This is the first of several sourcebooks charting the reception of Avicenna in the Islamic East in the 12th-13th centuries CE. It translates and analyzes hundreds of passages on topics like existence, universals, free will, and proofs of God.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Dialogic and the Aesthetic:Some Reflections on Theatre as a Learning MediumAnthony Jackson (bio)A Doll's House will be as flat as ditchwater when A Midsummer Night's Dream will still be as fresh as paint; but it will have done more work in the world; and that is enough for the highest genius, which is always intensely utilitarian.— George Bernard Shaw, "The Problem Play"1People have tried for centuries to (...) use drama to change people's lives, to influence, to comment, to express themselves. It doesn't work. It might be nice if it worked, but it doesn't. The only thing dramatic form is good for is telling a story.—David Mamet, A Whore's Profession2These two assertions, some 100 years apart, were of course meant to be contentious—but they do point to one of the recurring questions about the role that theatrical art plays in modern Western culture and nicely encapsulate the contrasting claims made by practitioners and critics alike for the "work in the world" that drama can do. On the one hand, it is argued that what is conventionally thought of as great dramatic art—while it may be imaginatively rich, aesthetically compelling, and "timeless" in its appeal—will not achieve the social impact that plays such as A Doll's House have done. Such plays have a different function. They can be directly useful to us in the "real world" beyond the theatre walls, perhaps capable of influencing that world or at least influencing the way we think about and operate in the world—but they may not, consequently, have much shelf life. A Doll's House, of course, obstinately refuses to leave both shelf and stage but in this respect may be an exception that proves the rule; the vast majority of "interventionist" dramas rarely outlive their historical moment. (A play such as Spirochete, a [End Page 104] living newspaper written in 1938 in Chicago with the aim of heightening public awareness of the widespread—but barely discussed—problem of syphilis and of the cures available, undoubtedly did much effective work in the world but remains of and for its time.3 )On the other hand, playwright David Mamet casts buckets of cold water over the whole notion of "useful" dramatic art. Let us not delude ourselves, he argues, into thinking drama is good for anything else than telling a story—the value of good dramatic storytelling is important enough as it is. It serves the art form—and possibly those we wish to influence—badly if we insist on trying to change the world using drama as our lever. A genuine work of art, it is often said, cannot be didactic or "instrumental." The novel, play, or poem that sets out to convey information or to preach a message risks surrendering those very qualities we usually value in art—complexity, multilayered meanings, richness of imagination. Jonathan Levy, in his A Theatre of the Imagination, argues that "the impulse to create theatre for children is the impulse to give a gift, without strings. It is this impulse... we should... call upon when we find ourselves in the theatre tempted to teach."4 Further, "when art is used to teach, either the teaching or the art must suffer."5 The implication is clearly that teaching and dramatic art make awkward bedfellows. It has to be one or the other, not both. The late, much missed, Lowell Swortzell took a not dissimilar line in his provocative essay on theatre-in-education, "Trying to like TIE,"6 and many practitioners of children's and young people's theatre have likewise resisted having their work categorized as educational or in any way curriculum driven. The work must have its own justification, as art, as storytelling, offering young people an experience that may complement but that is fundamentally different from anything else they get in school. Even Augusto Boal has at times appeared to reinforce the dichotomy. Arguing for a theatre that can serve the immediate needs of the marginalized, the oppressed, and the disadvantaged, he has negotiated a challenging and productive path through the artistic and socially responsive implications of... (shrink)

This article presents and discusses for the first time an excerpt from Censorinus’ “De die natali” (12,3-13,1) which forms part of a Carolingian collection of Latin texts on music. The relevant collection, which is extant in at least five manuscripts ranging from the 9th to the 13th century, has not been recognized as such in the past. It was assembled between ca. 750 and 830 in Northeastern France, and its compiler might also be responsible for an ‘edition’ of the (...) so-called “Notitia Galliarum” found in MS Città del Vaticano, Reg. lat. 982. The Censorinus excerpt offered by the collection is negligible for the constitution of the text, but it enlarges our knowledge of the Carolingian reception of the “De die natali”. (shrink)

The article examines the change in luminosity in Gothic stained-glass windows, based on examples from France. This change began around the middle of the 13th century, when coloured panels were increasingly set into grisaille glass. The joint use of clear glass with intensely coloured glass on the one hand allowed more light to enter the interior of the church, and on the other led to different design solutions for combining coloured images with the grisaille. This brought about the evolution (...) of the band window in which one or more horizontal series of coloured figurative panels crossed over the narrow mullions against a ground of grisaille. In order to explain the development of composite windows, material arguments (economic constraints, technological progress) as well as non-material arguments (new aesthetic) have been advanced and are critically considered. The focus of the article is on the effect of the media synthesis between stained glass and architecture with regard to the visual projection of the images. (shrink)

pt. 1. Introduction and indices -- pt. 2. Catalogue.

In this book Philippa Hoskin offers an account of the pastoral theory and practice of Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln 1235-1253, within his diocese. Grosseteste has been considered as an eminent medieval philosopher and theologian, and as a bishop focused on pastoral care, but there has been no attempt to consider how his scholarship influenced his pastoral practice. Making use of Grosseteste's own writings - philosophical and theological as well as pastoral and administrative - Hoskin demonstrates how Grosseteste's famous interventions (...) in his diocese grew from his own theory of personal obligation in pastoral care as well as how his personal involvement in his diocese could threaten well-developed clerical and lay networks. (shrink)

Is vision merely a state of the beholder’s sensory organ which can be explained as an immediate effect caused by external sensible objects? Or is it rather a successive process in which the observer actively scanning the surrounding environment plays a major part? These two general attitudes towards visual perception were both developed already by ancient thinkers. The former is embraced by natural philosophers (e.g., atomists and Aristotelians) and is often labelled “intromissionist”, based on their assumption that vision is an (...) outcome of the causal influence exerted by an external object upon a sensory organ receiving an entity from the object. The latter attitude to vision as a successive process is rather linked to the “extramissionist” theories of the proponents of geometrical optics (such as Euclid or Ptolemy) who suggest that an entity – a visual ray – is sent forth from the eyes to the object. The present paper focuses on the contributions to this ancient controversy proposed by some 13th-century Latin thinkers. [...]. (shrink)

​Authors, Factions, and Courts in Angevin England: A Literature of Personal Ambition (12th-13th Century) advances a model for historical study of courtly literature by foregrounding the personal aims, networks, and careers as the impetus for much of the period’s literature. The book takes two authors as case studies – Gerald of Wales and Walter Map – to show how authors not only built their own stories but also used popular narratives and the tools of propaganda to achieve their own, (...) personal goals. The purpose of this study is to overturn the top-down model of political patronage, in which patrons – and particularly royal patrons – set the cultural agenda and dictate literary tastes. Rather, Fabrizio De Falco argues that authors were often representative of many different interests expressed by local groups. To pursue those interests, they targeted specific political factions in the changeable political scenario of Angevin England. Their texts reveal a polycentric view of cultural production and its reception. The study aims to model a heuristic process which is applicable to other courtly texts besides the chosen case-studies. (shrink)

The double truth question is located at the center of an extensive debate on the relationship of theology and philosophy—on the epistemic order of reason and scientific knowledge on the one hand and revelation and faith on the other. While this field of tension has been a crucial topic for the self-perception of Christian theology ever since, the disputes largely intensified in the 13th century within the scope of both the growing influence of the rediscovered Aristotelianepistemology and the condemnation (...) of 219 articles by the Parisian bishop Étienne Tempier. In this context, the present article investigates the accounts offered by Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Meister Eckhart, discusses their mutual relation, and traces significant aspects in their interpretation of the Early Christian authors Augustine and Boethius. (shrink)

This study contains three parts. The first tries to follow the spread of the study of the Prior Analytics in the first two centuries during which it was at all studied in Western Europe, providing in this connection a non-exhaustive list of extant commentaries. Part II points to a certain overlap between commentaries on the Prior Analytics and works from the genre of sophismata . Part III lists the questions discussed in a students' compendium from about the 1240s and (...) in six commentaries per modum quaestionis from the 1270s through the 1290s. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer the spanish translation with notes of three treatises of Ramon Llull : Artificium electionis personarum, the chapter XXIV of book II from Llibre d’Evast, d’Aloma e de Blaquerna named «En qual manera Natana fo eleta a abadessa» and De arte electionis. These three texts show a new election technique supported on the Ars magna methods. The translations are preceded by a short introduction explaining the place that such texts occupy in the whole lullian opus and (...) the advances of recents investigations. (shrink)

This article analyzes the treatment of natural philosophy in the work of Thomas Aquinas from the point of view of assimilation of the Aristotelian physical corpus. It focuses primarily on the Aquinas’s defense of the conception of the fallibility of the natural reason, the provisional and revisable character of all physical theories, the necessity of intercultural dialogue to discover the truths about nature, and Aquinas’s role in the development of the skeptical attitude in scientific research of the mobile’s world.

Este artículo presente y analiza el legado de Abū Madyan cuyas bases van a quedar ilustrado perfectamente en el posterior desarrollo del sufismo andalusi-magrebi de origen šāḏilī y la doctrina de ibn ‘Arabī: traduccion española y estudio critico de las evidencias y cotejos textuales, ensenanzas y practicas espirituales y funcionalidad social.

Several studies have approached sense perception in the encyclopaedias of Thomas of Cantimpré, Bartholomew the Englishman, and Vincent of Beauvais. A comparative analysis of these encyclopaedias shows that all of them arrange sense perception in accordance with the expositions on the soul and with human and animal anatomy. Yet there are significant differences in how they treat the objects of sensation: Thomas does not refer to them at all, Bartholomew considers them to be “accidents,” and Vincent deals with them separately (...) when discussing the features of the sensible world. These differences, I argue, respond to two different readings of Aristotle. (shrink)

cannot, cover the broad topic indicated in the title. Rather, it will concern itself only with some preliminary ideas leading the way to a larger project, which, however, should eventually bear an even broader title. As a matter of fact, here I will consider at some length only two authors from the beginning of the period indicated in the title, namely, Aquinas and Siger of Brabant. (Or perhaps three authors, provided the anonymous author of the..