A few words of introduction

I have recently been appointed Associate Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Messina, Italy. In previous years, I worked at the University of Porto (with a Marie Curie Fellowship), KU Leuven (FWO Senior Research Fellowship), HU Berlin (Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship), and the University of Durham (JRF). My research expands on premodern hylomorphism and focuses particularly on theories of matter and prime matter. I am also the editor of Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval (with Alexander Fidora) and the book series Global Perspectives on the History of Natural Philosophy (with Yael Kedar and Cecilia Panti), published by Routledge. You will find below a comprehensive overview of my academic and professional journey for your perusal.

Internal structure of the CV

Are you looking for some specific information? You can go directly to any of the sections of this CV by clicking on the related entry below. If you prefer a more casual approach, just scroll down to start exploring.

1. Academic Background

2. Research Framework

3. Organised Events

4. Publications

5. Teaching

6. Lectures and Talks

7. Outreach

1. Academic Background

1.1 MAIN APPOINTMENTS

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

Department of Ancient and Modern Civilisations (DICAM), Università di Messina (IT), Since 8 Jan 2024.

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MARIE SKŁODOWSKA-CURIE RESEARCH FELLOW

Instituto de Filosofia, Universidade do Porto (PT), 1 Oct 2023 – 7 Jan 2024.

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Research Project: Hylomorphism in a Globalizing World: Scholastic Debates on the Ontology of Nature Across Europe, China, and New Spain (HYLOGLOB). Funding Institution: Horizon Europe, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA–IF).

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FWO SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW

Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven (BE), 1 Oct 2020 – 30 Sept 2023.

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Research Project: The Shadow Within Nature: Epistemology and Ontology of Matter in the Late Middle Ages. Funding Institution: FWO: Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen, Senior Research Fellowship, n. 12ZT221N.

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ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT RESEARCH FELLOW

Institut für Philosophie, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (DE), 1 Sept 2018 – 31 Aug 2020.

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Research Project: Knowing the Shadow: Ontology and Epistemology of Matter in the 13th Century. Funding Institution: Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung.

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JUNIOR RESEARCH FELLOW

Department of History and Institute of Advanced Studies, Durham University (UK), 1 July 2016 – 30 June 2018.

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Research Project: The Metaphysics of Grosseteste and Bacon: Between Philosophy and Science. Funding Institution: Durham University, DIFeREns2 and European Union’s 7th Framework Programme (grant agreement no 609412).

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1.2 FURTHER WORK EXPERIENCE

ACADEMIC COLLABORATOR

Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Leuven (BE). 2023-2024.

BOOK SERIES CO-EDITOR

Routledge Publishing (UK), Global Perspectives on the History of Natural Philosophy. Editors: Yael Kedar, Cecilia Panti, and Nicola Polloni. 2022-present.

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Fostering a new approach to the study of the history of natural philosophy this series aims to expand the discussion on natural philosophy cross-culturally and comparatively by focusing on the philosophical reasoning about nature developed particularly, but not exclusively, in three main cultural settings: Europe, the Middle East, and China. One of the main focal points of Global Perspectives on the History of Natural Philosophy is the interplay between philosophical and scientific concepts, stances, and problems arising from the premodern consideration of nature, broadly considered. Accordingly, the series provides a cutting-edge framework in which natural philosophy can be considered from new philosophically meaningful angles. Acknowledging the historical interweaving of philosophy and science of nature, the series publishes monographs and edited volumes dealing with the history of natural philosophy from three methodological perspectives: philosophical analysis, historical reconstruction, and comparative studies. Submitted manuscripts may either examine authors and issues from a specific philosophical tradition or engage comparatively with patterns and problems shared by different cultural settings.

Publisher: Routledge

Series editors: Yael Kedar (Tel Hai College), Cecilia Panti (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”), and Nicola Polloni (University of Messina)

Editorial committee: Veronique Decaix (University of Paris), Shixiang Jin (University of Science and Technology of Beijing), Andreas Lammer (Radboud University), Matteo Martelli (University of Bologna), Cecilia Trifogli (University of Oxford), Linwei Wang (Wuhan University).

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ACADEMIC JOURNAL CO-EDITOR

Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval, since Jan 2018. Editors: Alexander Fidora and Nicola Polloni.

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Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval (REFIME) is a yearly scholarly publication indexed, peer-reviewed, and distributed by UCO Press. Regularly published since 1993, it is the official journal of Sociedad de Filosofía Medieval (SOFIME). Its official venue is the University of Córdoba (Spain). The main scope of Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval is the broad field of studies on medieval thought. Its specific aim is to provide scholarship with outstanding scientific contributions, specifically on scientific and philosophical reflections developed through the Middle Ages, their sources, and their influence through the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. Any original contribution to study on the four main medieval traditions – Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek – is welcome, especially if focused on the transmission of knowledge among these different frameworks. While the main interest of the Journal is the philosophical analysis of doctrinal positions held by medieval and Early Modern thinkers, papers examining the historical context of those positions are welcome as well, recognising the implicit link between historical and philosophical study of medieval thought. The Journal is also interested in original papers on the broad history of scientific reflection, from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period, especially when linked to their medieval development or sources. Dedicated sections of the Journal publish critical reviews of newly published books and scientific notes of short length. In exceptional cases, the Journal accepts modern translations of medieval and Early Modern texts of short length accompanied by an introduction.

Publisher: UCO Press

Journal editors: Alexander Fidora (UAB) and Nicola Polloni (University of Messina)

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ACADEMIC INSTRUCTOR

Universidad de Córdoba (ES), Master in Religious Pluralism: Jews, Greeks, and Arabs from the Post-Classical Era to the Early Modern Period, Nov 2021 to Sept 2023.

ACADEMIC INSTRUCTOR

Technologische Universität Berlin, Institute for Philosophy, History of Literature, Science and Technology. Academic year 2017-2018.

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW

Department of Humanities, Università di Pavia (IT). 1 Jan – 30 June 2016.

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Research Project: The Toledan School of Translators and Avicenna’s Influence on Latin Philosophy. Funding Institution: Fondazione Chimaera – Centro Studi di Filosofia Medievale ‘Maria Elena Reina’.

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SIEPM RESEARCH FELLOW

Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame (USA), 1 Feb – 31 May 2015.

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Research Project: Gundissalinus’s Reception of Universal Hylomorphism. Funding Institutions: University of Notre Dame and SIEPM.

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1.3 EDUCATION

PHD IN PHILOSOPHY

Università di Pavia (IT), 2015. International Co-tutelle with Barcelona.

PHD IN CULTURES IN CONTACT IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ES), 2015. International Co-tutelle with Pavia.

MA IN PHILOSOPHY

Università di Siena (IT), 2012.

BA IN PHILOSOPHY

Università di Siena (IT), 2008.

1.4 CONTINUING EDUCATION

COMMUNICATING FOR IMPACT AND INFLUENCE

University of Cambridge, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), 2020.

HIGHER EDUCATION TEACHING

Harvard University, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, 2020.

1.5 AWARDS AND HONOURS

HONORARY FELLOW

Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidad de Córdoba (ES), 2019-2023.

HONORARY FELLOW

Department of Humanities, University of Pavia (IT), 2013-2019.

SEAL OF EXCELLENCE OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Awarded for the research project ‘Knowing the Shadow: Knowledge and Experience of Matter in the Middle Ages’ (MSCA-GF, n. 793587), 2018.

1.6 ACADEMIC VISITING STAYS

UCLOUVAIN, INSTITUT SUPÉRIEUR DE PHILOSOPHIE

Louvain-la-Neuve (BE), Oct 2023-Jan 2024.

UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BEIJING

Beijing (CN), Nov-Dec 2023.

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY

Oxford (UK), Jan-April 2020.

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Berlin (DE), Oct-Dec 2019.

THE WARBURG INSTITUTE

London (UK), July-Sept 2014.

THE WARBURG INSTITUTE

London (UK), July-Aug 2013.

2. Research Framework

2.1 EDITORIAL BOARDS

BOOK SERIES CO-EDITOR, GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE HISTORY OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

Routledge. Editors: Yael Kedar, Cecilia Panti, and Nicola Polloni, 2022-present.

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Publisher: Routledge

Series editors: Yael Kedar (Tel Hai College), Cecilia Panti (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”), and Nicola Polloni (University of Messina)

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JOURNAL CO-EDITOR, REVISTA ESPAÑOLA DE FILOSOFÍA MEDIEVAL

Editors: Alexander Fidora and Nicola Polloni, 2018-present.

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Publisher: UCO Press

Journal editors: Alexander Fidora (UAB) and Nicola Polloni (University of Messina)

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EXECUTIVE EDITOR, REVISTA ESPAÑOLA DE FILOSOFÍA MEDIEVAL

Editors: Alexander Fidora and Pedro Mantas España. 2017-2018.

2.2 POSITIONS IN LEARNED SOCIETIES

VICE-PRESIDENT

Sociedad de Filosofía Medieval (SOFIME), since 2021.

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Sociedad de Filosofía Medieval (SOFIME) is an academic society founded in Zaragoza on the occasion of the 1st National Conference of Medieval Philosophy (Zaragoza, 12-14 December 1990). Since 1993 SOFIME edits the Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval (REFIME), an indexed academic peer reviewed journal printed by the University of Zaragoza Press. SOFIME’s main goal focuses on the research of the Iberian Medieval thought and the transmission of medieval knowledge to the Western Europe, by promoting conferences, colloquia and scientific , such as the national and international conferences held every four years since the 1990. As a member of the Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Medievales (FIDEM), SOFIME collaborates and participates in the international conferences and colloquia organised by the FIDEM.

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MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Aquinas and ‘the Arabs’ International Working Group, since 2020.

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SECRETARY

Roger Bacon Research Society, 2020-2023.

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The purpose of the Roger Bacon Research Society is to promote research of the science, philosophy, history and culture of the Middle Ages with the special focus on contributing to in-depth knowledge of Roger Bacon (1220-1292), his environment and his philosophical, historical, and cultural significance. In order to pursue its aims, the Society supports research and collaboration among its members. The Society will foster individual and collaborative research projects. It will establish an information network among its members, will distribute a newsletter, organise an annual meeting and an online reading group. The Society will support its members concerning the publication of scientific contributions directly related to its aims. It will sponsor, as cultural entity, the organisation of conferences, congresses, panels, colloquia, and similar gatherings whose purposes meet those of the Society. It is among the prerogatives of the Society to disseminate the results of these gatherings through the publication of proceedings or in other forms. Particularly, the Society fosters a free-access dissemination of academic knowledge via web and other means.

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COMMUNICATION MANAGER

Sociedad de Filosofía Medieval (SOFIME), 2016-2021

2.3 MEMBERSHIP OF LEARNED SOCIETIES

ROGER BACON RESEARCH SOCIETY | RBRS

Founding member since 2020.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE SOCIETY | HSS

Member since 2017.

SOCIETY FOR MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY | SMRP

Member since 2015.

SOCIÉTÉ INTERNATIONALE POUR L’ÉTUDE DE LA PHILOSOPHIE MÉDIÉVALE | SIEPM

Member since 2013.

SOCIETÀ ITALIANA PER LO STUDIO DEL PENSIERO MEDIEVALE | SISPM

Member since 2013.

SOCIEDAD DE FILOSOFÍA MEDIEVAL | SOFIME

Member since 2012.

INTERNATIONAL ROBERT GROSSETESTE SOCIETY

Member since 2012.

2.4 MEMBERSHIP OF SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEES

VISIO BEATIFICA. EARLY MODERN DEBATES ON THE BEATIFIC VISION: BYZANTINE REVIVAL AND LATIN REACTIONS

Conference, UC Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve (BE), 18-19 June 2024.

2023 COLLOQUIUM OF SOCIEDAD DE FILOSOFÍA MEDIEVAL: DE IMAGINE

Conference, Universidade Beira Interior, Covilhã (PT), 7-9 September 2023.

KU LEUVEN COLLOQUIA IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

Conference, Universidade Beira Interior, Covilhã (PT), 7-9 September 2023.

REVISTA CIENCIAS Y ARTES

Academic Journal, Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de América Latina (PE), since 2023.

8TH CONGRESS OF SOCIEDAD DE FILOSOFÍA MEDIEVAL (SOFIME): DE COGNITIONE

Congress, Universidade do Porto (PT), 6-8 September 2021.

THE MULTI-ETHNIC BORDERLANDS OF MEDIEVAL TOLEDO: NEW DIRECTIONS

Conference, Texas State University and Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, Toledo (ES), 5-7 June 2019.

CORDOBA NEAR EASTERN RESEARCH UNIT

Research Unit, Universidad de Córdoba (ES), 2018-2023.

SCIENCE, IMAGINATION AND WONDER – ROBERT GROSSETESTE AND HIS LEGACY

Conference, University of Oxford and Durham University, Pembroke College, Oxford (UK), 3-6 April 2018.

2.5 COLLABORATIONS: RESEARCH GRANTS

RECEPCIÓN Y EVOLUCIÓN DEL CONCEPTO DE ANIMA MUNDI EN EL SIGLO XII

Instituto Multidisciplinario de Historia y Ciencias Humanas (grant no. PICT-2021-GRF-TII-00018), Buenos Aires (AR), PI: Cecilia Rusconi. Since 2023.

“CERTAINTY WITHOUT DOUBT AND TRUTH WITHOUT ERROR”: THE MATHEMATICAL EPISTEMOLOGY OF ROGER BACON

Tel Hai College (IL), Israel Science Foundation project (grant no. 2773/21), PI: Giora Hon and Yael Kedar. Since 2021.

EX UMBRA IN SOLEM: HISTORIA DE LA DOCUMENTACIÓN DE LA ENSEÑANZA DE LA FILOSOFÍA NATURAL (FÍSICA), CHILE (1698-1798)

Universidad de Playa Ancha (CL), Proyecto Fondecyt Iniciación 11200279 (ANID-Chile), Principal Investigator: Abel Aravena Zamora. 2020-2023.

GREEK-ARABIC AND LATIN BIBLICAL AND PATRISTIC MANUSCRIPTS

Universidad de Córdoba (ES). Funding Entity: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, ref. IPGC2018-096807-B-I00, PI: Juan Pedro Montferrer-Sala. 2019-2021.

THE ORDERED UNIVERSE

Durham University and University of Oxford (UK). Funding Entity: Arts and Humanities Research Council, PI: Giles Gasper. 2016-2020.

UNITY AND PLURALITY OF THE LOGOS IN THE WORLD

Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (ES). Funding Entity: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, ref. FFI2015-63947-P, PI: María Jesús Soto-Bruna, 2016-2018.

2.6 COLLABORATIONS: RESEARCH GROUPS

TEORÍA FINALISTAS EN LA EDAD MEDIA

Universidad Católica de Argentina, Buenos Aires (AR), PI: Laura Corso Estrada. Since 2021.

DB DOMINICUS GUNDISSALINUS

Autonomous University of Barcelona (ES). PIs: Alexander Fidora, Nicola Polloni, María-Jesús Soto-Bruna. Since 2020.

ARISTOTELICA PORTUGALENSIA. THE RECEPTION OF ARISTOTLE IN PORTUGAL UNTIL THE 18TH CENTURY

Instituto de Filosofia, Universidade do Porto (PT). PI: Paula Oliveira e Silva. Since 2018.

REASON, POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN PHILOSOPHY

Instituto de Filosofia, Universidade do Porto (PT). PI: José Meirinhos. Since 2018.

AQUINAS AND ‘THE ARABS’ INTERNATIONAL WORKING GROUP

Marquette University (USA). PI: Richard C. Taylor. Since 2016.

DB ROGER BACON

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ES), PI: Óscar De la Cruz Palma. 2016-2020.

ROGER BACON: THE PHILOSOPHER’S WORKSHOP

Società Italiana per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino (SISMEL), Florence (IT). 2016-2020.

3. Organisation of Research Events

3.1 CONFERENCES

FROM TOLEDO TO GOTHA: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE IMPACT OF AVICENNA UPON SCIENCES AND PHILOSOPHY IN EUROPE

Organised with Cécile Bonmariage, Sébastien Moureau, and Andrea Aldo Robiglio. Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve (BE), 14-15 October 2022.

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Avicenna’s contributions have been pivotal for the development of knowledge in pre-modern Europe. Since the 12th century, his philosophical works had been made available in Latin and used to investigate metaphysical and natural problems, better understand Aristotle’s sometimes obscure doctrines, assimilate the reflections of thinkers like Alexander of Aphrodisias, but also to train generations of physicians to treat illnesses and grasp the fundamentals of embryology and the fabric of the human body. By focusing on the multilayered transfer of Avicenna’s theories to the Latin West, from the times of Domenicus Gundisalvi to the Europe of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and of the newly founded Academies of Sciences, From Toledo to Gotha aims to gather some of the most innovative researchers working on aspects of the “Avicenna Latinus”. What is the nature and precise extent of Avicenna’s impact on European thought? Is it possible to isolate a specific Latin “brand” of Ibn Sina’s thought distinct from and defined against its original, “Arabic” contents and system? Is it accurate to consider that – as it has been commonly written – the main Islamicate authority in Europe was Averroes instead of Avicenna? How deep Renaissance Avicennism reshaped the Platonic and Aristotelian legacies? Which are the characteristic features of the material transmission, translation, circulation, and reading of Avicenna’s (and Ps-Avicenna’s) writings throughout Europe on the eve of the Scientific Revolution? A joint collaboration among KU Leuven, UCLouvain, and SOFIME, the conference will foster a general re-setting of the debate on the “Avicenna Latinus”, shedding light on some obscure aspects of his influence on European philosophy through an organic, longue-durée and inter-linguistic approach to his philosophical production. Avicenna’s role in the constitution of European philosophy and science will be examined by discussing a series of intertwined questions touching upon a plurality of domains and aspects, from the material production and circulation of the Latin translations of Avicenna’s works to the impact of the latter on philosophical doctrines and medical practices developed in Europe.

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LATE MEDIEVAL HYLOMORPHISM: MATTER AND FORM, 1300–1600

Organised with Russel Friedman and Zita Toth. Leuven (BE), 9-11 June 2022.

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Later medieval philosophers would claim that all bodies are compounds of matter and form. Yet, among themselves, their ways of conceiving of the two components tended to differ substantively. The conference “Late Medieval Hylomorphism” aims at disentangling the specificities of a long-lasting debate on hylomorphism, the scope and originality of which is still unknown. While hylomorphic issues in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century have received some scholarly attention, the later history of Scholastic hylomorphism is still to be explored. What were the main disputes concerning hylomorphism in the period? What were the main positions? Who were the interesting thinkers defending unusual points of view? These questions unfold at different levels of the ontological examination of substances. For instance, the debate about the modality of existence of prime matter conceived of as either a pure potency or an entity in act had profound impact on the later tradition up to the seventeenth century. In a similar manner, the contentious thirteenth- and fourteenth-century question of whether there is a plurality of substantial forms in any compound is present into the early modern period; but were new positions, arguments, and ideas develop over the course of the centuries? Moreover, an important view in thirteenth-century hylomorphic debates was the so-called theory of “universal hylomorphism”, which seems to disappear from the later debate; but is this in fact the case? A like question can be asked about the Augustinian notion of seminal reasons (rationes seminales). Additional central questions about the later medieval debate on hylomorphism ask about the ontological distinction between super- and sublunary matters, and the roles played by prime matter and substantial form in the process of substantial change. And underlying all these issues, thinkers had to address the lurking worry that no well-grounded reasoning on matter and form is possible when neither of the hylomorphic constituents can be known.

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DIVERGENT SCHOLASTICISM: PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT AND SCHOLASTIC TRADITION BETWEEN EUROPE AND THE AMERICAS, 1500-1700

Cycle of conferences. Organised with Abel Aravena Zamora and Christophe Geudens. Leuven (BE) and Playa Ancha (CL), March to October 2022.

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A very common narrative in the history of both philosophy and science reconstructs the dawn of early-modern thought as a clean break from the dusk of Scholasticism and its Aristotelian roots. The workshop Divergent Scholasticism: Philosophical Thought and Scholastic Tradition between Europe and the Americas, 1500-1700 focuses on a different story. It is a story made of continuities and ruptures within late Scholasticism and nourished by refined theoretical elaboration and wide transmission of knowledge between the two shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Expanding from Europe (Leuven, Salamanca, and Coimbra) to Latin America and Asia, Second Scholasticism has received growing attention from scholarship only in recent decades. Organised by Abel Aravena Zamora, Christophe Geudens, and Nicola Polloni, the aim of Divergent Scholasticism is to foster a collaborative global network of interested scholars to better understand the specificities of such long-neglected debate.

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HYLOMORPHISM INTO PIECES: ELEMENTS, ATOMS AND CORPUSCLES IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES (1400–1600)

Organised with Sylvain Roudaut. Stockholm (SE) and Leuven (BE), 7-8 April 2022.

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Hylomorphism, the doctrine claiming that physical bodies are metaphysically composed of matter and form, was among the most successful, widespread, and influential theories in the later Middle Ages. Yet hylomorphism had its fair share of problems, which gradually arose during the later Middle Ages. In the 17^th century, it became common to claim that the principles of matter and form are unnecessary to explain natural processes and the structure of beings. Like many conceptual shifts in the history of philosophy, detachment from the Aristotelian framework was in many respects the final result of a gradual evolution in the way in which matter and form were conceived and applied as speculative devices. Important aspects of the strong oppositions to hylomorphism in 17^th-century philosophy have been object of recent studies. Nonetheless, the story of how this doctrine and its associated concepts proper to Aristotelianism gradually declined in the late Middle Ages still has to be properly assessed, especially in consideration of the fundamental theoretical developments of the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Organised by Sylvain Roudaut (Stockholm) and Nicola Polloni (Leuven), the conference “Hylomorphism into Pieces: Elements, Atoms and Corpuscles in the Late Middle Ages” aims to fill this gap by studying the major steps of this story from the late 14^th century to the late 16^th century.

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MATERIA, 气/QÌ, AND THEIR EPISTEMES

Organised with Shixiang Jin. Leuven (BE) and Beijing (CN), 10-11 December 2021.

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In their historical course, philosophy and science have looked at nature to find meaningful patterns, causes, and links able to explain the behaviour of natural phenomena: why they work the way they do and how they can be turned to human advance. A specific aspect of such historical query has been the study of the ontological structure of the natural world. Most philosophical traditions have postulated the existence of a physical or metaphysical substrate of the natural world: a subject over or into which physical change happens. Organised by Nicola Polloni (濮若一) and Shixiang Jin (晋世翔), Materia, 气/Qì, and Their Epistemes is first Leuven-Beijing workshop in the history of premodern natural philosophy. The result of a promising collaboration between KU Leuven and the University of Science and Technology of Beijing, the workshop will be held on Zoom on 10-11 December 2021, freely accessible by anyone interested in the topic. Our first Leuven-Beijing workshop in the history of premodern philosophy of nature focuses on such obscure substrate and the historical constructions aimed at unveiling it in the European and Chinese traditions. In later medieval Europe, natural philosophy was based on the Aristotelian claim that the physical universe has a hylomorphic constitution: it is made of matter and form. Approximately during the same period, Chinese thinkers elaborated a refined philosophy of nature whose physical and metaphysical foundation was grounded on the intertwining dynamic between 气 (qì) and 理 (lǐ): the universe is made of chunks of 气 in which理 are instantiated. In both traditions, the “material” principle – materia and 气 – underwent an epistemic fragmentation into a plurality of disciplinary epistemes following the effort to grasp how such principle was supposed to work in theoretical and practical contexts (from metaphysics to alchemy, pharmacy, weather forecast, and so on).

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THE ELUSIVE SUBSTRATE: PRIME MATTER AND HYLOMORPHISM FROM ANCIENT ROME TO EARLY QING CHINA

Cycle of conferences. KU Leuven (BE), May 2021 to March 2022.

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Claiming that every corporeal thing is made of matter and form, hylomorphism is a cornerstone of premodern metaphysics. Originated from Aristotle’s works, hylomorphism soon exceeded the boundaries of Aristotle’s speculative framework. Thought of as an alternative to Plato’s transcendentalism, for centuries the Latin philosophical tradition was marked by a syncretic approach to both theories. Application of the hylomorphic device led to the formulation of elegant metaphysical theories that expanded on Aristotle’s original stances. Among these doctrinal developments, ancient and medieval philosophers have often maintained that the universe was shaped out of an original, prime matter (prōtē hylē, al-hayūlā al-’ūlā, materia prima) corresponding to the potential and unqualified substrate of (corporeal) existence. The Elusive Substrate aims at disentangling the richness of metaphysical theories of original/prime matter that have been produced in the centuries-long philosophical debate about this concept. Focussing on the Latin tradition, the congress reconstructs the main tenets of the history of prime matter by considering how philosophers envisioned the basic ontological constitution of the universe. Such examination will be centred on nine historical phases. These are sections of the Latin debate that are characterised by doctrinal peculiarities, authoritative references, and specificities of problems to be addressed. Each phase will be engaged through the examination of three case-studies. Through their insights, the congress will examine the history of prime matter from a unitary perspective enriched by a plurality of philosophical doctrines and methodological approaches.

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PRIME MATTER: THE ONTOLOGICAL STAKES OF PHYSICAL ENDURANCE

Conference. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (DE), 28 February 2020.

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What is prime matter? And why did medieval practitioners of both philosophy and science strive intellectually to maintain its existence? The conference Prime Matter: The Ontological Stakes of Physical Endurance delves into these and further questions directly concerning the hylomorphic model of nature. Organised by Nicola Polloni, the conference will take place at HU Berlin and is funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. A whole day of discussions on matter, prime matter, and natural change that will close with a keynote lecture given by Cecilia Trifogli (University of Oxford).

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DE INTELLECTU: GREEK, ARABIC, LATIN, AND HEBREW TEXTS AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

Conference. Organised with José Higuera, Celia López, Pedro Mantas, José Meirinhos. Universidade do Porto (PT), 6-7 February 2020.

MATTERS ENTAGLED: AN EARLY-CAREER SYMPOSIUM ON HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY

Symposium. Organised with Elena Baltuta. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (DE), 12 July 2019.

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What characteristics define the history of philosophy before the modern turn? The workshop Matters Entangled engages with this fundamental question through a series of case studies from the European, Islamic, and Indian traditions. By giving the stage to early career scholars from all of the world, the workshop will dive into centuries-old issues by disentangling earlier interpretations and new possible solutions. As usual, the event is free and open to anyone interested. The workshop will take place at the Institute of Philosophy of HU Berlin, in the Invalidenstrasse building.

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TRANSLATING EXPERIENCE: MEDIEVAL ENCOUNTERS WITH NATURE, SELF, AND GOD

Conference. Organised with Katja Krause. Durham University (UK), 4-6 June 2017.

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What is the role of experience in medieval encounters with nature, self, and God? The Aristotelian sciences, such as astronomy and meteorology, zoology and botany, as well as other medieval disciplines such as medicine, alchemy, and magic drew on experience in different ways and to different degrees. Their applications range from singular references to experience in different arguments to collected works of experience, such as the medical literary genre of the experimenta that focuses on medical remedies. Yet the same concepts — tajriba, nissayon, experientia / experimentum — are also used in the encounter with the self; more specifically in the realms of epistemological inquiry, internal reflection on experience of the natural world, or the question of conscience. A third prominent area where experience plays a central role in medieval discourses is encounters with the divine through rapture, prophecy, the practice of magic and necromancy—discourses in which the concept of experience finds its very limits. Despite their diversity of applications, all three encounters of experience with nature, self, and God seem to share a twofold approach: on the one hand, ‘experience’ is discussed as a noetic object to reflect upon epistemological and psychological questions; on the other hand, ‘experience’ is used as noetic tool to increase, correct, and corroborate the knowledge acquired in the different disciplines. What seems to underlie all encounters with experience and approaches to it, however, are questions of ‘translation’ on the three levels of the conceptual, the linguistic, and the material—translations that cross not only cultural and religious boundaries, but also from the real world to that of parchment.

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DA STAGIRA A PARIGI: PROSPETTIVE ARISTOTELICHE TRA ANTICHITÀ E MEDIOEVO

Conference. Org. with Chiara Blengini, Silvia Gastaldi, and Cesare Zizza. Università di Pavia (IT), 30-31 May 2016.

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Il convegno Da Stagira a Parigi: Prospettive aristoteliche tra antichità e medioevo si focalizza sulla storia dell’aristotelismo e la sua ricchezza speculativa. Partendo dalla prima ricezione delle opere Aristoteliche in Grecia antica, la discussione si muove ricostruendo le tre tradizioni che, nel medioevo, caratterizzano l’aristotelismo in lingua greca, araba e latina. Il convegno si terrà presso il Collegio Ghislieri dell’Università di Pavia.

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IDEE, TESTI E AUTORI ARABI ED EBRAICI E LA LORO RICEZIONE LATINA

Conference. Università di Pavia (IT), 3-4 December 2014.

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Il convegno Idee, testi e autori arabi ed ebraici e la loro ricezione latina si concentra sugli scambi intellettuali durante il Medioevo tra tre culture che coesistevano nella stessa area geografica, lo spazio vasto dalle Isole Britanniche al Deserto del Sahara, e dalla Valle del Douro all’Hindu Kush. Queste tre culture, che non possono essere ridotte alla loro confessione o etnia, sono storicamente collegate tra loro sotto molti aspetti, sia materiali (attraverso il commercio, le guerre e i matrimoni) che immateriali (l’interdipendenza tra le loro speculazioni filosofiche e le loro narrazioni religiose). Nello specifico, il convegno si focalizza sugli scambi di idee e dottrine filosofiche tra queste tre tradizioni e il fondamentale ruolo che la riflessione araba ed ebraica ha giocato nello sviluppo del dibattito filosofico latino medievale.

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PENSARE A WEIMAR: FIGURE DEL PENSIERO TEDESCO NELLA GERMANIA DELLA CRISI

Conference. Organised with Luca De Giovanni Università di Pavia (IT), 10-12 December 2013.

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Nell’incertezza politica, economica e sociale della Repubblica di Weimar, la Germania è protagonista di un’intensa esperienza di pensiero dalla quale scaturirono diverse prospettive filosofico-culturali, esperienze che giunsero al tragico culmine con la giunta al potere del nazionalsocialismo. Nei confronti di questa deriva autoritaria molte figure di primo piano presero diverse posizioni, la più celebre e controversa delle quali è il coinvolgimento di Heidegger nel biennio 1933-34. Lo scopo dell’incontro pavese del 10-12 dicembre è di tracciare un profilo critico delle principali figure che segnarono in vario modo il panorama culturale della Germania di quegli anni, e in ultima analisi l’intera cultura occidentale del Novecento. Tra questi, al centro degli interventi si troveranno le riflessioni di Werner Jaeger, Karl Jaspers, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Max Weber e Karl Löwith; ma anche le letture e le critiche presentate da Ernst Bloch, Jacques Derrida e Theodor Adorno a questi pensatori e agli esiti delle loro riflessioni.

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3.2 RESEARCH MEETINGS

MEDIEVAL LOGIC AND ONTOLOGY (MeLO) SEMINAR

Research colloquium. Organised with Christophe Geudens. KU Leuven (BE), 2020-2021.

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MeLO is a virtual forum dedicated to research in logic and ontology from the period c. 500-1700. Organized by Christophe Geudens and Nicola Polloni, MeLO is specifically targeted at early career researchers and aims to provide them with an opportunity to present their work to peers through either talks or discussions of pre-circulated draft papers. Meetings take place fortnightly, usually on Fridays at 4.30 pm CET or 9.30 am CET. Invited authors can present their research by delivering a spoken paper (25/30 min) or by pre-circulating a written paper (briefly introduced by its author). A mutually enriching discussion with the attendees will follow. Meetings last for about 1 hour.

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NATURE AND EMERGENCE: A RESEARCH READING GROUP ON SAMUEL ALEXANDER

Research reading group. Organised with Alexander Blum, Dominic Dold, and Núria Muñoz-Gargante. KU Leuven (BE), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Max-Planck-Institute für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (DE), 2020-2021.

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The research reading group start on 1 April 2020 and will meet biweekly on Zoom. We will read the four books of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time, and Deity. Participants are supposed to read the texts (usually two chapters per meeting) before the biweekly session in which the texts will be discussed. Participation in the research reading group is upon invitation only. However, anyone willing to participate can send me an email and I will be happy to include them in the reading group.

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MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHICAL GATHERINGS II

Weekly colloquium in Ancient, Medieval, and Early-Modern Philosophy. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (DE), October to December 2019.

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Following the great success of the previous edition of the Medieval Philosophical Gatherings, this second instalment of the colloquium engages once again with some of the most difficult topics of medieval philosophy with young scholars from all over the world. The colloquium takes place on a weekly basis (with some exceptions) at the Institute of Philosophy of HU Berlin. Attendance is free and all are more than welcome!

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MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHICAL GATHERINGS I

Weekly colloquium in Ancient, Medieval, and Early-Modern Philosophy. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (DE), April to July 2019.

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The Medieval Philosophical Gatherings is an open space to discuss some of the most crucial issues of medieval philosophy from a fresh new perspective. Every week or so, we will delve into the specificities of the medieval debate through the lenses of young scholars’ research on new topics and problems. The colloquium is open and all are welcome. To attend, all that is needed is an email and the willingness to explore the subtleties of scholasticism.

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3.3 CONGRESS PANELS

NATURAL ENTANGLEMENTS: CONFUSED PERCEPTIONS IN THE MIDDLE AGES

2023 International Medieval Congress. Leeds (UK), 3-6 July 2023.

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According to medieval Aristotelianism, knowledge starts from the senses and evolves through a chain of cognitive processes. Through perception, humans can access the world, make claims about its nature, and ponder about its unperceivable structures. This panel delves into peculiar types of perceptions and perceptual puzzles in medieval epistemology. The first paper discusses the kind of perceptions we have in dreams and delusional dreams (e.g., dreamless nights, nightmares, sleepwalking), which challenges the boundaries between fiction and reality. The second paper expands on the use of fringe perceptive cases (e.g., listening to silence, seeing darkness) to conceive ontological principles that cannot be seen or touched, such as prime matter. Finally, the third paper expands on the medieval understanding of intentionality by questioning the nature of the “species” considered as a case-study to explore the intricate relations among what is physical, spiritual, and intentional in the Middle Ages.

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HYLOMORPHISM IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES: CONTRASTING PERSPECTIVES

2022 SIEPM Congress. Paris (FR), 22-26 August 2022.

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The panel delves into the hylomorphic debate from the 13th and 14th centuries. Engaging with how hylomorphism was discussed in different philosophical domains (natural philosophy, psychology, and metaphysics), the three papers engage with relevant aspects of the problematic deployment of this theory as central explanatory device in medieval philosophy. Serena Masolini will expand on the hypothesis that matter is always accompanied by active potencies, which led 13th-century English natural philosophers to establish a crucial distinction between prime and natural matter. Virginia Scribanti’s paper will deal with another instantiation of hylomorphism, this time in consideration of the constitution of the human being in terms of body and soul. Focusing her attention on William of Alnwick, Scribanti will examine the originality of Alnwick’s theory of the unity of the human compound. Finally, Russell Friedman’s paper will engage with John of Jandun’s theory of prime matter. Like Alnwick, with Jandun, too, a main role is played by Averroes and his great impact on the Latinate discussion of hylomorphism. Expanding on Jandun’s theory of the potency of prime matter, Friedman will discuss both justifications and implications of this theory in the broader context of the 14th-century debate on matter. As a whole, the panel will dissect some of the most problematic issues arising from hylomorphism as they were discussed in the later Middle Ages. The panel is organically connected to the second proposed session on hylomorphism, which will focus on a later phase in the history of hylomorphism.

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CROSS-POLLINATIONS AND CREATIVE INTERPRETATIONS: THE PLACE OF TOLEDO IN THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY

The Multi-Ethnic Borderlands of Medieval Toledo: New Directions. Toledo (ES), 5-7 June 2019.

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The panel delves into the cross-cultural environment that nurtured Toledo during the Middle Ages and expands into the philosophical outcomes of that unique blending of expertise, cultures, and languages. By focusing on four crucial case studies, the panel touches upon some of the most important theories and authors which, connected to Toledo either directly or indirectly, would profoundly and drastically impact on the European philosophical tradition.

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PRE-MODERN EXPERIENCES AND THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE

2017 Meeting of the History of Science Society. Toronto, ON (Canada), 9-12 November 2017.

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Our knowing is limited by physical and cognitive boundaries such as corporeal matter, individual particularity, natural exceptionality, and human reason. The history of science may be viewed as the progressive evasion of these limits through the formulation of theories and the creation of speculative and technical instruments that made possible a deep comprehension of reality that regularly transcended the reaches of sense experience and reason. This panel presents four examples of how, in the pre-modern period, a progressive liberation from the limits of knowing laid the basis for the emancipation of different disciplines and inventions. At the same time, the continuity of questions on the limits of experience, knowledge, and science is accompanied by processes of discontinuity or even fracture in dense histories of opposing paradigms, contrasting perspectives, and tacit revolutions paving the road to the trailblazing developments which ranged from the telescope and the microscope to the discovery of new life worlds in the Americas and East Asia. Vincenzo Carlotta will illustrate how ancient alchemical explanations challenged philosophical paradigms and fashioned new knowledge of ultimate structures of reality in a longue-durée history. Yehuda Halper will portray how conceding the limits of metaphysics instigated a turn to the Aristotelian physical sciences and the questioning and rethinking their very foundations. Katja Krause will illustrate how novel connections between the medieval disciplines of medicine and zoology reshaped knowledge of the living body well into the Renaissance. Nicola Polloni will discuss how medieval shifts in conceptions of prime matter moulded Early Modern mathematizations of physics.

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3.4 SKILLS WORKSHOPS

ENVISIONING AND DESIGNING NEW RESEARCH IN PHILOSOPHY

KU Leuven, Leuven (BE), 9 February 2024.

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The workshop will discuss different strategies to envision the planning, tailoring, and designing of new research projects in the broad field of philosophy and its historical course. Each session will offer a critique of academia by engaging directly with the main requirements of funding schemes, European institutions, and individual universities. Participants should expect a reasonable amount of realism and be ready for their idealistic plans to be shattered and largely disrupted by their hands-on encounter with the reality of present-day research in philosophy that the workshop will provide.

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PROJECT DESIGN FOR PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH

KU Leuven, Leuven (BE), 4 February 2023.

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Stemming from the 2022 Common Seminar of the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven, the workshop Project Design for Philosophical Research will delve into the specificities of research proposals and their most mysterious, troublesome sections. All students from the Common Seminar are free to join the workshop, which will expand on many features of philosophical academic publishing, research proposals, and persuasive communication that we have discussed in the classroom.

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4. Academic Publications

4.1 BOOKS

THE TWELFTH-CENTURY RENEWAL OF LATIN METAPHYSICS: GUNDISSALINUS’S ONTOLOGY OF MATTER AND FORM

Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2020. xiii + 318pp. ISBN: 9780888448651.

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Medieval metaphysics is usually bound up with Scholasticism and its influential exemplars, such as Aquinas and Duns Scotus. However, the foundations of the new discipline, which would reshape the entire edifice of Western philosophy, were established well before the rise of Scholasticism through an encounter with the Arabic philosophical tradition. The Twelfth-Century Renewal of Latin Metaphysics uncovers what rightly should be considered the first attempt to construct a metaphysical system in the Latin Middle Ages in the work of Dominicus Gundissalinus. A philosopher and translator who worked in Toledo in the second half of the twelfth century, Gundissalinus elaborated a fascinating metaphysics grounded on a substantive revision of the Latin tradition through the work of Avicenna, Ibn Gabirol, and al-Farabi. Based on a series of structural dualities of being that express the ontological difference between the caused universe and the uncaused creator who lies beyond any duality, it was to prove original and far-reaching.　With Gundissalinus we witness the first Latin appropriation of crucial doctrines, like the modal distinction between necessary and possible existence, formal pluralism, and universal hylomorphism. This study thoroughly analyses Gundissalinus’s revisionary interpretation of his Latin and Arabic sources, paying particular attention to the “unlikely blending” of Ibn Gabirol’s universal hylomorphism and Avicenna’s modal ontology which became the cornerstone of his metaphysics.

DOMINGO GUNDISALVO: UNA INTRODUCCIÓN

Madrid: Editorial Sindéresis, 2017. 165pp. ISBN: 9788416262342.

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Gundisalvo desempeñó su papel principal como filósofo, y como tal, fue el primero en acoger críticamente las doctrinas avicenianas, farabianas, gabirolianas y aristotélicas. En este sentido, Gundisalvo nos proporciona un panorama donde el platonismo timaico típico de la Escuela de Chartres y de Hermann de Carintia estaba en crisis y que, en varias décadas, llegó a ser superado por la revolución aristotélica del siglo XIII. En sus escritos, Gundisalvo parece quedarse entre las dos orillas de este caudal especulativo, acogiendo el aristotelismo neoplatónico árabe y rechazando fundamentos doctrinales timaicos, sin renegar de su formación platónica y boeciana. Por consiguiente, además del explícito valor de sus traducciones y de aquellos textos que tuvieron una gran difusión y recepción, como el De divisione o el De unitate, resulta evidente el valor implícito de la figura de Domingo Gundisalvo como filósofo un contexto cultural irrepetible como lo fue Toledo en el siglo XII.

4.2 JOURNAL ARTICLES

UNTANGLING ROBERT GROSSETESTE’S HYLOMORPHISM: MATTER, FORM, AND BODINESS

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Advance online publication (2024).

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During the thirteenth century, Aristotelian hylomorphism became the cornerstone of scholastic natural philosophy. However, this theory was fragmented into a plurality of interpretations and reformulations, sparking a rich philosophical debate. This article focuses on Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253), one of the earliest Latin philosophers to directly engage with Aristotle’s natural philosophy. Specifically, it delves into Grosseteste’s perspective on hylomorphism, emphasizing two controversial doctrines that characterized British scholasticism in the late thirteenth century: universal hylomorphism and formal pluralism. The former claims that all substances, whether bodily or spiritual, are hylomorphic compounds, that is, they are made of matter and form. Formal pluralism, in turn, maintains that hylomorphic substances possess more than one substantial form simultaneously. After a brief introduction, the paper proceeds, first, to examine the type of hylomorphism endorsed by Grosseteste, shedding light on an obscure passage that seems to suggest universal hylomorphism. Second, the examination expands on Grosseteste’s theory of bodily form and emphasizes the apparent contradiction of this theory with universal hylomorphism. The discussion then turns to Grosseteste’s endorsement of formal pluralism and the functionality he envisioned being expressed by the bodily form. Finally, the paper draws conclusions about Grosseteste’s revised hylomorphic account.

LATE SCHOLASTIC ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF PRIME MATTER

Ancient Philosophy Today: Dialogoi 6/1 (2024): 38-64.

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Scholastic hylomorphism conceives prime matter and substantial form as metaphysical parts of every physical substance. During the early modern period, both hylomorphic constituents faced significant criticism as scientists and philosophers sought to replace Aristotelianism with physical explanations for the workings of the universe. This paper focuses specifically on prime matter and delves into the arguments put forth by four 16th-century scholastic philosophers – Toledo, Fonseca, Góis, and Suárez – in their attempts to establish the existence of prime matter. Firstly, I analyse a set of arguments rooted in substantial change, which emphasize the crucial role of a persistent, common substrate in the processes of generation and corruption. Secondly, I explore a set of ex-nihilo arguments and, thirdly, I examine a series of demonstrations based on the interplay between accidental and substantial change. Although these three sets of arguments converge on the necessity of a common substrate for substantial change to occur, they fall short of demonstrating that this substrate is both prime and shared by all natural entities. Fourthly, I turn to a set of arguments centred on the impossibility of infinite regress, designed to complement those related to natural change, and I assess additional arguments that do not primarily focus on substantial change. Lastly, I draw my conclusions on these argumentative strategies to demonstrate the existence of prime matter.

罗吉尔·培根自然哲学中的质料多元论 [“MATERIAL PLURALISM IN ROGER BACON’S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE”]

自然辩证法通讯 [Journal of Dialectics of Nature] 46/3 (2024): 80-89.

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质形论”主张所有的物体都由质料和形式构成。该理论是前现代欧洲哲学史上最具影响和争议的理论之一。它在自然哲学和形而上学方面要面对诸多难题，尤其是质料和形式的本体论地位，以及自然物体（元素和混合物）的本体论构成。围绕上述争论，中世纪思想家罗吉尔·培根（Roger Bacon）坚持实体形式多元论立场，通过主张每一种实体形式都需要与适合它的特定形而上学质料相结合，表述了一个更为多元的形而上学质料理论。这一微妙但根本性的视角转变，确立了一种新的作为自然变迁物理基底的“自然质料”概念，为研究自然变化开启了全新视野。

CONCEIVING PRIME MATTER IN THE MIDDLE AGES: PERCEPTION, ABSTRACTION, AND ANALOGY

Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 105/3 (2023): 414-443.

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In its formlessness and potentiality, prime matter is a problematic entity of medieval metaphysics and its ontological limitations drastically affect human possibility of conceiving it. In this article, I analyse three influential strategies elaborated to justify an epistemic access to prime matter. They are incidental perception, negative abstraction, and analogy. Through a systematic and historical analysis of these procedures, the article shows the richness of interpretations and theoretical stakes implied by the conundrum of how prime matter can be known by human beings. In particular, the reasons behind the later medieval acceptance of analogy as the main way to unveil prime matter become clearer by pointing out the correlation between the ontological and epistemological levels of the medieval examination of prime matter.

SOMBRAS DE GUNDISALVO EN LA SUMMA HALENSIS

Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía 40/2 (2023): 15-24.

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La contribución de Domingo Gundisalvo a la historia de la filosofía medieval ha sido de fundamental importancia especialmente por su originalidad y sincretismo. Sin embargo, la recepción explícita de las obras de Gundisalvo en el siglo XIII ha sido explorada sólo parcialmente. Este artículo discute el problema desde un punto de vista metodológico a través del examen de un caso particular: la influencia de las obras de Gundisalvo en la Summa Halensis. Después de haber presentado los problemas principales de un análisis del impacto de Gundisalvo en el siglo XIII, el artículo discute algunos ejemplos de la influencia explicita en Roger Bacon y Thomas de York. La ultima parte de la contribución examina el uso del De unitate et uno de Gundisalvo por parte de los autores de la Summa Halensis y un posible ejemplo de influencia implícita de otros textos gundisalvianos en esta obra.

ROBERT GROSSETESTE ON MOTION, BODIES, AND LIGHT

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29/6 (2021): 1034–1053.

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The article dissects Grosseteste’s theory of the origin of bodily motion discussed in De motu corporali et luce. The first section examines Grosseteste’s discussion of the metaphysical structure of body qua body and the postulation of a kind of original motion (motion qua motion) as a common feature to all bodies. The second section discusses how Grosseteste’s stance on the ontological structure of bodies is connected to his claim that motion qua motion is originated by the apprehensive power as such. The latter is a generic feature common to the apprehensive powers of celestial intelligences, humans, and animals. Finally, the last section of the article analyses Grosseteste’s identification of light with the cause of five kinds of change. Stressing the tensions within his treatment of this problem, I argue that Grosseteste elaborates a remarkably original theory of the ontological structure of corporeal beings, which stems from his blending of Aristotelian natural philosophy with metaphysical assumptions inherited from the Platonic tradition.

HUGH OF ST VICTOR, DOMINICUS GUNDISSALINUS AND THE PLACE OF THE MECHANICAL ARTS IN MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURES OF KNOWLEDGE

With Alexander Fidora. Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie 153/3 (2021): 291-318.

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This contribution engages with the problematic position of the mechanical arts within medieval systems of knowledge. Superseding the secondary position assigned to the mechanical arts in the Early Middle Ages, the solutions proposed by Hugh of St Victor and Gundissalinus were highly influential during the thirteenth century. While Hugh’s integration of the mechanical arts into his system of knowledge betrays their still ancillary position as regards consideration of the liberal arts, Gundissalinus’s theory proposes two main novelties. On the one hand, he sets the mechanical arts alongside alchemy and the arts of prognostication and magic. On the other, however, using the theory put forward by Avicenna, he subordinates these “natural sciences” to natural philosophy itself, thereby establishing a broader architecture of knowledge hierarchically ordered. Our contribution examines the implications of and the reception afforded to such developments at Paris during the thirteenth century, emphasising the relevance that the solutions offered by Gundissalinus enjoyed in terms of the ensuing discussions concerning the structure of human knowledge.

EARLY ROBERT GROSSETESTE ON MATTER

Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 75/3 (2021): 397–414.

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This article investigates the origin of Robert Grosseteste’s theory of matter. Covering Grosseste’s early production, from his De artibus liberalibus to De luce and the Commentarius on Aristotle’s Physics,the article examines Grosseteste’s gradual developing of a philosophical theory of matter and prime matter by means of his progressive study of the works of the Aristotelian tradition. Surprisingly, Grosseteste’s first notion of matter is bound to alchemy and astrology. It is a physical notion of matter as subject to astral influence and human manipulation. Only with his study of Aristotle’s Physics, does Grosseteste elaborate a more Aristotelian theory of matter, directly engaging himself with the manifold problems of assimilating Aristotle’s theories into a Christian-based speculation. As a consequence, a much refined version of his theory of matter is presented in the commentary on the Physics and De luce, where prime matter is envisioned as an extensionless point containing in itself the possibility of the existence of the entire universe. Notwithstanding the gradually more philosophical attitude marking Grosseteste’s reflection, some tension between the alchemical and metaphysical epistemes of matter he engaged with can be appreciated throughout much of Grosseteste’s early production.

A MATTER OF PHILOSOPHERS AND SPHERES: MEDIEVAL GLOSSES ON ARTEPHIUS’S KEY OF WISDOM

Ambix, 67/2 (2020): 135-153.

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The article examines the two Latin versions of Artephius’s Clavis sapientiae (Key of Wisdom) that have been preserved in early modern collections of alchemical texts. A comparative analysis of the two versions shows that one of them has undergone a process of textual manipulation. In particular, an interpolation of short philosophical passages concerning the doctrine of prime matter has relevant interpretative implications. These additions appear to be grounded in the early thirteenth-century philosophical debate on cosmology and the first Latinate reception of Aristotle’s metaphysics.

GUNDISSALINUS ON THE ANGELIC CREATION OF THE HUMAN SOUL: A PECULIAR EXAMPLE OF PHILOSOPHICAL APPROPRIATION

Oriens 47/3-4 (2019): 313-347.

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With his original reflection—deeply influenced by many important Arabic thinkers—Gundissalinus wanted to renovate the Latin debate concerning crucial aspects of the philosophical tradition. Among the innovative doctrines he elaborated, one appears to be particularly problematic, for it touches a very delicate point of Christian theology: the divine creation of the human soul, and thus, the most intimate bond connecting the human being and his Creator. Notwithstanding the relevance of this point, Gundissalinus ascribed the creation of the human soul to the angels rather than God. He also stated that the angels create the souls from prime matter, and through a kind of causality which cannot be operated by God. What are the sources of this unusual and perilous doctrine? And what are the reasons which led Gundissalinus to hold such a problematic position? This article thoroughly examines the theoretical development and sources of Gundissalinus’s position, focusing on the correlations between this doctrine, the overall cosmological descriptions expounded by Gundissalinus in his original works, and the main sources upon which this unlikely doctrine is grounded: Avicenna and Ibn Gabirol.

GUNDISSALINUS AND AVICENNA: SOME REMARKS ON AN INTRICATE PHILOSOPHICAL CONNECTION

Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 28 (2017): 515-552.

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This article analyses the peculiarities of Dominicus Gundissalinus’s reading and use of Avicenna’s writings in his original works. Gundissalinus (1120ca – post 1190) is indeed the Latin translator of Avicenna’s De anima and Liber de philosophia prima, but also an original philosopher whose writings are precious witnesses of the very first reception of Avicennian philosophy in the Latin West. The article points out the structural bond with the Persian philosopher upon which Gundissalinus grounds his own speculation. This contribution stresses, in particular, the important role played by Avicenna’s psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics in order to provide Gundissalinus with a different set of answers to at least two main questions. On the one hand, the problem of creatural existence and cosmological causation, concerning which Gundissalinus tends to doctrinally merge Avicenna with Ibn Gabirol. On the other hand, Avicenna’s influence is crucial for Gundissalinus’s attempt at elaborating a new system of knowledge, which was supposed to be able to include the new sciences made available by the translation movement, but that also needed to be internally organised through firm epistemological principles. Beside his crucial contribution as translator, Gundissalinus’s first philosophical encounter with the Avicenna paved the road for the subsequent reception of the Persian philosopher’s works, opening a hermeneutical perspective which would be pivotal for the thirteenth-century discussions on soul, knowledge, and being.

GUNDISSALINUS ON NECESSARY BEING: TEXTUAL AND DOCTRINAL ALTERATIONS IN THE EXPOSITION OF AVICENNA’S METAPHYSICS

Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 26/1 (2016): 129-160.

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This article examines the textual alteration strategy carried out by Dominicus Gundissalinus in his original works. One of the most striking examples of this approach can be detected in the large quotation of Avicenna’s Philosophia prima I, 6–7 in Gundissalinus’ cosmological treatise De processione mundi, in which the Spanish philosopher variously modifies the text he translated a few years before. After a short presentation of Gundissalinus’ double role as translator and philosopher, the study moves on to the analysis of Avicenna’s doctrine of necessary and possible being, and the five demonstrations of the unrelated uniqueness of necessary being offered by Avicenna. These arguments are directly quoted by Gundissalinus: nevertheless, the author modifies the text in many passages, here examined through the analysis of some representative excerpts. The results of this enquiry suggest that Gundissalinus is following an effective alteration strategy, envisaging at least two main purposes: the clarification of Avicenna’s line of reasoning, and the doctrinal assimilation of Philosophia prima’s theories in his original philosophical system. In appendix to this article the whole text of the two versions of Philosophia prima I, 6–7 is presented.

GUNDISSALINUS’S APPLICATION OF AL-FARABI’S METAPHYSICAL PROGRAMME: A CASE OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL TRANSFER

Mediterranea. International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledge 1 (2016): 69-106.

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This study deals with Dominicus Gundissalinus’s discussion on metaphysics as philosophical discipline. Gundissalinus’s translation and re-elaboration of al-Fārābī’s Iḥṣā’ al-ʿulūm furnish him, in the De scientiis, a specific and detailed procedure for metaphysical analysis articulated in two different stages, an ascending and a descending one. This very same procedure is presented by Gundissalinus also in his De divisione philosophiae, where the increased number of sources –in particular, Avicenna– does not prevent Gundissalinus to quote the entire passage on the methods of metaphysical science from the Iḥṣā’ al-ʿulūm, with some slight changes in his Latin translation. The analytical procedure herein proposed becomes an effective ‘metaphysical programme’ with regards to Gundissalinus’s onto-cosmological writing, the De processione mundi. The comparative analysis of this treatise with the procedure received by al-Fārābī shows Gundissalinus’s effort to follow and apply this metaphysical programme to his own reflection, in a whole different context from al-Fārābī’s and presenting doctrines quite opposed to the theoretical ground on which al-Fārābī’s epistemology is based, like ibn Gabirol’s universal hylomorphism. Nevertheless, thanks to the application of the ‘metaphysical programme’, one can effectively claim that Gundissalinus’s metaphysics is, at least in the author’s intentions, a well-defined metaphysical system. In appendix to this article the three Latin versions of al-Fārābī’s discussion on metaphysics are reported, e.g., Gundissalinus’s quotations in De scientiis and De divisione philosophiae, and Gerard of Cremona’s translation in his De scientiis.

THIERRY OF CHARTRES AND GUNDISSALINUS ON SPIRITUAL SUBSTANCES: THE PROBLEM OF HYLOMORPHIC COMPOSITION

Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale 57, 2015: 35-57.

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In this contribution I examine the problem of spiritual composition in Thierry of Chartres and Gundissalinus. While the former is quite reticent in admitting a spiritual hylomorphism, the latter develops Thierry’s outcomes through the results of al-Ghazali’s and Ibn Daud’s treatment of spiritual substances. The resulting ontology affirms that also spiritual creatures are composed of matter and form: an unacceptable perspective for the three sources used by Gundissalinus.

ELEMENTI PER UNA BIOGRAFIA DI DOMINICUS GUNDISALVI

Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littèraire du Moyen Âge 82, 2015: 7-22.

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This study summarizes the main hypothesis and evidences in our possess regarding the biography of the translator and philosopher Dominicus Gundissalinus, who worked in Toledo during the second half of the 12th century. The main phases of Gundissalinus’life are presented through the exam of documental sources and data drawn from works ascribed to the “Gundissalinus’Circle”. The article clarifies some important aspects of Gundissalinus’ stay in Segovia, and tries to answer some questions regarding his transfer to Toledo in 1162.

IL DE PROCESSIONE MUNDI DI GUNDISSALINUS: PROSPETTIVE PER UN’ANALISI GENETICO-DOTTRINALE

Annali di Studi Umanistici 1, 2013: 25-38.

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Il De processione mundi si rivela un trattato di estremo interesse, tanto rispetto alla rielaborazione gundissaliniana delle dottrine ivi presentate in chiave non più propriamente platonica, quanto – e parallelamente – rispetto alla ricezione delle istanze critiche tipiche della seconda metà del XII secolo, che fungono da sostrato al rapido mutamento di paradigma speculativo nel giro di pochi decenni. Le questioni dottrinali che Gundissalinus si pone, gli esiti filosofici che accoglie dal mondo arabo e quelli che rigetta dalla tradizione latina ci lasciano intravedere la ricerca di nuove risposte a quelle domande cui il sistema platonico-timaico non appariva più in grado di far fronte. Ed è proprio il tentativo gundissaliniano di sviluppare una prospettiva ontologica nuova che prescindesse dalla crisi del platonismo – che egli già percepiva e che costituisce lo sfondo della sua riflessione – a condensare il maggiore interesse storico e filosofico per la sua figura. Comprendere Gundissalinus e la sua opera può così permettere di gettare luce su quel periodo che segna il tramonto del paradigma platonico e il rapido sorgere dell’aristotelismo quale Weltanschauung complessiva del XIII e XIV secolo.

4.3 EDITED VOLUMES

IBN GABIROL (AVICEBRON): LATIN AND HEBREW PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONS

Edited by Nicola Polloni, Marienza Benedetto, and Federico Dal Bo. Turnhout: Brepols, 2023. ISBN: 9782503605524. 412 pp.

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This volume dives into this plurality of voices bearing witness to Ibn Gabirol. Some criticise while others praise him. Some of their arguments in claiming allegiance or refusal are well-grounded, while other may appear quite naive. In any case, the voices of these historical actors constantly considered Ibn Gabirol’s speculation as a reference that could not be tacitly dismissed, even when it was considered to be erroneous. This volume should be considered as an invitation to reconsider Ibn Gabirol’s originality and his pivotal contribution to the history of philosophy in the Abrahamic tradition on the shores of the Mediterranean Basin. A reconstruction of the entire intricate history of Ibn Gabirol’s impact on both Latin and Hebrew traditions is impossible, for different reasons. Among them, the lack of studies on many medieval philosophers who interacted with Ibn Gabirol’s thought seems to preclude any comprehensive appreciation of his influence on the Latin Middle Ages. In some ways, the echo of Aquinas’s criticism against Ibn Gabirol still appears to be consequential for present-day scholarship. And it results in an unspoken tendency to neglect both the relevance and influence of this great Jewish philosopher.

FRAGMENTED NATURE: MEDIEVAL LATINATE REASONING ON THE NATURAL WORLD AND ITS ORDER

Edited by Mattia Cipriani and Nicola Polloni. London: Routledge, 2022. ISBN: 9780367557034, 228 pp.

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This volume examines a plurality of problems, theories, and images of the order and regularity that medieval philosophers and practitioners saw as structuring the natural world. Such richness of perspectives is directly bound to the plurality of epistemes of nature that characterised European philosophy and science in the Middle Ages and to the specificities of the case-studies discussed by the contributors. While most medieval thinkers agreed on considering nature as an ordered structure of interactions, any glimpse of such structure had its own coordinates. Different domains engaged with nature according to their own methods and assumptions. Consideration of a diverse set of animals or plants may lead to diverse sets of features and theories. And the reading of an authoritative text could apport very different ideas in one period and another, in one tradition and its competitor. Yet in all these cases, philosophers and practitioners not only looked at nature appreciating its order, but had to order themselves nature in return, prescribing (and proscribing) rules, texts, behaviours, and narratives. Hence, the natural order of the universe is based on the theoretical reordering of data, solutions, and theories by interested practitioners.

THE PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE OF ROGER BACON: STUDIES IN HONOUR OF JEREMIAH HACKETT

Edited by Nicola Polloni and Yael Kedar. London: Routledge, 2021. ISBN: 978-03-6747-1743. 240pp.

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This volume collects thirteen scholarly contributions on the life, thought, and context of one of the most fascinating characters of medieval culture, Roger Bacon. The volume is also meant to celebrate one of the most influential interpreters of Bacon’s thought, Professor Jeremiah Hackett, who has recently retired and whose many contributions have shaped the scholarly consideration of Roger Bacon profoundly and substantively. At least since John Dee’s rediscovery of Bacon’s works and, for different reasons, Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, the name of Roger Bacon is bound to the “Romantic” character of a peculiar scientist interested in the secrets of nature and living in a time of darkness. When the common perception is contrasted with the historical data, this fictional image fades away. The Middle Ages, and especially the 13^th century, were not a time of darkness. The renewal of science and philosophy started in the 12^th century, and flourished during Bacon’s time with the discovery of new sciences, new theories, and new interests. In this context, however, it is surely true that Bacon’s activity was characterised by some peculiar traits that nourished much of the early-modern narrative about him. He harshly criticised the world he was living in and, particularly, the academic system and the two mendicant orders, Dominicans and Franciscans. He publicly and repeatedly supported the study and practice of problematic sciences like alchemy and astrology and became a central advocate of the use of mathematics and experimental science for the mastery of nature. He was the proponent of a profound reshaping of Latin culture through a reform of the education system, the details of which he submitted to the Pope.

VEDERE NELL’OMBRA: STUDI SU NATURA, SPIRITUALITÀ E SCIENZE OPERATIVE OFFERTI A MICHELA PEREIRA

Edited by Cecilia Panti and Nicola Polloni. Firenze: SISMEL (Micrologus’ Library 90), 2018. ISBN 9788884508133. 430 pp.

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The volume collects twenty-eight original essays by colleagues and friends of Michela Pereira offered on the occasion of her seventieth birthday. As a pioneer of the re-evaluation of fundamental areas of the Western philosophical and scientific tradition, starting with alchemy, Michela Pereira has dedicated important studies to Hildegard of Bingen, Roger Bacon, Ramon Llull, in addition to being one of the most authoritative interpreters of the feminist movement in the modern world. «Seeing in the shadow», the title of this volume, recalls a suggestive image coined by Hildegard to establish a connection between the work of creation, human nature and prophetic knowledge, three contexts around which the interests of Michela Pereira turn. The essays of the volume interpret these topics in many thought-provoking ways. Covering a wide temporal arc, from late Antiquity to Early Modern Times, and ranging from alchemy and medicine to spirituality, prophecy and myth, from the body-soul relation to performative arts, such as theatre and music, they also include brief editions of unedited medieval texts and an updated bibliography of Michela Pereira’s publications.

APPROPRIATION, INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM: PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL EXCHANGES BETWEEN THE ARABIC, HEBREW AND LATIN INTELLECTUAL TRADITIONS

Edited by Alexander Fidora and Nicola Polloni. Barcelona – Roma: FIDEM, 2017. ISBN: 978-2-503-57744-9. 336 pp.

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The volume gathers eleven studies on the intellectual exchanges during the Middle Ages among the three cultures which existed side by side in the same geographical area, i.e. the vast space from the British Isles to the Sahara Desert, and from the Douro Valley to the Hindu Kush. These three cultures – who may not be reduced to their confession or ethnicity – are historically related to each other in many respects, both material (trade, wars, marriages) and immaterial (the interdependence among their religious narratives and their philosophical speculations). The studies herein presented focus on some peculiar examples of the transcultural interactions among exponents of the Arabic, Hebrew and Latin philosophical and theological traditions. While we do not want to downplay the fundamental role of the religious contexts, our focus on the linguistic denominations of these cultures aims at drawing attention to the conceptual medium, or rather media, which underlined and shaped the interactions and interplays among these traditions – interplays that were characterized by the contact of these three languages being used by people of different religious beliefs in their quest for knowledge: Spanish Jews writing in Arabic, Jews collaborating in the translation of Arabic texts into Latin through the vernacular, Western Muslims whose writings were read mainly by Jews and Christians in Hebrew and Latin.

4.4 BOOK CHAPTERS

MISINTERPRETING IBN GABIROL? QUESTIONS, DOUBTS, AND REMARKS ON A PROBLEMATIC LATIN TRANSLATION

In Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron): Latin and Hebrew Philosophical Traditions. Edited by Nicola Polloni, Marienza Benedetto, and Federico Dal Bo, 49-68. Turnout: Brepols, 2023.

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The present contribution aims to cast some light on the questions about whether and how Gundissalinus and John of Spain have Aristotelised the Fons vitae. I want to provide scholarship with contextual data and some further doubts about the making of the Latin translation of Ibn Gabirol’s work. In the first section, I expound the main historical coordinates of Dominicus Gundissalinus’s activity as translator and philosopher. Next, the second section examines Gundissalinus’s interpretation of Ibn Gabirol and his gradual detachment from some of Ibn Gabirol’s doctrines he previously held. Gundissalinus’s disingenuousness in his first reception of the Fons vitae is then contrasted with Ibn Daud’s harsh criticism of Ibn Gabirol. My analysis shows that Ibn Daud interprets the Fons vitae in a noticeably Aristotelian way, consistent with the Latin rendering of the text. Finally, in the last section, I explore different possibilities (and raise some doubts) about the Latin translation of the Fons vitae.

DOMINICUS GUNDISSALINUS’ ON UNITY AND THE ONE

In Contextualizing Premodern Philosophy: Explorations of the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin Traditions. Edited by Luís Xavier López Farjeat, Katja Krause, and Nicholas Oschman, 293-308. London: Routledge, 2023.

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This chapter offers the first English translation of a treatise by Dominicus Gundissalinus (ca. 1115–post 1190), On Unity and the One (De unitate et uno), completed by an introduction to the main theoretical coordinates discussed in the treatise. In his first philosophical work, Gundissalinus treats a delicate metaphysical problem: What do we mean when we say that something is “one”? Grounding his discussion on Ibn Gabirol’s Fons vitae, Gundissalinus’ answer to this question is remarkably Neoplatonic. Proceeding from the true One, unity is the efficient cause of the union of two opposite entities, matter and form, into the ontological individuality proper to each and every created thing. Gundissalinus connects this metaphysical point to various sets of problems, from the hierarchical order of the universe to the difference between discrete and continuous quantities. Accordingly, De unitate et uno is a significant example of the first Latin encounter with Jewish Neoplatonism in a fast-changing landscape that would shift to Aristotelianism only a few decades after Gundissalinus’ death.

ORDERING THE SCIENCES: AL-FĀRĀBĪ AND THE LATINATE TRADITION

With Alexander Fidora. In Ишрак: ежегодник исламской философии [= Ishraq: Islamic Philosophy Yearbook], Vol. 10. Edited by Janis Eshots, 110-130. Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 2022.

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Although al-Fārābī exerted a remarkable influence on medieval Latin philosophy, his reception in and contribution to Western thought have received far less scholarly attention than that of Avicenna and Averroes. In an attempt to redress the balance, the present article argues that al-Fārābī played a central role in some of the major intellectual shifts and changes in 12^th– and 13^th-century Europe. Thus, we show how al-Fārābī informed the systematic translation of new philosophical corpora – including Aristotle – and how he shaped the ensuing epistemological reorganisation of the medieval ordo scientiarum, which found its institutional expression in the newly established universities and their curricula.

TOLEDAN TRANSLATORS, ROGER BACON, AND THE DYNAMIC SHADES OF EXPERIENCE

In Premodern Experience of the Natural World in Translation. Edited by Katja Krause, Maria Auxent, and Dror Weil, 325-340. London: Routledge, 2022.

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Medieval literary cultures were nurtured by translations from other languages. Particularly, medieval European philosophy is rooted on translations of theoretical and practical texts from Greek and Arabic. These translations can be considered as ‘objects of experience’ that are impacted by the societal world of the translators and impact in return on the perception of the extra-mental world of their readers. This contribution examines how different ‘shades’ of the historical actors’ experience of the external world about translations. First, the chapter discusses the social and personal interactions of translators working in medieval Toledo and the translation activities that resulted. Second, it examines Roger Bacon’s criticism of translations and his use of “experience” to sustain his argument, stressing the persuasive function that his accounts of experience perform in the text. The results of this case-studies examination show the irreducibility of the notion of ‘experience’ to a fixed restricted meaning and stress the role of translations as ‘epistemic vessels of experiences’ that may be personal, accounted, or persuasively invented.

CAOS A TOLEDO: DOMENICO GUNDISALVI, DANIELE DI MORLEY E LA CORPOREITÀ DELLA MATERIA PRIMA

In Verba et mores: Studi per Carla Casagrande. Edited by Chiara Crisciani and Gabriella Zuccolin, 301-319. Rome: Aracne, 2022.

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Questo contributo si concentra su un aspetto della riflessione intellettuale di Daniele di Morley che mostra alcune vicinanze – e opposizioni – con alcune critiche espresse da Domenico Gundisalvi. Nello specifico, Gundisalvi attacca duramente la dottrina del caos primordiale in quanto inammissibile da un punto di vista ilemorfico. Daniele di Morley discute lo stesso problema e rigetta parzialmente questa teoria, tuttavia da un punto di vista differente: la materia originale è necessariamente corporea. Nelle pagine seguenti discuterò le posizioni di questi due filosofi rispetto a come il caos primordiale si relazioni alla teoria della materia prima, cercando di delineare punti di contatto e coordinate interpretative di questo problema.

MEDIEVAL UNIVERSES IN DISORDER: ONTOLOGICAL ROOTS, AUTHORITATIVE COORDINATES, AND PRIMEVAL CHAOS

In Fragmented Nature: Medieval Latinate Reasoning on the Natural World and Its Order. Edited by Mattia Cipriani and Nicola Polloni, 49-75. London: Routledge, 2022.

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Plato’s theory of primeval chaos marked much of the medieval discussion on cosmogenesis up to the 13^th century. Many thinkers from the early Middle Ages agreed with the Timaeus in believing that the universe was originally in a state of chaos and later arranged in the beautiful order we now appreciate. Yet following the Latin translations of Aristotle’s works, Scholastic philosophers would abruptly start to ignore or reject this influential theory. Curiously, instead of acknowledging its Platonic origin, they often referred it back to a different set of ancient authors such as Anaxagoras and Hesiod. My contribution examines this shift in the interpretation of primeval chaos and the systematic use of “authoritative coordinates” in the debate on the tenability of this theory. Firstly, I examine some influential sources of the theory of primeval chaos, with specific emphasis on Ovid and Calcidius. Secondly, I discuss some of the main features of the 12^th century debate on primordial disorder in relation to the first reception of Aristotle’s works in Latin Europe. Thirdly, I analyse three important case-studies from the 13^th-century treatment of this topic: Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, and Albert the Great. Their refutations of primeval chaos and its traditional authoritative coordinates shed light on the extent of the interpretative reshaping of this theory in the 13^th century. Finally, I show that the main doctrinal reasons behind such a doctrinal restyling of primeval chaos proceed from Aristotelian hylomorphism. Nonetheless, other aspects of this process are still unclear, starting from the substitution of the “old” auctoritates (Plato, Ovid, Calcidius) with “new” authors (Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Hesiod) whose works were only partially and mediately known by medieval philosophers.

THE PEREGRINATIONS OF THE SOUL IN THE AFTERLIFE: A WORK FROM LATE 12TH-CENTURY IBERIA. INTRODUCTION, EDITION, AND TRANSLATION

With Charles Burnett. In Mark of Toledo: Intellectual Context and Debates between Christians and Muslims in Early Thirteenth Century Iberia. Edited by Charles Burnett and Pedro Mantas-España, 155-195. Cordoba: UCOPress, London: The Warburg Institute, 2022.

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The Peregrinations of the Soul in the Afterlife is a highly original text on Christian philosophy concerning the possible directions the human soul can take after death. The vocabulary and sources strongly suggest that the work was written in the circle of Dominicus Gundissalinus in the late twelfth century, and could therefore have been written in Toledo in the milieu of Marcus of Toledo. Its intelligent blend of Arabic philosophical texts (largely translated by Gundissalinus and his team) and Christian theological references make it well worth further study, which can be facilitated by the new edition and English translation provided in this article.

DISENTANGLING ROGER BACON’S CRITICISM OF MEDIEVAL TRANSLATIONS

In Early Thirteenth-Century English Franciscan Thought. Edited by Lydia Schumacher, 261–282. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.

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In his Compendium studii philosophiae, Roger Bacon declares that ‘were I to have power over the books of Aristotle I would have them all burned because it is nothing but a waste of time to study them, a cause of error, and a multiplication of error beyond what can be accounted for.’ Bacon’s pyromaniac attitude to Aristotle is not due to his dislike of the acclaimed Philosopher, but rather to the Latin rendering of his works. Bacon points out that ‘since the labors of Aristotle are the foundations of all of science, no one can estimate how great the damage is to Latins because of the bad translations philosophers have received.’ Apparently, nothing can be better than something, if the latter is a source of error and discord. Expanding on the same line of reasoning, Bacon observes that it would be better to do as Robert Grosseteste did (pace sua), when he ‘entirely disregarded the books of Aristotle and their methods’ – at least according to Bacon. One might wonder, what was so bad about the Latin translations of Aristotle to motivate such harsh criticism by Bacon? In the following pages, I want to discuss Roger Bacon’s critique of the Latin translators and present a different interpretation of Bacon’s stance. This topic has been studied by Gabriel Théry and Richard Lemay. In their discussion of Bacon’s position, however, both scholars appear to have been quite unable to distinguish theory from rhetoric, purpose from persuasiveness, and the historical actor from the historical witness. As a consequence, the biases they see and blame in Bacon’s criticism of the translators are mirrored by their own criticism of Bacon’s words.

ROGER BACON ON THE CONCEIVABILITY MATTER

In Roger Bacon and Medieval Science and Philosophy. Studies in Honour of Jeremiah Hackett. Edited by Nicola Polloni and Yael Kedar, 76-97. London: Routledge, 2021.

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This contribution analyses Roger Bacon’s solution to the problem of how humans can conceive matter. Being potential and formless, the effort to ground a partial knowability of matter has intrigued many medieval philosophers. Their solutions were often intertwined with the ontological assumptions they made about this peculiar metaphysical entity and their ontological commitment about its existence. In the case of Bacon, this already problematic point is further complicated by his complex ontology based on radical formal pluralism (= any composite has a plurality of non-incidental forms) and extreme realism. The first section of the chapter examines Bacon’s discussion of the problem in his Questions on Physics, where the solution is provided by the analogical strategy: matter can be known by analogy to the form. However, can this procedure be applied also to the case of prime matter? The second section explores Bacon’s distinction between secondary and specific matters and the ontological structure characterising the composite that he envisioned. I argue that the analogical strategy must be complemented with another procedure able to get below “the matter we know” (proximate matter). The third section analyses Bacon’s criticism of the doctrine of the unicity of matter in the Opus tertium. In this context, I examine Bacon’s discussion of reversed abstraction to conceive the genus generalissimum and argue that this procedure is required to complement the analogical strategy in the case of the conceivability of prime matter.

THE LIBERAL ARTS: INHERITANCES AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

With Giles Gasper, Sigbjorn Sønnesyn, Neil Lewis, and Jack Cunningham. In Knowing and Speaking: Robert Grosseteste’s De artibus liberalibus ‘On the Liberal Arts’ and De generatione sonorum ‘On the Generation of Sounds’. Edited by Giles Gasper, Cecilia Panti, Tom McLeish, and Hannah Smithson, 36–50. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

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To contextualize this somewhat beguiling treatise is to understand it at once product of Grosseteste’s own thinking, as as a a response and reaction to his inheritances, ancient and more contemporary, and as a distinctive contribution to wider shifts in the way that the arts were conceived. What follows offers a description and commentary of the developments of the liberal arts, as conceptual framework and institutional platform, from late antiquity to Grosseteste’s lifetime. This allows an overview of changes to the liberal arts as a whole, and within the individual arts, and a wider perspective in which to consider Grosseteste’s achievements in this area. Some of the authors and texts discussed would not have been familiar to Grosseteste, but others would, bringing to the fore questions about the textual sources he dwelt with in the composition of his treatise.

THE USE OF THE STARS: ALCHEMY, PLANTS, AND MEDICINE

With Giles Gasper, Sigbjorn Sønnesyn, Anne Lawrence-Mathers, and Nader El-Bizri. In Knowing and Speaking: Robert Grosseteste’s De artibus liberalibus ‘On the Liberal Arts’ and De generatione sonorum ‘On the Generation of Sounds’. Edited by Giles Gasper, Cecilia Panti, Tom McLeish, and Hannah Smithson, 166–195. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

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The final sections (§§11-13) of On the Liberal Arts move to the uses of astronomy in natural philosophy with three specific examples: the planting of plants, the transmutation of metals, and medical interventions. Grosseteste’s conceptual framework for astronomy emerges from a variety of sources, mediating different models of the cosmos and its operations and components. The emphasis on the quadrivial arts and their application within the disciplines of natural philosophy marks his text out as significantly different from previous medieval treatises on the liberal arts, and the focus on astronomy as the culmination of the applicability of the arts is rarer still. The stress laid on astronomy at the culmination of the treatise offers particular insight into the broader worldview that frames Grosseteste’s conception of the liberal arts.

NATURE, SOULS, AND NUMBERS: REMARKS ON A MEDIEVAL GLOSS ON GUNDISSALINUS’S DE PROCESSIONE MUNDI

In Causality and Resemblance. Medieval Approaches to the Explanation of Nature. Edited by María Jesús Soto-Bruna, 75-87. Hildesheim, Zürich, and New York: OLMS, 2018.

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Gundissalinus’s De processione mundi expounds a detailed description of the institution of the universe based on a fascinating range of Latin and Arabic sources. Realising a synthesis between Avicenna’s and Avicebron’s metaphysical positions, the universe depicted by Gundissalinus is grounded upon a delicate and yet intrinsically coherent web of interpretations of divergent philosophical perspectives. A rather problematic point of De processione mundi is the use Gundissalinus makes of the ratio numerorum. In particular, his use of numerical series—twice in the text—to demonstrate the completeness of the created universe appears to entail striking contradictions with what Gundissalinus claims in his treatise. My contribution addresses this “consistency problem” pointing out that the meaning of the two numerological series can be clarified through a curious gloss on the text attested by the entire manuscript tradition of De processione mundi.

THE TOLEDAN TRANSLATION MOVEMENT AND DOMINICUS GUNDISSALINUS: SOME REMARKS ON HIS ACTIVITY AND PRESENCE IN CASTILE

In A Companion to Medieval Toledo. Reconsidering the Canons. Edited by Yasmine Beale-Rivaya and Jason Busic, 263-280. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018.

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The origins of the Toledan translation movement can be traced back to the translation activities developed in Southern Italy and Northern Spain since the end of the eleventh century. In Italy, the translations were realized from Greek into Latin; whereas in Catalonia and the Ebro valley, translators as Plato of Tivoli, Robert of Ketton, and Hermann of Carinthia translated Arabic writings. Following different linguistic tracks, these first translations shared a common interest on scientific works, and particularly astronomy. The activity of these first translators was also directly connected to the main scientific milieux of the time, namely Salerno and Chartres, where the translated texts were read and used.

L’ACQUA CHE SI TRASFORMA IN PIETRA. GUNDISSALINUS E AVICENNA SULLA GENERAZIONE DEI METALLI

In Vedere nell’ombra. Studi su natura, spiritualità e scienze operative offerti a Michela Pereira. Edited by Cecilia Panti and Nicola Polloni, 103-119. Florence: SISMEL, 2018.

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What are the sources of a curious example of generation mentioned by Gundissalinus, by which water becomes a stone? This contribution explores the theoretical aims of the example presented in De processione mundi, assessing the Avicennian doctrinal framework in which it is placed by Gundissalinus. The origin of the example itself, though, appears to be far more complicated. After examining possible Latin sources and the alchemical implications suggested by the example, the study focuses on a different hypothesis: that Gundissalinus had access to the Arabic version of Avicenna’s De generatione and corruptione.

TOLEDAN ONTOLOGIES: GUNDISSALINUS, IBN DAUD, AND THE PROBLEM OF GABIROLIAN HYLOMORPHISM

In Appropriation, Interpretation and Criticism: Philosophical and Theological Exchanges Between the Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Intellectual Tradition. Edited by Alexander Fidora and Nicola Polloni, 19-49. Barcelona and Roma: FIDEM, 2017.

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This contribution focuses on a particular branch of Gundissalinus’s production, namely ontology, and a peculiar feature of his reflection: the progressive problematization of his doctrine of hylomorphism. I will analyse the sources that influenced Gundissalinus’s mature discussion of ontological composition, underscoring the changes introduced by the Toledan philosopher to his previous doctrinal positions regarding the status of hylomorphic components and their cosmogonic causation. In order to do so, I will briefly examine the opposing theories elaborated by Ibn Gabirol and Ibn Sīnā, doctrines merged together by Gundissalinus in his final metaphysical reflection. Eventually, I will put forward a hypothesis about a possible medium of both Gundissalinus’s change of position and his doctrinal synthesis – i.e., Ibn Daud’s philosophical influence on Gundissalinus.

ARISTOTLE IN TOLEDO: GUNDISSALINUS, THE ARABS, AND GERARD OF CREMONA’S TRANSLATIONS

In ‘Ex Oriente Lux’. Translating Words, Scripts and Styles in the Medieval Mediterranean Society. Edited by Charles Burnett and Pedro Mantas, 147-185. Arabica Veritas IV. Córdoba: UCOPress, London: The Warburg Institute, 2016.

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At least since the first decade of the thirteenth century, therefore, the Aristotelian texts translated by Gerard of Cremona were studied, used, and quoted in the Île-de-France and England. Nonetheless, these texts had been available since at least 1187, the year in which Gerard of Cremona died in Toledo, and probably beforehand. The period of time between the composition and completion of the translations and the first attested receptions of Aristotle in England and France indicates a chronological gap with respect to the use of these sources and texts. A possible contribution to help clarify this thorny question may be suggested, namely, to examine the influence of Aristotle’s texts translated by Gerard before their spread throughout the continent. That is to say, to consider their reception in the Castilian capital, Toledo, where, during the second half of the twelfth century, at least three philosophers, Abraham ibn Daud, Dominicus Gundissalinus, and Daniel of Morley, are known to have lived and worked.

NATURA VERO ASSIMILATUR QUATERNARIO: NUMEROLOGIA E NEOPLATONISMO NEL DE PROCESSIONE MUNDI DI DOMINICUS GUNDISSALINUS

In De Natura. La naturaleza en la Edad Media. Edited by José Luis Fuertes Herreros and Ángel Poncela González, 679-688. Ribeirão: Húmus, 2015.

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Nelle ultime pagine del De processione mundi, Dominicus Gundissalinus presenta due interessanti scansioni numerologiche dell’esistente a partire dai risultati dell’indagine sulla genesi del cosmo, affrontata nella trattazione anteriore. Già nelle pagine precedenti, il filosofo toledano manifesta una certa tendenza ad utilizzare la numerologia come strumento apodittico volto a suffragare l’argomentazione filosofica, sancendone così la validità in modo rigoroso. Un utilizzo, questo, che si esplicita in brani la cui paternità non è direttamente gundissaliniana, ma che sono risultanti da una combinazione delle tre fonti principali di Gundissalinus nella redazione del suo trattato: la Philosophia prima avicenniana, il De essentiis di Ermanno di Carinzia e il Fons vitae di Avicebron.

4.5 BOOK REVIEWS

DUCOS AND LUCKEN 2018. RICHARD DE FOURNIVAL ET LES SCIENCES AU XIIIE SIECLE. FIRENZE: SISMEL. ISBN: 978-8884508430

2021 | Aestimatio NS 2/1 (2021): 238-244.

HASSE AND BERTOLACCI 2018. THE ARABIC, HEBREW AND LATIN RECEPTION OF AVICENNA’S PHYSICS AND COSMOLOGY. BERLIN: DE GRUYTER. ISBN 9781614517740

2021 | Isis 112/3 (2021): 598-599.

SUAREZ-NANI AND PARAVICINI BAGLIANI 2017. MATERIA: NOUVELLES PERSPECTIVES DE RECHERCHE DANS LA PENSEE ET LA CULTURE MEDIEVALES (XIIE-XVIE SIECLES). FIRENZE: SISMEL. ISBN: 9788884508072

2020 | Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval 27/1 (2020): 199-210.

LAMMER 2018. THE ELEMENTS OF AVICENNA’S PHYSICS: GREEK SOURCES AND ARABIC INNOVATIONS. BERLIN: DE GRUYTER. ISBN 9783110543582

2019 | Isis 110/3 (2019): 586-587.

MARTÍNEZ GÁZQUEZ 2016. THE ATTITUDE OF THE MEDIEVAL LATIN TRANSLATORS TOWARDS THE ARABIC SCIENCES. FIRENZE: SISMEL. ISBN: 9788884506948

2018 | Aestimatio 13 (2018): 141-144.

SOTO BRUNA AND ALONSO DEL REAL 2015. DE UNITATE ET UNO DE DOMINICUS GUNDISSALINUS. PAMPLONA: EUNSA. ISBN: 9788431329426

2016 | Anuario filosófico 49/2 (2016): 484-486.

PESSIN 2013. IBN GABIROL’S THEOLOGY OF DESIRE. MATTER AND METHOD IN JEWISH MEDIEVAL NEOPLATONISM. CAMBRIDGE: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. ISBN: 9781107032217

2015 | Theology and Sexuality 21/2 (2015): 163-165.

5. Teaching

5.1 COURSES AND READING GROUPS

COMMON SEMINAR: RESEARCH AS A CAREER

Course, MA and PhD level. KU Leuven (BE), Institute of Philosophy. 2023-2024

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Ref: B-KUL-W0R00A-2324. First semester 2023-24. Course convenors: Russell Friedman and Nicola Polloni. 4 ECST.

Syllabus

MATTER, ELEMENTS, AND MIXTURES: CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

MA course. University of Cordoba (ES), Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. 2022-2023.

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First semester 2022-2023. Course convenor: Nicola Polloni. Ref: UCO-3492-2021: “The Universality of Scientific Knowledge: Islamicate Philosophy and Science in the Latin Middle Ages”. MA in Religious Pluralism. 4+4 ECTS.

Syllabus

COMMON SEMINAR: RESEARCH AS A CAREER

Course, MA and PhD level. KU Leuven (BE), Institute of Philosophy. 2022-2023.

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Ref: B-KUL-W0R00A-2223. First semester 2023-24. Course convenors: Russell Friedman and Nicola Polloni. 4 ECST.

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HYLOMORPHIC CROSSROADS: ISLAMICATE AND LATINATE PERSPECTIVES ON MATTER AND FORM

MA course. University of Cordoba (ES), Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. 2021-2022.

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Ref: UCO-3492-2021: “The Universality of Scientific Knowledge: Islamicate Philosophy and Science in the Latin Middle Ages”. MA in Religious Pluralism. First semester 2021-2022. Course convenor: Nicola Polloni. 4+4 ECTS.

Syllabus

COMMON SEMINAR: RESEARCH AS A CAREER

Course, MA and PhD level. KU Leuven (BE), Institute of Philosophy. 2021-2022.

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Ref: B-KUL-W0R00A-2122. First semester 2021-22. Course convenors: Russell Friedman and Nicola Polloni. 4 ECST.

Syllabus

ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL VISIONS OF LIGHT AND COLOUR

Course, MA level. Technologische Universität Berlin (DE), Institute of the History of Science,

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Winter semester 2019. Course lectured by Katja Krause and Nicola Polloni.

Syllabus

SCATTERED MATTER: ATOMS AND REALITY ACCORDING TO NICHOLAS OF AUTRECOURT

Reading group (level: MA and PhD). Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE), Institut für Philosophie, Winter semester 2019.

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MOBILISING KNOWLEDGE IN TRANSLATION

Course, MA level, 2019. Technologische Universität Berlin (DE), Institute of the History of Science, Summer semester 2019.

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Course lectured by Maria Avxentevskaya, Robert Middeke-Conlin, Nicola Polloni, Shixiang Jin.

STRUCTURES OF MATERIALITY: ROGER BACON AND THE CONUNDRUM OF PRIME MATTER

Reading group (level: MA and PhD). Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE), Institut für Philosophie, Summer semester 2019.

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RESHAPING THE TRADITION: NARRATIVES OF MATTER IN CALCIDIUS AND IBN GABIROL

Reading group (level: MA and PhD). Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE), Institut für Philosophie, Winter Semester 2018.

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5.2 ORGANISED SUMMER SCHOOLS

STRUCTURING NATURE: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERCULTURAL SUMMER SCHOOL

Summer School. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and MPIWG Berlin (DE), Summer 2019.

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Berlin, 15 July to 3 August 2019. Organisers: Nicholas Aubin, Vincenzo Carlotta, Mattia Cipriani, Katja Krause, and Nicola Polloni.

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5.3 TEACHING SEMINARS

STRUCTURING BODIES: MATTER, FORM, AND ELEMENTS IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Seminar, BA level. Tel Hai College (IL). 19 April 2023.

UNTANGLING MEDIEVAL NATURAL PHILOSOPHY: AN EXCURSION INTO MATTERS, FORMS, AND OTHER PECULIAR ENTITIES

Seminar, MA course. UC Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve (BE), 9 May 2022.

THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA AS SPACE OF PHILOSOPHICAL DISSEMINATION

Seminar, MA seminar, 2016. Università di Pavia (IT), Spring semester 2016.

NEOPLATONISM AND ARISTOTELIANISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Seminar, BA level, 2014. Università di Pavia (IT).

5.4 TEACHING ASSISTANCE

COMMON SEMINAR: RESEARCH AS A CAREER

Teaching Assistance, MA and PhD course, 2020-2021. KU Leuven (BE), Institute of Philosophy.

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Ref: B-KUL-W0R00A-2021. First semester 2023-24. First semester 2020-2021. Course convenors: Karin de Boer and Russell Friedman. 4 ECST. Responsibilities included grading and mentoring.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Teaching Assistance, MA module, 2016. Università di Pavia (IT).

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Responsibilities included lecture and seminar teaching, guiding and mentoring students, and evaluation. Course convenor: Chiara Crisciani.

HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

Teaching Assistance, BA module, Winter Semester 2015. Università di Pavia (IT).

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Responsibilities included lecture and seminar teaching, guiding and mentoring students, and evaluation. Course convenor: Chiara Crisciani.

HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

Teaching Assistance, BA module, Winter Semester 2014. Università di Pavia (IT).

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Responsibilities included lecture and seminar teaching, guiding and mentoring students, and evaluation. Course convenor: Chiara Crisciani.

HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

Teaching Assistance, BA module, Winter Semester 2013. Università di Pavia (IT).

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Responsibilities included lecture and seminar teaching, guiding and mentoring students, and evaluation. Course convenor: Chiara Crisciani.

5.5 TEACHING PROGRAMMES

THE WORLD MACHINE

Seminar, OxNet Initiative Course, 2019. University of Sunderland (UK).

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Schools Outreach and Access Programme for the OxNet Initiative, Durham University, University of Oxford, University of Sunderland. Responsibility for lecture and seminar teaching for 16-17 years old university applicants, as part of a national UK programme; preparation of teaching materials, delivery and assessment.

THE ORDERED UNIVERSE

Seminar, OxNet Initiative Course, 2018. University of Sunderland (UK).

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6. Lectures and Talks

6.1 GUEST RESEARCH SEMINARS

NATURE, MATTER, AND CHANGE: AN EXPLORATION THE SCHOLASTIC ONTOLOGY OF PHYSICAL SUBSTANCES

Guest Research Seminar. University of Science and Technology Beijing | 北京科技大学 (CN). 17 November – 8 December 2023.

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The seminar delves into scholastic natural philosophy by considering the most fundamental features of the ontological constitution of physical beings as it was envisioned in the European Middle Ages. We will begin with the Aristotelian notion of movement and its application to distinguish between two different realms in the universe: the perfect celestial spheres above the moon and the world below, marked by incessant generations and corruptions. Through the consideration of forms as principles of conservation, organisation, and behaviour of natural substances, we will move on to consider change according to a theory called ‘hylomorphism’, which claimed that all natural beings partake of the same structure of matter and form. This explanatory device allowed medieval philosophers to shed light on how nature works and is structured, but it also originated a series of puzzling implications that gradually problematised their natural philosophy. We will focus on some of these problematic features related to the conceptions of ‘matter’ and ‘materiality’, like the condition of prime matter, its role in the physical constitution of bodies, the epistemological conundrum of its conceivability, and the tensions arising from a hylomorphic consideration of the elements and their mixtures.

webpage

poster

THE PENETRATION OF ARABIC PHILOSOPHY INTO THE LATIN PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION

Guest Research Seminar. Marquette University (USA) and Aquinas and ‘the Arabs’ International Working Group. January to April 2017.

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6.2 INVITED LECTURES

GLOBALISING HYLOMORPHISM: MATTER AND MATERIALITY BETWEEN EUROPE AND CHINA IN THE 16TH CENTURY

UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve (BE), 20 December 2023.

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Hylomorphism, the Aristotelian theory claiming that natural substances are composed of matter and form, serves as the cornerstone of scholastic natural philosophy. This theory underwent a rich and extensive process of refinement during the Middle Ages, culminating in the sophisticated accounts formulated in the 16th century, known as “Second Scholasticism”. In my talk, I will delve into the specificities of the later hylomorphism debate, particularly focusing on matter, and its broader impact beyond Europe. Indeed, this debate played a crucial role in shaping the initial encounters between European and Chinese philosophy. Firstly, I will explore the main characteristics of scholastic hylomorphism. Secondly, I will briefly examine the diversity of stances and accounts in the 16th-century debate, contrasting the positions held by Toledo and the Coimbran commentators. Thirdly, I will analyze the Latin texts written by Ricci and Longobardo, two Jesuits missionaries in China, and discuss their use of hylomorphism to try and understand the complexities of 宋明理学 metaphysics. Finally, I will draw my conclusions.

MANUEL DE GÓIS, PEDRO DA FONSECA, AND THE PROBLEM OF PRIME MATTER’S POTENCY

Sun Yat-sen University | 中山大学, Guangzhou (CN), 5 December 2023.

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The Coimbra commentaries on Aristotle’s physical works offer a systematic account of some of the most problematic aspects characterising scholastic natural philosophy. The commentaries would become a shared reference for Jesuits missionaries and philosophers globally, from Europe to Latin America and Eastern Asia. Crossing the boundaries between metaphysics and physics, the concept of prime matter was among the most problematic and divisive issues of scholastic philosophy. In particular, the question about prime matter’s condition as either a pure potency (as Aquinas maintained) or a special kind of act (as the Scotists claimed) was particularly complex. In my lecture, I will address how Manuel de Góis (1543–1597), the main author of the Coimbra commentary on the Physics, delved into this problem. Firstly, I will introduce the main features characterizing hylomorphism in the 16th-century. After having clarified the context of Góis’s discussion, I will examine, secondly, his claim that prime matter is a pure potency and the problematic implications of this position. Thirdly, I will analyse Pedro da Fonseca’s discussion of the same problem in his Metaphysics commentary, which seems to have impacted profoundly on Góis. I will finally draw my conclusions on Góis’s theory of prime matter.

THEORIES OF MATTER IN LATER SCHOLASTICISM

Tsinghua University | 清华大学, Beijing (CN), 28 November 2023.

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Aristotelian natural philosophy prescribed the existence of a persisting substrate upon which the generation and corruption of natural substances could happen. According to medieval scholastic philosophers, this substrate is prime matter, the ultimate constituent, together with the substantial form, of each and any natural thing. Yet what is this prime matter? What features does it have? And how can it work as potential receptacle of forms and enduring substrate of change? In my lecture, I will examine two case studies of the later scholastic debate on prime matter: Francisco de Toledo and the Coimbran Jesuits. First, I will introduce the main tenets of scholastic hylomorphism (the doctrine claiming that natural substances are compounds of matter and form) and the theory of prime matter. Second, I will examine Toledo’s theory of matter as an entity provided with some kind of actuality and the main functions it carries out in natural change. Third, I will contrast Toledo’s theory with the Coimbrans’ and their perplexing account of prime matter. I will then draw some conclusions on the later scholastic debate on matter.

THE INEVITABLE SUBSTRATE: LATE SCHOLASTIC ARGUMENTS FOR EXISTENCE OF PRIME MATTER

Peking University | 北京大学, Beijing (CN). 25 November 2023.

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According to medieval Aristotelianism, all bodily substances are compounds of substantial form and prime matter. By itself, matter expresses the potency to the realisation of the compound through the reception of a substantial form. Hence, it seems to be completely deprived of any features aside from being a substrate for the reception of forms. Yet prime matter is also the enduring substrate of substantial change, which happens by the acquisition and loss of the forms of the two termini of change. From these two main functions, a plurality of complex issues arose in the Middle Ages touching upon its condition, functionality, and usefulness for the explanation of how the universe works. In my talk, I want to address why, for scholastic philosophers, prime matter was indispensable notwithstanding the many problems arising from its inclusion in their ontology. To do so, I will examine the arguments deployed to demonstrate the existence of prime matter by four scholastic philosophers from the 16th century: Francisco de Toledo, Pedro da Fonseca, Manuel Góis, and Francisco Suárez. First, I will introduce some main tenets of scholastic hylomorphism. Second, I will analyse five group of arguments used by these authors to assess why they thought they needed prime matter. Finally, I will draw my conclusions.

GIACOMO ZABARELLA ON CONCEIVING MATTER BY ANALOGY

University of Cluj, Cluj (RO), 2 May 2023.

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How can humans grasp such an elusive entity as prime matter? For centuries, medieval scholasticism relied on a claim that Aristotle makes in Ph. I.7 about the underlying substrate of generation and corruption and maintaining that matter can be known by analogy. Analogies, however, can be drawn in many ways and, on this regard, medieval scholasticism was marked by two opposite tendencies. On the one hand, many philosophers maintained that prime matter can be grasped by analogy with the artefacts. On the other, many more conceived this procedure as an analogy with the form, a tendency that grows particularly strong from the 14th century onwards. In my lecture, I will focus on Giacomo Zabarella’s harsh critique of the scholastic treatment of this method and his reassessment of Ph. I.7. In ontology, Zabarella is renowned for having maintained that prime matter is bodily (i.e., the “intrinsically extended view”, using Robert Pasnau’s taxonomy) yet potential. Less is known about Zabarella’s epistemology of prime matter and, crucially, how the two sides of the equation (ontology and epistemology) are intertwined in his hylomorphism. Firstly, I will briefly introduce Aristotle’s analogical strategy in Ph. I.7 and outline the ways it was read by some prominent scholastic philosophers. Secondly, I will expand on Zabarella’s criticism of the “analogy with the form” interpretation, contrasting his arguments with those of Scotus’s, one of his main targets. Finally, I will draw my conclusions on the reasons behind Zabarella’s critique and introduce a working hypothesis about the origins of the “analogy with the form” interpretation in the 13th century.

FRANCISCO DE TOLEDO ON THE CONSTITUTION OF HYLOMORPHIC SUBSTANCES

University of Helsinki, Helsinki (FI), 17 February 2023.

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According to hylomorphism, physical substances have a hylomorphic core made of prime matter and substantial form which is further qualified by accidents. My talk expands on how the Jesuit philosopher Francisco de Toledo (1532-1596) conceived of these basic components of substances and particularly prime matter. First, I will expand on the reasons why prime matter is a puzzling entity of Scholastic ontology, focusing especially on the requirements proceeding from the admission of a principle of hylomorphic union able to explain the individuality of each substance. Second, I will analyse Toledo’s claim that prime matter and (physical) substantial forms are partial substances, stressing his reliance on a dual epistemological consideration of prime matter. Third, I will discuss Toledo’s refutation of the Thomist claim that prime matter is a pure potency and the emendation of the principle of hylomorphic union that it implies. Finally, I will draw some conclusions concerning the curious blending of epistemological and ontological aspects of Toledo’s physical hylomorphism.

FRANCISCO DE TOLEDO ON MATTER

Tel Hai College, Tel Hai (IL), 17 January 2023.

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Hylomorphism, the doctrine claiming that all bodily substances are compounds of matter and form, was an extremely successful explanatory device during the Middle Ages. While present-day Neo-Aristotelian metaphysicians are re-assessing the philosophical value of this theory, there is at least one aspect of Scholastic hylomorphism that still puzzles philosophers and historians of philosophy alike: the notion of prime matter. Grounded on Aristotle’s philosophy yet probably absent from its original thought, the notion of a first, utterly unqualified, and potential substrate of the bodily world originated harsh debates and philosophical controversies throughout Scholasticism. Its main dual functionality as (1) enduring substrate of substantial change and (2) potency that is joined to the substantial form to constitute an individual substance created a series of doctrinal frictions that were differently addressed. In my talk, I will analyse how the Jesuit philosopher Francisco de Toledo (1532-1596) engaged with the manifold problems concerning prime matter. First, I will briefly introduce some central issues emerging from the Scholastic consideration of prime matter and the Thomistic and Scotistic trends related to them. Second, I will analyse Toledo’s discussion of prime matter in his commentary on Physics I.7, focusing particularly on the role that prime matter plays in (1) the generation of a new substance and (2) the metaphysical constitution of bodies. Third, I will connect Toledo’s treatment of the ontology of prime matter with his discussion of how this entity can be conceived and stress the relevance of the latter in Toledo’s formulation of the former. My conclusions will assess how Toledo’s theory resolves some of the most problematic issues at stake with the inclusion in our ontology of such an elusive entity.

FRANCISCO SUÁREZ AND MANUEL GÓIS ON PRIME MATTER AND ITS CONCEIVABILITY

University of Haifa, Haifa (IL), 17 January 2023.

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Prime matter, the primary substrate out of which the universe is shaped according to Scholastic philosophers, was a cornerstone of the premodern consideration of the physical world. Notwithstanding its centrality, prime matter was a source of manifold problems that marked the Scholastic debate profoundly. These problems often emerged from two seemingly opposed functions that this entity was asked to carry out. On the one hand, prime matter was meant to be the enduring substrate that allows generation and corruption to occur naturally. On the other, prime matter was also meant to express a sort of “sheer” potentiality, which it needs to be joined to the substantial form and constitute an individual substance. These two claims seem to be mutually exclusive and medieval philosophers strived to harmonise them. Yet, on what epistemic grounds is it possible to make valid claims about prime matter? How can humans conceive such an elusive entity that seems to escape any qualification and categorisation? My talk will explore these entanglements of ontological and epistemological issues by discussing two crucial case-studies: Francisco Suárez (1548-1617) and Manuel Góis (1543-1597), the main author of the Coimbran commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. Firstly, I will briefly introduce the conceivability problem in relation to the later medieval debate on prime matter. Secondly, I will examine Suárez’s solutions to the dual-functionality problem (matter as substrate and potency) and the question of knowability highlighting their interrelation. Thirdly, I will move on to analyse Góis’s disordered treatment of the conceivability problem and his reliance on Pedro da Fonseca (1528-1599). My examination will show that Suárez and Góis deploy similar epistemic procedures to justify the knowability of prime matter. Yet, they connect these procedures to their opposite claims about the ontology of prime matter – an entitative act for Suárez, a pure potency for Góis. My conclusions will assess the reasons behind this duality of outcomes and whether the epistemic obstacles to grasp prime matter may hinder the reasoning about its ontology or not.

TRANSLATIONS AND ACCOMMODATIONS: THREE STORIES OF CROSS-CULTURAL EXCHANGE

Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan (IL), 16 January 2023.

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Cross-linguistic translations mark crucial aspects of our lives: they are so crucial that we often do not realise how much we rely on them. Naturally, much of the relevance we bestow upon translations nowadays is due to the planetarisation of our society, the internet, and the possibility to reach out anyone in the globe with a simple click on our laptops. Yet it would be a mistake to believe that translations started to play such a meaningful role in human societies only in recent years. Broadly conceived, translation means interpretation and interpretation is a defining factor of our lives. Narrowly conceived as rendering of a written or spoken text from one language into another, translations defined the history of our societies almost since their beginning. In my lecture, I will explore how translations shaped some central aspects of the intellectual and scientific production in medieval Europe. And we are going to do that by focusing on three translators and their stories: they are Livius Andronicus, Dominicus Gundisalvi, and Prospero Intorcetta. None of them had probably thought that he would end up being a translator later in his life nor that he would have to engage with cultural production for most of his life. They lived centuries apart from each other, but their biographies and activities are very good examples of the foundational role played by translations in the establishment of cultural, philosophical, and scientific traditions in Latin Europe.

MATTER AND PRIME MATTER IN THE LATIN MIDDLE AGES: SURVEYING AN ELUSIVE SUBSTRATE

Zhongnan University of Economics and Law | 中南财经政法大学, Wuhan (CN), 22 November 2022.

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The notion of prime matter is among the most problematic aspects that defined the Latin developments of Aristotelianism. In its most radical conceptions, prime matter lacks all kind of features: it is extensionless and potential inasmuch as it is completely devoid of any forms. Yet how can such a minimally existent entity carry out the function of enduring substrate of substantial change? What problems arise from the inclusion of prime matter into our ontology, particularly in relation to the structural entanglements of medieval natural philosophy with metaphysics? And finally, how did medieval philosophers tackle the issue of prime matter’s conceivability since this entity cannot be known in itself but only obliquely? My lecture will discuss these central questions about the notion of prime matter by outlining some of the solutions that medieval philosophers strived to give to these problems. Firstly, I will briefly examine why medieval natural philosophy requires a substrate that endures change and how this requirement is connected to prime and secondary matters. Secondly, I will present some main questions related to this entity and the alternative answers that were produced by the Scholastic debate. Finally, I will discuss the conceivability problem that premodern philosophers faced to justify that prime matter is knowable and analyse the most successful strategies that were formulated to resolve this problem.

SUÁREZ ON THE EPISTEMIC CHALLENGE OF CONCEIVING PRIME MATTER

University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg (SE), 25 November 2021.

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Among the most problematic items devised by medieval metaphysics, prime matter was a cornerstone of the Scholastic examination of the ontological structure of bodies and their constitutive processes of generation and corruption. Either considered as a complete potency (with Aquinas) or an entity provided with some entitative actuality (with the Scotists), prime matter was a peculiar yet central entity to be included in these philosophers’ ontological catalogues. An additional sign of such peculiarity was the restricted conditions by which prime matter was supposed to be conceivable. My talk will expand on how these epistemological conditions were discussed by Francisco Suárez in his Metaphysical Disputations, focusing on the solution that the Spanish philosopher proposes to the problem of prime matter’s conceivability. First, I will briefly discuss the main options elaborated in the central Middle Ages to justify an epistemic access to prime matter. Suárez was indeed well aware of the medieval discussion of this problem and his solution can be better appreciated by a broader consideration of alternative possibilities. Second, I will examine the doctrinal context of Suárez’s treatment of prime matter in his thirteenth metaphysical disputation since the epistemological issue of conceivability is grounded on his ontological treatment of prime matter. Finally, I will analyse Suárez’s solution to the problem about the conceivability of prime matter particularly in consideration of two epistemic strategies: analogy and negative abstraction.

FRAGMENTACIONES HILEMÓRFICAS: ROGERIO BACON Y EL PROBLEMA DE LA CONSTITUCIÓN ONTOLÓGICA DEL MUNDO

Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (ES), 24 February 2021.

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El hilemorfismo – la doctrina aristotélica según la cual cada ente corpóreo es un compuesto de materia y forma – ha sido una de las teorías más desarrolladas y debatidas durante la Escolástica medieval. Sin tener acceso a los textos principales donde Aristóteles discute esta doctrina, los primeros siglos de la Edad Media produjeron un ‘hilemorfismo ingenuo’ fundado en correspondencias sinonímicas con los textos sagrados interpretados platónicamente. Con el pasaje al siglo trece y la disponibilidad de textos de Aristóteles, Avicena, y Averroes, la situación muta drásticamente. En Física I, Aristóteles delinea los fundamentos del mundo natural y sus principios: materia, forma, y privación. Sin embargo, ¿que significa propiamente decir que este árbol o aquella piedra son compuestos hilemórficos? ¿Cual es su materia, la materia primera o algún tipo de materia segunda? Y si es una materia segunda, ¿esto no implicaría una pluralidad de formas sustanciales que parece ser excluida por Aristóteles? Estas preguntas caracterizaron muchos aspectos de la discusión metafísica en el siglo trece. En mi ponencia, discutiré la solución propuesta por Rogerio Bacon examinando sus críticas a las soluciones alternativas propuestas por Alberto Magno y Tomás de Aquino, por un lado, y la tradición franciscana, por otro.

A MATTER TO BE GRASPED: EPISTEMIC STRATEGIES AND ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS ABOUT PRIME MATTER

Radboud University, Nijmegen (NL), 20 September 2019.

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The lecture examines the medieval reception of two epistemic strategies proposed by Aristotle to know (prime) matter. Both analogical and negative strategies are developed from two main tensions this metaphysical concept is constructed upon. On the one hand, the tension between metaphysics and natural philosophy, on which the analogical strategy is based, focusing on the role of prime matter as physical substrate. On the other hand, the tension between metaphysics and logic, from which the negative strategy arises in its consideration of prime matter as general subject. It is from the borderline encounters of these philosophical disciplines that the conundrum of matter has been nurtured since the Greek commentators of Aristotle, if not before.

LOOKING INTO THE UNKNOWABLE: PREMODERN CONUNDRUMS OF PRIME MATTER

Durham University, Durham (UK), 5 March 2019.

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In his Allegoria Peripatetica, the renaissance scientist and philosopher Fortunio Liceti engaged with a “sharp man” who claimed that prime matter is a sort of nothingness which can be grasped only by imagination. Fortunio’s short reply is lapidary. Prime matter does exist and has a marginal substantial existence. Moreover, it is knowable not through imagination, but through the intellect—and indeed only the fools are unable to conceive prime matter, as they have no intelligence. Less than a century afterwards, another philosopher and scientist with much prestige, Francis Bacon, would claim that the prime matter is nothing but a fairy matter, completely useless if not dangerous. Even more, Bacon adamantly acknowledges that any claim that things are made of this fairy matter is perverse and utterly inappropriate for natural philosophy. Be a matter of fairy tales or for very intelligent people, the notion of prime matter has fascinated generations of philosophers with its manifold tortuous intricacies. Medieval thinkers were no exception. This talk engages with some of these intricacies and tortuosities, examining how premodern thinkers acknowledged that prime matter was indeed knowable, at least under certain conditions.

LA CIENCIA DE ‘LOS OTROS’. PECULIARES ASIMILACIONES DE TEORÍAS ÁRABES POR LA TRADICIÓN FILOSÓFICA LATINA

Universidad de Córdoba, Cordoba (ES), 26 January 2017.

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Uno de los topoi más típicos de la percepción común de la Edad Media por los no especialistas es el reconocimiento de un choque de civilizaciones entre los musulmanes y los cristianos. Este topos, arraigado en eventos históricos muy peculiares como la reconquista en la península ibérica o las cruzadas en el Oriente Medio, se ha vuelto en uno de los pilares de la retórica política de hoy en día. Como bien sabéis, durante los mil años que componen la Edad Media, la historia de las relaciones entre cristianos, musulmanes y judíos muestra características y peculiaridades muy diferentes de esta idea común. Es una historia compleja de encuentros y enfrentamientos, curiosidad y aversión, colaboración y aislamiento. Y todavía, desde una perspectiva cultural y filosófica, se trata de la historia de una fusión continúa entre horizontes diferentes y a menudo opuestos, marcada por la influencia continuativa de la filosofía griega en las tres tradiciones filosóficas abrahámicas y de cada una de estas tres – o mejor dicho, cuatro, considerando la reflexión bizantina como algo diferente de la latina – en las otras, con diferentes grados de aceptación, problematización y repulsión. Córdoba, la ciudad de Averroes y Abraham ibn Daud. Estamos en uno de los lugares más simbólicos de este largo proceso que ha marcado indisolublemente la construcción y el desarrollo de la filosofía occidental, y hoy os presentaré algunos aspectos del aproximación de los primeros filósofos latinos a interesarse en la reflexión filosófica y científica en lengua árabe. Analizaremos algunos ejemplos de tres características de este primer aproximación a la cultura árabe entre la segunda mitad del siglo doce y el comienzo del siglo trece: el sincretismo teológico, la consideración de los árabes respeto a los griegos, y el sentimiento de inferioridad cultural de los latinos hacia su propia producción científica y filosófica.

GUNDISSALINUS, AVICENNA, AND THE ROAD TO PARIS

Marquette University, Milwaukee (WI), 2 November 2016.

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Together with two further, anonymous works, the De causis primis et secundis and the Book on the Peregrinations of the Soul in the Afterlife, Gundissalinus’s writings mark the theoretical and even material path that will lead to the great receptions and criticisms of Avicenna and the other ‘Arabs’ in Paris and Oxford during the thirteenth century and beyond—from John Blund to Albert of Cologne, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, and Duns Scotus. I will try to cast some light on this very first stage of ‘theoretical appropriation’ of Avicenna’s doctrines in the Latin West, analysing how Avicenna’s doctrines have been accepted or rejected by Gundissalinus and the two anonymous authors of the De causis primis et secundis and the On the Peregrinations of the Soul in the Afterlife, and pointing out, in particular, the role played by other translations produced in Toledo on Avicenna’s philosophical reception.

TRANSLATION AND APPROPRIATION: NECROMANCY, ASTROLOGY, ALCHEMY

University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame (IN), 31 October 2016.

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The early-medieval traditional articulation of knowledge was based on the division between trivium and quadrivium expounded, posited under the authority of authors like Boethius and Martianus Capella. The human knowledge, thus, found its development through the seven liberal arts—grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometrics, music and astronomy. The seven liberal arts were accompanied, in the mind of any early-medieval scholar, by the twofold division of philosophy in theoretical and practical; and by the mechanical arts, from agriculture to architecture, to cynegetics and navigation, discussed by a vast number of classical and early-medieval sources, among which one has to remember at least Macrobius, Isidore of Seville, Augustine, Priscianus, and the Roman authorities such as Virgil’s and Vitruvius’s. Notwithstanding their undeniable bond with the classical (and pagan) authorities, in these medieval systems of knowledge there is no place for bizarre disciplines like astrology or divination, or demoniac arts like necromancy, while others were simply unknown, like science of gold-making that will be called alchimia. This situation will abruptly change in the second half of the twelfth century as a direct consequence of the translation movements from Arabic and Greek into Latin, a change of perspective that constitute the topic with which we are going to deal today. We will take into account two articulations of knowledge, the system proposed by Hugh of St Victor in his Didascalicon and that expounded by Gundissalinus in his De divisione philosophiae, pointing out how the scenario changes with the arrival of the ‘new’ sciences in the Latin West.

6.2 INVITED CONFERENCE TALKS

EXPANDING QUANTITY: ROBERT GROSSETESTE ON THE BODILY FORM

Workshop Quantity, Extension, and Infinity in the 13th and 14th Centuries, Tel Hai College, Tel Hai (IL), 5-7 June 2023.

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Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253) shows a marked tendency to explain physical and metaphysical theories by recurring to the geometrical scheme of light radiation. Moving along geometrical lines, light displays its causal agency when interacting with the bodies and their ontological root, i.e., matter. Bodies are the primary subject of a universe that is moved like a clockwork: a “machina mundi” that can be moved only insofar as its cogs are extended, quantified substances. Yet before quantity and extension, before bodiliness and physicality, the cosmological roots of the universe were an extensionless substrate and an agent that tends towards infinite extension: prime matter and light. How can quantifiable bodies come out of an extensionless, featureless prime matter? In my paper, I will analyse Grosseteste’s theory of the bodily form as bestower of extension (i.e., potentially quantified bodiliness). First, I will discuss the kind of hylomorphism endorsed by Grosseteste, particularly whether he adheres to universal hylomorphism or not. Second, I will examine how he envisioned the functionality of the bodily form and what implications his theory has in terms of formal pluralism. Finally, I will draw some general conclusions on Grosseteste’s hylomorphism.

IDLE SUBSTRATES IN A WORLD OF FORMS? FRANCISCUS TOLETUS ON PRIME MATTER, ACCIDENTS, AND ELEMENTS

Conference: The Mechanization of the Natural World, 1300-1700, Stockholm University, Stockholm (SE), 25-28 May 2023.

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Scholastic hylomorphism conceived of matter as a potential substrate whose main function is to be joined to forms. The course of nature happens upon this entity which, inert in itself, is constantly transformed into the matter of something else through the incessant processes of generation and corruption. New interpretations of nature would gradually challenge the usefulness of what appeared to be an idle, elusive substrate. In my talk, I want to photograph Francisco Toletus’s theory of prime matter by considering the overall treatment of this entity that he gives in his commentaries on the Physics and DGC. Firstly, I will discuss Toletus’s stances on the substantiality and potency of prime matter, stressing his strive for a balance between Aquinas’s and Scotus’s positions. Secondly, I will discuss two further aspects related to prime matter with which Toletus engages in his commentaries, namely, the inhesion of accidents in prime matter and the case of elemental mixing. My analysis will shed light on Toletus’s theory of matter and display a certain tension between opposite tendencies in his hylomorphism.

PROBLEMATIC BLENDS OF EPISTEMIC PROCEDURES TO CONCEIVE PRIME MATTER

Workshop: The Logic of Matter. University of Helsinki, Helsinki (FI), 16 February 2023.

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I will discuss three short texts expanding on the conceivability of prime matter and detailing the solutions elaborated by Francisco de Toledo, Francisco Suárez, and Pedro da Fonseca. More specifically, I will focus on some exegetical problems arising from the peculiar blending of analogical and abstractive procedures to grasp prime matter in Toledo and Fonseca, and the possible interpretations of a short passage in Suárez’s DM XIII. Indeed, Toledo and Fonseca seem to combine the analogical procedure from Ph. I.7 with negative abstraction, a method usually attached to Aristotle’s stripping-away argument which, nonetheless, carries out a refuting function in Metaph. Z.3. I will introduce each text and detail the novelties introduced by each author and the problematic issues that seem to arise.

ROGER BACON’S “MATHEMATICAL PROOFS” AGAINST THE INFINITY OF PRIME MATTER’S POTENCY

With Yael Kedar. Roger Bacon Conference, St Bonaventure University (US), 21 July 2022.

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The question of the infinity of matter is tightly linked, in Bacon’s writings, to his theory of the unity of matter, as well as to the relation between the concepts of potentiality, extension and essence. The reasoning which Bacon provides against the ideas of the infinity of matter and its extension, is but another phase in his comprehensive argumentation against the postulate that the form alone makes the things of the world vary, while the substrate of these variations, namely, matter, remains in essence one and the same. Among the arguments which Bacon employs in this context three are particularly intriguing, since they serve as examples of Bacon’s use of “mathematical proofs” for issues related to other domains of knowledge, in this case – metaphysics. Bacon offers the quantitative argument that the assumption of an infinite potential inhering in finite substance leads to the absurdity of the part having a greater essence than the whole and the finite possessing more essence than the infinite. These proofs raise several questions which we aim to discuss, the most prominent of which focus on Bacon’s quantitative treatment of essences: its meaning, basis and implications.

BONAVENTURE AND THE EPISTEMIC ELUSIVENESS OF PRIME MATTER

Conference: Ut bon(aventurian)i fiamus: International Conference on the 800th Anniversary of Bonaventure’s Birth. University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana (SLO), 1 October 2021.

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Medieval philosophy often shows itself as a sort of wild forest made of difficult problems, refined doctrines, and complex solutions. In my talk, today, I will focus mostly on one of the roots that allowed such speculative forest to grow: hylomorphism and, specifically, the theory of matter. Matter, indeed, has been the subject of a long-lasting series of debates and issues that from some point of view started with the beginning of Greek philosophy itself. While the substantial form, too, underwent a process of gradual epistemic detachment in the later Middle Ages, it is matter, and especially prime matter, that gave origin to widespread controversies between and within different philosophical traditions. In my talk, I will examine Bonaventure’s only reference to the conceivability of prime matter. Discussing some of the ontological implications of the epistemic strategy mentioned by Bonaventure (negative abstraction), I will show how such reference appears to hint at a specific interpretation of Augustine’s stance on the problem of matter’s conceivability. According to such reading of Augustine, it seems that Bonaventure limits the scope of application of negative abstraction avoiding any definitive endorsement of this epistemic strategy.

WISDOM IS OUT THERE! ROGER BACON AND THE EPISTEMIC RECONSTRUCTION OF LOST BOOKS AND MISSED KNOWLEDGE

Conference: Exchange of Knowledge Between Literate Cultures, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen (DK), 19-21 July 2021.

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During the Latin Middle Ages, translations of scientific and philosophical texts from Greek and Arabic into Latin crucially contributed to cause the Aristotelian shift that characterised the Scholastic tradition up to the 17^th century. These translations also fostered an idealistic conception about the “knowledge of the others” (ancient sages and Islamicate thinkers alike) that needed be retrieved and implemented in Latin Christendom. A philosopher and scientist from the 13^th century, Roger Bacon was an enthusiastic and omnivorous reader and a harsh critic of how the translators often rendered the original texts into Latin. He daringly proposed a reform of Latin knowledge which included the study of foreign languages as necessary instrument to proper understand sacred, philosophical, and scientific texts. Engaging with the lines of Bacon’s attitude towards Greek and Islamicate wisdom, my talk expands on a specific aspect: Bacon’s description of the epistemic treasures that science and philosophy still had to offer to the Latinate debate. In particular, I will focus on Bacon’s treatment of Aristotle and Ibn Sīnā, examining how Bacon reconstructs the list of works that these thinkers had authored yet were not available to the Latins (nor existing, in most cases). In this context, I will discuss how such beliefs impacted on Bacon’s own interpretation of both philosophers, with curious and relevant outcomes in the intellectual history of the Latin Middle Ages.

HYLOMORPHIC CROSSROADS: IBN DAUD, GUNDISSALINUS, AND THE FONT OF LIFE

Conference: Abraham ibn Daud: historia, filosofía y teología política en Sefarad, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid (ES), 9-10 March 2021.

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Contrasted to the extant excerpts from the Arabic original version, the Latin translation of Ibn Gabirol’s Fons vitae reveals a systematic reinterpretation of main philosophical stances and doctrines. The translation was made in Toledo by Dominicus Gundissalinus and John of Spain. My paper will dive into the intricate questions arising from this case of supposed linguistic clumsiness of two otherwise reliable translators. Their reinterpretation of Fons vitae would have consequential outcomes for Scholastic ontology through the assumption of a “universal hylomorphism” coarsely linked to Augustine. I shall discuss the philosophical stances on hylomorphism maintained by Ibn Gabirol, Gundissalinus, and Abraham Ibn Daud. Supposedly, the head of Gundissalinus’s and John’s translating team was Ibn Daud. In his Emunah Ramah,Ibn Daud expresses much criticism of Ibn Gabirol’s hylomorphism, refuting both its mistakes and misinterpretations in connection to Islamicate Aristotelianism. In turn, Gundissalinus’s philosophical treatises closely follow Ibn Gabirol’s theories, without showing any awareness of its controversial ontological outcomes. Was Gundissalinus’s lack of expertise and awareness of Aristotle’s metaphysics that led him to mis-render Ibn Gabirol’s work? And why Ibn Daud, the main translator of the team, should have agreed to having his colleagues translating a text he despised so much?

ROGER BACON ON THE CONCEIVABILITY OF MATTER

Conference: 13th-Century English Franciscans. King’s College London, 25 July 2020.

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Being potential and formless, the effort to ground a partial knowability of matter has intrigued many medieval philosophers. Their solutions were often intertwined with the ontological assumptions they made about this peculiar metaphysical entity and their ontological commitment about its existence. In the case of Bacon, this already problematic point is further complicated by his complex ontology based on radical formal pluralism (= any composite has a plurality of non-incidental forms) and extreme realism. The first part of the paper examines Bacon’s discussion of the problem in his Questions on Physics, where the solution is provided by the analogical strategy: matter can be known by analogy to the form. However, can this procedure be applied also to the case of prime matter? The second part explores Bacon’s distinction between secondary and specific matters and the ontological structure characterising the composite that he envisioned. I argue that the analogical strategy must be complemented with another procedure able to get below “the matter we know” (proximate matter). The third part analyses Bacon’s criticism of the doctrine of the unicity of matter in the Opus tertium. In this context, I examine Bacon’s discussion of reversed abstraction to conceive the genus generalissimum and argue that this procedure is required to complement the analogical strategy in the case of the conceivability of prime matter.

MATTER, FIRST AND FINAL

Roundtable discussion with Neil Lewis and Rega Wood. Robert Pasnau’s Virtual Colloquium, 25 June 2020.

DOMINICUS GUNDISSALINUS AND THE RECEPTION OF ARABIC PHILOSOPHY IN THE 13TH CENTURY

With Alexander Fidora. Conference: The Intercultural Roots Early Scholasticism: Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Latin. King’s College London, London (UK), 23-24 January 2020.

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While today the importance of Dominicus Gundissalinus and his division of philosophy is generally acknowledged, the significance of his contribution for later epistemological developments still needs to be assessed with more precision. For a long time, histories of philosophy provided only a few references to Michael Scot (d. before 1236) and his tract De divisione philosophiae, along with Robert Kilwardby (d. 1279) and his famous De ortu scientiarum, when dealing with the influence of Gundissalinus’s division of the sciences. Our talk will examine the problematic reception of Gundissalinus’s works in the 13th century, and posit a fundamental distinction among the different uses of a source that seems to characterise medieval philosophy.

SHADOWS OF GUNDISSALINUS IN THE SUMMA HALENSIS

Conference: The Summa Halensis: Philosophy and Reception. King’s College London and University of Oxford, Oxford (UK), 23-25 September 2019.

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In the past few decades, important studies published have shed some crucial light on the impact exerted by Gundissalinus on some central medieval authors. His theories provided them with a first interpretation of sometimes exotic doctrines derived from the Arabic texts he himself translated into Latin in Toledo. However, only a few medieval authors explicitly mentioned Gundissalinus’s name or that of his works. In contrast to this rather meagre set of references, his influence appears to have been greater, although in a subtle, murky, shadowy way. My talk is focused on a preliminary analysis of the influence that the theories of Dominicus Gundissalinus have had on the Summa Halensis, directly and indirectly. In other to have some discussion about that, I shall start with a general account of what I mean when I say that Gundissalinus’s reception is problematic and why some of his philosophical stances are quite peculiar, sometimes ingenuous, other times bizarre.

EXPERIENCING MATTER: TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSITIONS IN GROSSETESTE’S EARLY WORKS

Conference: Premodern Experience of the Natural World in Translation. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (DE), 27-28 June 2019.

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Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253) was a most influential scientist and philosopher active in England in the Middle Ages. My contribution will explore the curious development of a philosophical concept of matter in Grosseteste’s reflection. Differently from most of his colleagues, Grosseteste did not receive a proper philosophical training. His first works were focused on scientific themes (astronomy, optics, alchemy) and characterised by “empirical attitudes”. Grosseteste grounded these works on Arabic scientific texts translated into Latin a few decades before and providing him with specific notions of natural matter. This first phase of Grosseteste’s reflection is indeed marked by a consideration of matter as “experienceable materiality”—a substantively different notion from Aristotle’s. Gradually, though, Grosseteste would have to combine his early notion of matter with Aristotelian matter. How did these two notions interact in Grosseteste’s reflection? Did Grosseteste’s proto-empirical approach reflect in his philosophical position of matter as natural principle? And did a gradual access to different sets of translated sources impact on this conceptual elaboration?

MOVEMENTS, CLUSTERS, AND TEAMS: MODERN PERSPECTIVES ON PREMODERN TRANSLATIONS

Conference: The Multi-ethnic Borderlands of Medieval Toledo: New Directions. Texas State University and Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, Toledo (ES), June 5-7, 2019.

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Premodern scientific translations into Latin have been a central aspect of cross-cultural studies in the last century. Consideration of how books and ideas, problems and doctrines have easily crossed cultural, political, and religious boundaries throughout the Middle Ages has substantively reshaped the intellectual history of Premodern Europe. In the twelfth and thirteenth century, Toledo has been a most eminent venue of this “translation movement”. Translators like Gerard of Cremona, Dominicus Gundissalinus, Marc of Toledo, and Michael Scot contributed to make available to the Latin public a fundamental set of scientific and philosophical works which would have had major revolutionary outcomes in Europe. Undoubtedly, the historical relevance of the Toledan translation movement is central. This paper addresses a different question. It does not concern the relevance of this phenomenon, but our approach and implicit understanding of its intrinsic dynamics. What is it that we mean when we refer to a translation “movement”? What are the unspoken implications of our consideration of this activity (or activities) as an implicitly organised and organically developed phenomenon? And finally, if not a movement, how should we consider and refer to it when we study the crucial cultural events that took place in Toledo?

MARGINAL EPISTEMOLOGIES OF MATTER: PREMODERN STRATEGIES FOR KNOWING THE PRIME SUBSTRATE

Conference: Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions: Intellect, Experience and More. Università di Pisa, Pisa (IT), 22-25 May 2019.

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This paper explores some relevant strategies adopted by medieval authors in order to supersede the intrinsic limitations on prime matter’s knowability as implied by the “otherness” of its peculiar ontological status. In particular, I shall focus on how medieval authors have engaged with problematic passages from (and hermeneutics of) Aristotle’s Metaphysics Ζ, 10 and I, 8; Physics Α, 7; and Plato’s Timaeus, 52b. Examination of relevant cases will show a fundamental tension in place between the scanty conditions of knowability of prime matter and the pivotal role this notion was meant to play in both natural philosophy and metaphysics.

LE QUESTIONI SULLA FISICA DI RUGGERO BACONE: IL PROBLEMA DELLA MATERIA

Conference: La Fisica di Aristotele nel Medioevo. Parigi e Oxford (1210-1270). Università di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Roma (Italy), 3 April 2019.

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Il problema della materia, di cosa sia questa entità di cui l’universo è composto in modo radicale e originario, è uno dei problemi più affascinanti, duraturi e al contempo tra i più complessi della tradizione filosofica. Sotto molti aspetti, il mistero della materia non è oggi più chiaro di quanto lo fosse in antichità, ma di sicuro la posizione del problema è ben diversa. Non si tratta di campi elettromagnetici discreti che circoscrivono il vuoto e di particelle subatomiche che, con fare felino, sono e non sono al medesimo tempo. La fisica premoderna si basa su concetti diversi, fondamentalmente radicati su una visione del mondo come un continuo fisico, in cui il vuoto non esiste e dove spesso il discreto di riduce al continuo.

PREMODERN TRANSLATIONS INTO LATIN: RHETORICAL STRATEGIES AND HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTIONS

Conference: Mapping the Rhetoric of Science Writing in Antiquity and Beyond. Ionian University, Corfu (GR), 28-29 March 2019.

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This paper approaches a specific problem concerning a rather peculiar phenomenon: the translations into Latin made in the Middle Ages. How can we distinguish between rhetorical exaggerations and reliable descriptions in letters and prologues accompanying the translated texts? To what extent can they be considered as trustworthy witnesses of the translator’s activity and social context? From this starting point, questions on the use of rhetoric in Premodern translations will be extended to our contemporary consideration of that phenomenon. How does rhetoric shape our scientific discourse on cross-cultural historical events like translations and doctrinal appropriations? And how much does our consideration of contemporary problems affect implicitly our appreciation of the past? Notwithstanding our historical distance, it will be argued, Premodern and modern rhetorical approaches to cross-cultural phenomena do not appear to differ much in style, as they do in orientation.

INSIDE MARC OF TOLEDO’S APPROACH TO IBN TÛMART AND HIS PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL DOCTRINES

With Pedro Mantas-España. Conference: Trespassing Walls. Jews, Christians and Muslims around Their Texts and Traditions. Universidad de Córdoba, Cordoba (ES), 29 January 2019.

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In our presentation we summarise our plans of collaboration within a forthcoming project leads by Juan Pedro Monferrer. The first step consists in a survey of Marie-Therese d’Alverny’s paper on Marc of Toledo and his translations commanded by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and master Maurice (it includes a summary of their edition, their philological analysis and commentaries). The second step combines a review synthesis of ibn Tūmart doctrine. With the third step, we enter what we consider the most relevant part of our contribution. We analyse key aspects of Rodrigo’s intellectual-political biography; the context of his Historia arabum as strategic political narrative, and his rational more than tolerant attitude toward Muslims and the Arab culture. Through this third step of our study, Marc of Toledo’s translations could be considered as an instrument which served Jiménez de Rada’s political purposes.

KNOWING THE SHADOW. PRIME MATTER AND ITS KNOWABILITY IN THE 13TH CENTURY

Conference: Matter, Mind, and More. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin (DE), 9 November 2018.

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Matter, and especially prime matter, is a ubiquitous, somewhat shadowy, and yet central philosophical notion. A sort materia phantastica, as Francis Bacon famously observed stating that its description is not but “a hard and perverse desire”, prime matter has been a philosophical conundrum for centuries. Medieval thinkers were aware of that, although their acknowledgement of these peculiarities has been gradual and, eventually, coincided with their detachment from this bizarre concept. A central moment of this process are the manifold and intricate discussions on matter in the thirteenth century—discussions that, as you might know, are also the subject of my research. The thirteenth century, though, is marked by what we could define as a doctrinal rupture that implied a gradual detachment from a Timaeus-based narrative and an Arabic-shaping of some new Aristotelian tendencies.

SOURCES OF LIGHT: REMARKS ON THE GROSSETESTE/AVICEBRON CONNECTION

Conference Science Imagination and Wonder – Robert Grosseteste and His Legacy. University of Oxford, Oxford (UK), 3-6 April 2018.

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Robert Grosseteste’s doctrine of light, with its metaphysical and physical implications, is one of the most intriguing and fascinating theories of the Latin Middle Ages. Identified with the first form joining matter in God’s creation of the universe, but also used to explain physical dynamics of movement and causality, lux and lumen, its ontical correlative, play a pivotal role in Grosseteste’s scientific and philosophical reflection. What sources Grosseteste used to ground his theory? Recent studies have pointed out the relevance of peculiar sources – such as Artephius’s Clavis sapientiae – for Grosseteste’s elaboration. Its main source, though, still appears to be a rather problematic work: Avicebron’s Font of Life – with the possible addition of the Latin translator of this text, the Iberian philosopher Dominicus Gundissalinus. In my paper, I will re-assess the problem of the Grosseteste/Avicebron connection in relation to the doctrine of light. Problems of consistency within Grosseteste’s approach and reflection will be addressed in order to understand the reasons behind his acceptation of a redundant, but yet metaphorical and marginal point of Ibn Gabirol’s speculation, hopefully casting some light on whether the Font of Life actually is the main source of Grosseteste’s doctrine.

NICHOLAS OF CUSA AND GUNDISSALINUS: A PRELUDE ON MATTER

Conference: East-Western Transmission of Knowledge. Universidad de Córdoba, Cordoba (ES), 3 April 2018.

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Two hundred and fifty years and around a thousand miles separate the peculiar thinkers on which this talk is going to focus: Dominicus Gundissalinus and Nicholas of Cusa. While the latter is surely one of the most original and important thinkers of the Renaissance, Gundissalinus is a rather unstudied and often forgotten character of that ‘philosophical revolution’ taking place between the end of the twelfth- and the beginning of the thirteenth century. Living in different times and places, both Gundissalinus and Cusa are eminent witnesses of the exhaustion of shared philosophical traditions and the very construction of new frameworks and theoretical landscapes.

ARABIC PHILOSOPHY IN LATIN EUROPE BEFORE MICHAEL SCOT

Conference: Crossing Lands. Spreading knowledge in the Near East and the Mediterranean from Late Antiquity to Middle Ages. Universidad de Córdoba, Cordoba (ES), 14 March 2018.

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Circulation, reception, and criticism of Arabic philosophy during the fifty years separating Gundissalinus and Michael Scot is yet a matter of hypothesis, if not a real mystery: few authors and texts are available, while the destination of the Toledan translations, and consequently their demand, is still unproven, In this paper, I will try to re-address the question of how these texts circulated throughout Europe by asking an additional question, that is, how successful was Gundissalinus’s peculiar attempt at merging Avicenna’s and Ibn Gabirol’s metaphysical accounts, a question which, in turn, corresponds to asking what is the history of the effects of Gundissalinus’s ontology in the first decades after its elaboration.

CHAOS IN TOLEDO: GUNDISSALINUS, DANIEL OF MORLEY, AND THE CHARTREAN TRADITION

Conference: Scire naturam: filosofia e ciências, da antiguidade ao início da modernidade. Universidade do Porto, Porto (PT), 26-28 February 2018.

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My contribution focuses on a specific and fascinating historical moment of the course of the doctrine of primordial chaos – the end of the twelfth century – and on two peculiar authors, Dominicus Gundissalinus and Daniel of Morley. They are two important witnesses of how the Greek- and Arabic-into-Latin translation movements progressively reshaped the philosophical approach to the doctrine of primordial chaos and to Plato’s Timaeus in general. Both studying in Toledo in the second half of the century, Gundissalinus and Daniel supposedly had access to a wide range of new sources through which construct a different description of the cosmic institution beyond the traditional reference to Plato. Both authors combine Arabic sources with twelfth-century auctoritates: the outcomes of their reflections, though, are rather different in both scope and approach.

DOMINGO GUNDISALVO Y DANIEL DE MORLEY ACERCA DEL ESTABLECIMIENTO Y CONSERVACIÓN DEL UNIVERSO

Conference: Explicatio y ratio naturae. Comprensiones medievales sobre el origen del universo. Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona (ES), 16 January 2018.

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Daniel of Morley’s Philosophia and Dominicus Gundissalinus’s De processione mundi are two very relevant synthesis of twelfth-century cosmology. Written in the same period, both works receive the new texts translated into Latin in Toledo, but with very different approaches: while Gundissalinus grounds his reflection on metaphysical sources, and Avicenna in particular, Daniel tends to use with more perspicacity the natural writings translated in the previous decades. My contribution will analyse the discussion on primary and secondary causality presented by these two authors, pointing out how a very same phenomenon, i.e., the Toledan translation movement, can be seen as the origin of two extremely different reflections, which nonetheless share the same purpose of contributing to the solution of the very same problems and questions on the derivation of the ontological multiplicity from God.

TRADUCCIÓN Y CIRCULACIÓN DEL CONOCIMIENTO ÁRABE A FINALES DEL SIGLO XII: UNAS NOTAS DE INTRODUCCIÓN

Conference: Oriente próximo y la cuenca del Mediterráneo. Fe, creencia y transmisión textual entre lo canónico y lo apócrifo. Universidad de Córdoba, Cordoba (ES), 30 November 2017.

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Los mil años que separan la caída de Roma y las noventa y nueve tesis de Lutero están marcados por un incesante movimiento de personas, confines, ideas, mercancías, problemas y libros. Mediante estos movimientos, conocimientos y practicas circularon más allá de toda frontera geográfica, teológica y cultural, remodelando y refundando enteras tradiciones que estaban atadas entre sí por numerosos factores y un mar común. En sus orillas, se hablaban cuatro lenguas principales: árabe, hebreo, latín, y griego. Los movimientos de traducción que tuvieron lugar en todo el Mediterráneo durante la Edad Media y el Renacimiento estaban finalizados en superar estos límites lingüísticos y hacer disponible nuevo y precioso conocimiento. Se trata de una larga historia, cuyas raíces departen del comienzo mismo de la civilización humana.

MATTER OF CHANGE: PHILOSOPHICAL CLAIMS AND RELIGIOUS CONCERNS ON THE SUBSTRATE

Conference: Pre-Modern Sciences and Religions. Harvard University, Cambridge (MA), 6-7 November 2017.

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The concept of matter is integral to the history of philosophy, and yet, it is also a source of puzzling problems and doctrinal tensions for almost every discipline thematising its notion. One of these tensions arising from the philosophical enquiry on matter appears as crucial: that is, the relation between matter and God. Up to the end of the twelfth century, this relation is mainly established and discussed in cosmogonic terms: matter, providing the ‘ontological leap’ from spiritual to corporeal beings, must enter the description of the world institution from its very beginning, as a direct effect of God’s creation. At the same time, though, in this relation matter appears to be characterised by an intimate ‘otherness’: God’s creative power, absolute unity and true being are the opposite of matter’s inert status, intrinsically tending to multiplicity and chaos, posited ‘between some kind of substance and nothing’ (with Plato) and yet furnishing tangible existence to the bodies. In my talk, I am going to discuss four twelfth-century authors who engaged with the problem of matter and God, starting with Calcidius’s Latin translation of Plato’s Timaeus. They are Peter Lombard, William of Conches, Honorius of Autun, David of Dinant, and Dominicus Gundissalinus.

EFFECTUS, AFFECTUS, AND DEFECTUS: CAUSALITY AND CAUSATION OF THE SUBSTRATE

Conference: Aspectus and Affectus: Robert Grosseteste, Understanding and Feeling. Georgetown University, Washington DC, 30 March-1 April 2017.

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Based on the same Latin verb facio, the terms ‘affectus’, ‘effectus’, and ‘defectus’ are widely used by the Latin philosophers in reference to different disciplines and peculiar problems of the reflection on, among others, being, soul, and knowledge. By a metaphysical viewpoint, these concepts are bound to each other as they describe three ontological situations reciprocally connected as different aspects of a causal event. From that event, something (a.) is caused following the casual footprints of the event (effectus); (b.) it receives (and, in some case, provides) an accidental or substantial disposition (affectus), which is characterised by (c.) its lack of different characteristics or further improvement of those characteristics that the thing already has from the causal event (defectus). Often developed through slightly different vocabularies and theoretical contexts, the doctrinal genesis of this causal dynamic is connected to Aristotle’s thematization of physics and metaphysics, and its interpretations by the Muslim and Jewish philosophical traditions. Finally available to the Latin philosophers since the end of the twelfth century, these pivotal sources will reshape the medieval debate on physics and metaphysics up to the Early-Modern Period. In my talk I will examine a border-line case of this metaphysical dynamic: the substrate of corporeal bodies, matter, and its role in the constitution of the hylomorphic compound. Specifically, I will focus on the problematic position of matter as a per se ontological defectus (i.e., complete lack of actuality) which affects and effects the caused being, examining the opposed approaches to this problem offered by Ibn Gabirol and Avicenna, and their Latin developments.

CONTRASTING PERSPECTIVES: THE LATINS, THE ARABS, AND THE RISE OF A NEW APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY

Conference: Filosofia Medieval: em curso e em toda a extensão. Universidade do Porto, Porto (PT), 12-13 January 2017.

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The translation movement from Arabic into Latin had long-lasting effects on Medieval speculation, allowing the Latin philosophers to deal with new doctrines, problems, and approaches thanks to the translated works by Aristotle, Avicenna or Averroes. While the acceptance and criticism of many of these theories will be fully achieved in the second half of the thirteenth century, the first phase of assimilation of the ‘new’ doctrines is marked by an enthusiastic and, perhaps, ingenuous approach. In my talk, I will analyse some examples of this Latin appropriations of ‘Arabic’ philosophy, dealing with some intriguing authors between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century (Gundissalinus, Daniel of Morley, Alexander Neckam, and Robert Grosseteste).

DOMINICUS GUNDISSALINUS AND THE RENOVATION OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

Conference: Translation and Philosophy: Gundissalinus and Ibn Daud in 12th Century Spain. University of South Carolina, Columbia (SC), 11 November 2016.

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Gundissalinus’s contribution is crucial and developed in a twofold way. On the one hand, indeed, the translating activity pursued by Gundissalinus and his participation to the ‘Avicenna project’ with Abraham Ibn Daud made available to the Latin public texts whose relevance is undeniable for the subsequent Aristotelization of medieval philosophy: and this is the case of Avicenna’s De anima and Liber de philosophia prima. But Gundissalinus’s choice to translate also peculiar writings like al-Kindi’s De radiis or Ibn Gabirol’s Fons vitae had permanent consequences on the reflections of many philosophers, like Grosseteste or Bacon. On the other hand, the second and even more important contribution by Gundissalinus is his original philosophical speculation as it is offered in the treatises he wrote. With those writings, Gundissalinus tried to fill the gap in the Latin philosophical framework in which he received his education, and thus, in the first place, Chartres. He tried to exceed the limits of the Timaic Platonism, criticising the doctrine of primordial chaos in a Gabirolian basis; refusing the theory of the demiurge following Avicenna’s doctrine of necessary being; revising the cosmological Platonism of Hermann of Carinthia’s De essentiis by putting them under a crypto-Aristotelian natural lens. The very same effort can be seen at work on Gundissalinus’s elaboration of a new articulation of science, the De divisione philosophiae, where he proposes a lay system of knowledge that could be able to integrate the new disciplines whose knowledge was made available thanks to the translation movement. And finally, a very similar scenario is provided by the consideration of his De anima, and his theoretical effort at assimilating the great news of the time, that is, Avicenna’s psychology.

6.3 CONGRESS TALKS

THE SOUND OF SILENCE: USING CONFUSED PERCEPTIONS TO CONCEIVE METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES

2023 International Medieval Congress Leeds, University of Leeds (UK), 3-6 July 2023.

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What does one hear when listening to silence? And what when one says that she’s seeing darkness? According to the Scholastic philosopher Giles of Rome (1243-1316), these borderline perceptual cases are analogical with the epistemological process by which we can grasp prime matter, the metaphysical entity which constitute all bodies. In my talk, I will expand on Giles of Rome’s discussion of the metaphor of silence as speaking of the conceivability of prime matter. First, I will shortly present why prime matter appears to be ungraspable by definition in reason of its formlessness and extensionlessness. Second, I will examine Giles of Rome’s solution to the conceivability puzzle. I will start from his (short) introduction of the analogical method in his commentary on the Physics and move on to the (long) treatment of how humans can know prime matter in his Hexaemeron. Finally, I will scrutinize Giles of Rome’s account by contrasting it with both its sources (Augustine, Calcidius) and later developments (Francisco Suárez, Manuel Góis).

sYSTEMATISING MATTER IN COIMBRA: MANUEL DE GÓIS ON THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF PRIME MATTER

15th International Congress of SIEPM, University of Paris, Paris (FR), 22-26 August 2022.

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In writing the Coimbra commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Manuel de Góis attempted an overall systematisation of how this central text ought to be interpreted. The aim of the commentary implied De Góis to engage with a wide web of often opposite theories and sources and give a broad picture of how the natural world should be considered, understood, and described. Yet some central items entailed by the Scholastic explanation of nature exceeded nature itself: this is the case of prime matter. My talk will discuss De Góis’s treatment of matter in his commentary on the first book of the Physics. I will focus particularly on the question inquiring about the definition, conceivability, and name of prime matter (bk 1, ch. 9, q. 2). How does the Coimbra commentary engage with these problematic aspects arising from an epistemological consideration of prime matter? How are De Góis’s claims related to his stances about the ontology of this peculiar entity? And how does the insertion of new sources that were unavailable in the Middle Ages, like Plotinus, impact on the consideration of prime matter as epistemic object? First, I will present some of the main problems entailed by an epistemological consideration of prime matter. Second, I will analyse how the Coimbra commentary on the Physics deals with this problem through the discussion of definition, conception, and name of prime matter. Finally, I will examine how De Góis’s stances are connected to his general interpretation of hylomorphism and the role that both new and old sources play in his solution to the problem about the conceivability of prime matter.

FORMLESSNESS AND METAPHORS OF AN ELUSIVE SUBSTRATE: FACING THE EPISTEMIC OBSCURITY OF PRIME MATTER

57th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo (MI), 9-14 May 2022.

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The notion of matter (materia) was a common reference in technical and philosophical texts throughout the Middle Ages. While the tradition shifted from early-medieval Platonism to late-medieval Aristotelianism, the term “materia” never ceased to be at the centre of problems, debates, and controversies. During this process, this notion was reshaped, gradually acquiring new disciplinary epistemes that expanded on the explanatory functions that matter was required to carry out. In my talk, I want to discuss one specific aspect that is common to most theories of matter formulated throughout the early and later Middle Ages alike: how can humans conceive matter? This question characterised many discussions of primordial or prime matter, that is, the substrate of the physical universe that in itself is intangible, unperceivable, and formless. Being so remote from human perception and reasoning, prime matter might appear to be a mere abstraction or even an epistemic void placed at the very heart of the study of nature. How can anyone know anything about something with no forms nor qualifications? To justify an epistemic access to prime matter, medieval actors formulated a plurality of strategies to conceive such elusive substrate. My talk will focus on one of these strategies, which is based on Plato’s Timaeus and Calcidius’s commentary. According to this strategy, matter can be grasped by incidental perception, like when we see darkness without actually seeing anything. How should we understand this peculiar statement? And how was it treated by medieval actors? Focusing on some meaningful case studies from the 12^th and 13^th centuries, I will examine the interpretive fragmentation of this procedure, also in relation to another analogical approach proposed by Aristotle in Physics I 7 to justify the conceivability of prime matter.

COGNICIONES PROBLEMÁTICAS: SUÁREZ, LOS CONIMBRICENSES Y EL RETO EPISTEMOLÓGICO DE LA MATERIA PRIMERA

VIII Congreso Internacional Iberoamericano de la Sociedad de Filosofía Medieval: De cognitione. Universidade do Porto, Porto (PT), 6-8 September 2021.

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En la Escolástica medieval, la doctrina del ilemorfismo pone las bases del estudio de la naturaleza tanto a nivel de movimiento natural (mutación sustancial y accidental) como de constitución ontológica de los entes corpóreos. Entre los distintos aspectos relacionados al ilemorfismo medieval, la correlación entre ontología y epistemología de la materia primera parece haber jugado un papel principal en la justificación de las posibilidades epistémicas de la filosofía natural. Se trata de dos preguntas fundamentales: ¿cuál es el estatuto ontológico de la materia primera? ¿Y cómo es posible tener intelección de esta entidad? En esta presentación examinaré el problema escolástico de la cognocibilidad de la materia primera desde el punto de vista de una obras muy particular: las Disputationes metaphysicae de Francisco Suárez. Mediante su discusión de como los seres humanos puedan tener cognición de la materia primera será posible abordar la cuestión histórica acerca de cómo aspectos principales del ilemorfismo fueron desarrollados en la segunda escolástica.

MATTER AS EPISTEMIC OBJECT: INTELLECTION, MANIPULATION, AND PARTICULARISATION IN THE 13TH CENTURY

2019 Meeting of the History of Science Society. Utrecht (NL), 23-27 July 2019.

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The paper explores the richness of scientific and philosophical approaches to matter in the thirteenth century. The twelfth-century Arabic- and Greek-into-Latin translation movements provided, in a relatively short time, Latinate audience with different accounts of matter as epistemic object proper to diverse disciplines—natural philosophy, logic, metaphysics, as well as alchemy, medicine, and astronomy. I will discuss tensions and implications arising from a consideration of such a plurality of meanings and theories of matter and materiality in the thirteenth century.

ROBERT GROSSETESTE: PATTERNS OF CAUSALITY, MATTER, LIGHT, AND THE DIVINE

2019 International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, Leeds (UK), 1-4 July 2019.

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Light. From the myth of the cave of Plato’s Republic to the holy atar of Zoroastrianism, up to the dreams of galactic warp-engines, light has always played an enveloping role in human imagination and thought. Light is intimately related to goodness, in its founding link with the Idea of the Good, again in Plato’s Republic, which shines goodness over the universe in analogy to the Sun, whose light provides visibility and, therefore, truth and even existence upon the world. Light also coincides with being, existence, and form. In Plotinus’s Enneads, for instance, the images of the transcendent forms, like rays of light, are reflected off the darkness of matter as off a dark mirror. Finally, light is perspicuity of knowledge, the final resolution of doxastic belief as expounded by Augustine’s theory of divine illumination and, following a much-complicated process, Aristotle’s theory of the soul in its Arabic and Latin developments.

FROM MATTER TO MATERIALITY: PREMODERN QUESTS FOR KNOWING THE PRINCIPLE OF CORPOREALITY

2018 Meeting of the History of Science Society. Seattle (WA), 1-4 November 2018.

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For a premodern scientist, matter is what made an apple this apple and also distinguished that apple from the mental idea. Matter was the carrier of three-dimensional extension and the bearer of forms, which in turn articulated the patterns of definition, shape, and intrinsic nature of this or any apple. Premodern knowing depended on form whence matter appears to inevitably escape it – as matter is, by definition, what is other than form. How was the premodern understanding of corporeality shaped by the grounding and yet shadowy functions by matter? And how could premodern thinkers grasp what matter is – and subsequently how it can properly satisfy the physical conditions of dimensionality and corporeality – if matter cannot be known? This paper will examine two alternative strategies that were put in place to resolve this puzzle in the High Middle Ages: the denial that knowing matter is possible (Aquinas) and the assumption that it can be known albeit feebly and mediatedly (Scotus and Ockham). While both strategies meant to resolve this puzzle, they also contributed to stress the theoretical flaws which originated by the tension between the physical functions of matter and its (un)knowability. This crucial impasse would facilitate the identification of matter and materiality, as it required philosophers and scientists to provide new answers and narratives beyond the Aristotelian tradition and to drastically contribute to the final ousting of Aristotelian metaphysics from natural science.

EXPANDING MATTER: COSMOLOGIES OF LIGHT IN ARTEPHIUS AND GROSSETESTE

53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies. Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo (MI), 10-13 May 2018.

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Light and Matter. My paper will examine the interaction between these two principles of existence in the intriguing cosmologies elaborated by two peculiar authors: ‘Artephius’ (Clavis sapientiae) and Robert Grosseteste (De luce). Examination of their cosmogonies and descriptions of the first moments of the universal institution will provide the ground to address the intricate question of how a mysterious Hermetical text and a well-known English philosopher shared the same approach to the never-ending problem of matter’s dimensionality.

ACCORDANCE AND STRIFE: ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY AT THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

ACPA Conference Philosophy, Faith and Modernity. Dallas (TX), 16-19 November 2017.

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Since its very beginning, Christian philosophy received the crucial influence of Neoplatonic metaphysics. Augustine and Boethius, are the peak of a well-known process which shaped many aspects of the reflection on God and His creation throughout the Middle Ages. Among these themes, the discussion of the ontological difference between the Creator and His creation is one of the most intriguing, and it is as well the subject of this talk. Specifically, I will exposit two different strategies in dealing with this problem, elaborated by two very peculiar thinkers of the twelfth century—David of Dinant and Dominicus Gundissalinus. Their reflections, indeed, are marked by the reception of the new translations from Greek and Arabic realised in the second half of the twelfth century, translations that were to reshape the Latin philosophical debate in its entirety. David and Gundissalinus, then, are two witnesses of a first and radical approach to these scientific novelties, aspects of that ‘modernity’ the medieval thinkers had to face in the thirteenth century, and beyond.

SCIENCES OF MATTER? KNOWLEDGE OF THE MATERIAL SUBSTRATE IN THE TWO BACONS

2017 Meeting of the History of Science Society. Toronto (ON), 9-12 November 2017.

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Separated by more than three centuries, the figures of Roger Bacon (ca. 1220 – ca. 1292) and Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) are exemplar cases of the problematic relation between philosophy and science. Both attempted to revolutionise the scientific method of their day by criticizing causes of error, albeit under opposite circumstances. On the one hand, Roger attacked the ‘scholastic method’ as entangled in the passive use of philosophical authorities rather than in knowledge making based on experience. On the other, Francis elaborated a new speculative method which, in his eyes, could supersede the Aristotelian tradition grounded on late scholasticism, which included Roger’s views. Both thinkers thus studied physics with their peculiar interest, yet both had to also address the problem of matter as the irreducible root of physical reality. Roger lamented the lack of a detailed discussion on matter in the Aristotelian corpus, whereas Francis stressed the excesses of the Aristotelian approach to physics in answering the question of the knowability of matter, that is, if matter in itself—rather than what is material—can be known. My paper will focus on this fundamental aspect of the history of a ‘science of matter’ in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern Period. In particular, I will show how and why the birth of the ‘science of matter’ would require the definitive sacrifice of the philosophical notion of matter proper to the Aristotelian tradition, and replace it by a quantitative (and thus mathematizable) concept of matter.

GUNDISALVO, GUILLERMO DE AUVERNIA, Y EL PROBLEMA DE ATRIBUCIÓN DEL DE IMMORTALITATE ANIMAE

VII Congreso Internacional Iberoamericano de la Sociedad de Filosofía Medieval: De relatione. Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Barcelona (ES), 14-16 November 2016.

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Entre las obras atribuidas a Gundisalvo, el tratado De immortalitate animae pone algunos problemas de primaria importancia. De hecho, existen dos versiones de la obra, con dos diferentes tradiciones manuscritas que atribuyen el tratado a Gundisalvo y a Guillermo de Auvernia, aspecto que ha suscitado, en las últimas décadas, la refutación de la paternidad gundisalviana del De immortalitate por muchos autores. En esta contribución se tomarán en cuenta los datos presentados a favor y en contra de la atribución a Gundisalvo y a Guillermo, con particular atención a la ontología en que se basa en tratado y a la posible historia del texto. Por último, se intentará proponer una hipótesis de investigación que pueda contribuir a la vexata quaestio sobre la paternidad de esta obra muy peculiar.

‘NATURA VERO ASSIMILATUR QUATERNARIO’: ALCUNE OSSERVAZIONI SULLA NUMEROLOGIA DEL DE PROCESSIONE MUNDI

VI Congreso Internacional Iberoamericano de la Sociedad de Filosofía Medieval: De natura. Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca (ES), 4 December 2012.

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Il De processione mundi di Dominicus Gundissalinus propone una struttura cosmogonica e ontologica incentrata sulla dottrina dell’essere necessario di Dio in opposizione all’essere possibile delle creature, proponendo una versione corretta dell’ilemorfismo universale gabiroliano. In questa processione cosmogonica, la causalità divina si esplica nei due distinti piani di realtà – ontologico e ontico – come creatio, compositio e generatio. La trattazione gundissaliniana della causa non si esaurisce però del tutto nella dottrina delle tre causazioni recepita da Ermanno di Carinzia: nel trattato possiamo infatti rintracciare alcuni riferimenti alla teoria numerologica che a prima vista risultano abbastanza oscuri, ma che si rivelano di notevole interesse ad un esame più attento.

6.4 CONFERENCE TALKS

REASSESSING GUNDISSALINUS ON PRIME MATTER

2023 AAIWG International Conference, Marmara University, Istanbul (TR), 29 May – 1 June 2023.

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Dominicus Gundissalinus, a 12th-century philosopher, is a transitional figure in the development of philosophy from pre-Scholastic to Scholastic thought. He is one of the first Latin thinkers to engage systematically with hylomorphism. Gundissalinus’s approach to this theory is unique in several ways. While he draws primarily from Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron) and Avicenna, he shows little direct engagement with Aristotle, and his approach is grounded in the 12th-century framework with its Platonic nuances, even as he moves toward Aristotelianism. In my talk, I will examine Gundissalinus’s theory of prime matter through the lenses of the most debated issues in scholastic hylomorphism. First, I will discuss how Gundissalinus engaged with the dual functions that prime matter was supposed to carry out in medieval Aristotelianism according to its role as substrate of substantial change and potency of the compound. Second, I will address Gundissalinus’s solution to the problem of how matter is related to the form focusing particularly on his formal pluralism and the problem of the emergence of the three dimensions. In my conclusions, I will summarise the implications of Gundissalinus’s hylomorphism and its impact on the tradition.

ROGER BACON ON PRIME MATTER, ELEMENTS, AND MIXTURES: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES

Workshop: Materia, 气/Qì, and Their Epistemes. KU Leuven and University of Science and Technology Beijing, Leuven (BE) and Beijing (CN), 10-11 December 2021.

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Among the most problematic items devised by medieval metaphysics, prime matter was a cornerstone of the Scholastic examination of the ontological structure What is a body made of? This question has been scrupulously discussed by European medieval philosophers for centuries. Its answers had to delve into both physical and metaphysical considerations of bodies, trying to solve frictions originated from Aristotle’s texts and their authoritative interpretations. In my talk, I will discuss Roger Bacon’s claim that the substrate of elemental transmutation and generation and corruption of mixtures is not prime but natural matter. I will examine the main features characterising natural matter in relation to its substrate to both elements and mixtures and consider the state of this matter considered per se and under the instantiation of elements and mixtures. This examination will allow for some fundamental preliminary questions about the possibility of historical and philosophical comparison of Bacon’s theory with the process of instantiation of 理 into chunks of 气 elaborated by in the context of 宋明理學, to be discussed with the other participants in the workshop.

ROGER BACON ON MATTERS, POTENCIES, AND CHANGE

Conference: The Elusive Substrate: Prime Matter and Hylomorphism from Ancient Rome to Early Qing China. KU Leuven, Leuven (BE), 5 November 2021.

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Grounded on interpretations of Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics, later medieval theories of hylomorphism tend to be characterised by harshly debated opposite positions. This is evident with many aspects of the hylomorphic partnership constituting bodily substance: discussions on the ontological condition of prime matter, its uniformity in both super- and sublunary realms, and the number and graduality of substantial forms within a compound were controversial aspects of a heated debate. Yet it seems that most medieval philosophers agreed upon some general points, mostly related to the functionality of matter and form within the compound. Concerning prime matter, two main functions seem to characterise its contribution to both the constitution of the natural world and its vicissitudes. Prime matter is (1) the enduring substrate of substantial change that perdures when a new substantial form is educed, and (2) it expresses the potentiality of the compound to be transmuted into something else. It may be argued that the metaphysical necessity of prime matter arises from these two main functions. In my talk, I will challenge this assumption by examining the strange case of Roger Bacon’s hylomorphism. Contrary to mainstream philosophers of the time, Bacon’s reading of Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes led him to formulate a rather curious yet intrinsically coherent hylomorphic system based on a plurality of metaphysical matters and forms nested within the compounds. After a short analysis of Bacon’s hylomorphic pluralism, I will discuss Bacon’s answer to two key questions: What is the metaphysical substrate of the elements? And what ontological part expresses the potency of a compound? I will argue that, although for Bacon prime matter does not carry out any of the main functions usually ascribed to this entity, it is nonetheless integral to the constitution of both bodily and spiritual worlds.

MAJOR ISSUES IN MEDIEVAL HYLOMORPHIC THEORY

With Zita Toth. De Wulf Mansion Centre Research Day, KU Leuven, Leuven (BE), 14 June 2021.

MEDIEVAL UNIVERSES IN DISORDER

Talk, MeLO Seminar. KU Leuven, Leuven (BE), 12 March 2021.

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In the 12th century, primeval chaos was a shared cosmogonical theory, discussed and accepted by an impressive number of philosophers and theologians. Grounded on the Timaeus, the kind of hylomorphism that was applied to this theory was often proceeding from Calcidius. Yet what happens to the theory of primeval chaos after the “Aristotelian shift” of the 13th century? How did Scholasticism interact with this curious theory which seems in open contradiction with the central tenets of the Aristotelian framework? Primeval chaos was maintained by some “best sellers” of the time, like Plato’s Timaeus, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and many works by theologians like Augustine, Hugh of St Victor, and Peter Lombard. How did Scholastic philosophers interact with these authoritative coordinates when primeval chaos appeared to be untenable? In my paper, I will first discuss the central tenets of the main sources working as authoritative coordinates up to the 12th century. Second, after a short examination of the arguments against primeval chaos elaborated in the 12th century, I will analyse how three 13th-century philosophers – Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, and Albert the Great – engaged with the problem of primeval chaos in their commentaries on Aristotle. From there, I will draw my conclusions on how the theory of primeval chaos was discussed by 13th-century philosophers adopting a completely different set of authoritative coordinates who substantively changed the way in which this theory was conceived.

12TH-CENTURY PERSPECTIVES ON MATTER, WITH AND WITHOUT ARISTOTLE

Conference: Prime Matter: The Ontological Stakes of Physical Endurance. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin (DE), 28 February 2020.

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Although the main coordinates of Aristotle’s hylomorphism were known to Latin philosophers even before those translations, the concept of “prime matter” seems to arise in the Latinate world only between the end of the 12^th and the beginning of the 13^th centuries, circumscribed by Aristotle’s own works. Earlier in the tradition, materia prima better corresponds, if such a terminological distinction can be allowed, to the “first” rather than “prime” matter of the universe, cosmologically connoted yet deprived of many of the features characterising its Aristotelian cognate, “prime matter”. Although defined by different and oscillating characteristics than prime matter, this first, primordial, and original matter of the universe envisioned by early-medieval thinkers was still a matter whose corporeal or incorporeal status needed to be addressed. My talk will focus on this specific and rather understudied problem of medieval philosophy: Was early-medieval first matter corporeal or even material? Under what circumstances can matter be said to be a body? And finally, what was the horizon of this problem, considering the early-medieval lack of direct access to Aristotle’s metaphysical and natural works? I will address these questions through four case-studies corresponding to four different models elaborated to answer the question of the emergence of corporeity. They are the “Incorporeal Body”, the “Bodily Matter”, the “Coincidence of Accidents”, and the “Abstraction without Subsistence” models.

MATTER, APPREHENSION, AND METAPHYSICS: PREJUDICES IN FAVOUR OF THE ACTUAL?

Conference: De intellectu. Greek, Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew Texts and Their Influence on Medieval Philosophy. A Tribute to Rafael Ramón Guerrero. Universidade do Porto, Porto (PT), 6-7 February 2020.

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Originated within the Aristotelian tradition yet somewhat alien to Aristotle himself, like a virus prime matter spread to other traditions and latitudes, in different disciplines and periods. A matter of research and teaching, the notion of prime matter seems to be unavoidable for any scholar of medieval philosophy. With this talk, I would like to problematise it by asking some questions about not only the medieval discussion of this notion, but also concerning our preliminary comprehension of what prime matter is or better was. On the one hand, such a preliminary and often unspoken comprehension can be considered as a sort of prejudice that, as such, needs to be clarified in order to positively proceed to the historical examination of this notion. On the other hand, this preliminary problematisation would help to specify the ontological commitment of our own philosophical theories applied to the interpretation of those doctrines.

AVICENNIAN COSMOLOGIES? REMARKS ON GROSSETESTE AND “THE ARABS”

Aquinas and the Arabs Annual Fall Meeting. Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City (MX), 23-25 August 2018.

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It is usually acknowledged that Robert Grosseteste was one of the first thirteenth-century Latin philosopher to study, quote, and be influenced by ‘the Arabs,’ particularly Avicenna, Averroes, and Ibn Gabirol. At a closer look, the situation appears to be rather different, as Grosseteste’s use of his sources – rarely mentioned by name – is very peculiar. This paper explores both presence and influence of Islamicate authors on Grosseteste’s early production, stressing the originality of his approach to the philosophy of ‘the Arabs.’

‘INDEED, THE SOUL HAS NOT BEEN MADE BY THE FIRST MAKER’: CREATION, IMITATION, AND MATTER

Conference: Creation and Artifice. The Warburg Institute, London (UK), 1-2 June 2017.

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Gundissalinus’s radical interpretation of Ibn Gabirol’s account of matter as presented in his Fons vitae has pivotal implications for the Archdeacon’s cosmogonic theory. Gundissalinus considers God’s creative action to be limited to the creation and first composition of matter and form generally speaking (De processione mundi). As a consequence, the causative and institutive process of the temporal world in itself and in its parts has to be based upon the causality of a secondary cause. In Gundissalinus’ eyes, this secondary cause does not create (for creation is always ex nihilo), but rather moulds matter through a series of secundariae compositiones which imitate God’s causality in ‘creating’ new bodies and souls every day (De anima, De processione mundi). In my talk, I will examine Gundissalinus’s peculiar interpretation of creation from matter on the basis of his sources (starting with Ibn Gabirol and Ibn Daud), and I will draw a first sketch of the dissemination and the influence of his positions on thirteenth-century debates concerning matter and universal hylomorphism.

I NUMERI DELLA NATURA: TESTIMONIANZE NUMEROLOGICHE IN GUNDISALVI E GROSSATESTA

Conference: Rappresentazioni della natura nel Medioevo. Università di Padova, Padua (IT), 24-27 May 2017.

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Il nesso tra numeri e ordine naturale, variamente trattato dalle fonti tardoantiche della speculazione medievale (Agostino, Macrobio e Marziano Capella in particolare), trova nel dodicesimo secolo una nuova portata teoretica legata alla pervasiva tematizzazione del concetto di natura. Il caso più emblematico a riguardo è sicuramente la riflessione di Teodorico di Chartres, che lega la tematica numerologica alla costituzione stessa dell’essere creaturale. Lo sviluppo di questo tema nella riflessione di Domenico Gundisalvi e Roberto Grossatesta costituisce l’oggetto del presente contributo. Per entrambi questi autori, la matematica costituisce uno strumento indispensabile per la comprensione della realtà. In Gundisalvi, probabile autore del Liber mahameleth, lo studio dei numeri ha una validità primariamente pratica che però risulta di grande rilevanza per la dimostrazione della completezza della creazione, come richiesto dal programma metafisico proposto nel De divisione philosophiae. In Grossatesta, la matematica, accompagnata dalla geometria, ha un valore cruciale e fondativo per lo studio della realtà fisica, in particolare negli scritti successivi al 1225 e alla piena formulazione della sua teoria della luce. Tanto il De processione mundi di Gundisalvi (ed. Bülow, pp. 55,6-56,12) quanto il De luce di Grossatesta (ed. Panti, pp. 84,205-85,232) si concludono con una scansione numerologica della costituzione e della natura del creato. Il mio contributo si focalizzerà sull’esame di questi due brani, evidenziandone la portata dottrinale ed esaminando le relazioni genetico-dottrinali tra i due testi, al fine di comprendere come l’applicazione della numerologia al problema della composizione fisica trovi un coerente sviluppo dalla tematizzazione chartreana a quella oxoniense della prima metà del tredicesimo secolo, passando per Toledo.

ARISTOTELE A TOLEDO

Conference: Da Stagira a Parigi: prospettive aristoteliche tra Antichità e Medioevo. University of Pavia, Pavia (IT), 30-31 May 2016.

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Al momento della sua morte, avvenuta nel 1187, Gerardo ha tradotto dall’arabo al latino ben 71 opere, stando almeno all’eulogio scritto in suo onore dai suoi studenti; e tra questi scritti si trova un buon numero di opere aristoteliche: la Physica, il De generatione et corruptione, i primi tre libri delle Meteore, gli Analitici secondi ma anche gli pseudo-aristotelici Liber de causis e De causis proprietatum et elementorum quattuor. Manca quello che sarà il “piatto forte” dell’aristotelismo latino, la Metaphysica, che era già parzialmente disponibile tramite la translatio vetustissima di Giacomo da Venezia (comprendente i primi quattro libri) e la Metaphysica vetus che arrivava fino al sesto libro. Da Toledo, queste traduzioni aristoteliche si diffusero con estrema rapidità, insieme agli altri testi filosofici e scientifici resi disponibili in lingua latina, contribuendo all’Aristotelian shift del secolo successivo. Il mio intervento non si concentrerà sulla diffusione delle opere aristoteliche toledane in Europa, ma su una questione apparentemente secondaria, eppure di grande interesse per comprendere le modalità e gli sviluppi del movimento di traduzione toledano, aspetto preliminare ma fondamentale per comprendere la diffusione dei testi tradotti dall’arabo. Nello specifico, la questione cui tenterò di rispondere è se ci sia stata una ricezione degli scritti aristotelici tradotti da Gerardo già a Toledo, e quindi prima della disseminazione nel resto d’Europa, da Oxford a Parigi a Roma

DOMINICUS GUNDISSALINUS ENTRE TOLEDO, SEGOVIA Y CHARTRES: CONVERGENCIAS DOCTRINALES

Conference: Espacios de la filosofía medieval: Córdoba, Toledo y Paris. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid (ES), 9 March 2016.

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Mi presentación se concentra en la especulación metafísica de Gundisalvo, traductor y filósofo toledano del siglo XII y, junto a Ibn Daud, uno de los más importantes exponentes del llamado «circulo de Toledo». Los principales aspectos cosmológicos y ontológicos desarrollados por Gundisalvo en sus tratados De processione mundi y De unitate serán analizados a partir de la recepción gundisalviana de las fuentes arábigas traducidas en Toledo. En particular, mi análisis se enfoca sobre la convergencia entre dos conjuntos doctrinales fundamentales para Gundisalvo: por un lado, la especulación de Ibn Gabirol, cuyo Fons vitae constituye probablemente la fuente más importante del filósofo toledano. Por otro lado, examinaré como el substrato de la reflexión gundisalviana se sitúa rotundamente en la huella de la tradición chartreana, evidenciando como el recurso a la ontología gabiroliana corresponde a específicos problemas elaborados en Chartres, y cuya solución se propagará de Toledo a Oxford y Paris.

POSSIBILITÀ MATERIALI E NECESSITÀ FORMALI: LETTURE GUNDISSALINIANE DI IBN SINA, IBN GABIROL E IBN DAUD

Conference: Idee, testi e autori arabi ed ebraici e la loro ricezione latina. Università di Pavia, Pavia (IT), 3-4 December 2014.

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Nella sua riflessione metafisica, Gundissalinus mostra una progressiva presa di coscienza di alcune problematiche principali tanto in relazione alla progressione cosmogonica quanto rispetto all’analisi della composizione ontologica degli enti. In questo senso è possibile tracciare le tappe di questo percorso attraverso la problematizzazione della principale fonte dell’ontologia di Gundissalinus, ossia il Fons vitae di Ibn Gabirol, in relazione alla ricezione della metafisica avicenniana. In questo intervento analizzeremo come Gundissalinus “legge” Ibn Gabirol a partire dal De unitate et uno, prima opera in cui troviamo una decisa adesione tanto alla cosmologia quanto all’ontologia gabiroliane, per poi esaminare come tale adesione venga progressivamente problematizzata dapprima nel De anima e, in seguito, nel De processione mundi, dove l’analisi gundissaliniana è segnata dalla necessità di reinterpretare la riflessione di Ibn Gabirol alla luce della Metaphysica e della Physica di Ibn Sina: una nuova ermeneutica in cui l’influsso di Abraham Ibn Daud su Gundissalinus non è affatto indifferente.

LES SOURCES NÉOPLATONICIENNES ARABES DE LA COSMOLOGIE DE GUNDISSALINUS

Conference: Métaphysique et cosmologie médiévales. Héritages philosophiques du Livres des causes. Dijon (FR), 16 September 2014.

TOLEDO, CROCEVIA DI CULTURE: IL CASO DEL MOVIMENTO DI TRADUZIONE

Conference: Cantieri d’Autunno 2013. Università di Pavia, Pavia (IT), 15 October 2013.

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Il 6 maggio 1085, dopo un breve assedio, l’antica capitale visigota di Toledo, inglobata nel dominio andaluso fin dal 711, si arrese alle truppe di Alfonso VI di Castiglia, che prese possesso della città il 25 maggio. Città di frontiera, tra il mondo islamico degli almohadi e degli almoravidi e un mondo latino in cerca di un riscatto politico, spirituale e culturale rispetto all’altra sponda del Mediterraneo, Toledo visse nel dodicesimo secolo un periodo di fioritura sociale e scientifica molto particolare e pressoché unico nella sua storia. Caratteristica principale e condizione materiale per un simile sviluppo fu un melting pot culturale, formato dalla coabitazione e collaborazione tra mozarabi, musulmani, ebrei e cattolici: questo crogiuolo interculturale, favorito da un’amministrazione cittadina ancora tollerante, costituisce una sorta di unicum nella storia d’Europa. Perciò non sorprende che Toledo divenga, nella seconda metà del XII secolo, il fulcro di quel movimento di traduzione dall’arabo al latino che condusse alla “svolta aristotelica” del secolo successivo, traduzioni realizzate tramite la stretta collaborazione tra individui appartenenti a religioni e culture diverse, ma uniti dalla comune credenza in una validità universale del sapere scientifico e filosofico. In questo contributo tratteremo inizialmente della storia del XII secolo toledano, dei principali problemi affrontati nell’assimilazione della città al regno di Castiglia, e specialmente quelli relativi alla convivenza con la popolazione musulmana e mozarabica. In secondo luogo, passeremo all’analisi specifica delle condizioni che resero possibile il movimento di traduzione dall’arabo, colto come principale manifestazione delle peculiarità della società toledana (ma con uno sguardo anche alle altre esperienze di traduzione, sottolineandone le differenze), esaminandone personaggi, metodologie e lavori, per concludere con alcune brevi riflessioni sull’impatto dirimente di queste traduzioni per la storia del pensiero e della cultura europei.

GUNDISSALINUS AND AVICENNA: SOME REMARKS ON THE TEXTUAL PRESENCE OF AVICENNIAN ‘METAPHYSICA’

Conference: 12th- and 13th-Century Attempts to Translate Muslim and Jewish Texts into Latin. Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum (DE), 19 March 2013.

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My talk will focus on both Gundissalinus’s translation activity and his main metaphysical treatise, De processione mundi, examining a specific aspect of Gundissalinus’ double work as philosopher and translator. I will examine particularly the relationship between Gundissalinus’s first translation of the Ilahiyyat and the long quotation from that work in De processione mundi. By analysing the modifications proposed by Gundissalinus in his own work light will be shed on how these textual alterations imply a different theoretical understanding of Avicenna’s ontology.

7. Outreach

7.1 COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS

IPM MONTHLY: MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY TODAY

Chief editor of online magazine on medieval philosophy, since 2022.

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IPM Monthly is a magazine on Medieval Philosophy that aims at sharing valuable information about the field, as well as reflecting on its paths, issues, and future by engaging with the philosophical community. Click on the pictures below to find out more about the team.

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THE EXTENSIONS PROJECT

Co-founder of the interdisciplinary outreach project active since 2018.

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Project founders: Rosie Reed Gold (artist, London), Nicola Polloni (philosopher, Messina), Tom Lancaster (physicist, Durham), and Joshua Harvey (psychologist, Oxford).

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IBERICA PHILOSOPHICA MEDIAEVALIA

Editor of the monthly newsletter of SOFIME, 2017-2022.

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Monthly newsletter of Sociedad de Filosofía Medieval aimed at fostering interdisciplinary sharing of news and information among different branches of medieval scholarship. 2017-2022.

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7.2 EVENTS AND PROMOTIONS

WHAT DID MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY DO FOR US? CROSS-DISCIPLINARY ENTANGLEMENTS

Round table at the 2023 International Medieval Congress Leeds, University of Leeds (UK), 4 July 2023.

MINIMA MULTIMEDIALIA

Outreach campaign producing short videos popularising aspects of the medieval speculations on philosophy and science. Campaign launched in October 2020, still ongoing.

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PRESENCE IN ABSENTIA

Art performance by Rosie Reed Gold with Joshua Harvey and Nicola Polloni. Berlin, 2 August 2019.

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Art performance by Rosie Reed Gold with the assistance of Joshua Harvey and Nicola Polloni on the conceivability of what is present without being perceivable, following Calcidius’s texts on prime matter and the contemporary psychological discussion on perception.

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MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY UNLEASHED YOUTUBE CHANNEL

YouTube Channel offering a wide and varied selection of videos on medieval philosophy and science: lectures, conferences, popularising items, interviews.

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7.3 OUTREACH ARTICLES

A CINEMATIC JOURNEY THROUGH HISTORY AND DUTY: HU MEI’S CONFUCIUS (2010)

IPM Monthly 3/1 (2024).

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The old saying “of taste, there is no disputing” works with food as well as movies (and TV series, think of The Rings of Power). Historical movies and biographies rank among the most divisive genres in contemporary cinematography. Naturally, biographical movies can focus on a vast array of historical figures, and seldom have producers been so daring as to center their attention on the lives of philosophers. Indeed, philosophers rarely have adventurous lives, with a few exceptions aside (such as Plato, Boethius, Marx, and a few others). Even fewer are those whose stories tell of a drama that may be relatable to 21^st-century audiences. In general, laypeople often picture the lives of philosophers as serene, filled with contemplation, seldom crossed by the events of the outside world. Few figures in the history of philosophy defy this idea more than the greatest of all Chinese philosophers – sorry, Laozi! – and one of the most influential thinkers in human history: Kong Zi (孔子), that is, Confucius. The dramatic story of his life is told in a poetic fashion in the movie Confucius (孔子), directed by Hu Mei (胡玫). Released in 2010, it features Chow Yun-fat (周润发) as Confucius.

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PHILOSOPHY AND SNICKERDOODLES: AN INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD TAYLOR ON FESTIVE RECIPES AND AN OLD TRADITION

IPM Monthly 2/1 (2023).

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How are Averroes and al-Ghazali connected to Sponge cakes, Rice Krispies, and Snickerdoodles? In the cold lands of Wisconsin, when the freezing wind blows from the lake and reminds to everyone that autumn will soon become winter, a professor of philosophy has started a long-lasting tradition that has made life far sweeter for hundreds of students and professors of philosophy. IPM Monthly had to find out more about this. We contacted Richard Taylor, from Marquette University. In our interview, Richard expands on the list of students’ recipes that he has started to collect in 1986 and the reasons behind this fascinating tradition. He also gives some culinary advice and reflections on how to build rapport with the students when dealing with philosophy and its history.

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ХРАНИТЕЛИ – THE SOVIET VERSION OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS YOU NEED TO WATCH

IPM Monthly 1/ 7 (2022).

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The Coffee Break of our December issue invites you to dive into a “different” representation of Tolkien’s universe. You have enjoyed Peter Jackson’s trilogy of The Lord of the Rings and you might have been puzzled by the later trilogy The Hobbit (as many of us did). Now that 2022 is coming to an end, you have probably survived countless discussions, controversies, debates, and fights about Amazon’s The Rings of Power. Perhaps, you think you want some rest from Tolkien and the manifold ways in which the universe he created can be represented on the screen, waiting to listen to some Kzoo panels on the topic in the spring of 2023.

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THE ROS BEIAARD OF DENDERMONDE

IPM Monthly 1/2 (2022).

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Every ten years, in the Flemish town of Dendermonde, Belgium, something unique takes place. The quiet town is suddenly invaded by thousands of people coming from all over Belgium and abroad (more than eighty thousand in 2022). Starting from the banks of the river Scheldt, a historical costume parade of hundreds of Dendermondenaars (the town residents) and actors slowly marches through the streets of Dendermonde, representing with costumes and chariots the long history of this town and the legend of the Ros Beiaard. The majestic parade is crowned and closed by the Ros Beiaard, from which the festival takes its name. A gigantic wooden horse is brought around by the pijnders, three groups of twelve people that in turns carry the huge beast around and simulate the moves of a real horse. On top of it, four kids ride the horse. They are four brothers (also in real life) that represent the heemskinderen – Renaud de Montauban and his three brothers from the legend of the Beiaard. A huge crowd cheers the passage of the Ros Beiaard singing an old Flemish song (’t Ros Beyaert doet zyn ronde, in de Stadt van Dendermonde, ….) while an ecstatic feeling permeates tourists and locals alike.

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叙事的打破者 [THE BREAKER OF NARRATIVES]

Critique of Andrea Fagioli’s sculptures for 苏州市雕塑协会, Jan 2022.

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安德里亚·法吉奥利的艺术创作以艺术家与时间之流的恒常对话为显著特征。通过娴熟运用其矛盾性的在场与不在场、附着与分离，时间成为法吉奥利作品的隐秘主角。就像一个古老的神一样，时间在其创造性作用中显示着自身：它塑造命运与思想、生命与死亡、感情与信仰。尽管时间概念令许多艺术家为之着迷，但法吉奥利却以其独特的艺术视角描绘了时间在宇宙中的作用的一个不同方面。他的目光聚焦于时间对形式的无情重塑，它那更改样式、改变形式、揭开本应隐匿不见者的欢快而野蛮的流动。在这一更改形式、形状和结构的恒常过程中，时间仿佛在自娱自乐。

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L’OMBRA DI BREXIT SULL’ACCADEMIA INGLESE

In circolo. Rivista di filosofia e culture 2 (2016).

potestas essendi

Medieval philosophy and unconceivable stuff managed by Nicola Polloni

Nicola Polloni | CV

A few words of introduction

Internal structure of the CV

1.1 MAIN APPOINTMENTS

1.2 FURTHER WORK EXPERIENCE

1.3 EDUCATION

1.4 CONTINUING EDUCATION

1.5 AWARDS AND HONOURS

1.6 ACADEMIC VISITING STAYS

2.1 EDITORIAL BOARDS

2.2 POSITIONS IN LEARNED SOCIETIES

2.3 MEMBERSHIP OF LEARNED SOCIETIES

2.4 MEMBERSHIP OF SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEES

2.5 COLLABORATIONS: RESEARCH GRANTS

2.6 COLLABORATIONS: RESEARCH GROUPS

3.1 CONFERENCES

3.2 RESEARCH MEETINGS

3.3 CONGRESS PANELS

3.4 SKILLS WORKSHOPS

4.1 BOOKS

4.2 JOURNAL ARTICLES

4.3 EDITED VOLUMES

4.4 BOOK CHAPTERS

4.5 BOOK REVIEWS

5.1 COURSES AND READING GROUPS

5.2 ORGANISED SUMMER SCHOOLS

5.3 TEACHING SEMINARS

5.4 TEACHING ASSISTANCE

5.5 TEACHING PROGRAMMES

6.1 GUEST RESEARCH SEMINARS

6.2 INVITED LECTURES

6.2 INVITED CONFERENCE TALKS

6.3 CONGRESS TALKS

6.4 CONFERENCE TALKS

7.1 COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS

7.2 EVENTS AND PROMOTIONS

7.3 OUTREACH ARTICLES