Medieval Commentaries Research Articles

Women’s Spaces —Real and Imagined— in the Illustrated Beatus Commentaries

The medieval Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liebana, with twenty-nine surviving examples that extend from a single page to over 300 folios, is an illustrated genre spanning more than three centuries. Although the color-filled manuscripts have been well studied by scholars from a range of fields, the Beatus tradition has never been analyzed from a gendered perspective. In the present article, therefore, the authors investigate this apocalyptic genre as a whole in order to recover the memory of women’s involvement with the Beatus Commentaries. To do so, we apply a spatial analysis to female patronage and practices, and to the most telling examples of female representations within, demonstrating that a gendered lens brings to the fore evidence of originality in medieval manuscripts while restoring a more complete and balanced understanding of the Beatus tradition overall.

Espacios de mujeres —auténticos e imaginados— en los Beatos ilustrados

El Comentario al Apocalipsis de Beato de Liébana representado por veintinueve conocidos ejemplares, desde un solo folio hasta más de 300, es un género ilustrado cuya vigencia superó los tres siglos. Aunque los coloridos manuscritos han sido estudiado por especialistas en una gama amplia de campos, la tradición de los Beatos jamás se había analizado desde una perspectiva de género. Por lo tanto, en el presente artículo los autores investigan esta tradición apocalíptica como un conjunto para poder recuperar la memoria de la participación de las mujeres. Para tal fin, se aplica una analítica espacial al matronazgo y a las prácticas de las religiosas así como a las imágenes más parlantes de las representaciones femeninas para demostrar que a través de una aproximación de género se revelan evidencias de originalidad en los manuscritos medievales. De la misma manera se recobra una comprensión más completa y equilibrada de la tradición de los Beatos en sí.

L’hypothèse de la cessation des mouvements célestes au xive siècle : Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan et Albert de Saxe

Abstract Aristotelian cosmology implies the plurality of celestial motion for the process of generation and corruption in the sublunar world. In order to investigate the structure of the cosmos and the degree of dependence of the sublunar on the supralunar region, medieval Latin commentators on Aristotle explored the consequences of the cessation of celestial motion. This paper analyses the position of some philosophers of the fourteenth-century Parisian school, namely Nicole Oresme, John Buridan and Albert of Saxony.

Cicerone, de Inventione, 1.18: Iudicatio est, quae ex infirmatione et confirmatione rationis nascitur controversia

Cicero, in the early work de Inventione (1.18), defines what is the hermagorean doctrine of κρινόμενον: “the point for the judge's decision is the issue which arises from the denial (ex infirmatione) and tight assertion of the excuse (et confirmatione rationis)”. The doubts on the authenticity of the text are old, and modern editors delete the reference to the confirmatio. However, most of manuscripts attest the necessity of the confirmation of the defense. Also, confirmatio is that by means of which our speech proceeding in argument adds belief, and authority, and corroboration to our cause (de Inv., 1.34). Moreover Cicero, in Partitiones oratoriae (104), explains that only by continuous refutations between the parties to the proceedings it arises the κρινόμενον: this is the rhetorical counterpart of dialectic antilogy. Finally, the early medieval commentaries of the de Inventione give reason to the firmamentum after the κρινόμενον.

Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom by Anthony Celano

Reviewed by: Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom by Anthony Celano Matthew R. McWhorter Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom. Anthony Celano. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 272 pp. Anthony Celano’s Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy is a recent collection of studies from a veteran scholar of medieval philosophy who has conducted more than thirty years of research into the ethical doctrine of Aristotle and its reception by thirteenth-century Latin thinkers. Celano observes that Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is the seminal kind of cultural achievement that admits of numerous interpretations and developments (7). At the same time, Celano promotes a central thesis in this volume that underscores that the content of the Ethics must be differentiated from how it was understood by medieval commentators. The hermeneutical key that should be used to understand Aristotle’s original doctrine, Celano contends, is one that recognizes practical wisdom (phronesis) as having a broader scope than that which was admitted by the medieval commentators, a scope that includes the ability to originate moral norms (viii–ix). In contrast, Aristotle’s medieval commentators were influenced in their reading of the Ethics by the natural law doctrine found in Scripture and Patristic thinkers (5) and as found in the works of Cicero and Seneca (238). The medieval commentators, Celano maintains, read Aristotle with an “acceptance of natural law and synderesis” and, due to these presuppositions, subsequently “transform Aristotle’s Ethics from one based upon a human standard into one that depends upon a divine foundation” (viii). The interpretational result is a truncated understanding of practical wisdom that is no longer recognized as able to originate “moral universals,” that is restricted to the prudential ability to apply the “eternal principles of action” (ix). Elsewhere, Celano refers to this as “the evolution from practical reason to prudence” (241). He points to Albert the Great as the primary medieval thinker who significantly restricted the scope of practical wisdom in this regard (169). Celano’s volume is divided into nine chapters. The work includes selections from Aristotle’s Greek and extensive Latin quotations, as well as frequent citation of relevant English and international secondary sources. Celano begins his study by briefly outlining certain moral topics that can affect one’s interpretation of the Nicomachean Ethics. These topics include how one understands the nature of happiness (eudaimonia), the relation of Aristotle’s ethical doctrine to a natural moral law, and the structure of moral acts. Celano then provides a longer treatment of the issue of happiness in connection [End Page 1430] with Aristotle’s doctrine of practical wisdom. The study then shifts and proceeds chronologically through the works of important thirteenth-century thinkers. His third chapter begins this chronological survey by focusing on William of Auxerre and Philip the Chancellor. The fourth chapter examines commentaries on the Ethics authored prior to 1248 (an anonymous commentary, a commentary ascribed to Robert Kilwardby, and the pseudo-Pecham commentary). Celano then dedicates two chapters to Albert the Great and his treatment of Aristotle’s Ethics. This discussion is followed by a chapter focused on Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, and then a chapter examining two late-thirteenth-century commentaries, one of which is ascribed to Parisian arts master Radulphus Brito. Celano closes the volume with a short concluding chapter that returns to discuss in part the themes outlined in his first chapter (namely, the issues of natural law and practical wisdom). Celano states that he developed this book out of a desire to understand what he describes as Aristotle’s two different accounts of happiness that are found in separate sections of the Nicomachean Ethics (vii). These distinct accounts, Celano maintains, also indicate different understandings of human goodness (23). He contends that one account, in book 1, describes happiness as resulting from a combination of contemplative and practical activities (2). Reading the Ethics in light of this first account results in what Celano (appropriating terminology from W. F. R. Hardie) calls the “inclusive” interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrine of happiness (2 and 16). In contrast, a second account that Aristotle provides, in book 10, describes happiness as the result...

A “Vicious” Interpolation in Horace’s First Epistle

The present article argues for the non-authenticity of l. 38 in the first Horatian Epistle. Together with the allusions to avarice and pride at ll. 33 and 36, it contains a reference to the cardinal sins, a concept that did not yet exist at the time of Horace. In particular, the sins listed in the line at issue appear to coincide with those discussed by Gregory the Great in his Moralia in Iob (31.45) and eventually adopted by medieval thought. The metrical pattern and a check of the main medieval commentaries support the suspected spuriousness of the line.

Kariki Jogijara i wedyjska tradycja wznoszenia ołtarzy ofiarnych w Kerali

The article concerns a hitherto little known Sanskrit text called Karikas of Yogiyar – a medieval commentary to Baudhayanaśulvasutra (ca. 5th century BC). The text in question deals with the construction of the Vedic altars specific to the Keralan sacrificial tradition. It is attributed to the ascetic Yogiyar from the village Taikkat Mana (Edappal), who probably lived around 16th or 17th century. Karikas of Yogiyar are presumably the only known independent śulvasutra commentary in Sanskrit of the post-Vedic period.

Fallacy

The precondition of rationality in Aristotelian syllogistic logic is fallacy. Medieval commentaries, in turn, treat fallacy as a nonreferential discourse, developing what is essentially a theorization of fictionality and its practices.

Manufacturing and trade of Asian elephant ivory in Bronze Age Middle Asia. Evidence from Gonur Depe (Margiana, Turkmenistan)

This paper presents the detailed stylistic and functional analysis of a large collection of artifacts made from Asian elephant ivory discovered at the Oxus Civilization site of Gonur Depe in southern Turkmenistan. Artifacts in ivory of Asian elephant from Bronze Age sites in Middle Asia have usually been considered as evidence for the import of finished items from the greater Indus Valley. The detailed study of the Gonur Depe ivories has instead proven that there are significant morphological and stylistic differences between these artifacts and those found at contemporaneous sites in the Indus Valley. This evidence raises important questions about the provenance of the raw material and about the origin and training of the craftsmen who manufactured the objects. Detailed research in textual sources about traditional arts and crafts in South Asia and in classical and medieval commentaries about ivory carving, integrated with ethnographic data about skilled crafting in traditional societies, has led to propose new hypotheses about the complex socioeconomic and cultural organization of manufacturing and trade of Asian elephant ivory during the Bronze Age.

L''Ovidius moralizatus' de Pierre Bersuire. Essai de mise au point

Thanks to the age-long efforts of Birger Munk Olsen, to whom the present article is dedicated, we have a good overview of how the Roman classics were spread, read, and (re-)used up to the year 1200, but we have no such cicerone for the Late Middle Ages. Taking the medieval commentaries on the Metamorphoses as a point of departure, the article is an attempt to open up the Ovidius moralizatus of Pierre Bersuire, a fourteenth-century commentary that hitherto has received relatively little notice due to the lack of a critical edition. After a preliminary discussion of how the Ovidius moralizatus relates to the earlier medieval commentary tradition and a general assessment of the Avignon and Paris versions, the core of the article focuses on the explanatory principles.

Auteurs affichés, auteurs dissimulés. Le recours aux citations dans le 'Commentaire sur l'Enéide' attribué à Bernard Silvestre

Birger Munk Olsen's works have pointed out the importance of the commentaries in the reception and canonization of the Latin auctores during the twelfth-century Renaissance. In Bonaventure's famous classification, the commentator, who writes both with his own words and with the words of the others, but gives to the second of these the primary position, is lower in rank than the author. He is also dependent on the commentators who wrote before him. However, the study of mentions or quotations of auctores and former commentators in medieval commentaries shows that the latter used their predecessors only in order to expose their own point of view. A good example of this is furnished by the commentary of the Aeneid commonly attributed to Bernardus Silvestris. This article studies its difference of treatment between its two models, Macrobius and Fulgentius – the first is displayed, the second is more concealed –, and also its use of Ovid, whose Metamorphoses are used as early as in the commentary of Book 1, but who is not explicitly claimed as a model.

Divisio Textusand the Interpretive Logic Of Thomas Aquinas’Lectura Ad Ephesios

AbstractHenri de Lubac has proclaimed that medieval exegetical texts contain a “whole mental universe” within their pages. While full of promise, de Lubac’s statement also points to the problem of how modern readers may profitably engage the unfamiliar mental universe of such texts. The distinctive scholastic practice of structuring a composition bydivisio textuscan function as a helpful guide not only for understanding the structure of medieval texts but also for understanding the interpretive logic employed by medieval commentators. By focusing on Thomas Aquinas’lectura ad Ephesios, this paper demonstrates how thedivisio textuscan help identify important aspects of a commentator’s interpretive logic. The article then turns to examine Aquinas’ interpretation of predestination in Eph 1:5–6a to demonstrate the significance of thedivisio textusfor understanding medieval exegetical and interpretive decisions at both the macro- and micro-level. The article concludes that thedivisio textuscan be a helpful tool for uncovering the “mental universe” contained within medieval exegetical texts.

Ethical Themes in Medieval Jewish Biblical Commentaries: An Opportunity in the University Classroom

AbstractThe aim of this article is twofold: to open a window on ethical themes in medieval Jewish biblical commentaries and to illustrate how such works can catalyze explorations of issues in Jewish ethics in the university classroom. The article takes its inspiration from a course taught at Bar-Ilan University in Israel bearing the title “Medieval Jewish Biblical Interpretation: Past and Present.” In addition to its investigation of the medieval commentaries, the article exemplifies one pedagogical strategy employed in the course that sees these texts put in dialogue with a range of post-medieval literary and artistic expressions from Caravaggio to John Lennon and, especially, works of Israeli art, poetry, and song. Apart from adding interest and surprise, this strategy underscores the enduring nature of the issues addressed by the medieval commentators, which include fratricide, peace, pluralism, martyrdom, military ethics, altruism, supererogation, and love of one's fellow human being.

Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom by Anthony Celano

Reviewed by: Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom by Anthony Celano Katja Krause Anthony Celano. Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. x + 263. Cloth, $99.00. Celano’s book focuses on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (NE) and thirteenth-century scholastic appropriations of it. Its objectives are to unravel the inconsistencies in Aristotle’s accounts of eudaimonia, to establish the prominence of phronesis (practical wisdom), and to reveal alterations of Aristotle’s phronesis in medieval moral thought (back-cover). Celano’s textual analyses are laborious, and some features of his story may be considered stimulating insights. His construal of phronesis as primary to Aristotle’s moral conception (viii), his emphasis on Albert’s contribution to medieval moral thought (chapters 5–6), and his inclusion of the largely uncharted anonymous Erfurt commentary (chapter 8) represent important contributions. Yet Celano tells a tale that others have already told (e.g. R. A. Gauthier 1947–48, quoted by Celano on 78): that Aristotle’s NE contains a single veracity which seemingly transcends history. With their decidedly Christian agenda, however, scholastic interpreters “misread Aristotle’s Ethics” (78) or provided readings “contradictory to his thought” (231). Celano’s story takes its impetus from his view that, with the passage of time, thirteenth-century thinkers (all with close ties to the University of Paris) arrive at an improved grasp of Aristotle’s NE. Celano suggests that, early in the century, when only parts of the NE circulated, William of Auxerre, Philip the Chancellor, and six arts masters tried to get to the root of Aristotle’s ethics, but were “not entirely successful” (99). In the second half of the century, when the NE was translated and disseminated in its entirety, “more gifted theologians, such as Albert, Thomas and Bonaventure” achieved better results in understanding the text than their scholastic forebears had done (99). Celano reads Albert’s early De natura boni, [End Page 160] De bono, and De homine—the latter of which he misconstrues as an ethical work (100)—as preparations for Albert’s subsequent reconciliations of the NE “with the Christian ideals of perfect beatitude and natural law” in his two commentaries on the NE (130). Celano then argues that Albert’s commentaries decisively influenced later medieval commentaries on Aristotle, including that of Thomas Aquinas, while he equally portrays Thomas’s reading of Aristotle as departing from Albert’s (169). Finally, Celano discusses two commentaries on Aristotle’s NE written at the end of the thirteenth century: one by the anonymous Erfurt commentator and one by Radulphus Brito. In Celano’s view, they read Aristotle in “decidedly un-Aristotelian ways” to harmonise his NE with their own moral principles (231); and they replaced the “ground-breaking work” of Albert and Thomas (209) with their “reverence for tradition” (231). Celano’s book is a hero-narrative complete with denouement. Crucial to it is the thesis that the scholastic thinkers he discusses altered Aristotle’s intention in accordance with their Christian agenda. While, in Celano’s reading of the text, Aristotle founded his NE on the “human standard” of phronesis, the scholastic readers established it on “a divine foundation.” They read Aristotle through the lens of foreign concepts such as “natural law” or “synderesis” (viii, 64), and restricted Aristotle’s phronesis to moral decisions (231). Yet I wonder whether this is an accurate picture. The scholastic thinkers discussed here were more concerned with determining the truth about human prudence and happiness than with developing a truthful reading of Aristotle’s text. In their negotiations of this truth, they differed notably in accordance with their different historical contexts. Regrettably, Celano underplays these contexts, which constituted the ‘lifeworlds’ (Husserl’s term) within which they wrote. Indeed, it would be helpful to understand that early thirteenth-century moral theology, as propounded by William and Philip, arose within the theological framework established by Peter Lombard, and merely utilised some Aristotelian moral concepts. In contrast, early thirteenth-century moral philosophy conducted by the arts masters shifted the framework away from Lombard toward an Aristotelian one. This contrast could help evaluate important motives behind the early appropriations...

An Inventory of Medieval Commentaries on pseudo-Aristotle’sPhysiognomonica

Pseudo-Aristotle’s Physiognomonica is one of the main authoritative texts in the field of ancient and medieval physiognomy. After its thirteenth century translation into Latin by Bartholomew of Messina, the treatise was widely diffused across Europe. Nevertheless, its medieval reception and use remains largely unexplored. The present paper aims to fill this gap and offers a new inventory of all the medieval commentaries written on pseudo-Aristotle’s Physiognomonica. The newly discovered material allows us to demonstrate that this physiognomic text was more widely read and commented upon than was previously accepted, which inevitably changes the picture of medieval physiognomy in general.

Rereading Beruriah through the Lens of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Yentl

In this article I offer a new reading of Beruriah, sparked by my reading of Isaac Bashevis Singer's story Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy. Notwithstanding the differences in time and literary genre, Singer's invention of a twentieth-century version of Beruriah, and the sorrowful ending he creates, prompt us to reread Beruriah as a rabbinic attempt to question the male/female binary and its limitations. In the wake of third-wave feminism, which sees women as now having the choices that Beruriah seems, on some level, to have embraced, this article offers a new feminist reading that builds and expands upon scholarly insights of the past. We have become accustomed to thinking of Beruriah as proof that women became Torah scholars in antiquity, and of medieval commentators such as Rashi as men who sought to call attention to the dangers of women studying Torah. This article proposes that there is more to learn from Beruriah and her husband Rabbi Meir, not to mention Yentl and her study partner, Avigdor.

Moja przygoda z praktycyzmem

For forty years I have been using in all my Polish scientific works the term "practicism" ("praktycyzm"), and its equivalents in my publications in French, German and Italian. This term has its strong background in Aristotle's notion and term of praxis, which was with precision defined in the commentaries to Nicomachean Ethics, in particular, by numerous medieval commentators. However, this term became not to be a popular one – both in colloquial and philosophical languages, although, it was used later by some other Polish historians of philosophy. When I relate today, and once again explain the sense of my studies on practicism, I do it to inspire young philosophers to search the new terms and definitions for better, maybe well-aimed, description of the phenomena and contents, which I called "practicism".

The 1525 Rabbinic Bible and How to Read It: A Study of the Annotated Copy in the John Rylands Library

Daniel Bombergs 1525 edition of the Rabbinic Bible is a typographical masterpiece. It combines the text of the Hebrew Bible with Aramaic Targumim, medieval Jewish commentaries and the Masoretic textual apparatus. As testified by the numerous copies in the libraries of Jewish and Christian readers, this was a popular edition that remained in demand long after its publication. This article examines why and how readers studied the 1525 Rabbinic Bible by analysing the annotated copy now in the John Rylands Library (shelfmark: R16222). This particular copy furnishes detailed information about the reading habits of past owners, including early-modern Ashkenazi Jews and nineteenth-century English Hebraists. Studying how it has been used sheds light on why readers selected this edition and how they studied the apparatus and exegetical resources that Daniel Bomberg placed alongside the biblical text.

John of Jandun on Relations and Cambridge Changes

The paradigmatic examples of what we call nowadays ‘mere Cambridge changes’ are relational properties. If someone is on the left of a table at t − 1 and on the right of this table at t, the table does not undergo a physical change, but it has nonetheless new relational properties. What kind of relation lies behind this kind of change? Should we abandon the definition of identity as a set of permanent properties through time? This concern with identity and change was already present in Aristotle's Physics 5 and 7 and medieval commentators tackled the problem with some important refinements due to their metaphysical discussions about the nature of relations. John of Jandun's discussion of this topic, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, is particularly interesting. First, he defines self-identity as a relation of reason, which means for him that it is not a real relation. Second, he distinguishes two kinds of relational changes: those involving real relations and the acquisition a qualitative property; and those that are based on relations of reason. In the second case, there is no real change and the relation is established by the mind. After a presentation of his ontology of relations and changes, we will discuss the application of Jandun's theory to sensation and intellectual knowledge, which he treats as relational changes.

The Invention of Relations: Early Twelfth-Century Discussions of Aristotle's Account of Relatives

Aristotle's discussion of relatives in the Categories presented its eleventh- and twelfth-century readers with many puzzles. Their attempt to solve these puzzles and to develop a coherent account of the category led around the beginning of the twelfth century to the invention of relations as items which stand to relatives as qualities stand to qualified substances. In this paper, I first discuss the details of Aristotle's accounts of relatives and the related category of ‘situation’ and Boethius' commentary on them. I then examine some of the earliest mediaeval commentaries on the Categories showing how the notion of relation, and in particular of individual relations, was developed. I conclude by showing how Peter Abaelard's treatment of relations in his Dialectica was part of an ongoing and sophisticated debate over the nature of relations.