Peter Abelard

Résumé : Dans cet article, on présente une modalité spécifique de transmission textuelle, celle de la reportatio, concernant deux pratiques didactiques du XIIe siècle, à savoir la lectio et la disputatio. L’objectif est de donner une description systématique des caractéristiques littéraires qui peuvent nous amener à reconnaître si un texte a été transmis par le moyen de la reportatio. Comme exemples issus de la pratique de la lectio, on analyse les Sententiae de divinitate de Hugues de Saint-Victor et les Sententiae Magistri Petri Abaelardi. Comme exemples issus de la pratique de la disputatio, on analyse trois documents : le recueil de questions théologiques attribuées à Odon de Soissons par son éditeur (J.-B. Pitra), un recueil inédit de questions théologiques discutées dans l’école cathédrale de Paris (ms. Troyes, Médiathèque du Grand Troyes - olim Bibl. Mun. -, 964, fol. 89r-159v), et les Disputationes de Simon de Tournai (éditées par J. Warichez).

The Mystic Ark is a forty-two page description of the most complex work of art from the entire Middle Ages: a painting also known as The Mystic Ark.  The purpose of the painting was to serve as the basis of a series of brilliant lectures undertaken by Hugh--who was considered to be the leading theologian of Europe during his life--from around 1125 to 1130 at Saint Victor, a Parisian abbey of Augustinian canons, whose school, along with those of Notre-Dame and Ste-Geneviève, acted as the predecessor of the University of Paris.  The purpose of the text (which I have translated from the Latin) was to enable others outside of Saint Victor--teachers, advanced students, scholars, monks, canons--to undertake similar discussions themselves by providing the information necessary to produce the image.  Containing all time, all space, all matter, all human history, and all spiritual striving, this highly political image dealt with a series of crucial cultural issues in the education of society's elite during one of the great periods of intellectual change in Western history.  Essentially a visualization of Hugh's summa-like systematic theology, De sacramentis, the multiplication and systematization of imagery in The Mystic Ark bridged the gap between literature's potential for complex expression and such expression in large-scale public art, an achievement that led to the creation of the Gothic portal: the major means of public communication apart from the spoken word, and the most significant, fully indigenous expression of Northern European, public figural art of the Middle Ages.
    Hugh of Saint Victor's Mystic Ark: Illustrations: http://mysticark.ucr.edu.  This site presents a collection of images of The Mystic Ark that repeat in greater visual detail the same illustrations published in my study The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century for those who would like to study the image of The Mystic Ark more closely than is possible with the printed illustrations.

From the tenth through the twelfth centuries some manuscripts containing Virgil's poems contain the musical notation known as neumes. Thereafter such notation of Virgil apparently ceases for centuries. The neumes (and singing) may have fallen by the wayside as new practices developed of singing Latin rhythmic poems or vernacular songs based on Virgil, rather than excerpts from Virgil's own quantitative poetry. In prefaces to the Paraclete Hymnbook Peter Abelard quotes observations by Heloise on the need for a more regular syllable count than in quantitative hymns. Virgilian reception and musical notation may have evolved together away from quantitative Latin.

La distinzione tra sacramenti e sacramentali è fortemente influenzata dagli eventi storici. La difficoltà cessa di esistere se facciamo ricorso all'interpretazione tipologica di epoca patristica. Ogni sacramento e ogni rito è una diversa partecipazione dell'unico "Mistero di Cristo".

"The romantic tale of Peter Abelard and Heloise has been widely known for centuries. The legend relates in part to the letters exchanged between the two, years after Abelard had been castrated at the behest of Heloise's vindictive uncle, Fulbert.

These "personal" letters form the basis for bestselling compilations of works by Abelard and Heloise in translation, such as the recently revised Penguin The Letters of Abelard and Heloise or the new Hackett Abelard and Heloise, The Letters and Other Writings. They hold fascination for the light they shed on the relationship between the man and woman, as teacher and student, lovers, husband and wife, monk and nun, abbot and mother superior, and much more.

The popularity of the "personal" letters has generated considerable fanfare for the publication of another set of correspondence printed under the title The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard. The authorship of all these letters has been contested repeatedly, with the last-mentioned collection being the center of a present firestorm.

Generally ignored have been nearly a dozen other letters or letter-like texts, unassailably the work of Peter Abelard. Jan M. Ziolkowski's comprehensive and learned translation of these texts affords insight into Abelard's thinking over a much longer sweep of time and offers snapshots of the great twelfth-century philosopher and theologian in a variety of contexts. One group shows him engaging with Heloise and nuns of the Paraclete, another with Bernard of Clairvaux, and a third with four entirely different addressees on four entirely different topics. Broadening our panorama of the twelfth-century Renaissance, the picture presented by these texts complements, complicates, and enriches Abelard's autobiographical letter of consolation and his personal letters to Heloise."

In 1887, Paul Tannery suggested that some ancient Pythagoreans defended a form of atomism against which Eleatic philosophers such as Zeno of Elea reacted. Later, Democritus and Leucippus on one hand, Plato on the other, developed atomistic intuitions in reaction to this old debate. No one would accept nowadays Tannery’s historical claim, but the philosophical content of his interpretation is still relevant for the history of atomism, especially for the Middle Ages. Indeed, according to Tannery the Pythagoreans defined atoms as points, i.e. the equivalent of units for numbers but with a position in space. This conception of a point was well known in the Middle Ages thanks to Boethius’ adaptation of Nicomachus of Gerasa’s Institutio arithmetica and other indirect sources (Macrobius, Martianus Capella, for instance) and was accepted by several philosophers and theologians. In this paper we try to follow the reception of this
concept from the 12th to the 14th century.

This collection of essays represents  Professor Harjeet Singh Gill's  preoccupation with the semiotics of conceptual structures in language, literature, art and culture since 1964 when he
joined the Centre National de  Ia  Recherche Scientifique in  Paris. The theoretical reflections begin from the twelfth century philosopher, Pierre Abelard, through the Age of Enlightenment
of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries with Port Royal Logic, Condillac and Destutt de Tracy, to the modem French theoreticians of conceptual constructs. This eight hundred
years long  tradition has  been  reflected upon, interpreted and applied on  specific European and Indian, oral and written texts, by the author, and by his students in a number of doctoral
theses. There have been different perceptions but the reactions and responses of the students and colleagues, both Indian and French, have helped crystallise his theoretical position, without
necessarily altering the basic hypotheses. The search for this epistemological continuity was the main theme of the International  Seminar on Theories of Signification since the Middle Ages that Professor Gill organised in Paris in November 1993 on the invitation of the Maison des  Sciences  de  I 'Homme.  These  reflections  in  a  new  unified  conceptual  structure are presented for another look, regard, another critique.


Paris
January 13, 1995  Danielle Gill

Diante das perspectivas correntes no século XII, ou seja, o realismo e o nominalismo, Pedro Abelardo, mestre clérigo da Escola Catedral de Paris, propõe, fundamentalmente na Logica Ingredientibus, uma terceira via: o conceitualismo. Tal teoria trabalha com uma desrealização do real lógico. Ela se desenvolve a partir da questão do nome e da nominação do geral, mas ela não reduz os universais a nomes.

The chapter explores the forms of sacralized mastership characterizing ecclesiastical cultures of learning in northern and western Europe from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. The main focus is on changing contemporary assumptions about the interaction of teachers and students with the sacred sphere, such as forms of divine inspiration, 'natural', God-given talent or learning as a form of asceticism. At the same times, the chapter reflects critically on the label of 'charismatic' teaching, which has been used in several important works to characterize the relevant concepts of teaching.

In recent times, scholars have turned their attention to distilling whatever morsels of intellectual thought they could gleam from Heloise’s letters to Abelard, in search for signs of independence of thought in her, and to determine whether she had any influence on Abelard’s philosophy, in particular his ethical writings. I begin with a summary of my understanding of Abelard’s ethics, based on his Scito te ipsum and aided by the many secondary literature on the subject, followed by a discussion about Heloise’s writing style and concerns by looking at the letters she composed and the questions she asked in the Problemata, so that we can isolate her conception of ethics and compare with that of Abelard’s.

"As a letter writer Peter Abelard is known best for the autobiographical Historia calamitatum, which presents itself ostensibly as a consolatoria [epistola] to an unnamed friend, and his correspondence with Heloise, which amounts to seven letters, often subsumed into the so-called Personal Letters (Letters 2–5) and the so-called Letters of Direction (Letters 6–8). These eight letters are now most often numbered continuously from one through eight, although confusingly they have been presented sometimes with the Historia calamitatum unnumbered and the letters from and to Heloise numbered one through seven, rather than two through eight. (This is to say nothing of the so-called Lost Love Letters, which have been argued recently and controversially to be excerpts from the billets doux exchanged by Heloise and Abelard during their love affair.) All of these texts have been made easily accessible in good editions and translations and are generally familiar to medievalists. Less studied have been at least a half dozen other letters, among which are Letters 9–14, which were edited definitively by the late Edmé Smits (1950–1992). These other writings have the disadvantages of not being as closely associated with the personal engagement of Peter Abelard and Heloise, of having separate addressees, and of being transmitted separately rather than in an organic collection. But several of them stand out for being as extraordinary in their own right as is the personal correspondence, and they hold the potential to repay the effort of close examination. In this case I would like to probe two of them to glean insights into Peter Abelard’s practice as a historian and as a textual critic. Letters 11 and 10 will be treated chronologically, not according to the traditional numbering."

This paper summarizes medieval definitions and divisions of consequences and explains the import of the medieval development of the theory of consequence for logic today. It then introduces the various contributions to this special issue of Vivarium on consequences in medieval logic.

This paper examines Abelard's engagement with disputation (disputatio) from the vantage point of twelfth-century scholasticism. Eschewing the well-worn details of Abelard's personal life and philosophical positions, analysis is instead focused on two parallel dimensions of his career: the manner in which he attempted to face-off with his adversaries through public debate and his underlying theory of disputation. It is argued that Abelard's theory is to be found not in his theological or logical works, but in his polemical letters and his ethical dialogue, the Collationes, which together offer a coherent hermeneutical strategy for discerning truth. Abelard's contribution to the art of disputation needs to be assessed in light of his broader involvement in the scholastic method and contemporary Jewish-Christian relations.

The medieval Church's concern with moral reform contributed to the emergence of a genre of literature in the thirteenth century dedicated to the vices and virtues. Inspired by monastic and scholastic traditions, treatises such as Laurent d'Orléans's Somme le roi encouraged the avoidance of sin and provided the faithful with a moral taxonomy that ultimately ensured their access to heaven. Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls and Meister Eckhart's Discourses of Instruction challenge this virtue-centered approach to salvation. Relying on their shared claim that the fall of the just man is in fact a virtue, this essay argues that their moral theology is grounded not on the a posteriori act of penance needed for salvation, but on the a priori consent of the will. This alternative view of moral life finds support in previous strands of the Christian tradition, and in particular in Peter Abelard's theory of intentionalism. Virtues were the stars of medieval moral thought. Pastoral and scholastic works argued that virtues shaped morality by combatting the vices, holding sin at bay, and heightening one's capacity to pursue the good. In the thirteenth century, there emerged an entire literary genre of treatises on vices and virtues. 1 By extolling the message that virtues could triumph over sin, these treatises helped confessors judge the severity of medieval Christians' sins and provided the faithful with a clear moral taxonomy that would help them become good citizens in the here and now as they awaited the reward of eternal salvation. In this climate of virtue-centered moral theorizing, the works of Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) and Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) stand out. The two make some provocative statements that challenge the conventional understanding of the virtues and the deeply held principles of medieval moral thought. In particular, they

As a person trained primarily in philosophy, Peter Abelard employed an intense questioning mentality in fleshing out his theological ideas.  His extreme debating style of totally deconstructing theological positions and then afterward including some of those same aspects into his own views made it easy for his religio-political enemies to take apparently heterodox statements and declare these as representative of Abelard’s entire atonement theology.  However, many of his theological beliefs are supported in the New Testament and were already held by the church fathers.  He frequently affirmed Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice as the ransom to redeem man.  He rejected various contemporary views in support of a partial human free will, divine predestination preceded by divine foreknowledge, the idea of sin as an internal attitude rather than merely an act, and the view of God as the ultimate Good.  Yet, for reconciliation between God and man to be accomplished entirely and completely the Holy Spirit has to perform a change within the individual believer.  Therefore Abelard emphasized that Christ’s passion and death was a manifestation of divine love that touches the believer and awakens in him love towards God; yet it is an act of divine grace and not a human merit.  Thus Abelard’s view of atonement was actually more comprehensive and orthodox than the views of his contemporaries.

de Carvalho e Edições MínervaCoímbra. Reservados todos os direitos de acordo cora a leςislaçãο em vigor MínervaCoímbra 2001 APRESENTAÇÃO Reúnem-se aqui dois estudos, desiguais por natureza, que se ocupam de um linicο autor, o curioso e interventiνο filósofo do século XII Pedro Abelardo. O primeiro trabalho, «Ler Abelardo», não tem outra preocupaçãο além da de permitir ao leitor um eventualmente primeiro acesso à figura do pensador, desse modo introduzindo o segundo estudo. Concentra-se, pois, numa apresentação divulgadora da sua vida e da sua obra, tomando em contexto o título «autobiográfico» Ηίstόría das Minhas Calamidades. Por esta razão, acrescentou--se também, em Apêndice, um Mapa e um Quadro Cronológico. O segundo capítulo, «Qualquer coisas que nas coisas não é τιmα coisa», pretende ser uma apresentação nova do consagrado tema dos universais, tal qual a leitura do nosso autor no-la permite fazer. Não obstante 0 contexto académico universitário preciso que acolheu este último trabalho, afigura-se-nos que ele tem pleno cabimento na presente colecção, «Ιaiêutica», dado o tema dos universais ser objecto do actual Programa de Filosofia do Ensino 7 LOGICA E PAIXAO. Abelardo e os Universais Secundario, na sua Unidade Ερistémicο-Ontológica, «Realidade e Verdade». Defende-se, primeiro, uma alteração no modo de apresentar e colocar o chamado «problema dos universais». Depois, pretende-se que a sua raiz, que muito (atrever-nos-íamos a dizer: que quase tudo) deve a Abelardo, nos força a considerar tal questão no ' ambito do que chamamos a «diferença linguística». Não sei se a propósito, lembraria uma referência inusitada sobre a (in ) utilidade desta proposta. Na obra Otras Inquisiciones, Jorge Luis Borges, confronta a novidade do nominalismo patrimonial reconhecer-seo quanto este movimento lógico-filosófico deve a Abelardo) com a sua alegada vitória actual «tan vasta y fundamental que su nombre es inútil. Nadie se declara nominalista porque no hay quien sea otra cosa»'. Como se vera, o tema também comporta uma extensao hermenêutica endógena (como via de acesso ao abelardismo) e, exogenamente, uma aplicaçao social, ou mesmo política, de um pathos metafísico ocidental sui generis. É esta última razoo que une o «nome da rosa» ao horizonte passional da lógica.

Resumo: Essa dissertação discute de maneira sistemática as acusações e condenações por heresia de Pedro Abelardo (1079 – 1142), notável monge e filósofo bretão. Embora Abelardo seja um popular objeto de análise – e paixão – entre os estudiosos, suas condenações por heresia, na maior parte das vezes, foram escanteadas em suas análises. Acreditamos que isso tenha se dado por conta dos historiadores preferirem centrar suas atenções nos grandes grupos heréticos ou nas chamadas “heresias populares”. Partimos do suposto que para o estudo das heresias medievais é preciso centrar as atenções nos perseguidores destas, mas sempre tendo em mente que os textos anti-heréticos eram mais uma construção discursiva eclesiástica, que respondia a anseios políticos muito particulares, do que reflexo dos posicionamentos dos acusados. Nesse sentido, é fundamental restabelecer as relações sociais tanto de Pedro Abelardo quanto dos seus acusadores. Foi possível identificar na argumentação dos textos que criticaram e condenaram Abelardo três grandes eixos. O primeiro é a grande capacidade de circulação das ideias de Abelardo. O segundo seria o fato de Abelardo propor interpretações errôneas das Sagradas Escrituras, defender posições abomináveis e perverter os principais preceitos cristãos. Por fim e intrinsecamente associada a esses dois eixos, Abelardo era visto por seus perseguidores como um crítico da autoridade eclesiástica e pontifícia, um potencial cismático que colocava em risco a unidade da Igreja. Esses eixos nortearam a estruturação de nosso texto. Acreditamos, por fim, que o estudo da heresia de Abelardo, além de nos revelar aspectos sobre a própria heresia, pode informar sobre dimensões sociais fundamentais do período.

Abstract: This dissertation systematically discusses the accusations and convictions for heresy of Peter Abelard (1079 - 1142), remarkable Breton monk and philosopher. Although Abelard is a popular object of analysis - and passion - between scholars, his convictions for heresy, in most cases, were marginalized in their analysis. We believe that this occurred due to the historians¿ preference to focus their attention on the large heretical groups or the so-called "popular heresies". We suppose that, for the study of medieval heresy, is necessary to focus attention on its persecutors, but always keeping in mind that the anti-heretical texts were more an ecclesiastical discursive construction, which responded to very particular political aspirations, than a reflection of the positions of the accused. Therefore, it is essential to establish the social relations of Peter Abelard and his accusers. It was possible to identify three major axes in the argumentation in the texts that criticized and condemned Abelard. The first is the high capacity of circulation of Abelard's ideas. The second would be the fact Abelard propose misinterpretations of the Holy Scriptures, defend abominable positions and pervert the main principles of Christianity. Finally, intrinsically linked to these two axes, Abelard was seen by his pursuers as a critic of ecclesiastical and papal authority, a potential schismatic which put Christianity at risk. These axes guided the structure of our text. We believe, finally, that the study of heresy of Abelard, besides revealing aspects of the heresy itself, can inform on key social dimensions of the period.

Brève liaison amoureuse que celle de Héloïse et Abélard. Un conte cruel dont bien des péripéties sont obscures. Chanoine Fulbert abuse de sa « nièce » Héloïse, enceinte à son insu. Elle s’éprend de son beau prof Abélard qui la cherche. L’anxiété devant la perspective d’une grossesse venue d’ailleurs, conduit les deux innocents amants à la séparation. La chose bientôt évidente, Héloïse saute en l’air. « Il n’y a plus de doute, » écrit-elle à son ami dans une lettre expresse, « je suis enceinte ! Que faire ? » Savoir et ne pas dire : Qui a fait le coup ? C’est toute la question suivante.
  Pour couvrir leur honte, Abélard la force au mariage. En se dénonçant, lui, comme (faux) père criminel, il lui rend son innocence. Fulbert coupe vite court aux bruits qui courent qu’il serait le (vrai) père. Dans un sauve-qui-peut tragique, il castre Abélard. Brandissant l’appareil génital d’Abélard, il désigne le coupable ! « On lui a coupé tout ce dont il s’est servi en l’espèce ! » Ainsi s’étouffe le scandale d’un viol incestueux !
Pour garantir l’intégrité d’Héloïse devant ses contemporains et devant l’histoire, Abélard écrit l’Histoire de mes calamités, une autobiographie où il masque le viol. Il impose sa version officielle. « C’est comme ça que dorénavant on racontera l’histoire ! » C’est comme ça qu’on l’a racontée jusqu’ici. Il signale qu’elle fut mère. Mais il ne dit pas qui fut le père. On voit bien que ce n’est pas Abélard et qu’elle est vierge. La seule et véritable Héloïse est celle d’Abélard. Découvrez-la.
Nous avons cru jusqu’ici à la fable d’une écolière fécondée par son précepteur. C’est faux. Cette affaire ne s’est pas passée comme on a admis depuis toujours. Avec cette nouvelle version des faits, l’auteur d’Abélard, mon frère paru chez le même éditeur (2001),embarrasse l’opinion régnante. Vous non plus, ne croirez plus dorénavant que c’est si simple.

In this essay I would like to investigate the interplay among three interrelated topics in the culture of the long twelfth century, which is the twelfth century with the addition of fifty years from the eleventh and twenty-five from the thirteenth. First, I will examine the relationship between being a disciple and being a student, then the important place in discipleship and studentship occupied by imitation of the apostolic past, and finally the threat that the attraction of followers to charismatic masters posed to the Church (and to the masters). My contention is that the long twelfth century witnessed an intersection between the concepts of discipleship and studentship—that disciples and discipuli were one and the same much more often than has commonly been the case.

The discussion of universals in Peter Abelard's Logica 'Ingredientibus' has been interpreted in many ways. Of particular controversy has been the proper way to interpret his use of the term status. In this paper I offer an interpretation of status by comparing Abelard's account of knowledge of universals to Edmund Husserl's presentations of categorial and eidetic intuition.

This is the First Edition of our Annuario Academico for 2016-17, which we are sharing on Academia.edu to solicit interest from prospective students to study with us. Note that the edition is Polyglot, but the canonical version is the English.

The ScholastIcum is an institute for the study of Scholastic Theology and Philosophy, headquartered at Rome, dedicated to the promotion of the greater appreciation and understanding of Medieval Theology and Philosophy as it was taught at the University of Paris in the mid 13th century.

For that purpose, the Scholasticum focuses its attention on three fields of study, Medieval Philosophy, Medieval Biblical Studies and Scholastic Theology, offering graduate courses of Specialization in Medieval Studies, at Rome and via video-conferencing to students throughout the world, of the following kinds:

a) Preparatory courses in Latin, Philosophy, History and Medieval Studies, aimed at orientating the students for the three principle course-work.

b) Baccalaureatus Philosophicus: 2 year Course on medieval
Philosophy focusing on the Scholastics and pre-Scholastics
authorities and texts in Philosophy.

c) Baccalaureatus Biblicus: 2 year Course on medieval scriptural studies, based on the Glossae and Commentaries of that age.

d) Baccalaureatus Sententiarius: 2 year course on the Four Books of sentences of master Peter, taking as its text books, the Commentaria of Saints Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio on the same.

e) Magister Sacrae Doctrinae: 1-2 year specialization program for Doctoral students, seeking to fully grasp the Scholastic method of theological instruction.

In the study of which, the Institute has the following academic objectives:

a) To impart to the student an authentic historical understanding of the authors, language and methods used at the University of Paris, in the mid 13th century.

b) To educate students with profound and complete knowledge of Peter Lombard’s Four Book of Sentences, in Latin and in translation.

c) To give the student a profound and practical experience in the understanding, formulation, crafting and argumentation of the Scholastic Method, as employed by Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio.

d) To form students and instructors capable of Scholastic argumentation, analysis and research.

The faculty is to comprise full and part-time positions, with a frequency of visiting professorships, to provide a wide and broad exposure to the current research on the topics
treated of in this general description of the Institute.

La réflexion qui suit est un essai pour lire les pratiques intellectuelles de l'université médiévale à la lumière des outils heuristiques habermassiens, avec toutes les précautions que le comparatisme historique requiert : quelle pourrait être la fécondité du transfert -contrôlédes concepts habermassiens appliqués à la sphère médiévale ? La question est de savoir si la disputatio médiévale peut être appréhendée comme une forme de l' « usage public du raisonnement » dans l'acception habermassienne 1 , acception dans laquelle la raison ne relève pas d'une intériorité de la pensée subjective mais consiste bien en une activité sociale et matérielle inscrite dans un cadre collectif de discussion.

La réflexion qui suit est un essai pour lire les pratiques intellectuelles de l'université médiévale à la lumière des outils heuristiques habermassiens, avec toutes les précautions que le comparatisme historique requiert : quelle pourrait être la fécondité du transfert -contrôlédes concepts habermassiens appliqués à la sphère médiévale ? La question est de savoir si la disputatio médiévale peut être appréhendée comme une forme de l' « usage public du raisonnement » dans l'acception habermassienne 1 , acception dans laquelle la raison ne relève pas d'une intériorité de la pensée subjective mais consiste bien en une activité sociale et matérielle inscrite dans un cadre collectif de discussion.

The medievals held that a supreme rational power, God, is the cause of all being and all becoming. The world is created from nothing by a Creator, and is at all times sustained in its existence by that same Creator. The view squares well with Scripture and has some attractive consequences. For instance, if everything is due to the supreme rational power, then everything in the world is – in the end, and whether we see it or not – rational, orderly, good. The view is also associated with some very tricky puzzles, most notably a particularly convoluted version of the problem of evil. An associated, perhaps more basic problem is whether there exists any real power in individual beings of the created realm. If everything is due to God's power, then how can a creature such as a human being have any power of her own?

In this paper I study conceptions of power in early medieval philosophy. Before Aristotle's works on natural philosophy were made available, Christian philosophy was to a large extent Platonist, though the term "Platonist" needs qualification. Apart from part of the Timaeus, the medievals had no first-hand access to Plato's thought. The major channels of Platonist influence were instead authors like Augustine, Boethius and Dionysius the Pseudo-Aeropagite.

I will focus on two related themes in 11th and 12th philosophy: first, the discussion of modalities in relation to the doctrine of God's omnipotence, and secondly, the idea of will as a self-moving power. In his "Letter on Divine Omnipotence" (1065), Peter Damian (1007-1072) discusses the question whether God can undo what has been done. On the one hand, God can do anything; on the other, it seems one has to say that the past cannot be altered. Damian dismisses a proposed solution to the effect that God has the power to do only the things he "wills" (vult) to do. According to Damian, this solution entails the untenable view that God is only able to do the things he in fact does, and unable to do anything else. (Damian appears to infer correctly, at least if we grant him a premiss which both Damian and his opponents will almost certainly agree on, namely, that x gets done if and only if God wills x.)

Not everyone would find the view untenable, however. Less than a hundred years later Peter Abelard (1079-1142) puts forward a carefully crafted argument in favor of the very position Damian rejects. On Abelard's account, God can only do what He in fact does and can omit only what He in fact omits. Abelard's position is fairly clear but it raises many questions. Anyone inclined to side with him will, it seems, have to rethink the relation between having a power and being able to act, and also between having a power and being subject to necessity. Damian's final position on the matter, on the other hand, is far from clear. The details of this discussion, and its background, where Boethius is an important figure, is the first theme.

The second, related, theme is the power of the will in creatures. Plato claimed that the soul is a self-mover. In Augustine and the Christian philosophers who follow him, Plato's claim turns into a claim about 'will': the soul is self-moving insofar as it wills
things, or, as Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) puts it, the will is an instrument that moves itself. Exactly what self-movement amounts to in Augustine's early medieval successors is not an altogether straightforward affair. In the second half of the thirteenth century, in the context of the debate between voluntarists and intellectualists, Anselm was often wrongly thought to having claimed the will is an active, as opposed to passive, power in relation to the power of intellect. In Anselm's theory of powers, however, there is no room for a active–passive distinction. In the paper, I will clarify Anselm's idea of will as a self-moving power and discuss how this idea influenced later medieval philosophical discussions about human and divine freedom, about the nature of the soul, and about the metaphysics of the created universe.

Resumen. Se presenta aquí la traducción bilingüe del pasaje 13:8-10 del libro IV de los Commentaria in epistolam Pauli ad romanos de Pedro Abelardo, en el cual el autor comenta la sentencia paulina del amor como plenitud de la ley. El mismo
resulta central para comprender no sólo el eje de la totalidad de la obra, sino también la misma teoría ética del Palatino,  dado que complementa conceptualmente los postulados del Scito te ipsum y del Dialogus. La traducción se encuentra precedida de una breve introducción.
Palabras clave: Pedro Abelardo - Comentario a la Epístola de Pablo a los romanos - Ética - Caridad - Ley.

According to Renaissance research it is possible to establish the exact date when the mythical figure of Hermes Trismegistos was rediscovered in Latin literature: it happened in 1463, when Marsilio Ficino finished his translation of the Pimander commissioned by Cosimo de’ Medici. Ficino’s translation is considered a turning point in the reception history of Hermetic texts and a typical project of the age of Renaissance. There is, however, one fact that recent accounts of this phenomenon frequently fail to mention – the Pimander’s impact was so enormous because over the centuries a multitude of earlier traditions had already awakened scholarly interest in the revelations of Hermes. It is the aim of this paper to present some examples of this earlier reception of Hermetic traditions before Ficino’s supposedly epochal work. The study suggests that during the Middle Ages references to Hermetic teachings substantiated a myth of the Trismegistos as originator and teacher of ancient secret knowledge. In studying the transformation of this myth, however, it is neither assumed that we see a linear perpetuation of the traditions of Antiquity nor an early onset of the age of Renaissance. Instead, the following pages will address specific re-interpretation and transformation processes, and deal with questions about the historical, discursive and socio-cultural factors that caused them. Overall, various transfer scenarios can show how mythical traditions from different cultural backgrounds and historical contexts were integrated into a civilization’s own conceptual framework.
In the following, three examples of transfer processes will be presented: the first section pursues how the originally pagan Hermetic traditions have been combined with the Christian revelation since the time of the Church Fathers. The second and third sections focus on the reception of the Hermetica by Latin scholars in the twelfth century. On the one hand, the treatise referred to as Asclepius, studied at the schools of Paris, serves as an example for the acquisition of knowledge in an institutional environment with specific links among the learned recipients. On the other hand, valuable insights can be gained into the motivation of the actors of the twelfth-century translation movement who translated Hermetic texts from different cultural regions. This paper puts the focus on Latin translators from the Iberian Peninsula and from Constantinople, because their cases exemplify the cultural transfer from the Islamic and the Byzantine world.

La notion de personne – radicale pour la période médiévale et transversale aux champs de la théologie, la morale, le langage et la psychologie abélardienne – est, dans les mots du philosophe, plurielle. Elle signifie différemment pour le théologien, pour le grammairien, pour le rhéteur et le comédien. Qu’est-ce que cela engage ? De quel ordre est cette différence ? Peut-on y trouver un certain dénominateur commun ? Penser la « personne » et son équivocité suppose ainsi de se rapprocher des questions majeures de la pensée abélardienne toute entière ; une pensée, probablement, aussi équivoque que le terme abordé.

The fourteen essays collected in this book were written between 1972 and 2012. With such a time span among them you might expect their themes to be disparate, but you would be only partially right. These essays are wide ranging in the sense that they cover three authors-Augustine (essays 1-8), Abelard (essay 9), and Anselm (essays 10-14)-and a number of different topics in philosophical theology.

The first nine essays share an interest in broadly Augustinian moral theory, and fit together well. The essays on Anselm focus mainly on his ontological argument, and are more relentlessly "analytic" in style than the others. Given the likely interests of readers of this journal, this review will largely ignore those latter essays in order to focus on Mann's more accessible discussion of Augustinian themes. The texts discussed in these essays tend to be those that philosophers have taken to be philosophical in nature; Mann's attention is particularly focused on the Confessions along with earlier works such as De Libero Arbitrio. Mann treats Augustine as a contemporary in the sense that he allows Augustine's thought to provoke us to examine our own thoughts and assumptions.

Second, he assumes that Augustine and Abelard's thought is complex and nuanced. They might not have names for some of their ideas, but they might nevertheless have quite a lot of interesting ideas. Mann is therefore ready to find distinctions and other subtleties in their texts that other readers might miss. Third, he respects the difficulty of the questions he sees Augustine, Abelard, and Anselm wrestling with enough that he is not overly harsh with his interlocutors when their thoughts have loose ends and they cannot figure things out. A persistent and attractive theme of these essays is the mysterious nature of ourselves and our world.