1. Stoicism in classical Latin literature -- 2. Stoicism in Christian Latin thought through the sixth century.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Republicanism, Religion, and Machiavelli’s Savonarolan MomentMarcia L. ColishMachiavelli’s readers often take at face value his claim that Christianity has weakened Italy’s civic spirit and martial valor, leaving it open to priestcraft and foreign invasion. Some scholars see this critique of Christianity as an expression of the irreligious, immoral, neopagan, or scientific Machiavelli, making it the chief index of his modernity. 1 One subset within this group treats Machiavelli’s [End (...) Page 597] anthropology as a secularized version of Augustine on original sin, absent an Eden behind it and a redemption before it. 2 Another view of Machiavelli on religion sees him as treating religion, whatever its teachings, functionally, as an instrument promoting desirable political behavior. 3 This is why they regard [End Page 598] Machiavelli as original and modern; although Maury D. Feld notes rightly that Machiavelli is here simply imitating the ancient Roman historians, who all treat religion in just this way. 4 For some proponents of the functionalist interpretation, it does not preclude Christian belief on Machiavelli’s part. For them his brief is not against Christianity itself but against clericalism, the papacy, and Christianity as it is currently interpreted. 5 Still others recognize Machiavelli’s acceptance of signs and portents, saintly behavior and miracles, and other indices of God’s existence and action in human history. They also note Machiavelli’s praise of biblical leaders seen as divinely inspired and his inclusion of them among the founders of religions and states who head his list of heroes. 6 Going farther, some scholars argue that Machiavelli was a conventional, if not an ardent or impeccable, Christian, who joined a religious confraternity before which he preached his Exhortation to Penitence, and the apparent recipient of the last rites of his church after a deathbed confession. 7 [End Page 599]Can these conflicting assessments of Machiavelli and religion be integrated? To some extent, yes. Once, that is, we consider a number of issues not always brought to bear on this question. Machiavelli recognizes that the foreigners who have overrun Italy and deprived Florence of the republic he had served are as Christian as the Italians. At home and abroad, their Christianity has not undermined their military strength or the civic virtue Machiavelli associates with republics. Within contemporary Florence there were three kinds of republicanism on offer, for those unhappy with the Medici restoration of 1512. One group sought to restore the pre-Medici governo stretto constitution dominated by the ottimati. Their opponents defended governo largo republicanism. Machiavelli advocated this type of polity, informed by his reading of ancient history and his assessment of human nature. But another, competing version of governo largo was put forth by Girolamo Savonarola during the Dominican friar’s stormy career as de facto head of the Florentine state from 1494 to 1498. Savonarola’s republican theory combined a number of ideas that Machiavelli loathed: the appeal to the Venetian Great Council as a model, the wish to purge Florence of her sins so that she could serve as the New Jerusalem in the coming apocalypse, and the notion that governo largo was a means to these religious ends, since the more broad-based the government, the more readily could it legislate and enforce moral reform. And, far from self-destructing after the friar’s ashes had been strewn on the Arno, Savonarolan republicanism continued to draw support from a diverse and substantial group of Florentines. Equally alarming, the agents [End Page 600] of this protracted Savonarolan moment seemed to have preempted Machiavelli’s own anticlerical, antipapal, antioligarchic, and antiMedicean positions, as well as a theory of governo largo. If we foreground Machiavelli’s desire to defend his own version of republicanism by undermining the Savonarolan alternative and if we recall that he treats Christianity positively in other contexts, it becomes possible to read those passages where he criticizes Christianity as practiced in Italy as texts with an antiSavonarolan subtext. Read this way, they are not incompatible with his acceptance of Christianity as true or as politically constructive elsewhere. In approaching this topic, we should also remember the longstanding associations that bound Christianity to politics and warfare.Addressing this last point... (shrink)

In the De ordine, one of his early dialogues, St. Augustine makes the first of several assertions about the positive value of the liberal arts in the education of the theologian. Having argued that the principle of order applies to all things, he spells out a particular order for the study of the arts, which, he says, supply skills and information useful to the theologian. Even if a man lives a virtuous life, he observes.

In the 1170s, John of Cornwall and Walter of St. Victor both attacked Peter Lombard's Christology, charging that he taught that Christ, insofar as He was a man, was nothing, or Christological nihilianism. At the time, this position had two corrolaries: the view that if the incarnate Christ lacked a human person His humanity was not an aliquid, and the view that His humanity once assumed was accidental and partible from His divinity, like a garment or habitus that could be (...) put on and taken off at will. Both positions were associated with the habitus theory describing the hypostatic union, which was currently taught along with the homo assumptus and subsistence theories. In Book 3 of his Sentences the Lombard reprises all three theories. He indicates that they all have support in the Christian tradition. He also finds all of them problematic. He urges that the matter be left open, pending further reflection. In the Lombard's view, while the incarnate Christ lacked a human persona, He possessed a human aliquid, the human nature made up of body and soul, united to each other and to the Word at the moment of His conception, and not separated from His divinity thereafter. The accidental and partible view of Christ's manhood is what he finds objectionable in the habitus theory. (shrink)

This paper surveys the doctrine on angels taught by theologians in the first century of scholasticism . This topic has received virtually no scholarly attention; but it is of interest for the light it sheds on the concerns of school theologians during this formative stage of their discipline. We can subdivide our target century into three parts, the first half of the twelfth century closing with the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the second half of the twelfth century, and the first (...) quarter of the thirteenth century. In the first of these three stages, scholastic theologians, for the first time, faced the challenge of creating a syllabus for the teaching of systematic theology and developed the sentence collection as their genre of choice for that purpose. The question of where to place angels within that context and genre, or even if they should be placed there at all, was the single most heavily debated topic on their angelological agenda. Another major matter on that agenda on which agreement reigned as to the desired outcome, although different masters proposed different itineraries to their common destination, was the felt need to refute Origen's claim that backsliding and conversion remained eternal options, so that Lucifer and the fallen angels might even be saved. Other issues that attracted attention had to do with the psychology of angels and their exercise of reason and will both before and after their fall or confirmation in glory. (shrink)

The Book of Psalms was unquestionably the book of the Old Testament most beloved by patristic and medieval exegetes. Seen as a guide to the Christian life and as a prophecy of Christ and his church, the Psalms received extended attention from Hilary of Poitiers, Augustine, and Cassiodorus and from their Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon successors. After the ninth century, monastic writers continued to display a sustained interest in the text. As had always been the case, so in the twelfth century (...) the goal of monastic commentators was to inspire unction and compunction in their monastic audience. And, as before, their address to the Psalms reflected the assumption that this audience knew the Psalter by heart. Their exegesis could draw on the meditative and homiletic techniques embedded in monastic lectio divina, and they could present the exegesis of the Psalms as an adjunct to the devout chanting of the Psalter in the monastic liturgy. When they appealed to past authorities, the monastic exegetes simply chose readings they found illuminating and, without identifying the source, wove them seamlessly into their own exposition. These aspects of Psalms exegesis are quite traditional. They are found over and over again in the monastic writers of the twelfth century. (shrink)

Addressing classicists, philosophers, students, and general readers alike, this volume emphasizes the unity of Seneca's work and his originality as a translator of Stoic ideas in the literary forms of imperial Rome. It features a vitalizing diversity of contributors from different generations, disciplines, and research cultures. Several prominent Seneca scholars publishing in other languages are for the first time made accessible to anglophone readers. (See also the attached file with ToC and Introduction).

With the arrival of the fourth volume of this work, Peter Lombard's Sentences is now fully available in English for the first time. Giulio Silano's text, based on the third critical edition by Ignatius C. Brady in two volumes (Grottaferrata, 1971-81) is distinguished by its accuracy and readability, meeting the exacting criteria of a Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies translation. Each volume has a detailed table of contents, an index of biblical and patristic references, and a full bibliography of English (...) translations of sources cited in the text along with on-line versions where they exist. Volume 1 contains a bibliography of Anglophone scholarship pertinent to the Lombard, not updated in volume 4. .. (shrink)

I argue that Hume’s ethics can be characterized as a virtue ethics, by which I mean a view according to which character has priority over action and the principles governing action. In a traditional utilitarian or Kantian ethics, character is subordinate to practical deliberation. I first outline this approach in Aristotle’s ethics, then draw parallels to Hume. I argue that virtuous character in Aristotle is understood in terms of “self-love.” A virtuous agent’s self-love enables sizing up practical situations properly and (...) exhibiting the virtue called for by the situation. But if an agent’s character is defective, the practical situation will be misapprehended and responded to improperly. I then argue that although Hume claims moral judgments are the product of sympathy, they are actually the result of a complex process of practical reflection and deliberation. (shrink)

I argue that Hume's ethics can be characterized as a virtue ethics, by which I mean a view according to which character has priority over action and the principles governing action: virtuous character guides and constrains practical deliberation. In a traditional utilitarian or Kantian ethics, character is subordinate to practical deliberation: virtue is needed only to motivate virtuous action. I begin by outlining this approach in Aristotle's ethics, then draw relevant parallels to Hume. I argue that virtuous character in Aristotle (...) is understood in terms of "self-love." A true self-lover enjoys most the exercise of the characteristic human powers of judging, choosing, deciding and deliberating. A virtuous agent's self-love enables sizing up practical situations properly and exhibiting the virtue called for by the situation. But if an agent's character is defective, the practical situation will be misapprehended and responded to improperly. I argue that though Hume claims moral judgments are the product of sympathy, they are actually the result of a complex process of practical reflection and deliberation. Although Hume writes as though anyone can be a judicious spectator, there is reason to think that persons of calm temperament, who enjoy deliberation and have a facility for it, are more likely to perform the corrections in sentiments that may be necessary. If this is so, an agent's character has priority over his or her practical deliberations. (shrink)

At Treatise 581ff., Hume seems to ground moral distinctions in therational deliberations of the observer, thereby making sentiment expendable.Is Hume then an example of an early modern ethicist, for whom moral distinctions are derived from reason alone? I argue that Hume's use of strategiesfrom ancient ethics can help explain how reason remains subordinate to sentiment.For if to take up the point of view of the judicious spectator we musthave the right constellation of sentiments and passions , then moral distinctions are (...) only derivatively based onreason. (shrink)

At Treatise 581ff., Hume seems to ground moral distinctions in therational deliberations of the observer, thereby making sentiment expendable.Is Hume then an example of an early modern ethicist, for whom moral distinctions are derived from reason alone? I argue that Hume's use of strategiesfrom ancient ethics can help explain how reason remains subordinate to sentiment.For if to take up the point of view of the judicious spectator we musthave the right constellation of sentiments and passions (the right character, asthe ancients (...) might say), then moral distinctions are only derivatively based onreason. (shrink)