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Karsten Engel, Ueli Zahnd (eds.)

Transforming Philosophy Late Medieval Knowledge in Transition

Karsten

Engel, Ueli Zahnd (eds.)

Transforming Philosophy

Late Medieval Knowledge in Transition

Schwabe Verlag

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Preface

Karsten Engel and Ueli Zahnd: Transforming Late Medieval Philosophy. Introduction

Julie Brumberg-Chaumont: Logic and Metaphysics in the Thirteenth Century. AMedieval Conflict of Disciplines at the Faculty of Arts

Silvia Negri: Wie humilitas im 13. Jahrhundertzueiner Art modestia wurde .41

Peter S. Eardley: Rationality as Self-Determination. Scotus and the Later Medieval Transformation of Aristotle’s Theory of Rationaland Non-rational Powers.

Monica Brinzei: From protestatio to gratiarum actio While Becoming aMaster in Theology

Luciano Micali: Scholastic Control on Mysticism in the Works of Jean Gerson

Monica Brinzei and Giacomo Signore: The Rise of ars moriendi atthe University of Vienna Before the Printing Press.

Yehuda Halper: Abraham Bibago on the Aleph-Bet of Jewish Theology

Christophe Grellard: Eine Kirche im Wandel.Gerson-Lektüren am Vorabend der Reformation:der Fall von Jean Laillier

Guy Guldentops: Virgilius Wellendorffers Philosophiekonzept. Eine Pseudomorphose

Isabelle Mandrella: Der Philosophie-Teppich von Heiningen ..

Ana GómezRabal and Marta Pavón Ramírez: Glossaries at the End of the Middle Ages and in the HumanisticPeriod: an Overlooked Source?Michael Servetus in Basel

Roberto Hofmeister Pich: Herrschaft und Recht. Bemerkungen zu Francisco de Vitorias konsequentem Thomismus

Christoph Sander: What’sthe Matter with this Compass?

Magnetic Declination as Anomaly in Early Modern Instruments and Thought

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

Index of Places

Preface

This volume is dedicatedtoMaarten Hoenen on the occasion of his retirement in 2025 –aninspiring thinker,a challenging teacher, and adear colleague.

In addition to the authors of this volume, we would like to acknowledge several friends and colleagueswho have contributed tothe successofthis volume. We are verygrateful to Nadja Germann and Mario Meliadò for their support in developing the concept of this volume. We thank Arlette Neumann foraccepting this volume into the Schwabepublishing program and Thomas Lüttenberg and Timothy Simich for their excellent proofreading. We would also liketothank the Philosophy Department at theUniversity of Basel and Regio Basiliensis for their additional support. Finally, we would like to thankthe Swiss National Science Foundation for itscontribution to the open-access publication of this book.

Basel andGeneva, September 2025

Karsten Engel and Ueli Zahnd

Transforming Late MedievalPhilosophy

Introduction

Karsten Engel and Ueli Zahnd

Any experienced hiker will, beforesetting out, check the weather and study the trail’sterrain, for the sake of their own safetyaswell as to prepare appropriate hiking attire. In order to select the right footwear, for instance, one needs information about whether it has rained at the chosen location inthe preceding hours and what the nature of theground to be traversed islike –whether, for example, chalkysoil has become slippery or if scree paths have shifted due to fluctuating debris. Thesepreparations reflect an understanding that the environment constantly affectsthe rocky ground and alters it.

It is worth taking acloser look at this image of rock, which as «hard matter»is– by something prima facie «soft»such as sun, rain, snow and wind, but also by floraand fauna –altered in its properties in theshort term, or sometimeseven reshapedinthe long term. It is fascinating to observe, for example, what environmental influences can do to rock, how stormsorbiological processes are capable of moving, fragmenting, and shaping it, or how the cultivation of the soil can give risetoentirely new and sometimes even breathtaking formations. Although all thesevariations originate from what at first glance appears to be the rather unremarkable rock from the earth’sinterior,itisusually only through the action of environmental forces that they become as spectacular as we perceive them. The rock has already undergone along transformation by thetime it reaches the earth’ssurface, but from that moment on, its ongoing transformation proceeds even more steadilyasitisexposed to external climatic factors.

It is this image of the generation and transformation of «hard matter» that serves to illustrate the intention of the present book. This volume brings together studies that have set themselves thetaskofinvestigating how forms of knowledge and philosophical thought were transformed during aphase of Western historythat is still of fundamental importance and

has laid out the ground, so to speak, for our thinking today. Often in the shadow of the spectacular projects of renewal associated with the Renaissance,1 transformations took place within late medieval philosophy that, sometimes in subtle ways and sometimesthrough major shifts,produced structures, conceptual frameworks, or methodical approaches which –exposed to constant further change– continue to shapeour intellectual landscape to this day.2 To be sure, the processesoftransformation that fundamentally reconfiguredthe societies of Latin Europebetween the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries3 were also in close interaction with forms of knowledge that did not primarily see themselves as groundbreaking or innovative, but rather committedthemselvestothe preservation, safeguarding, and controlledtransmission of knowledge as scholasticorpastoral learning within traditionally oriented institutions such as universities or the

1 That is, if «Renaissancephilosophy»isnot taken in the large, but yet to be evaluated sense used by the contributions of A. Edelheid (ed.), Renaissance Scholasticisms. Fighting Back,Leiden/Boston 2025. See also J. Kraye, «Reconfiguring the Relationship between Humanism and Philosophy», in A. Blair, N. Popper(eds.), New Horizons for Early Modern European Scholarship,Baltimore 2021, pp. 95–110, and E. del Soldato, Early Modern Aristotle:Onthe Making and Unmaking of Authority,Philadelphia 2020. Onthe historiographical origins of the concept of the Renaissance as principal transformative factor at the end of the MiddleAges, see most recently the contributions in M. Meliadò, C. Muratori (eds.), Dissident Renaissance.Rewriting the History of Early Modern Philosophy as Political Practice,Leiden/Boston 2025.

2 See, for example, the contributions in S.F. Brown (ed.), Meeting of the Minds:the Relations Between Medieval and Classical Modern European Philosophy,Turnhout 1999; R.L. Friedman,L.O. Nielsen (eds.), The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and ModalTheory, 1400–1700,Dordrecht 2003;R.Ariew, Descartes among the Scholastics, Leiden/Boston 2011;R.Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 1274–1671,Oxford 2011, together with J. Klima, A.W. Hall(eds.), Metaphysical Themes, Medieval and Modern, Newcastle 2014;and most recentlyS.J.G. Burton, Ramism and the Reformation of Method. The Franciscan Legacy in Early Modernity,Oxford/New York 2024.

3 By way of example, see É. Boillet, I.R. Johnson (eds.), Religious Transformations in New Communities of Interpretation in Europe(1350–1570): Bridging the Historiographical Divides,Turnhout2022;V.Leppin, S. Michels (eds.), Reformation als Transformation? Interdisziplinäre Zugänge zum Transformationsparadigma als historiographische Beschreibungskategorie,Tübingen 2022.

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Church.4 However, just as fundamental climatic changes cannot be traced upon rock through isolated singular events but rather through observation ofseeminglymundane detail, in the same way it is the changes within seemingly conventional fields of knowledge that can serve as ayardstick for the transformativepower of that era.5

With an attentive eye for detail, the papers collected in this volume aim toinvestigate the very type of source material which, at firstglance, may not seem overly spectacular,but upon closer inspection are able to shed light on specific aspects of the transformation of knowledge in the late Middle Ages. Inthe spirit of the image describedatthe beginning, they proceed from the assumptionthat resources of late medieval knowledge, at aspecific moment, were perceivedas«sources»(in our modern understanding of the term), thus emerging in condensedform to the «surface»and undergoing transformation –regardless of how long they had been accessible. At the momentthey«emerged» as such sources, they set in motion transformative processes through their interaction with «environmental influences»: they triggered ruptures or forged new connectionsand therebyreshaped the landscape of knowledge.Inother words, they were met with approval and dissemination or with critique;they enabled new perspectives on related forms of knowledge or caused them to be seen in adifferent light.Influ-

4 See, in particular, the studies of M.J.F.M. Hoenen, «Nominalismus als universitäre Spekulationskontrolle», RecherchesdeThéologie et Philosophie Médiévales 73 (2006), pp. 349–374; id.,«Die Universität im Mittelalter. Philosophisches Wissen und seine Gefahr», in B. Zimmermann (ed.), Vonartes liberales zu liberal arts,Freiburg 2013, pp. 39–62; id.,«Ideas, Institution, and Public Scandal:Academic Debates in Late Medieval Scholasticism», in K. Ghosh, P. Soukup (eds.), Wycliffism and Hussitism:Methods of Thinking, Writing and Persuasion, c. 1360–c.1460,Turnhout 2021, pp. 29–72; id.,«Scientia Sophistica andthe Limits of Late Medieval Scholasticism», in G. Frank, F. Fuchs, M.Herweg (eds.), Das 15. Jahrhundert,Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2021,pp. 455–469.

5 This has been explored, by way of example, by Maarten Hoenen in his recent studies focusing on the Leipzig theologian MagnusHundt (†1519), see M.J.F.M. Hoenen, «Grammar,Logic, andCognition. MagnusHundt (1449–1519)and the Notion of Material Supposition», Mediaevalia. Textos eEstudos 41(2022), pp. 75–94; id., Denken im Disput. Albertisten und Thomistenüber das Argumentieren,Münster 2023. See also K. Engel, Universitätzwischen heute und vorgestern. Eine wissenschaftsphilosophische Auseinandersetzung mit Magnus Hundt (1449–1519),Basel 2025.

enced by external factors, they developeda life of their own, found their place, blended into their surroundings, or remained standing like an erratic boulder, thereby influencing their environment in turn. And depending on the «general weather patterns»(«Grosswetterlagen») that prevailed in subsequent periods of the historyofphilosophy, they were assigned one meaning –oranother.Inthis sense, these sources are not merely testimonies to their time of origin;rather, the various ways in which they have been received serve also as indicators of the «climatic»orhistorical conditions under which the late medieval landscape of knowledge was perceived in different eras of the past.

The papers collected in this volume each present such sources in concrete terms. Just as the geological forms and materials are diverse, so too are the sources discussed here: they include treatises (Monica Brînzei), methods (Yehuda Halper or Ana Gómez Rabal and Marta Pavon Ramirez), concepts (Silvia Negri or Peter Eardley), and categorizations (Julie BrumbergChaumont), but also material sources such as acarpet (Isabelle Mandrella) and compasses (Christoph Sander). They revolve around philosophical (Guy Guldentops), ecclesiological (Christophe Grellard), and pastoral topics (Luciano Micali), as well as aspects of premodern university studies (Giacomo Signoreand MonicaBrînzei). The papersthus pursue abroad concept of philosophythat not only includes theological speculation, but also explores philosophical thought beyond the narrow academic milieu.6 In doing so, they highlight when or through what circumstancesa particular source gained «transformative significance», even if it is not immediately apparent as to how this significance may itself have been reshaped through

6 See M.J.F.M. Hoenen, «The Transition of Academic Knowledge. Scholasticism in the Ghent Boethius (1485)and Other Commentaries on the Consolatio», in id.,L.Nauta (eds.), Boethius in the Middle Ages. Latin andVernacular Traditions of the Consolatio Philosophiae,Leiden 1997, pp. 167–214; id.,«Scholastik und Seelsorge in den Predigten der Sammlung Paradisus animeintelligentis. Ein Beitrag zur Wissensvermittlung im Mittelalter», Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 73 (2006), pp. 69–98; id.,L Sturlese,«Manuscripts,Ideas, Culture. Volkssprachliche Dokumente mittelalterlicher Frömmigkeit in einer philosophie- und theologiehistorischenPerspektive», in W. Scheepsma (ed.), Zwei mittelniederländische Texte des Geistbuchs,Rome 2013, pp. VII–XIX;and more generallyR.Imbach, C. König-Pralong, Le défi laïque. Existe-t-il une philosophie de laïcs au Moyen Âge?,Paris 2013.

12 Karsten Engel and Ueli Zahnd

aprocess of transformation. In the course of this volume, several contributions also offer reflections on how this transformation has been interpreted inmodern historiography of philosophy.

All the sources presented share the characteristic that they reveal an aspect of transformation through which science and philosophy have evolved from the premodern era to the present day. The sources encompass ideas originating in the Latin Middle Ages (Giacomo Signore and Monica Brînzei, or Christophe Grellard) as well as the receptionofancient thought and ideas from other cultural spheres (Peter Eardley or Isabelle Mandrella); non-Christian traditions are represented (Yehuda Halper)aswell as dissident thinkers (Ana Gómez Rabal and Marta Pavon Ramirez). The sources and the transformative processes they illustrate span five centuries,ranging from the thirteenth century (Silvia Negri or Julie Brumberg-Chaumont) through more or less classical authors of the fifteenth century (Luciano Micali and Guy Guldentops)tothe seventeenth century (RobertoHofmeister Pich and Christoph Sander). As far as possible, the chronological sequence also informs the structureofthe present volume.

The idea of transformation, as illustrated in thecontributions to this volume, makes the ambivalence between continuityand rupture visible: some sources and some ideas areperennial andalways remain on the surface and exposed to the elements, while others require aspecific milieu, a particular resonant ground, in order to unveil their influence. Above all, however, it becomesevident that historiography in thepasthas at times been unable to restrain itself from imposing auniform narrative ontothe transformation stories the various sources have had to tell –whether by taking the epochal boundary around 1500 too seriously7 or by attributing to

7 This has been widely questioned in aglobal perspective, see most recently A. Beecroft, «Periodization as Strategyand as Method», Speculum 100 (2025), pp. 182–184. See also F. Schmieder, «Epochengrenze als Denkhindernis:Brasil, oder warum die Welt um 1500 nicht neu erfunden wurde», in M. Chihaia, G. Eckert (eds.), Kolossale Miniaturen. Festschrift für Gerrit Walther,Münster 2019, pp. 269–274;J.-D. Müller, «Die Reichweite von Epochenbegriffen»,inK.W. Hempfer, V. von Rosen (eds.), Multiple Epochisierungen. Literatur und Bildende Kunst, 1500–1800,Berlin 2021, pp. 65–85;and the literary review byC.Markschies, «Wie sinnvoll ist es, von‹Mittelalter›zureden?Neuere Debatten über Epochen und Epochenwandelinder Geschichtswissenschaft und ihre möglichen Folgen

movements such as the Renaissance asignificance behind which other developments fell completely out of focus.8 As aresult,the possible histories of transformation for many sources were effectively predetermined, without allowing for acloser examination of the divergent nature of each source and enabling them to be discussedontheir own merits.

Orientation tools such as epochs areundoubtedly useful as heuristics in historiography, serving to characterize,much like climatic conditions, the milieu or the resonant ground and the environment mentioned above. However, it has long been recognizedthat such labels –for instance, those used to distinguish the «Middle Ages»from the «Renaissance»orthe «Early Modern Period» from the «ModernEra»– are not inherent to thesources themselves9 and do not determine their processesoftransformation, but should themselvesonly be determinedbycareful historical analysis of these processes.10 The papers collected in this volume therefore attempttoilluminate the transformation of sources in away that does justice to the sources themselves, without taking such orientation tools more seriously than they actually are:descriptive aids for «Grosswetterlagen». Precisely becausethe für die Christentums- bzw. Kirchengeschichte», Theologische Literaturzeitung 148 (2023), pp. 289–310.

8 See M. den Hartog, «Why we need to lose ‹the Renaissance›asa means of periodization. An analysis of the pros and cons based on historical theory», Groniek 206/207 (2016), pp. 91–102, and the literary review in J.-H. de Boer, Die Gelehrtenwelt ordnen. Zur Genese des hegemonialenHumanismus um 1500,Tübingen 2017, pp. 25–53. See also W.J. Bulman, «From RenaissancetoEnlightenment», in A. Blair, N. Popper (eds.), New Horizons for Early Modern European Scholarship,Baltimore 2021, pp. 31–49.

9 See T. Harris, «Periodizing the Early Modern», in K. Poole, O. Williams (eds.), Early Modern Histories of Time,Philadelphia 2019, pp. 21–35. On the historiography of the periodization see F.N. Clark, Dividing Time. The Making of Historical Periodization inEarly Modern Europe,PhD thesis, Princeton 2014, and more closely for the history of philosophy the contributions in C. König-Pralong, M. Meliadò, Z. Radeva (eds.), «Outsiders» and «Forerunners».Modern Reason and Historiographical Births of Medieval Philosophy, Turnhout 2016.

10 See M.J.F.M. Hoenen, «Die Mittelalterfalle», Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 72 (2024), pp. 451–457,inresponse to A. Speer, 1000 Jahre Philosophie. Ein anderer Blick auf die Philosophie des «Mittelalters»,Paderborn 2023.

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weather, even during amajor weather situation,can change locally, acloser look usually does no harmindescribing the conditions more accurately. Or, to put it in another way:«The map is not theterritory» (Bateson)11 –our orientation tool does not depict all the relevant details needed for description, but exclusively those for which it was designed –inthis case, merely the reconstructedgeneral weather patterns.Therefore, it is worthwhile, in acreative process during philosophical-historical wanderings, to put the maps aside wheneverthey threaten to block thewanderer’s thinking, the observer, or the researcher in their processesofperception, conceptualization,and inquiry. One who has cultivated this attentivenessto detail, to the seemingly unspectacular, and to perspectives detached from predefined maps –both as awanderer and as ahistorian of philosophy –and who has, through this approach, not only repeatedly pointed out overlooked transformations in the history of philosophy, but has alsotransformed the historiography of late medieval philosophy and thefifteenth century in particular,isMaarten Hoenen. This volume is dedicated to him onthe occasion of his retirement in 2025.

11 G. Bateson, Mind and Nature. ANecessary Unity,New York 1979, p. 30f.

Logic and Metaphysics in the Thirteenth Century

AMedieval Conflict of Disciplines at the Faculty of Arts

Julie Brumberg-Chaumont

1. Introduction

The source we would like to follow in this contribution is afamous passage from Aristotle’s Metaphysics,wheremetaphysics and logic (inAristotle’s words:primary philosophy, dialectic and sophistic)are made closely connected regarding their subject matter,that is, being as being (ens simpliciter), with differencesin«faculties»(Metaphysics IV, 1004b15–27).This passage has been differently translatedand interpreted.1 Together withother passages, it has led to the medieval Latin idea (inspired by Arabic philosophers)oflogic and metaphysicsastwo «common sciences», distinct from«particular sciences»and having asomewhat identical subject matter,

1 «Sic ens simpliciter habet accidentia propria. Et ista accidentia sunt de quibus philosophum opportet perscrutari. Et signumeius est, quoniam Logici et Sophistae laborant in hoc, quod Philosophusdebet laborare. Scientia enim Sophistica est scientia deceptoria tantum. Logiciautem loquunturdeomnibus rebus, et ens est scientia communis omnibus. Et manifestum est, quod isti loquuntur de istis rebus, quae sunt propriae Philosophiae.Scientia enim SophistarumetLogicorum reducuntur in unum genus, scilicet genus Philosophiae. Sed differt Philosophia ab altera illarum modo virtutis, ab alia autem per considerationem regiminis vitae. Logicus enim scit illud quod scit Philosophus: Sophista autem existimat scire, et nescit in rei veritate», Aristotle, Metaphysica, translatio nova,inAverroes, InAristotelis Opera cumAverroeis Commentariis, Aristotelis Metaphysica,Venice 1562–1574 (reprint Frankfurt 1962), fol. 70BC.Inthe Vetustissima Translatio Iacobi (AristotelesLatinus 25/1, ed. G. Vuillemin-Diem, Bruges/Paris, 1970, p.66; Composita,p.149), and in the Translatio Anonyma (Aristoteles Latinus 25/2, ed. G.Vuillemin-Diem, Bruges/Paris,1976, p. 63f.), Aristotle says that dialectic is perastic (temptativa), i. e., it tests what philosophy knows (cognoscitiva/sciens), instead of:«the logicianknowswhatthe philosopher knows (Logicus enim scit illud quodscit Philosophus)», in the Translatio nova. The texts of the Vetus and the Anonyma translationes are more faithful to the Greek.