davidson2013 Dreaming in Class Aristotle’s De sompno in the Schools.pdf

8/19/2019 davidson2013 Dreaming in Class Aristotle’s De sompno in the Schools.pdf

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Lola Sharon Davidson

It took over a century and a hal rom their first Latin translations orAristotle’s natural science works to become a central part o the scholasticcurriculum. Te integration o this pagan, and indeed rankly materialist,

discourse into the intellectual orthodoxy o Christian Europe was beset with problems, not only intellectual but also social, political, and religious. Tis inte-

gration took place in the schools through the accepted pedagogical practices olecture, disputation, commentary, and glossing. Te schools were the arena in

which the new science contended with religious orthodoxy and in which a syn-thesis was orged, replacing the Augustinian Neoplatonism o the earlier MiddleAges with the Christian Aristotelianism o the later period. Muslim and Jewishscholars had already aced the challenge o integrating Aristotle’s materialistscience into the spiritual perspective o a religious society. Teir commentaries

prooundly influenced the West’s own interpretation o the Greek philosopher.

Dreams lay at the heart o the relationship between the spiritual and the mate-rial. Aristotle’s views on dreams were expounded in the De anima, which becamea core text in the schools,1 and in more detail in the three treatises known col-lectively as the De sompno. In this chapter I will look at what the manuscriptsand commentaries can tell us about the reception o the De sompno in the West.2

1 See Mind, Cognition and Representation, ed. by Bakker and Tijssen. For commentaries onAristotle’s natural science works in general see Te Dynamics o Aristotelian Natural Philo sophy, ed. byLeijenhorst, Lüthy, and Tijssen, and in particular De Haas, ‘Modifications o the Method o Inquiry

in Aristotle’s Physics .1’, or the relationship between text, commentary, and later interpretation.Aristotle’s works are reerred to throughout this chapter according to their Latin titles.

2 All manuscript reerences not otherwise indexed are to the catalogue in Davidson,

Te Classics in the Medieval and Renaissance Classroom: Te Role o Ancient exts in the Arts Curri-culum as Revealed by Surviving Manuscripts and Early Printed Books , ed. by Juanita Feros Ruys, John O. Ward, and Melanie Heyworth DISPU 20 (urnhout: Brepols, 2013) pp. 199–222 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.DISPU-EB.1.100292


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200 Lola Sharon Davidson

Aristotle wrote three short treatises on the subject o dreams and sleep — De somno et vigilia, De insomniis, and De divinatione per somnum. Tey were groupedtogether under the title De sompno and ormed part o a group o short treatiseson natural science termed the Parva naturalia. James o Venice translated five othe Parva naturalia but not the De sompno, whose translator remains unknown.3

James and the anonymous translator worked in Constantinople rom Greek texts while Gerard o Cremona worked in Spain, translating rom Arabic texts whichhad themselves been translated either rom the Greek or rom Syriac translationsrom the Greek. Te conusion to which such a lengthy chain o transmissioncould give rise may well be imagined. ogether their work ormed the Corpusvetustius which included most o Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy plus a

ew works mistakenly attributed to Aristotle, such as the De plantis and the Dedifferentia spiritus et animae. New translations were made rom the Greek in themiddle o the thirteenth century by William o Moerbeke and these are known asthe Corpus recentius. Te anonymous De sompno survives in 102 manuscripts, theMoerbeke version in 162, and Michael Scot’s translation o Averroes’ epitome othe De sompno in orty-nine. Tis makes the De sompno a comparatively popular

work. Te De anima, the core text o the Aristotelian science curriculum, survivesin 144 manuscripts o James’s translation, 268 o the Moerbeke version, sixty-

two o Michael Scot’s translation, and a urther fify-six o Scot’s translation oAverroes’ commentary.4

Aristotle proposes a consistently materialist theory o dreaming. For Aristotle,sleep is the negative aspect o waking — hence the title o his first treatise on thesubject, De somno et vigilia. Sleep is caused by the process o digestion, whichshuts down the perceptual apparatus used to procure ood while the animal isawake. By definition, dreaming does not involve thinking or recollection, whichare properties o the cognitive soul. Te cognitive soul may operate during sleep

but this has nothing to do with dreaming. Rather, dreaming consists in the per-sistence o sense impressions that were received during waking but passed unno-ticed due to competition rom stronger sensations. Tese sensations may also beinternal, allowing or the possibility o medical diagnosis rom dreams. Aristotleattributes no teleological unction to dreams and completely denies them anymantic or religious significance. He argues that since dreams come particularly

‘Dreams, Boundaries and the welfh Century Renaissance’, pp. 274–336.

3 See Minio-Paluello, ‘Iacobus Veneticus Grecus’, p. 288; Ricklin, Der raum der Philo- sophie, pp. 307–22; and riogli and Leemans, ‘Commission II’.

4 Dod, ‘Aristoteles Latinus’, p. 76.


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to inerior people, rather than to the intelligent and wise, they cannot possibly besent by God. Aristotle dismisses any correspondence between dreams and eventsas coincidence.5

Clearly this view was diicult to reconcile with the revelatory nature oChristianity and its long visionary tradition. o deny the truth o dreams was todeny the spiritual reality to which they were thought to give access. Te solution,already adopted by the classical world, was to distribute competing dream theo-ries among different categories o dream — some dreams were divine, some phys-iological, some demonic. Te Muslims and Jews who passed on Aristotle to the

West had wrestled with a similar credibility gap. Moreover, like the Latin West,they were the inheritors o a Neoplatonic tradition that had largely submerged

Aristotle’s conflict with Plato.6 It is worth pausing here to consider the intellec-tual environment into which Aristotle’s science made its irruption and thus the

preconceptions scholars may have brought to it.One possible source o misunderstanding was Cicero who in his De divina-

tione credits Aristotle with the standard Neoplatonic belie in the dream activityo the soul when reed by sleep rom the senses. Tis appears as a direct contradic-tion o the Aristotelian position as we understand it rom his surviving works.Nevertheless, the same attribution was made by Sextus Empiricus who, like

Cicero, reerred it to the lost Aristotelian dialogue, On Philosophy. Te contra-diction continues to provoke scholarly debate and makes it easier to understand why so many Aristotelian commentators were able to take the position they didon dreams.7 However, it cannot be said that the De divinatione was a popular

work. Indeed there are only ourteen manuscripts rom beore the thirteenth cen-tury, most o which come rom France. Te De divinatione is almost always oundassociated with Cicero’s De natura deorum and his De ato, and in our cases withhis rare translation o Plato’s imaeus. Te De divinatione is a debate in which the

Ciceronian speaker makes a persuasive rationalist attack on all orms o divina-tion, including dream interpretation. Since it deals with pagan religious belies, it was not calculated to appeal to Christian moralists, and although it exposes thesebelies as unounded superstitions, the grounds on which it does so are as inimi-cal to Christianity as they are to paganism.

5 Aristotle, Parva naturalia, trans. by Beare and Ross; Wijsenbeek-Wijler, Aristotle’s Concepto Soul, Sleep and Dreams.

6 Blumenthal, ‘Neoplatonic Elements in the De anima Commentaries’. On the history otheories o the imagination see Bundy, Te Teory o Imagination in Classical and Mediaeval Tought .

7 Chroust, ‘Aristotle’s Protrepticus versus Aristotle’s On Philosophy’.


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Te medieval scholar was ar more likely to have encountered Cicero’s viewson dreams in the context o Macrobius’s commentary on Cicero’s SomniumScipionis. Irene Caiazzo lists 123 surviving manuscripts o Macrobius’s commen-tary rom the twelfh century, plus one abbreviation, and one lost manuscript. 8 o this may be added two manuscripts rom the ninth century, five rom thetenth, and fifeen rom the eleventh, making 147 beore the thirteenth century.Te Somnium appears without the commentary in another eight manuscripts. Inover a third o the manuscripts, the Somnium and its commentary are virtuallyalone, while in at least nine they are associated with Calcidius’s Commentary onPlato’s imaeus, which also has a section on dream classification, and in the rest

with other Ciceronian works on the natural sciences, cosmology, and astronomy.

Macrobius is reerred to as a dream interpreter in eight o the manuscripts.9Macrobius’s commentary expounds the Neoplatonic belie in the ascen-

sion o the soul and the possibility o divine illumination through dreams. Its popularity in the Platonic renaissance o the twelfh century is understandable.However, or our purposes, what is striking about these manuscripts is not onlytheir popularity but the act that they almost never overlap with the Aristoteliancorpus.10 Here the manuscript tradition records a proound philosophical diver-gence, one that effectively separates the cathedral schools o the twelfh century

rom the universities o the thirteenth. Alison M. Peden and C. H. L. Bodenhamhave suggested that Macrobius’s popularity declined as Aristotelianism replacedPlatonism in the schools, but Steven F. Kruger has demonstrated Macrobius’scontinued influence on thirteenth- and ourteenth-century writers on dreams.11 Rather than displacing earlier theories, Aristotelian science was integrated withthem, but it was not a harmonious synthesis. As Tomas Ricklin has observed,the introduction o a scientific, indeed essentially medical, understanding o thehuman body and its processes placed in question its relationship with the soul.12 However wholehearted the acceptance o Aristotle’s physiological theories, anyserious treatment o the subject had to reconcile Aristotelian materialism withthe Christian tradition.

8 Caiazzo, Lectures médiévales de Macrobe, pp. 291–94.9 Davidson, ‘Dreams, Boundaries and the welfh Century Renaissance’, pp. 301–14.10 A possible exception is Uppsala, Universitetsbibl., MS C.647, but this highly

miscellaneous codex is a later assemblage o ragments.11 Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, Chap. 5, pp. 83–122; Bodenham, ‘Te Nature o

the Dream in Late Medieval French Literature’; and Peden, ‘Macrobius and Medieval DreamLiterature’.

12 Ricklin, Der raum der Philosophie, pp. 408–16.


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Most o the Corpus vetustius was completed by the mid-twelfh century but itdoes not seem to have circulated widely until the thirteenth. I know o only ourmanuscripts o Aristotle’s De sompno rom the late twelfh century. In one man-uscript it is bound with the very rare dream interpretation manuals o PascalisRomanus and Leo uscus; in another with works by Boethius and Aristotle andtreatises on computus and astronomy; in the third with the Corpus vetustius andPlato’s imaeus; and in the ourth with the Corpus vetustius alone.13 At least 142manuscripts o the De sompno survive rom the thirteenth century, almost invari-ably associated with other scientific works by Aristotle. Indeed fify-eight o thesurviving codices contain only the Corpus vetustius, orty-five only the Corpusrecentius, three are a mixture o the Corpus vetustius and the Corpus recentius,

and three are ragments. Tree-quarters o the codices thereore contain only theAristotelian texts, to which glosses and commentary have been added, presum-ably in the classroom, according to the teachings o particular masters. Te uni-orm content o the large majority o these codices points to their productionand use as textbooks. O those manuscripts whose geographical provenance hasbeen established, more than hal are known to have come rom France and halo the rest rom England. Most o these manuscripts, with their standard red-and-blue decoration, present a broadly similar appearance and were presumably

proessionally produced or use in the schools. Indeed copying textbooks was probably a useul source o income or impoverished students. Fify-one manu-scripts, approximately one third o the total, have picture initials, thirty-one haveilluminated initials and, o course, quite a ew manuscripts, in the medieval man-ner, have vacant spaces still patiently awaiting their initials some seven hundred

years later. We can conclude that buying textbooks was not cheap in the thir-teenth century.

Te De sompno itsel is ofen introduced with a picture initial which normally

illustrates the two states o waking and sleeping discussed in the first o the threegrouped treatises, the De somno et vigilia. BAV, MS Barb. lat. 165, an Englishmanuscript dated 1288, shows a man sleeping on the grass with another standingbeside him playing a drum and flute, which may be an allusion to dreams as senseimpressions.14 BAV, MS Vat. lat. 2071, English again, shows a man reclining on arock under the night sky with a man standing beside him, grasping the sleeper’s

13 Oxord, Bodl. Libr., MS Digby 103, ols 128 r–136 v ; BAV, MS Reg. lat. 1855,ols 43 v –46 v , 86r–87 v ; BnF, MS lat. 6569, ols 68 v –75 v ; Sankt Florian, Stifsbibl., MS XI 649,

ols 129r–138r. For a ull discussion o Oxord, Bodl. Libr., MS Digby 103 and Sankt Florian,Stifsbibl., MS XI 649, see Ricklin, Der raum der Philosophie, pp. 307–22.

14 BAV, MS Barb. lat. 165, ols 344 v –354r (ol. 344 v ).


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wrist and cloak with both hands.15 BAV, MS Vat. lat. 2984, a French manuscript,has a couple in bed, the woman sleeping, the man sitting awake with a windowbehind him.16 BAV, MS Urb. lat. 206, an English manuscript rom the begin-ning o the thirteenth century, has a particularly elaborate initial showing Christenthroned above a crowned couple in bed. Below the bed are two heads andon either side o the bed stand mitred priests, identified by writing as Tomas,Archbishop o Canterbury, and Archdeacon Edmund. Apparently Christ hassent the royal couple, or at least the king, a dream recalling the heinous assassina-tion o his servants, symbolized by the heads under the bed, and inorming otheir glorious resurrection, shown by them standing at the side o the sleepers.17 Here the artist has moved beyond illustration into the realm o political com-

mentary, implicitly contradicting the Aristotelian text with a divine vision.Despite their evident cost, ew o the manuscripts boast marks o ownership.

Tose that do usually proclaim themselves to be the property o monastic institu-tions, ofen Dominican and Franciscan, but also other orders. Several come romthe Sorbonne and a ew rom the university at Pavia. Occasionally the scribe, orstudent, has lef his mark. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 2083 was written in 1280 ‘by thehand o Yves Baldwin, cleric o the Breton bishopric o La Flèche’.18 Magdeburg,Bibl. des Domgymnasiums, MS 165, rom a Dominican library, declares: ‘Here

ends the book De somno et vigilia with a most excellent interlinear gloss by me,subprior Brother Peter Linkhoes’.19 BAV, MS Vat. lat. 2075 observes ‘whichthings were given in the school o master John o Aquila’.20 BL, MS Royal 12.C. xv, with texts by Averroes and Aristotle, was written by Henry o Charwelton,

who in 1349 was the priest at Roxton in Bedordshire.21 BL, MS Royal 12. G.ii, announces ‘Henry o Renham wrote this book and heard it in the schools o

15 BAV, MS Vat. lat. 2071, ols 286 v –297r (ol. 286 v ).

16 BAV, MS Vat. lat. 2984, ols 177 v –85 v (ol. 177 v ).17 BAV, MS Urb. lat. 206, ols 306r–17 v (ol. 306r).18 BAV, MS Vat. lat. 2083, ols 196 v –201r (ol. 211 v ): ‘MoCCoLXXXmo […] de manu

Ivonis Baudoyns clerici Britonis de Sagitta Episcopi.’19 Magdeburg, Bibl. des Domgymnasiums, MS 165, ols 170r–83r (ol. 183r): ‘Explicit

liber de Sumno et vigilia cum glosa interlineari valde bona per me ratrem Petrum Linckhoessuppriorem.’

20 BAV, MS Vat. lat. 2075, ols 197 r–205r (ol. 208r): ‘quos concessi in scolis magistriIohannis de Aquila’.

21 BL, MS Royal 12. C. xv, ols 247 v –50r (ol. 261 v ): ‘Henricus de Charwelton scriptsithoc volumen.’ Tis indicates that the manuscript is early ourteenth century rather than earlythirteenth, as suggested in Aristoteles latinus, ed. by Lacombe and others, , 383–84, §309.


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Oxord and corrected and glossed it in the hearing’.22 Henry, a Benedictine monkrom Rochester priory, had apparently prepared or his studies by copying thetextbook.23 Te personal reading o the text is here merely a prelude to its author-itative and collective interpretation.

Most o the manuscripts are glossed and many include commentaries. Al-though my manuscript survey did not extend into the ourteenth century, by

which period these manuscripts were extremely numerous, it is notable thateven the thirteenth-century manuscripts ofen have glossing in ourteenth- andfifeenth-century hands. As well as being subject to prolonged use, these manu-scripts were also very well travelled. A French manuscript, or example, is likely toeature glosses in English, German, and Italian hands covering a period o several

centuries. Te glossing does not always proceed as ar as the De sompno. Te De sompno was certainly widely read as part o the Parva naturalia, but it is probablethat the major impact o Aristotelian dream theory came via the De anima which

was the most popular Aristotelian text and preceded the Parva naturalia in mostcollections. As with modern textbooks, not all students made it to the end. Te

De anima makes only a ew reerences to dreaming, all o which treat it as an in-erior state o inactivity and deception, a view that is urther developed in the De

sompno itsel.24

Te Arabic radition

Te introduction o Aristotelian science to the Latin West was not a casual by- product o cultural contact but rather the expression o a positive drive. Charles S.F. Burnett has demonstrated that the oledan translators, and Gerard o Cremona(1114–1187) in particular, were implementing a coherent project intended torecover or the Latins the intellectual heritage o the Greeks. Tey were, in a sense,

continuing the enterprise cut short by Boethius’s untimely death.25 Te oledantranslators were ortunate to be working not only in a period o exceptional intel-lectual exchange between the three main ‘peoples o the Book’, but in the con-text o an Aristotelian revival whose main proponents were the Muslim Averroes

22 BL, MS Royal 12. G. ii, ols 368r–82 r (ol. 1 v ): ‘quem librum scripsit Henricus deRenham et audivit in scolis Oxonis et emendavit et glosavit audiendo’.

23 Clark, ‘University Monks in Late Medieval England’, p. 62.

24 Aristotle, De anima, trans. by Foster and Humphries; on dreams, see pp. 164, 385–86,395 and 442.

25 Burnett, ‘Te Coherence o the Arabic-Latin ranslation Program in oledo’.


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(Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198) and the Jewish Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), bothmedical doctors originally rom Cordoba. Tese scholars inherited and passedon the philosophical tradition begun by Alkindi (800–873), the first championo Greek philosophy in the Muslim world. Alkindi was ollowed by Alarabi(c . 870–950), a Neoplatonic commentator on Aristotle whose classification othe sciences seems to have provided the ramework or Gerard o Cremona’stranslation programme. Alarabi was ollowed in turn by Avicenna (Ibn Sina,980–1037), a medical doctor who, like Alarabi, placed Aristotle within a reli-gious ramework. Dominicus Gundissalinus (c . 1150), archdeacon o Segovia,translated Avicenna’s De anima and himsel wrote, among other works, a treatiseo the same name.

O the 146 Aristotelian codices containing the De sompno , thirty-sevenalso contain works attributed to authors other than Aristotle.26 Gundissalinusand Alarabi head the list, being present in eight codices each, closely ollowedby Averroes and Alkindi on seven, and Avicenna and Albertus Magnus on six.Aquinas only rates our because this survey stops at the thirteenth century. He isexceeded by Boethius on five and equalled by Alexander o Villa Dei. Te workso these authors all deal with natural science, except or those o Boethius andAlexander which are on arithmetic. Te reason these authors hover in such a nar-

row range is because they are requently ound together in what one might termthe de luxe version o the Aristotelian scientific codex. While only a quarter o thecodices include separate commentaries, these collections are more significant orthe development o the discourse than the more numerous basic textbooks.

Te influx o substantial numbers o new texts necessarily affected not onlythe intellectual lie o Europe but also the structure o education, particularlysince it coincided with the shif rom the cathedral schools to the universities.Te symbolism o the seven liberal arts continued to be influential, especially inart where the established iconography persisted, and to some extent also in struc-turing the lower levels o education.27 Within the nascent universities o Oxordand Paris, however, the rise o Aristotle resulted in the liberal arts being subsumedinto a wider curriculum. An anonymous guide or arts students at Paris, com-

posed between 1230 and 1240, divides the arts course into three parts: rational philosophy (the trivium o grammar, rhetoric, and logic), natural philosophy (thequadrivium o arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, to which were now

26 Works mistakenly attributed to Aristotle at the time, such as the De differentia spiritus

et animae o usta ibn Luqa or the De plantis o Nicholas o Damascus, are included withAristotle or the purposes o this survey.

27 Willemsen, Back to the Schoolyard , pp. 213–59.


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added physics and metaphysics), and moral philosophy. Aquinas, who did somuch to integrate the new Aristotelian knowledge, proposed a similar division.28

Te vast majority o the manuscripts fit this schema. Tey are concerned exclu-sively with the physics part o the course. welve manuscripts contain materialrom other sections o the natural philosophy course (Boethius and Alexanderon arithmetic, Alhazen on optics, John o Sacrobosco on astronomy). Seven con-tain material other than natural philosophy, but most o these are miscellaneouscodices assembled rom earlier manuscripts. Te overwhelming impression is otwo levels o text or the physics course: the basic text, containing the works oAristotle, to be glossed by the student under the instruction o the master; andthe advanced text, including commentaries and additional works on the subject,

or the use o masters and those aspiring to that position.Alkindi’s Liber de somno et visione, which was translated by Gerard oCremona, is not a commentary but rather a short introductory treatise on thenature o sleep and dreams.29 Seven manuscripts survive rom the thirteenthcentury, o which three also include Aristotle’s De sompno, while the rest eaturescientific works by writers in the Aristotelian tradition. For Alkindi, ‘the dreamis the use o thought by the soul and the suspension o the use o the senses’.30

Whereas Aristotle considered sleep an effect o digestion, Alkindi consideredefficient digestion and the restoration o the body to be the purpose o sleep. He

quotes Plato, ‘the sage o the Greeks’, on the soul as the location o all sensible andintelligible things and hence o all knowledge, and urther cites ‘their eminent

philosopher Aristotle’ as supporting this view.31 It is or this reason that the soulis capable o perceiving uture events and universal truths in dreams. Te person’s

physical and moral receptivity determine the degree o truth and clarity o thedream. Te process is essentially the same as that which operates while awake and

which permits some people to orm more accurate conceptions o the past, pre-sent, and uture than do others. Contrary and conused dreams result rom errors

made in the process. Te unusual imagery o dreams is evidence o the soul’s crea-tivity when reed rom the senses. For Alkindi, dreaming is a superior, becauseless material, orm o thought.32

28 Kibre, ‘Te Quadrivium in the Tirteenth Century Universities’.29 al-Kindī, ‘raité d’Al Kindi sur la uiddité du sommeil et de la vision’; or the Latin text

and manuscripts see Nagy, ‘Die Philosophischen Abhandlungen des Ja‘qūb ben Isḥāq al-Kindī.30 al-Kindī, ‘raité d’Al Kindi sur la uiddité du sommeil et de la vision’, p. 80: ‘Le songe est

donc l’usage de la pensée par l’âme et la suspension de l’usage des sens.’

31 al-Kindī, ‘raité d’Al Kindi sur la uiddité du sommeil et de la vision’, p. 81: ‘Platon lesage des Grecs […]. Leur philosophe eminent Aristote.’

32 al-Kindī, ‘raité d’Al Kindi sur la uiddité du sommeil et de la vision’.


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Averroes wrote commentaries on all o Aristotle’s works, including a shortcommentary or epitome on the De sompno which was translated into Latin byMichael Scot (c . 1175–1232).33 Te earliest surviving manuscript is in oledo,

where Scot worked beore moving to Frederick II’s court in Sicily.34 An anonymous translation also exists in one thirteenth-century manuscript. It isshorter than the Scot version and includes examples rom both Old and Newestaments.35 Averroes’ epitome occurs in twenty-two manuscripts rom thethirteenth century, only two o which also include Aristotle’s De sompno. Nineo these codices include other Aristotelian texts, five include only Averroes, andeight include other Aristotelian commentators, both Arabic and Latin. It is thusnotable that commentaries and collections o commentaries circulated sepa-

rately rom the actual Aristotelian text to which, o course, they were requentlytranserred by glossing. I we include the De sompno manuscripts o Averroes andAlkindi with the Aristotelian De sompno manuscripts, Averroes streaks ahead

with twenty-seven, Gundissalinus and Alarabi come next with ourteen andthirteen, ollowed by Avicenna on twelve, Alkindi and Albertus Magnus on ten,and Algazel, Aquinas, and Alexander o Villa Dei equal last at seven. It seemslikely that Averrroes was indeed the strongest influence on how Aristotle’s viewson dreaming were interpreted by the West.36

Averroes’ Epitome on the Parva naturalia is divided into three books. Te firstdeals with the De sensu, the second with the De memoria and the De sompno,and the third with the De longitudine. Averroes explains that these were the only

parts o the Parva naturalia available in Spain at that time. Book is urtherdivided into three chapters, the first treating memory, the second sleep and wak-ing, and the third dreams. Although ollowing the overall structure o Aristotle’s

work, Averroes’ commentary is a creative engagement with the text rather than anexplication o it. He accepts Aristotle’s physiological account o the mechanism

o sleep and dreaming but places it firmly within a Neoplatonic context. Tus,having propounded the Aristotelian theory according to which sleep is the suspension o the activity o the perceptive soul, he observes:

33 For the influence o Averroes’ commentaries on the reception o Aristotle’s Physica seeDonati, ‘Te Notion o Dimensiones indeterminatae’.

34 oledo, Bibl. de Cabildo, MS 95.12, ols 46 v –51 v .35 Averroës, Compendia librorum Aristotelis qui Parva naturalia vocantur , ed. by Shields

and Blumberg, p. xiv.36 For a discussion o the comparative impact o Avicenna and Averroes on medieval

Western philosophy in general see Marenbon, Later Medieval Philosophy , esp. pp. 50–65 and103–108; and De Libera, La Philosophie médiévale.


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And the common sense will advance towards the interior o the body to aid thecogitative aculty, or the cogitative aculty will become vigorous when the othersenses are at rest. Man, thereore, will be able to perceive uture events during sleep,

whereas he will not be able to perceive them during waking.37

Averroes urther mitigates the negative nature o Aristotelian sleep by arguingthat sleep can result not only rom a weakening o the perceptive aculty, but alsorom intense cogitation, causing the mind to withdraw rom the senses the betterto concentrate itsel:

Now this situation in certain people will reach such a point where they will experi-ence a condition similar to death […] and they will comprehend noble things and

behold spiritual things that exist in the world such as the angels, the heavens etc.38

Averroes opens his section on dreams by declaring:

It is appropriate, afer explaining the nature o sleep, that we explain the nature odreams and o those divine perceptions which are o the same class as dreams butare not related to the acquisition o man nor to his endeavour […]. o reject theirexistence is tantamount to rejecting the existence o sense-objects, and especially,the existence o true dreams; or there is not a person who has not at times haddreams that warn him o that which will happen to him in the uture.39

He remarks ‘people think that dreams come rom angels, divination rom demonsand prophecy rom God’,40 then explains that Aristotle is concerned only withdreams that provide inormation concerning the material, so he does not deal

with religious revelations.Agreeing with Aristotle that ‘the aculties o cogitation and memory do not

unction in sleep’, Averroes attributes dreams to the permanently active imagina-tive aculty and concludes that, since the source o true knowledge in dreams can-not be either past experience or cogitation, it must be divine intelligence. 41 Howcan divine intelligences, which by their nature are universal, communicate par-ticular inormation? Averroes argues that while the intelligence itsel is universal,the soul receives it as a particular because the soul is embodied and particulariza-tion is a unction o materiality. He compares this with a physician predicting

37 Averroës, Epitome o Parva naturalia, ed. and trans. by Blumberg, p. 33.38 Averroës, Epitome o Parva naturalia, ed. and trans. by Blumberg, p. 35.39

Averroës, Epitome o Parva naturalia, ed. and trans. by Blumberg, p. 39.40 Averroës, Epitome o Parva naturalia, ed. and trans. by Blumberg, p. 40.41 Averroës, Epitome o Parva naturalia, ed. and trans. by Blumberg, p. 41.


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the course o an illness rom the application o general principles to a particularcase. Dreams are symbolic because the dream image is more spiritual and hencecloser to the universal orm than is the particular. Averroes believes dreams havebeen granted to us as a gif to supplement the deficiency o our cogitative intellect

which is inadequate to deal with uture happenings. He devotes a brie paragraphat the end to alse dreams, ascribing them to day-residue, wish ulfilment, andhumoural imbalances, and concludes that one may distinguish true dreams romalse by the impression the ormer make on the soul.

Averroes’ Jewish contemporary, Maimonides, was orced into exile by the un-damentalist Almohads, fleeing to Egypt where he completed his most amous

work, Te Guide o the Perplexed .42 Maimonides appears in only two thirteenth-

century De sompno manuscripts, once as the sole accompaniment to a Corpusvetustius Aristotle and once together with Averroes’ De sompno and works byAvicenna, Alkindi, Alarabi, Algazel, Gundissalinus, and Alred o Sareshel. LikeAverroes, Maimonides was a medical doctor and his work shows a strong concern

with physiology. He divides the soul into the active intellect, the rational intel-lect, and the imaginative intellect. Te active intellect is concerned with puttingthoughts into action, the imaginative with the processing o the images o sensiblethings, and the rational with moral absolutes. Dreams are a unction o the imagi-

native soul, just as or Augustine they are a orm o spiritual perception, and orthe Muslims they pertain to the world o images, the alam-al-mithal . In dreamsthe imaginative soul remembers and meditates on the images and desires o theday, reed rom the distractions o the senses. Te difference between dreamsand prophecy is not one o kind but o degree. Dreams are an immature ormo prophecy. Maimonides distinguishes eleven degrees o prophecy, the highesto which requires the interaction o the imaginative and rational aculties witha high level o morality. Te difference between dreams and visions is a mattero the degree o certainty the dreamer is willing to attribute to the experience,

and this in turn is a unction o its clarity, which is determined by the degree ostrength o the imaginative intellect.43

Like Aristotle, Maimonides divides the soul into three parts. However,Aristotle’s sensitive soul is concerned purely with the processing o sense per-ception whereas Maimonides’ imaginative soul maniestly possesses a cognitiveunction. Aristotle’s denial o meaning to dreams rests on his exclusion o themrom the domain o cognition. o treat them as including cognition negates his

42 See Maimonides, Te Guide o the Perplexed , trans. by Pines.43 Maimonides, Te Guide o the Perplexed , trans. by Pines, pp. 360–410; or Maimonides

on dreams and prophecy see also Kreisel, ‘Moses Maimonides’, pp. 262–68.


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entire argument. Maimonides saw himsel as an Aristotelian and distrusted Plato’smythic language, but his understanding o Aristotle was strongly influenced bythe Neoplatonism o Alarabi.44 Nevertheless, his work excited opposition in the

Jewish community rom those who saw it as reducing prophecy to a psychological phenomenon and miracles to unusual natural events. In a movement parallelingthe condemnations o 1215 and 1277, discussed later in this chapter, Solomono Montpellier in 1232/33 ollowed up his call or a ban on the writings oMaimonides by appealing to the Catholic Inquisition to have them publicly burnt.Tis not only set an unortunate precedent, as exemplified by the subsequent burn-ing o the almud in Paris, but opened up an enduring conflict between religionand philosophy in Jewish thought.45 Nevertheless, notwithstanding its proscrip-

tion or materialism, Maimonides’ work became popular with the scholastics.46Maimonides and Averroes held somewhat similar views on dreams. Both were

influential in the interpretation o Aristotle in the West, but both the Jewish andMuslim traditions were ar more avourable to dreams and prophecy than theChristian. Christians too interpreted Aristotle in terms o their own preconcep-tions and were slow to realize the extent and depth o his materialism. However,the Latin West had already been developing a cosmology whose separationbetween spirit and matter would bring them closer to Aristotelian materialism

than was conceivable in either the Jewish or Muslim traditions.

Te Latin Commentators

Te English showed an early enthusiasm or Aristotle’s scientific works which were being taught at Oxord by the beginning o the thirteenth century. Alredo Sareshel’s De motu cordis, completed beore 1203 and dedicated to AlexanderNeckam, is the first Latin work to cite the De sompno. Alred, also known as

Alredus Anglicus, studied in Spain and is credited with a number o transla-tions and commentaries, including one on the De sompno which has not comedown to us. Te De motu cordis, which combines Avicennian Neoplatonism withAristotelian science, was a text in the Arts aculty o Paris by 1250.47 However,Aristotle’s triumph in the Paris schools was not achieved without opposition. In

44 Maimonides, Te Guide o the Perplexed , trans. by Pines, p. lxxix.45 Dobbs-Weinstein, ‘Te Maimonidean Controversy’.

46 Vajda, ‘La Philosophie juive du moyen âge’. See also, Broadie, ‘Maimonides and Aquinas’.47 Otte, ‘Te Lie and Writings o Alredus Anglicus’; Dod, ‘Aristoteles Latinus’, pp. 71–72;

Ricklin, Der raum der Philosophie, pp. 357–78.


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1210, the Council o Sens condemned the Quaternuli o the Paris master, Davido Dinant, and orbad reading or commenting on Aristotle’s books on natu-ral philosophy, either publicly or secretly. Te council associated the offendingtexts with the pantheistic heresy o the Amalricians, ollowers o the Paris mas-ter, Amaury o Bène. In 1215, the papal legate, Robert de Courçon, in grantingstatutes to the University o Paris, reaffirmed the ban on Aristotle’s metaphysicsand natural philosophy together with the teachings o David o Dinant and theAmalrician heretics.48 Te English natural philosopher Roger Bacon claimed thatthese condemnations were ‘on account o the eternity o the world and o time,and on account o the book concerning the divination o dreams, which is thethird o De sompno et vigilia and on account o many other transmitted errors’.49

Indeed the De sompno was used by David in his Quaternuli and David was citedas a commentator on the De sompno by the Oxord master, Ralph o Longchamp(c . 1155–1215). Ralph used David, as well as Aristotle, Alkindi, and Macrobiusin his commentary on Alan o Lille’s Anticlaudianus, which Ralph had completedby 1213. It is clear that despite the opposition o the Church, these texts were cir-culating reely.50 In 1231, Pope Gregory IX granted approval or the teaching osome expurgated Aristotelian texts. Te 1252 statutes or the English nation inParis include the De anima as required reading, and the 1255 list o books a mas-

ter was required to lecture on include virtually all the Corpus vetustius. Despiteinitial resistance, by the mid-thirteenth century Aristotle’s natural philosophy was part o the standard curriculum.51

Another Englishman, Adam o Buckfield, also wrote a commentary on the De sompno, which survives in fifeen manuscripts.52 Alred and Adam both appeartwice in my manuscript survey. Adam taught in the Arts aculty at Oxord in the1240s. He appears to have been popular, as many copies o his lectures survive.His work is so commonly ound associated with that o Aquinas that his com-

mentaries on the De sompno

have been printed as part o Aquinas’sOpera omnia

.He was strongly influenced by Averroes and indeed his commentaries have been

48 Ricklin, Der raum der Philosophie, pp. 324–34.49 ‘propter eternitatem mundi et temporibus, et propter librum de divinacione

sompniorum, qui est tertius de sompno et vigilia, et propter multa alia erronea translata’, quotedin Gregory, ‘I sogni e gli astri’, p. 142, n. 89, rom Bacon, Compendium studii theologiae, ed. byRashdall, p. 33.

50 Ricklin, Der raum der Philosophie, pp. 335–56 and 378–407; on Ralph see also Kruger,

Dreaming in the Middle Ages, pp. 116–19.51 Dod, ‘Aristoteles Latinus’, pp. 46–51.52 Lohr, ‘Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries’, p. 322.


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criticized as at times mere paraphrases o the Cordovan scholar.53 Adam’s primaryconcern seems to have been an explication o the logical structure o the text. Hededicates six lectiones to Aristotle’s first book, five to the second, and two to thethird, keeping roughly proportional to the length o Aristotle’s text but signifi-cantly exceeding it. Adam’s method may be seen rom the beginning o his com-mentary on the third and shortest book, De divinatione per somnum:

Having previously explained dreaming and certain o its properties, he here explainsa particular consequence o dreaming sleep, namely dream divination. Divinationis oreknowledge o any uture or absent things signified. And this part is dividedinto two parts. In the first he states his intention. In the second he carries out hisintention, there, nam quod omnes et cetera. And this [part is also divided] in[to]

two parts. In the first he proceeds by [presenting] opposing [propositions]. In thesecond [he proceeds] by explaining, there, necesse est et cetera. Te first is dividedinto two parts. In the first he demonstrates divination by two arguments. In thesecond he argues the affirmative side that divination exists, there, nullam vero.54

Te text is presented as a orm o shorthand to be expanded by the master and pupils. Adam approaches Aristotle’s scientific corpus with the hermeneutic appa-ratus o the trivium, confident that the tools o logic and dialectic will uncover itsmeaning. Te rigorously logical character o Aristotle’s work was the guarantee o

its authority, but the role o the interpreter in providing access to that authorityremained undamental.

Adam explains Aristotle’s argument within the logical ramework he has con-structed or it. His reading is generally a close one but, by its nature, paraphrase

permits subtle shifs o emphasis. By highlighting Aristotle’s speculations on therole o sense impressions, the possibility o their transmission, and the suscepti-bility o melancholics, Adam oregrounds a mechanism or telepathic and predic-tive dreams. Aristotle dismisses divine causation with the observation that were

dreams sent by God, they would come to wise persons while awake rather thanto oolish persons asleep. o the modern reader this is an argument against thedivine causation o dreams, but to a medieval reader it was an argument against

53 Weisheipl, ‘Science in the Tirteenth Century’, p. 462.54 My translation; Adam de Buckfield, ‘Commentarium in De divinatione per somnum’:

‘Determinato [sic] prius de somnio, et quibusdam proprietatibus ejus, hic determinat de quodamconsequente somnum ad somnium, scilicet de divinatione somni. Et est divinatio alicujus uturi etabsentis significati praecognitio. Et ista pars in duas dividitur. In prima ponit intentum. In secunda prosequitur de intento, ibi, nam quod omnes et cetera. Et ista in duas. Primo procedit opponendo.Secundo determinando, ibi, necesse est et cetera. Prima in duas. In prima ostendit divinationem perduas rationes. Secundo arguit ad partem affirmativam quod divinatio sit, ibi, nullam vero.’


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unauthorized nocturnal antasies and an endorsement o the waking revelationso accredited religious specialists. o some extent the text itsel permits theseshifs, or finding it impossible to deny flatly what everyone believes to be true,namely the predictive nature o dreams, Aristotle reutes their supernatural originby providing a series o materialist explanations that paradoxically lend weightto the possibility o such dreams. Moreover, that some dreams have a naturalorigin does not in itsel preclude the possibility o others being o divine origin.So Adam, like commentators beore and afer him, may be excused or confiningAristotle’s explanation to a restricted category o dreams.

Te German Dominican and Paris master, Albertus Magnus (c . 1193–1280),devoted a lengthy commentary to the De sompno. For the first two books this

closely ollows the structure o Aristotle’s argument, dealing with it point-by- point, but on reaching the more contentious third book, Albertus proceeds tolengthy digressions and a consideration o the views o other commentators.Albertus agrees with Aristotle that most dreams are natural and not sent by God,or otherwise they would not be sent especially to melancholics. Moreover theirinterpretation, which proceeds by metaphor, is not rational and so cannot beconsidered a science. Nevertheless, he declares Aristotle’s treatment o the sub-

ject to be imperect. He approves Socrates but rejects the Stoics and criticizes

Avicenna, Algazel, Averroes, Alarabi, and Isaac Judaeus or their Neoplatonicappeal to intelligences and universals. He believes that dreams are predictive, andthat by inorming us o the ate decreed by the stars they provide scope or theoperation o ree will in our response. He endorses Maimonides’ views on proph-ecy but adds two more levels to make thirteen grades. One ascends rom the

physical, through the imaginative, to the intellectual. He distinguishes visions, which are seen while awake, rom dreams, seen while asleep, and rom proph-ecy, when through rapture one learns something inaccessible through reason.

Following Augustine, Albertus sees prophecy as superior to visions and dreamsbecause it includes understanding.55 Albertus also dealt extensively with dreamsin his Summa de creaturis which Vincent o Beauvais used or his popular ency-clopaedia, Speculum naturale.56

Albertus was eclipsed by his pupil, Tomas Aquinas (1228–1274), whoseattempt to reconcile Aristotle and Augustine was to prove prooundly influen-

55 Albergus Magnus, Parva naturalia, ed. by Jammy; see also Steneck, ‘Albert on the Psycho-logy o Sense Perception’, and Diepgen, raum und raumdeutung als medizinisch-naturwissen-

schafliches Problem.56 For a detailed comparison o the two works see Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages,

pp. 99–122.


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tial.57 Aquinas observes that spiritual sensitivity is greater in sleep but reason isinerior, while prophecy requires divine grace.58 He agrees with Augustine that thebest prophet is one who both perceives and interprets images. Like Albertus, hedistinguishes between visions while awake and dreams while asleep. Not all proph-ecy requires alienation rom the senses, but when it does, such alienation proceedsin a natural manner, through sleep or contemplation, not through a distortiono nature, as in madness.59 Aquinas distinguishes five causes o dreams which hecategorizes as internal/external and spiritual/physical: 1) thoughts and desires; 2)internal physiological states; 3) external physical impressions; 4) God via angels;and 5) demons. Apart rom coincidence and medical diagnosis, true dreams comeonly rom external causes. Divination rom dreams is lawul unless they have been

obtained through a pact with demons.60

Both angels and demons can cause imagi-nary appearances through their action on the bodily humours. Dreams are not tobe considered deceptive simply because, owing to our own inadequacy, we ail tounderstand them.61 Demons cannot perorm miracles contrary to nature, suchas changing humans into animals, but they can change the appearance o things,according to natural processes, and can manuacture bodies out o air.62 Aquinastreats sexual dreams as imaginary experiences rather than direct demonic assaults.Teir culpability depends on their cause but they should be considered defilingeven though, being unintentional, they are not actually sinul.63

Aquinas remains torn between the superiority o waking and sleeping percep-tion. He agrees with Augustine that the spiritual is superior to the physical, andthat sleeping is more spiritual than waking. He also agrees with Aristotle that rea-son is stronger while awake, and that the physical senses are a more certain sourceo knowledge than the products o the imagination. Tat visions occur while

57 On the conflict between reason and revelation see Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages.

58 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ed. by Gilby, (1970), ed. and trans. by Potter, p. 33(2a2ae.172.1).

59 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ed. by Gilby, (1970), ed. and trans. by Potter, pp. 54–63(2a2ae.173.2–3).

60 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ed. by Gilby, (1968), ed. and trans. by O’Meara andDuffy, pp. 57–59 (2a2ae.95.6).

61 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ed. by Gilby, (1970), ed. and trans. by Charlesworth, pp. 25–29 (1a.111.3).

62 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ed. by Gilby, (1970), ed. and trans. by Charlesworth,

pp. 81–85 (1a.114.4).63 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ed. by Gilby, (1975), ed. and trans. by Gilby, pp. 57–65

(3a.80.7).


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awake does not enhance their credit, since they remain imaginary and implyalienation rom the senses. Aquinas is more interested in spiritual beings and lessinterested in astral influences than Albertus. Te action o angels and demons onthe bodily humours is Aquinas’s major device or linking the spiritual and mate-rial realms. Albertus is truer to Aristotle in his association o dreams with thenatural world, although he accords them more significance than Aristotle would.His thought inclines to natural magic and so risks denying God’s direct interven-tion in the world. Aquinas avoids this by combining the divine/demonic dual-ism o the monastic tradition with Aristotelian materialism. Te categories ospiritual/material and inner/outer are accorded more equal importance but aretenuously and inexplicably related. Te shif is reminiscent o the hardening o

categories in Gregory the Great as compared with Augustine.64Considerably more radical than either Albertus or Aquinas was another

Dominican, Boethius o Dacia (fl. c . 1270). Boethius wrote a short treatise ondreams which survives in nine manuscripts. It relies heavily on Aristotle with-out being a commentary as such.65 Boethius presents himsel as responding torepeated enquiries, suggesting there was considerable academic discussion on thematter. He asks whether knowledge o any kind, but particularly o the uture,may be obtained through dreams. He observes that there is neither a logical con-

nection nor a mechanism by which this might occur. Nevertheless he concludesthat such knowledge is possible: 1) through coincidence; 2) through deciding toact on a dream and thereby bringing about its realization; and 3) through per-ceiving the effects o stars upon the health o the body. Internally, the humoursalso may give rise to dreams:

And when black and earthly vapours rise up, then the sleeper dreams that he isseeing black monks [i.e. Benedictines]; and certain oolish ones, having awakened,swear that they have seen devils while they were asleep […] when clear vapours riseup […] they swear that they were carried away and have in truth seen angels. Andthey are deceived because they are ignorant o the causes o things.66

Boethius goes on to claim that ‘[a]lthough such cases o deception can happenowing to natural causes, nonetheless I do not deny that by divine will an angelor a devil can in truth appear to a person who is sleeping or to one who isill’.67 Strictly speaking, Boethius is orthodox, since the Church was more than

64 Markus, ‘Te Eclipse o a Neo-Platonic Teme’.65

Lohr, ‘Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries’, pp. 387–88.66 Boethius, On Dreams, trans. by Wippel, p. 75.67 Boethius, On Dreams, trans. by Wippel, p. 75.


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willing to denounce many dreams as delusory, but his orthodoxy would bemore convincing i he had not illustrated his naturalistic explanations withridicule o religious visions. His extended treatment o the humoural causeso dreams derives rom the Salernitan school and rom commentators such asAvicenna and Averroes rather than rom Aristotle himsel.68

Averroes was regarded as the champion o strict Aristotelianism.69 His viewscontinued to excite opposition in orthodox circles and, in 1270, the bishop oParis, Stephen empier, condemned aspects o his teachings. In 1277, these con-demnations were reissued in a considerably expanded version that covered a wide

variety o propositions o a materialist or rationalist tendency, as well as some which bluntly rejected the authority and teachings o the Church on matters such

as heresy and sexuality.70 wo o empier’s articles specifically condemn natural-ist views on dreams. Number thirty-three denounces the view ‘that raptures and

visions do not occur except by nature’ and number sixty-five ‘that God or intel-ligence does not pour knowledge into the human soul in sleep except throughthe medium o celestial bodies’.71 In his introductory letter, empier accused cer-tain unnamed masters in the arts aculty o Paris o teaching a doctrine o doubletruth — that something could be true according to reason yet alse according toaith, and vice versa.72 It seems improbable that any Paris master ever held that

something could be simultaneously true and alse. Rather Boethius maintainedthat reason provides a certain but partial access to truth which is completed byrevelation.73 Nevertheless empier may well have eared that some would preerthe truth o reason.

Te 1277 condemnations were particularly directed against Siger o Brabantand Boethius o Dacia, both o whom were driven out o Paris and sought re-uge in Italy, but they were also aimed at Albertus and Aquinas. 74 In particular,

68

Fattori, ‘Sogni e temperamenti’.69 See Van Steenberghen, ‘L’Averroïsme Latin au e siècle’.70 Piché, La Condamnation Parisienne de 1277 .71 ‘33 (177). uod raptus et visiones non fiunt, nisi per naturam’; ‘65 (176). uod deus vel

intelligentia non inundit scientiam anime humane in sompno, nisi mediante corpore celesti’,in Piché, La Condamnation Parisienne de 1277 , pp. 88 and 100; see also Gregory, ‘I sogni e gliastri’, p. 142.

72 ‘Dicunt enim ea esse vera secundum philosophiam, sed non secundum fidem catholicam,quasi sint due contrarie veritates, et quasi contra veritatem sacre scripture sit veritas in dictis

gentilium dampnatorum’; in Piché, La Condamnation Parisienne de 1277 , p. 74.73 See Piché, La Condamnation Parisienne de 1277 , pp. 201–15.74 See Tijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University o Paris, Chap. 2, or the context o the


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the proposition on astral influences was directed at Albertus whose strong inter-est in astrology tended to preclude supernatural explanations. Te condemna-tions represented a victory or the neo-Augustinianism o the Franciscans againstthe modified Aristotelianism o the Dominicans, but it was a temporary one.75 In 1323 Aquinas was canonized by Pope John XXII and in 1325, Stephen oBourret, Bishop o Paris, revoked any articles o the 1277 condemnations thatcould be interpreted as touching the doctrines o Aquinas.76 Following Aquinas,the Church preserved the consistency o the physical world and the existence oa transcendent creator by asserting a parallel spiritual realm, thereby opening amysterious gap between the material and the spiritual. he more materialistspeculations o Albertus and Boethius inspired the natural magic tradition that

preserved the unity o the spiritual and the material realms, but compromised theexistence o a God separable rom his creation.77

It took over a century or the Latin West to digest Aristotle, during whichtime its educational structure underwent proound changes. Te previously mar-ginal Aristotle became the core curriculum o the new universities. Within theclassroom the text was read, deconstructed, and reinterpreted, its various ele-ments careully sifed and evaluated, and then recombined into a more accept-able pattern. Commentaries were the tools medieval scholars used to conront

the challenge o Aristotle’s materialism and to integrate this radical new orm oknowledge. Te same manuscripts transmitted the texts, together with their bur-den o commentary and glossing, guiding interpretation or centuries to come.

1277 condemnations. See particularly p. 43 on Hissette’s identification o thirty articles romSiger and thirty rom Boethius, and pp. 52–56 on the understanding by contemporaries that thecondemnations targeted Aquinas.

75 Piché, La Condamnation Parisienne de 1277 , pp. 168–72; and Wippel, ‘Te Condem-nations o 1270 and 1277 at Paris’.

76 Tijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University o Paris, pp. 55–56.77 For the subsequent history o these opposing philosophical tendencies, see Easlea, Witch-

Hunting, Magic and the New Philosophy, and Easlea, Science and Sexual Repression. For a conciseoverview o the central debates o medieval philosophy see De Libera, La Philosophie médiévale.

Lola Sharon Davidson studied Anthropology at the Université de Paris VII, then returned to theUniversity o Sydney or her PhD on dreams in the 12th-century Renaissance. She has publishedon medieval European heresy, witchcraf, and dreams, and Australian commercial history. Herbooks include (with S. Salsbury) Australia’s First Bank: Fify Years om the Wales to Westpac (Sydney: University o New South Wales Press, 2005); (ed.) Te Epic in History (Sydney: SydneyAssociation or Studies in Society and Culture, 1994); and with John O. Ward (eds) Te Sorceryrial o Alice Kyteler (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance exts and Studies, 1993). She iscurrently compiling a documentary history o women and the inquisition with John O. Ward.


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——, MS Royal 12. G. iiMagdeburg, Bibliothek des Domgymnasiums, MS 165Oxord, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 103Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS onds latin 6569Sankt Florian, Stifsbibliothek, MS XI 649oledo, Biblioteca del Cabildo, MS 95.12Uppsala, Universitetsbiblioteket, MS C.647

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