‘Better to Let Scandal Arise than to Relinquish the Truth’: The Cases of Conscience of the Masters of Paris in the Thirteenth Century.

This volume addresses the ways in which institutions ‘did or did not constrain, enable and inflect the substantive thinking of individuals’ (see the introduction to this volume, p. 25). A number of the chapters explore this theme by identifying ways in which scholastic authors developed their own position within the boundaries imposed by institutional loyalties. Fitzpatrick’s and Linde’s chapters in this volume, for example, show how, at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, scholastic debate simultaneously pushed forward intellectual arguments and defined the parameters of disputes between Dominicans, Franciscans and the secular clergy. In contrast, quodlibets dealing with cases of conscience, the subject of this chapter, are something of an exceptional case in scholastic thought: moral quodlibets usually did not correspond directly to the syllabus organized around commentaries on the Sentences and they addressed questions which were not in the strictest sense theological, but which related to pastoral care. This chapter argues that responses to moral quodlibets should be understood neither as personal responses to a controversy, nor as attempts to carve out a position in a debate between rival ‘schools’. Rather, they are best explained as interventions within a separate genre of penitential thought and have a close relationship with manuals for confessors. In penitential manuals, the imperative on the author was less to devise appropriate responses to open questions and more to offer practical advice on how one should act. This was no less true of the moral quodlibets answered by theology masters. When masters gave responses within this genre, they found themselves constrained and enabled by institutions, but in a rather different way from when they answered questions in other kinds of theology

Understanding a Selection of Medical, Theological and Poetic Diagrams in a Thirteenth-Century Book of Biblical Commentaries: British Library, Harley MS. 658

British Library, Harley MS. 658 is a miscellany of study aids for the Bible from the early thirteenth century, bound together with a collection of scientific, poetic and theological diagrams. The texts were written by different scribes probably at separate times and places, but, apart from two texts at the back of the codex, were collected soon after by a single compiler with a clear intention. The collection is a comprehensive handbook for Biblical study, comprising of works on the literal, allegorical and moral interpretation of scripture, as well as models for reading, disputing and preaching. The nine diagrams vary in subject matter; they include a map of the city of Jerusalem, diagrams relating to the study of grammar, medicine and theology, in contrast to the Biblical and moral themes dominant in the rest of the book. Although they at first might appear incongruous, closer examination reveals that they can best be seen as appendages to two works included in the collection, Peter of Poitiers's Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi and the Computus. The contents of the diagrams suggest that their collector was well versed in twelfth-century philosophy and subscribed to a theory of education current in the twelfth century, according to which all aspects of knowledge, including medical and natural science, could be deployed in exposition and contemplation of the Bible

The generation and evaluation of recombinant human IgA specific for Plasmodium falciparum merozoite surface protein 1-19 (PfMSP1(19))

BACKGROUND: Human immunoglobulin G (IgG) plays an important role in mediating protective immune responses to malaria. Although human serum immunoglobulin A (IgA) is the second most abundant class of antibody in the circulation, its contribution, if any, to protective responses against malaria is not clear. RESULTS: To explore the mechanism(s) by which IgA may mediate a protective effect, we generated fully human IgA specific for the C-terminal 19-kDa region of Plasmodium falciparum merozoite surface protein 1 (PfMSP1 19), a major target of protective immune responses. This novel human IgA bound antigen with an affinity comparable to that seen for an epitope-matched protective human IgG1. Furthermore, the human IgA induced significantly higher NADPH-mediated oxidative bursts and degranulation from human neutrophils than the epitope-matched human IgG1 from which it was derived. Despite showing efficacy in in vitro functional assays, the human IgA failed to protect against parasite challenge in vivo in mice transgenic for the human Fcα receptor (FcαRI/CD89). A minority of the animals treated with IgA, irrespective of FcαRI expression, showed elevated serum TNF-α levels and concomitant mouse anti-human antibody (MAHA) responses. CONCLUSIONS: The lack of protection afforded by MSP1 19-specific IgA against parasite challenge in mice transgenic for human FcαRI suggests that this antibody class does not play a major role in control of infection. However, we cannot exclude the possibility that protective capacity may have been compromised in this model due to rapid clearance and inappropriate bio-distribution of IgA, and differences in FcαRI expression profile between humans and transgenic mice