Du néoplatonisme au réalisme et retour, parcours latins du Liber de causis aux xiiie - xvie siècles

Abstract

The article presents the unknown tradition of the Latin commentaries on the Liber de causis from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. On the basis of recent research, a new list of 56 commentaries has been established: 40 of them are unpublished, others are either lost or published in post-incunabula editions; researchers knew and cited most often only 6 commentaries (Roger Bacon Albert the Great, Siger of Brabant, Thomas Aquinas, ps.-Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome). The new commentaries allow us to discuss certain historical hypothesis, especially the issue that the medieval authors neglected the metaphysics of Proclus. The manuscripts are held in various libraries of Europe (especially Erfurt, Krakow and Prague, but also Uppsala, Paris and Vienna) which demonstrates a wide distribution of the text. Indeed, the Liber de causis was taught not only at the Faculty of Arts in Paris around 1255, but also in the Dominican convent in the South of France in the first decades of the fourteenth century and at the Faculty of Arts in Krakow at the turn of the sixteenth century. First attributed by Latin authors to Aristotle, the Liber de causis was considered, after Thomas Aquinas’ commentary, an epitome of Proclus’ Elementatio Theologica, and has aroused great interest among the realist authors from the school of Albert the Great.