This new book is part of a major research project aimed at the scientific study of the Summa Halensis and its influence. The introduction by Lydia Schumacher is very comprehensive.
In the first chapter (the chapters are not numbered), the learned expert on Franciscan education, Michael P. Robson, presents a masterful synthesis of English Franciscan educational institutions based on a three-fold structure: Priory-schools, Custodial Schools, and University learning. The purpose of the whole system was to provide lectors in the Franciscan houses. It is remarkable to see just how many English Franciscans went on to teach in European Universities and schools.
The next chapter, written by Giles Gaspar, presents a very rich and careful study of the teaching of Robert Grosseteste as the first master of the first Franciscan school at Oxford. What stands out clearly is the scriptural, pastoral, and penitential nature of this teaching. Grosseteste's theology was directed to preaching and pastoral care.
The third chapter is a study in the iconography on Alexander of Hales. The high point of the chapter is the scholarly analysis of the image found in Ms. Vat. Lat. 705, fol. 1r. Aaron Gies provides a convincing analysis that his image is indeed an image of Alexander of Hales.
The fourth and fifth chapters are connected. Cecilia Panti's chapter on Adam of Exeter (sometimes called Adam of Oxford) is a masterpiece of original research. It presents the most up to date work on this little-known associate of Robert Grosseteste. This is a comprehensive review of works that should be attributed to Adam of Exeter and some works that might be attributed to him. One such work is the De calore solis, previously attributed to Grosseteste; another is a new text on the rainbow. Adam may have influenced Grosseteste.
Emillie Lavallée presents a very interesting analysis of themes from the Letters of Adam Marsh. They are counsel, deliberation, and illumination. Adam Marsh was a very busy man who was much involved in advising and counseling leaders in church and society. Adam contrasts the certainty of divine truth with the dangerous uncertainties of daily life. He links divine inspiration to reason and experience in order to discern what one ought to do.
Neil Lewis presents a masterful interpretation of the unity of truth in Grosseteste, Thomas of York, and Richard Rufus. As a preliminary, he defines how the word truth (veritas) is used by these authors. It refers primarily to the eternal Word. The other truth is that by which true things are true. Following a very careful account of names, signification, and supposition in Grosseteste, Thomas of York, and Richard Rufus, and having noted the similarities and differences in language, Lewis asks the all-important question: “Are their views really that different then?” He answers: “Apparently not.” Richard Rufus is distinctive in that he introduces the new technical language of analogical predication.
Rega Wood and Zita V. Toth present a fascinating and careful argument for Richard Rufus as the ancient Master invoked by John Duns Scotus in his formulation of the famed “Formal Distinction.” Furthermore, they argue that Richard Rufus “was maximally influenced by Alexander, quoting him in almost every distinction in his commentary on the first book of the Sentences” (160). The powers of the soul are not integral parts; they are virtual parts of the soul. One can speak of the virtual containment or unitive containment. The positions of Alexander, Rufus, and Scotus are similar.
Zita V. Toth seeks to answer the questions as to whether corruptible and incorruptible things have the same metaphysical principles. She examines the relevant passages from book four of Richard Rufus's Scriptum on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. In addition, she also discusses an Anonymous Commentary on the principles of corruptibility. Found in Oxford, Corpus Christi MS 119 (ca. 1250). The teaching here is similar.
Fiorella Retucci, the editor of Thomas of York's Sapientiale sets out the need to overcome older and staler ideas on Thomas's great project. This has long been held to have been a work of authentic Augustinianism. Retucci's probe and exemplary discussion of some sources indicates the vast reading and multiple sourcing of Thomas's work. In particular, she examines three remarkable, un-Augustinian sources: 1) the Liber de Causis; 2) the hermetic text Asclepius, and 3) an example taken from the works of Averroes.
Sophie Delmas performs a great service to scholarship in finding that works customarily attributed to Bartholomew the Englishman are not written by him. “It is thus in the De proprietatibus rerum [a works still not fully edited] and in the integral moralizing glosses in the margins of the manuscripts that traces of his exegetical work can be discovered” (266). The various spiritual meanings had to be based on an accurate literal meaning of things. Delmas gives a significant account of the borrowing of matter from Bartholomew's work by Eustace d'Arras.
Nicholas Polloni provides a very thoughtful analysis of Roger Bacon's criticisms of the translators of Aristotle. Polloni presents the case that what Bacon is doing is setting out the conditions for an ideal translator. Bacon noted that many of the known translators did not fully reach this ideal and indeed that some were indeed very bad. Polloni defends Bacon against some older critics.
The final two chapters, those by José Felipe Silva on John Pecham's Theory of Natural Perception and Riccardo Saccenti on Pecham's critique of Aquinas on the soul and the influence of the Summa Halensis, while brief, are very good pieces of philosophical interpretation.
As Saccenti clearly shows, Peacham's philosophical understanding of the soul is based on the foundations set out in the Summa Halensis. Silva provides a useful summary of Aquinas's understanding of the body-soul relationship. But of course, the big issue is the fact that Aquinas and Pecham have divergent concepts of matter and corporeality.
