Heroic Virtue In The Commentary Tradition On The Nicomachean Ethics In The Second Half Of The Thirteenth Century

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to show how the Latin commentators of Aristotle?s Nicomachean Ethics of the second half of the thirteenth century read and explained the doctrine of the virtus heroic . It presents this subject as it appears in the commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics by Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and also in some late thirteenth-century commentaries (once called Averroist) written by Masters of Arts: the commentaries of Radulphus Brito (also known as the Vatican commentary), Giles of Orleans, and the anonymous of Erlangen. If Thomas attempted to integrate heroic virtue into Christian theology, the Masters of Arts active in the late thirteenth century displayed the opposite tendency. In the context of theological discussion in the Summa theologiae , Aquinas includes the virtus heroica in his Christological theories and in his theory of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Keywords: Albert the Great; Aristotle; Averroist; Christian theology; Nicomachean Ethics ; Summa theologiae ; thirteenth century commentary tradition; Thomas Aquinas; virtus heroic