This collection is published in memory of Pieter De Leemans, who passed away in 2019 and who organized the colloquium that led to this volume. An expert on the medieval Latin translations of Aristotle’s texts, his impact on the field was great, and a short tribute that prefaces the volume testifies to his work as a scholar, teacher, and colleague.
Each of this collection’s nine essays takes up quite specific aspects of medieval scholastic theology pertaining to life, death, and the soul and elaborates them through consideration of the different ways in which mostly thirteenth-century commentators, theologians, and authors responded to them. They thus impart a strong sense of the lively atmosphere of engaged debate that was prevalent in medieval philosophy.
While the topics of the essays vary, there are a number of overlapping themes, topics, and questions: for example, two essays deal with the question of radical moisture and its relationship to the prolongation of life, and commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics are the subject of two other essays. The collection as a whole is concerned with questions such as the following: What is the (good) life of the soul, and how does it relate to life in God? Can the soul ever know itself in this life? Are the dying happy? Is death ever preferable to life? Can life be prolonged through humoral manipulation? What is life? And how do scientific theories interact with theology in understanding life, death, and the resurrection of the body? Essays that deal with related questions are grouped together in the collection, although there are no explicit indicators of these connections (other than their titles). Below, I have briefly summarized each essay in relation to some of the other themes that I saw emerging in terms of methodology, rather than subject.
Questions of genre and disciplines are important to the collection. Violeta Cervera Nero’s contribution, for example, puts into dialogue “didascalic” texts, such as guides for students and compendia, and commentaries dating from the 1230s to explore how these two types of text conceive of the divisions among the different branches of philosophy in relation to the life of the soul. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics were introduced into the curriculum at the University of Paris in 1215, and the compendia and student guides associated with it provide useful information regarding how it was taught. The Guide for Students that Nero considers, for instance, divides philosophy quite differently from Arnoul of Provence’s tripartite division of life in oneself (ethics), in one’s family (economics), and in the broader community (politics), focusing instead on the life of the soul in God. Also interested in how teaching texts are conceptually distinct from other philosophical genres is Tilke Nelis, who analyzes the differences between a short, anonymous compendium of De Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae (from Ms. Tanner 116), the full Greek text, and the text’s Latin translation to explore the generic characteristics of compendia that were intended for teaching. Many of the features of the compendium reflect its genre as a summary or abbreviatio; it is consistently more condensed than the Aristotelian text in Greek or the Latin translatio vetus by James of Venice, omitting, for instance, certain examples and shortening repeated phrases. The compendium also adds clear chapter headings and each of its four chapters is introduced by a summary of its contents. Again, this is appropriate to its genre. The essay also includes a source study and an edition of the Tanner manuscript.
One of the particularly interesting things about this collection is how it illuminates the intersections of disciplinary boundaries as well as generic ones, demonstrating how medical and scientific theories could be brought to bear on theology. Julien Lambinet, for instance, explains how Alexander of Hales uses contemporary physiological theories to address the question of whether the human body is both corruptible and incorruptible. Hales is responding to the passage in Peter Lombard’sSentences which discusses Adam’s loss of immortality after the Fall. Hales’s contribution is to consider how Galen’s theories of radical and nutrimental moisture play into the duality of corruptibility and incorruptibility that characterize the first humans. Chiara Crisciani’s essay takes up Albertus Magnus’s claim that only physicians should opine on whether manipulating radical moisture can prolong life indefinitely, exploring how a physician’s commentary, Tommaso del Garbo’s fourteenth-century Tractatus, compares to those of the philosophers Arnold de Villanova and Pietro d’Abano. The question of how and whether life can be prolonged in this way is also taken up by Marek Gensler and Monika Mansfeld, who focus on Walter Burley’s commentaries on the Parva naturalia. (Spoiler alert: It can’t.)
The use of mathematical argumentation is the subject of Chris Schabeland Monica Brînzei’s essay, which discusses a set of principia (a genre in which bachelors of the Sentences at the University of Paris would take turns defending a thesis that they had preciously circulated to the others) that consider whether it is ever rational--or even possible--to choose annihilation over suffering. The authors demonstrate how Jean de Mirecourt and Pierre Ceffons use mathematical argumentation and the related concepts of limits and latitudes to push their opponents’ views to an absurd conclusion in support of their thesis that that annihilation can be the reasonable choice when the other option is extreme and prolonged suffering.
Of course, theological responses to Aristotelian arguments regarding life and death are a dominant theme of the collection. Valeria A. Buffon uses commentaries on a passage from Aristotle’s analysis of Solon’s adage that no man can be called happy until he is dead to discuss the variety of ways in which thirteenth-century commentators interpreted the relationships among happiness, life, and death, arguing that scholars tended to view these issues according to their philosophical and faith-based commitments. Sylvia Negri discusses Henry of Ghent’s argument that the will is ultimately ontologically superior to the intellect and that it is the ultimate determinant of the degree to which any being can be said to live. Free choice, or liberum arbitrium, is at its greatest when the agent is moved by no interest or influence outside of self, meaning that there is a scale of “life” that ranges from plants at the very bottom, through animals, humans, and angels, to God, who moves and wills only what he already is, at the peak. Finally, Jean-Michel Counet concludes the collection with a reflection on why, according to Aquinas, the soul in this life cannot have intuitive knowledge of itself. Counet proposes a hypothesis concerning how the soul is received into the body in this life but the body is received into the soul in the resurrection as a possible explanation for why the soul’s knowledge is limited before death but not when it is within the resurrected body; he concludes by considering why Thomas in fact did not use this reasoning to explain the soul’s lack of intuitive knowledge of itself.
This volume will be of interest to scholars of medieval philosophy who are particularly interested in questions of the body/soul relationship and--as the title suggests--of life and death. A few minor caveats: First, a few of the chapters include a great deal of untranslated Latin, which may be an obstacle for some readers. (The Latin is translated in certain chapters, however.) Second, some of the essays would have benefitted from further copyediting; there are occasional typographic or grammatical and syntax errors that impede understanding. Finally, while the introduction does an excellent job of summarizing the subsequent chapters, I would have appreciated a more general discussion of the topics and questions addressed by the volume to accompany these summaries.
None of these issues interferes with the overall utility of the collection, which, among other things, amply demonstrates the richness and complexity of medieval philosophical debate, especially in the thirteenth century. Several of the essays also bring attention to relatively under-studies works and authors, and the inclusion of the edition of the Tanner manuscript’s compendium adds to our understanding of how works were summarized, taught, and transmitted in this period.