Scientia, potentia e voluntas Dei nella Lectura super primum Sententiarum di Giacomo da Viterbo

Abstract

The present dissertation is placed within the historical debate on the manuscript VII C 52 of the National Library of Naples: it is an autograph and only extant codex of the Augustinian master James of Viterbo and it keeps a work known as Abbreviatio in I Sententiarum Aegidii Romani. According to the traditional historiography, the short treatise was composed between 1283 and 1285, at the time he was lector in one of the Augustinian convents of the Roman province (Ypma’s hypothesis), or between 1300 and 1302, when he was lector principalis in the General house of studies of the Order in Naples (Gutiérrez-Giustiniani’s hypothesis). Not only the dating of the work, but also its contents are uncertain: the title has been affixed on the manuscript later and it is not original; the work also has no formal characters of abbreviated forms of a commentary on the Sentences. The research , carried out directly on the manuscript, has allowed to identify the work contained in the Neapolitan manuscript with the notes of which James availed himself to ‘read’ the Sentences in Paris, during the academic year 1287-1288. Such a result (chapter 1), together with the transcription (appendix) and the doctrinal examination of the distinctions 35-48 on the divine attributes of science, power and will (chapters 2-4), sheds light both on the formation and the first teaching of James and on the first organizing stage of the studium of the Augustinians in Paris, at a time when the Order did not have an independent studium generale in the city. The quotations from Thomas Aquinas (the main source of the Lecture) and the clear preference for his doctrines confirm the value granted by the ‘young’ Hermits school the authority of Aquinas, thanks to the mediation of Giles of Rome, the Augustinians’ first regent master in theology in Paris and the official doctor of the Augustinian order; at the same time, it suggests that James studied at the Dominican studium or at least at a studium very close to the Dominican context, rather than under Henry of Ghent. The influence of Thomas’ thought on the Lectura requires to pull over the successive production of James paying greater attention to Aquinas’ background: so it is necessary to overcome the idea of a progressive intellectual ‘conversion’ of James from Giles’ to Thomas’ positions...[edited by Author]