Summistae: The Commentary Tradition on Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae

De 10-10-2013 a 12-10-2013

Summistae: The Commentary Tradition on Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae - 16th to 18th Century

International Conference
Porto, 17-19 October 2013

Program: tba.
Speakers

Rationale abstract

pdf


Peter Lombard’s Sentences was the standard theological text from the late thirteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth century. Yet, by the end of the fifteenth century, the Sentences started to be replaced by the Summa Theologiae as the book to be taught and commented on at the faculty of theology. The reading of the Summa was already a practice in fifteenth-century Dominican studia, most notably in Cologne where the earliest commentaries on the Summa came to light. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Iberian universities adopted the Summa as the official text of university teaching at a faculty of theology on a permanent basis. This replacement was later extended to many Counter-Reformed universities all through Europe and even to the universities of the Spanish empire. The Summa remained as the theological textbook until the eighteenth century. This explains the huge number of commentaries on the Summa.
If not for anything else, the Summa commentaries are important for the history of philosophy for two reasons: they continue the tradition of medieval thought — the commentators still draw on authors such as Scotus, Durandus of St. Pourçain, Ockham, Buridan and Gabriel Biel— and they represent a significant part of the Scholasticism which was known to Descartes and Leibniz. However, the commentaries stand as original works on their own, as shown by the commentaries composed by Soto, Báñez, Arriaga, Wiggers, Lessius and many others.
Although some conferences and collective volumes have been dedicated to the study of a single author, to the late scholastic political thought or to the commentaries produced in the sixteenth-century University of Salamanca, no symposium has ever been specifically devoted to the Summa commentaries which span from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. As the Summa deals with nearly all the theological and philosophical topics and touches on all the philosophical domains, this conference may provide an outline of the philosophical thought produced in early modern university.
The main purpose is to hold a conference on the Summa commentaries following the structure of the Summa itself. Each participant will select a question, a set of articles from a question or even a delimited group of questions, from one part of the Summa and carry out an investigation on how different commentators (and from different backgrounds and regions) dealt with a given issue. The commentaries on the Summa are here understood in a broad sense, thereby including Disputationes and Cursus Theologici based on the text of the Summa.
The papers do not necessarily have to be eminently historical or make use of a diachronic approach, as the main interest is to see the ways in which various commentators touched on the same question. For this reason, we welcome also studies that may compare the commentators with early modern philosophers, such as Descartes, Hobbes, or German Protestant authors. Further to this, we welcome papers that may offer a study of the commentaries against the background of early modern Aristotelianism. Each participant should deal with more than one commentary and, if possible, takes into account not only the most notable authors, but also names such as Augustinus Reding, Juan Salas, Nicolas Ysambert, or Francisco de Araújo (given their importance in their own time).

Confirmed speakers

 

Call for submissions
This is an invited conference, but a small number of papers will be accepted through application. If you want to present a paper, please send, by e-mail, a title and an abstract, with a cover letter containing contact information to: gfm@letras.up.pt (subject head “Summistae paper presentation”). Closing date for applications: 15th October 2012.
Stipends are available through application for accepted independent or unemployed researchers.


Meeting project
Lidia Lanza
Marco Toste
This conference is part of the research project Iberian Scholastic Philosophy at the Crossroads of Western Reason: The Reception of Aristotle and the Transition to Modernity directed by J. Meirinhos and funded by FCT.


Organization: J. Meirinhos, L. Lanza, M. Toste

Gabinete de Filosofia Medieval
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto
Via Panorâmica s/n
4150-564 Porto
Portugal

Funding
Instituto de Filosofia; Universidade do Porto
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia; COMPETE; QREN; UE/Governo de Portugal



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