PIMS publishes Aquinas's Lectura romana

This is fantastic news. After 20 years and more in gestation, the Lectura romana of St Thomas—also known as (but wrongly) the "Alia lectura"—has been published. Fred Unwalla, of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies’s Publications Department, sent me this yesterday:

The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies is proud to announce the publication of a previously lost work of Thomas Aquinas: the Lectura romana in primum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, edited by † Leonard E. Boyle, OP and John F. Boyle.

Ptolomeo of Lucca, the friend, confessor, and biographer of Aquinas, uniquely reported that Thomas, while in Rome, had written a second commentary on Book I of Peter Lombard’s Liber sententiarum. The Lectura romana is that commentary. It is a reportatio of Aquinas’ lectures on Peter Lombard given in Rome in 1265–1266. An entirely new commentary, the Lectura romana contains a prolog, ninety-seven articles covering distinctions 1–17 and 23, and three short notes on distinctions 3 and 24. These lectures cover the nature of sacra doctrina, the names and attributes of God, the Trinity, and charity.

The Roman Province of the Order of Preachers had established a new studium at Rome in which Thomas would teach his fellow Dominicans beginning their theo­logical education. The Lectura romana constituted part of his teaching in this new studium. In this work, we have the only surviving reportatio of Thomas’ teaching other than biblical commentaries. Written with the trim precision of the Summa theologiae, the Lectura romana contains questions, arguments, and examples not found elsewhere in the works of Aquinas. Because it can be precisely dated to 1265–1266, it is also particularly promising for understanding the development of Aquinas’ thought on a number of central theological topics.

The Lectura romana survives in the margins and guard folia of a thirteenth-century manuscript of the Parisian Scriptum now in Lincoln College, Oxford.

Orders from within North America may be sent to the Department of Publications. Further information about ordering, a complete description, and an excerpt from the book, are available online at www.pims.ca. The book will be distributed in Europe by Brepols Publishers later this spring.

And when you do go to the PIMS web site, You’ll find a downloadable PDF file with the Preface and the contents of the Lectura romana. I plan to discuss this volume—and the larger topic of this Lectura—in my upcoming Newsletter. Fantastic news.

PS: While you are there at the PIMS web site, notice the publication in English of Raymond of Penyafort’s Summa on marriage, translated by Pierre J. Payer; at the end of that volume Payer has a table the assembles the parallels between Raymond’s account of marriage in his Summa and that of Aquinas in his Scriptum on the Sentences (which is the single fullest treatment available to us, as Thomas did not get to the treatise on marriage in the Tertia pars).

Holy Grail found

Joseph’ Goering’s "The Virgin and the Grail"Well, sort of.

One of the real good guys in medieval studies, Joseph Goering at Toronto, told me a couple of years ago about a project that he had been quietly working on. He thought, he said at the time, that he knew how the legend of the Holy Grail came about. He was working on it, he said, and hoped that he’d finish the project before too lond. Well, the project is done, and the book is published by Yale University Press. Here is the blurb:

Some fifty years before Chretien de Troyes wrote what is probably the first and certainly the most influential story of the Holy Grail, images of the Virgin Mary with a simple but radiant bowl (called a "grail" in local dialect) appeared in churches in the Spanish Pyrenees. In this fascinating book, Joseph Goering explores the links between these sacred images and the origins of one of the West’s most enduring legends.
 

While tracing the early history of the grail, Goering looks back to the Pyrennean religious paintings and argues that they were the original inspiration of the grail legend. He explains how storytellers in northern France could have learned of these paintings and how the enigmatic "grail" in the hands of the Virgin came to form the centrepiece of a story about a knight in King Arthur’s court. Part of the allure of the grail, Goering argues, was that neither Chretien nor his audience knew exactly what it represented or why it was so important. And out of the attempts to answer those questions the literature of the Holy Grail was born.

So if you want something enjoyable to read, by a great historian, you can get the book on Amazon.com.

Correction: Leonard Boyle, OP, lecture IS published in English

Ugh. I hate being wrong.

A while back, in the first newsletter, I said that:

All the articles in the neat little collection of Leonard Boyle’s articles on Aquinas (Facing History: A Different Thomas Aquinas [Louvain-la-Neuve: FIDEM, 2000]) are in English…save one. The last article is in French, “Saint Thomas d’Aquin et le troisième millenaire,” (pp. 141-159). This is all a tad odd, since the original talk upon which this text was based was given in English in Chicago in 1999. You can, however, see a transcription of the talk in English, and indeed listen to the talk (in RealAudio or QuickTime format) by clicking here.

Thanks to Michael Sherwin, OP, we now know of a full publication of the talk. He explains:

You probably already know about this, but a published version of the talk in English exists.  Leonard gave the talk again as one of the Aquinas Lectures at Maynooth.  McEvoy published a collection of these talks.  Here is the reference: Leonard Boyle, "St. Thomas Aquinas and the third millennium" in Thomas Aquinas: Approaches to Truth: the Aquinas Lectures at Maynooth, 1996-2001, edited by James McEvoy and Michael Dunne (Four Courts Press, 2002), 38-52.

My bad, Fr. Michael; I didn’t know about the talk!. It really is a wonderful talk. And if you read carefully, you’ll even see some Dominicans disagreeing with each other about some important matters in the Order’s history (Hint: The papal bull, Cum qui recipit prophetam).

Update on 2005-09-30 16:25 by Mark Johnson

I’m wrong twice! James Ginther points out:

Boyle’s talk was also printed in the last festschrift (Omnia Disce, ed. A. Duggan, J. Greatrex, and B. Bolton; Ashgate, 2005).

You can read his full comment in the comments on this news item.

Aquinas on Scripture: a new book from T&T Clark

Aquinas on Scripture: A Critical Introduction to his CommentariesThe folks at T & T Clark have come out with another useful book on Aquinas, this time one devoted to his reading and commenting on sacred scripture. The book is entitled Aquinas on Scripture: A Critical Introduction to his Commentaries. Here’s the blurb:

This book evaluates all the biblical commentaries of St Thomas Aquinas for the modern age with each commentary examined by an expert, specialist scholar in that field. Each chapter focuses on the two or three major themes of its particular commentary and also relates the themes of the commentaries to Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles and especially to his Summa Theologica.

The purpose of this volume is not only to evaluate Aquinas’ commentaries, but also, in so doing, to demonstrate that Aquinas is primarily a biblical theologian, a consideration that has come more and more to the fore in recent studies. No other book systematically addresses this important issue for Aquinas, biblical studies and theology.

Here’s the line-up of articles in the book, their authors, and affiliations:

• Introductory Essay, by Nicholas M. Healy, St John’s University, New York, USA
• Job, by John Yocum, Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo University, Manila
• Isaiah, by Joseph Wawrykow, University of Notre Dame, USA
• Matthew, by Jeremy Holmes, doctoral student at Marquette University
• John, by Matthew Levering, Ave Marie University, Naples, Florida
• Romans/Galatians, Steven Boguslawski, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, USA
• 1&2 Corinthians, by Daniel Keating, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, USA
• Ephesians/Colossians, by Mark Edwards, Christ Church College, Oxford University, UK
• Philippians, 1&T Thessalonians, Philemon, by Francesca Murphy, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
• 1&2 Timothy, Titus, by John Saward, Greyfriars, Oxford and International Theological Institute,
  Gaming, Austria
• Hebrews, by T. Weinandy, Greyfriars, Oxford and the United States Conference of
  Catholic Bishops, Washington, D.C.
• Index

The hardback copy of the book is absurdly priced at $105.00 USD, making the paperback appear reasonable at $29.95.

A new book by David Berger

David Berger, editor of Doctor Angelicus (the newer German journal devoted to Aquinas), has a new book coming out. The book is entitled In der Schule des Hl. Thomas von Aquin: Studien zur Geschichte des Thomismus (Bonn: Verlag Nova et Vetera, 2005). Here’s the blurb (auf Deutsch):

Seit dem Tod des hl. Thomas von Aquin (1274), des „engelgleichen Lehrers" der katholischen Kirche, haben sich seine Schüler immer wieder neu um die Aneignung und Tradierung seiner Lehre bemüht und diese dadurch lebendig erhalten: so entstand als eigene Denkrichtung und philosophisch-theologische Schule der Thomismus. Obgleich dieser Schule über all die letzten sieben Jahrhunderte bis zur gegenwärtigen Stunde eine eminente Bedeutung zukommt, existiert bis heute keine Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Geschichte.

In dem hier vorliegenden Buch sind Studien zu wichtigen Aspekten dieser Geschichte versammelt, die einen Beitrag für eine noch zu schreibende historische Gesamtdarstellung des Thomismus bieten wollen. Dabei reicht das Themenfeld von der Jahrhunderte langen Suche dieser Denkrichtung nach ihrem eigenen Wesen über naturrechtliche Fragen bis hin zu wichtigen thomistischen Institutionen (Päpstliche Thomasakademie, Zeitschrift „Divus Thomas") sowie bedeutenden Thomisten (N. Del Prado, R. Garrigou-Lagrange, B. Lakebrink, J. Brinktrine).

Ganz entsprechend der Doktrin des hl. Thomas selbst, ist die historische Forschung jedoch stets mit dem systematischen Anliegen verbunden: durch alle Studien hindurch wird deutlich gemacht, dass der Thomismus kein museales Phänomen ist, sondern gerade heute eine ganz einzigartige Aktualität besitzt: Zeigt er uns doch den hl. Thomas inmitten der aufgewühlten Wogen der „Diktatur des Relativismus" (Papst Benedikt XVI) als jenen Leuchtturm, der uns den Weg zur Wahrheit weist.

The book will appear in Oktober, and can be purchased from Verlag Nova et Vetera. You can get the table of contents and the forward in PDF format by clicking here.

Robert Pasnau's book wins APA Book Prize for 2005

Robert Pasnau’s book, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature : A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae, 1a 75-89 ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), has won the American Philosophical Association Book Prize award for 2005. The book is a new, in-depth, consideration and presentation of Thomas’s teaching on human nature as found in questions 75-89 of the first part of the Summa theologiae. The book is available on amazon.com.

A collection of essays by Servais Pinckaers, OP

The Pinckaers ReaderBack in the 1980’s one of my teachers in Toronto, Walter Principe, CSB, noted my interest in St Thomas’s moral teaching and encouraged me to read the work of Servais Pinckaers, OP. In honesty I never got around to that much — my “commentator time” had been given over to Santiago Ramirez — but I knew that, at some point, I would need to read Pinckaers.

The people over at Catholic University of America Press have made that easier, with the publication of The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, a new volume containing 20 of Pinckaers’s studies, translated into English. Here is the blurb from the CUA site:

Servais Pinckaers, O.P., is one of the preeminent Catholic moral theologians of his generation. His highly acclaimed works, among them The Sources of Christian Ethics, offer a thoroughly Thomistic and contemporary vision of the Christian moral life. They reflect the philosophical and spiritual prowess of a moral theologian who is estranged neither from philosophical ethics nor from dogmatic theology, neither from Scripture nor from spirituality.

The first collection of its kind available in any language, this volume features the twenty most significant essays written by Pinckaers since his highly praised Sources. The essays offer profound reflections that are only possible by a contemporary moral theologian who knows the thought of Aquinas from lifelong study. Rather than taking a simply historical approach to Aquinas, Pinckaers seeks the basis of the intelligibility of the moral life, providing rich spiritual and theological insights along the way. He plumbs the depths of fundamental moral theology in these essays, where he treats Thomistic method and the renewal of moral theology, beatitude and Christian anthropology, moral agency, and passions and virtues, as well as law and grace. Such a detailed treatment of key issues in fundamental moral theology and Christian philosophical anthropology will certainly demand attention from every theologian and advanced student interested in Aquinas and in a virtue approach to Christian ethics.

Pinckaers’s work has been an important source for the revival of interest in virtue-oriented moral theology in recent years and will continue to be a major source for debates over the place of Scripture and the Holy Spirit in moral theology.

John Berkman is Associate Professor of Moral Theology and Area Director of Moral Theology/Ethics at The Catholic University of America. Craig Steven Titus is Research Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Ethics and Moral Theology at the University of Fribourg and Visiting Professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. The essays are translated by Sr. Mary Thomas Noble,O.P., Craig Steven Titus, Michael Sherwin, O.P., and Hugh Connolly.

Here is the link to CUA Press, and you can also find the volume on Amazon.com.

Proceedings from Dutch-Flemish SITA conference on Aquinas (from Sept. 2004)

The Dutch-Flemish section of the SITA (http://users.skynet.be/thomisme), presided over by Leo J. Elders svd, organized its first conference on September 25, 2004 at the former Abbey of Rolduc (the Netherlands). The topic of the conference was “The actuality of Saint Thomas Aquinas.”

The proceedings of this conference, together with other essays, are now published in the series ‘Doctor Humanitatis.’

This first publication contains 13 essays, written in Dutch, English and German. The president of the International SITA, Abelardo Lobato op, opens the volume with an article on themes of the ‘quaestiones quodlibetales’. The president of the Dutch-Flesmish section, Leo Elders svd, investigates the presence of Plato in the writings of Aquinas. Bonifacio Honings ocd (Rome) shows how the Catechism of the Catholic Church is deeply indebted to Aquinas moral theology. Romanus Cessario op writes about the influence of Aquinas on Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’. The Dutch scholar Jozef Wissink, member of the ‘Thomas Instituut’ in Utrecht, articulates the highly interesting links between the mental state of dementia patients and Aquinas’ theory of knowledge, Victor Ravensloot argues for the validity of hylemorphism, David Berger talks about the actuality of the Tertia Pars of the Summa.

Next, the volume reprints an influential article by the late Dutch Dominican, Johannes van der Ploeg, who died in 2004, on the role of Scripture in Thomistic theology. The doctrine of God is the topic of the essay by Harm Goris, member of the well-known ‘Thomas Instituut’ in Utrecht. The Polish Thomist, Tadeusz Guz, compares the anthropology of Aquinas and Hegel. Jörgen Vijgen, Vice-President of the Dutch-Flemish section, investigates the role of philosophical reasoning in Aquinas’ articulation of the dogma of the resurrection of the body. The volume closes with a critical review of the recent French volume by the so-called ‘School of Toulouse’ on the actuality of Saint-Thomas.

De actualiteit van Sint-Thomas van Aquino, ed. J. Vijgen (Boekenplan, Hoofddorp, 2005), pp. 215 [ISBN 907179491-1] (Doctor Humanitatis I), can be ordered through the publisher’s website: http://www.boekenplan.nl.

Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas publishes 2003 conference proceedings

From the Secretary of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas:

The Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas is proud to announce the publication of the first and second volume of the Proceedings of the International Conference on “Christian Humanism in the Third Millennium: The Perspective of Thomas Aquinas”. The first volume is 1010 pages long and contains the Anthropological and Historical Sections. The second volume is 1011 pages long and contains the Christological, Metaphysical, Moral and Scientific Sections. Each volume costs USD 39 or Euro 29.65 - or the equivalent in the currency of your country - including postage but excluding bank charges. Methods of payment:

1. (Cheapest way) By cheque made out to Pontificia Accademia di San Tommaso and sent by mail to the following address: Pontificia Accademia di San Tommaso, Casina Pio IV, V-00120 Vatican City.
2. Bank transfer to: Account no. 1000 / 00009396; Owner: Pontificia Accademia di San Tommaso; Bank: San Paolo Imi; Agency: 06016; Address: Stazione Termini Binario 1, 00185 Roma, Italia; IBAN IT15 R010 2503 2511 0000 0009 396; BIC IBSPITTM

Payment can be made in dollars or in euros or in the equivalent amount in your country’s currency. After making the payment, please send me an email stating how many copies of the second volume you require and your full address. We will send out the books as soon as we have received notice of payment.

Volume III will be ready shortly. Please send an email to past@acdscience.va and you will be notified of its publication.

Of course, if you have someone in Italy who can make the payment for you or come directly to our Pontifical Academy in order to save on bank charges, we will then be more than happy to send you the books.

Romanus Cessario's "A Short History of Thomism"

At a recent conference at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida (web site here), I picked up a copy of Romanus Cessario, OP’s, little book, A Short History of Thomism, which had originally appeared in French. I’ve enjoyed the book so much, and feel it so useful, that I asked the kind people at Catholic University of America Press for the official blurb for the book, which follows:

New from THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS: A Short History of Thomism

Romanus Cessario, O.P.

February 2005
120 pages
Paperback ISBN 0-8132-1386-X, $19.95

Since the first followers of Saint Thomas Aquinas took up the task of explaining and defending his writings, Thomists have influenced deeply the Western intellectual tradition. Together they form a school called Thomism that can claim an uninterrupted history since the end of the thirteenth century. Using carefully selected resources, Romanus Cessario has composed a short account of the history of the Thomist tradition as it manifests itself through the more than seven hundred years that have elapsed since the death of Saint Thomas. A Short History of Thomism, originally published in French as Le Thomisme et les Thomistes, supplies a need that has not been met in over a century, and is the first such comprehensive account written in English. A preface by Ralph McInerny is included in this edition.

The author, who has worked in the field for more than thirty-five years, brings to his study an appreciation for the place that Saint Thomas Aquinas holds as a perennial teacher of Christian theology, and for the influence that the Common Doctor has exercised on all stripes of theology and philosophy.

“A very lucid and well documented introduction to seven centuries of reading Thomas Aquinas.”—Fergus Kerr, O.P., New Blackfriars

“A marked success and should be extremely useful to those just beginning to take an interest in exploring the career of Thomism after 1274.”—Timothy B. Noone, The Thomist

Romanus Cessario is Professor of Theology at Saint John’s Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts, and Associate Editor of The Thomist. He is the author of numerous works including Introduction to Moral Theology, Christian Faith and the Theological Life, and The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, and translator with Kevin White of John Capreolus’s On the Virtues.

TO ORDER: Please contact Hopkins Fulfillment Service, PO Box 50370, Baltimore, MD 21211 Toll free 1-800-537-5487

John Paul II talks about Aquinas in his most recent book

Passed on to me by Jörgen Vijgen (see his web site here):

Wonderful, encouraging words by our Pope! Pope John Paul II talks about Aquinas in the second chapter of his most recent book Memoria e identità (Rizzoli, Milano 2005):

IDEOLOGIE DEL MALE

Come dunque hanno avuto origine le ideologie del male? Quali sono le radici del nazismo e del comunismo? Come si è giunti alla loro caduta?

“Per meglio illustrare questo fenomeno occorre risalire al periodo anteriore all’illuminismo, in particolare alla rivoluzione operata nel pensiero filosofico da Cartesio. Il cogito, ergo sum – penso, dunque sono – portò con sé un capovolgimento nel modo di fare filosofia. Nel periodo precartesiano la filosofia, e dunque il cogito , o piuttosto il cognosco , era subordinato all’ esse che era considerato qualcosa di primordiale. A Cartesio invece l’ esse apparve secondario, mentre il cogito fu da lui giudicato primordiale. In tal modo non soltanto si operava un cambiamento di direzione nel filosofare – ma si abbandonava decisamente ciò che la filosofia era stata fino ad allora, ciò che era stata in particolare la filosofia di san Tommaso d’Aquino: la filosofia dell’ esse”. (19)

“Prima tutto veniva interpretato nell’ottica dell’ esse e di tutto si cercava una spiegazione secondo quell’ottica. Dio come Essere pienamente autosufficiente ( Ens subsistens ) era ritenuto l’indispensabile sostegno per ogni ens non subsistens, ens participatum , cioè per tutti gli esseri creati, e dunque anche per l’uomo”. (19)

“Se vogliamo parlare in modo sensato del bene e del male, dobbiamo tornare a san Tommaso d’Aquino , cioè alla filosofia dell’essere”. (23)

“Con il metodo fenomenologico, ad esempio, si possono esaminare esperienze come quella della moralità, della religione o anche dell’essere uomo, traendone un arricchimento significativo della nostra conoscenza. Non si può però dimenticare che tutte queste analisi, in modo implicito, presuppongono la realtà dell’essere uomo, cioè di un essere creato, e anche la realtà dell’Essere assoluto. Se non si parte da simili presupposti «realisti» , si finisce per muoversi nel vuoto”. (23)