Abstract An anonymous manuscript from the fourteenth or early fifteenth century, recently discovered, apparently transmitted Thierry of Chartres's philosophical theology to Nicholas of Cusa around 1440. Yet the author of the treatise is not endorsing Thierry's views, as both Cusanus and modern readers have assumed, but in fact is writing in order to refute them. Curiously the author never mentions Thierry's best known triad of unitas, aequalitas and conexio . But a careful comparison of the structure of the author's argument (...) to Thierry's extant works shows that the author was nevertheless quite familiar with the Breton master's writings. The reatise's author offers an incisive critique of Thierry's theory of “four modes of being“ and rejects two of the modes in particular. From this new perspective, the manuscript can be valued as the first known evidence of Thierry of Chartres's late medieval reception. (shrink)

É corrente se afirmar que antes da Modernidade não há registro de mulheres na construção do pensamento erudito. Que, se tomarmos, po exemplo, a Filosofia e a Teologia, que foram as duas áreas do conhecimento que mais produziram intelectuais, durante a Idade Média, não encontraremos aí a presença de mulheres. Entretanto, apesar de todas as evidências, se vasculharmos a construção do Pensamento Ocidental, veremos que é possível identificar a presença de algumas mulheres já nos tempos remotos, na Antiguidade Clássica e (...) na Patrística (ou Alta Idade Média). Mas é na Escolástica (Baixa Idade Média) que encontramos as primeiras Pensadoras, responsáveis por um sistema autônomo, distinguindo-se como fecundas escritoras, donas de obras tão profundas e importantes quanto as produzidas pelos homens de seu tempo, com os quais muitas vezes dialogaram em pé de igualdade. Dentro desse maravilhoso universo feminino de intelectuais, destacamos, na Escolástica, a figura de Hildegarda de Bingen (1098-1165), da qual trataremos um pouco neste artigo. It is common to say that before modernity there is no record of women in the construction of classical thought. What if we take, for example, to philosophy and theology, which were the two areas of knowledge that produced more intellectuals during the Middle Ages, we find there the presence of women. However, despite all the evidence, if we search the construction of Western Thought, we see that it is possible to identify the presence of some women already in ancient times, in Classical Antiquity and Patristics (or Middle Ages). But it is in Scholastic (Middle Ages) we find the first thinkers, responsible for an autonomous system, especially as fertile writers, owners of works so profound and important as those produced by men of his time, who often conversed on an equal footing. In this wonderful universe of female intellectuals, highlight, in Scholastic, the figure of Idelgarda of Bingen (1098-1165), which is discussed a bit in this article. (shrink)

Translated from the edition in Pierre Damien: Lettre sur la toute-puissance divine. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes, André Cantin, ed. & tr., (“Sources Chrétiennes,” vol. 191; Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1972.

Each inhabitant of our world Gilbert calls (following Boethius) an id quod est or subsistens. Its main constituents are the subsistentiae (or the subsistent's id quo which is sometimes taken collectively to stand for ea quibus) and these are accompanied by the 'accidents', quantity and quality. The subsistent owes its status (or transitory condition) to a collection of inferior members of the Aristotelian class of accidents, which to Gilbert's mind are rather 'accessories' or 'attachments from without' (extrinsecus affixa). (...) The term 'substantia' is used both to stand for substance and substantial form (subsistentia), i.e., that by which something is subsistent (or 'is a substance'). The collection of subsistentiae (substantial forms) or the forma totius is called natura. However, 'natura' is also used to stand for either just one subsistentia or all the forms found in a subsistens even including its 'accidental' forms (quantity and quality). The inclusion of all kinds of accidents (including those inferior ones that make up a thing's status) is seldom found in the intension of the word 'natura'. One of the key notions featuring in Gilbert's ontology is esse aliquid. 'To be a-something' has a threefold import. First, it means 'to be only some thing', and to miss perfection. Second, it has the positive sense of 'being a something', i.e. 'being determinate and well-delineated', not indefinite, not formless that is. Third, 'to be a something' implies concreteness, corporealness and singularity. (shrink)

IT is well known that the art of logic (logica or diale(c)tica) knew a remarkable flourishing period during the twelfth century. In the first half of the century its main centres in Paris were: the School of Notre DameI, of St. Victor2, of the Petit Pont3 and of Mont Ste Geneviève4. The present paper aims to offer some new evidence from the manuscripts on the teaching of logic as given in the School of Mont Ste.

A careful reading of Heloise's letters reveals both her contribution to Abelard's ethical thought and the differences between her ethical concerns and his. In her letters, Heloise focuses on the innate moral qualities of the inner person or animus. Hypocrisy—the misrepresentation of the inner person through false outer appearance, exemplified by the potentially deceitful religious habit or habitus—is a matter of great moral concern to her. When Abelard responds to Heloise's ideas, first in his letters to her and later in (...) his Collationes and Scito te ipsum, he turns the discussion away from her original interests. He transforms her metaphor of the habitus as false appearance into a discussion of another type of habitus, the habitual process of acquiring virtue, and integrates her focus on the animus into his developing ideas about sin as intention. Examining the differences between Heloise's ethical thought and Abelard's allows us to appreciate the distinct contributions of both. (shrink)

The article aims at elucidating the argumentation in Anselm's Proslogion by relating some aspects of it to the early medieval theory of argument. The focus of the analysis is on the "single argument" (unum argumentum), the discovery of which Anselm announces in the Preface to the Proslogion. Part 1 of the article offers a preliminary description of the single argument by describing the reductio ad absurdum technique based on the notion "that than which a greater cannot be thought". Part 2 (...) discusses the ideas about arguments and argumentation that Boethius presents in Book One of his In Ciceronis Topica. Part 3 draws attention to some early medieval sources (Abelard, Lanfranc, Anselm) that are witness to the importance of the Boethian ideas in Anselm's time. Finally, Part 4 argues that Anselm looked at his single argument in the Boethian framework and that the term "that than which a greater cannot be thought" should be identified as his single argument. (shrink)

In what follows, I argue that the thinkers of the twelfth to thirteenth century rediscovered and passed on the questions of metaphysics; in what I call the second beginning of metaphysics they also developed those questions in such a way that they could be received into the thinking of the modern era in the first place. It was precisely the theological context which forced this development and lead the theologians of the Latin West, inspired by their Arabic predecessors, to redesign (...) metaphysics according to the rules of Aristotle’s logic and philosophy of science. Put differently, through the challenge of theology medieval metaphysics was forced to become what it had claimed to be from the onset: first philosophy. (shrink)

Gaunilo, monk of Marmoutier, is known almost exclusively for his attempted refutation of Anselm’s ontological argument around 1079. Indeed, both his counter-example about the alleged island which is more excellent than all others and Anselm’s rebuttal thereof have nowadays become standard items for courses in medieval philosophy. Over the past decade or so, which has witnessed a revival of interest in the ontological argument, Gaunilo has been either lauded for his brilliancy or disparaged for his mediocrity. Thus, R. W. Southern (...) judges that, “in words which are as trenchant as, and in some details strikingly similar to, those of Kant,” Gaunilo pointed out the main difficulty in accepting Anselm’s argument.1 By contrast, the most Charles Hartshorne can say on Gaunilo’s behalf is that he is “a clever, but essentially commonplace mind.”2 Those who praise Gaunilo tend to do so because he “wisely” discerned the illegitimacy of inferring a factual statement from an a priori description. Those who speak derogatorily of his achievement tend to side with Anselm’s two criticisms: (1) that he misunderstood the phrase “aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari potest”—replacing it by “maius omnibus”—and (2) that his definition of “understanding” is inconsistent with his having maintained that what is unreal can be understood.3 Now, if Gaunilo did commit himself to two blatantly inconsistent statements within a few lines of each other, as the second criticism maintains, then to call him a clever mind would itself be an overstatement. (shrink)

Ibn Ṭufayl’s story of the solitary philosopher Ḥayy who, aided only by the power of his natural reason, comes to his own on an uninhabited equatorial island, attractively portrays the neo-Platonic worldview of the Muslim falāsifah . At the same time it forces to the foreground the most trenchant problem in any intellectualist ethics. If the highest virtue consists in the unmixed contemplative life, what good can a thinker do any longer, in any more mundane context? In this article, a (...) reading is proposed that integrates Ḥayy’s cosmological explorations with his relations towards nature and his fellow human beings. (shrink)

Although metaphysics as a discipline can hardly be separated from Aristotle and his works, the questions it raises were certainly known to authors even before the reception of Aristotle in the thirteenth century. Even without the explicit use of this term the twelfth century manifested a strong interest in metaphysical questions under the guise of «natural philosophy» or «divine science», leading M.-D. Chenu to coin the expression of a twelfth century «éveil métaphysique». In their commentaries on Boethius and under the (...) influence of Neoplatonism, twelfth century authors not only anticipate essential elements of thirteenth century metaphysics, they also make an original contribution to the history of metaphysics by attempting to integrate the theory of first principles, philosophical theology and ontology. This volume presents and examines the contributions of the twelfth century to metaphysics made by selected Jewish, Christian and Muslim authors of the Iberian Peninsula and Francia. -/- Contributors include Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (Frankfurt am Main), Andreas Speer (Würzburg), Charles Burnett (London), Alexander Fidora (Frankfurt am Main), Thomas Ricklin (Neuchâtel), Yossef Schwartz (Jerusalem), Josep Udina (Barcelona), Jack C. Marler (St. Louis/USA), Gillian R. Evans (Cambridge), Andreas Niederberger (Frankfurt am Main) and Françoise Hudry (Paris). (shrink)

A study of the reception of Aristotle's Prior Analytics in the first half of the twelfth century. It is shown that Peter Abaelard was perhaps acquainted with as much as the first seven chapters of Book I of the Prior Analytics but with no more. The appearance at the beginning of the twelfth century of a short list of dialectical loci which has puzzled earlier commentators is explained by noting that this list formalises the classification of extensional relations between general (...) terms and that this classification had already be put forward by Boethius in his de Syllogismo Categorico and Introductio ad Syllogismos Categoricas . It is pointed out the kind of text referred to as an ` Introductio ' at the beginning of the twelfth-century follows very closely the structure of Boethius own Introductio and adds to it material drawn from his accounts of loci and the conditional propositions. It is argued that the reception of the Prior Analytics has to be understood against the background of this well developed tradition of treating together syllogisms, loci , and conditional propostions. Referring to a challenge to the formal validity of Darapti in the Ars Meliduna the paper concludes by illustrating that the theory of the syllogism presented in Prior Analytics was still controversial in the middle of the twelfth-century. (shrink)

Mews offers an intellectual biography of two of the best known personalities of the twelfth century. Peter Abelard was a controversial logician at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame in Paris when he first met Heloise, who was the brilliant and outspoken niece of a cathedral canon and who was then engaged in the study of philosophy. After an intense love affair and birth of a child, they married in secret in a bid to placate her uncle. Nevertheless, the vengeful canon (...) Fulbert had Abelard castrated, following which he became a monk at St. Denis, while Heloise became a nun at Argenteuil. Mews, a recognized authority on Abelard's writings, traces his evolution as a thinker from his earliest work on dialectic (paying particular attention to his debt to Roscelin of Campiegne and William of Champeaux) to his most mature reflections on theology and ethics. Abelard's interest in the doctrine of universals was one part of his broader philosophical interest in language, theology, and ethics, says Mews. He argues that Heloise played a significant role in broadening Abelard's intellectual interests during the period 1115-17, as reflected in a passionate correspondence in which the pair articulated and debated the nature of their love. Mews believes that the sudden end of their early relationship provoked Abelard to return to writing about language with new depth, and to begin applying these concerns to theology. Only after Abelard and Heloise resumed close epistolary contact in the early 1130s, however, did Abelard start to develop his thinking about sin and redemption--in ways that respond closely to the concerns of Heloise. Mews emphasizes both continuity and development in what these two very original thinkers had to say. (shrink)

Peter Lombard is best known as the author of a celebrated work entitled Book of Sentences, which for several centuries served as the standard theological textbook in the Christian West. It was the subject of more commentaries than any other work of Christian literature besides the Bible itself. The Book of Sentences is essentially a compilation of older sources, from the Scriptures and Augustine down to several of the Lombard's contemporaries, such as Hugh of Saint Victor and Peter Abelard. Its (...) importance lies in the Lombard's organisation of the theological material, his method of presentation, and the way in which he shaped doctrine in several major areas. Despite his importance, however, there is no accessible introduction to Peter Lombard's life and thought available in any modern language. This volume fills this considerable gap. Philipp W. Rosemann begins by demonstrating how the Book of Sentences grew out of a long tradition of Christian reflection-a tradition, ultimately rooted in Scripture, which by the twelfth century had become ready to transform itself into a theological system. Turning to the Sentences , Rosemann then offers a brief exposition of the Lombard's life and work. He proceeds to a book-by-book examination and interpretation of its main topics, including the nature and attributes of God, the Trinity, creation, angelology, human nature and the Fall, original sin, Christology, ethics, and the sacraments. He concludes by exploring how the Sentences helped shape the further development of the Christian tradition, from the twelfth century through the time of Martin Luther. (shrink)