A tribute to Fr Busa, from Stephen Ramsay (repost)

Via Fr. Matthew Lamb of Ave Maria University, who knew Fr Busa in Italy in the 1970’s (and who suggested to Busa the idea of putting the Index Thomisticus on CD-ROM), comes a tribute from Dr. Stephen Ramsay, Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a member of the digital humanities community, who greatly admired Fr. Busa’s work (and had corresponded with him):

(Note: reposted with permission of Dr. Ramsay):

Fr. Roberto Busa, S.J. (1913-2011)

Last night, I learned of the passing of Roberto Busa – a man that many consider the founder of Digital Humanities.

In recent years, people have called that lofty title into question, and not without justice. It seems that Busa was one among the many who were striving to bring computer technology – then in its early infancy – to bear on humanistic problems back in the forties. Like most DH scholars today, he was part of a much wider intellectual network.

But when I was starting out in the field, it was taken more-or-less for granted that Busa had started it all, and it’s not difficult to understand why. He was a Jesuit – a member of that most troublesome of religious orders, universally renowned both for its learning and for its many provocations both theological and disciplinary. His project recalled the ancient roots of the European university itself: a massive concordance to the works of Thomas Aquinas, who was himself a scholar and an intellectual revolutionary. It’s undoubtedly the case that many at the time were thinking of ways to use computers to conduct research in the humanities, but the scale and sweep of Busa’s project stands alone. It’s a story about old becoming new, and yet about continuity with the past.

His 1980 essay “The Annals of Humanities Computing: The Index Thomisticus” used to be required reading of sorts for people starting out, and it’s still my favorite. It’s a personal essay on how the Index came to be. The beginning is unforgettable:

I entered the Jesuit order in 1933. I was then 20. Later my superior asked me: “Would you like to become a professor?”

“In no way!” My wish was to become a missionary to take care of the poor.

“Good. You’ll do it, all the same.”

The subject of Busa’s research – and the occasion for creating the Index – was detailed study of the notion of “presence” in Thomas. Perhaps the New Criticism was taking hold in some other part of the world, but for Busa, philology was the proper hermeneutical framework.

[A]ll functional or grammatical words (which in my mind are not “empty” at all but philosophically rich) manifest the deepest logic of being which generates the basic structures of human discourse. It is this basic logic that allows the transfer from what the words mean today to what they meant to the writer.

The methodology for exploring that logic was clear enough:

According to the scholarly practices, I first searched through tables and subject indexes for the word praesens and praesentia. […] My next step was to write out by hand 10,000 3” X 5” cards, each containing a sentence with the word in or a word connected with in. Grand games of solitaire followed.

Busa himself eschewed the title of founder, and goes out of his way in this essay to list the others whom he thought were far ahead of him. But how can we deny the title to someone who writes:

It was clear to me, however, that to process texts containing more than ten million words, I had to look for some kind of machinery.

(If you’re not ready to do the first ten million by hand, you’re simply not in the good Father’s philological league).

He eventually made his way to IBM. In fact, he made his way to the office of Thomas Watson himself:

I knew, the day I was to meet Thomas J. Watson, Sr., that he had on his desk a report which said that IBM machines could never do what I wanted. I had seen in the waiting room a small poster imprinted with the words, “the difficult we do right away; the impossible takes a little longer,” (IBM always loved slogans). I took it with me into Mr. Watson’s office. Sitting in front of him and sensing the tremendous power of his mind, I was inspired to say: “It is not right to say ‘no’ before you have tried.” I took out the poster and showed him his own slogan. He agreed that IBM would cooperate with my project until it was completed “provided that you do not change IBM into International Busa Machines.” I had already informed him that, because my superiors had given me time, encouragement, their blessings and much holy water, but unfortunately no money, I could recompense IBM in any way except financially. That was providential!

Is it any wonder that Busa became the patron saint of DH? John Unsworth, in a talk a few years ago, noted, “Most disciplines can’t point to a founding moment, much less a divine one.”

(I assume the non-DH-er in that photograph is Pope Paul VI)

And then there’s this:

I feel like a tight-rope walker who has reached the other end. It seems to me like Providence. Since man is a child of God and the technology is a child of man, I think that God regards technology the way a grandfather regards his grandchild. And for me personally, it is satisfying to realize that I have taken seriously my service to linguistic research.

Those words, written thirty years ago, are of a man who intends to live long and well.

And he did.

Roberto Busa SJ (1913-2011)

Father Roberto Busa SJ died on Tuesday, 9 August 2011, at the Aloisianum, the Institute of Gallarate (Varese, Italy). L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, aptly introduced its obituary with the headline: “Stop the reader, Fr. Busa has died”, highlighting his enormous achievements in the area of computer technology : “If you surf the Internet, it is thanks to him. If you jump from one site to another, clicking on links highlighted in blue, it is thanks to him. If you use a pc to write emails and documents, it is thanks to him. If you can read this article, it is thanks to him.” Other obituaries appeared here, here and here. We, who so easily use the online edition of the Corpus Thomisticum and the Index Thomisticus, would do well to recall how this gigantic work started in 1949! Father Busa tells his story in the foreword of A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.

Bonnetty, Aquinas, and Rationalism

Aquinas has been accused at sundry times by sundry people of sundry forms of rationalism, something that continues to this day. I can understand this to a certain extent even if I think that it is misguided. 

Among those who have leveled this accusation at Aquinas appears to be Augustin Bonnetty, a nineteenth century French philosopher and theologian and founder and editor of the journal Annales de philosophie chrétienne. Bonnetty, a layman, was an exponent of “traditionalism” (not to be confused, of course, with the traditionalism we talk of today with respect to critics of certain aspects of the post-Vatican II Church), a kind of fideistic approach to the truths of the faith. Traditionalism was one of the theological movements that Vatican I attempted to deal with in its decrees. 

After the archbishop of Paris had expressed concerns about Bonnetty’s ideas to the Congregation of the Index in Rome, he was asked by that congregation in 1855 to endorse four theological propositions with his signature. The fourth proposition was the following, which I came across while doing research for a paper on natural theology not long ago: 

Methodus, qua usi sunt divus Thomas, divus Bonaventura et alii post ipsos scholastici, non ad rationalismum ducit, neque causa fuit, cur apud scholas hodiernas philosophia in naturalismum et pantheismum impingeret. Proinde non licet in crimen doctoribus et magistris illis vertere, quod methodum hanc, praesertim approbante vel saltem tacente Ecclesia, usurpaverint. 

[The method used by St. Thomas, by St. Bonaventure, and, after them, by other scholastics, does not lead to rationalism, nor does it explain why, in modern schools, philosophy should fall into naturalism and pantheism. Hence these doctors and masters cannot be reproached for using that method, especially with the approval, at least tacit, of the Church.] 

It is surprising to see Bonaventure also suspected of rationalism since it is often the case that those who regard Aquinas as a rationalist of some variety, or as having strong rationalist tendencies, praise Bonaventure’s supposedly more affective and mystical theology as an alternative.

[A version of this post appeared in May on my now defunct blog “the end of the modern world, etc.”]

American Catholic Philosophical Association Annual Meeting on “Science, Reason and Religion” (October 28-30, 2011)

This year the ACPA meeting will be in St. Louis, on the theme “Science, Reason and Religion,” hosted by St. Louis University. The conference program and satellite session schedule are now online. The Aquinas Medal will be awarded to Jorge J. E. Gracia, who will present “Does Philosophy Have a Role to Play in Contemporary Society? The Challenges of Science and Culture.” The four plenary speakers are: 

• John Cottingham, “Confronting the Cosmos: Scientific Rationality and Human Understanding.”
• Michael Ruse, “Making Room for Faith: Does Science Have Limits?”
• John F. Haught, “Darwin, Faith and Critical Intelligence.”
• Dominic J. Balestra, “Galileo’s Legacy: Getting the Relationship In-Between Scientism and Literalism Right.” 

As usual, there will be several talks on the philosophical thought of Aquinas in the program and satellite sessions. Registration information for the conference can be found here.

A calling card from Tommaso Zigliara, OP

Got a neat e-mail and attachment from Martin Walter, who a few years back provided us with some stunning pictures, and who helped the entire Thomistic community by editing John of St. Thomas’s Cursus philosophicus. It turns out that he recently bought vol. 1 of the Leonine Edition (dating from 1882), which contained Thomas’s commentaries on Aristotle’s De intepretatione and on the Posterior Analytics—both of these editions were re-edited in 1989 as Leonine 1*/1 and 1*/2. The first tomus was published under the general editorship of Tommaso Zigliara, OP.

But Walter turned out to have purchased not just any old copy of the original volume 1 of the Leonine edition, for on the inside, on page 2, there is a well-wrought inscription that tells a story:

Here’s a transcription, followed by a translation:

Hic primus tomus operum Sancti Thomae Aquinatis
ad cujus editionem operam contulerunt
Reverendus Pater Albertus Hoogland et Reverendus Pater Constantius
Suermondt e provincia nostra Romam
accersili, Bibliotecae nostrae in Conven-
tu Huisensi dono datus est ab
Eminente Fratre Thoma Zigliara
Ordinis Praedicatorum
Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinali.

This first tome of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas,
toward whose publication Rev. Father Albertus Hoogland and Rev. Father Constantius Suermondt contributed (summoned to Rome from our province), was given as a gift to our library in the convent in Huissen by <his> eminence, Brother Tommaso Zigliara of the Order of the Preachers, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church.

Both Frs Hoogland and Suermondt came from the Dominican Convent in Huissen, which seems to be the provenance of the book that Martin Walter bought. Which of course raises the question, “why did a Dominican convent part with a prized copy of a work by Thomas Aquinas?” That’s another investigation—Walter tells me that the book had multiple owners, at one point being owned by an Oratory.

Thanks to Martin Walter for sharing this interesting discovery. Zigliara should not be forgotten.

PS: Zigliara was not merely the general editor of the first edition of Thomas’s Commentary on the Posterior Analytics. He was also the author of careful annotations on Thomas’s text (i.e., made a commentary on Thomas’s commentary). Fr. James Weisheipl, in his own handbook on this key Aristotelian text (and Thomas’s commentary), singles out Zigliara’s fine treatment of how we are able to apprehend the essential forms of things through the senses (see Thomas, In II. Post., lect 13, no. 7 [Marietti edition]), and Zigliara’s notes (Leonine volume 1, p. 375 cols. a-b).

Benedict XVI on Albert the Great: “He still has a lot to teach us”

Below is an excerpt from Benedict XVI’s appreciative and enthusiastic commendation of St. Albert’s manifold accomplishments in philosophy, theology, and science.  These comments were delivered at the General Audience held on March 24^th, 2010.

….

He still has a lot to teach us. Above all, St Albert shows that there is no opposition between faith and science, despite certain episodes of misunderstanding that have been recorded in history. A man of faith and prayer, as was St Albert the Great, can serenely foster the study of the natural sciences and progress in knowledge of the micro- and macrocosm, discovering the laws proper to the subject, since all this contributes to fostering thirst for and love of God. The Bible speaks to us of creation as of the first language through which God who is supreme intelligence, who is the Logos reveals to us something of himself. The Book of Wisdom, for example, says that the phenomena of nature, endowed with greatness and beauty, is like the works of an artist through which, by analogy, we may know the Author of creation (cf. Wis 13: 5). With a classical similitude in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance one can compare the natural world to a book written by God that we read according to the different approaches of the sciences (cf. Address to the participants in the Plenary Meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 31 October 2008; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, 5 November 2008, p. 6). How many scientists, in fact, in the wake of St Albert the Great, have carried on their research inspired by wonder at and gratitude for a world which, to their eyes as scholars and believers, appeared and appears as the good work of a wise and loving Creator! Scientific study is then transformed into a hymn of praise. Enrico Medi, a great astrophysicist of our time, whose cause of beatification has been introduced, wrote: “O you mysterious galaxies… I see you, I calculate you, I understand you, I study you and I discover you, I penetrate you and I gather you. From you I take light and make it knowledge, I take movement and make it wisdom, I take sparkling colours and make them poetry; I take you stars in my hands and, trembling in the oneness of my being, I raise you above yourselves and offer you in prayer to the Creator, that through me alone you stars can worship” (Le Opere. Inno alla creazione).

St Albert the Great reminds us that there is friendship between science and faith and that through their vocation to the study of nature, scientists can take an authentic and fascinating path of holiness.

His extraordinary openmindedness is also revealed in a cultural feat which he carried out successfully, that is, the acceptance and appreciation of Aristotle’s thought. In St Albert’s time, in fact, knowledge was spreading of numerous works by this great Greek philosopher, who lived a quarter of a century before Christ, especially in the sphere of ethics and metaphysics. They showed the power of reason, explained lucidly and clearly the meaning and structure of reality, its intelligibility and the value and purpose of human actions. St Albert the Great opened the door to the complete acceptance in medieval philosophy and theology of Aristotle’s philosophy, which was subsequently given a definitive form by St Thomas. This reception of a pagan pre-Christian philosophy, let us say, was an authentic cultural revolution in that epoch. Yet many Christian thinkers feared Aristotle’s philosophy, a non-Christian philosophy, especially because, presented by his Arab commentators, it had been interpreted in such a way, at least in certain points, as to appear completely irreconcilable with the Christian faith. Hence a dilemma arose: are faith and reason in conflict with each other or not?

This is one of the great merits of St Albert: with scientific rigour he studied Aristotle’s works, convinced that all that is truly rational is compatible with the faith revealed in the Sacred Scriptures. In other words, St Albert the Great thus contributed to the formation of an autonomous philosophy, distinct from theology and united with it only by the unity of the truth. So it was that in the 13th century a clear distinction came into being between these two branches of knowledge, philosophy and theology, which, in conversing with each other, cooperate harmoniously in the discovery of the authentic vocation of man, thirsting for truth and happiness: and it is above all theology, that St Albert defined as “emotional knowledge”, which points out to human beings their vocation to eternal joy, a joy that flows from full adherence to the truth.

St Albert the Great was capable of communicating these concepts in a simple and understandable way. An authentic son of St Dominic, he willingly preached to the People of God, who were won over by his words and by the example of his life.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us pray the Lord that learned theologians will never be lacking in holy Church, wise and devout like St Albert the Great, and that he may help each one of us to make our own the “formula of holiness” that he followed in his life: “to desire all that I desire for the glory of God, as God desires for his glory all that he desires”, in other words always to be conformed to God’s will, in order to desire and to do everything only and always for his glory.

Interesting News from Northern Colorado

I assume that few of our readers have ever tried out for a job as a sports announcer. I could be wrong.

But suppose you were in this situation and were asked just to make up a narrative on the spot of an imaginary athletic event. What might be some names of players that you might make up as you’re calling this imaginary game? Joe DiMaggio, Hank Aaron, Ty Cobb are names that might come to mind if you’re a baseball fan like me. Football fans might think of names like Roger Staubach or Lynn Swann I suppose.

A couple weeks ago the University of Northern Colorado held tryouts for a new public address announcer. Apparently one of the hopefuls for the position, Arnie Guin, was asked to do exactly what I just mentioned, call an imaginary game. What was the first name that came to Mr. Guin’s mind as he was trying to show off his stuff?

Thomas Aquinas.

Who would have thought? Perhaps no one was more surprised by the name of Mr. Guin’s imaginary athlete than Mr. Guin himself. Below is an excerpt from an article on the tryouts at UNC published in the Greeley Tribune, the local paper.

Even Arnie Guin couldn’t believe he said it as the words came tumbling off his tongue.

“And that was a 45-yard touchdown run from Thomas Aquinas,” echoed the voice of Guin through an empty Nottingham Field on Thursday.

Yes, the same St. Thomas Aquinas that was a renowned theologian and philosopher in the 13th century. It just happened to be the first name that popped into Guin’s mind as he participated in an open tryout to be the next voice of the University of Northern Colorado Bears.

UNC held the open tryouts Thursday for a public address announcer at UNC sporting events this season. Although only three participants showed up for the tryouts, they exuded tons of energy and enthusiasm as they tried out for the job by reading a prepared script by the UNC marketing department and then getting a chance to do their own little ad-lib at the end to show off their own unique style.

Guin, 45, rolled through the script like a veteran, but when it came to the ad-lib on the touchdown call, the only name he could think of was that of Aquinas.

“Right after I said it was one of those ‘Oh, no, where did that come from,” Guin said.

Actually, it made perfect sense when you consider that Guin is the campus pastor for Dayspring Christian Academy. His son, Seth, a basketball player at Dayspring Christian Academy saw the announcement for the tryouts while searching for UNC basketball season tickets online and encouraged his dad to try out.

Call for Papers: International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 10-13, 2012)

The call for papers is out for the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI. This year’s conference will be held May 10-13, 2012. Planned sessions on Aquinas are: 

• Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas
• Thomas Aquinas
• Faith and Certainty: Augustine and Aquinas on the Adequacy of Faith in Understanding God in This Life 

Other notable sessions include: 

• New Trends in Medieval Franciscan Thought: Bonaventure’s Epistemology and Aesthetics
• Natural Law and Political Thought
• Natural Law and Moral Philosophy
• Boethius and the Liberal Arts
• The Philosophy and Theology of Nicholas of Cusa
• Contingency and Necessity in Medieval Philosophy
• Veniat Pax: Gerson and His Contemporaries on War and Peace 

The submission deadline for paper proposals is September 15^th. And, as always, a large assortment of booksellers and publishers will be at the conference.

Aquinas, One of the Greatest Philosophers Ever?

In a “non-scientific” poll asking about the greatest philosopher in history, conducted six years ago by the BBC Radio 4 program “In Our Time,” which features academic discussions of famous people and ideas, Aquinas placed #7 overall.

It looks like Aquinas has come a long way since the time when modern historians of philosophy (e.g., Émile Bréhier) claimed that no philosophy was done in the Middle Ages (or, if it was, that it wasn’t worth remembering) and that there was a yawning chasm between the Greeks and Descartes.

Here are the top ten great philosophers according to the BBC poll results:

1. Karl Marx
2. David Hume
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein
4. Friedrich Nietzsche
5. Plato
6. Immanuel Kant
7. St. Thomas Aquinas
8. Socrates
9. Aristotle
10. Karl Popper 

Marx won by a landslide, receiving 27.93% of the vote. Aquinas only received 4.83% of the vote. Still, considering that this was probably a largely secular audience (not to mention non-Catholic), it is surprising that Aquinas even made the top ten. Moreover, there were a number of other philosophers nominated, who ranked lower than Aquinas. When the voting was finished, Aquinas had beat Socrates, Aristotle, Popper, Descartes, Epicurus, Heidegger, Hobbes, Kierkegaard, Mill, Russell, Sartre, Schopenhauer, and Spinoza. That’s pretty impressive for a pious primitive from the Dark Ages.

I don’t recall this poll getting much press at the time. Well, I suppose that’s not surprising. Philosophers don’t make the news much. It’s probably not unusual, then, that some non-scientific poll by the BBC about philosophers didn’t really cause a stir. So, I’ve taken it upon myself to generate a bit more press for this five-year-old poll. I imagine that the results would not be too different if the poll were taken again today.

There was also an episode on Aquinas originally broadcast by “In Our Time” on Sept. 17, 2009, with John Haldane, Martin Palmer, and Annabel Brett. You can listen to it here. It must be said, however, that Palmer and Brett are not the best guides to Aquinas. Haldane isn’t bad even if in this context his approach to Aquinas has to be introductory.

“In Our Time” generally deals with interesting topics and often has well-informed guests. It’s worth having a look at the old broadcasts in the program archive.

[A version of this post appeared last October on my now defunct blog “the end of the modern world, etc.”]

Aquinas the Italian

French-speaking authors dominated the Thomism of the 20th century and, although they continue to be a major force in the first decade of the 21st century, other language and national groups are also emerging as important players.

What of these other Thomists? What are their histories and prospects? With respect to these questions it would seem quite natural to ask first about the Thomism of Aquinas’s native land. Is Italian Thomism alive and well? What do we know of its history post-13th century?

Obviously I’m not going to try to answer these huge questions in a single post. But I think they would be good questions to delve into over a series of posts. In the present remarks we might begin a little closer to our own time.

Among 20th century Italian Thomists, the Stigmatine father Cornelio Fabro was undoubtedly the most prominent. He pioneered the study of participation in Aquinas, publishing La nozione metafisica di partecipazione secondo s. Tommaso d’Aquino in 1939.

                                                      

But Fabro was not only an exegete of Aquinas. He also penned numerous articles on Kierkegaard along with articles on other major philosophical figures, mostly modern, such as Hegel, Marx, Sartre, and Heidegger.

Nor was Fabro a mere historian. He pursued speculative questions too, especially metaphysical ones, and dealt with contemporary issues like atheism — indeed, as far as I know (readers, please correct me if I’m wrong), his only book translated in English is God in Exile: Modern Atheism, brought out by the Newman Press in 1968.

The Institute of the Incarnate Word has undertaken the project of publishing critical editions of Fabro’s opera omnia and generally promoting his work. They have an excellent and extensive website dedicated to Fabro. Unfortunately for non-Italophones, the site is entirely in lingua italiana.

One of the resources on the site is a collection of Fabro’s aphorisms compiled by his secretary Sr. Rosa Goglia. The first one is a gem (as I suspect are many of the others):

In fondo all’uomo c’è sempre l’Ulisse eterno che cerca nuovi approdi.

Roughly translated: “In man’s depths there is always the eternal Ulysses who seeks new shores.”

Benedict XVI on the enduring value of Peter Lombard

Below are two interesting excerpts from a General Audience (December 30^th, 2009) of Benedict XVI reflecting on the life and work of Peter Lombard.  In this audience Benedict highlights several aspects of The Lombard’s famous work, The Sentences, which are particularly important contributions to the history of theology.

Like all theology teachers of his time, Peter also wrote discourses and commentaries on Sacred Scripture. His masterpiece, however, consists of the four Books of the Sentences. This is a text which came into being for didactic purposes. According to the theological method in use in those times, it was necessary first of all to know, study and comment on the thought of the Fathers of the Church and of the other writers deemed authoritative. Peter therefore collected a very considerable amount of documentation, which consisted mainly of the teachings of the great Latin Fathers, especially St Augustine, and was open to the contribution of contemporary theologians. Among other things, he also used an encyclopedia of Greek theology which had only recently become known to the West: The Orthodox faith, composed by St John Damascene. The great merit of Peter Lombard is to have organized all the material that he had collected and chosen with care, in a systematic and harmonious framework. In fact one of the features of theology is to organize the patrimony of faith in a unitive and orderly way. Thus he distributed the sentences, that is, the Patristic sources on various arguments, in four books. In the first book he addresses God and the Trinitarian mystery; in the second, the work of the Creation, sin and Grace; in the third, the Mystery of the Incarnation and the work of Redemption with an extensive exposition on the virtues. The fourth book is dedicated to the sacraments and to the last realities, those of eternal life, or Novissimi. The overall view presented includes almost all the truths of the Catholic faith. The concise, clear vision and clear, orderly schematic and ever consistent presentation explain the extraordinary success of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. They enabled students to learn reliably and gave the educators and teachers who used them plenty of room for acquiring deeper knowledge. A Franciscan theologian, Alexandre of Hales, of the next generation, introduced into the Sentences a division that facilitated their study and consultation. Even the greatest of the 13th-century theologians, Albert the Great, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and Thomas Aquinas began their academic activity by commenting on the four books of Peter Lombard’s Sentences, enriching them with their reflections. Lombard’s text was the book in use at all schools of theology until the 16th century.

…

Among the most important contributions offered by Peter Lombard to the history of theology, I would like to recall his treatise on the sacraments, of which he gave what I would call a definitive definition: “precisely what is a sign of God’s grace and a visible form of invisible grace, in such a way that it bears its image and is its cause is called a sacrament in the proper sense” (4, 1, 4). With this definition Peter Lombard grasps the essence of the sacraments: they are a cause of grace, they are truly able to communicate divine life. Successive theologians never again departed from this vision and were also to use the distinction between the material and the formal element introduced by the “Master of the Sentences”, as Peter Lombard was known. The material element is the tangible visible reality, the formal element consists of the words spoken by the minister. For a complete and valid celebration of the sacraments both are essential: matter, the reality with which the Lord visibly touches us and the word that conveys the spiritual significance. In Baptism, for example, the material element is the water that is poured on the head of the child and the formal element is the formula: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. Peter the Lombard, moreover, explained that the sacraments alone objectively transmit divine grace and they are seven: Baptism, the Eucharist, Penance, the Unction of the sick, Orders and Matrimony (cf. Sentences 4, 2, 1).

A new and welcome edition of Aquinas' "De Unione Verbi Incarnati" is now available

Students and scholars interested in Medieval Christology, Aquinas’ theology of the hypostatic union, and the hotly debated question of Christ’s esse will welcome the new volume prepared by Prof. Klaus Obenauer of the University of Bonn. Thomas von Aquin: Quaestio disputata ›De unione Verbi incarnati‹ (Frommann-holzboog: 2011, ISBN: 978-3-7728-2563-7) includes a new critical Latin text prepared by Walter Senner, Barbara Bartocci, and Obenauer, as well as a German translation and a formidable 500+ page commentary by Prof. Obenauer.

The Leonine Commission has yet to prepare its own edition of the De Unione so the critical Latin text alone—not to mention the massive commentary—makes this volume a noteworthy contribution to Medieval and Thomistic studies.

My own initial examination indicates a number of interesting and (at times) substantial differences between the new critical text and the text used in the Marietti edition. In case any of you are curious: the oft-quoted and frequently debated “esse secundarium” remains in the body of the fourth article.

http://www.frommann-holzboog.de/site/index_neuerscheinungen.php