While rummaging through the traffic logs for the web site recently I realized that I never got any hits from *.cn websites or IP addresses. How come? I did a little digging, and have found out why: thomistica.net is blocked in China. Really.
Your URL is blocked!
My personal website is also blocked.
Who ever thought running a website about Saint Thomas Aquinas would be a political statement?
Thanks to Thomas Osborne at Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St Thomas, Houston, for a link to the Commentaria of St Bonaventure on Book 1 of the Sentences, which has both the Latin and the English. Click here to go to the commentary on Book 1. Other translation work is in progress. And since the Franciscans were responsible for the critical edition on Peter Lombard's Libri sententiarum, you can find out about that, here.
(Boosterism mode: ON): Medieval studies is a fascinating series of disciplines. While hunting around recently for information on post-Gratian canon law texts—I need to become literate in the Quinque compilationes antiquae—I came across the web page of Frederick S. Paxton of Connecticut College, who had written and posted a careful article on the recent and exciting work concerning the origins of the Decretum (prompted in large part by the work of Anders Winroth).
But there is more on his site, and for those interested in St Thomas's moral teaching, it provides a keyhole picture of something that mattered the whole world to the medievals, and perforce to Thomas: the rituals surrounding death. For Paxton has been at work producing a "reconstructive edition" of death rituals used at Cluny. Now Cluny is far removed from the world of the Dominicans, true, but reading through Paxton's edition gives one the sense of how communal death was to those living in religion, and how religious linked the process of dying to the liturgy of the Church, and hence to the biblical texts that undergirded her liturgy. The text says, towards the end:
Absolve, Domine, animam famuli tui ab omni vinculo delictorum, ut in resurrectionis gloria inter sanctos tuos resuscitatus respiret.
Absolve, Lord, the soul of your servant of all the chains of sin, so that he may breathe again in the glory of the resurrection, brought back to life among your saints.
Paxton has posted working versions of his Latin edition and English translation on his web page, in MS Word formats.
Those of us who labor in the fields of medieval philosophy and theology perhaps need reminding from time to time that the medieval theories we study drew their lifeblood from the daily realities of medieval living—and dying (Boosterism mode: OFF).
This just in, from the University of Toronto's Collaborative Programme in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy:
Details to follow, but we thought you might like to know about the distinguished line-up for our annual colloquium this fall.
Friday, 28 September:
SESSION I
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Bonnie Kent (University of California at Irvine)
Jeff Hause (Creighton University), commentary
6:30 reception
Saturday, 29 September:
10:00 - 12:00
SESSION II
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Alfred Ivry (New York University)
Carlos Fraenkel (McGill University), commentary
lunch break
2:30 - 4:30
SESSION III
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Brian Leftow (Oriel College, University of Oxford)
Antoine Cote (University of Ottawa), commentary
7:00 Conference Dinner (reservation required)
All sessions will be held in Alumni Hall, Room 400 (St. Michael's College, 121 St. Joseph Street). The sessions are free and open to the public. If you plan to attend please let us know: medieval.philosophy@utoronto.ca -- and be sure to let us know if you intend to participate in the conference dinner!
The colloquium is sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, Department of Classics, and Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto; University of St. Michael's College; Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.
Accomodations:
The Holiday Inn Midtown in Toronto, located on Bloor Street next to the St. George campus, is offering rooms at a reduced rate for the conference. Please reserve online at http://www.holidayinn.com/torontomidtown, using the Corporate ID #100217931.
I decided to remove the "guestbook" feature from the site. No-one was really using it, and it was serving as something of a honey-pot for spammers, thus distorting the number of real visitors to the site (and unduly inflating traffic numbers). People who wish to make comments about the site can use the "contact" page of the site, anyway. No big loss.
If you'd been able to hop a plane to Toulouse for this weekend (i.e., Friday, May 11-Saturday, May 12) you'd have been able to attend a fascinating conference on "Anti-Thomism," sponsored by the Revue thomiste: «Antithomisme: histoire, thèmes, figures». The conference covers medieval anti-Thomists (e.g., Durandus) and modern figures who labored in one way or another in reaction to "Thomism" (e.g., Henri Bouillard, SJ).
Thanks to Gilles Emery, OP, for providing the link.
The good people at Ave Maria University’s “Sapientia Press,” have published a second volume of Fr Gilles Emery, OP’s, writings on Aquinas. Here is the account provided to me by Matthew Levering:
Following upon Gilles Emery’s universally well-received Trinity in Aquinas, this new collection of essays by the noted Swiss Thomist will further enhance his reputation for theological depth and breadth. The first four chapters, which comprise the first 153 pages of the book, make available in English the best instruction on the most difficult issues that characterize St. Thomas Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology. This superb “book within a book” explores in detail the very purpose of Trinitarian theology, with an emphasis on distinguishing St. Thomas’s approach from the various forms of arid rationalism and on displaying Aquinas’s debt to Augustine’s spiritual vision. In addition, these opening chapters on the Trinity engage the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Son according to Aquinas—a topic treated in Trinity in Aquinas but now deepened by a meditation on “the Spirit of Truth”—as well as the “personal mode” of Trinitarian action ad extra. For readers seeking to understand how and why Aquinas’s theology is fully Trinitarian rather than (as is sometimes suggested) modalist, Emery’s exposition of the Trinitarian action ad extra and our relation in grace to each Person of the Trinity will be necessary reading.
A second section of the book demonstrates Emery’s extraordinary theological range. He devotes two chapters to the sacraments as they relate to the Church, in each case showing that Aquinas’s insights speak profoundly to contemporary controversies. Another chapter treats briefly the place of the Eastern Fathers in Aquinas, a question that has become increasingly important in ecumenical dialogue so as to show that Thomistic theology is not antithetical to reunion with the Orthodox East. In the context of a world plagued by Cartesian dualism and inability to come to terms with the scope of human suffering, two further chapters treat Aquinas’s hylomorphic understanding of the human person and his account of God’s permission of evil (the latter through the lens of Charles Cardinal Journet). Finally, the book concludes on a fittingly ecumenical note, as Emery takes up George Lindbeck’s influential reading of Aquinas as a “postliberal” theologian who thereby has an important place in contemporary Protestant-Catholic dialogue. In the hands of Gilles Emery, the work of Thomas Aquinas is shown to contribute profoundly to the task of appreciating and resolving the central theological discussions and controversies of our time.
This is an extraordinary volume, with great studies on a wide variety of issues. And Fr Emery’s work is the gold standard for Thomistic scholarship. Check out the blurbs on the back of the book 
.
Here is a list of papers on St Thomas that are scheduled at this year's Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, MI:
I can't find any!
This is, admittedly, as narrow view of the work that might be of interest and indeed crucial use to Thomists. There is, for instance, a session on Peter Lombard, sporting a paper by none other than Philipp W. Roseman.
I came across this site and this event a bit back. The "Thomistic Seminar" is an annual meeting at Princeton, more akin to a graduate seminar—taking place in a single week's time—than a conference with papers' being presented and discussed. The seminar sports a full and attractive web site, with information about its present doings, as well as past seminars. Also listed are the faculty for this summer's seminar, including David Gallagher and Gyula Klima.
Fr. Jean-Pierre Torrell has placed on his personal web page at the University of Fribourg an autobiographical account of his personal intellectual life, entitled "Mon parcours intellectual," dating from early February of this year. A fascinating read. At the base of the web page you'll find a PDF file of his bibliography, listing—gulp!—392 different writings. Of particular notice among the newer items is Nouvelles recherches thomasiennes. Cinq études revues et augmentées, to appear this year.
This sad news in, from Fr. Adriano Oliva, OP, president of the Leonine Commission, in Paris:
Chère Amie, Cher Ami,
Il y a une heure, dans le couvent de l'Annonciation à Paris, le P. Betrand Georges Guyot s'est endormi dans le Seigneur. Il était dans sa 87ème année, 62ème de vie religieuse. Le 12 avril j'avais parlé avec lui et il se sentait très fatigué, sans savoir pourquoi. Il était serein et joyeux comme nous l'avons connu. Dès que nous connaîtrons le jour de ses obsèques je vous le communiquerai.
Amitiés, Adriano Oliva.
Fr Guyot was one of the hard-working members of the Commission for many, many years, and author of critical articles on medieval manuscripts, particularly those pertaining to philosophy and theology.
Rethinking the topic of virtue ethics recently had me visiting some classic sources, one of which is by any account seminal: G.E.M. Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy," Philosophy 33/124 (1958): 1-19. The article has been republished all over the place, especially in anthologies devoted to the subject of virtue ethics. But it is also located on the web, intact. Copy, paste, print…
Under the direction of the Sacra Doctrina Project
