The Anonymous Peterhouse Master and the Natural Philosophy of Plants

Traditio ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 313-326
Author(s):  
R. James Long
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Albert The Great ◽  
University Curricula ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
The University ◽  
Latin Version

Early in the thirteenth century, probably within the first decade, a treatise on plants was translated from the Arabic by Alfred of Sareshel (or Alveredus Anglicus), which was to become the foundation of the science of botany for the Latin-speaking world. This treatise was until the sixteenth century universally ascribed to Aristotle and awarded all the authority accorded the Philosopher in the other sciences. Within a generation of the appearance of the Latin version the De plantis had become a set text in university curricula and by 1254 was prescribed by statute at the University of Paris as an examination subject. Roger Bacon was lecturing on the text at Paris already in the 1240s and a decade later Albert the Great was composing his monumental and never-to-be-surpassed commentary on the same text.

scholarly journals Botany as a New Field of Knowledge in the Thirteenth Century: On the Genesis of the Specialized Sciences

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-75
Author(s):  
Mustafa Yavuz ◽  
Pilar Herraíz Oliva
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Huge Amount ◽  
New Curriculum ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
The University ◽  
Special Case

The reception of the translations of Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian works at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century promoted a new understanding of the sciences as specialized fields of knowledge. The huge amount of translations required a new organization of knowledge, which included novel subjects and categories. Among these there is a very special case, namely the pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis, translated from Arabic into Latin and then back into Greek to be re-translated into Latin again. De plantis was included in the new curriculum in Ripoll 109 (1230–1240 BCE), and constituted the main source for botanical studies until the sixteenth century. Throughout this paper we will explore the reception and impact of De plantis in both the Arabic and the Latin traditions. We aim to show its foundational role in the development of botany as a theoretical discipline within the natural sciences.

Thirteenth-Century Aristotelian Logic

2021 ◽  
pp. 147-186
Author(s):  
Ana María Mora-Márquez
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Aristotelian Logic ◽  
Albert The Great ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
The University

The aims of this paper are to show (i) that thirteenth-century Aristotelian logic (AL-13) is a logical tradition that considers Aristotelian logic (AL: the logical curriculum at the University of Paris, that is, Porphyry’s Isagoge, Aristotle’s Organon, Boethius’s De divisione and De topicis differentiis, and the anonymous Sex principia) as a system that is organized around the syllogistic argument; and (ii) that AL-13 can be characterized as the study of scientific method, of which formal analyses are a part but by no means the crucial one. I give a diachronic account of AL-13, with its continuities and ruptures, by looking at the general accounts of AL by Nicholas of Paris (1230s), Albert the Great (1250s), and Radulphus Brito (1290s).

Rhetoric and Pedagogy

2014 ◽  
pp. 408-422
Author(s):  
Peter Mack
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
The University ◽  
Writing Exercises ◽  
The Way

Rhetoric manuals make sense only related to the school syllabuses in which they were taught. To understand how the textbooks were used we need to study the other texts, the way they were read, and the writing exercises schools prescribed. This chapter focuses on local examples of the role rhetoric played in school and university syllabuses in the Renaissance. It analyzes the role of rhetoric teaching in the school of Guarino in Verona and Ferrara 1418–60; Italian schools and universities of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the University of Paris in the early and middle sixteenth century; Johann Sturm’s school in Strasbourg 1538–81; Elizabethan grammar schools and universities; German grammar schools, specifically the 1580 Krems statutes; and the 1599 Jesuit Ratio Studiorum. The chapter makes a plea for many more local studies to provide more detailed information about the range of ways rhetoric was employed in Renaissance education.

scholarly journals Towards a New Methodology for Natural Philosophy: Latin Averroism Revisited

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 131-155
Author(s):  
Pilar Herráiz Oliva
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Philosophical Movement ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
Siger Of Brabant ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The University ◽  
Special Case ◽  
Shed Light

The reception of Aristotelian philosophy with Averroes’s commentaries in the thirteenth-century Latin world promoted a new way of understanding natural philosophy and its method. A very special case among the readers of such commentaries, mostly found at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris, are the so-called averroistae. What these averroistae actually were is still a matter of discussion in current scholarship, whereas there is kind of consensus regarding the main exponents of this philosophical movement, namely Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia. The aim of this paper is to shed light on this topic by providing a re-definition of Averroism in the 13th century. To do this, I will analyse some of the most important works of the aforementioned authors in an attempt to clarify the specificity of their philosophical program.

[Pro]passio Doloris: Early Dominican Conceptions of Christ's Physical Pain

2008 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 630-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
DONNA TREMBINSKI
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Physical Pain ◽  
Albert The Great ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
The University

In the thirteenth century Dominican theologians studying and teaching at the University of Paris began to debate how Christ experienced physical pain during his crucifixion. Drawing upon patristic arguments these considerations culminated in the conclusions of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas that Christ's physical pain was the most severe that had ever been experienced in the history of humanity. The reasons for Dominican concern to emphasise the unique severity of Christ's pain are complex and not always complimentary. The debate can be understood as part of the high medieval revival of interest in humanity and human achievement, but it can also be read as a challenge to Cathar beliefs and as a form of resistance to increasingly popular modes of affective piety.

Twelfth-century Cosmography, theDe secretis philosophie, and Māshā'allāh (Attr. to),Liber de Orbe

Traditio ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 235-276
Author(s):  
Barbara Obrist
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Lunar Eclipse ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
Central Section ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester ◽  
The Universe

TheLiber de orbe, attributed to Māshā'allāh (fl. 762–ca. 815) in the list of Gerard of Cremona's translations, stands out as one of the few identifiable sources for the indirect knowledge of Peripatetic physics and cosmology at the very time Aristotle's works on natural philosophy themselves were translated into Latin, from the 1130s onward. This physics is expounded in an opening series of chapters on the bodily constitution of the universe, while the central section of the treatise covers astronomical subjects, and the remaining parts deal with meteorology and the vegetal realm. Assuming that Gerard of Cremona's translation of theLiber de orbecorresponds to the twenty-seven chapter version that circulated especially during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was, however, not this version, but a forty-chapter expansion thereof that became influential as early as the 1140s. It may have originated in Spain, as indicated, among others, by a reference to the difference of visibility of a lunar eclipse between Spain and Mecca. Unlike the twenty-seven chapterLiber de orbe, this expanded and also partly modified text remains in manuscript, and none of the three copies known so far gives a title or mentions Māshā'allāh as an author. Instead, the thirteenth-century witness that is now in New York attributes the work to an Alcantarus:Explicit liber Alcantari Caldeorum philosophi. While no Arabic original of the twenty-seven chapterLiber de orbehas come to light yet, Taro Mimura of the University of Manchester recently identified a manuscript that partly corresponds to the forty-chapter Latin text, as well as a shorter version thereof.

Hugh of St Victor, Dominicus Gundissalinus and the Place of the Mechanical Arts in Medieval Architectures of Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Vol 153 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-318
Author(s):  
Alexander Fidora ◽  
Nicola Polloni
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The One ◽  
Mechanical Arts

This contribution engages with the problematic position of the mechanical arts within medieval systems of knowledge. Superseding the secondary position assigned to the mechanical arts in the Early Middle Ages, the solutions proposed by Hugh of St Victor and Gundissalinus were highly influential during the thirteenth century. While Hugh’s integration of the mechanical arts into his system of knowledge betrays their still ancillary position as regards consideration of the liberal arts, Gundissalinus’s theory proposes two main novelties. On the one hand, he sets the mechanical arts alongside alchemy and the arts of prognostication and magic. On the other, however, using the theory put forward by Avicenna, he subordinates these “natural sciences” to natural philosophy itself, thereby establishing a broader architecture of knowledge hierarchically ordered. Our contribution examines the implications of such developments and their reception afforded at Paris during the thirteenth century, emphasising the relevance that the solutions offered by Gundissalinus enjoyed in terms of the ensuing discussions concerning the structure of human knowledge.

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