Хермоген от Тарс и формирането на византийската канонична реторика

Author(s): Gerasim Petrinski / Language(s): Greek, Ancient (to 1453),Bulgarian Issue: 20/2014

In the second century AD relativism and syncretism are being replaced by complete religious and philosophical movements with their own canonical texts. These movements “fight for orthodoxy” against internal and external enemies. This tendency is apparent mostly inside the Neoplatonic and Christian circles, but can be applied also to more specified branches of knowledge – jurisprudence (with the Theodosian and Justinian codes), grammar, and lexicology. Rhetoric does not make an exception. Between 2nd and 5th centuries rhetorical education is being limited to five treatises on argumentation, stylistic, disposition and progymnasmata (rhetorical exercises) – these treatises belong to Hermogenes of Tarsus and Aphthonius. The purpose of this study is to present the main concepts of the Hermogenian works “Onstaseis”, “On types of Style”, “On Method”, “On Invention”.

O edycji komentarzy Waltera Burleya do "Parva naturalia"

Author(s): Marek Gensler,Robert Podkoński / Language(s): Polish,Latin Issue: XXII/2016

Walter Burley was an English philosopher and theologian active in the first half of the fourteenth century. He is best known for his contributions to logic and the philosophy of nature. His five commentaries on the Parva naturalia: De sensu et sensato, De memoria et reminiscentia, De longitudine et brevitate vitae and De somno (comprising all three of Aristotle’s works on the issue), are, most probably, the fruits of his long regency at the Arts Faculty in Oxford. Until recently, they have not attracted much interest among historians of philosophy. A preliminary study of these works, however, shows that they deserve attention for a number of reasons. They document an early stage in the development of Burley’s views on natural philosophy. They are also a display of a valuable variety of approaches to the texts usually commented upon for teaching purposes in the Oxford schools of that time.

Prolegomena to an Edition of Albert's "Topics"

Author(s): Carlos Steel / Language(s): English,Latin Issue: XXI/2015

Albert’s monumental paraphrase on the Topics remains terra incognita for scholars in medieval philosophy. Before its importance can be truly assessed we need a critical edition of this text. The present article offers some prolegomena for a future edition. Of the eight manuscripts transmitting Alberts Topics seven belong to the Parisian tradition (including five depending on the university exemplar). Only one manuscript, Florence Laur. Conv. Sopp. 195, copied in 1427, is independent from that tradition and makes it possible to correct the numerous errors of the Paris tradition and in particular its omissions. Parallel texts in Albert demonstrate that the supplementary texts one finds in the Florence manuscript are certainly authentic and cannot be explained as conjectural additions. A new edition will reveal Albert’s text in a form radically different from the standard Borgnet edition.

Metody matematyczne w badaniach z zakresu filozofii przyrody. Problem szybkości powstawania form w XIV-wiecznym traktacie "De sex inconvenientibus"

Author(s): Joanna Papiernik / Language(s): Polish,Latin Issue: XXIII/2017

The anonymous treatise "De sex inconvenientibus" was written by an author who presumably belonged to the group of Oxford Calculators (it is assumed that he was William Heytesbury’s student). The four questions discussed in this text concern the velocities in the process of generation (De generatione), motion of alteration (De motu alterationis), motion of augmentation (De motu augmentationis) and in the local motion (De motu locali). The fragment of the first question, presented above, regards the problem of measuring velocity in the generation of forms of the elements. It is a good example of the application of some mathematical procedures in the Aristotelian-Averroean physics, which was characteristic for the Oxford Calculators. The translated part shows also the important dependence of "De sex inconvenientibus" on William Heytesbury’s "De tribus praedicamentis" (the sixth chapter of his treatise "Regulae solvendi sophismata").

Relacje między zabobonami a wiedzą naukową w komentarzach Waltera Burleya do Parva Naturalia Arystotelesa

Author(s): Marek Gensler / Language(s): Polish Issue: XXIII/2017

For a modern reader, Walter Burley’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Parva naturalia are a puzzling blend of superstitions and rational arguments. A more detailed analysis of selected issues shows that they are very well integrated within a complex worldview. What is more, the Christian-Aristotelian worldview of those times allowed for critical procedures of data analysis, which enabled scholars of the time to test the everyday beliefs and see whether they can be explained by means of the accepted theories. This way they were able to preserve coherence of the system of knowledge and identify the exceptional cases, which were branded as superstitions.

"Quintavia” św. Tomasza z Akwinu we współczesnej dyskusji filozoficzno-przyrodniczej

Author(s): Mirosław Twardowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2017

Dla św. Tomasza z Akwinu celowość, jako istotny element w wyjaśnianiu świata, obejmuje całą przyrodę, zarówno nieożywioną, jak i ożywioną, w tym byty rozumne. Widoczna jest ona w aktywności bytów fizycznych, które działają w taki sposób, aby osiągnąć to, co jest dla nich najlepsze. Tak rozumiana celowość wyklucza przypadek i jest argumentem wskazującym na istnienie Boga. Kazimierz Kłósak dostrzega konieczność reinterpretacji piątej drogi św. Tomasza, w punkcie wyjścia kładąc nacisk na porządek występujący w świecie bytów ożywionych, a nie na celowość. Według Christopha Schönborna wnikliwa obserwacja wszechświata, Ziemi, życia dostarcza nam „przytłacza-jących dowodów” na istnienie porządku, planu i celu. Przestrzega jednak przed zbyt po-chopnymi próbami doszukiwania się wszędzie „inteligentnego projektu”. Richard Dawkins przekonuje, że silne złudzenie, że świat został zaprojektowany lub stworzony w jakimś celu, da się łatwo wytłumaczyć jako skutki działania darwinowskiego doboru naturalnego i mutacji. Francisco J. Ayala twierdzi, że nie ma sprzeczności między mechanizmami ewo-lucji a działaniem Boga Stwórcy. Ewolucję postrzega on jako naturalny proces, za pomo-cą którego Bóg stworzył istoty żywe, a także rozwinął je zgodnie ze swoim planem. Paul Davies, choć nie uważa, że wszystkie bez wyjątku złożone układy stanowią wynik koń-cowy naturalnych procesów, podkreśla jednak, że należy zachować ostrożność w wycią-ganiu jednoznacznego wniosku o istnieniu projektodawcy na podstawie powierzchownych obserwacji. Dla Roberta Jamesa Berry logiczne i naukowo poprawne jest komplementarne podejście do zagadnienia przyczynowości: naturalistyczne i teistyczne. John C. Polkin-ghorne podkreśla, że Bóg pozostaje ze światem w nieustannej interakcji, chociaż nie inter-weniuje doraźnie w zachodzące w nim procesy. Wreszcie, według Michała Hellera, Bóg stwarzając świat, „określił strategię wkomponowywania przypadków w działanie praw przyrody”.

Faith and Reason in Stephen Langton (+1228) and Some of His Contemporaries

Author(s): Magdalena Bieniak / Language(s): English Issue: XXIV/2018

This article discusses an early scholastic question whether knowing something is compatible with believing it. The main authors taken into consideration are Stephen Langton, Praepositinus of Cremona, Geoffrey of Poitiers, and William of Auxerre. They assess the possiblity of proving the existence of God by natural means, evaluate the certainty and reliability of faith in comparison to philosophical knowledge, and speculate whether finding rational evidence for an article of faith would hinder one’s salvation. These controversies help to determine the degree of cognitive optimism of each of the authors and reveal their attitude to natural reason. The study includes an analysis of Langton’s basic terminological distinctions concerning faith, knowledge, and understanding. It concludes with a critical edition of his theological question Vtrum fides sit de non apparentibus tantum

William of Godin on Knowability of God.

Author(s): Mikołaj Olszewski / Language(s): English Issue: XXIV/2018

William’s Commentary on the Sentences, sometimes called the Lectura Thomasina, was perceived in the Middle Ages as faithful and adequate exposition of Thomas Aquinas’ theology, hence a closer look at the contents of this previously unedited text has been postulated by medievalists, especially those interested in the Thomistic tradition. This study first characterizes the manuscripts containing the Lectura, then analyses the dependence of William’s work on John Quidort’s Commentary and Aquinas’ Summa theologiae, before finally providing a critical edition of Distinction 2 from Book I. 80% of the text of the Lectura is based on Quidort’s earlier Commentary and its doctrinal contents follow the solutions proposed by St Aquinas.

Hugolinus ab Urbeveteri, „Questiones super Physicamˮ, III, 1-3 (avec quelques souvenirs personnels)

Author(s): Stefano Caroti / Language(s): French Issue: XXIV/2018

In the first three questions of the third book of his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Hugolinus ab Urbeveteri deals with a very important topic in the late medieval debate on semantic and natural philosophy: the nature of motion. To endorse a parsimonious ontology — according to which motion is no different from the moving thing and the successive acquisition or loss of a form or of space (forma fluens) — one has to face William Ockham’s semantic analysis of expressions such as motus est and the reduction of ontology to permanent beings. These three quaestiones bear witness to the intellectual effort utilized to avoid either the Scylla of realism or the Charybdis of the more radical outcomes of Ockham’s criticism.

Les manuscrits des „Quaestiones super Libros Sententiarum” de Robert Holkot. Partie IV : Eichstaett, Universitätsbibliothek, St 713

Author(s): Pascale Farago-Bermon / Language(s): French Issue: XXIV/2018

This paper describes the content of the manuscript of Robert Holkot’s Commentary on the Sentences preserved in Eichstaett : Universitätsbibliothek st 713. This manuscript is a precious testament to the active reading done on Holcot’s Sentences in some Dominican convents during the second half of the fourteenth century. Copied in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, by the brother Io[hannes] of Castua (Kastav?), at the very moment when Iohannes Galeaz Visconti was chasing the Scaliger from Verona (1387), it contains what could be the first work known to date from the famous Prior of Santa Maria Novella, the “blessed” Alexius of Strozzis († 1383): some “Solutiones argumentorum Holcoti in questione corporis Christi.” Copied within the walls of the Florentine convent, this manuscript does not belong to the old fund of Santa Maria Novella, described by S. Orlandi and G. Pomaro, but probably uses exemplares from Holcot’s Lectura that were available at the convent or at least in Florence. This copy of Holkot’s Quaestiones super Sententias is further distinguished by the anonymous additions it makes to the text, which are conscientiously reported in margins.The tabula makes use of a system of marginal letters that the author describes in detail in his introduction. It only indexes the first three books, which are the only ones to have an original foliotation. The dubium De obiecto actus credenda [0002] is missing from this copy, which seems to consider that book I begins at question 2. This manuscript also reveals previously unknown, slightly mutilated witness of the Sex articuli copied after the question [015]. The manuscript copies book III before book IV and in book III includes the series [008 of incarnatione], [018 of beatitudine], [009 of angelo custode], [010 of peccato demonum]

„Utrum Tantum Signa Sint Universalia”. A Question from John’s Of Münsterberg Commentary on the „Metaphysics” (VII, 32)

Author(s): Monika Mansfeld / Language(s): English Issue: XXIV/2018

John of Münsterberg’s opinions concerning the status of universals are preserved in two sources: his Commentary on the Metaphysics and an anonymous record of discussions in which he participated in Prague. In both sources, John’s own opinions on the topic are paired with comments on the positions of his opponents, especially radical realists, such as John Hus, Štěpán of Páleč, and Stanislaus of Znojmo. Although John of Münsterberg was often considered in secondary literature to be a nominalist, a more detailed analysis of his texts leads to a conclusion that the opinions he presented there are more characteristic of moderate realism. Question 32 from book 7 of his Commentary on the Metaphysics, the critical edition of which constitutes the main part of this paper, is devoted not only to the title-question, viz. whether signs are only universals, but also to the problem of how universals exist in things. It is preceded by the editor’s short introduction

Pratiques intellectuelles à l’Université de Prague au XVe siècle. Notes sur un Quodlibet de Jan Arsen de Langenfeld (c. 1400)

Author(s): Iulia Szekely / Language(s): French Issue: XXIV/2018

This article proposes an insight into the quodlibetical disputations that took place at the beginning of the 15th century at the University of Prague. At times, the topics of these disputations reflect the views against the Catholic Church that Jan Hus and other masters were exploring in those days. The current article edits and examines two questions taken from the manual of Jan Arsen of Langenfeld, a German Master of Arts from the University of Prague University. These questions were conceived for the disputations that he led around 1400 and provided an interpretation of the propositions extracted from or inspired by the Book of Causes. A thorough analysis of the sources and influences of these questions shows that arguments and phrases circulated from one Master to another, from one quodlibetal disputation to another, hence consolidating a specific philosophical and theological tradition.

Jean de Maisonneuve, l’albertisme tardif et deux commentaires à la „Métaphysique”

Author(s): Dragos Calma / Language(s): French Issue: XXIV/2018

This paper reassesses the initial reception of Albert the Great’s philosophical thought in the 15th century by analysing John of Nova Domo’s Commentary on the Metaphysics. It raises serious doubts about the authenticity of this text, accepted without question by previous scholars, edits some fragments of it and compares with a similar text preserved in a different manuscript. It proves that this Commentary is transmitted in a unique manuscript and that it shares only a few common features with other authentic works by John of Nova Domo.

Puncta ex commentario Nicolai Tempelfeld de Brzeg in „Parva Naturaliaˮ: Editio Critica

Author(s): Maciej Stanek / Language(s): English Issue: XXIV/2018

Codex BJ 1946, held in the Jagiellonian Library of Krakow, is an important source for studies on teaching in Krakow in the 15th century. The main part of its content is the so-called puncta which belong to a peculiar genre of scholastic literature noted for its extremely unelaborate form. Although little is known about puncta-commentaries from secondary literature, it seems they were written by scholars for at least three purposes. Some of them were composed in order to present a register of issues necessary for exams, playing the role of syllabuses. Another type of puncta is supposed to be a workbook and such texts were often a revised edition of a lecturer’s commentary. Finally, some texts called puncta are excerpts from other works, only slightly altered and revised by their authors. Despite differences in the purposes of their origin, all puncta have an obvious common feature: they are abbreviated and in some way revised versions of earlier works. The case of the Puncta in Parva Naturalia here was preserved in cod. BJ 1946, a fundamental text for which was a commentary by Nicolas Tempelfeld of Brzeg.

Debating the Authority of Pseudo-Augustine’s „De spiritu et animaˮ

Author(s): Constant Mews / Language(s): English Issue: XXIV/2018

This paper introduces the De spiritu et anima, widely copied in the medieval period as a work of Augustine, but whose authority and authorship was much contested in the 13th century, in particular by Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. The text draws on and paraphrases ideas about the soul from a wide range of texts, none thematically more important than the De anima of Isaac of Stella, who addressed his treatise to Alcher, a monk of Clairvaux, reportedly of some eminence in medicine. The suggestion made in the late 17th century within the Maurist edition of the works of Augustine (and re-affirmed by McGinn) that DSA is a derivative compilation, is very different from an alternative perspective that has been raised, that it is by Isaac of Stella himself. This paper argues that while it draws heavily on Isaac’s De anima, it modifies Isaac’s perspectives in the light of both a more Augustinian approach and an interest in the physical body and that the hypothesis of Alcher’s authorship should not be dismissed out of hand. DSA formulates an anthropological perspective about the soul that would rival that of Aristotle and find strong support in the Franciscan Order.

Aristoteles’ „Physikˮ bei Albertus Magnus. Aneignung, Interpretation, Transformation

Author(s): Henryk Anzulewicz / Language(s): German Issue: XXIV/2018

This essay portrays the origins of Albertus Magnus’s appropriations of Aristotle’s Physics, and focuses on his initial decontextualised theological uses, as well as his later contextualised philosophical interpretations and transformations. It elucidates the role of some key external conditions for this epistemic caesura in Albert, highlighting the wider context of these two hermeneutically different modes of appropriating Aristotle’s littera. In particular, the essay underlines the reciprocal transformations of the sources and their proposed ideals in light of the two examples of (1) Albert’s integration of some philosophemes from Aristotle’s Physics into his moral theology, and (2) the concept of matter in Albert’s doctrine of creation. Its purpose is to highlight the special position of Albert’s commentary on the Physics in his scientific system and some of its unique features.

Henricus Bate, William of Moerbeke and the Centiloquium of „Ptolemyˮ

Author(s): Carlos Steel / Language(s): English Issue: XXIV/2018

The philosopher and astronomer Henry Bate of Mechelen (1246–1310?) became acquainted with William of Moerbeke at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274. He received translations of texts from William that he was particularly interested in, such as the rare translation of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, which he uses as his reference text. In his Nativitas (1280–1281) Bate also quotes from a Greek translation of the Centiloquium. This pseudo-Ptolemaic work enjoyed an extraordinary fortune during the Middle Ages. No less than five different Latin translations were made from the Arabic. There is no manuscript of a translation from the Greek. An analysis of Bate’s quotations from the Centiloquium reveals that this unknown translation from the Greek was most probably a work by William of Moerbeke.

Waltera Burleya kwestie do Arystotelesowego „O długości i krótkości życia”. (Pierwsze tłumaczenie na język nowożytny)

Author(s): Marek Gensler,Monika Mansfeld / Language(s): Polish Issue: XXIV/2018

Walter Burley’s commentary on Aristotle’s De longitudine et brevitate vitae, one of the fruits of his regency at the faculty of Arts in Oxford, contains three questions, all closely related to the commented text. The first of them concerns the influence of climate on the length of human life. Burley opposes here Aristotle’s statement that inhabitants of hot lands live longer than those of cold lands. His own conclusion that inhabitants of lands with moderate climate live longest is drawn from another Aristotelian premise that moderate climate is best for preservation of natural humidity and hotness. The second question inquires whether fire is corruptible in its own sphere. Following Aristotle Burley asserts that everything that is having material substrate is corruptible. His own addition is pointing to the “hotness” or “coldness” of planets, the properties of which result not from their forms but powers. The third question studies the possibility of infinite duration of an individual animal if it continuously received adequate food. Burley’s reply is concordant with Aristotle’s. In his opinion, natural humidity of animals is gradually weakened because of its “rarefaction,” which results from the fact that humidity of food is less pure than natural humidity. Consequently, even though it sustains life and prolongs the animal’s ability to act, it decreases the power of natural humidity to prolong the animal’s ability to last.

Caterina Tarlazzi, Individui universali. Il realismo di Gualtiero di Mortagne nel XII secolo

Author(s): Wojciech Wciórka / Language(s): English Issue: XXIV/2018

SFÂNTUL TOMA – IN DOCTRINA MUGITUM

Author(s): Anton Adămuț / Language(s): Romanian,Moldavian Issue: 4/2019

Silence is sometimes so fullof meanings that it abolishes the word, not only to make it useless, but also because itthus dissipates the fine essence it carries with her, without letting itself to be touched.Silence is the hymn that the word brings to the spirit. Thus, the word of God, full andabsolute Revelation, is not different from absolute silence2. Why? Because, asJohannes Climacus says, the friend of silence is near to God. I will speak in thefollowing text about Saint Thomas Aquinas, having in mind a sayng of SaintAugustine: in magno silentio cordis.