Scotus Academicus, Tomus primus: De Deo in se subsistente

So great is the society and connection of beauty with goodness, that among the Greeks they are expressed by the same word: for τὸ καλόν signifies both, both the good and the beautiful. It is therefore a consequence that, once the divine goodness has been delineated, beauty also should be in some measure adumbrated, so that its likeness may shine forth more clearly.

Note 1. Spiritual beauty can be delineated from corporeal beauty. Now corporeal beauty is, as Cicero says in 1. Tusculanarum: a fitting shape of the members together with a certain sweetness of color. In imitation of whom St. Augustine, lib. 22. De Civit. c. 10., says: All beauty of bodies is a congruence of parts together with a certain sweetness of color: but where there is no congruence of parts, either something offends for this reason, because it is small; or for this reason, because it is excessive: whence St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 39. art. 8., says that three things are necessary for beauty: First indeed, integrity, or perfection; for things which are diminished are by that very fact ugly: Second, due proportion or consonance: and again clarity; whence things which have a bright color are said to be beautiful. St. Ambrose embraces all these things in the second book of the Hexaemeron toward the end: For that is true beauty, he says, that there be in the individual members what befits, and in the whole: so that in the individual parts grace, in all the beauty of a fitting form may be praised. Whence it is clear that beauty no less than goodness consists in a certain congruence, though with the greatest difference between the two. And that this may appear

Note 2. The good is indeed that which is apt, and has a certain congruence; but in order to the supposit to which it belongs. Hence that is said to be good which all things desire. But the beautiful is that very congruence itself, which does not precisely regard appetite, but the true and genuine species and the absolute exemplar of itself, which the Platonists call an idea: for it is a certain perfect form of any thing whatsoever, complete and consisting in all its numbers and parts; which first inheres in the very mind of God; then secondly in the mind and intelligence of those endowed with reason; of which also some force and small part overflows into the senses themselves, especially the interior ones which are in man. Whence we call that man beautiful who has that conformation of mouth and countenance, and that figure and elegance of members, and finally that sweetness of color which the perfect species of the human body requires, of which sort we carry about in our senses and minds. And so, according as that form is diverse which we have inwardly conceived and expressed, so varied is the judgment of men concerning beauty. For the Ethiopians, for example, who prefer the black color of the body to whiteness, judge white bodies to be ugly; they judge black ones to be handsome. We think otherwise about the same matter, because we have been otherwise instructed. The Greeks, says Clement of Alexandria, 7. Strom., just as they make the gods like men in form, so also they set them subject to the same perturbations of mind as those by which they themselves are moved, and just as each one describes their forms as like to themselves, as Xenophanes says, the Ethiopians indeed black and snub-nosed, but the Thracians ruddy and with blue eyes, so also they liken their minds to those who fashion them.

Note 3. That just as the beauty of visible things consists chiefly in two things, namely in a due habitude, or a fitting proportion of the parts among themselves and to the whole; likewise in a congruent suffusion of color or of light informing and adorning the parts of the body: so the beauty of spiritual substances, which have neither parts nor color nor sensible light, is to be placed in due operation and in the right judgment of the intellect. For operation is related to the essence of the one operating as a member to the body, and it beautifies and illuminates the operation of intellectual knowledge, just as sensible light or a splendid color beautifies corporeal members or the parts of the body. Hence St. Augustine calls virtue the beauty of the soul, Epist. 222.: What else, he says, is justice, when it is in us, or any virtue whatsoever by which one lives rightly and wisely, than the beauty of the inner man? Now that this beauty of the soul is far more excellent than corporeal beauty, the Spouse sufficiently commends in Cant. 4.: How beautiful you are, my friend, apart from that which lies hidden within! as if he would say: the elegance of your body is indeed comely, but the hidden beauty of your soul far excels it. Thence in Canticles 6. he says again: As the rind of the pomegranate, so are your cheeks apart from the hidden things: elegance, but good to your eyes; signifying by this enigma that, just as the chief adornment of the pomegranate lies hidden within, so the beauty of the soul shines more sweetly than the form of the body: for the one shines outwardly, the other inwardly; the one is extinguished in a short time, so that it is found to have withered before it blooms, the other is perpetual and eternal; the one is most pleasing to human eyes, the other to divine eyes: Whence St. Ambrose, lib. 3. Hexam. cap. 13.: Who can esteem a beauty greater than the comeliness of her who is loved by the King, approved by the Judge, dedicated to the Lord, consecrated to God? This beauty does not wither nor fail: that is true comeliness, which does not seize alien eyes, nor wounds fragile minds; but acquires the judgments of all, destined to be a fraud to none, a praise to itself.

First conclusion. — God is most beautiful: indeed He is beauty itself.

Dionysius Carthusianus proves this conclusion by various reasons, lib. De Natura Dei art. 57. First, because the beauty of a spiritual substance is to be placed in due operation and in the right judgment of the intellect, as we said in the third Note: but the action of God, especially the immanent action, since it is everlasting and most fitting to God, connatural, consubstantial, and exceedingly delightful: likewise the knowledge of the divine intellect, since it is invariable, most splendid, and intuitive of all things with infinite activity and unchangeable light: it is evident that God is beautiful and truly most beautiful. Second, that is called beautiful which pleases the sight: therefore, since God is in Himself infinite goodness, most simply possessing the perfection of all goods, from whom come all truth and illumination and knowledge; it follows that He supremely pleases every interior sight of intellectual creatures; indeed He supremely pleases Himself with infinite complacency, and perpetually contemplates Himself, as the super-beautiful good, and as essential beauty. Third, things which appear more luminous and purer are called beautiful: but God is not only luminous, and pure, and splendid, but He is also eternal light itself, uncircumscribed and perfect, and consequently He is most beautiful. Fourth, beauty is the ray, the flower, and the purest emanation of divine goodness: but God is goodness itself: therefore He is also beauty itself. Fifth, that is beautiful which allures all things to itself, and which all desire: whence the Platonists call the love of beauty desire: but God converts all things to Himself, as the end of all things, the desire of the eternal hills, and the sweetest love of all: therefore He is most beautiful. Finally, God Himself makes all things beautiful, and is the principle of all beauty: therefore equally the center of beauty: whence the Royal Psalmist justly sings in the name of God: The beauty of the field is with me: or as the Septuagint reads: The splendor of the field is with me, as the fountain of all beautiful things, flowing forth in a perpetual outflow.

With these things Boethius agrees: Thee all things from a supernal Example thou leadest, thyself most beautiful, the beautiful World bearing in mind, and forming it from a like image.

One may gather this very beauty of His from His works:

For from the greatness of the works, writes St. Hilary, lib. 1., and from the beauty of creatures the Creator of the generations is consequently discerned. The Creator of great things is in the greatest, and the Maker of the most beautiful is in the most beautiful; and, since the work surpasses sense itself, so much the more must the Worker far exceed every sense: with a few words interposed: Is not the Lord of this very beauty necessarily to be understood as the most beautiful of all beauty, so that, although the species of His eternal adornment escapes the sense of every intelligence, yet the sense of the adornment does not leave the opinion of intelligence? And so God is to be confessed as most beautiful, so that He is neither within the judgment of understanding, nor outside the perception of those who understand.

As if he would say that from this the beauty of God is to be judged the more sublime, because it far transcends every sense and every created intellect. With this St. Augustine agrees, lib. 11. De Civitate Dei, cap. 4. Apart from the prophetic testimonies, he says, the world itself, by its most ordered mutability and mobility, and by the most beautiful species of all visible things, in a certain manner silently proclaims both that it was made, and that it could not have been made save by God, ineffably and invisibly great, and ineffably and invisibly beautiful. dorus, lib. 1. De Summo bono, cap. 4. That man may return to God by the very footsteps by which he turned away; so that, because through love of the beauty of the creature he withdrew himself from the form of the Creator, he may return again through the comeliness of the creature to the beauty of the Creator. By all these things, therefore, it is established that God is not only most beautiful, but also the center, the fountain, and the principle of all beauty.

Second conclusion. — The most excellent and preeminent beauty of God consists chiefly in the most ordered and most resplendent connection of all divine perfections, and in their supreme identity.

This is sufficiently evident of itself; and it is confirmed from a likeness taken from the corporeal and at the same time spiritual beauty of creatures. For we have said that the beauty of bodies is the most ordered conjunction of the parts of the body, together with the resplendent light of color: similarly, that the beauty of spirits is their most ordered operation and the union of their perfections; so that even divine beauty consists chiefly in the most ordered and most glittering union and identity of all the excellences of the Divinity.

Marsilius Ficinus discloses this same truth no less elegantly than subtly in the Convivio, Orat. 6. cap. 17., where he investigates and points out the diverse beauty of bodies, souls, Angels, and God in this way:

The form of the body, he says, consists in the composition of many parts, is constrained by place, slips away with time: but the Species of the Soul indeed suffers the vicissitudes of the body, and contains a multitude of parts, but is free from the limits of place. The species of the Angel, however, has number alone, and stands immune from the other two. But the beauty of God suffers none of these things. You see the form of the body, surely: do you wish also to behold the species of the soul? Take away from the bodily form the weight of its very nature, and the limits of places, leave the rest; you now have the species of the soul. Do you wish to uncover the beauty of the Angel? Remove, I pray, not only the spaces of place, but also the progress of times; retain the multiple composition, and you will at once obtain it. You desire also to discern the beauty of God! Take away in addition the multiple composition of those forms: leave wholly the simple form, and you will immediately attain the species of God. Moreover, the beauty of all bodies is that light of the Sun which you see, consisting in those three things, namely the multitude of forms, the space of place, the change in time. Take away its immaterial seat, so that besides place it retains the other two, and precisely such is the beauty of the soul. Take away from this the change of time, if you please, send away the rest; there remains a light most clear, without place, without motion, but engraved in the reasons of all things: and that is the Angel, and the beauty of the Angel. Take away finally that number of diverse ideas, leave one simple and pure light, like that light which remains in the very globe of the Sun and is not dispersed through the air; you now in some manner comprehend the beauty of God, which so far excels the remaining forms as that light of the Sun, pure and inviolate in itself, surpasses the splendor of the Sun scattered, cut up, and obscured through the cloudy air. Moreover, just as there is a certain shadow of the Sun in water relative to its clear light in the air, and the splendor in the air is a shadow relative to the light of the Sun refulgent in the Sun itself: so likewise is the comparison among those four, of the Body, the Soul,

of the Angel, and of God: for the beauty of the body is a shadow of the beauty of the soul: the species of the soul is a shadow of the form of the Angel; the form of the Angel, a shadow of the beauty of God. But He alone, just as He is true and most pure light, so He is most perfect beauty; so that He alone both enkindles and must terminate every created love.

Too much, therefore, are mortals to be lamented, who are charmed and detained by the vain, deceptive, and perishable beauty of corporeal things, and do not sigh for that immortal beauty, cleansed of every blemish. Hence any one of us can justly exclaim with Augustine, Soliloquiorum, cap. 31:

You have illuminated me, light of the world, and I have loved you; for no one loves you save him who sees you; and no one sees you save him who loves you. But late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new: late have I loved you! Behold, you were within, and I was outside, and I sought you elsewhere, and I rushed, deformed, upon those beautiful things which you made.

Whence likewise with the best right St. Bernard exclaims, Sermone de miseria humana: What then do you seek outside God? what do you desire besides Him? What pleases you without Him? He made all things, He has all things, He is everything; whatever good you desire, whatever beautiful you seek, you will find all in Him, and you will enjoy Him.

IMPRIMATUR: F. Albertus Lepidi O. P. S. P. A. Magister. IMPRIMATUR: Ioseph Ceppetelli, Archiepiscopus Myrensis, Vicesgerens.