Medieval Commentaries

The present book is a collection of Karsten Friis-Jensen’s published studies of how Horace was understood during the Middle Ages. They demonstrate his gradually deepening insight into the themes he developed, such as the position of the Materia commentary as the standard commentary on the Ars Poetica, the connection between the supposed chronology of Horace’s works and their suitability for readers of different ages, and the importance of the Odes in the medieval curriculum.

Our Western cultural heritage is made up of the legacy of Semitic, Greek and Latin culture and languages. The Hebrew Gospel of Saint Matthew represents a translation into the biblical language from a Romance version of the Vulgate, with special fea-tures, between the more striking: some twenty colloquial words in the medieval Ro-mance language of Catalonia and central Pyrenees; and some thirty phrasal terms from the medieval Ordinary Gloss, which were added to the canonical text.
The introduction of the edition focuses on the main Medieval features of the Gospel of Saint Matthew present in the «Eben Bohan » of Shem Tob ibn Shaprut: the presence of a popular romance vocabulary compared with its equivalents in Occitan, Provençal and Catalan New Testaments from the period and the insertion of some scholarly paragraphs of the « Glossa Ordinaria »  with special mention of Mt 13,23. Other features relating it to the Visigothic recension of the Vulgate such as liturgical Marks and temporal introductions of the readings. It would have been translated from Latin to Catalan around the first half ot thirteen century and from Catalan to Hebrew at the end of the same century.

Our Western cultural heritage is made up of the legacy of Semitic, Greek and Latin culture and languages. The Hebrew Gospel of Saint Matthew represents a translation into the biblical language from a Romance version of the Vulgate, with special fea-tures, between the more striking: some twenty colloquial words in the medieval Ro-mance language of Catalonia and central Pyrenees; and some thirty phrasal terms from the medieval Ordinary Gloss, which were added to the canonical text.
The introduction of the edition focuses on the main Medieval features of the Gospel of Saint Matthew present in the «Eben Bohan » of Shem Tob ibn Shaprut: the presence of a popular romance vocabulary compared with its equivalents in Occitan, Provençal and Catalan New Testaments from the period and the insertion of some scholarly paragraphs of the « Glossa Ordinaria »  with special mention of Mt 13,23. Other features relating it to the Visigothic recension of the Vulgate such as liturgical Marks and temporal introductions of the readings. It would have been translated from Latin to Catalan around the first half ot thirteen century and from Catalan to Hebrew at the end of the same century.

This essay surveys a generation of scholarship since the death of Beryl Smalley, pioneer in the study of the medieval reception of the bible, in 1984. We try to give a fair representation of work produced in English, French, German, and Italian over the last thirty years. We report on: 1) editions, tools, and translations, 2) surveys and synthetic treatments, 3) work on medieval biblical hermeneutics, 4) studies of periods and individuals, 5) thematic studies and studies of biblical books and pericopes across broad periods, and 6) comparative work on Muslim, Jewish, and Christian exegesis. We describe a rapidly growing quantity of knowledge and expanding perspectives on biblical interpretation in medieval culture. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

A set of commentaries on Terence, whose witnesses appear for the first time in the XII-XIIIth century and show certain common features, are known as 'commentarii recentiores'. Despite their significance in the history of the Terentian exegesis, we know very little about them: hardly a few passages have been edited and the identification of the commentaries itself is still confusing and erroneous in some respects. The purpose of this article is to set as accurately as possible the catalog of these 'commentarii recentiores', distinguishing them from each other, and to define every commentary through the mss that transmit them.

Il Communiter è un commento all'Ars poetica tramandato da sei manoscritti che ne attestano la circolazione nel Trecento in area tosco-emiliana. Nato probabilmente in epoca dantesca, il testo enuncia un principio nuovo: insieme alla grammatica, alla dialettica e alla retorica, anche la poesia può essere inserita tra le arti del discorso in quanto disciplina capace di persuadere l'animum auditoris. L'Introduzione ripercorre le tappe del processo di affrancamento della poesia rispetto alla retorica ed esamina il suo rapporto con l'esegesi oraziana in generale, il dictamen e le poetriae mediolatine.

In this study I examine the argument for the existence of God from finality formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas in the prologue to his commentary Super Evange-lium Sancti Ioannis. Of particular interest is accounting for his characterization of this argument as the via efficacissima. I suggest two reasons for this appellation: first, philosophically , because this demonstrates the existence of God from the cause of causes and thus supplies intelligibility and explanation even for the via manifestior of efficient cau-sality. Second, theologically, because its conclusion imparts an understanding of God as the Lord of Lords, by whose Divine Providence the world is ordered and governed. In this way, then, Thomas philosophically begins to explicate the theological implications of the Verbum of St. John's Gospel.

Founded in 1946 by Paul Oskar Kristeller, the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum has become an indispensable research tool for scholars interested in the history of the classical tradition in the West during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Each article treats a separate classical author, beginning with a detailed essay on the author’s reception from antiquity to AD 1600. This ‘Fortuna’ is followed by a comprehensive list both of manuscript and printed commentaries on each Latin author and, in the case of Greek authors, a list of Latin translations as well.  Since its first volume published in 1960, the CTC has published articles on nearly a hundred classical authors, with dozens more in active preparation. The project boasts an international team of contributors from fourteen countries in Europe and North America. Given the ever-growing interest in departments of English, European languages and Comparative Literature in the history of classical reception, the basic scholarship provided by CTC has become more vital to humanistic research than ever.  In this volume, the tenth in the series, five full-length articles devoted to Pindar, Aelianus Tacticus, Musaeus, Agathias, and Aulus Gellius are supplemented by addenda et corrigenda on articles previously published on Lucretius, Dionysius Periegetes, and Sallust.

In a sense Maimonides identifies his views on the subject of divine providence with those of Epicurus. He does so by implying an analogy between this Greek philosopher's atheistic opinions and those put forth by Elihu in the Book of Job. Despite the fact that commentators have discussed Maimonides' views on providence for eight hundred years the only one to refer to the connection between Elihu and Epicurus was Joseph Ibn Kaspi in the fourteenth century. One of the consequences of this analogy is a modification of our understanding of Maimonides' concept of "providence according to the intellect." Whereas Moshe Narboni and other commentators have understood Maimonides' concept of providence to involve a unification of the human intellect with the Active Intellect, the association with Epicurus suggests an emphasis on the human individual's material faculties such as the imagination. Indeed, it is possible that, following Al-Fārābī, Maimonides rejected the possibility of conjunction with the Active Intellect altogether, and that "providence according to the intellect" consists of nothing more than the activity of the human individual's material faculties.

The present contribution pursues a twofold objective: The first part (I), which is mainly meant to lay out some rather introductory remarks, strives to give a general account of the context in which Ibn Sīnā’s hitherto neglected Middle Compendium of Logic (al-Muḫtaṣar al-awsaṭ fī l-manṭiq) must have been composed (I.1 and I.2) and to indicate, on a more specific level, in which way the Kitāb al-Maqūlāt of the Muḫtaṣar provides us with interesting material for assessing Ibn Sīnā’s reception of the exegetical tradition of the Categories (I.3); it is concluded by some notes on the two most reliable manuscripts containing the Muḫtaṣar (I.4) and on the editorial conventions that are subsequently observed (I.5). On the basis of two manuscripts from Istanbul, the second part (II) offers, at least to my knowledge, the editio princeps of the Kitāb al-Maqūlāt (“Book of the Categories”), i.e. the second treatise, of the Muḫtaṣar al-awsaṭ fī l-manṭiq.

The review concerns the edition "Commentaire Vulgate des Métamorphoses d’Ovide. Livres I–V", edited by Frank T. Coulson and Piero Andrea Martina, with a French translation of the commentary by Piero Andrea Nartina and Clara Wille. The edition was published as the first volume of three planned volumes in Paris by Classiques Garnier in 2021 in the serie Textes littéraires du Moyen Âge no. 62, Ovidiana texts no. 2.), 820 pp. ISBN 978-2-406-10727-9

In this course we will study Muhammad al-Tabrizi's Commentary on Maimonides's 25 premises, in which Maimonides summarizes Aristotelian physics for the purposes of demonstrating God's existence, unity, and incorporeality. Tabrizi was one of the first (if not the first) commentator on the Guide of the Perplexed, and one of the Hebrew translations of his commentary was used as a major resource by Moses Narboni and Hasdai Crescas.

Physiology of Dreaming and Perception of the Divine Two Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle´s De somno et vigilia 1 by Agnes Karpinski According to medieval theories on human cognition, the imagination (imaginatio) plays an important role in the cognitive process, because it enables human beings to understand and comprehend single phenomena of the external sensible world. The imaginatio is a virtue, located in the brain, where it receives sensory information from the exterior senses, so that the sensory data can be transmuted into mental images (phantasmata). Apparently the imaginatio serves as a necessary and basic condition for the acquisition of knowledge. The phantasmata are not only the medium between sense objects and higher cognitive powers, but also responsible for dream experiences during sleep when digestion takes place and the inner senses are not able to receive exterior sense data. Although phantasmata were considered as a preliminary necessity in the cognition process, it is in fact not possible for any human intellect to obtain knowledge without referring to phantasmata, except through divine grace. Aristotle´s strict physiological explanation of the phenomenon included a complete negation of divinatory dreams, which he considered as nothing more but byproducts of the sense perception with no deeper meaning at all. This fact might have been challenging for medieval commentators, who could choose between two options. They could leave a closer discussion to Theologians 2 or they could try to give natural explanations with the support of methodological approaches from the philosophical area of epistemology, combined with the physiology of the body. Two medieval commentaries on De somno et vigilia will be in the focus of investigation: 1 In the medieval commentary tradition De somno et vigilia can contain commentaries on Aristotle´s De insomniis (On dreams) and De divinatione per somnum (On divination in sleep). Recently an edited volume on Les "Parva naturalia" d'Aristote (2010) was published by Brenet/Grellard. 2 This is the case in John Versor´s († c. 1485), Quaestiones super libros Aristotelis, Cologne, 1493 (Heinrich Quentell): http://tudigit.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/show/inc-iv-234/0131?sid=859a21e6c99321c2ac3542958c86e0d1 (4.11.15).

An examination of geometrical topics of significance for Gersonides's philosophy. Through this course, students will have direct access to one aspect of the intellectual background of medieval philosophers. Students will acquire a familiarity with the fundamental concepts and tools of classical geometry, in order to better understand the treatment of geometrical topics in medieval philosophical discourse.

The study of geometry occupied a central place in the education of medieval scholars. Maimonides went so far as to describe mathematics as an essential stage in the preparation of the student for whom The Guide of the Perplexed was intended. The importance of geometry is especially apparent in the works of Gersonides (Provence 1288-1344). In his philosophical magnum opus, Milhamot ha-Shem, Gersonides uses a particular geometrical proof connected to Euclid's Elements, in the context of his doctrine of miracles. Gersonides treats the topic at greater length in his Commentary on the Elements. In this course we will study the chain of propositions leading to Euclid's demonstration that the total value of any triangle's three angles is equal to two right angles (180 degrees). In the second stage we will study the topic as treated by Gersonides. In Gersonides's view, some of Euclid's premises require demonstration or philosophical explication. No prior knowledge in mathematics is required for this course.

The first medieval glosses on the Rhetorica ad Herennium, which can be attributed to Menegaldus (11th c.) and are still unpublished, can constitute a new paragraph of the much larger chapter dedicated to the quotations of classical characters within rhetorical commentaries.
Some of them, here published and analysed for the first time, show us the original mentioning of characters taken from Terence, Statius, Vergil and Sallust and chosen to enliven classical rhetorical rules about misericordia and mentitio (rhet. Her. II 31,50 and III 2,3); such glosses are here compared with the opinions of Menegaldus in Cic. inv. and of other contemporary masters (whose commentaries are generally still unpublished).

This volume presents the first study, critical edition, and translation of one of the earliest works by Richard Rolle (c. 1300-1349), a hermit and mystic whose works were widely read in England and on the European continent into the early modern period. Rolle’s explication of the Old Testament Book of Lamentations gives us a glimpse of how the biblical commentary tradition informed what would become his signature mystical, doctrinal, and reformist preoccupations throughout his career. Rolle’s English and explicitly mystical writings have been widely accessible for decades. Recent attention has turned again to his Latin commentaries, many of which have never been critically edited or thoroughly studied. This attention promises to give us a fuller sense of Rolle’s intellectual, devotional, and reformist development, and of the interplay between his Latin and English writings.
Richard Rolle: On Lamentations places Rolle’s early commentary within a tradition of explication of the Lamentations of Jeremiah and in the context of his own career. The edition collates all known witnesses to the text, from Dublin, Oxford, Prague, and Cologne. A source apparatus as well as textual and explanatory notes accompany the edition.

The Role of so-called Postpredicaments in Cracovian Masters’ Teaching
of the 1st half of the 15th Century

The third part of Aristotle’s Categories, postpredicaments, is problematic for several reasons. The most important one is that it differs signifi cantly from the rest of that treatise in terms of its content which led to the rejection of its authenticity by some scholars. The others, however, tried to explain the main differences between the three parts of Categories by showing the mutual relationship between them. The Cracovian Arts Masters of the 1st half of the 15th century – Benedict Hesse, Paul of Pyskowice and the anonymous author of the commentary
on Categories preserved in codex BJ 1941 – belong to the second group of interpreters who opt for the treatise’s authenticity. This article presents an overview of the controversies concerning the structure of Aristotle’s treatise, the way the Cracovian Masters of Arts understood them and tried to deal with them. Those attempts to prove the unity and the well thought-out structure of Categories as well as the necessity of the postpredicaments show the variety of methodological and doctrinal positions current in the Cracovian milieu that was characteristic of the philosophical approach of the Polish commentators of those times.

Příspěvek se týká problému tzv. "pseudo-Ovidiana", středověkých spisů, které jsou registrovány jako Ovidiovo dílo. Příspěvek ukazuje, že pseudo-Ovidiové spisy se nepovažovaly do 14. století za originální práci Ovidia. První úvod, který registruje některé pseudo-Ovidiové spisy jako od Ovidia, je psán až cca. 1400. Do té doby většina podobných spisů jsou v rukopisech zapsané zvlášť. Poznámka Jana ze Salisbury (cca. 1115-1180) v Metalogiconu o výuce Bernarda ze Chartrese (cca. 1120) dokazuje, že studenti byli vyzváni k napodobení klasických autorů. Teprve v 15. století byly podobné spisy považovány za pravé.

In this course we will explore rabbinic legal discourse about personal injury law. Specifically, we will consider the ways in which rabbinic texts address questions of how legal justice should be attained when one person causes physical injury to another person. In such a case, should the perpetrator merely have to pay compensatory damages or should there be additional retribution for the harm they caused? In calculating the estimated damages to the injured person, what factors are to be taken into account? To address these and other issues, we will examine the eighth chapter of the Babylonian Talmud Baba Qama, known as Pereq HaHovel. We will consider how the rabbis develop and radically reformulate the Biblical lex talionis into a conception of justice that is both corrective and retributory.

COURSE GOALS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES: The purpose of this course is to examine rabbinic personal injury law while also increasing our facility in analyzing Talmudic texts. The course aims to sharpen and develop reading skills for the Talmud, Rashi, Tosafot, and other selected medieval Talmudic commentators and legal codifiers. We will read the Talmud critically, being sensitive to the language, structure, terminology and methodology employed.