De Vita Research Articles

Refined Resemblances: Three Categories of Astromagical Images in Marsilio Ficino’s De vita 3.18 and Their Indebtedness to “Abominable” Books

In the third book of his De vita libri tres , the De vita coelitus comparanda published in 1489, the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino explains the pictures that the ancient “astrologers and magicians” imprinted on their talismans. He distinguishes among three pictorial conventions: visual forms, imaginable forms, and characters. The passage explaining these forms serves as a prologue to chapter 18, which gives instructions for fabricating talismans and speculates on the efficacy of magical images. This article examines Ficino’s distinctions as descending from the tradition of learned image magic, concentrating on certain iconographical and theoretical questions: What – and what kinds of – pictures did Ficino mean and on what exemplars did he base his distinction of three classes?

The Transmission of Suetonius’s Caesars in the Middle Ages

The medieval manuscript tradition (9th–13th centuries) of Suetonius’s De vita Caesarum has not been fully understood, and no complete and accurate stemma of the earliest extant witnesses has been drawn. This paper, based upon a fresh collation of the manuscripts, describes in detail the constitution of the tradition’s two main branches, the main lines of contamination that can be traced within and between them, and the “family tree” best suited to reconstructing the archetype from which all extant copies of the work ultimately descend.

Sharers in the Contemplative Virtue: Julianus Pomerius’s Carolingian Audience

Sometime between the end of the fifth century and the early sixth, the priest, grammarian, and rhetorician Julianus Pomerius composed a hortatory guidebook for bishops entitled De vita contemplativa . In the centuries following its composition, this paranetic text became erroneously attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine, the famous defender of Augustine’s doctrine of grace in mid-fifth-century Gaul. Consequently, Pomerius’s text was lent discernible authority, both through Prosper’s well-known connection to Augustine as well as through the apparent Augustinianism of the text itself. The De vita contemplativa was also often paired closely with the work of Gregory the Great, which served to further enhance the importance of the text for Carolingian bishops. As this article argues, Pomerius’s contention, that not only monks, but also worldly bishops could achieve an earthly form of perfection through a rigorous adherence to their duties as “watchmen,” proved remarkably appealing, and useful, to the Carolingian episcopate.

Emperor Claudius' neuropsychiatric presentation: from tics to behavioral symptoms.

Emperor Claudius' neuropsychiatric presentation: from tics to behavioral symptoms.

Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and His Influence ed. by Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw, Valery Rees (review)

Reviewed by: Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and His Influence ed. by Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw, Valery Rees James K. Coleman Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw, and Valery Rees, editors. Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and His Influence. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 198. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. xii + 384. Cloth, $183.00. Scholarship on Marsilio Ficino has flourished during the last decade, thanks in large measure to the recent publication of James Hankins and Michael Allen’s definitive edition and English translation of Ficino’s magnum opus, the Platonic Theology. The increasing accessibility of Ficino’s writings has opened the way to important new scholarly work revealing with ever-greater clarity Ficino’s immense influence during his own lifetime and subsequently, not only as the first translator of Plato’s complete works, but also as an original philosopher in his own right. The present volume, a collection of scholarly essays on Ficino’s thought and influence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is the latest confirmation of the vitality of this field of study. The volume is divided into two parts. The first consists of essays that deal with Ficino’s own thought and his engagement with the earlier Platonic tradition. Particularly noteworthy contributions include James Hankins’s essay, which establishes Ficino’s importance as the first author to discuss atheism and religious despair as a problem with physiological causes. In this respect, Ficino was a major influence on Robert Burton, among other later thinkers. As Hankins explains, it is surprising that Ficino, a great admirer of Plotinus, developed such a view, given that Plotinus insisted that the soul controls the body, whereas the body exerts no influence over the soul. In his readiness to acknowledge the body’s influence on the soul, Ficino is indebted to Galen, whom he regarded as a Platonist. Hankins shows that Ficino’s De vita, with its medical and magical cures designed for scholars prone to melancholy, also aims to cure the atheism toward which scholarly minds are sometimes inclined, by alleviating the physiological imbalances that give rise to unbelief. Valery Rees’s essay examines the relationship between praise and love in Ficino’s writings, arguing that Ficino’s creative use of praise draws on literary models including the Hermetic corpus and the Pauline epistles, as well as the writings and teachings of Antoninus Pierozzi. Stéphane Toussaint’s essay focuses on Ficino’s ideas about levitation and heavenly rapture, highlighting the importance of Ficino’s belief that the scriptural accounts of Ezekiel and Elijah’s ascents to heaven could be explained by Neoplatonic theories of the vehicles of the soul. Toussaint provides the first solid evidence that Ficino read and drew material from the work of Jean Gerson, and argues convincingly that Ficino’s ideas about levitation were influenced by writings of Michael Psellos. The second half of the volume is dedicated to studies of Ficino’s influence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Brian Copenhaver’s essay explores the gap between [End Page 484] the characterizations of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola offered by Marsilio Ficino and by Gianfrancesco Pico: while Ficino’s letters cast Pico as an endangered but engaged intellectual, Gianfrancesco takes pains to portray his uncle as a world-denying Christian saint. According to Copenhaver, Gianfrancesco Pico deliberately published his uncle’s letters in a sequence far removed from their temporal order, intending for the letters to be read not historically, but thematically and spiritually. Copenhaver argues that Gianfrancesco’s ordering of the letters foregrounds the theme of Pico’s repentance, which unfolds over three sequences of letters: the first proclaims Pico’s repentance, the second charts its initial failure, and the third documents its final achievement. Letizia Panizza’s essay traces the ways in which Ficino’s version of Platonic love theory was reworked by an array of sixteenth-century authors, from Baldassare Castiglione to Alessandro Piccolomini. Of particular interest is Panizza’s new analysis of the rewriting of Book IV of Castiglione’s Libro del Cortegiano carried out on behalf of the Congregation of the Index by the Jesuit Antonio Ciccarelli da Foligno. Constance Blackwell’s essay identifies the sixth-century philosopher Simplicius as...

Petrarca De remediis utriusque fortunaejának recepciója a 16–18. századi magyarországi irodalomban

In the 14th–18th centuries Petrarch’s most widely disseminated work was De remediis utriusque fortunae. Petrarch’s Latin works had been known in Hungary since the 15th century and in the 18th century a real cult of De remediis can be traced, proved by the correspondence of contemporary aristocrats, scholars and politicians (e. g. István Brodarics, Farkas Kovacsóczy). His sonnets and the lines of Triumfi were often read, quoted, translated (e. g. by Bálint Balassi, Miklós Zrínyi); the Griselda, Boccaccio’s novel, known mainly in Petrarch’s Latin translation, also got translated into Hungarian (by Pál Istvánfi). His letters written in verse, as well as the Sine nomine collection, the Secretum and the De vita solitaria were certainly being read in Hungary. During the 17th–18th centuries Hungarian readers could get acquainted at first-hand with the name and works of the Italian humanist through the foreign printed editions of Petrarch’s writings. Writers, scholars, ecclesiastical leaders and others read and used these texts for both private and public purposes. In the 18th century De remediis was reedited eight times and its only complete translation so far was prepared between 1760 and 1762. The reception of De remediis is thus a highly important chapter in Hungarian spiritual history.

Nikolaos Kabasilas’s De vita in Christo and its context

Nikolaos Kabasilas’s De vita in Christo and its context

Antuza – matka św. Jana Chryzostoma w świetle starożytnych źródeł

The existing historiography keep silent about Anthusa, early widowed mother of St. John Chrysostom, who raised him, educated and led to Christianity. The author, who for years has been involved in the life of the mothers of the Fathers of the Church, presents her figure based on available historical sources from the first millennium, including: a). the statements of John in his own works (Dialogus de sacerdotio I; Ad viduam iuniorem 2; Epistula ad Olympiadem 6, 4), however he had never mentioned her name; b). later Lives of John, based on his own works and transmitted traditions, in which his mother is mentioned (Palladius – Dialogus de vita S. Joannis Chrysostomi, BHG 870, CPG 6037; Georgius Alexandrinus – Vita S. Joannis Chrysostomi, BHG 873, CPG 7979; anonymous Vita S. Joannis Chrysostomi abbreviate, BHG 874d; Theodorus Trimithuntius – Vita S. Joannis Chrysostomi, BHG 872, CPG 7989; Ps-Hesychius Hierosolymitanus – Laudatio S. Joannis Chrysostomi, BHG 880h, CPG 6592; Cosmas Vestitor – Vita S. Joannis Chrysostomi, BHG 876m, CPG 8147; Symeon Metaphrastes – Vita et conversa­tio S. Joannis Chrysostomi, BHG 875; anonymous Vita S. Joannis Chrysostomi, BHG 875d); c). the ancient histories of the Church (Socrates – HE VI 3, 1; Cas­siodorus – Historia tripartita X 3).

Un florilegio de biografías latinas (review)

Reviewed by: Un florilegio de biografías latinas Erik Ekman María José Muñoz Jiménez. Un florilegio de biografías latinas. Textes et Études du Moyen Âge 47. Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2008. 315 pp. ISBN: 978-2-503-52983-7 Un florilegio de biografías latinas is an edition and study of MS 7805 of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, a codex of 96 folios written on Italian paper in a fifteenth-century Spanish hand (13–14). The manuscript was produced some time after 1448, which can be adduced from a reference to In Hypocritas et Delatores Invectiva published by Poggio Braciolini in this year (16). It contains excerpts of Histories of Alexander the Great by Quintus Curtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, The Life of Hadrian by Aelius Spartianus, and the History of Rome by Titus Livy. The selections from these texts are biographical and include the lives of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Hannibal and Scipio Africanus. Until relatively recently philologists have neglected florilegia. These collections of fragments of classical texts copied and placed together for easy reference were considered too unoriginal, derivative, and fragmentary to be taken seriously by editors who sought to strip the medieval glosses from the texts of Greek and Latin antiquity in order to uncover the original words of an author. Fortunately, more recent scholarship has placed a higher value on these manuscripts, which offer a valuable look into the reading and writing practices of the past, as well as into literary tastes, since they contained the passages deemed most important by their compilers and readers. Un florilegio de biografías latinas is a welcome addition to the field, making this unique text, with its single manuscript witness, much more accessible to scholars. The content of MS 7805 reflects the interest in biography among humanists in the fifteenth century, including vernacular authors, like Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, author of Generaciones y semblanzas, or Fernando de Pulgar, author of Claros varones de Castilla. What is not immediately evident is the importance of this manuscript, a single witness, unlike the ubiquitous De vita et morarum philosophorum, produced in the fourteenth century and erroneously attributed to Walter de Burley. María José Muñoz Jiménez addresses this in the introduction, in which she argues that MS 7805 is likely the work of the converso author, Martín de Ávila, squire and literary companion of the Marqués de Santillana, as well as Latin secretary for important members of the clergy and for Juan II (31). Muñoz Jiménez bases her conclusion on the fact [End Page 332] that Ávila, at the behest of the Marqués de Santillana, had translated several works by Poggio Briacciolini, who is mentioned in the Florilegio. There are also several glosses in the manuscript that seem to indicate that the work was the product of a royal Latin secretary. Muñoz Jiménez’s argument is inconclusive, as she herself admits, though compelling: “En lo que se me alcanza, de todas las figuras que componen el panorama cultural de la época, Martín de Ávila parece, desde luego, la más interesada y cercana al tema tratado en el manuscrito que nos ocupa, la más relacionada con el raro producto literario que es el florilegio biográfico” (32). If Martín de Ávila did indeed produce this text with the encouragement of the Marqués de Santillana, it is not simply another example of humanist interest in biography, but a Latin text directly linked to one of the founding authors of Castilian letters. Given the specialized knowledge necessary to produce a text like this one, the author was no doubt one of a limited number of mid-fifteenth-century humanists with experience in Italy and extensive knowledge of Latin and classical letters. Its compiler was either Martín de Ávila or someone very much like him. Un florilegio de biografías latinas includes an introductory philological study and a semi-paleographic transcription of MS 7805. There are also several appendices: an edition...

From Twelfth-Century Schools to Thirteenth-Century Universities: The Disappearance of Biographical and Autobiographical Representations of Scholars

Learned men of the twelfth century, especially the first half, frequently wrote about themselves and each other. Well-known examples of autobiographical writing include Guibert of Nogent's De vita sua or Monodiae, Rupert of Deutz's defense of his theological career in his Apologia attached to his commentary on the Benedictine rule, Peter Abelard's Historia calamitatum, and Gerald of Wales's De rebus a se gestis. Examples of biographical narrative are easily found: the life of St. Goswin included an account of Goswin defeating Abelard in disputation; Baudri of Bourgueil wrote a poem about famous schools and scholars; the anonymous Metamorphosis Goliae provided characterizations of many masters; John of Salisbury's Metalogicon described the teaching methods of Bernard of Chartres and, in an autobiographical account of his own education, offered sketches of many of the leading masters in northern France, while Otto of Freising's Gesta Friderici I Imperatoris recounted parts of the academic careers of Abelard...

Pleasure and theSapiens: SenecaDe vita Beata11.1

Previous articleNext article No AccessPleasure and the Sapiens: Seneca De vita Beata 11.1Henry DysonHenry DysonUniversity of Michigan Search for more articles by this author University of MichiganI would like to thank the members of the Latin Philosophy Reading Group at the University of Michigan, Jay Reed, Charles Brittain, my two anonymous readers, and Elizabeth Asmis for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this note.PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Classical Philology Volume 105, Number 3July 2010 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/658630 Views: 29Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Craig Keener Body, Mind, and Passions in Romans: Paul’s Alternative View within His Philosophical and Religious Context, The Biblical Annals 12, no.22 (Apr 2022): 255–277.https://doi.org/10.31743/biban.13476

Eusebius von Caesarea, De Vita Constantini, Über das Leben Konstantins (review)

Reviewed by: Eusebius von Caesarea, De Vita Constantini, Über das Leben Konstantins Aryeh Kofsky Eusebius von Caesarea, De Vita Constantini, Über das Leben Konstantins Bruno Bleckmann, Horst Schneider, EDD. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Pp. 548, ISBN 978-2-503-52560-0. This new bilingual edition of Eusebius’ Life of Constantine (De vita Constantini = VC), offers a German translation by Horst Schneider together with an introduction by Bruno Bleckmann; the Greek text is that of Fridhelm Winkelmann’s critical edition (GCS, 1991). In recent years, the VC has been newly translated into Italian (L. Tartaglia, 2001) and English (Av. Cameron and S.G. Hall, with a detailed commentary, 1999), serving the need for modern translations of this important text. Schneider’s new translation now joins P. Dräger’s recent one (2007), rendering this service to German readers. Schneider presents an up-to-date literal, clear, and readable translation of Eusebius’ heavy Greek style, accompanied by minimal footnotes. The Life of Constantine is the single most important source for the reign of Constantine. In his introduction (pp.7–106), Bleckmann provides an overview of the main aspects of the work, often touching on controversial issues. A brief discussion of the significance of the VC poses the question whether the “Constantinus Christianus” of the Vita is merely a fanciful projection of the author. Any attempt to answer this fundamental question should distinguish among the historical Constantine, his own self-perception, and Eusebius’ construction of the Christian emperor. Bleckmann reasserts the wide consensus regarding Eusebius’ authorship of the VC. Eusebius wrote it only after the death of the emperor in 337, and apparently did not entirely finish it before his own death in 339. An account of the content follows. Bleckmann then discusses the genre of the VC and the intentions of the author. The work deals only with selected aspects of the emperor, confirming Eusebius’ stated goal “to put into words and write down that which relates to a life dear to God.” [End Page 178] Scholarly consensus has characterized the VC as a literary hybrid of panegyric, biography, and historical and hagiographical narratives. It also should be regarded as a “mirror for princes,” and may further be viewed as a continuation of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History. At the same time, the VC also should be considered in its conception and method of documentation as a new creation, as Eusebius in fact regarded it. As for its prospective audience, the heavy Greek style was conceivable only for a highly educated readership. It also is possible that the work’s addressees were Constantine’s sons, who were expected to guarantee the continuation of Constantine’s Christian policies through a promotion of a Constantinian myth. But the VC should not be seen mainly as a slanted hagiography because it hardly alludes to the ecclesiastical polemics that raged after Constantine’s death. The VC thus is primarily a historical-theological work endowed with the dimensions of sacred history. Bleckmann then discusses the sources of the VC, upholding the authenticity of the various documents and illustrating the historian’s use of his own writings. The second part of the introduction examines the image of Constantine in the VC. As a background, Eusebius creates a pro-Christian idealization of Constantine’s father, Constantius I. Yet, Bleckmann argues that this referential framework already had been part of Constantine’s own propaganda that Eusebius then elaborated. According to Eusebius, Constantine continued his father’s religious policy until the conquest of the east. But his dramatic conversion began earlier, and his famous vision served only to enhance it. Constantine’s “vision of the cross” in 312 apparently is a fiction, one that belongs to a late official version of his rule; it does not yet appear in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History. An earlier solar vision in 310 only later was given a Christian interpretation and it was in fact Constantine himself who developed the version reported by Eusebius. For Constantine, the vision of the cross was only one of many visions and proofs of his unmediated relationship with the military God protecting him. Eusebius followed the Roman contemporary patriotic propaganda, depicting Constantine as a liberator from the tyrants. Bleckmann argues that Eusebius is...

Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo's "Therapeutae" Reconsidered

Jewish Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: by Joan E. Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 417. $99.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0199259615. Not every book represents publication of a research process spanning three continents. This book does (among other places, Harvard, Copenhagen, and Waikato, New Zealand), and result is a learned, open-minded, messy hybrid that dares to say things about Philo, gender, and Alexandrian Jewish philosophy that may be deemed not true in one or other of these more local settings. The book is divided into two parts, of which first, Philo's 'Therapeutae' Reconsidered, deals with various aspects of literary construct, Therapeutae, and their possible historical counterpart. The second part, Women and Gender in De vita focuses, as title indicates, more narrowly on representation of women Therapeutae and gender issues in text. Chapter 1 focuses on method. Taylor briefly situates her work in some modern scholarly debates over rhetoric versus history, over possibility of recovering ancient women, and over theory of history in postmodern era. She refutes common argument that De vita contemplativa (which is also only surviving text from ancient world describing Therapeutae) shows so many traits of literary and rhetorical composition that Philo has probably just made it up. Taylor nuances such views by stating that if Philo merely wanted to construct an ideal community, he would not have situated it in neighborhood of his primary audience but rather on a far-off island. Concerning presence of women in this philosophical Taylor states that they rather seem to pose a rhetorical problem for him: they need to be explained. Had Philo had a choice, it would have been far easier for him to describe this ideal philosophical community as consisting of men only. In ch. 2 Taylor asks why Philo wrote De vita contemplativa. Taylor works from a historical empirical perspective by establishing as much evidence of a historical context for work as possible, from other works and from other sources. It is in this constructed context that she sees rationale behind rhetoric and target audiences that may have found it persuasive. In ch. 3 she discusses name Therapeutae, its rhetorical nature as well as identity of group behind name. Of particular importance is her insistence that this is a cultic term, which leads to her exploration of why, then, Philo used this word in context of contemplative philosophers (p. 62). Because of (wrong) sectarian connotations that have stuck with term in research, Taylor announces her redesignation as the Mareotic group, named after lake they lived near to. Chapter 4 then situates group geographically and socioeconomically within Alexandrian society and maps its internal hierarchical structure. Chapter 5 widens scope a bit and analyzes how Judaism was conceptualized as a philosophy in Greco-Roman world. Taylor points out how discourses of cult and philosophy were converging in Hellenistic-Roman periods. Judaism was widely seen as a philosophy in Alexandria and elsewhere. An appreciation of this is necessary in order to understand rhetorical construct and to trace group's perception of themselves. In ch. 6 Taylor discusses radical allegorical method that group applied in their reading of Scriptures and links between allegorical interpretation and degrees of asceticism. Chapter 7 continues by linking De vita contempkitiva and De migratione Abrahami and argues that extreme allegorizers in latter are strikingly similar to Therapeutae in former. Both groups share a solar calendar that dropped celebration of usual Jewish feasts and conformed all festivals to a regular pattern based on cosmic power of number 7, Taylor takes links between cult and philosophy, allegory, asceticism, and calendar as indications of wider cultural context in which Mareotic group took shape. …

Petrarca ad Ariccia

In two works, De viris illustribus and De vita solitaria, Petrarch tells his experience in Ariccia’s wood where took place the nocturnal meetings between Numa Pompilius and nymph Egeria. The main s...

Requirements for Becoming and Remaining a Pastor: an Impression From the Late Medieval Synodal Statutes of the Diocese of Cambrai, 1308-1500

of these sources and their significance for the history of pastoral care (section 1). After having situated the ecclesiastical and religious life of the southern Low Countries in its context of Western Christianity (section 2), the conditions to become and remain a pastor will be discussed (section 3). Not the specific tasks of pastoral care, which to a large extent involved the administration of the Sacraments, will be questioned, but the profile that every pastor had to fulfil in order not to be suspended or excommunicated will be questioned. This restriction implicates a focus on what in the statute books normally falls under the headings 'ordination' (De ordinibus) and 'priestly con duct' (De vita et honestate clericorum). The survey of the requirements mentioned in these two headings allows us to trace and interpret the changes that took place in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. More precisely, what have the successive bishops done, by means of the synodal statutes, to maintain the requirements in order to improve the quality of pas toral care (section 4)? Eventually, some conclusions will be made and a comparison with the situation in the middle of the sixteenth cen tury (section 5).

Vida de Segundo: Versión castellana de la ‘Vita Secundi’ de Vicente de Beauvais ed. by Hugo O. Bizzarri (review)

MLRy 97.4, 2002 1003 Vida de Segundo: Version castellana de la (Vita Secundi' de Vicente de Beauvais. Ed. by Hugo O. Bizzarri. (Exeter Hispanic Texts, 55) Exeter: University of Exeter Press. 2000. lxxvi + 46pp. ?13.99. Secundus learns as a schoolboy that there is no such thing as a chaste woman. Years later, he visits his mother anonymously and pays a servant to persuade her to lie with him. Although he remains chaste, his mother kills herself in shame. Seeing that his words were responsible for her death, he resolves never to speak again. He pursues a career ofteaching at Athens, writing but never speaking. The questions seek definitions, and the responses are often poetic: 'Que es el omne? Voluntad encarnada, fantasma del tienpo, asechador de la vida, collacion de la muerte' (p. 14). The tale is of Greek origin. As Bizzarri explains (pp. xix-xxvii), following Lloyd W. Daly and Walter Suchier, The Altercatio Hadriani et Epicteti Philosophi' and the Question-and-Answer Dialogue (Illinois: University Press of Illinois, 1939), theoldest Latin version is that of Willelmus Medicus (fl. 1167-86). From Willelmus descend Vincent of Beauvais (1190-1264), who expurgates his text, and Walter Burley (12751345 )>who takes William over wholesale. Of these, Vincent and Burley were translated into Spanish, and are the subject of the present edition. The Old Spanish Vincent firstappears as Chapter 196 of the Primera cronica general of AlfonsoX (c.1270); then as an independent text in a collection of wisdom texts (Escorial h.in. 1 and Salamanca, University, 1763); and in the fifteenthcentury as a chapter oi Bocados de oro (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional 9204; Escorial e.m.io; Majorca (?): private library of Bartolome March; Gerona: Biblioteca Lambert Mata). The link with Bocados continues into print, with three editions of 1495, 1510, and 1527. This association is understandable, as both Bocados and Segundo deal with the life and sayings of the sages. The Spanish Burley exists in three manuscripts: Escorial h.111.1, Madrid: Real Biblioteca 11-561, and Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, San Roman 39. The Burleian Secundus material does not circulate separately. To Bizzarri's bibliography we must add: Francisco Crosas Lopez, 'Notas para la edicion de la version castellana de Walter Burley, De vita et moribusphilosophorum', in Actes del VII Congres de la Associacio Hispdnica de LiteraturaMedieval, ed. by S. Fortuno Llorens and T. Martinez Romero (Castello de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universtitat Jaume I, 1999), 1, 101-12; and 'Traduccion castellana medieval del De vita et moribusphilosophorum de Walter Burley', RILCE, 16 (2000), 38-45. Medieval Spanish literature has three texts of a similar nature: Donzella Teodor, the tale of Tawaddud fromthe Thousandand One Nights, studied recently by Margaret Parker in The Story of a Story across Cultures: The Case of the Doncella Teodor (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 1996); the Spanish version of the Altercatio Hadriani et Epicteti, the Dialogo de Epicteto y el emperador Adriano, edited by Bizzarri (Frankfurt: Vervuert, 1995); and the subject of the present edition, the Vida de Segundo. Both texts edited here have been edited before by Hermann Knust, Vincent in Mittheilungen aus dem Eskurial (Stuttgart: Litterarischer Verein, 1879) and Burley in Gualteri Burlaei Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum (Stuttgart: Litterarischer Verein, 1886). Ramon Menendez Pidal edited the Alfonsine Vincent in his Primera cronica general de Espana (Madrid: Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles, 1906). Although these editions are classics, the appearance of new witnesses and the work of Daly and Suchier, and of Ben Edwin Perry, Secundus the Silent Philosopher (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), have made a new edition necessary. The present work opens with a solid 76-page introduction which surveys the textual tradition and establishes a stemma. There follow the editions. An important aspect of the textual history ofthe Spanish Vincent version, which Bizzarri appears not to have examined at firsthand, is precisely the earliest stage of its transmission in Spanish. As Bizzarri explains, this version firstappears in the Primera cronica general. However, he chooses 1004 Reviews as his base the independent text of h.m.i, noting readings from the Alfonsine text as edited by Menendez Pidal. Variants are exhaustively recorded. Endnotes cite the Latin original of Vincent...

Petrarch and the Genealogy of Asceticism

Perhaps no author within or outside of the canon of Western literature wrote as extensively on the topic of as did Francesco Petrarch. While many of our modern associations with the term may find some of their origins traceable as far back as Petrarch's career, the term solitude carried with it much different associations in his century than it does for us today, influenced as we are by the Romantic tradition and especially by Wordsworth's absorption with the idea of as an ideal state for self-conscious reflection on the individual's personal history and its meaning. No less than three of Petrarch's major prose works-the De otio religioso, the De vita solitaria, and the Secretum-confront the topic of directly, and we can also point to many letters, poems, and portions of his treatises that either directly or indirectly reflect Petrarch's virtual obsession with solitude. In Petrarch we are confronted with an author who was at once the most politically connected intellectual of his century-we are even tempted to call him a public intellectual-and yet who constantly invoked his desire for solitude, for an escape from the many distractions and seductions that the cities and courts of his society offered. For Petrarch these were invariably places where desire lurked and power held sway, so that the life of was often invoked as an alternative-a counter-cultural locus, perhaps-where freedom from temptation and subjection was imagined as an escape from the negotium of worldly life. There is much in Petrarch's writings on the solitary life that is wishful and that we might characterize as merely compensatory in a life that was otherwise quite active and engaged, but there is also a

Traducción castellana medieval del "De vita et moribus philosophorum" de Walter Burley

As a part of the a critical edition of the anonymous Castilian translation of Walter Burley's De vita et moribus philosophorum, this paper presents a preliminary description of the three existing manuscripts, the criteria for the edition, and the edition of the first chapter: life and opinions of Thales.

L'espressività del cielo di Marsilio Ficino, lo Zodiaco medievale e Plotino

Abstract This essay provides an analysis of Marsilio Ficino's doctrine of the heavens, especially as this is developed in his commentary on Plotinus' Enneads with reference to contemporary debates in Florence concerning the legitimacy of astrology and in view of new interpretations of attendant problematic issues. Particular attention is given to Ficino's early works, such as the Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum, as well as to his commentary on Enn. 4, 4-42 and his De vita. The leading interest of the essay consists in the attempt to clarify Ficino's reception of the medieval doctrine of the heavens, most pointedly the theory propounded by Peter of Abano in his Lucidator dubitabilium astronomiae of 1310.

The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature (review)

Reviews179 were quite unknown to me at first hand, and I appreciated introductions to Calderón de la Barca, Max Jacob, and Mario Luzi, in particular the last with his indebtedness to Bergson and TeUhard. Yet I am left wondering who the reader is who would require preliminary introductions to some and could manage advanced essays on others. Occasionally the editors do slip in clues about their prejudices. Thus, Robert Royal, in his essay on Péguy, suggests that "one of the most deep-seated critical prejudices in the twentieth century is that religion is bad for literature" (p. 160). I am not convinced of the truth of that claim—though pardy true, the very opposite might be a more sustainable position. What is needed is more editorial energy. This could be a very important collection, but it simply falls apart, and fails to engage with the real issues of the ludic as a central element in the reworking of theological thinking today, not least through literary exercises. The profoundly liturgical (and spiritual) dimension of that reworking is recognized in Marion and in the last essay by Louis Dupré, "Ritual: The Divine Play of Time." Dupré's excellent comments on temporality and drama as ritual are hardly sustained by any previous close readings and provide no real conclusion to the book. And his final sentence is revealing—suggesting that we live in an age suspicious of religion and religious language. What is needed is a much clearer theoretical sense of the postmodern so profoundly recognized by Jean-Luc Marion, and its deep theological implications, not least in its sense of play in text and literature. In his endorsement of the book, Gerald Gillespie acknowledges the "brilliant synthesizing" by Nemoianu and Dupré in their essays. This is just what is lacking in a book which contains individual papers of great insight and literary scholarship. University of GlasgowDavid Jasper The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature, by Juliana Schiesari; xii & 267 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992, $36.95 cloth, $14.95 paper. Schiesari contends that "melancholia is not simply a pathological condition of either medical or psychological interest, but a historically specific discursive practice that differentiates along gender lines . . . between those 'losses' that are considered significant and those that are not" (p. 186). Citing Hamlet as a favorite traditional figure of melancholy, she suggests that the question is not "To be, or not to be," but who is meaningfully empowered to ask and rewarded 180Philosophy and Literature for doing so (p. 63). That there are laurels to be received by male melancholiacs is the substance of much of Schiesari's work. It is an argument she makes most convincingly in her analysis of Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia," Ficino's De amore and De vita, and Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata. In such works, male melancholy is seen as a source of genius, brought about, in part, by the melancholic 's higher moral character and his special relationship with the transcendent . His status is achieved, however, by a devaluation of mourning, traditionally associated with the feminine and the vulgos: ". . . the 'significant' losses ofthe melancholic are themselves appropriated from what, from his standpoint, can only be called 'insignificant others'" (p. 186). Schiesari argues that women's melancholia, on the other hand, is historically situated as demonic at worst, incoherent at best. The modern version of melancholia , depression, is given no attributes of transcendent value because it is predominandy associated with women. Against this gender-differentiating tradition , Schiesari cites the work of Hildegard of Bingen, whose alternative vision of melancholy was that it was a debilitating illness shared equally by men and women. Schiesari finds, in the works of Gaspara Stampa and Isabella di Morra, attempts to articulate female melancholia, in opposition to an overwhelming Petrarchan influence which objectified women while effectively silencing them. She is critical, however, of contemporary feminists Irigaray and Kristeva for the absence she finds in their works of a constructive response to female melancholia , particularly in Kristeva's assertion that women must "kill off the mother" (p. 81): ". . . the reactivation of the gendered categories of melancholia in conjunction with Kristeva's own particular...