Bonaventure, the German Dominicans and the new translations
Bonaventure, the German Dominicans and the new translations
John Marenbon
As the previous chapter has illustrated, even in the first half of the
thirteenth century the outlook of thinkers was much affected by the
newly available translations of Aristotle and of Arabic commentaries
and treatises.1 By the mid-1250s, the arts course in Paris included almost
the whole body of Aristotle’s works and, within a couple of decades,
nearly all the translations from the Greek and Arabic which would be
used in the medieval universities were already available. The three
leading theologians of this generation are the Dominicans, Thomas
Aquinas and his teacher, Albert the Great, and the Franciscan,
Bonaventure.2 As philosophers, it may be argued, they form an unequal
triumvirate. Aquinas is, by almost any account, among the greatest
philosophers of his, or any, period; the next chapter will be devoted to
him. Neither Bonaventure nor Albert came near to his ability at devising
and interlinking, on a wide variety of philosophical questions, clear
and powerful arguments which modern philosophers still find it
worthwhile to scrutinize. Each, however, developed a range of distinctive
positions. They include striking views on the nature of philosophy and
its relation to their Work as theologians; and, in Albert’s case at least,
these were adapted (and ultimately transformed) by a school of
followers. It is these views on which the present, brief discussion will
concentrate. But first some further details about the new translations
are necessary, since they provide the background both to the thinking
of Bonaventure and Albert, and to the work which all the following
chapters will be examining.
THE TRANSLATIONS
Aristotle, the old textbooks used to say, reached the West through the
Arabs. Literally, this statement is false. For the most part, Aristotle reached
Western scholars in direct translations from the Greek: Boethius’
translations of nearly all the logic (which became available gradually
from the ninth to the twelfth centuries); James of Venice’s versions (c.
1130–50) of the Posterior Analytics, Physics, On the Soul, some shorter
scientific works; other twelfth-century translations of On Generation
and Corruption and the Physics. As for the Ethics and the Metaphysics,
there was a twelfth-century version of Nicomachean Ethics II and III
(known as the ‘Old Ethics’); the whole work was translated early in the
thirteenth century, though only Book I (known as the ‘New Ethics’)
circulated; and then (c. 1246–7) Robert Grosseteste and his assistants
made a new translation of the whole work (they also translated part of
On the Heavens). James of Venice translated Metaphysics I–III and part
of IV; an early thirteenth-century revision of this translation, conflated
with the unrevised text, formed the ‘Old Metaphysics’, whilst a twelfthcentury
translation of the whole work except Book XI was known as
the ‘Middle Metaphysics’ (it seems not to have been used until the midthirteenth
century). Finally, between 1260 and 1280 William of Moerbeke
revised or retranslated almost all Aristotle’s works, as well as making
the Politics and Poetics available for the first time. William’s translations
became standard, except for the logic, for which Boethius’ translations
(and, for the Posterior Analytics, James of Venice’s) were generally used.3
But there is, none the less, an important element of truth in the idea
of ‘Aristotle through the Arabs’. Some translations were made from
the Arabic: for example those of Gerard of Cremona, who worked in
Toledo, of the Posterior Analytics, Physics and some of the scientific
works. A version of the Metaphysics (the ‘New Metaphysics’; Book I,
minus beginning, to X and most of XII) translated from the lemmata
of Averroes’ commentary was used in the early to mid-thirteenth
century.4 More important, Aristotle’s non-logical works reached the
West along with (or preceded by) a corpus of commentary by Arabic
philosophers. In mid-twelfth-century Toledo, Dominic Gundissalinus,
a canon of the cathedral there, helped by Arabic-speaking assistants,
translated parts—including those corresponding to On the Soul and
the Metaphysics—of Ibn Sina’s (Avicenna’s) paraphrase-commentary
of Aristotle, the Shifā’ (Book of Healing); further sections were
translated late in the thirteenth century.5 In the 1220s in Sicily, Michael
Scotus translated a number of commentaries by Ibn Rushd (Averroes),
including the ‘great’ commentaries (full-scale, detailed sentence by
sentence discussions) on On the Soul, the Physics, Metaphysics and
On the Heavens. Averroes’ shorter ‘middle’ commentaries to a variety
of Aristotle’s works, including the logic, On Generation and Corruption
and Nicomachean Ethics, were translated either by Scotus, or a little
later by others. All these commentaries profoundly affected the ways
Western thinkers read Aristotle. In addition, the Toledan translators of
the twelfth century made Latin versions of various works by al-Kindī
and al-Fārābī, more or less connected with Aristotle, as well as al-
Ghazzālī’s Intentions of the Philosophers.
Plato did not benefit directly from this busy period of translation.
Although Henry Aristippus made Latin versions of the Meno and
Phaedo in Sicily shortly before 1150, they hardly circulated, so the
Timaeus in Calcidius’ incomplete translation remained the one text by
Plato himself well known in the Middle Ages.6 A good deal of
Neoplatonic material, however, became available, partly in the
commentaries and other works related to Aristotle, because the Arab
philosophical tradition before Averroes was heavily influenced by
Neoplatonism in its approach to Aristotle, and also more directly: an
Arabic adaptation of some of Proclus’ Elements of Theology was
translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona as the Book about Causes
(Liber de causis) and adopted into the Aristotelian curriculum (see
below, pp. 230–1); later, William of Moerbeke translated the whole of
the Elements of Theology directly from the Greek.
Jewish philosophy was also translated. The Toledan translators put
into Latin Isaac Israeli’s Book on Definitions and Solomon ibn Gabirol’s
(‘Avicebron’ or ‘Avencebrol’) Fountain of Life. Maimonides’ great
Guide of the Perplexed was put into Latin in the 1220s, from the
Hebrew translation of Judah al-Harisi (see [10.32]).
BONAVENTURE
John of Fidanza, known as Bonaventure, was born c. 1217. He studied
arts in Paris from 1234 or 1235 until 1243. He then joined the
Franciscans and studied theology, also in Paris, where he was taught
by Alexander of Hales, the first of the Franciscan masters of theology.
Bonaventure himself held the Franciscan chair from 1253 to 1255. In
1257 he was elected Minister General of his Order, but he still
maintained close contacts with the university and continued his
theological writing up until nearly the time of his death in 1274. Among
his most important works are his commentary on the Sentences (1250–
5), a systematic textbook of theology called the Breviloquium, the brief
Journey of the Mind towards God (1259) which expresses in a concise
personal style many of his central ideas, and the sets of university
sermons (Collationes) he gave in his last years, especially those on the
Work of the Six Days (Hexaemeron), from 1273.
Bonaventure knew many of the newly translated texts and
commentaries well. Theology, as he and his contemporaries
recognized it, was a discipline which used arguments. Aristotelian
logic had long been regarded as one of the theologian’s essential
argumentative tools, and by the 1250s the terminology and concepts
of Aristotle’s metaphysics and natural science were also
indispensable. Bonaventure used this intellectual equipment, but his
commitment to argument and conceptual analysis was far weaker
than Aquinas’, nor did he share much of Aquinas’ belief that, on
many questions, a full and accurate grasp of Aristotle’s views was the
best way to the right answer. Not surprisingly, then, he tended to
adapt Aristotelian positions and combine them with others in the
ways which best suited his overriding theological aims. For example,
he accepted a roughly Aristotelian account of sense-cognition as the
first stage of his theory of knowledge, but insisted that for knowledge
of the truth direct divine illumination was required. Aristotle’s theory
of matter and form became, for Bonaventure (perhaps influenced by
Solomon ibn Gabirol, see p. 75), a doctrine of universal
hylomorphism. Everything, with the sole exception of God, is a
composite of matter and form. Human body and human intellective
soul are not, therefore, related—as in Aristotle, and Aquinas—as
matter to form, but as matter—form composite to matter—form
composite; a position which may be less satisfying than Aristotle’s
intellectually but fits well with Christian belief about individual
immortality. The difference between Bonaventure and Aquinas is
particularly pointed on the question of the eternity of the universe.
This view, clearly contrary to Christian belief, was (rightly)
recognized by many at the time to have been Aristotle’s—though
there were also doubts about the attribution. Aquinas insisted that,
although ‘the universe is not eternal’ is a truth known by faith, it
cannot be demonstrated; towards the end of his life, indeed, he
argued that God could have created an eternal universe had he so
chosen. By contrast, Bonaventure thought that he could
demonstrate—using arguments based on Aristotle’s own views about
the infinite—that the universe is not and could not have been eternal.7
One of Aristotle’s special failings, in Bonaventure’s view, was his
rejection of Platonic Ideas. In using the Ideas—considered, in the usual
way since patristic times, as being in the mind of God—as a way of
explaining the relationship between the creator and the universe,
Bonaventure was merely doing the same as almost every other
thirteenth-century theologian, Aquinas included. He was exceptional,
however, in the weight he gave to explaining exemplarism which, along
with the discussion of creation and divine illumination, he held
constituted the whole of true metaphysics. This emphasis reveals the
underlying direction of his thought. We reach the divine exemplars,
and through them, God, by seeking in all things that which they
exemplify. For Bonaventure, the main task of a Christian thinker is
not so much to argue or analyse (though sometimes this is necessary)
as to learn how to read creation, finding in it the hidden patterns and
resemblances which lead back to God. We have been provided, he
says, with a threefold aid for reaching ‘the exemplary reasons’ of things:
sensibly-perceptible creation, where God has left his traces (vestigia);
man’s soul, which is made in the image of God; and Scripture, with its
riches of inner meaning.
In The Journey of the Mind, Bonaventure develops this way of
thinking in the most explicit way. The universe is ‘a ladder for climbing
to God’: we must ascend through the traces of God, which we find in
what is bodily, temporal and outside us, through the image of God,
which we find within our immortal, spiritual selves, and finally raise
ourselves to the eternal being. To these three stages correspond the
threefold existence of things: in matter, in understanding and in God’s
mind, and Christ’s threefold substance, bodily, spiritual and divine (I,
2–3). Each stage, however, is itself divided in two, for in each we can
find God either through his mirror or in his mirror. The six steps yielded
by this multiplication correspond to six powers of our soul: sense,
imagination, reason, intellect (intellectus), intelligence (intelligentia) and
the ‘summit of the mind’ or ‘spark of synderesis’. Bonaventure also
provides various scriptural parallels: the six days of creation, the six
steps of Solomon’s throne, the six wings of the Seraphim seen by Isaiah,
the six days after which God called Moses from the midst of darkness
and the six days after which Christ summoned his disciples on the
mountain where he was transfigured (I, 5–6). This elaborate set of
parallels and analogies is itself merely the framework for the analogies
which make up each of the individual steps. So, for example, the fourth
stage of ascent—contemplating God in his image—involves considering
the Trinity in the image of man reformed by grace, his soul purified,
illumined and perfected by the three theological virtues of faith, hope
and charity. ‘Hierarchized’ in this way, the human spirit is compared
to the hierarchy of angels (three groups of three), and a parallel is
drawn between the three laws (of nature, of the Old Testament and of
grace) and the three senses of Scripture, moral, allegorical and
anagogical, which purify, illumine and perfect (IV, 1–6).
All the great Franciscan theologians of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries looked back to Bonaventure with respect, and often his
positions influenced their discussions of individual questions. But they
did not share his fondness for reading signs and elaborating patterns
as opposed to constructing and criticizing arguments; and it is on this
point of difference, rather than on any of the intellectual debts they
owed to the founder of their tradition, that depends their importance
as philosophers.
ALBERT THE GREAT
Born in Swabia at the turn of the thirteenth century (1193, c. 1200,
1206–7 have been suggested), Albert died in extreme old age in 1280,
outliving by six years his most famous pupil, Thomas Aquinas. After
studying in Italy and Germany, and joining the Dominicans, he was a
master of theology in Paris from 1245 to 1248 and then taught theology
at Cologne until he became provincial of the German Dominicans
(1254–7). Although he had no fixed teaching position after this, Albert
continued his work on natural science, philosophy and theology with
great energy until after 1270. His writings are among the most
voluminous of any medieval thinker. They include, among many others,
two comprehensive theological textbooks, a commentary on the
Sentences completed in 1249, long paraphrase commentaries (in the
manner of Avicenna) on many of Aristotle’s works, including On the
Soul (c. 1254–7), the Ethics (1252–3) and the Metaphysics (1263–7),
a work On the Causes and Procession of the Universe based on the
Book about Causes and on al-Ghazzālī (after 1263) and commentaries
on pseudo-Dionysius (some, at least, written between 1248 and 1250).
As even this bare list indicates, Albert’s attitude to the translations
of Aristotle and of the related Arab material was, quite unlike
Bonaventure’s, one of unrestrained enthusiasm. Historians have indeed
been agreed in giving him a central role in making Aristotle the supreme
human authority for university theologians. Yet a glance at his
Aristotelian commentaries shows that Albert’s Aristotelianism is mixed
with a host of characteristically Neoplatonic themes and views, and
this—combined with the variety of his interests and works—has led to
the impression that Albert was a muddled writer, overwhelmed by the
mass of new material and unable to resolve the incompatible positions
of his various sources or reach any coherent theories of his own. Thanks
to Alain de Libera, however, it is now clear that, at least in one main
aspect of his work, Albert is putting forward a bold and clear view, not
so much about any individual problem in philosophy as about the
nature and aim of the very practice of philosophizing.8
For Albert, Aristotelian metaphysics, the study of being, needed to
be complemented and completed by an Aristotelian theology, the study
of God. Albert found his Aristotelian theology in the Book about Causes
which he took, along with his contemporaries, to be a work by Aristotle
himself. When, late in Albert’s life, Thomas Aquinas, using William of
Moerbeke’s translation of Proclus’ Elements of Theology, showed that
the Book about Causes was an adaptation of this Neoplatonic work,
Albert took no notice. No wonder—for, had he done so, he would
have had to give up the claim which runs through his life’s work that
he is expounding what he calls the ‘peripatetic’ position. Albert’s
peripateticism, then, builds on Aristotle, on the Book about Causes
and on Avicenna’s interpretation of Aristotle, which posits a hierarchy
of Intelligences, each lower Intelligence emanating from the higher.
Albert adapts these models, however, striving to maintain an absolute
distinction between God, who is the being of all things only in so far as
he is the cause of their being, and his creation, and to avoid any
implication that the universe emanates eternally from God—a view
which could not fit the Christian doctrine, which Albert accepted, of a
created universe with a beginning.
Through our intellects, Albert believed, even in the present life we
belong to the hierarchy of Intelligences. Here Albert both used and
broke with his Arab mentors. Avicenna had identified the lowest of
the Intelligences with the active intellect which Aristotle had mentioned
briefly in On the Soul as being necessary if the potential intellect
(intellectus possibilis), in itself purely receptive, is to be able to think.
Averroes, in the view of Albert and all his Latin interpreters from the
1250s onwards, had gone even further and supposed that there was
only one potential intellect for all men. Avicenna’s position could easily
be adapted to Christianity by taking the active intellect as God himself;
Averroes’, which precluded individual immortality, could not. Albert,
however, holds that each human has its own individual active and
potential intellect; like Bonaventure and Aquinas, he attacks the
Averroist theory of a single intellect for all men; and yet he also proclaims
his closeness to Averroes’ theories about the intellect. These positions
are not, as they might seem, in conflict with one another. Albert, like
Averroes, held that human thought involves contact with an eternal,
single intellect. But he considered that this came about through each
human’s individual agent intellect which was itself an emanation from
the single, separate agent intellect. We engage in thought through the
joining of our individual agent intellects to our individual potential
intellects, which are predisposed to receive intelligible forms in the
same way as our senses are predisposed to receive sensory ones. The
conjunction is not a simple matter. Although the agent intellect is part
of our soul, and in this sense is joined to it, the conjunction Albert has
in mind is of its ‘light, by which it activates the things understood’ to
the potential intellect.
By describing how this conjunction takes place, Albert sketches a
view of the highest human happiness, which it is for philosophers to
achieve ([10.49] III: 221–3). He bases himself on Aristotle’s comments
in Nicomachean Ethics X about theoretical contemplation as the best
life for man. We can engage in intellectual speculation in two ways, he
explains: through thinking the self-evident truths which we know
simply by thinking of them, and through what we choose to learn by
investigating and by listening to those who are learned. In both routes,
we grasp intelligibles only because our agent intellect makes them
intelligible, and ‘in making them actually understood, the agent
intellect is joined to us as an efficient cause’. What we are
contemplating in this process, Albert believes, are not—as the
description so far might suggest—eternal truths, but separate
substances. The more our potential intellect is filled with these
intelligibles, the more it comes to resemble the agent intellect, and
when it has been filled with every intelligible thing, the light of the
agent intellect has become the form to its matter, and the composite
of agent and potential intellect is called the ‘adopted’ (adeptus) or
divine intellect: ‘and then the man has been perfected to carry out the
work which is his work in so far as he is man—to contemplate
perfectly through himself and grasp in thought the separate substances’
([10.49] III: 222:6–9). ‘This state of adopted intellect’, Albert adds, ‘is
wonderful and best, for through it a man becomes in a certain way
like God, because in this way he can activate divine things and bestow
on himself and others divine understandings and in a certain way
receive everything that is understood’ ([10.49] III: 222:80–4).
ALBERT’S SCHOOL: THE GERMAN DOMINICANS
Albert’s influence worked on three different groups in three different
directions. Most explicitly associated with him, though most distant
in time, are the fifteenth-century thinkers who set up Albert as their
authority and described themselves as ‘Albertists’; they are discussed
below in Chapter 18. Albert was also an important figure for those in
the arts faculties who looked to Averroes as the most faithful interpreter
of Aristotle and who, while respecting Christian doctrine, considered
their own role as arts masters was to reason without resort to revelation.
Some of these thinkers from the thirteenth century are discussed below
in Chapter 12; the movement they began lasted through to the end of
the Middle Ages. John of Jandun (1285/9–1328) was one of the most
outspoken advocates of Averroes (and learned from Albert), and
Averroism was then taken up in Bologna and Padua, in Erfurt in the
late fourteenth century and in Krakow in the mid-fifteenth.9 But Albert’s
closest followers—those who carried on his tradition chronologically
and developed what was most characteristic in his thought—were a
group of thinkers who were all, like him, German Dominicans.10 They
knew Albert’s work well, both directly and through Hugh Ripelin of
Strasbourg’s Compendium of Theological Truth (c. 1260–8) which
drew up some of the main themes of his work in textbook fashion.
The first important member of the group was Ulrich of Strasbourg
(born c. 1220–5), a student of Albert’s at Paris and then Cologne. He
returned to Paris in 1272 to complete his studies in theology, but died
before he was finished. He had already written a large summa, On the
Highest Good, which uses, and develops even more explicitly than
Albert himself, the idea of the divinization of the intellect.
In the work of Dietrich of Freiberg, Albert’s thinking is given a new
and highly original twist. Dietrich (c. 1250–1318/20) belonged to a
younger generation. He was active in Germany (from 1293 to 1296 he
was provincial of the Dominican Province of Teutonia) but also in the
University of Paris, where he studied between 1272 and 1274 and
some time between 1281 and 1293, and where he was master of
theology in 1296–7. He is an important figure in the history of natural
science (see [10.73]), but his most remarkable philosophical ideas
concern the human intellect. As mentioned above, medieval theologians
generally accepted the view that God knows (and produces) his creation
through ideas in his intellect. Dietrich accepted this common view with
regard to the relation between God and all things except for intellects.
The human intellect, he argues in On the Intellect and the Intelligible,
is related to God in a different, closer way, which it has in common
only with other intellects, such as (if they exist) the Intelligences posited
by the philosophers. An intellect proceeds from God ‘in so far as it is
an image of God’. Like God’s thinking, the object of the intellect’s
thinking is God himself. It is just this knowing God which constitutes
the intellect; in the same act of knowing the intellect knows itself as
that which knows God, and through knowing its essence it also knows
all other things outside itself, since it is their exemplar: ‘in one look
(intuitus) knowing its origin and thus coming into being it knows the
entirety of things.’11 In this way, Dietrich argues that intellects exist in
a special sort of way, which he describes as ‘conceptional being’: an
intellect should not be considered as a something, which has a certain
power—that of intellectually thinking. Rather, the thinking by which
an intellect knows God is what the intellect is. Whereas Albert had
explained how the human intellect could become God-like through
what it could contemplate (the separate substances), Dietrich
emphasizes the God-likeness of the intellect in its very manner of being.
In another work (On the Origin of the Things which belong to the
Aristotelian Categories), Dietrich argues that, in an important sense,
the objects which we encounter in experience, and which can be
described according to Aristotle’s ten categories, are made by our
intellects. Since the intellect knows these objects, it must bear a relation
to them. The only three possible relations are that (1) it is identical to
them, (2) they cause it, or (3) it causes them. Dietrich dismisses (1) and
rejects (2) because a cause must have a ‘greater power of forming’
(formalior virtus) than that which it causes, whereas the intellect is
‘incomparably more form-like and simpler than these things’.12
Although Dietrich goes on to qualify his position, allowing that the
intellect is not the only cause of these objects, he has given, to say the
least, a surprisingly large role to the human intellect in constituting the
world it grasps.13
The most celebrated of the German Dominicans is Eckhart (1260–
1328). But Eckhart’s fame has been linked more to his reputation as
a mystic and as the instigator of a popular mystical movement,
especially among women, than to his philosophical arguments. Unlike
any other of the Western thinkers treated in this volume, Eckhart
produced a body of work in the vernacular (Middle High German);
and it is in these sermons that he develops some of his most striking
ideas. Yet, until shortly before his death, when the process began
which would lead to his posthumous condemnation in 1329, Eckhart
had followed an outstanding career as a university theologian. He
was a master of theology in Paris from 1302 to 1303 and, a rare
honour, master again (magister actu regens) in 1311–13; from 1322
to 1325 he was in charge of the Dominican studium in Cologne.
Recent scholars have emphasized the philosophical aspects of
Eckhart’s work (found both in the Latin Parisian Questions and
Three-part Work, and in the German sermons and treatises) and have
seen it as part of the tradition going back to Dietrich of Freiberg and
Albert. Here there is room to touch on just three of these aspects of
Eckhart’s rich and many-faceted work.
In the second of his Parisian Questions (1302–3), Eckhart argues
the position that in God, being (esse) and thinking (intelligere) are the
same. In itself, there is nothing unusual about this position; Aquinas
had held it too, and Eckhart quotes Aquinas’ arguments for it. But
Eckhart develops the idea in a particular direction, arguing—in a way
which parallels what Dietrich of Freiberg says about the human
intellect—that God is intellect, and his being follows from this: it is
not ‘because he is, that God thinks but because he thinks that he is; so
that God is intellect and thinking and this thinking is the basis of his
being’. The Gospel of John does not begin, Eckhart goes on to remark,
with the words ‘In the beginning was an existing thing (ens) and the
existing thing was God’, but ‘In the beginning was the Word’; but the
Word is ‘in itself entirely relative to the intellect’. ‘Neither being nor
being existent (ens) is appropriate for God but something higher than
what is existing.’ Eckhart’s line of argument threatens to undermine
the whole tradition of theology based on God as supreme being;
although it too is rooted in theological tradition, the tradition of negative
theology which goes back to pseudo-Dionysius.14
Eckhart’s idea of the ‘basis’ (grunt) or the ‘spark’ (vunke) of the
soul, developed especially in his German sermons, is even more daring,
especially according to the interpretation recently advanced by Burkhard
Mojsisch who, more than previous writers, has explored the
philosophical, rather than the mystical, aspects of these writings.15
Dietrich of Freiberg had already described the active intellect as the
basis of the soul: the cause from which it springs. For Eckhart, however,
the grunt or vunke does not belong to the soul, although it is in it.
Eckhart must insist on this because he also claims that this ‘something’
is ‘uncreated and uncreatable’ (see [10.69] 133–4). When, in order to
leave behind the false I and discover the true one, our possible intellect
turns away from forms—wishing nothing, knowing nothing, letting
nothing act upon it—it is to this ‘something in the soul’ which it must
turn. Eckhart is willing to identify the uncreated grunt with God, but
also, it seems, to go even further: the idea of God, he argues, implies a
relation to something else, to creation; the grunt, or the ‘I as I’, by
contrast, bears no relation to anything but itself. It is its own cause and
even the cause of God (see [10.70] 27).
Eckhart thus transforms the theme he inherited from the tradition
of Albert, according to which the highest part of man’s soul, the intellect,
is divinized through its ability to be filled with intelligible contents
derived from God’s thought itself. For Eckhart, the spark in the soul is
itself divine or even more than divine, and only by turning away from
anything outside myself and from any content whatsoever, do I discover
myself as this ‘I as I’. He also makes a parallel transformation of the
moral outlook linked to Albert’s theme. In place of the philosophical
ideal of nobility, found in the contemplation enjoyed by the philosopher,
Eckhart substitutes a nobility of renunciation which he expresses by
the word ‘detachment’ (abegescheidenheit), and an ideal of poverty
and humility: ‘Were a man truly humble’, he writes, ‘God would have
either to lose his own divinity and be entirely bereft of it, or else diffuse
himself and flow entirely into this man. Yesterday evening I had this
thought: God’s greatness depends on my humility; the more humble I
make myself, the more God will be raised up.’16
The tradition of Albert takes a different twist in the writings of
Berthold of Moosburg (fl. c. 1335–c. 1361). His known work comprises
just an incomplete, but none the less vast, commentary on Proclus’
Elements of Theology. This choice of a life’s work was no accident.
Berthold believed that the ‘Platonic philosophers’, of whom he
considered Proclus an outstanding example, had arrived at the true
philosophy, by contrast with Aristotle and his followers. For Berthold,
the main distinction to be considered is no longer between the teachings
of the philosophers and those of Christian faith, but between the two
main schools of ancient philosophy: the Aristotelians, whose
metaphysics, the knowledge of being qua being, is seen in opposition
to the theology developed by Christians and Neoplatonists alike (see
[10.63] 317–442).
NOTES
1 Readers of this chapter are requested to look at what I say in my Introduction
(above, p. 9, n. 8) about its aims and, especially, its limitations.
2 Aristotle was also studied intensively in Oxford: see above, Chapter 9, and
Marenbon [10.34].
3 It is not certain that William was responsible for the revision of Grosseteste’s
translation that became standard.
4 For an authoritative summary of present knowledge about the translations of
Aristotle, see Dod [10.30]. The preceding paragraph and a half is based especially
on this study.
5 On Latin versions of Avicenna, see d’Alverny [10.27].
6 Part of the Parmenides was to be found in the lemmata of William of Moerbeke’s
translation of Proclus’ commentary, but neither the commentary nor the text was
generally known: see Steel [10.35] 306.
7 See Weber [10.47]. On the history of these arguments based on the idea of infinity,
many of which appear to go back to the sixth-century Greek Christian thinker
John Philoponus, see R.Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, London,
1983, esp. pp. 210–31.
8 See de Libera [10.64]. My comments on Albert draw especially from de Libera,
but they offer only a crude reflection of de Libera’s subtle views. See also de
Libera [10.63] for a development of his views about Albert within a wider context.
9 See Schmugge [10.71] for John of Jandun and Kuksewicz [10.62] for later
Averroism.
10 An excellent guide to this tradition, and argument for its unity, is provided in de
Libera [10.63].
11 De intellectu et intelligibili II, 36; for the whole discussion, see II, 34–6, and III,
37; cf. Mojsisch [10.68].
12 De origine rerum praedicamentalium V2.
13 Flasch was the first scholar to bring out the nature and importance of Dietrich’s
position here: see [10.59].
14 For a thorough study of the background to the Parisian questions 1 and 2, see
Zum Brunn and others [10.74] and Imbach [10.60].
15 See Mojsisch [10.69] and [10.70]. Not all Eckhart scholars accept Mojsisch’s
views: for a critique, see [10.72], esp. 307–12.
16 Sermon 14 [10.53, Deutsch. Werke, I 237:1–5], quoted by de Libera [10.65] 325;
on Eckhart’s transformation of the ideal of nobility, see de Libera [10.65] 299–
347.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Editions of Latin Translations from Greek, Arabic and Hebrew
This is a list of some of the most important translations of philosophical works: for
fuller lists, see Marenbon [Intr. 10] 194–7, with additions noted in Marenbon [10.33]
1009, n. 1.
10.1 Al-Ghazzālī (Algazel) Intentions of the Philosophers, sections on physics
and metaphysics, in J.Muckle (ed.) Algazel’s Metaphysics, Toronto,
1933.
10.2 Al-Ghazzālī (Algazel) Intentions of the Philosophers (complete text),
Venice, 1506.
10.3–10.8 Aristotle: Logic (translations by Boethius, William of Moerbeke and
others), ed. L.Minio-Paluello et al. (AL 1–6) Bruges and Paris, 1961–
75).
10.9 ——Metaphysics (translations by James of Venice, translatio vetus,
translatio media), ed. G.Vuillemin-Diem (AL 25), Bruges and Paris,
1970, 1976.
10.10 ——Nicomachean Ethics (various translations), ed. R.Gauthier (AL 26),
Bruges and Paris, 1972–4.
Aristotle’s On the Soul (Michael Scotus’s version) appears as lemmata in his
translation of Averroes’ Great commentary [10.14].
10.11 ——On the Soul (William of Moerbeke’s version), as lemmata in
Aquinas’s commentary, ed. R.Gauthier (Leonine edition 45), Rome
and Paris, 1984.
10.12 Ibn Rushd (Averroes) Aristotelis opera cum Averrois commentariis,
Venice, 1560. (A large collection of his commentaries, uncritically
edited.)
10.13 ——The 1562–74 edition of the above work, which contains fewer
commentaries, has been reprinted in Frankfurt, 1962.
10.14 ——Great commentary on Aristotle, On the Soul, ed. F.Crawford,
Cambridge, Mass., 1953.
Averroes’ Great commentary on Aristotle, Metaphysics is published as a
whole in [10.13] vol. 8, and on individual books as follows:
10.15 ——on Book II, ed. G.Darms, Freiburg, Switzerland, 1966.
10.16 ——on Book V, ed. R.Ponzalli, Berne, 1971.
10.17 ——on Book XI, ed. B.Burke, Berne, 1969.
10.18 Ibn Sina (Avicenna): book on On the Soul from the Shifā’, in S.van Riet
(ed.) De anima, 2 vols, Bruges and Paris, 1968, 1972.
10.19 ——book on the Metaphysics from the Shifā’, in S.van Riet (ed.) Liber
de philosophia prima sive scientia divina, 3 vols, Bruges and Paris,
1977–83.
10.20 Liber de causis (Book about Causes), ed. A.Pattin, Louvain, undated.
10.21 Maimonides Guide of the Perplexed, Latin translation of the Hebrew
translation by al-Harisi, Dux seu director dubitantium vel
perplexorum, Paris, 1520; repr. Frankfurt, 1964.
10.22 Plato Timaeus (Calcidius’ version, with his commentary), ed. J.Waszink,
2nd edn, London, 1975.
10.23 ——Meno, translated by Henry Aristippus, ed. V.Kordeuter and C.
Labowsky, London, 1940.
10.24 ——Phaedo, translated by Henry Aristippus, ed. L.Minio-Paluello,
London, 1950.
10.25 Porphyry Isagoge, translations by Boethius and others, ed. L.Minio-
Paluello, (AL 1, fasc. 5–6), Bruges and Paris, 1966.
10.26 Proclus Elements of Theology, translated by William of Moerbeke, ed.
H. Boese, Leuven, 1987.
Bibliographies and catalogues
Very full bibliographical information will be found in Daiber [10.29].
10.27 d’Alverny, M.-T. ‘Avicenna Latinus’, Archives de l’histoire doctrinale et
littéraire du moyen âge (1961–72): 28, 281–316; 29, 217–33; 30,
221–72; 31, 271–86; 32, 259–302; 33, 305–27; 34, 315–3; 36, 243–
80; 37, 327–61; 39, 321–41.
Studies
10.28 Brams, J. ‘Guillaume de Moerbeke et Aristote’, in Hamesse and Fattori
[10.31] 315–36.
10.29 Daiber, H. ‘Lateinische Übersetzungen arabischer Texte zur Philosophie
und ihre Bedeutung für die Scholastik des Mittelalters’, in Hamesse
and Fattori [10.31] 203–50.
10.30 Dod, B.G. ‘Aristoteles Latinus’, in CHLMP, 45–79.
10.31 Hamesse, J. and Fattori, M. (eds) Rencontres de cultures dans la
philosophie médiévale, Louvain and Cassino, 1990.
10.32 Kluxen, W. ‘Literaturgeschichtliches zum lateinischen Moses Maimonides’,
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 2l (1954): 23–50.
10.33 Marenbon, J. ‘Medieval Christian and Jewish Europe’, in S.H.Nasr and
O.Leaman (eds) History of Islamic Philosophy, vol. II, London, 1996.
10.34 ——(ed.) Aristotle in Britain during the Middle Ages, Turnhout, 1996.
10.35 Steel, C. ‘Plato Latinus’, in Hamesse and Fattori [10.31] 300–16.
Bonaventure
Original language editions
10.36 Opera omnia, ed. P.P.Collegii S.Bonaventurae, 10 vols, Quaracchi, 1882–
1902.
10.37 Collationes, ed. F.Delorme (Bibliotheca Franciscana medii aevi 8),
Quaracchi, 1934.
10.38 Itinerarium mentis ad Deum (text of Opera omnia with French parallel
trans. and notes by H.Duméry), Paris, 1960.
Translations
10.39 Breviloquium, trans. J.de Vinck, Paterson, NJ, 1963.
10.40 Itinerarium mentis ad Deum (The mind’s journey to God), trans.
P.Boehner, St Bonaventure, NY, 1956. (Other translations are also
available.)
10.41 De reductione artium ad theologiam, trans. E.T.Healy, St Bonaventure,
NY, 1955.
10.42 Collationes on the Hexaemeron, trans. (into French) M.Ozilon, as Les
six jours de la. création, Paris, c. 1991.
Studies
10.43 Bougerol, J. Introduction à l’étude de Saint Bonaventure, Tournai, 196l.
10.44 Gilson, E. La Philosophie de Saint Bonaventure, 3rd edn (Etudes de
philosophie médiévale 4) Paris, 1953. (There is an English translation
of the first, 1924, edn of this book: The Philosophy of St Bonaventure,
trans I.Trethowan and F.J.Sheed, New York, 1938.)
10.45 Quinn, J. The Historical Constitution of St Bonaventure’s Philosophy,
Toronto, 1973.
10.46 Van Steenberghen, F. La Philosophie au XIIIe siècle, Louvain, 1966.
10.47 Weber, E.H. Dialogue et dissensions entre Saint Bonaventure et Saint Thomas
d’Aquin à Paris, 1252–73 (Bibliothèque thomiste 41), Paris, 1974.
Albert the Great and his Influence
Original language editions
10.48 Albert the Great Opera omnia, ed. A. and E.Borgnet, Paris, 1890–9.
10.49 ——Opera omnia, chief ed. B.Geyer, Münster, 1951–.
10.50 Berthold of Moosburg, Commentary on the Elements of Theology, partial
ed. by L.Sturlese, Rome, 1974.
10.51 Dietrich of Freiberg Opera omnia, ed. K.Flasch et al., Hamburg, 1977–83.
10.52 ——De origine rerum praedicamentalium, ed. F.Stegmüller, ‘Meister
Dietrich von Freiburg über den Ursprung der Kategorien’, Archives
d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 24 (1957): 115–201.
(This edition has been replaced by that in [10.51] but may be more
readily available.)
10.53 Eckhart Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke, ed. J.Quint et al.
(Stuttgart, 1930–).
Translations
10.54 Eckhart, Sermons and treatises, trans. M.O’C.Walshe, London and
Dulverton, 1979.
10.55 Meister Eckhart: the Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and
Defence, trans. E.Colledge and B.McGinn, London, 1981.
10.56 Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, trans. B.McGinn, NJ, 1986.
10.57 Eckhart Parisian Questions and Prologues, trans. A.Maurer, Toronto,
1974.
Bibliographies and catalogues
10.58 Larger, N. Bibliographie zu Meister Eckhart (Dokimion 9), Freiburg,
Switzerland, 1989.
A wide bibliography to the whole area is given in de Libera [10.63].
Studies
10.59 Flasch, K. ‘Kennt die mittelalterliche Philosophie die konstitutive Funktion
des menschlichen Denkens? Eine Untersuchung zu Dietrich von
Freiberg’, Kant-Studien 63 (1972): 182–206.
10.60 Imbach, R. Deus est intelligere, Freiburg, Switzerland, 1976.
10.61 Krebs, E. Meister Dietrich (Theodoricus Teutonicus de Vriberg): sein
Leben, seine Werke, seine Wissenschaft (BGPT MA 5, 5–6), Münster,
1906.
10.62 Kuksewicz, Z. ‘L’influence d’Averroes sur les universités en Europe
centrale: l’expansion de l’averroisme latin’, in J.Jolivet (ed.) Multiple
Averroes, Paris, 1978, pp. 275–86.
10.63 Libera, A.de Introduction à la mystique rhénane d’Albert le Grand à Maître
Eckhart, Paris, 1984. Repr. as La mystique rhénane, Paris, 1994.
10.64 ——Albert le Grand et la philosophie, Paris, 1990.
10.65 ——Penser au moyen âge, Paris, 1991.
10.66 Lossky, V. Théologie négative et connaissance de Dieu chez Eckhart,
Paris, 1960.
10.67 Meyer, G. and Zimmermann, A. Albertus Magnus: Doctor Universalis
1280/1980 (Walberger Studien 6), Mainz, 1980.
10.68 Mojsisch, B. Die Theorie des Intellects bei Dietrich von Freiberg,
Hamburg, 1977.
10.69 ——Meister Eckhart. Analogie, Univozität und Einheit, Hamburg, 1983.
10.70 ——‘“Le moi”: la conception du moi de Maître Eckhart: une contribution
aux “lumières” du Moyen-Age’, Revue des sciences religieuses 70
(1996): 18–30.
10.71 Schmugge, L. Johannes von Jandun (1285/9–1328), Stuttgart, 1966.
10.72 Waldschütz, E. Denken und Erfahren des Grundes. Zur philosophische
Deutung Meister Eckharts, Vienna, Freiburg and Basel, 1986.
10.73 Wallace, W.A. The Scientific Methodology of Theoderic of Freiberg (Studia
Friburgensia, NS 25), Freiburg, Switzerland, 1959.
10.74 Zum Brunn, E., Kaluza, Z., Libera, A. de, Vignaux, P. and Wéber, E.
Maître Eckhart à Paris. Une critique médiévale de l’ontothéologie
(Bibliothèque de l’école des hautes études, sciences religieuses 86),
Paris, 1984.
Routledge History of Philosophy.
Taylor & Francis e-Library.
2005.