In the corollaries to Book I, Chapter 5 of De causa Dei, Thomas Bradwardine assumes the existence of an actual, infinite, God-filled extramundane void. Thomas Buckingham, Bradwardine’s former student, develops in the unedited Question 23 of his Quaestiones theologicae a rejection of the void’s existence precisely in opposition to the theory of his master. His argumentation is not only remarkable in its own; it also allows us to reassess essential concepts from Bradwardine’s De causa Dei, such as divine power, causality (...) and ubiquity. This paper first presents the Aristotelian notion of the void in rendering it in the context of the philosophy of nature at fourteenth-century Oxford; it is then dedicated to the analysis of the chapter in question from De causa Dei along with Buckingham’s answer. It is accompanied by a critical edition of Question 23 from Buckingham’s Quaestiones theologicae, »Utrum sit necesse ponere Deum esse extra mundum in situ seu vacuo imaginario infinito«. (shrink)

Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, Volume 62, Issue, Page 397-403, January 2020.

Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, Volume 62, Issue, Page 397-403, January 2020.

In his commentary on Lombardʼs Sentences, question 1, Robert Halifax OFM presents a remarkably original and inventive optical argument. It compares two pairs of luminous and opaque bodies with two shadow cones until the luminous bodies reach the zenith. In placing two moving human beings into the shadow cones whose moral evolution parallels the size of the shadows, Halifax creates an unprecedented shadow theater equipped with mathematics and theorems of motion from Thomas Bradwardineʼs Treatise on Proportions. This paper is a (...) first attempt at analyzing this imaginary experiment and the mathematics of the infinite it implies. It also shows that optics had new aims through its connexion with the theorems of motion of the Oxford Calculators. (shrink)

Manuscripts in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek contain several unexplored witnesses to theological disputations that took place at the University of Vienna in the fifteenth century. Three manuscripts especially contain, along with many new questions, debates that are also recorded in Harvard MS Lat. 162, and testify to the contribution of Petrus Reicher de Pirchenwart, Regent Master in Theology, to the disputes. These witnesses also reveal that Andreas de Waytra was an important collector of Viennese theological debates, especially in his rapellarius, and (...) reveal as well several previously unknown aspects of disputational practice at the University of Vienna. (shrink)

Manuscripts in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek contain several unexplored witnesses to theological disputations that took place at the University of Vienna in the fifteenth century. Three manuscripts especially contain, along with many new questions, debates that are also recorded in Harvard MS Lat. 162, and testify to the contribution of Petrus Reicher de Pirchenwart, Regent Master in Theology, to the disputes. These witnesses also reveal that Andreas de Waytra was an important collector of Viennese theological debates, especially in his rapellarius, and (...) reveal as well several previously unknown aspects of disputational practice at the University of Vienna. (shrink)