Medieval theology (Medieval Studies)

This article examines how St. Thomas Aquinas developed rich theological insights to be used ultimately in his preaching ministry as a thirteenth century magister in sacra pagina. His exegetical approach deploys a careful divisio textus to arrive at the
literal meaning and doctrinal sense of the scriptural passage. The ambiguities of difficult passages are examined dialectically by short logical disputations that uncover the riches of the text. The fruits of these labors were then brought together in the master’s university sermon for the conversion and perfection of souls. Thus, the three duties of the medieval master codified in the statutes of the University of Paris – namely, to teach, to dispute, and to preach – contextualize the task of the medieval theologian, rooting him in the revealed Word of God and requiring him to care for the souls of his students and colleagues in his preaching by announcing and explaining the sense and practical import of sacra doctrina. This article also examines the proximate historical source for these three duties as the practice of lectio divina was brought out of the monasteries and into the public sphere of the academies in the great cities of medieval Europe. There is much we could learn today from recovering this robustly ecclesial and pastoral way of pursuing biblical theology.

Artykuł analizuje, w jaki sposób bogaty dorobek teologiczny św. Tomasza
z Akwinu jest wykorzystywany w jego praktyce kaznodziejskiej jako XIII-wiecznego
“magister in sacra pagina”. Jego egzegetyczne podejście wyraża się w ostrożnym “divisio textus”, aby dotrzeć do dosłownego i doktrynalnego sensu danego tekstu biblijnego.  Ambiwalentne interpretacje trudnych tekstów są dialektycznie analizowane za pomocą krótkich, logicznych dysput odkrywających bogactwo tekstu. Owoce tej pracy były niejako zbierane w kazaniu średniowiecznego mistrza ukierunkowanym na nawrócenie i doskonalenie dusz. Trzy obowiązki średniowiecznego mistrza wyrażone w statutach Uniwersytetu Paryskiego – nauczanie, prowadzenie dysput oraz kaznodziejstwo – wskazują na zadania średniowiecznego teologa, zakorzeniając go w objawionym Słowie Boga i wymagając od niego troski o dusze swoich studentów i kolegów wyrażane w głoszenie sensu i praktycznych implikacji sacra doctrina. W artykule przeanalizowano także zródła historyczne dotyczące wspomnianych trzech obowiązków takie jak “lectio divina” przeprowadzana poza klasztorami, w publicznej sferze akademii w największych miastach Europy. Ten model eklezjalnej i pastoralnie ukierunkowanej teologii biblijnej może stanowić również wzór dla współczesnej jej kontynuatorki.

The Influences of the Dominican Order in the Middle Ages
Taylor Institute, Lincoln College, and Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University

September 10-12, 2015

This interdisciplinary conference will explore the influences of the Dominican Order on all aspects of medieval life, encompassing the large-scale influences of the Order and the legacy of its prominent figures, as well as the impact that the Order had on those that came into contact with it.

The keynote paper will be delivered by Mary Rouse, on ‘The Vital Impact of the Dominicans on Books at the University of Paris, 1217-1350’.  The program will feature papers on the Dominican influence in England, Northern Europe, Italy, Eastern Europe, and the Byzantine world; the influence of Friars on other movements and communities; Dominican influence on architecture, art, books, music and liturgy; and influential Dominican philosophers and theologians.

Confirmed speakers are from the UK, the USA, Canada, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.  In addition, the conference will include a walking tour of medieval Oxford, and a concert of music that can be associated with the Dominican Order. 

http://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/influences-dominican-order-middle-ages

Le università rappresentano una delle più originali e longeve
“novità” introdotte dal Medioevo: in esse si ritrovano sia elementi
di continuità con i precedenti centri di alta istruzione e con i saperi
del mondo classico greco-latino sia l’esito culturale delle spinte
all’associazionismo diffuse in molti segmenti della società urbana.
Il volume ripercorre le esperienze universitarie che negli ultimi
decenni del xii secolo presero forma nelle dinamiche città dell’Italia
centro-settentrionale segnando un riferimento istituzionale
e scientifico nel panorama scolastico europeo e concorrendo
in modo determinante alla precisazione di un sapere omogeneo
e di una percezione di appartenenza a una comune area culturale.
Mette in luce le funzioni di raccordo dei flussi internazionali di studenti
e di maestri, di definizione di modelli culturali e di pratiche didattiche,
di formazione delle élites intellettuali che assegnarono alle università
un influente ruolo negli assetti sociali e politici dei luoghi di potere
e dei quadri della Chiesa. La storia del pensiero, delle singole
discipline, delle realtà politico-sociali costituisce così il fondale
che chiude la scena in cui, divise tra vocazione “universalistica”
e orizzonte cittadino, agirono le università.

The article is a piece of interdisciplinary research: it connects historical-theological studies of medieval Christian thinking and studies in the history of Christian education. It is built around the conviction that the socio-cultural and intellectual context on the one side and the form and content of theology on the other side are always correlated to each other. In other words, the system or type of education that a person goes through influences his mode of thinking and, at last, his theology. The weight and value of this contextual-theological stance are checked and examined within a historical-theological analysis of thirteenth-century university education and the formation of the phenomenon of medieval scholasticism.
The study detects and shows the connections between the educational model that was prevalent at the time and the theology that was formulated. Such a thesis is confirmed and illustrated by the test case of Thomas Aquinas and his Summa theologiae. In the end, the conclusion offers a number of brief notes concerning the educational and intellectual value of study for lay Christians and Christian educators of the present day.

Analysis of the Columbanus' monastic rules and the four 'Columbanian' monastic rules written after his death: the Regula Donati, the Regula cuiusdam ad virgines, the Regula cuiusdam patris and the fragment De accedendo ad deum. All four texts express different, and to a certain extent contentious claims on Columbanus' heritage and develop their own distinct monastic program. The Regula cuiusdam patris should be read as a voice of dissent against the path Columbanian monasticism took and might be related to the circle around the monk Agrestius. The Regula cuiusdam ad virgines was most likely written by Jonas of Bobbio, the author of the Vita Columbani. The fragment De accedendo ad deum may have been a lost chapter of the Regula cuiusdam ad virgines. As a reflection on the connection between prayer and ascetic achievements De accedendo can be read as a key text on Columbanian monastic theology.

Jordan argues that it is Peter Damian who first coined the term sodomia, though he notes that adjectival forms of the word can be found in earlier documents: "The central terms used by medieval Christian theologians to describe what we call 'sexual activity' cannot be translated into modern English. They condense in themselves different and in some ways briefer histories of category formation. Consider the terms luxuria, vitium sodomiticum, and peccatum contra naturam as they figure in Scholastic texts. It might be permissible to transliterate the last two as 'Sodomitic vice' and 'sin (or vice) against nature,' with appropriate warnings. But luxuria, the root term, cannot even be transliterated as 'luxury' without provoking misunderstandings each time" (Jordan, Invention of Sodomy, p. 29). 5. Jordan says it was inevitable that the resultant category would be anything but concrete or discrete: "The essential thing to notice in the processes by which 'Sodomy' was produced is that they first abolish details, qualifications, restrictions in order to enable an excessive simplification of thought. Then they condense a number of these simplifications into a category that looks concrete but that has in fact nothing more concrete about it than the grammatical form of a general noun" (Jordan, Invention of Sodomy, p. 29). 6. One of these diatribes is reproduced in the Prologue to this book; see also my article,

Anselm of Canterbury's Proslogion and its basic theological theses have frequently been viewed as a proof of God’s existence or the ontological argument for it. However there exists another approach, searching for a more religious or mystical reading of the work. A middle way, which combines the two approaches, helps to reconsider this work and its author’s ideas. This third approach views Proslogion as both a narrative and a rational explanation of complex process of gaining the knowledge of God per se. The article aims at offerring such a balanced re-reading, by means of the conceptual exegesis of the introductory and concluding chapters of the Proslogion in dialogue with such scholars as G. R. Evans, R. McMahon, J. Sire, and others.

Gli uomini di cultura del Medioevo intendevano la schola come
una formazione (institutio) condivisa, fondata su capisaldi costituiti
dalle sue autorità (auctoritates) e organizzata secondo un
curriculum. Il volume ripercorre, tra continuità e cambiamento,
la storia della scuola dal protagonismo della Chiesa nell’istruzione
altomedievale al sempre più articolato quadro di scuole nel
basso Medioevo, quando, a partire dal xii secolo, nelle vivaci città
dell’Occidente latino sorsero le prime università. In questi secoli
la scuola non fu solo chiamata a divulgare la cultura “dotta”,
quella scritta, ma assunse essa stessa il ruolo di centro propulsore
di nuova cultura, frutto della complessa mediazione tra i saperi
pagani della tradizione classica e quelli cristiani. Il flusso di
“intellettuali”, di modelli culturali e di libri, che trovò il suo raccordo
nei centri di istruzione, concorse così in modo determinante
alla formazione di un sapere omogeneo.

This article presents the first forensic source criticism of the papal encyclical that launched the Third Crusade, Audita tremendi (1187/1188); it makes four main arguments. First, its core empirical contribution is to demonstrate textual variation across the four issues of the letter. Second, it engages with the debate on whether the crusading movement existed in an institutional form in the twelfth century by challenging the interpretation that the reissue of Audita tremendi and similar papal documents was the result of uninspired "plagiarism". Third, it offers a new reconstruction of the immediate context of the issue of the document and argues that, rather than being the product of a long period of careful composition, it was issued as a hurried response to the arrival of the news from Hattin. Fourth, it reconsiders the role of the encyclical in the call for the Third Crusade and contends that the papacy was focussed not on the promotion of the military expedition but the launch of an immediate liturgical campaign of communal repentance. Additionally, the article prints comparative transcriptions of the four issues as an appendix, three of which are published here for the first time.

(Trepczyński, 2018)
The main hypothesis presented and examined in this paper is that St. Thom-as Aquinas had written the commentary on Ps. 51(50) ("Have mercy on me, o God" , miserere mei, Deus) mainly for educational reasons. It is argued that he did it not only to collect useful notes to teach about the Psalm's content and understanding, but also, above all, to have a well-designed tool to teach Christian theology. This argumentation is based on external (context) and internal (content) analysis of Ps. 50 conducted in this article. It is also shown that this hypothesis has an additional explanatory power, as it helps us to understand the strategy adopted by Aquinas when composing the commentary and sheds some light on his pedagogical practice.

An introduction I wrote in 2007 to a volume of English translations of St. Thomas Aquinas's three ventures into the Mendicant controversies at the University of Paris. The book that this was written for went nowhere, but maybe the introduction (entirely derivative scholarship, as these things tend to be) will be useful.

“Rejecting Essentialism and Gendered Writing: The Case of Christine de Pizan,” in Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages, hrsg. Jane Chance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), pp. 96-131.

examines the intellectual historical, in particular the theological, context in which Christine rejects essentialism and theories of the "nature" of women.

Magister Jacobus (c.1260 - c.1340) had as his purpose the revaluation of the "musica speculativa" tradition in the 14th century.  In his treatise "Speculum Musicae", he aimed to demonstrate how it could remain pertinent even when inserted into the Aristotelian and Thomist scholastic framework (associated with the thirteenth century). Magister Jacobus – in full congruence with the "liberal arts" pedagogical program and the " Itinerary of the Mind into God" program present in the philosophical and theological speculation of the Middle Ages –        considered the study of speculative music as an epistemological tool through which man could be introduced to the study of Philosophy and Theology. In this way, the mind could be led from the mirror of sensible things (including the "mirror of music") to the contemplation of invisible things, and above all to the contemplation of God.

Saint Bonaventure doesn't systematize a treatise on ecclesiology as usual in the Middle Ages. However, in several passages of his works from the first to the last shows richness of theological elements. The starting point in understanding the Church is always Trinitarian. This is why not only Christology but also pneumatology, that is, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, has a fundamental place. From the foundation to the perfection of the Church, the third person of the Trinity plays a determining role. The mission of Christ in the Passion follows that of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. He acts in such a way that he makes the Church alive, dynamic, imbued with faith, charity and hope. The work of the Incarnation is the fruit of the partaking of the whole Trinity, while in the Son the Church finds the foundation and mediator of the faith, which incorporates the life of the mystical body, in the Holy Spirit we find the charity that makes the Church a place of diversity, Mutual opening, and fraternal service.

Since the mid-90’s the figure of Peter Lombard and his Book of Sentences has regained the importance in scholarly world and been studied from both historical-theological and historical-philosophical perspectives. But some aspects of his thinking, encapsulated in the written form, which was to become the material basis for the thirteenth- through the fifteenth-century theological projects, remained somewhat insufficiently researched. Therefore this article analyzes the select parts of the Book of Sentences with the purpose of looking at how Peter Lombard handled the issue of God’s knowledge. The article shows that for Peter Lombard God’s knowledge is God’s awareness of everything knowable. It has no causal power which belongs to the divine will. Nevertheless, this knowledge is able to function in two different modes: it can be either a purely cognitive act as awareness alone, or a double cognitive and voluntary act as awareness and simultaneous volition in the form of approbation. Hence, God’s knowledge in general is not causative, but God’s knowledge of the good must be causative because he simultaneously knows and wills what is good. The article reasonably suggests that Lombard’s logic implies the compatibility of God’s (fore)knowledge and voluntary activity, on the one hand, and the contingency of the created order and the rational creatures’ free will, on the other hand. But the details of this conception remain unrevealed as Lombard’s presentation of the problem is to be declared underdeveloped.

Our Western cultural heritage is made up of the legacy of Semitic, Greek and Latin culture and languages. The Hebrew Gospel of Saint Matthew represents a translation into the biblical language from a Romance version of the Vulgate, with special fea-tures, between the more striking: some twenty colloquial words in the medieval Ro-mance language of Catalonia and central Pyrenees; and some thirty phrasal terms from the medieval Ordinary Gloss, which were added to the canonical text.
The introduction of the edition focuses on the main Medieval features of the Gospel of Saint Matthew present in the «Eben Bohan » of Shem Tob ibn Shaprut: the presence of a popular romance vocabulary compared with its equivalents in Occitan, Provençal and Catalan New Testaments from the period and the insertion of some scholarly paragraphs of the « Glossa Ordinaria »  with special mention of Mt 13,23. Other features relating it to the Visigothic recension of the Vulgate such as liturgical Marks and temporal introductions of the readings. It would have been translated from Latin to Catalan around the first half ot thirteen century and from Catalan to Hebrew at the end of the same century.

The thirteenth century in Europe witnessed both the birth of formal medical education in the West and the growth and spread of confession for all Christians. These two systems of social interaction are not unrelated, for both depend on professionals (physician and priest) trained in forms of diagnosis and treatment, whether of illness or of sin. While Christian authors had employed medical metaphors in religious contexts since the first descriptions of “Christ the Healer” in Antiquity, it was only in the decades around 1200 that the equivalency of priest as confessor and physician was made explicit and became a powerful image in the hands of later medieval preachers and theologians. Most historians of confession explain the popularity of such religious-medical metaphors with reference to Canon 21 of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which required annual confession, and in which the confessor is advised to act like a learned physician, treating and curing the wounds of sin. Yet, as I will demonstrate through a study of theological treatises and confessional manuals from this era, the application of medical language to the confessional did not begin in 1215, but rather over the preceding half century in the schools of Paris, where a new and ambitious generation of clergy was trained in both theology and medical theory. These clerical authors, who includes Alan of Lille, Peter the Chanter, Peter of Blois, Robert of Flamborough, and others, encouraged priests to imagine themselves as learned physicians, trained in Galenic humoral theory, who carefully diagnose the nature of a penitent’s spiritual disease, and provide a correct and curative dose of penance that was neither too weak nor too strong. Medieval writings on confession thus provide evidence of how the medical knowledge of higher education may have spread to less learned priests and to the laity.

«Прослогіон» Ансельма Кентерберійського та його ключові тези розглядаються переважно з перспективи доведення буття Бога чи «онтологічного аргументу» на користь Його існування. Однак існує альтернативний підхід, який шукає більш релігійного або містичного прочитання цього твору. Поєднання цих підходів допомагає більш збалансовано й по-новому переосмислити і сам цей твір, й ідеї його автора. Такий третій шлях розглядає «Прослогіон» водночас і як розповідь, і як раціональне пояснення комплексного процесу богопізнання як такого. Метою статті є запропонувати таке комплексне прочитання за допомогою концептуальної екзегези вступних і завершальних розділів «Прослогіона» в діялозі з такими дослідниками, як Дж. Р. Еванс, Р. Макмейгон, Дж. Сайр та інші.

Anselm of Canterbury's Proslogion and its basic theological theses have frequently been viewed as a proof of God’s existence or the ontological argument for it. However there exists another approach, searching for a more religious or mystical reading of the work. A middle way, which combines the two approaches, helps to reconsider this work and its author’s ideas. This third approach views Proslogion as both a narrative and a rational explanation of complex process of gaining the knowledge of God per se. The article aims at offerring such a balanced re-reading, by means of the conceptual exegesis of the introductory and concluding chapters of the Proslogion in dialogue with such scholars as G. R. Evans, R. McMahon, J. Sire, and others.

an article presenting biblical evidence from the New Testament for the hypothesis of the non-unwrapping of the shroud that covered the body of Jesus Christ at the time of his resurrection, according to which the body would have disappeared from inside the cloth without undoing the folds and bonds that held him; the said assumption is commonly made by defenders of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, based on the fact that the visible image on the fabric shows no signs of over manipulation in its formative stage and immediate following moments. This characteristic is still today used by critics of the authenticity as an evidence of a process similar to canvas painting. The non-unwrapping, in turn, would sustain the other hypothesis that the image was formed by radiation coming from the body of Christ at the time of His resurrection and the miraculous escape of the glorious body out of the shroud, thus leaving the shroud empty but preserving folds and bolds, unlike it would be in the case of someone simply unwrapping the cloths to remove the body.

This is an overview of the current state of research regarding Peter Lombard and the "Book of Sentences," written for the "Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques." The piece offers a treatment of Peter Lombard's life and works, of the "Book of Sentences," and of the reception of the latter in its long history of commentaries. Detailed bibliographies are included.

(from back of the book)

In this study Charles Raith II fills a gap in Reformation-era scholarship by analyzing Calvin’s teaching on works and reward in light of medieval theological developments surrounding the doctrine of merit. While significant analysis has been given to Calvin’s doctrine of justification, its relation to sanctification, the notion of union with Christ, and the role of participation, there is as yet no sustained analysis of how these teachings are shaped by the most hostile and pervasive of his polemics, namely, his confrontation with a merit-based framework for understanding Christian salvation. This volume, however, interprets Calvin’s own theological constructions as contextually determined by the reigning polemics of his day. In sum, the volume (1) analyzes Calvin’s tracts, scriptural commentaries and Institutes to demonstrate the manner of Calvin’s rejection of the doctrine of merit; (2) reviews the scholastic developments surrounding the doctrine of merit from the High to Late Middle Ages as background to Calvin’s thought; (3) highlights Calvin’s principle problems with the doctrine of merit: the competitive-causal schema between divine and human causality, merit as a basis for justification, and good works as “deserving” of reward; and (4) unpacks Calvin’s theology of justification, sanctification, the worth of works, and the role of works in salvation as an alternative to the “opponents” doctrine of merit. The volume concludes by reflecting on the reception of Calvin’s theology of works and reward in later Reformed thought.

Summary procedure, resulting of extensive synergistic work carried out
by the medieval legislators of both Laws, was an alternative process to the solemn, more agile and faster. The Saepe Contingit constitution represents the paradigm that will reach its full scholarly maturation on the Bartolus de Sassoferrato’s study about the Constitution Ad Reprimendum. The article briefly explores the steps that lead to the appearance of the summary Rite on the medieval Ius Commune, highlighting the role of Canon law, and in particular the legislative interventions of Pope Clement V, in the making of this process, from the decretals Dispendiosam and Saepe Contingit up to the mentioned Bartolus’s study, as well as its reflection on the Italian statuti comunali.

This article intends to explore briefly the steps that lead to the appearance of the summary Rite on the medieval Ius Commune, highlighting
the role of Canon law, and in particular the legislative interventions of Pope Clement V, in the conformation of this process, from the decretals
Dispendiosam and Saepe Contingit up to the Bartolus de Sassoferrato’s study about the Constitution Ad Reprimendum, well as its reflection on
the italian statuti comunali.

Realizzato a tempera e oro su tavola, secondo le tecniche dell'antica pittura sacra cristiana, la tavola con l'Albero della Vita, opera vasta e dettagliatissima attribuita al pittore toscano Pacino da Buonaguida ( ), fu commissionata agli inizi del XIV secolo dalle Clarisse del monastero di Santa Maria in Monticelli a Firenze, per essere trasportata in via de' Malcontenti in occasione del loro trasferimento nel 1531. Intorno al 1808, in seguito alle soppressioni napoleoniche, la pala finì nel patrimonio di Montedomini: riscoperta nel 1849, fu subito trasferita alla Galleria dell'Accademia, dove tuttora è custodita. Opera entusiasmante per complessità stilistica e ricchezza di particolari, il suo significato non si può però ridurre all'indagine storico-artistica. Come scrive A. Malraux: «Un crocifisso romanico non era al suo nascere una scultura, e la Madonna di Cimabue non era da principio un quadro» 1 . Così il grande dipinto di Pacino, realizzato per un ordine eminentemente contemplativo e di natura claustrale, doveva possedere non solo una finalità didattica e dottrinale, ma svolgere la funzione di una solenne pala d'altare, e rappresentava «in qualche modo, la dilatazione della tavola mistica del sacrificio» 2 .

This paper seeks to clear the way for new historical-theological research into the corpus of St Gregory Palamas and his followers in late Byzantium. While recognizing the immense impact and the extraordinary contribution of pioneering scholars such as Fr John Meyendorff, this paper examines the methodological and hermeneutic questions that dominated Neo-Palamite scholarship in the twentieth century.

This article re-examines the much-debated question of the indebtedness of the medieval Icelandic scholar-poet-politician Snorri Sturluson to the Christian-Latin tradition. I offer an argument for a relationship between the construction of Snorri’s mythography in the Edda and two figurative traditions stemming from the Old Testament,  most notably codified in the 9th chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes, and their subsequent reception in the medieval commentary tradition in Latin and Icelandic, the Old Norse liturgy, vernacular saints’ lives, and lives of the Icelandic bishops. My central claim is that two pervasive figures, the bird and the fish—prototypically represented as captured in Ecclesiastes 9:12 and elsewhere in the Christian literary tradition—merit consideration not as “sources” of certain myths of Loki but of Snorri’s representation of them. Previous scholarship, I suggest, has overlooked a Christian background to the Norse gods’ final fishing expedition, which leads to the binding of Loki and his captivity until Ragnarǫk, when Loki is caught in a net of his own invention: a widespread biblical topos concerning the devil and other “evil-doers.” Snorri’s treatment of the “The Matter of Loki” is hence relevant more broadly to long-standing debates concerning the intellectual debt of Snorri’s conception of Norse myth as “mythic history” to the formative influence of Christian eschatology.

Il volume analizza un'abbondante documentazione dei secoli XIII-XV relativa alle scuole ecclesiastiche legate alla canonica della cattedrale di Città di Castello, al monastero camaldolese di Sansepolcro e agli Ordini mendicanti presenti nei due maggiori centri dell'Alta Valle del Tevere. Di particolare interesse si rivelano le costituzioni della scuola canonicale del 1288, la cui attività è documentata dal 1233 al 1469. Dal capitolo della cattedrale di Città di Castello dipende anche la pieve di Santa Maria in Sansepolcro, la cui scuola è sporadicamente documentata nel 1279 e nel 1292.
La seconda parte del libro è dedicata alla presentazione di alcune biblioteche ecclesiastiche (monastero camaldolese di Anghiari 1140, vescovo di Città di Castello 1279, monastero camaldolese di Sansepolcro 1478/80) e familiari queste ultime nell'intento di capire quali testi di cultura religiosa fossero diffusi fra i laici.
Un'appendice finale raccoglie schede documentarie e bibliografiche su alcuni maestri di diritto canonico e di teologia, tra i quali il domenicano Giacomo Nardi da Città di Castello, gli agostiniani Dionigi da Sansepolcro e Rodolfo da Città di Castello, i camaldolesi Giovanni Abbarbagliati da Sansepolcro e Alessio da Città di Castello, il minore conventuale Luca Pacioli e i Servi di santa Maria Niccolò di Francesco da Sansepolcro e Stefano di Luca Becci.

Bede and the Cosmos examines Bede’s cosmology—his understanding of the universe and its laws. It explores his ideas regarding both the structure and mechanics of the created world and the relationship of that world to its Creator. Beginning with On the Nature of Things and moving on to survey his writings in other genres, it demonstrates the key role that natural philosophy played in shaping Bede’s worldview, and explores the ramifications that this had on his cultural, theological and historical thought. From questions about angelic bodies and the destruction of the world at judgement day, to subtle arguments about free will and the meaning of history, Bede’s fascinating and unique engagement with the natural world is explored in this comprehensive study.


Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Background and Context

Chapter 2: De natura rerum and the Topography of the Cosmos

Chapter 3: Bede’s Cosmogony: Creation, Perfection, Decline

Chapter 4: Soul and Body

Chapter 5: Aetherial Angels and Aerial Demons

Chapter 6: God and Creation

Chapter 7: Heaven, Hell and the Interim

Chapter 8: The End of the World and After

Chapter 9: Conclusion

L’autore offre un bilancio delle edizioni critiche delle opere di san Bonaventura da Bagnoregio. partendo dal sussidio compilato nel 1975 da Balduinus Distelbrink e dai successivi aggiornamenti e accertamenti relativi all’autenticità di vari scritti del Dottore Serafico. Uno spazio particolare viene offerto ai sermoni, per i quali si indicano nuovi manoscritti e testi finora inediti e sconosciuti, reperiti durante le recenti ricerche dell’autore. Si prospettano quindi nuove edizioni di alcuni gruppi di discorsi bonaventuriani.

The author provides an appraisal of the critical editions of the works of St Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, starting from the subsidy compiled in 1975 by Balduinus Distelbrink and the subsequent updates and assessments of the authenticity of the various writings of the Seraphic Doctor. Sermons occupy a special place, for which new manuscripts and texts previously unpublished and unknown found during the author’s recent researches, are indicated. New editions, therefore, of some groups of the writings of Bonaventure are foreseen.

I convegni di Micrologus sono interamente consacrati ai problemi che riguardano la storia della natura, dall'antichità all'epoca moderna. Essi sono progettati in maniera interdisciplinare e tentano perciò di gettare un ponte tra specialisti provenienti da orizzonti di ricerca diversi e appartenenti a discipline diverse. Storici delle scienze, delle letterature e delle mentalità medievali, come pure specialisti di storia dell'arte e delle immagini cercano di dialogare insieme intorno a temi e testi che sono destinati a nutrire la ricerca e la riflessione di un numero sempre più grande di discipline.
Tutti gli articoli sono sottoposti al giudizio di uno o più revisori anonimi. La decisione in merito alla pubblicazione spetta al direttore, tenuto conto del parere dei revisori.
La rivista, che ha periodicità annuale, pubblica articoli nelle principali lingue europee. Ogni articolo è corredato da un abstract in lingua inglese.
"Micrologus" è interamente consultabile on line al sito www.mirabileweb.it.