Albertus Magnus

"El tratado "De secretis mulierum" [...] es un peculiar tratado de medicina, atribuido erróneamente a Alberto Magno, que tuvo una gran circulación en Europa Central entre los siglos XIV y XVII, especialmente en el ámbito alemán [...] conoció una difusión extraordinaria, a juzgar por el número de manuscritos y ediciones conservadas [...] en este trabajo he preferido centrarme en un aspecto que considero crucial: la concepción de la sangre menstrual como una sustancia tóxica y las consecuencias que dicha concepción tiene en la actitud hacia las mujeres."

The article focuses on the first three chapters of Isaiah. After recalling the results of modern biblical scholarship on the use of legal and forensic jargon in Isaiah (§ 1) and giving a thumbnail sketch of the traditions of Latin Christian exegesis in the Middle Ages (§ 2), I will examine passages of the commentary on Isaiah written by Dominican theologian Albert the Great in the 13th century (§ 3). The aim is to evaluate to what extent the concerns of the original biblical text, when filtered through the Latin Vulgate and through Christian foresight, are captured by the medieval exegete, to what extent Albert is able to understand the peculiar theme of the self-awareness of the history of Israel in the form of a legal contention between God and His people.

Gregor Julien Straube: Fruchtbarkeitskulte. In: Gudrun Gersmann, Katrin Möller und Jürgen-Michael Schmidt (Hgg.): Lexikon zur Geschichte der Hexenverfolgung. Halle an der Saale 2009 (historicum.net, Geschichtswissenschaften im Internet), URL: http://www.historicum.net/no_cache/persistent/artikel/6977/ [07.08.2009].

Les philosophes médiévaux n'ont pas hésité à proclamer que : « Chaque être humain est un animal. » Pour eux, c'était un fait scientifique et une vérité logique, un élément crucial de leur vision du monde dans laquelle toutes les substances sont hiérarchiquement ordonnées selon une taxonomie systématique, appelée l'Arbre de Porphyre. Selon cette classification systématique, les animaux appartiennent au genre des corps vivants, et ils se distinguent des plantes par leur capacité à percevoir. De plus, le genre 'animal' est divisé en deux espèces, les animaux rationnels et irrationnels, mais en dépit de cette différence, nous sommes nous aussi des animaux d'un point de vue taxonomique. Cette affinité se manifeste dans le domaine de la psychologie, étant donné que les philosophes médiévaux pensaient que nos vies sont à bien des égards similaires à la vie des animaux. Nous percevons notre environnement, nous avons des émotions, nous imaginons les objets absents, et nous nous soucions de nos corps et de notre bien-être matériel. Les animaux nous sont familiers tant nous avons en commun avec eux. D'autre part, les philosophes médiévaux pensaient que nous avons une place particulière dans la création. On peut voir que dans l'Arbre de Porphyre, tous les autres animaux appartiennent au genre des animaux irrationnels, et que seul l'être humain est considéré comme un animal rationnel. C'est notre rationalité qui nous distingue des autres animaux. Cette différence peut être abordée sous deux angles ...

A study on the notion of wisdom in Albertus Magnus based on his commentaries on Eth. Nic.

«La sabiduría en san Alberto Magno» in: "La sabiduría en Tomás de Aquino. Inspiración y reflexión. Perspectivas filosóficas y teológicas", edited by Liliana B. Irizar, Bogotá: Universidad Sergio Arboleda, 2017, ISBN: 978-958-8987-57-6, pp. 33-53.

It is widely believed that the philosophical concept of ‘tabula rasa’ originates with Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding and refers to a state in which a child is as formless as a blank slate. Given that both these beliefs are entirely false, this article will examine why they have endured from the eighteenth century to the present. Attending to the history of philosophy, psychology, psychiatry and feminist scholarship it will be shown how the image of the tabula rasa has been used to signify an originary state of formlessness, against which discourses on the true nature of the human being can differentiate their position. The tabula rasa has operated less as a substantive position than as a whipping post. However, it will be noted that innovations in psychological theory over the past decade have begun to undermine such narratives by rendering unintelligible the idea of an ‘originary’ state of human nature.

Il volume ripercorre lo sviluppo del pensiero del giovane Nicola Cusano dalla frequentazione del maestro albertista Eimerico da Campo presso l’Università di Colonia (1425) e dal confronto con le posizioni filosofiche dei domenicani dello Studium coloniense, fino agli anni della maturità a Roma (1450).

Il saggio illustra il contesto storico-culturale della genesi del De docta ignorantia, testo che suggella la presa di distanza di Cusano dal proprio passato universitario ma anche, al contempo, la sua insoddisfazione nei confronti dell’umanesimo diffuso in Italia negli anni del Concilio di Ferrara-Firenze; e lo segue nella sua ‘caccia della Sapienza’, nell’incontro con differenti tradizioni e contesti, fino alla formulazione dell’ideale del ‘Socrate cristiano’ nell’Idiota.

Il volume, riccamente documentato anche sul piano della storia delle interpretazioni e degli studi su Cusano, contribuisce a far luce sulla formazione del suo pensiero e sulle questioni che ne hanno segnato la vita.

This paper examines the methodology employed by Thomas Aquinas in his two derivations of the categories, or sufficientiae. In these accounts, he shows the distinctiveness of the ten Aristotelian categories as modes of being (modi essendi) through an analysis of modes of predication (modi praedicandi).  The paper considers why Aquinas sees this logical method of predication (via praedicationis) to be an appropriate tool for the metaphysician.  Similarities between Aquinas’s and Albert’s sufficientiae are shown to clarify Aquinas’s methodology. In particular, the paper examines how both thinkers employ modes of denominative predication and modes of opposition to derive the categories.  The paper not only reveals Aquinas’s full methodology in his sufficientiae, but it also provides further insight into how he uses logical methods in general in his metaphysical investigations.

Nel XIII secolo, insieme alle traduzioni latine del corpus aristotelico, circolava un De plantis attribuito ad Aristotele, ma scritto in realtà da Nicola di Damasco, un autore di lingua greca vissuto intorno al II secolo d.C.. Quando nel 1256 Alberto Magno commenta quest’opera, si accorge che il testo condivide ben poco con l’epistemologia e il metodo argomentativo di Aristotele. Così, Alberto interviene sul De plantis con strategie commentaristico-parafrastiche così ricche e integrative che, più che spiegare il testo, finiscono per ristrutturarlo. In questo saggio mostreremo le due alternative che Alberto fornisce in risposta alle lacune botaniche rinvenute nel De plantis, avanzando l’ipotesi che si possa identificare nel Liber de animalibus il modello epistemico al quale Alberto si ispira nel suo tentativo di riscrivere lo scritto sulle piante che Aristotele avrebbe dovuto o potuto comporre.

Recorrido crítico por la figura de Necepso-Petosiris, nombre ficticio (legendario) bajo el cual se oculta el autor (quizá uno solo mejor que varios) greco-egipcio de un manual célebre de astrología, probablemente compuesto en el curso del s. II a.C., pero basado sin duda en una tradición más antigua. Dicho manual, del que sólo conservamos fragmentos dispersos, representa uno de los testimonios más antiguos de la tradición hermética. Esquema del capítulo: Testimonios y fragmentos, Ediciones. Estudios. Autor(es) y cronología. Título. Contenido de la gran enciclopedia astrológica hermética. Influencia.

Thomas Aquinas's Filioque doctrine was never discussed at the Council of Florence. Instead, an eclectic Dominican was the sole spokesman for the entire Latin Church as appointed by Pope Eugene IV (1439). This John Montenero, OP, did not represent the doctrine of Aquinas in either his Scriptum, or his Contra graecos, or his Summa Theologiae. Instead, Mark of Ephesus fought against an eclectic subordinationist at Florence and correctly evaluated his theory as reducible to pneumatomachianism. This work shows that there are at least five levels to looking at Aquinas's filioquism: (1.) Aquinas's lectio reverentialis of primitive non-metaphysical theories from the 12th century (2.) Aquinas's acceptation of Franciscan rearrangement of John Damascene's De fide orthodoxa into a filioque argument from will (3.) Aquinas's reception of this tradition by an Aristotelianizing Albert the Great (4.) Aquinas's purification of Franciscan filioquism into pure metaphor (5.) the reinvention of a Albertan-inspired filioquism by more intensely developing the theory of Aristotelian relations as ulteriorly developed by Anselm.

Desde los comienzos de la Baja Edad Media y hasta el siglo XVII circularon por Europa una enorme cantidad de libros que prometían revelar a sus lectores los misterios de la naturaleza y de las artes. Estos «libros de secretos» constituyen un tipo muy particular de literatura técnica, situado a medio camino entre los recetarios y los textos herméticos, y abierto a gran cantidad de temáticas, desde la fisiognomía hasta la magia, aunque las más extendidas fueron la alquimia y la medicina.
En este volumen se presenta la primera edición crítica del De secretis mulierum, un tratado bajomedieval de origen alemán que se inserta dentro de esa tradición de los libros de secretos y que constituye el primer representante de los secreta mulierum o «secretos de las mujeres», un subgénero muy particular, relacionado tanto con la filosofía natural como con la medicina y dedicado a desvelar los misterios del proceso de la generación humana. El De secretis mulierum, que conoció una amplísima difusión durante varios siglos, hecho al que no fue ajena su adscripción, errónea, a Alberto Magno, es un documento de gran importancia no sólo para los investigadores interesados en la filosofía natural y la medicina de las épocas medieval y renacentista, sino también para los que trabajen en campos como la astrología, la fisiognomía o la historia de las mujeres. Todos ellos encontrarán en la edición crítica del tratado una base textual sólida y segura sobre la que llevar a cabo sus investigaciones. El volumen incluye además una traducción del texto latino al castellano, así como un estudio introductorio en el que se realiza un acercamiento general a los libros de secretos medievales, prestando especial atención a los de contenido médico y, dentro de estos, a los "secreta mulierum."

SOME MODERN SCHOLARS, such as Jeremiah Hackett and Agostino
Paravicini Bagliani, assert that the thirteenth-century work most commonly known as the Speculum astronomiae should not be attributed to Albertus Magnus. However, this article, based on a close analysis of forty-one of the surviving fifty-nine manuscripts containing the Speculum
in conjunction with a wide array of other primary sources, demonstrates
that the preponderance of the evidence is strongly suggestive that this is
a genuinely Albertine work. Furthermore, this article considers some of
the ways in which astrology fit into Albert’s larger theological and philosophical thought. Since Albert was a bishop and a theologian, it is necessary to see his astrological views as central to his theology, which is why he wrote about the subject almost every time he put pen to paper. Thus, this article not only argues for Albert’s authorship of the Speculum but also demonstrates how it fits within his larger body of writings on astrology and theology, while showing how these two subjects were linked for him.

Sophocles’ Antigone and the Corpus Hippocraticum describe the proper features of natural law. Aristotle’s Ethics, then, offers an explicit notion of natural law, which St. Albert comments in Super Ethica. However, in Cicero’s De inventione the German theologian finds his natural law’s definition: «what certain innate strength inserted». In De bono V q. 1, St. Albert establishes the length of this definition and presents a complete notion of natural law. St. Albert also notices that man, in relation to the practical intellect’s science, is twice in potency. Firstly, he is in potency of knowing the first principles of this science, and, secondly, once they are known, he is in potency of inferring from them the conclusions of the practical science. When he possesses these conclusions, finally, he is in potency of applying them in practical life. Intrigued by the way in which these first principles are known, St. Albert realizes that the knowledge of the notions corresponding to these principles only accidentally must be attributed to the discovery or determination of the names, with which we call these principles. In truth, is necessary that the light of agent intellect intervene to conduct the knowledge of the principles to the act. In this point, St. Albert discourse returns to Cicero’s definition: that innate strength which inserts natural law is not other than the light of the agent intellect.

Starting from the condemnation of the clearly Thomist proposition “In the human, there is only one form, the rational soul, without any other substantial form” in 1286 by the Archbishop of Canterbury I ask how Aquinas could have opposed (as the Archbishop rightly claimed) the Augustinian philosophical theology and spirituality of the Latin Church, "reason and the saints" and answer that it required the unity of Dionysius with Aristotle that Aquinas learned from Albert and discerned himself. The paper goes on to consider how Aquinas discovered that both Dionysius and the Liber de causis were Platonist (Aquinas was the first to call Dionysius a Platonist) and the consequences of this shift Albert never made. The paper gives arguments for redating Thomas' Exposition of the Divine Names.

Having looked at Proclus in terms of the immediate connection of the One as Nothing by excess and Matter as Nothing by defect,  and treated Aquinas’ Ipsum Esse Subsistens, as Trinitarian and Incarnational because of its self-differentiating inclusivity,  I take another step in bringing Aquinas and Proclus closer by considering the primary differentiation in both: the divine Henads and the Persons of the Trinity. We consider here how, for both Proclus and Aquinas, the becoming of the multitude of beings is preceded by a multiplication of divinities within the First according to a strongly different logic than that which governs what succeeds them.  Owing to difficulties in arriving at an account of the relation of the One and the Henads, either in Proclus or commentators, and in applying language from one set of structures to another, this must be a preliminary investigation and I look forward to help from those to  whom this paper is presented.
I conclude my comparisons of Persons and Henads: Finally, the Persons and the Henads have in common that their numbers are finite. However, the number of the Henads is indefinite and remains unknown to us. Because the Persons are relations emerging from perfect or internal activities, of which there are only two in intellectual beings, knowing and loving, the Trinity is fixed at three with certainty.  The relation between being, knowing and loving is the conversion, i.e. remaining, exitus, reditus, which structures being for Proclus.  Thus, at this point, as well as many others, Aquinas’ Neoplatonism draws the finite into the infinite and the structure of human subjectivity into the divine.  Through this flattening and by this mutual interconnection, his Trinity becomes a monotheism. Fatefully, what limits and characterizes its members is a subjectivity it shares with humans.
Finally, the Persons and the Henads have in common that their numbers are finite. However, the number of the Henads is indefinite and remains unknown to us. Because there are only two internal activities in intellectual beings, knowing and loving, the Trinity is fixed by their three relations.  The trinitarian conversion on itself of being, knowing and loving in Aquinas, is a form of the  remaining, exitus, reditus, which structures all being for Proclus.  Thus, at this point, as well as many others, Aquinas’ Neoplatonism draws the finite into the infinite and the structure of human subjectivity into the divine.  Through this flattening, and by this mutual interconnection, his Trinity becomes a monotheism. Fatefully, what limits and characterizes its members is a subjectivity it shares with humans.
The difference with which I have concluded is gigantic and requires much reflection, especially now that the culture which succeeded Hellenic Neoplatonism and drew it within itself is on the point of destroying the conditions of human life. Also requiring reflection are the similarities between the ways both theologians make the transition from unity to the many. More is at work here than mere influence. Have we to do with theological necessities or Platonic ones or both? Must multiplicity begin within divinity itself? Robert Crouse explicates Augustine’s assertion of this requisite,  and judges the matching Proclean modes as incapable of success.  Aquinas’ inclusion of Augustine within a Proclean structure must from this point of view be regarded not only as unnecessary but, indeed, as mistaken. However, if as Jean Trouillard  and others judge, the move to Proclus beyond what they regard as Augustine’s anthropomorphic Trinity is necessary to protect the Divine transcendence, then is not the necessity in a different place?  There are few questions more urgently in need of investigation than these.

A textual journey through Dante s Comedy must begin from its beginnings. For this reason I chose the utmost classical approach of the lectura to examine the first three cantos as a textual whole in three movements, as they develop the exposition of the Third Way in Thomas demonstration of the existence of God (Summa Theologiae I, II, 3). Dante s Comedy is a unitary text distinguished by a strong hysteron proteron narrative pattern, where the Author embeds in his main character a manifold profile: pilgrim, reporter and narrator. The narrator has grown in experience through the journey from a complete loss of orientation to a gradual regain of the natural order of things, i.e. from a complete mental submission to contingency or disorder misleading to suicide to a natural order of things wanted by God. The Third Way of Thomas demonstration leads from a crypto-atheism, i.e. God does not exist, to the demonstration that a necessary being has to be. I analyzed Thomas Third Way and then applied this perspective to the first three cantos of Dante s Comedy. At the end I noticed that the Comedy as a whole is necessarily contingent, so that a further analysis of the threefold feature of Dante was crucial for the comprehension of the whole. His experience as a man and above all as a man of culture required also awareness of his contemporary culture and of the main influences he may have perceived and left a print in his conscience. Therefore I chose to investigate contingency as a state of the mind, as the medieval philo-theologicians did too: they understood contingency not only as the interaction of matter and form, but as a condition of the soul between earthly disorder and celestial natural order.

Dionysius in Albertus Magnus and his student Thomas Aquinas
Oxford Handbook to Dionysius the Areopagite
Edited Mark Edwards, Dimitrios Pallis, George Steiris
“Dionysius nearly everywhere follows Aristotle as will be evident to anyone diligently examining his books.”
For this judgement, the great Thomist scholar Marie-Dominque Chenu supposed Aquinas “to have been duped by certain external resemblances.”  However, if, in fact, there are dupes here, the first was Albertus Magnus. From his great teacher, Albert, the Dionysian Peripatetic, Aquinas, for whom the Areopagite remained a quasi-Biblical authority but identified as a Platonist, learned the fundamental congruence of the doctrines of the greatest philosophical authority, Aristotle, and his match in the higher realm of theology, Dionysius.

I. Albert, the Dionysian Peripatetic
A. Dionysius and Aristotle juxtaposed in Cologne
Aquinas had been initiated by Albert into what Alain de Libera called “The ‘way’ of Dionysian peripateticism,”  when, from 1245/46  to 1251/52, Thomas was his student, first in Paris and, then, crucially, from 1248, in Cologne. In the advanced studium the Dominicans directed Albert to establish there, “the greatest Dionysian commentator of the XIIIth century,”  exposited the entire Dionysian corpus and began his explanations of the works attributed to Aristotle.  Evidence that Thomas studied both authors with him are manuscripts of Albert’s commentaries on the Dionysian corpus and of his lectures on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle.  For the former, we have Thomas’ autographs, written out for Albert as his assistant.  Thus “he copied the whole set of Albert’s [Dionysian] commentaries by hand” and also inserted annotations.  For the Ethics, we have a reportatio by Thomas. Importantly for the differences which evolved between their ways of thinking, Albert did not start his paraphrastic expositions of the Aristotelian corpus until the one devoted to the Physics in 1251/52. Soon after that, Thomas left for Paris. Burger stresses that “when Albert was commenting on the texts of Aristotle, and finally on the Liber de causis, Thomas was in Paris and in Italy. So their ways, like their thinking, were separated.”
“In the autumn of 1251, or at the latest 1252, [Aquinas] commenced his career of teaching at the University of Paris by cursive reading of two books of the Bible.”  These lectures qualified him to comment on the Sentences, obtain the licentia docendi, the status of magister, and a chair. Thomas’ Sentences Commentary is his largest theological system. Commenting on the second Book Thomas made his observation about Dionysius following Aristotle, “during the academic year 1252-53” or the next,  when he was still strongly under the influence of Albert.

This chapter on later Platonic traditions focuses on Denys, otherwise known as Ps-Dionysius the Areopagite. A late fifth- to early sixth-century theologian dependent on Plotinus, Damascius, and, above all, Proclus, assumed to have been converted by St Paul and possessing his spiritual wisdom, Denys was influential throughout  Catholic theology. The chapter places Denys’s innovations against the background of Christian engagement with Neoplatonism after Augustine. After tracing Denys’ influence from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, his role in modernity via Pierre de Bérulle and neo-scholasticism is considered. We conclude with his importance for some postmodern Catholic thinkers.

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-arabic-influences-on-early-modern-occult-philosophy-liana-saif/?isb=9781137399465

The Arabic Influences on Early Modern Occult Philosophy introduces Arabic medieval astrological and magical theories formulated mainly in The Great Introduction to the Judgements of the Stars by Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi (787-886), De radiis by Ya'qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (801-873), and the Picatrix by Maslama al-Qurtubi (d. 964). Liana Saif investigates their influence on early modern occult philosophy, particularly the works of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), and John Dee (1527-c. 1608). The Arabic theories of astral influences provided a naturalistic explanation of astral influences and magical efficacy based on Aristotelian notions of causality. In addition, this book explores how this causality was reconciled with astrological hermeneutics, Neoplatonic emanationism, and Platonic eschatology, thus demonstrating the complexity of early modern occult philosophy and its syncretism.

In this paper we argue that the problem of the one and the many, as first proposed in the West by Parmenides, can be resolved without recourse to either monism or nominalism by an appeal to distinct though mutually ordered principles of distinction in the realm of material substances, namely that of material individuation, distinction according to form, and supposital distinction. This solution, rooted in St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Albert the Great, maintains that what distinguishes one material substance from any other substance absolutely is the agency of the Divine Intellect. This agency elicits in the created material substance the actuality of the relation of creation, which is the cause or principle that, in inhering in the ens creatum as a property subsisting in it, sustains the material substance in its mode of being as suppositum by formally perfecting its distinction with reference to God the Creator.

The XXVIth annual SIEPM colloquium, A Research Workshop of the Israel Science Foundation, will take place on 4-6 April 2022 at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. The subject of the colloquium is: Dialectic in the Middle Ages: Between Debate and the Foundation of Science. Dialectic played a central role in medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian intellectual cultures as both a tool for knowledge making and an object of study in its own right. Medieval intellectual cultures saw dialectic, often associated with Aristotle's Topica, as crucial for describing and defining philosophy and science, as well as characterizing and inculcating religious beliefs. Debates and discussions, which played a large role in medieval education systems in all three traditions, were also frequently associated with Aristotle's Topica. Indeed, Aristotle's chief text on dialectic was associated with teaching the masses religious ideas, constructing arguments for various forms of debate, imparting religious, scientific, and philosophical concepts to the intellectual elite, and discovering the grounds of scientific arguments and their basic premises. At the same time, the text enabled a study of the methods themselves, viz. a study of arguments based on opinions, generally accepted premises (as opposed to demonstrations), induction, and the groundwork of debate itself. The forms of disputations and debate that we encounter in medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian intellectual cultures varied among intellectual and religious climates and so did the historical understanding of dialectic.

Scholars have become increasingly aware of the importance of a work defending astrology as “the most Christian science,” known today as the Speculum Astronomiae. There have been a number of articles and books written on the subject; most scholars, however, have concentrated on the authorship and dating of the text. This study turns away from the traditional scholarly orientation to focus instead on the content of the Speculum, its sources, and its impact on the intellectual world of the medieval period.

According to Aristotle, eutrapelia is the virtue that disposes us rightly with regard to relaxing amusments, in particular by means of witty conversation. This article examines the reception of eutrapelia by Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Gerald Odo. Philosophically, the main issue is to clarify in which sense eutrapelia is a virtue, indeed a moral virtue. Historically, it is a case study of how a specific Aristotelian topic is approached differently in works of various authors or in diverse works by the same author.