell gleaned from Arabic texts often took precedence.⁸ Likewise, Aristotle’s doctrine reached Europe earliest through Arabic translation and commentary, and scholastics continued to rely on Arabic commentators to elucidate Aristotle’s sometimes opaque arguments long after translations of his works began to circulate.

Central medieval authors first became familiar with the mechanics of smell given in Arabic texts, and later medieval authors continued to rely on Arabic accounts as authorities on olfaction. Arabic-language texts contained a largely Galenic explanation of smell blended with elements of Aristotle and Arabic innovations, especially on the sense organ. The late eleventh-century translation by Constantine the African (c. 1020–bef. 1099 AD) of the Pantegni, a work by Haly Abbas (‘Alī Ibn al-‘Abbās al-Majūsī; 925–94 AD), brought a fully developed Galenic-Arabic account of olfaction to medieval Europe, and it was readily embraced by twelfth-century authors. The Liber dietarum universalium of Isaac Israeli (c. 855–955 AD) was also translated by Constantine but did not become influential until the thirteenth century, by which time two texts of Avicenna (Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ʿAlī Ibn Sīnā; c. 970–1037 AD), the Canon medicinae and De anima, had also been translated and began to spread their influence throughout Europe. Although Isaac locates the sense organ in the brain, he does agree with Aristotle in considering odor to be mediated and in emphasizing the nearness of odor to flavor. Avicenna generally follows Galen, but he acknowledges that perception of odor may happen through mediation and relies heavily on the similarities between odors and flavors for judgment of illness and prescription of medicines. The Colliget of Averroes (Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn Aḥmad Ibn Rushd; 1126–98 AD) was also in translation by the thirteenth century. Averroes is the only Arabic author who totally rejects Galen in favor of Aristotle. However, his concept of how odorous fume comes into being is decided un-Aristotelian, and it is rejected, along with his location of the sense of smell in the nose, by medieval scholars.

Scholastic discussions of the sense of smell were an extension of two Greek traditions, one centered on Galen and the other on Aristotle. However, medieval Europe received them almost exclusively through interpretation by authors writing in Arabic. The outline here focuses on the sense organ, the nature of odor, the types of odors, and the general effects of odors on the body, in part because Greek, Arabic, and medieval Latin introductions to smell tended to include each of these categories but also because these traits are essential to understanding the specific powers that medieval authors attributed to odors to heal, to harm, and to otherwise affect bodies.

Greek discussions of the sense of smell

Han Baltussen has shown that there was considerable interest in the sense of smell before Plato that set the stage for much later inquiry. The earliest Greek ideas of smell in the Archaic period, as reflected in Homeric epic, reveal a basic division of odors into good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant.⁹ Presocratic philosophers expanded on this common cultural foundation as they considered how the sense of smell worked. Philosophers before Plato had also already begun to raise such questions as how distance from the odorous object and the qualities of the air carrying an odor affected odor perception.¹⁰ Plato’s discussion of olfaction in Timaeus built on earlier work and formed the foundation of much later work, including that of the Neoplatonists who influenced early Christian and Muslim authors.¹¹ Even though Timaeus only touched medieval thought on olfaction inasmuch as it had inspired Galen and his Arabic interpreters, the points that Plato made in Timaeus regarding the organ of smell, the nature or medium of odor, types of odors, and the effects of odors on the body comprise the basis for most later discussions of the olfactory sense.

Plato links each of the senses with the elements: taste happens when earthy particles touch the tongue, sounds are carried on air, and fire makes sight possible. Contrary to the pattern, however, odor is not produced by a single element. Plato explains that the sense organ of smell is not able to perceive any of the pure elements: “the vessels involved in our sense of smell are too narrow for the varieties of earth and water parts, yet too wide for those of fire and air.” No element, then, has any odor. Instead, an odor is a “half-breed,” made up of two elements, specifically air and water. Odors exist in the transitional states between air and water, which Plato names either vapor (water turning to air) or mist (air turning to water).¹² Odorous mist or vapor comes from an object that either has become wet or is decaying (mist) or is melting or...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Why odor?
• Part 1 The anatomy and physiology of olfaction
• Part 2 The powers of odors
• Part 3 The spiritual sense of smell
• Index