scholarly journals The Dominican Robert Kilwardby (ca. 1215–1279) as schoolman and ecclesiastical official

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Beukes
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Church History ◽  
Current Research Problem ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Robert Kilwardby

This article, by reworking the most recent specialist contributions, presents a fresh overview of the scholastic and ecclesiastical contributions of the Oxford Dominican Robert Kilwardby (ca. 1215–1279). After highlighting the current research problem of the ‘canon’ in Medieval philosophy, the article turns to Kilwardby as a positive example of a ‘non-canonised’ thinker from the high Middle Ages – one who is thus thoroughly researched in a specialised or niche compartment, but who remains mostly unacknowledged in mainstream or ‘canonised’ Medieval philosophy. The article thus reappraises Kilwardby intending to accentuate his scholastic and ecclesiastical contributions beyond the confines of a particular niche. Kilwardby’s often provocative combination of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Augustinianism as a schoolman, and his central yet problematic role in the Paris-Oxford condemnations of 1277 as an ecclesiastical official, are henceforth reappraised.Intradisciplinary/interdisciplinary implications: As a millennium-long discourse, Medieval philosophy functions in a Venn diagrammatical relationship with Medieval history, Church history, patristics and philosophy of religion. Whenever ‘mainstream’ or ‘canonised’ Medieval philosophy is impacted from the niche research, it may well have implications that these closely related disciplines could take note of. Such is the case in this ‘hourglass’ reappraisal of life and work of Robert Kilwardby as a scholastic thinker and an ecclesiastical official.

scholarly journals Middeleeuse Studies, Mediëvalistiek en Mediëvalisme: Kritiese onderskeide en samehange

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Beukes
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Church History ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
East And West ◽  
Research Challenge ◽  
The Middle Ages

Medieval Studies, Medievalist Studies and Medievalism: Critical distinctions and intersections. The aim of this article is to clarify Medievalism (Mediëvalisme) as a research challenge in Medieval Studies, thereby contributing to the discipline’s methodological and contemporary-discursive development. In conjunction with the author’s recent analyses of three subject-internal problems in Medieval philosophy ([1]the calibration of periodisation; [2] latent Orientalism and the subsequent problem of ‘two registers’ [‘East’ and ‘West’]; as well as [3] the problem of the ‘canon’), Medievalism is presented as the idea-historical postulation of a Medieval ‘Other’ with the subtle intent to alleviate the notion of some contemporaneous ‘Self’; in other words, Medievalism points toward the apparent spontaneous acceptance of a disparity between a superior post-Medieval Self and an inferior Medieval Other. This includes the essentialising of a single aspect, or contingent aspects, of the Medieval Other, which results in conjectures of deeply caricaturised and quasi-comprehensive views of the Middle Ages. Medievalist Studies (translated for the sake of clarity, as Mediëvalistiek in Afrikaans to circumvent the curious and confusing overlapping of the terms ‘Medievalist Studies’ and ‘Medievalism’ in English), the discipline that studies the post-Medieval reception of the Middle Ages (in whatever form or genre), is presented as a legitimate supplementary tool for exposing Medievalism, particularly in non-specialised contexts. The article henceforth argues for the systematic employment of Mediëvalistiek in its countering of Mediëvalisme as an effective supplementary resource in Medieval Studies – especially within the context of the contemporary Neoconservative reception of the Middle Ages.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Dealing with a millennium-long variety of discourses, Medieval Studies functions in a Venn-diagrammatical relationship with Medieval philosophy, Medieval history, church history, patristics, philosophy of religion and sociology of religion. Whenever these proximate disciplines are impacted by specialist Medieval research, it may well have noteworthy implications. Such is the case in this critical distinction between and clarification of the intersections between Medieval Studies, Mediëvalisme (Medievalism) and Mediëvalistiek (Medievalist Studies).

Lombard, Peter (1095/1100–1160)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia L. Colish
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Formal Logic ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Four Books ◽  
Marked Preference ◽  
Pedagogical Framework

Peter Lombard’s philosophical views are important given the formative role his Sententiae in IV libris distinctae (Four Books of Sentences) played in the education of university theologians in the high Middle Ages, many of whom were also philosophers. Peter staunchly opposes theologies, cosmologies and anthropologies of a Platonic or Neoplatonic type. While conversant with new trends in logic in his day, he is disinclined to treat theological issues as illustrations of the rules of formal logic or natural philosophy, preferring to view them from a metaphysical perspective. In his doctrine of God he deliberately eschews terminology associated with any one philosophical school. In his anthropology and sacramental theology he shows a marked preference for Aristotelianism. The hospitability of his theology to Aristotelianism and to a philosophical treatment of a range of theological questions made his Sentences elastic enough to accommodate the reception of Greco-Arabic thought and to serve as a pedagogical framework usable by philosophers of every persuasion during the succeeding three centuries.

William of Ockham

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Pelletier ◽  
Magali Roques
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
William Of Ockham ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
Franciscan Order ◽  
John Xxii ◽  
The Right

William of Ockham (b. c. 1287–d. 1347) is one of the giants of medieval philosophy. He was an innovative and controversial thinker who lived an extraordinarily eventful life. He entered the Franciscan order as a young boy and then studied in Oxford and London, where he composed an extensive body of work on logic, natural philosophy, and theology in accordance with the academic requirements of the time. While waiting to incept as a magister with the right to teach in the faculty of theology at Oxford, he was summoned to the papal court at Avignon in 1324, where some of his doctrines were suspected of being heretical. There, he was drawn into the current political crisis of the day between Pope John XXII and the Franciscan order on the question of who owned the property that the Franciscan order used (buildings, clothing, food, etc.). John XXII argued that use entailed ownership; the Franciscans argued that it did not. Ockham waded into the debate, inaugurating an interest in politics and political philosophy that would occupy him exclusively until his death. Eventually convinced that John XXII was a heretic, Ockham fled Avignon in 1328 in the company of Michael of Cesena and other Franciscan leaders, finding protection at the court of Ludwig of Bavaria, the Holy Roman Emperor. He composed a second body of work on property and property rights, heresy, and the nature, origin, and relationship of temporal and spiritual power. Ockham was excommunicated in 1328 but never officially charged with heresy. Ockham’s body of work is remarkable, and not only because of the abrupt shift in his intellectual and political pursuits. Despite the risk of oversimplification, we can identify certain pervasive tendencies in his thought. He exhibits a general preference for parsimony and privileges minimalism in metaphysics while developing a highly sophisticated analysis of language and logic. He insists on a firm foundation for knowledge in our direct experience of individual and contingent objects. He emphasizes divine omnipotence, simplicity, and freedom, and places human freedom and rationality at the heart of his ethics and politics. Ockham’s reputation as an enfant terrible of the late Middle Ages, whose doctrines were commonly represented as either calamitous or revolutionary, depending on the interpreter, has been substantially revised in the past three decades. A balanced and critical assessment of his thought and position in the history of medieval philosophy nevertheless remains an ongoing project.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.E.M. Lippiatt
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Governing Institutions

Historians of political development in the High Middle Ages often focus on the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as the generations in which monarchy finally triumphed over aristocracy to create a monopoly on governing institutions in Western Europe. However, it was precisely in this period that Simon of Montfort emerged from his modest forest lordship in France to conquer a principality stretching from the Pyrenees to the Rhône. A remarkable ascendancy in any period, it is perhaps especially so in its contrast with the accepted historiographical narrative. Despite the supposed triumph of monarchy during his lifetime, Simon’s meteoric career took place largely outside of royal auspices. Simon’s experience provides a challenge to an uncomplicated or teleological understanding of contemporary politics as effectively national affairs directed by kings.

Simon V of Montfort and Baronial Government, 1195-1218

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.E.M. Lippiatt
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Violent Death ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Southern France ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Biographical Study

Dissenter from the Fourth Crusade, disseised earl of Leicester, leader of the Albigensian Crusade, prince of southern France: Simon of Montfort led a remarkable career of ascent from mid-level French baron to semi-independent count before his violent death before the walls of Toulouse in 1218. Through the vehicle of the crusade, Simon cultivated autonomous power in the liminal space between competing royal lordships in southern France in order to build his own principality. This first English biographical study of his life examines the ways in which Simon succeeded and failed in developing this independence in France, England, the Midi, and on campaign to Jerusalem. Simon’s familial, social, and intellectual connexions shaped his conceptions of political order, which he then implemented in his conquests. By analysing contemporary narrative, scholastic, and documentary evidence—including a wealth of archival material—this book argues that Simon’s career demonstrates the vitality of baronial independence in the High Middle Ages, despite the emergence of centralised royal bureaucracies. More importantly, Simon’s experience shows that barons themselves adopted methods of government that reflected a concern for accountability, public order, and contemporary reform ideals. This study therefore marks an important entry in the debate about baronial responsibility in medieval political development, as well as providing the most complete modern account of the life of this important but oft-overlooked crusader.

Visions of Kinship in Medieval Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Hummer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Late Roman

What meaning did human kinship possess in a world regulated by biblical time, committed to the primacy of spiritual relationships, and bound by the sinews of divine love? In the process of exploring that question, this book offers a searching re-examination of kinship in Europe between late Roman times and the high Middle Ages, the period bridging Europe’s primitive past and its modern present. It critiques the modernist and Western bio-genealogical and functionalist assumptions that have shaped kinship studies since their inception in the nineteenth century, when biblical time collapsed and kinship became a signifier of the essential secularity of history and a method for conceptualizing a deeper prehistory guided by autogenous human impulses. It argues that this understanding of kinship is fundamentally antagonistic to medieval sentiments and is responsible for the frustrations researchers have encountered as they have tried to identify the famously elusive kin groups of medieval Europe. It delineates an alternative ethnographic approach inspired by recent anthropological work that privileges indigenous expressions of kinship and the interpretive potential of native ontologies. The book reveals that kinship in the Middle Ages was not biological, primitive, or a regulator of social mechanisms; nor is it traceable by bio-genealogical connections. In the Middle Ages kinship signified a sociality that flowed from convictions about the divine source of all things and wove together families, institutions, and divinities into an expansive eschatological vision animated by “the most righteous principle of love.”

scholarly journals Resource Controllability of Business Processes Under Conditional Uncertainty

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Zavatteri ◽  
Carlo Combi ◽  
Luca Viganò
Keyword(s):  
Access Control ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Process Management ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Autonomous Systems ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Current Research Problem ◽  
Constraint Networks ◽  
Process Engine ◽  
A Current

AbstractA current research problem in the area of business process management deals with the specification and checking of constraints on resources (e.g., users, agents, autonomous systems, etc.) allowed to be committed for the execution of specific tasks. Indeed, in many real-world situations, role assignments are not enough to assign tasks to the suitable resources. It could be the case that further requirements need to be specified and satisfied. As an example, one would like to avoid that employees that are relatives are assigned to a set of critical tasks in the same process in order to prevent fraud. The formal specification of a business process and its related access control constraints is obtained through a decoration of a classic business process with roles, users, and constraints on their commitment. As a result, such a process specifies a set of tasks that need to be executed by authorized users with respect to some partial order in a way that all authorization constraints are satisfied. Controllability refers in this case to the capability of executing the process satisfying all these constraints, even when some process components, e.g., gateway conditions, can only be observed, but not decided, by the process engine responsible of the execution. In this paper, we propose conditional constraint networks with decisions (CCNDs) as a model to encode business processes that involve access control and conditional branches that may be both controllable and uncontrollable. We define weak, strong, and dynamic controllability of CCNDs as two-player games, classify their computational complexity, and discuss strategy synthesis algorithms. We provide an encoding from the business processes we consider here into CCNDs to exploit off-the-shelf their strategy synthesis algorithms. We introduce $$\textsc {Zeta}$$ Z E T A , a tool for checking controllability of CCNDs, synthesizing execution strategies, and executing controllable CCNDs, by also supporting user interactivity. We use $$\textsc {Zeta}$$ Z E T A to compare with the previous research, provide a new experimental evaluation for CCNDs, and discuss limitations.

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