A Fourteenth-Century Scholastic Dispute on Astrological Interrogations

Vivarium ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-285
Author(s):  
C. Philipp E. Nothaft
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
The Future ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
Internal Coherence ◽  
The University

Abstract This article examines and edits an anonymous text from the late 1330s (Quesitum fuit utrum per interrogationes …), which was written to refute the arguments presented in a lost quaestio disputata by an unknown Parisian philosopher. At the heart of this scholastic dispute was the question whether the astrological branch known as interrogations was an effective and legitimate means of predicting the future. The philosopher’s negative answers to this question as well as the rebuttals preserved in our anonymous text offer valuable new insights into the debate over astrology that raged at the University of Paris during the fourteenth century. Besides arguing at length for the internal coherence and philosophical soundness of interrogations, the text contains a bold defence against the Augustinian view that astrologers consort with demons. This defence was later rebutted as part of an anti-astrological polemic by the astronomer Heinrich Selder, who is known to have studied in Paris during the 1370s.

Metaphor and mental language in late-medieval nominalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 136-166
Author(s):  
Magali Roques
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
William Of Ockham ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Language And Communication ◽  
Mental Language ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
And Function ◽  
The University

Abstract In this paper, I intend to examine the conception of metaphor developed by fourteenth-century nominalist philosophers, in particular William of Ockham and John Buridan, but also the Ockhamist philosophers who were condemned by the 1340 statute of the faculty of arts of the University of Paris. According to these philosophers, metaphor is a transfer of meaning from one word to another. This transfer is based on some similarity, and is intentionally produced by a speaker. My aim is to study whether this view on metaphor is related to a specific view on the relation between thought, language, and communication. With this case study, I intend to argue that the view on the nature of thought one holds does not necessarily determine what the nature and function of metaphor are. I will show that the three philosophical doctrines under study diverge in their understanding of the mechanisms of a metaphor, while they share the same view on the nature of thought, namely that thought is a mental language.

The sermon literature of pope Clement VI

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 163-172
Author(s):  
Diana Wood
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Teaching Skill ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
The University ◽  
Walter Burley

Maximus sermocinator verbi Dei is the description of pope Clement VI, formerly Pierre Roger, given by a fourteenth-century French chronicler. Others of the pope’s compatriots were equally fulsome in their adulation. An Italian chronicler, perhaps an ex-student at the university of Paris, where Pierre Roger had been a master in theology, records:. . . gratissimus fuit sermocinator. Quum cathedram concionaturus aut disputaturus ascendebat, tota Parisiorum Civitas, ut eum audiret, accurrebat. Proh quam eleganter sermocinabatur!In Prague, Clement’s ex-pupil, the emperor Charles IV, remembered the grace with which he had been infused through listening to one of his master’s sermons over twenty years before. Even the English joined this chorus of praise. Thomas Walsingham paid tribute to Clement as a man of singular culture, while Walter Burley lauded his teaching skill, his oratory, and his legendary memory. By the early fifteenth century Clement’s sermons were regarded as models. Several of them appear, abbreviated and anonymous, as part of a treatise on preaching by Paul Koëlner, canon of Ratisbon, written some time before 1420.

Albert of Saxony (c.1316–90)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Biard
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
New Physics ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
University Of Vienna ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
The University ◽  
Epistemological Realism

Albert of Saxony, active in the middle and late fourteenth century, taught at the University of Paris and was later instrumental in founding the University of Vienna. He is best known for his works on logic and natural philosophy. In the latter field he was influenced by John Buridan, but he was also influenced by the English logicians. His thought is rather typical of the sort that followed Buridan, combining critical analysis of language with epistemological realism. He was important in the diffusion of terminist logic in central Europe, and of the new physics in northern Italy.

Logic and Mathematics

2020 ◽  
pp. 455-471
Author(s):  
Edith Dudley Sylla
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Technical Measure ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Negative Images ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
Consolation Of Philosophy ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The University ◽  
John Wyclif

Chaucer is known as a philosophical poet. He translated Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy from Latin to English. Do his works reveal familiarity with what went on in philosophy at Oxford and Cambridge universities in the fourteenth century? The chapter summarizes typical features of the work of the so-called ‘Oxford Calculators’ (also known as the ‘Merton School’) and contemporary philosophers at the University of Paris (who, together, may be called the fourteenth-century ‘moderni’) and contrasts these features with the work of John Wyclif, which became influential later in the fourteenth century. Among the features considered are disputations on sophismata, use of the logica moderna and technical measure languages, demonstrative reasoning, and optimism about the capabilities of scientific disciplines. Resonating more with Wycliffites are negative images of clerics.

Theory and Practice: A Jewish Physician in Paris and Avignon

AJS Review ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Einbinder
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Medical Faculty ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Northern France ◽  
Medical Careers ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Jewish Physician ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
Papal Court ◽  
The University

Not otherwise known as a bright era for the Jews of Christian Europe, the late fourteenth century nonetheless counted a number of thriving Jewish medical careers. One physician who surfaced in this period was Jacob b. Solomon of Avignon (sometimes called Jacob b. Solomon haTzarfati), whose career has been documented in two cities. In northern France, the land of his ancestors, we find him in the 1370s in the orbit of the University of Paris and its prestigious medical faculty. By the early 1380s, however, Jacob was at the papal court in Avignon, where or near where he was raised. There, in his own day at least, he achieved some renown while serving as physician to Pope Clement VII's brother, Count Pierre of Geneva.

Aureol, Peter (c.1280–1322)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Pasnau
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
Franciscan Order ◽  
The University

A master of theology at the University of Paris and a member of the Franciscan order, Peter Aureol helped shape the philosophical agenda of the fourteenth century. His original and provocative views were widely discussed during the later Middle Ages, but his influence was rather indirect since his views almost always met with hostility. Although Aureol wrote extensively on a wide range of philosophical and theological issues, his most-discussed contributions to philosophy, in epistemology and metaphysics, centre on his theory of esse apparens (apparent existence).

A Short Modern History of Studying Sacrobosco’s De sphaera

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 23-33
Author(s):  
Alin Constantin Corfu
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Modern History ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
The University

"A Short Modern History of Studying Sacrobosco’s De sphaera. The treatise generally known as De sphaera offered at the beginning of the 13th century a general image of the structure of the cosmos. In this paper I’m first trying to present a triple stake with which this treaty of Johannes de Sacrobosco (c. 1195 - c. 1256). This effort is intended to draw a context upon the treaty on which I will present in the second part of this paper namely, a short modern history of studying this treaty starting from the beginning of the 20th century up to this day. The first stake consists in the well-known episode of translation of the XI-XII centuries in the Latin milieu of the Greek and Arabic treaties. The treatise De sphaera taking over, assimilating and comparing some of the new translations of the texts dedicated to astronomy. The second Consists in the fact that Sacrobosco`s work can be considered a response to a need of renewal of the curriculum dedicated to astronomy at the University of Paris. And the third consists in the novelty and the need to use the De sphaera treatise in the Parisian University’s curriculum of the 13th century. Keywords: astronomy, translation, university, 13th Century, Sacrobosco, Paris, curriculum"

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