Authors:Carl Philipp Emanuel Nothaft Pages: 1 - 15 Abstract: This article makes the argument that a Latin table of geographic coordinates, copied in Italy in the second half of the thirteenth century (MS Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnham 211, fol. 260r), is derived from a list excerpted from a Greek manuscript of the Κανὼν πόλεων ἐπισήμων (« Table of important cities ») in Ptolemy’s Handy Tables. Other sources that appear to bear witness to a thirteenth-century dissemination in Italy of geographic data from the Κανὼν include the Summa de astris of Gerard of Feltre (1264/65) and some later coordinate lists contained in fourteenth-century manuscripts. * This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 894940. PubDate: 2022-03-31 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13608 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Fiorella Magnano Pages: 17 - 38 Abstract: Although many scholars have stressed the dialectical structure of Peter Abelard’s theological works, the total absence of studies concerning the use of dialectical topics into his theological discourse is surprising. Therefore, this study aims to draw attention on this specific aspect of Abelard’s theological works, in order to illustrate the way in which the dialectical topics, exposed in a logical context, were subsequently put into service of the Sacred Scripture to explore its sense. My conclusions are that the ‘topical exegesis’ represents the space of autonomy assigned to human reason in search of a foundation, if not rational at least reasonable, of the high degree of verisimilitude of Revelation’s content. PubDate: 2022-03-31 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13623 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Mariano Gómez Aranda Pages: 39 - 70 Abstract: Psalm 148 is a hymn inviting all beings in the celestial world and the earthly world to praise God. Even though the Psalm seems simple and easy to understand, two questions have been raised in the history of the exegesis of this Psalm: why are these specific creatures and no others mentioned in the Psalm', and why are they placed in this particular order' In Ancient Judaism no much attention was given to the explanation of this Psalm from a scientific perspective; however, in the thirteenth century, in the context of the reception of Aristotelianism in southern France, important exegetes such as David Qimhi and Menahem ha-Meiri interpreted this Psalm to the light of Aristotelian cosmology, and more especifically in consonance with scientific ideas exposed in Aristole’s Meteorology. Abraham ibn Ezra was the first Jewish exegete who wrote a systematic commentary on Psalm 148 to demonstrate that the biblical text describes the structure, composition and laws of the Universe according to Aristotelian principles. Ibn Ezra’s scientific comments on this Psalm were the starting point for the future scientific analysis of later exegetes in southern France, such as David Qimhi and Menahem ha-Meiri. It is the purpose of this article to analyze how Psalm 148 has been interpreted by these three Jewish exegetes from a scientific perspective and to prove how later exegetes explained, developed or even refuted the scientific interpretations of their predecessors. It also examines the sources that Ibn Ezra may have used to know Aristotle’s ideas. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13637 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Valentina Lepri Pages: 71 - 94 Abstract: This article argues that the notebooks produced by students during their stay abroad can become precious documentary evidence of early modern knowledge creation and organization. From the second half of the 15th century an unprecedented availability of paper led students to take notes freely on anything they considered useful or interesting for their education and, more generally, for their future. The case study of the notebooks belonging to a student from Danzig who stayed in Wittenberg in the 1560s, will show how the multi-text documents produced by students contribute to a better understanding of both their educational needs and their original reworking of academic knowledge. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.14019 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Fernanda Ocampo Pages: 95 - 136 Abstract: This work proposes to consider the doctrine of ‘quiddity’ and ‘definition’ in Dietrich of Freiberg, in relation to one of his four core theses: namely, that the quiddity of the compound substance is exclusively constituted by the substantial form, and that it is the parts which are said of form (and not others) that the definition signifies through its constitutive terms. In this sense, we will seek to manifest the doctrinal elements that motivate Dietrich’s position, while emphasizing his peculiar way of reading Aristotle, especially with regard to the central theses outlined in Metaphysics VII 10. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.14047 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Alexander Treiger Pages: 143 - 181 Abstract: The present study examines social history of the Graeco-Arabic translation movement from the perspective of the Christian communities that participated in it. Special attention is given to Melkite and Nestorian translators active in ʿAbbāsid Baghdad – from the late eighth-century Melkite translator al-Biṭrīq to the famous ninth-century Nestorian translator Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq – and to the complex interactions between Melkites and Nestorians, which involved both competition and scholarly collaboration. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13666 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Joe Glynias Pages: 183 - 224 Abstract: This paper sheds light on one aspect of the large-scale influx of Arabic scientific knowledge into Byzantium through an analysis of three Byzantine astrological compendia that contain texts originally written in Greek as well as those translated from Arabic to Greek. While written c. 1200–1400, each manuscript contains a compilation that was assembled in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The paper first considers the dating of each of the three compilations and shows the utility in using these late Byzantine manuscripts to study Middle Byzantine astrology. Second, it analyzes the Arabic texts translated in these compilations and uses them to explain the chronology and the scale of the translation of astrological material from Arabic to Greek. Third, it considers how the Arabic and Greek material is combined within these manuscripts, and what the resulting synthesis says about Middle Byzantine astrology writ large. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13669 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Luca Farina Pages: 225 - 279 Abstract: This article provides an overview of the Greek mentions of the Arabic astrologers Māšāʾallāh ibn Aṯarī al-Baṣrī and Abū Maʿšar al-Balḫī, together with the edition of the Greek fragments explicitly attributed to Māšāʾallāh, based on all their witnesses. Moreover, a general introduction to the Greek tradition of the two astrologers and a discussion of their mentions in the manuscript Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 1056 are supplied. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13659 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Antoine Pietrobelli, Marie Cronier Pages: 281 - 315 Abstract: This paper investigates how Symeon Seth (second half of the eleventh century) introduced some Arabic medical heritage, especially Galenic, to Byzantium, which probably originated from his training in Antioch around 1060 with the famous Baghdadi physician Ibn Buṭlān. After providing new data on Seth’s biography, our analysis focuses on his three main medical works, whose nature and reception were very different but which are all extensively based on Arabic science: the Refutation of Galen, the On Foodstuffs and the On the Handbook of Health (the latter being, as we show, a partial translation of Ibn Buṭlān’s Taqwīm al-Ṣiḥḥa). We analyse the context of production of each of these three works, the way Seth uses and quotes (or does not quote) his Arabic sources, and their Byzantine reception. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13665 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Thibault Miguet Pages: 317 - 345 Abstract: The main objective of the current paper is to offer a preliminary study of a hitherto unknown Byzantine translation of al-Majūsī’s Kitāb al-malakī preserved in a single manuscript: MS Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, supplément grec 638 (fourteenth century). After a brief introduction, the Paris manuscript is presented and described, and its content – a Greek translation of the first part of al-Majūsī’s Kitāb al-malakī – identified. The study then focuses on John Dioikêtês of Constantinople, responsible for the Greek text, showing that it is no less than the translator of the Arabic work as well as the copyist of the manuscript. The last part formulates an hypothesis as to where the manuscript could have been produced, and gives some details on its subsequent story. An Appendix compares Greek text samples of the Paris manuscript with Arabic text samples of the Kitāb al-malakī (based on two editions and a manuscript), showing that the Greek text is a translation of the Arabic. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13667 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Christine Roughan Pages: 347 - 375 Abstract: This paper examines the context for the Greek translations and adaptions of Islamic astronomical works which came out of Maragha and Tabriz at the end of the thirteenth century. It discusses the observation programs and the teaching activities of astronomers at the Maragha Observatory in order to shed light on the relation of the translated texts to the intellectual activities at the observatory and to the broader picture of education in the astral sciences in these two cities. The paper argues that astronomical education in these centers drew from a combination of more established teaching texts and of newer works by the astronomers and teachers at the observatory, and that the selection of sources that received translations and adaptions in Greek was motivated by the particular needs of the Byzantine student or students in question. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13676 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Luca Burzelli Pages: 391 - 422 Abstract: Review article of: Brian Copenhaver, Magic and the Dignity of Man: Pico della Mirandola and his ‘Oration’ in Modern Memory, Belknap of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA–London 2019. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.14054 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Massimo Tamborini Pages: 423 - 447 Abstract: Review article of: Girolamo Cardano, De consolatione, a cura di Marialuisa Baldi, revisione filologica a cura di Elisabetta Tonello, Leo S. Olschki, Firenze 2019 (Hyperchen. Testi e Studi per la Storia della Cultura del Rinascimento, 6), pp. vi + 284, ISBN: 9788822266231. Girolamo Cardano, Sulla consolazione, a cura di Marialuisa Baldi, Leo S. Olschki, Firenze 2021 (Hyperchen. Testi e Studi per la Storia della Cultura del Rinascimento, 7), pp. xvi + 194, ISBN: 9788822267450. PubDate: 2022-03-27 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13452 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Natale Vacalebre Pages: 449 - 467 Abstract: Review article of: José Maria Peréz Fernandez, Edward Wilson-Lee, Hernando Colón’s New World of Books. Toward a Cartography of Knowledge, Yale University Press, New Haven–London 2021. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.14143 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:John Monfasani Pages: 469 - 488 Abstract: In 2015 I argued that the statistics of manuscripts derived from Élisabeth Pellegrin’s Les manuscrits classique latins de la Bibliothèque Vaticane proved that interest in classical literature did not collapse in thirteenth-century Italy as it did in Northern Europe. In 2017 Robert Black published a refutation of my argument. The present article is an answer to Black’s article. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13624 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Carlo Prosperi Pages: 489– - 489– Abstract: Even if all of Inferno constitutes an evident denial of free will, the role of chance and necessity (the title is a transparent allusion to the famous essay by Monod) in this canto gains particular importance. On the one hand, the tree-man, now more tree than man even psychically speaking, has no choice whatsoever, neither to move nor to speak; on the other hand, there is something mechanical in the punishment of the squanderers, which, in spite of the tragic compulsion to repeat itself ad infinitum, albeit with some occasional variation of time and place (as in the Decameronian novella about Nastagio degli Onesti), reminds - also for the unnatural acceleration of the motion - of certain comedy films of yesteryear. Moreover, they move aimlessly, blindly and, unknowingly and perhaps unwillingly, they are blind instruments of torture for the suicides. And in the very reconstitution of their dissipated «individuality» they totally depend on some mysterious divine intervention. PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13506 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Dario Gurashi Pages: 519 - 568 Abstract: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s reading of Original sin is based on a philosophical approach: in the declamation De originali peccato he explains the Fall as a metaphor for sexual intercourse and associates each Biblical character with a faculty of the soul: Adam embodies faith, Eve portrays reason, and the Serpent represents sexual desire. By deliberately disobeying God, Adam and Eve reject chastity and claim the divine power of giving life. Their transgression is therefore rooted in the presumption of overcoming the limits of human nature through concupiscence. Moving from the connection between theology and sexuality, Agrippa examines the role of man/faith and woman/reason, which symbolize existential choices aiming at the spiritual redemption of humankind PubDate: 2022-04-01 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13709 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:John Monfasani Pages: 583 - 587 Abstract: Review of: Michael J. B. Allen, Studies in the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico, Routledge, London–New York 2017 (Variorum Collected Studies Series,1063). XIII + 348 pp., ISBN: 9781472448385. PubDate: 2022-03-27 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13343 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Riccardo Saccenti Pages: 603 - 607 Abstract: Review of: Nicola Polloni, The Twelfth-Century Renewal of Latin Metaphysics: Gundissalinus’s Ontology of Matter and Form, Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies–Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Durham–Toronto 2020 (Durham Medieval and Renaissance Monographs and Essays, 6), ISBN: 978-0-88844-865-1. PubDate: 2022-03-27 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.14089 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Pedro Mantas-España Pages: 609 - 620 Abstract: Review of: Review of: Josef Stern, James T. Robinson, Yonatan Shemesh (eds.), Maimonides’ ‘Guide of the Perplexed’ in Translation. A History from the Thirteenth Century to Twentieth, Chicago University Press, Chicago, ILL. 2019, VII + 481 pp., ISBN 9780226457635. PubDate: 2022-03-27 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.14213 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Margherita Fantoli Pages: 621 - 631 Abstract: Review of: Bente Maegaard, Riccardo Pozzo, Alberto Melloni, Matthew Woollard (eds.), Stay Tuned to the Future: Impact of the Research Infrastructures for Social Sciences and Humanities, Leo S. Olschki, Firenze 2019 (Lessico intellettuale europeo, 128), XXXVI + 190 pp., ISBN: 9788822266439. PubDate: 2022-03-27 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.14106 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:María del Carmen Molina Barea Pages: 633 - 639 Abstract: Review of: Riccardo Gandolfi, Le vite degli artisti di Gaspare Celio. ‘Compendio delle vite di Vasari con alcune altre aggiunte’, Leo S. Olschki, Firenze 2021 (Biblioteca dell'Archivum romanicum, serie I: Storia, letteratura, paleografia, 504), 390 pp., ISBN 978882226702 3. PubDate: 2022-03-27 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13589 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Godefroid de Callataÿ Pages: 647 - 649 Abstract: Review of: Sarah Stroumsa, Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain, Princeton University Press, Princeton–Oxford 2019 (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World, 3), XXI + 220 pp., ISBN: 9780691176437. PubDate: 2022-03-27 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.14152 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Virginia Scribanti Pages: 651 - 663 Abstract: Review of: William of Alnwick, Questions on Science and Theology, Introduction and Critical Edition by Francesco Fiorentino, English Translation by John Scott, Aschendorff, Munster 2020 (Archa Verbi, Subsidia 18), 784 pp., ISBN: 9783402102404. PubDate: 2022-03-27 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.14084 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
Authors:Luisa Brotto Pages: 665 - 671 Abstract: Review of: Massimiliano Traversino Di Cristo (ed.), Giordano Bruno: Law, Philosophy, and Theology in the Early Modern Era, Classiques Garnier, Paris 2021 (Works from the Centre for Further Study of the Renaissance, 7), 478 pp., ISBN: 9782406104469. PubDate: 2022-03-27 DOI: 10.21071/mijtk.v7i.13837 Issue No:Vol. 7 (2022)
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