American Maritain Association: Conference 2006 call for papers

From Peter Pagan comes news of the posting of a call for papers for this year’s American Maritain Association conference in Nashville, Tennessee (November 2-5). The web page says:

The American Maritain Association invites proposals for papers to be delivered at its annual conference to be held in Nashville TN on Nov. 2-5 2006. Maritain considered Philosophy of Nature to play a vital role in the renewal of Thomism and modern culture. We wish to explore the problems surrounding the definition, methods, and applications of Philosophy of Nature, as set forth by Maritain in his books such as Science and Wisdom and Philosophy of Nature. Papers pertaining to these two works will be particularly welcomed. We also welcome papers exploring the work by others such as Yves R. Simon, Charles DeKonninck, William Wallace, and Stanley Jaki. Other possible paper topics include the relation of philosophy of nature to modern science, metaphysics, and theology; the relevance of philosophy of nature to contemporary issues such as evolution and intelligent design, ethics and natural law, sociobiology, and environmentalism.

The full text for the call for papers, and other particulars, is on the AMA’s web site.

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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).

Someday I'll see this painting in person

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Take that, Averroes!
A buddy of mine just returned from a conference he attended in Florence, and, a few days later, he received this picture from someone he met at the conference. I spent a whole semester in Florence in 1981 during my junior year in college, and never actually went into the Spanish Chapel at Santa Maria Novella. It goes without saying that, now that I’ve devoted my academic life to studying Thomas, I won’t let that chance slip away again.
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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).

2nd Newsletter is posted!

With apologies for the many delays, I have posted the second "Tommaso d’Aquino Newsletter" here on the site. You can find it under the Newsletters navigation menu on the left, under March 2006. I wanted to get the files posted right away, but will still have to clean up the HTML code for posting that later tonight (or early tomorrow morning). So the on-line version of the Newsletter will be posted later (as will the downloadable HTML version). But the downloads are available right now.

Enjoy, comment, and correct.

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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).

St. Thomas Aquinas and the Bible: A Bibliography

Christopher Baglow has generously agreed to allow the downloading of his St. Thomas Aquinas and the Bible: A Bibliography which you can find in MS Word format here on the web site. Thanks, Chris.

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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).

Holding off the Newsletter for a day or two

I’m holding off on putting up the Newsletter and some other things because the hosting service for Thomistica.NET, Squarespace.com, will be doing some work over the next day or two that will result both in some service interruption and, importantly, some new features that I might make immediate use of. I so much wanted the romance of having everything ready to go on the original feast day of St. Thomas (March 7, the date of his death). I appreciate people’s patience, and promise to put things up the instant I feel things are ready.

1 Comment

Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).

Remembering Beatrice Zedler

Dr. Beatrice Zedler, professor emerita of philosophy at Marquette University (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA), passed away Wednesday at the age of 89. Zedler received her bachelor of arts English summa cum laude with a minor in French in 1937 and her master of arts in philosophy in 1938, both from Marquette. She earned her Ph.D. in 1947 from Fordham University in New York.

Zedler taught a year at Marian College in Fond du Lac, Wis., and two years at College Misericordia in Dallas, Pa., before returning to Marquette as only the second woman ever hired to teach in the Department of Philosophy. Zedler retired in 1986 after almost four decades of distinguished service. Zedler was a 1981 recipient of the Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence, the Association of Marquette University Women’s Chair in Humanistic Studies from 1967 to 1971, and a member of Alpha Sigma Nu.

Zedler is survived by three nephews, grandnieces, cousins and a grandnephew. Visitation will be held Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. with a funeral service at 11 at the Clement Manor Chapel, 3939 S. 92nd St. Interment at Forest Home Cemetery will be private. The family has asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in Zedler’s name to the Marquette University Scholarship Fund.

The list of her publications—including her important translation of Thomas’s De unitate intellectus—check out the Marquette University’s library holdings for Zedler.

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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).

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. LecturaRomana.pngAn 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).

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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).

Metaphysics, Ethics, and Politics in the Thomistic and Analytic Traditions

From Matt O’Brien, a graduate student of philosophy at UTexas, comes a note about a conference on "Metaphysics, Ethics, and Politics in the Thomistic and Analytic Traditions," to be held this summer, at Princeton University (August 7–11, 2006). Here’s an explanation from the web site for the conference, which is intended for graduate students:

Metaphysics, Ethics, and Politics in the Thomistic and Analytic Traditions is a summer graduate seminar devoted to promoting intellectual exchange between the philosophical tradition inspired by Thomas Aquinas, broadly understood, and contemporary analytic philosophy. The modern revival of Thomism in Catholic circles began with the 1879 encyclical letter Aeterni Patris, and was exemplified in the work of Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson during the first half of the twentieth century. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, that revival was broadened as philosophers such as Peter Geach, Elizabeth Anscombe, Anthony Kenny, and Philippa Foot began to draw upon the insights of Aquinas (and Aristotle) within the context of contemporary analytic philosophy. The work of these philosophers and others has shown how the Thomistic tradition can inspire original, valuable contributions to contemporary debates, and often calls into question how the very issues of contemporary philosophy are themselves conceived.

The faculty for the seminar include:

  • Nicholas Rescher
  • Alexander Pruss
  • Gabriele De Anna
  • Mark C. Murphy
  • Michael Gorman

An exciting opportunity.

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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).

Your new favorite wine...

You now have a new favorite wine.

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Aquinas Napa Valley
About a month ago I was in Los Angeles (for certain reasons) and stumbled across this brand of wine in a local supermarket. Who’d have thought it? But, yes, there is a wine, grown in Napa Valley, California, called "Aquinas Napa Valley," made by the Don Sebastiani family. I bought a very fine Cabernet Sauvignon; they also have a Merlot and a Chardonnay. Recently the company redesigned the web site, but the web site that was up when I was in California described the family’s devotion to St. Thomas, etc. The current web site sports some desktop wallpaper! Lucky for me, the wine is sold locally here in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, area. Is it 5 o’clock yet?

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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).

Abbreviationes Online 2.5 (for manuscript work)

Olaf Pluta has updated his marvelous on-line manuscript abbreviation system, aptly named Abbreviationes. Abbreviationes Online 2.5 now goes both ways (you can input a word and look for its abbreviation, or input an abbreviation, and get some good expansions. Here is what Olaf says:

Abbreviationes Online 2.5 has been greatly enhanced. The complete Abbreviationes database is now available online. You can search for words matching a given abbreviation and for abbreviations matching a given word. You can choose from a variety of search options (is equal to, contains, begins with, ends with). And you can switch between different views on the data (list view, detail view).

Abbreviationes Online 2.5 supersedes the original Abbreviationes database (available for Mac OS and Windows), and you may wish to switch to the online version. For details, point your Web browser at http://abbreviationes.net or at http://abbrev.net, for short, and have a look at the demos. To go to Abbreviationes Online, click on the link at the bottom of this page and then choose one of the available Web servers.

A wonderful service, if you’re at a machine that’s licenced. The basic program, Abbreviationes, is a Mac program, so you’d need a Mac emulator to run it in MS Windows (see the specifics).

A personal wish: a native MS Windows version, with OpenType support. But that’s easy for me to say, because I wouldn’t have to code the thing!

Thanks, Olaf, for showing how computers might actually help to make academics more productive.

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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).

The Sacraments and Aquinas at Ave Maria University (Feb. 2007)

The folks at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, have done it again, planning a splendid conference on "Sacraments in Aquinas," to be held February 8-10, 2007. Here is the blurb and speakers list that Matthew Levering sent to me:

Sacraments in Aquinas

With some exceptions, very little work has been done on Aquinas’s sacramental and liturgical theology in the past few decades. In recent years, however, philosophical and theological interest in Aquinas’s sacramental theology and theological of the liturgy seems to be significantly increasing in ecumenical circles. Now seems an auspicious time to plan for a conference that would illumine the contributions of Aquinas, and the medieval tradition to which he belongs, in this area.

Speakers include

  • Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, Fordham University, Keynote Address
  • Reinhard Hütter, Duke University Divinity School, Closing Address
  • Sr. Thomas Augustine Becker, OP, Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist
  • Bernhard Blankenhorn, OP, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
  • Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP, Revue Thomiste
  • John Boyle, University of St. Thomas (MN)
  • Sarah Byers , Ave Maria University
  • Romanus Cessario, OP, St. John’s Seminary
  • Michael Dauphinais , Ave Maria University
  • Barry David, Ave Maria University
  • Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, OP, University of Fribourg
  • Gilles Emery, OP, University of Fribourg
  • Paul Gondreau, Providence College
  • Thomas Hibbs, Baylor University
  • Joseph Koterski, SJ, Fordham University
  • Peter Kwasniewski, International Theological Institute
  • Matthew L. Lamb, Ave Maria University
  • Michael Lang, London Oratory
  • Matthew Levering, Ave Maria University
  • Steven Long, Ave Maria University
  • Christopher Malloy, University of Dallas
  • Bruce Marshall, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University
  • Robert Miner, Baylor University
  • R. Trent Pomplun, Loyola College in Maryland
  • Lauren Pristas, Caldwell College
  • Richard Schenk, OP, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
  • Henk Schoot, Thomas Instituut te Utrecht
  • Joseph Wawrykow, University of Notre Dame
  • Thomas Weinandy, OFM Cap, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

I’m sure that their website will soon have more details. February in Florida sounds pretty good right now…

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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).

Aquinasonline.com is back, er, on-line

After a hiatus of some time, Joseph M. Magee’s Thomistic Philosophy Page web site is back on-line. It sports Thomistic topics, quodlibetal questions, bibliography, links, and a bookstore. A fine resource, in English.

1 Comment

Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is an associate professor of Theology at Marquette University, and founded thomistica.net on Squarespace in November of 2004. He studied with James Weisheipl, Leonard Boyle, Walter Principe, and Lawrence Dewan, at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, Canada).