Quaestio

The paper wishes to investigate the way Giles of Rome thought about logic: as a discipline, as a method, through an examination of the powers of logic, but also as a teaching subject. It tries to illuminate his views on logical education, and how he may have acted in favour of the latter as an Augustinian leader. It first offers a general presentation of the logical productions, from the 1270s to 1291. It then addresses the topic of logical education from two viewpoints: by a look taken at Giles’ views on logic in the De regimine principum, and by a quick survey of the history of the teaching of logic in the studia of the Augustinian order from the mid-1280s on. The last section is dedicated to the philosophy and anthropology of logic. It tries to enlighten the originality of Giles’ s position, as a new departure taken from traditional theories regarding the absolute necessity of logic as a science, as an art, and as the underlying logic of all sciences, itself included. Rather than essentially necessary for any kind of philosophical endeavour, logic is presented a need for men, due to the fallible nature of his potential intellect. Rather than a science, it is described as a method for science which doesn’t use its more powerful instrument, i.e. the theory of scientific syllogism, since it proceeds in a non-demonstrative manner in the theory of demonstration. Logic and metaphysics are compared as respectively under and above special sciences. The last paragraph deals with the problem of the powers of logic in the context of metaphysical knowledge.

In the De cognitione angelorum (1287-88) and then in the Ordinatio (after 1309), Gilles of Rome dedicates long chapters to angelic language (locutio angelica). His starting point is a question from Thomas Aquinas about the “secrets of hearts” (occulta cordium): they can only be known through corporeal signs, which unwillingly manifest them. Gilles uses Thomas’s postulate that the acts of will are not visible to others, to reject his definition of speaking as a thought voluntarily conveyed to others, and generalizes from his answer: thoughts need to be made manifest through a sign. He develops a theory describing the different types of signs according to their addressees (an angel’s speech to God, to himself, to another angel, to a man), and analyses them according to several criteria. In particular, from a careful analysis of the signs used by men, Gilles wonders whether the different types of signs used both by men and angels are natural or voluntary, from the point of view of both their composition and their meaning, basing his questioning on the reflections on language and signs in his earlier philosophical commentaries. This insistence on the need for signs will lead Gilles to give different answers to the classic questions about the difference between thought and language, the possibility of addressing a particular angel, and lying.

Giles of Rome developed his personal positions about signification in general and linguistic signification discussing contemporary and immediately preceding authors’ views, such as Robert Kilwardby’s, Albert the Great’s and probably various authors of the Modistic milieu. In this article, Giles’ positions on signs and linguistic signification will be shortly described, his discussions about homonymy will be linked to contemporary debates, and finally some of Giles’ positions that were discussed, criticized and sometimes misunderstood by later Modists, such as Simon of Faversham, the Anonymous of Prague and Radulphus Brito, in their commentaries on the Sophistical Refutations around the end of XIII^th century, will be commented upon.

This paper addresses the conception of theology developed by Giles of Rome from the Reportatio of his lecture on the second book of the Sentences (1271) to his fifth Quodlibet (1290). It demonstrates that, from the beginning of his career, Giles discredited the power of philosophical reason in the realm of theology, a discipline which he conceived as a defensive, rhetorical and exegetical practice. Henry of Ghent was the principal adversary attacked by Giles, who challenged the scientific legitimacy of theology which Henry, after Thomas Aquinas, had established as the highest speculative discipline. In the conclusion, the paper highlights strong similarities between Giles’ theological epistemology and Godfrey of Fontaines’ conception and practices of university sciences.

Giles of Rome maintains that the senses are passive powers and more specifically receptive powers, that is, powers to receive something from sensible objects. The items that the senses receive from sensible objects are (sensible) intentional species of the corresponding sensible forms. This paper deals with Giles’s account of the cognitive role of intentional species in sense perception. The central question is how the intentional species of red received in the eyes is related to the act of seeing a red apple. Is such a species the act itself of seeing a red apple or rather something distinct from the act and causally related to it? And in the latter case, what kind of causality is involved? We shall see that Giles changed his mind on this subject, so that we have an early view and a mature view. His early view (found in his commentary on De anima) is that the intentional species is distinct from the corresponding sensory act and a cause of it, more precisely a formal cause. His mature view (found in De cognitione angelorum) is that (i) in the case of the external senses the intentional species is the same as the sensory act itself, whereas (ii) in the case of the internal senses two kinds of intentional species are involved, that is, that which is the same as the sensory act and another one that acts as a proxy for the sensible object.

Giles of Rome systematically distinguishes two kinds of modes, which in this essay are labelled ‘conjunction modes’ and ‘category modes’. The latter - according to which a substance might have the mode of an accident (as in Christ’s dependent human nature), and an accident the mode of a substance (as in the Eucharist) - are ontologically innocent, and predications about them are parasitic on conjunction modes. Conjunction modes are features of the universe, and are deposited in their subjects by things united to but really distinct from their subjects. For example, a quantity-thing, united to a substance, deposits a quantity-mode in the substance; and an existence-thing, united to a particular essence, deposits an existence-mode in the essence. In this essay, some attempt is made to defend this view against objections raised by Ockham.

Does the second writing of the commentary on Petrus Lombardus, Sent. II (dist. 1) by Giles of Rome constitute a break compared to the first writing? The accurate comparison of the problem of the temporal beginning of the world and its treatment - where Reportatio and Ordinatio take the shape of a commentary on Phys., VIII, 1 - shows that the presence of Thomas Aquinas is even stronger after 1277. Refusing Aristotle’s and “modern” theologians’ arguments, in Ordinatio in continuity with Reportatio Giles advocates a philosophical position in favor of the temporal beginning of the world - theoretically possible though not given - as opposed to Thomas’ standard position, but not to his argumentation in Thomas de Aquino, In VIII Phys, 2.

This paper highlights the decisive role played in the longer course of Aristotelian tradition by Giles’ Sententia de bona fortuna, a work that constitutes a telling example of the radical transformations imposed by Latin thinkers on the Aristotelian philosophical system. The impact of this commentary was decisive for the subsequent discussions on fortune, contingency and “divine government” - that is, the issue of how God, as the First Principle of all beings, leads them all to their ends or their ultimate “good”. In so doing, the article shows that Giles’ reading of the Aristotelian treatise called Liber de bona fortuna marked the birth of a coherent ‘natural theology’ in the Latin West.

In Giles of Rome, moral responsibility and human freedom are articulated taking into account the relation of will and intellect. For Giles, this topic appears to be particularly crucial and often recurs in his texts over the course of his career. According to some scholars, reacting to the academic and ecclesiastic circumstances (e.g., his condemnation in 1277 and his rehabilitation in 1285), Giles increasingly favored the autonomy of the will in his ethics. That is to say, taking its starting point from an “intellectualistic interpretation” of the relation of the faculties of the soul, the Augustinian magister changed his mind after his rehabilitation, placing more importance on the volitional faculty. To the contrary, I shall point out that in his ethics certain consistencies can be observed that emerge in all his works. The aim of the article is to investigate whether Giles reconsidered his earlier opinion regarding moral responsibility. Keywords: Will/Intellect; Condemnation of 1277; Human

The article focuses on the twofold-nobility idea, a nobility of conduct and line, starting from some brief comments by Brunetto Latini, Thomas Aquinas and a more explicit formulation by Henry of Ghent. Then it focuses on the usage of this double notion in the De regimine principum by Giles of Rome and on how, through this couple, particularly in the vernaculars, it leads to the creation of a new political space for thinking nobility and courtesy.

Studying Giles of Rome’s De ecclesiastica potestate, scholars usually focus their attention on the first part, where the Augustinian master argues in favor of his extreme theory of papal power. The present paper deals with the second part of the treatise, devoted to the relationship between the Church and temporal possessions. The main issues discussed in this part are therefore not political and ecclesiastical power, but ownership and poverty. The paper underlines in the first place the connection existing between Giles of Rome’s treatment of these problems and the controversy between Secular and Mendicant clergy. Although originally a mendicant friar himself, Giles tries to avoid any interpretation of mendicant proverty that could undermine the right of the Church to exercise lordship over temporal goods. In the second place, the paper shoes how Giles’ account of the origin of private poverty is functional to his claim that the Church possesses all rights on temporal goods at the highest level. In this way, the Church is the sole authority that can grant a right of property, so that every human being depends on the Church also for his legitimate possession of temporal goods.

On the question of the intensio/remissio formarum, Giles, while sharing Thomas Aquinas’s view’s main tenets, develops a very different theory - in fact, a theory that is unique, and deeply “aegidian”: the increase or decrease does not take place in the essence of a qualitative form, but only in its esse, in function of the disposition of the subject that receives this form. Giles’s position, however, may be threatened by a risk of infinite regress in the conditions that explain the receptivity of a subject. He successfully addresses this issue, and, within the framework of Aristotelian physics, offers a very original response: qualitative changes in bodies are ultimately based, via condensation and rarefaction, on the spatial positions of their material parts.

Scholars paid scant attention to Giles of Rome’s Quaestiones methaphisicales. This is due to many reasons. The Quaestiones are likely the first of the Aristotelian commentaries written by Giles and all XVI-century printed editions conserve but a reportatio of the course on Metaphysics that Giles probably gave in Paris between 1268/1269 and 1271. Since Giles never edited the text of his lectures, we cannot be sure that Giles approved the list and the contents of the questions we may read today. Moreover, the current list is also incomplete because a study of cross-references in Giles’ Aristotelian commentaries (Donati 1990) showed that Giles wrote other questions, not included in the list we have today. Despite of these features, Giles’ Quaestiones are import both historically and philosophically. They contribute to fixing the chronology of Giles’ first works and to illustrating the metaphysics of the early Giles. In particular, a close examination of the questions on Books VII and VIII of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, devoted to substance and accidents, shows various things. For example, the influence exerted by Averroes’s Commentary on Giles’s teaching and, accordingly, the pivotal role played by the notion of definition in the explanation of the essence of substance and accidents. More generally, such an examination permits us bringing to light the exegetical devices Giles used in order to reconcile Thomas Aquinas’s view of the primacy and unicity of substantial form (a thesis that Giles, albeit with some hesitations, maintains across his career) with his idiomatic position that indeterminate dimensions must precede in some way substantial form. If this were not the case, Giles argues, we could not explain the process of particularization and multiplication of a form that is in itself ‘unparticular’ (imparticularis).

From the beginning of the XIV century, many leading works by Latin scholars were translated into Hebrew only a few years after being written. This practice reveals the extraordinary process of philosophical re-acculturation that has its roots in precise ideological and social reasons: implementing contemporary Latin culture rapidly and systematically meant, for late Medieval Hebrew translators, renewing Hebrew wisdom in the light of their Christian neighbours’ thought.

This was certainly the purpose of one of the protagonists of Hebrew Scholasticism, Yehudah ben Moses Romano: openly hostile to the philosophical inertia of his Jewish contemporaries, who were still convinced of being the sole holders of the truth bestowed on them from on high, he translated for his co-religionists new knowledge from his Christian colleagues.

Particularly intense and sustained were the translations he made of Giles of Rome, which display transversal interests in all aspects of his work (from logic and rhetoric to physics, ethics, psychology and metaphysics).

The history of the reception and success of Giles of Rome’s thought on the Jewish world goes far beyond Yehudah Romano’s intellectual project: the reference here is to Yoseph Taitazak (1480-1545 circa), who from his home in Salonica wrote the Porat Yosef, a bizarre Commentary on Ecclesiastes, in which Koholet’s words are used as an occasion for Taitazak to reinterpret the Aristotelian system through a Thomist and Aegidian lens. The inclusion of the Scholastic doctrine in Taitazak’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes, however, responds to a need symmetrically specular to the work of Yehudah Romano: not to proceed with a project of updating Hebrew culture, but to show instead how the Torah is the repository of all knowledge, indeed that the Torah is the knowledge.

Taking its cue from the famous articles in which the Jesuit Marcel Chossat, in the early decades of the last century, was the first to suggest that the doctrine of the real distinction between being and essence should be attributed to Giles of Rome, and not to Thomas Aquinas, the article proposes to consider the Neoplatonic matrix of Giles’ distinction, and to re-examine in more detail the doctrine of participation, which is the real trigger of the controversy between Giles and Henry of Ghent. It suggests that Thomas Aquinas, Henry and Giles all three draw on the Proclean tradition (namely on Proclus’ Elementatio theologica, and even more so on the Liber de causis), but each choosing different elements, as attested especially by the different readings of the fourth and ninth (in the Latin numeration) proposition of the De causis. Finally, it points out that the purpose of the distinction between being and essence is not at all, in Aquinas, to account for the contingency of creation (as it is in Giles of Rome, and as claimed by the Neothomists), but to highlight the superiority of God not only with respect to all that possesses matter, but also to all that possesses only a form, even if intrinsically necessary. The distance between Giles and Aquinas could not be greater in this respect: the Dominican Master is not at all interested in showing the radical contingency of all creatures, including separate substances. On the contrary, insofar as he defends the idea that separate substances, as pure forms, are inseparable from their being, it remains true that one could legitimately speak, with regard to this aspect, of “St Thomas’ Averroism”, as Chossat wanted.

In the early 1250’s, Albert the Great wrote the De mineralibus to establish a mineralogical science based on Aristotelian epistemology. In the first instance, the Dominican master undertakes to clarify the proximal material and efficient causes of minerals. In his analysis, the examination of material causes proceeds through the evaluation of the Peripatetic and Arabic mineralogy, while the study of the efficient causes leads Albert to align the formative process of the mineral substances with the processes of the generation of animals and plants. Here the physiological role of heat acting upon moisture is crucial in the context of matter acquiring form. In contrast with the mineralogical tradition, Albert assigns the role of the efficient cause of stones and metals to heat, thus laying the foundation for a general theory of the process of generation. With respect to every degree of being, heat, on the one hand, is the active quality of matter, being able to act upon the elements; on the other hand, it conveys all the natural formative principles required for the formation of a substance.

Among the authors of the 13th century, Albert the Great is perhaps - together with Thomas Aquinas - the one who chose to confront more closely the metaphysical instances of the Liber de causis. The anonymous work, an original readaptation of Proclus’ Elementatio theologica, not only found in Albert one of its most passionate interpreters, but also profoundly shaped his thought. It is difficult to establish whether it was more the Liber de causis that modelled Albert’s philosophical and theological reflection, or Albert’s reading of it that profoundly influenced the posterity of the De causis.

One of the best known aspects of Albert’s thought is undoubtedly his metaphysics of flow, and more particularly his attempt to harmonise the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo with the Neoplatonic model of procession and emanation. In this article I jointly analyse: (i) Albert’s definition of the flow; (ii) the way he describes the process of creation by the First Cause; (iii) the different definitions he offers of the first product of the First Cause. In this way, I hope to show that the nature of the flow - considered in its moment of origin (which coincides with the origin of the entire creation) - can be more adequately understood if considered in its relationship to that of the first created product, and vice versa.