Relations in Earlier Medieval Latin Philosophy: Against the Standard Account

Medieval philosophers before Ockham are usually said to have treated relations as real, monadic accidents. This “Standard Account” does not, however, fit in with most discussions of relations in the Latin tradition from Augustine to the end of the 12th century. Early medieval thinkers minimized or denied the ontological standing of relations, and some, such as John Scottus Eriugena, recognized them as polyadic. They were especially influenced by Boethius’s discussion in his De trinitate, where relations are treated as prime examples of accidents that do not affect their substances. This paper examines non-standard accounts in the period up to c. 1100

The Isagoge in the Latin Tradition until c, 1200

Although the Isagoge features in the Latin tradition from soon after it was written until 1200 (and, of course, beyond), the quantity and richness of the evidence for its use and interpretation in the twelfth century far outweighs that from the preceding eight hundred years. Most of this evidence consists of commentaries, usually anonymous and largely unpublished. They are catalogued in a substantial appendix to this article. The catalogue is not an entirely new one – I published a first version of it 25 years ago. But the research since this time – above all, that carried out and generously made available to his colleagues by Yukio Iwakuma – has so transformed our knowledge of the material that much of the significant information, about dates, authorship and affiliation has been changed or augmented. The second, longer, part of this article introduces this material and the recent research on it, and the picture that emerges of how the Isagoge was studied at the time. The first part looks more rapidly at the place of the Isagoge in the Latin tradition in the preceding centuries – a topic that has not before received individual treatment

Montaigne's Gods

According to Montaigne, \u2018we cannot condignly conceive\u2019 the nature and actions of God \u2018if we are able to conceive them at all. To imagine them condignly, we must imagine them unimaginable, unutterable, incomprehensible\u2019. These criticisms, directed at Raymond of Sebond, lead implicitly to the promotion of a radically negative theology. Yet, even if \u2018human reason goes astray [\u2026] when she concerns herself with matters divine\u2019, it is still possible to elaborate a discourse on God which speaks \u2018condignly\u2019 of His nature as beyond our power to comprehend. Moreover, it is in the literature of pagan antiquity that Montaigne finds the elements of this more \u2018religious\u2019 theology. This chapter examines Montaigne\u2019s annotations on Lilio Gregorio Giraldi\u2019s treatise, De deis gentium varia et multiplex historia (\u2018The Varied and Manifold History of the Pagan Gods\u2019, 1548), as well as the comparison between Christian and pagan theology sketched out in the Essais