Becoming a Brill Author. Publishing Ethics. Publishing Guides. General Open Access Information. For Authors. For Academic Societies. For Librarians. Research Funding. Open Access Pricing. Specialty Products. Catalogs, Flyers and Price Lists. Accessing Brill Products. Corporate Social Responsibility. Sales Contacts. Ordering from Brill. Editorial Contacts. Offices Worlwide. Course Adoption. Contact Form. The studies of the last years on the medieval reception of the Liber de causis have clearly revealed that, while the Liber de causis is a very important source of metaphysical doctrines within the Domenican order, 1 the work had been read with suspicion and disinterest by the Franciscans.
In a recent article, Dragos Calma 2 has ascertained this fact: Peckham quotes De causis explicitly only seven times; Ockham uses the text in merely six occasions and in three of which he does not even openly indicate his source 3 ; Scotus refers to six propositions of the Liber in nineteen explicit quotations. The situation does not change if we turn to the first Franciscan Masters, such as Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure. Indeed, a straightforward analysis of the explicit quotations shows how limited the influence of the Liber de causis was on both authors.
Alexander refers to ten propositions of the Liber 7 for a total of eight quotations in his Commentary on the Sentences and a total of twenty-one in the so-called Summa Halensis. The name of Thomas of York, an important Franciscan of the middle of the 13th century, rarely appears in the historical reconstructions of the reception of the pseudo-Aristotelian book.
There, the editor, Robert Steele, called attention to Thomas of York as an important author who has used De causis in the 13th century. In the Sapientiale , Thomas of York shows a deep confidence in his use of De causis and quotes it several times. This is exactly what this essay wants to show. The method and purpose of the work are openly declared by the author in the first four introductive chapters: first and foremost, the Sapientiale is a work written by a theologian for the purpose of coherently systematizing the doctrines of the philosophers in the clear attempt to realize a synthesis of Christian and philosophical wisdom.
Has autem utilitates et causas advertens ego minorum minimus elegi opus sudore plenum, et propter intellectus nostri imbecillitatem et ipsius operis difficultatem, de libris philosophicis congregare aliqua, que dixerunt de creatore et creaturis, quod estimo difficile propter eam, que paucis facta est, philosophie communicationem, verorum cum falsis confusionem, scientie sub verbis absconsionem. Among them, De causis surely plays an important role, as the following numerical data demonstrate.
