Harvey Brown from University of Western Ontario invites submissions for next year's Kalamazoo, in the sessions devoted to The Medieval Tradition of Natural Law.
Proposals should be sent, by Sept. 15, 2007, to :
Harvey Brown
Political Science Dept.
University of Western Ontario
London, Ont., Canada N6A 5C2
e-mail: hbrown2@uwo.ca
I got this in the e-mail the other day:
I take pleasure in informing you, also on behalf of the whole staff, that we have put online the first issue (1/January-June 2007) of the new e-review of Officina di Studi Medievali "Mediaeval Sophia - Studies and researches on medieval knowledge." The review, which has all formal authorizations as a periodical publication, will be updated every six months and will be put online in July and December; it will be placed side by with the academic journal of Officina di Studi Medievali, "Schede Medievali", which will continue to appear once yearly.
In this phase "Mediaeval Sophia" is online with reading and saving of the texts in PDF format, free of charge, for all sections. To connect use the link: www.mediaevalsophia.it. When you enter the site you will be asked to do free registration, with a form to be filled in all parts requested.
We are in the experimental phase and you will excuse us if there are any management problems, which, however, we are working on. Indeed, we will be very happy if you tell us about any problems and difficulties and if you suggest any ways to improve both the services and the review, which is open to contributions from anyone interested in our "International academic community of medieval studies."
For operational difficulties or for information and communications you can contact:
redazione@mediaevalsophia.it
redazione@officinastudimedievali.it
webmaster@mediaevalsophia.it
Thank you for your kind attention,
Alessandro Musco
President of Officina di Studi Medievali
Deputy-Editor of Mediaeval Sophia
OFFICINA di STUDI MEDIEVALI
Via del Parlamento, 32 - 90133 Palermo (Italy)
P. IVA 02473330823 - C.F. 97000790820
Tel. +39 (0)91 / 586314 - Fax. +39 (0)91 / 333121
E-mail: info@officinastudimedievali.it - staff@officinastudimedievali.it
Web: www.officinastudimedievali.it
The people over at the Thomas Institut in Cologne have put together a nifty short documentary about their Institute. The description runs as follows:
This video is a little documentary of the Thomas-Institut of the University of Cologne. The Thomas-Institut is a research Institute whose function it is to serve the study of medieval philosophy by preparing critical editions and historical and systematic studies of medieval authors.
An imbedded YouTube clips follows:
Got the following in this morning’s e-mail:
AMERICAN THEOLOGICAL INQUIRY (www.atijournal.org)
A Biannual Journal of Theology, Philosophy of Religion, Culture, & History (forthcoming: January 15, 2008).
Particular topics of interest include:
- (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Reformed, or Evangelical) Perspectives on the Current State of American Christianity.
- Current theological/philosophical trends in the Western world.
- Cultural/philosophical apologetics.
- Ecumenism and/or criticism of other traditions (ostensively) within the scope of ancient orthodoxy (Creedal Christianity)
- Systematic theology.
- Perspectives on history/historical events from an orthodox viewpoint.
- Engaging contemporary culture with the gospel.
- Engagement with the Patristical literature.
Please visit: http://www.atijournal.org for SUBMISSION GUIDELINES and additional information about the Journal.
Thanks to private funding, access to American Theological Inquiry is FREE. The Journal will be published in a PDF format, biannually, on January and July 15th.
As ATI prepares for its first edition on January, 15, 2008, we welcome the suggestions, ideas, and feedback of the American community of Christian scholars. To provide feedback to the Journal, please follow this link.
It may be something of a stretch to post it here, but the journal might be a place for a Thomist to say something interesting. I’d rather be too thorough. Those who submit articles are also asked explicitly to affirm their adherence to the four early creeds.
(Sotto voce: I’ve been meaning to think about ecclesial community, its creeds, and its sacred texts; maybe I’ll put together a post on my personal web site…).
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
-----------
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.
Under the direction of the Sacra Doctrina Project
