Una comunidad textual ideal según Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada: sobre la eficacia de Aristóteles y Alejandro Magno en la configuración de un saber letrado

Abstract

Chapter vi of section v of the Dialogus libri vitae, written by the archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada around 1214, offers some elements concerning the function of learned ecclesiastics in an ideal community. This passage is a very interesting example of the phenomenon of the transmission of knowledge in the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean basin during the 12th and 13th centuries. The archbishop’s discourse is built around political rationality and Aristotelian authority as a source of natural philosophy, and argues that learned knowledge (represented by Aristotle) is essential for the formation of the monarch (Alexander). Drawing on the seminal studies by Pick (2004) and González Diéguez (2017), and pending a complete work on section v as a whole, I will add some suggestions about materials that may have contributed to the writing of this chapter, arguing that literate identity was assumed as a discriminating trait by a community of individuals who shared readings and knowledge, the one located within the radius of action of the Toledo cathedral in the early years of the thirteenth century