Regna duo duorum. Berthold of Moosburg's Theory of Providence and Fate

Berthold’s belief in the rational governance of nature, emphasis on the order of the machina mundi, and admiration for the harmony of nature, and so on, were not merely traditional and stereotypical motifs derived from his sources that he wearily repeated. On the contrary, Berthold was truly fascinated by the world of nature. From the scanty information at our disposal, we know that he owned and annotated manuscripts containing works of scientific content (Ptolemy’s Almagest and Macrobius’ Commentary on the Dream of Scipio) and Albert the Great’s autographs (De animalibus, a part of Physica, De caelo, De generatione et corruptione, De natura loci and De causis proprietatum elementorum); that he added comments to Dietrich of Freiberg’s De iride and Aristotle’s Meteora; and that he wrote a now lost treatise De polo iridis. Moreover, his Exposition of the Elements of Theology discusses several issues in natural philosophy (light, time, movement, celestial periods, etc. ) and quotes large extracts from several scientific sources (e.g. Ptolemy, Thebit ben Chorat, Alhazen, Alfred the Englishman, etc.). All of this contributes to the picture of a scholar with prominent scientific interests, a thinker dominated by Wissenschaftspathos. By delineating a two-layered structure of reality, the regna duo theory provides the philosophical background for Berthold’s scientific interest and research. Fate is the principle behind the connection of cause and effect; it is what binds the dispersed multiplicity of sensible phenomena together, giving rise to an orderly and knowable world, to nature itself. Behind – and above – the regularity of natural processes and the uniform periodicities of celestial bodies moved by celestial souls, human reason recognizes a superior and divine intelligence. At the physical level, the causal operation of divine providence brings forth the arrangement of natural events according to regular laws of development. Despite its importance, the role of fate – and the world of nature more generally – has largely been underestimated by scholarship, leaving the Augustinian doctrine of twofold providence as the main focus for scholarship on Berthold’s theory of providence. Yet it is precisely this relationship between the regna duo, between providence and fate, that deserves more attention if Berthold’s theory is to be fully understood in itself and in the context of the debate on providence that took place among German Dominicans between the mid-13th century and the third quarter of the 14th century. This new interpretive approach, which emphasizes the astronomical-physical processes within Berthold’s metaphysical project, also unveils a tension that seems inherent in the concept of natural providence and that has until now remained undetected. In the Exposition of the Elements of Theology, we find two different understandings of natural providence. Often, as in the Expositio tituli, Berthold interprets natural providence in a theologico-metaphysical way as the procession of goodness which, originating with the primary God secundum causam, is per essentiam and per participationem in the divine realities. Sometimes, however, Berthold adopts a physical approach, consonant with Augustine’s passage in the De Genesi ad litteram, and considers natural providence to be the order of natural phenomena, seeing in this order the proof of the existence of a superior ruler.