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A Quaestio on Friendship Ascribed to Matthias of Knín, with some Notes and Questions on the Academic and Intellectual Life at the Prague Faculty of Arts at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century
No full textA little-known master from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, Matthias of Knin actually took part in a series of events that were of considerable relevance for the academic and intellectual life in Prague at the turn of the fifteenth century. Among the few extant works ascribed to him is the quaestio 'Utrum, si amicus et veritas dissenciant, veritas sit amico preferenda' that is published in the appendix to this article. After sketching Matthias's intellectual biography, the article presents the manuscript transmission of the quaestio and its structure, and raises a number of questions about academic practices and intellectual life at the Prague Faculty of Arts at the turn of the fifteenth century. Since the quaestio significantly depends on John Buridan's commentary on the Ethica Nicomachea, a throughout analysis of textual correspondences has been carried out
John Wyclif, De scientia Dei
No full textDe scientia Dei (On God's Knowledge) is one of the few major texts by John Wyclif that has not already been published. According to John A. Robson, the De scientia Dei is 'in some way, the most important of all the treatises' of Wyclif's so-called Summa de ente. It was probably written in 1372, when the editorial project of the Summa de ente was in its final stages, and when Wyclif was at the peak of his academic career. In it he deals with God's knowledge as a divine attribute, presents his peculiar view of God's knowledge as a relation of reason, distinguishes between God's knowledge of creatures in their intelligible being and in their actual existence, and argues in favour of a compatibilism between God's foreknowledge of future events and the liberty of human will. In this connection, a long section is also devoted to questions about the doctrine of salvation, and to the first elaborated exposition of Wyclif's doctrine of grace.
The edition is preceded by a historical and doctrinal introduction, enabling the reader to situate the tract within the framework of Wyclif's own production and to appreciate the relevance of some of the topics faced in the text in the light of the development of Wyclif's theological and philosophical thought
‘Iusti sunt omnia': note a margine del De statu innocencie di John Wyclif
No full textThe aim of my paper is to analyse Wyclif's De statu innocencie (c. 13751376). Here Wyclif paints the features of man in the edenic state, connecting them to some remarkable themes concerning nature, dominion, grace and free will. Lacking of nothing, man orginally had a perfect constitution and a natural dominion on all creatures, planned to serve God's glory. This state is used as a standard of measure of the fallen man's condition. My primary concern shall be to show how this treatise can be considered as an important laboratory where Wyclif tests the concepts he was working on
‘‘In ipso sunt idem esse, vivere et intelligere’’: notes on a case of textual bricolage
No full textThe article aims at ascertaining the provenance of the components of a textual bricolage found in Wyclif’s De scientia Dei. One of these conveys the doctrine - formulated by Victorinus and Augustine, and largely accepted by western medieval theologians - of the identity of divine being, life, and thought. Wyclif hints at it through the expression mentioned in the title of this article, whose wording depends upon a verse found in Alcuin’s hymn to the Trinity. Possibly unknown to Wyclif, Alcuin’s text is the source of the liturgical office for the Trinity composed by Stephen of Liège and reproducing Alcuin’s verse almost in the same wording. Adopted by many dioceses from the tenth century, Stephen’s office was approved by John XXII in 1334, and is probably Wyclif’s source. The appendix provides insights concerning Wyclif’s statement that philosophers agree with the teachings of theologians and the Church tradition on the doctrine at issue
"But and alle thingus in mesure, and noumbre, and peis thou disposedist" : some notes on the role of Wisdom 11, 21 in Wyclif's writings
No full textWisdom 11, 21 - "But you have disposed all things by measure and number and weight" - appears frequently in Wyclif's theological and philosophical writings, as well as in his pastoral and political works. A learned biblicist, Wyclif considers it to be the most difficult verse in the whole of Scripture. Such an assessment is apparently due to the theoretical content it conveys, which relates to the issue of the creative, legislative and redemptive order imposed by God. While addressing various metaphysical, soteriological or ecclesiological topics, Wyclif appeals to the authority of this Wisdom verse to develop a comprehensive view of order in terms of the intimate structure of reality. Any kind of deviation from this order - described as an infringement of God's rule, or as a loss of correspondence to the divine, exemplary ideas - is ultimately seen as a shadowy area which compromises the full intelligibility of the world
Una difesa del determinismo dell'ultimo Wyclif attribuita a Peter Payne
No full textA defence of determinism in late Wyclif attributed to Peter Payne. In this essay
is presented the edition of a short tract of natural theology based on the only two
extant copies preserved in mss. Praha, Národní knihovna, V.F.9, ff. 68v-75v and Wien,
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 4937, ff. 28r-34v. It is introduced by a historical
and philological note. A defence of John Wyclif’s views on future contingents condemned
at the Council of Constance in 1415, the tract turns out to be a startling profession
of crude determinism, so radical that it would hardly have been upheld by Wyclif
even in his later and most controversial writings. The anonymous tract can be plausibly
ascribed to Peter Payne, an Oxford Wycliffite who left England possibly to escape
prosecution and reached Prague only after Hus’s departure for Constance (11 October
1414). Probably composed from late 1419 to early 1420, when Wyclif’s theological
views were the object of harsh criticism by many masters at the University of Prague,
the tract has a literary form similar to that of a determinatio, the answer given by
a master to a question at the end of a disputation. Hence, it contains eighteen arguments
in support of Wyclif’s thesis that “everything that will come to pass, will come
to pass by absolute necessity” and six arguments against this thesis, followed by relevant
rejections. As to the writing technique, Payne draws a significant amount of textual
materials from several sources without citing them: namely Wyclif, Thomas Aquinas,
Jan Hus
Olga Weijers, In Search of the Truth. A History of Disputation Techniques from Antiquity to Early Modern Times, Brepols, Turnhout 2013, pp. 341, € 45,00
No full textWas the early Wyclif a determinist? Concerning an unnoticed level within his taxonomy of being
No full textThis article takes issue with the most authoritative argument for the commonplace that John Wyclif was an extreme determinist: he denied distinctions between divine ideas and God's metaphysical constituents and between ideas as principle of divine cognition of creatures (rationes) and as models for their production ad extra (exemplaria); since as a constituent of God's essence every divine idea is absolutely necessary, and every idea is unfailingly a pattern for creation, therefore God cannot but create anything He can think of. This paper argues against the premise that Wyclif never distinguished rationes and exemplaria by examining significant excerpts from Wyclif's edited and unedited academic writings in which the distinction is assumed or discussed. Wyclif maintains that there are more ideas in God than created essences ad extra, and that God's absolute power covers more than His ordained power does. To stress that not every divine idea is automatically a model for creation, Wyclif sometimes includes in his standard taxonomy of being a hitherto unnoticed level, the esse intentionale, which is eternal and ad intra, like the esse intelligibile, but contingent, the kind of being in which something participates as the result of God's free choice to bring it into existence ad extra at the due time
Andrew E. Larsen, The School of Heretics. Academic Condemnation at the University of Oxford, 1277-1409, Brill, Leiden-Boston 2011
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