Mirabile! Digital Archives for Medieval Latin Culture

One of my favorite resources is Medioevo latino, an annual publication of all things medieval thought. The parent company, SISMEL, has now improved on-line access to that annual, as well as other things it publishes:

The important resources constituted by the well-known SISMEL's repertories (Medioevo latino, the Bibliotheca Scriptorum Latinorum Medii recentiorisque Aevi, the Compendium Auctorum Medii Aevi) and by the prestigious journals published by the Edizioni del Galluzzo are available on line. For information: www.mirabileweb.it  · info@mirabileweb.it.

Probably mostly academic research institutions will opt to subscribe to this service, but it's nice to know that the service is available.

Kristeller’s “Latin Manuscript Books before 1600” on-line

Nerd alert: ON.

Here in my office I have the beefy printed edition of Paul Oskar Kristeller's Latin Manuscript Books before 1600: A List of the Printed Catalogues and Unpublished Inventories of Extant Collections staring at me, and telling me, "get to work!" If you need access to this work, it's now on-line (link). Happy hunting for the manuscript that breaks your stemma!

Nerd alert: OFF.

Aquinas at Blackfriars

The people at Blackfriars aren't sitting still. They've put together a compelling program of studies (link) for their Aquinas Institute. The program is headed by Fr Fergus Kerr, OP. A scrape:

The Aquinas Institute was established in 2004 under the directorship of Fergus Kerr OP. It aims to foster study of St Thomas at Oxford through seminars, occasional conferences, summer schools, and programmes that will bring international research scholars to the university each year.

Make sure to see the cool seminar series that they've put together, too.

Update on 2009-09-29 18:29 by Mark Johnson

From William E. Carroll, of Blackfriars:

Fergus Kerr is now retired and the new director of the Aquinas Institute is Vivian Boland, O.P.

The “Introduction” to the new Cursus philosophicus thomisticus edition

John Deely, of the University of St Thomas (Houston, TX), worked long and hard to get a reprint of John of St. Thomas’s (Jean Poinsot’s) Cursus philosophicus thomisticus. Thanks to the Georg Olms Verlag, and the editorship of Martin Walter, the thing has been reprinted in a glorious, three-volume set. And Deely, who knows a thing or sixty about John of St. Thomas (link), has kindly shared a PDF of his “Introductory Remarks on the Value of Poinsot’s Work to Philosophy Today.” A selection:

The standard histories of philosophy over the whole of the 20th century have tacitly agreed to give the impression that nothing of value or interest happened in the Latin tradition after the death of William of Ockham. I was first led to see the falsity of this standard view by a reading of Jacques Maritain’s writings on sign, published together in his book Quatre Essais sur l’Esprit dans sa Condition Charnelle (nouvelle edition revue et augmenté; Paris: Alsatia, 1956). In those writings, Maritain directed me to the Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot, then thoroughly embedded within the hefty volumes of Poinsot’s Cursus Philosophicus.

Mainly interested at the time in the newly developing idea of semiotics as a study of the action of signs, I spent the next fifteen years in preparing Poinsot’s semiotics for presentation as an independent edition, which was published in bilingual format by the University of California Press in 1985. Over the course of that work I came to appreciate the value of Poinsot’s work not only on the sign, but as a whole. For what the Cursus Philosophicus presents us with is nothing less than a careful and complete summation of what philosophy was able to achieve independently and in its own right prior to the advent of science in the modern sense as a complementary intellectual development.

It is true that the period of early modern philosophy approached from its Latin side, rather than from the side of its emergence out of Latin into the national language traditions of classical modern thought, is a dismaying maze of the greatest difficulty to navigate. This is precisely the value of Poinsot’s work as a whole.

Download the PDF here.

thomistica now on twitter

This one was too easy. Some required ICANN checking lead me to a reminder to see whether the name “thomistica,” was available on twitter. I was shocked, truly shocked, to find out that it was, so I nabbed it, and have set things up here. Now you can follow us here on thomistica (link) when I tweet about the small things.

You’ll also note on the right sidebar that I’ve included that last few tweets. All the best.

Edward Feser's Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide

Catholic philosopher Edward Feser has published Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (link), an introduction to the thought of St Thomas. Here’s a scrape from Amazon’s page:

One of history’s most influential philosophers and theologians, Thomas Aquinas was the father of modern philosophy of religion, and is infamous for his proofs for God’s existence. In this cogent introduction to his work, Edward Feser argues that you cannot fully understand Aquinas’ philosophy without his theology and vice-versa. Covering his thoughts on the soul, natural law, metaphysics, and the interaction of faith and reason, this is an essential introduction to the great thinker.

Feser is a well-known philosopher who vigorously engages contemporary philosophy and science, from an Aristotelian-Thomistic point of view (i.e., supportive of natural philosophy and A-T metaphysics). While at Amazon.com, check out his important The Last Supersition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.

Feser is also an active blogger, writing on an array of topics ranging from philosophy of mind to contemporary politics. More on his book (including the Table of Contents) at his website.

Thomas Aquinas on the Passions

Robert Miner (Baylor University) has sent along word that this book, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, has appeared. Published by Cambridge University Press, the book is a study of questions 22-48 of the Prima secundae of Thomas’s Summa theologiae—you know, the questions that everyone skips over on the way from questions 6-21 on the way to question 94, article 2!

Here’s a scrape from the CUP website (link to book):

The Summa Theologiae is Thomas Aquinas’ undisputed masterwork, and it includes his thoughts on the elemental forces in human life. Feelings such as love, hatred, pleasure, pain, hope and despair were described by Aquinas as ‘passions’, representing the different ways in which happiness could be affected. But what causes the passions? What impact do they have on the person who suffers them? Can they be shaped and reshaped in order to better promote human flourishing? The aim of this book is to provide a better understanding of Aquinas’ account of the passions. It identifies the Aristotelian influences that lie at the heart of the Summa Theologiae, and it enters into a dialogue with contemporary thinking about the nature of emotion. The study argues that Aquinas’ work is still important today, and shows why for Aquinas both the understanding and attainment of happiness requires prolonged reflection on the passions.

Part I. The Passions in General

1. The sensitive appetite

2. The definition of passion

3. The activation of passion

4. The morality of the passions

Part II. Particular Passions: The Concupiscible Passions

 5. Love

 6. Hatred and concupiscence

 7. Pleasure

 8. Sorrow

Part III. Particular Passions: The Irascible Passions

9. Hope and despair

10. Fear

11. Daring

12. Anger

 Epilogue: the passions, the virtues, and happiness

 Many happy sales (and reviews!), Robert!

Update on 2009-09-23 09:55 by Mark Johnson

Oh, you can also read a nice on-line excerpt from the book (link).

Got Summa?

Now and then one needs to blow off a little steam, and such was the case for me today, as I worked on the site and, generally satisfied with things, played a bit. In this case “playing” meant trying some ideas out with Photoshop CS4 and CafePress, where I had created a few “products” some years back, but never took things seriously.

But today was different, because I’d fallen in love with the humor of the phrase “Got Summa?,” a take-off from the ever-pliable meme that goes back to the famous “Got Milk?” campaign of many years back. So I came up with the following, which is now available on Thomistica.net’s CafePress store:

At the very least, it’s good for a grin. But of course, if you actually bought one (or ten, because they’ll make great Christmas gifts for your favorite Thomists), I’d be most grateful.

Style change and other updates to the site

If you've come by the site in the past day or so you'll have noticed that things were in flux, as I changed the site's formatting and color themes, as well as rearranged things. Sorry for any confusion and, on occasion, total breakdown—at one point I had made a single change and the whole site's content disappeared!

The color change was much-needed, as the previous color scheme and layout (3 column) made things hard to read and to navigate. I knew the overall effect was too dark when a visitor asked "why the Darth Vader mode?" I hope that the new look will be much lighter and more navigable.

I've added some photos that Jörgen Vijgen took this past summer, switched to a two-column layout, and restructured the main menu bar. Other changes will come as I'm able to find out what will, and what won't, break the site. Some general notes:

• Wallpaper: I'm working on some wallpaper that works better with increasingly common widescreen monitors (i.e., 16x9 format, as distinct from the 4x3 that the current wallpapers are set to).
• Traffic notes: almost 40% of the site's visitors still use Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6.0! People! Please upgrade your browser. Most new sites are using updated website-coding techniques (e.g., CSS 3), and you'll be left on the outside. Besides, Firefox and Safari and wonderful.
• I've created a "Support" menu item—tongue-in-check, that—that houses some link lists, book recommendations, and will be the main location for translations I've done in the past.
• The donation, Cafepress.com, and Squarespace links on the side column are a sign of the economic realities of running (and funding) the site.

More real news posts should follow in short order, now that I've got the site looking more organized. Thanks to all for their suggestions.

Streamed discussion on Aquinas on BBC Radio

With thanks to James South, Chair of Marquette's Philosophy Department, here is a link to a 45-minute long, streamed discussion on Aquinas, from BBC Radio 4. The discussion is led by Melvyn Bragg, and includes Martin Palmer, John Haldane and Annabel Brett. Here is a scrape from the BBC's website:

Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, works and enduring influence of the medieval philosopher and theologian St Thomas Aquinas with Martin Palmer, John Haldane and Annabel Brett.

St Thomas Aquinas' ideas remain at the heart of the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church today and inform philosophical debates on human rights, natural law and what constitutes a 'just war'.

Martin Palmer is Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture; John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews; Annabel Brett is Lecturer in History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Here is a direct link to the streamed discussion.

A downloadable Italian translation of the entire Summa theologiae

Wow. Here’s a link to a downloadable copy of the entire Summa theologiae in Italian, a labor of love by Tito Centi and Angelo Belloni (link to zip file; note: 30 MB).

A scrape from their site:

Il P. Tito Centi, del Convento di S. Domenico di Fiesole, che per ben 28 anni si è accollato quasi per intero la “gioiosa fatica”di tradurre, annotare, introdurre, correggere, redigere l’edizione italiana della Somma Teologica, mentre prende atto con piacere che le nuove edizioni italiane riproducono praticamente la sua, avendo ormai raggiunto la venerabile età di 94 anni ha espresso il desiderio che il frutto delle sue immani fatiche diventi, attraverso la rete informatica internet maggiormente accessibile al grande pubblico senza oneri di sorta. Il sottoscritto si è messo semplicemente a sua disposizione perché tale desiderio diventasse realtà. (P. Angelo Zelio Belloni o.p. – Fiesole)

N.B. Questa edizione integrale on-line non riproduce semplicemente quella pubblicata negli anni 1949-1975 a Firenze, ma è stata radicalmente rivista e modificata soprattutto nelle introduzioni, nella struttura e nei contenuti con apporti originali. Ci scusiamo per eventuali imperfezioni dovute alla trascrizione elettronica di alcune parti e alla dimensione consistente dell’intero documento.

AVVERTENZA: Il testo qui pubblicato é tutelato dai diritti di copyright. E’ consentito l’utilizzo solo per uso privato e personale. E’ quindi assolutamente vietata la riproduzione a fini commerciali con qualsiasi mezzo effettuata nonché la sua diffusione sullo spazio web senza una preventiva autorizzazione da parte nostra.

A mother lode of texts

Are you looking for the a scanned edition of, let's say, Aegidius Romanus' Quodlibeta (Lovanii: Typis Hieronymi Nempaei, 1646) or Durandus a Sancto Porciano's In IV libros Sententiarum (Venezia: Ex Typographia Guerraea, 1571) or—even better—Johannes Capreolus's entire Defensiones theologiae? This is the place to find them (link). Do this quickly, as texts have a tendency to dissappear…