Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Series 1, No. 36 Henry of Ghent stands out as a leading thinker, together with Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, of the second half of the thirteenth century. His rich and multifaceted thought influenced many different traditions; he has been seen as an eclectic. This book elucidates Henry of Ghent's philosophical and theological system with special reference to his Trinitarian writings. It also shows how Henry (d. 1293), the most influential theologian of his day in Paris, developed the Augustinian tradition in response to the Aristotelian tradition of...

This volume comprises Parts IV V of the Speculum Divinorum et Quorundam Naturalium of Henricus Bate and includes "On the Nature of Matter" and "On the Intellect as Form of Man."

In the month of June, 1995, the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies held its ninth International Colloquium at Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve. The Colloquium was devoted to Eriugena's hermeneutics and his interpretation of the Bible. The feature of Biblical hermeneutics is of main interest for a thinker like Eriugena. For him the source and the end of all truth is the understanding of Sacred Scripture. To unravel this inconcussa auctoritas diuinae Scripturae all hermeneutical skills have to be brought into play, in order to give rise to a true spiritual understanding of the...

This volume presents a critical edition of the final parts of Bate's Speculum. In these parts, which constitute the culmination of his Platonic-Aristotelian encyclopedia, Bate outlines a 'holistic' world-picture. Parts XX to XXII are devoted to the main topics of scholastic cosmology (the eternity of the world, the union of the heavenly bodies and their separate movers, the number and harmony of the spheres). Some original passages are of special interest for the history of medieval science: particularly Bate's theory of magnetism, his comments on observational errors, and his...

Concerning embryos, Porphyry takes an original view on issues that had been left undecided by his teacher Plotinus and earlier by the doctor Galen. What role is played in the development of the embryo by the souls or the natures of the father, of the mother, of the embryo, or of the whole world? Porphyry's detailed answer, in contrast to Aristotle's, gives a big role to the soul and to the nature of the mother, without, however, abandoning Aristotle's view that the mother supplies no seed. In the fragments of "On What is in Our Power," "Porphyry" discusses Plato's idea that we choose each...