RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

Philosophy and Science in the Middle Ages. Editions and studies.

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di NAPOLI "L'Orientale" - FILOSOFIA E POLITICA - ()

Research Unit Leader

Paolo Lucentini

Description

The research Unit will prepare critical editions and studies on Hermetic literature in the Middle Ages and Renaissance partly in progressive phases, and partly in syncronic phases. The main theme will be the philosophy of nature and theology treated in texts with a Hermetic origin or tradition, as well as in reception and discussion by medieval and renaissance authors. Critical editions and studies on authors such as Honorius Augustodunensis, Amalricus of Bena, Garnerius of Rochefort are also planned.

1. Publication of the volume of "Hermes Latinus": Textus magici [HL V], Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 145, Brepols, Turnhout. The publication was delayed because were recently identified several new witnesses of the text (see P. Lucentini, V. Perrone Compagni, I testi e i codici di Ermete nel Medioevo, Firenze 2001). The texts included in the volume are the following: Hermes Trismegistus, De imaginibus et horis; De imaginibus sive anulis septem planetarum; Liber planetarum ex scientia Abel; Liber Mercurii Hermetis; Liber Saturni; Liber Lunae. - Belenus, De viginti quattuor horis; De imaginibus diei et noctis; De sigillis Mercurii. - Thoz Graecus, De duodecim anulis; De quattuor speculis; De stationibus ad cultum Veneris; Liber Veneris. Some texts will be published in the original Arabic version too.

2. Studies on the presence of theological and naturalistic Hermetism in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissanc will be continued and extended: Alan of Lille, Michael Scotus, Roger Bacon, Albert the Great, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Bradwardine, Berthold of Moosburg, Nicholas Cusanus, Cornelius Agrippa. This research will also concern the encyclopaedic literature, texts of minor authors. A critical edition of ps.-Albertus' De mirabilibus mundi (the second part of Liber Aggregationis) is planned; this book was largerly known during Middle Age and Renaissance. It is expected to complete a monography on William of Auvergne, the learned Parisian bishop and scholar who lived during the turbulent penetration by the metaphysical and naturalistic Aristotelianism.

3. Studies on hermetic tradition within prae-islamic and islamic Arab culture will be conducted in the direction of a census of hermetic texts and manuscripts based on research on printed catalogues.

4. The manuscripts of the second part of Honorius Augustodunensis' Clavis Physicae have been collated in order to prepare a critical edition of this text, whose publication was suspended after the first volume came out (Lucentini, Roma 1974). Now the new edition of the Periphyseon by Edouard Jeauneau (CCCM 161-165) makes possible to give a critical text of this influential work of Honorius, that was an important source for Berthold von Moosburg (see Unit 1).

5. A monographical work on the philosophy of Amalric of Bena will be prepared, on the basis of a new edition of Garnerius of Rochefort, Contra Amaurianos, ms. Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale, 1301. This edition is quite completed and will replace the old edition by Clemens Baeumker, Contra Amaurianos. Ein anonymer, wahrscheinlich dem Garnerius von Rochefort zugehöriger Traktat gegen die Amalrikaner aus dem Anfang des XIII. Jahrhunderts, "Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters", 24/5-6 (1926). A critical edition of Isagogae theophaniarum symbolicae by Garnierus of Rochefort (ms. Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, 455, ff. 1r-146v) is also planned.