L'Agenda des Médiévistes

The conference Altiora te ne quaesieris (Sir. 3, 22): The Medieval Pursuit of Wisdom aims at discussing various aspects of the medieval search for intellectual and moral perfection. It is open to philosophical and theological considerations related to the concept of wisdom intended in a broad sense, both in its theoretical and practical dimensions. Among the many possible interpretative paths, there is the issue of the cognitive optimism vs the ethical and epistemic limitations of knowledge, the problem of the latent medieval scepticism and of various approaches to the problem of knowability, which is related to the variety of definitions of the scope of the unknown. Another issue concerns the basic motivations of medieval intellectuals, their aims and scientific ambitions, as well as the tension between the condemnation of ignorance, the prohibition of curiosity, and the natural desire for knowledge. Of particular importance is the impact of Aristotle’s theory of science on the medieval views on intellectual research. Furthermore, from a philosophical perspective, wisdom can be considered a matter of inherently and typically human activity; but, when viewed from a theological point of view, scientia and sapientia are gifts beyond the natural human powers. The pursuit of wisdom in the Middle Ages is a provocative issue, open to many other considerations, and it encourages an interdisciplinary debate.

The conference will take place in the historical buildings of the 1000‑year-old Benedictine Abbey near Cracow. It will include five sessions of half-an-hour long papers followed by discussions, a series of short presentations of research projects, a guided tour of the Abbey, and a trip to the historical centre of Cracow.

Programme :

Day 1 (Sept. 2)
16.00-18.00

Registration : 18.00
Dinner

Day 2 (Sept. 3)

9.30 : Greetings

9.45-10.50 :SESSION 1: WISDOM AND THEOLOGY
chair: Volker Leppin

Manfred Schulze: Wissen, Theologie, Frömmigkeit. Theologische Methodik bei Gregor von Rimini OESA (†1358)
Pascale Bermon: Sapientia in Theological Texts of the 14th Century, with a Focus on Gregory of Rimini
10.50-11.10 : Coffee break

11.10-12.45 : SESSION 1: WISDOM AND THEOLOGY continuation

Sigrid Müller: “From wisdom to arts and science: The understanding of theological ethics in the Later Middle Ages
Elżbieta Jung: Do the Natural Desire for Knowledge and Loving God Above All Make us Happy. Richard Kilvington in a Dispute Over Semi-pelagianism
Alexandra Baneu: Theology as Science and Wisdom in Pelbartus of Themeswar’s Rosarium
12.45-14.30 : Lunch break

14.30-15.30 : SESSION 2: WISDOM AS MYSTICISM AND CONTEMPLATION

Dietmar Mieth: Meister Eckhart über Wissenschaft und Weisheit
Paul Hellmeier: Der Intellekt ist nicht genug. Das proklische „unum in nobis“ bei Berthold von Moosburg
15.30-15.50 : Coffee break

15.50-18.00 : SESSION 2: WISDOM AS MYSTICISM AND CONTEMPLATION continuation

Christian Trottmann: Sapientiam amavi et exquisivi a juventute mea. Les distinctions entre divers niveaux de sagesse chez Denys le Chartreux et Marquard Sprenger
Giovanni Paolo Maggioni: Ex ore altissimi. Pursuit and transmission of sapientia in medieval hagiographic legends and visions.

18.00 : Dinner

Day 3 (Sept. 4)

9.30 : SESSION 3: WISDOM AND PHILOSOPHY

Mikołaj Olszewski: Sapientia or sapientiae
Maria Burger: Selbsterkenntnis durch Gotteserkenntnis. Der Imago-Dei-Traktat des Albertus Magnus
10.50-11.10 : Coffee break

11.10-12.45 : SESSION 3: WISDOM AND PHILOSOPHY (continuation)

Henryk Anzulewicz: Zum Begriff der Perfectio bei Albertus Magnus
Katja Krause: Envisioning the Usefulness of Science in the Middle Ages
Steven Harvey: Maimonides’ Seeming Disinterest in Phronesis

12.45-14.30 : Lunch break

14.30-16.10 : SESSION 4: SHORT PAPERS

Anne Greule, Lisa-Maria Knothe: Knowledge and temporal felicity in Albert the Great and Alan of Lille (together with L.-M. Knothe)
Agnes Karpinski: Dreams and Divination as Scientific Objects in Commentaries on Aristotle
Łukasz Tomanek: Marsilius of Inghen on limitations of natural knowledge of God
Thanasis Rinotas: …et sapientiam conferre perhibetur: Stones and Wisdom in the Work of Albertus Magnus
Magdalena Bieniak: Langton Project Presentation
16.10-16.30 : Coffee break

16.30-18.00 : IGTM membership annual meeting

18.00 : Dinner

Day 4 (Sept. 5)

9.30-10.50 : SESSION 5: BONAVENTURE ON WISDOM

Andrea Di Maio: At the Crossroads between the Two Biblical Trees. Studiosity vs. Curiosity according to Bonaventure
Agnieszka Kijewska: The Book of the Scripture and the Book of Nature as a Path to Wisdom
Thomas Prügl: A lost inaugural lecture of Saint Bonaventure?
10.50-11.10 : Coffee break

11.10-12.45 : SESSION 5: BONAVENTURE ON WISDOM continuation

Magdalena Płotka: Joyful pursuit of wisdom in St. Bonaventure
Shawn Colberg: Wisdom and Conformity: Reading as Journey in the Theology of Saint Bonaventure
12.45-14.30 : Lunch break

14.30-15.30 : SESSION 6: THOMAS AQUINAS ON WISDOM

Bernhard Blankenhorn: Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles, book III on the desire to see God: A Re-Reading in Light of Henri de Lubac and Lawrence Feingold
Michał Mrozek : The Role of Sapientia in Aquinas’s Moral Considerations of Summa Theologiae
15.30-15.50 : Coffee break

15.50-18.00 : SESSION 7: THE CARTHUSIANS ON WISDOM

Mikhail Khorkov: Controversies on Wisdom in the Erfurt Carthusian Treatises on Mystical Theology from the 15th Century / Kontroversen um die Weisheit in den Abhandlungen zur mystischen Theologie der Erfurter Kartäuser des 15. Jh.
Krijn Pansters: Eremitic Ethics: Wisdom From Behind Walls
Marieke Abram: How Philosophical is Mystical Theology? Denis the Carthusian on ‘scientia’, ‘sapientia’, and ‘contemplatio

18.00 : The reception

Informations pratiques :

2-6 September 2018

The conference will take place in the historical buildings of the 1000‑year-old Benedictine Abbey near Cracow.

It is located very close to Cracow, 10 min ride from the Kraków Balice airport and 20 min ride from the city center.

Source : IGTM 2018

Programme : here

An often repeated promise of the digital humanities, in the wake of the “computational turn”, is that the wide availability and accessibility of historical texts enables scholars to breach the restrictions of a literary canon. Such a potential for literary computing, which was in 1992 first set forward as a “new” philology by its godfather Roberto Busa SJ, prominently returns in the works of computing literary theorists such as John Burrows, Jerome McGann and Franco Moretti. Their assertions that quantification entails a “widening of the canon” and eventually the advance of a “new philology”, easily invoke medievalists’ inquisitiveness. How, exactly, can the digital humanities provide such insights for the Middle Ages?

Firstly, one can question if the Middle Ages have not irrevocably lost a privileged position in the modern-day literary canon altogether. The Middle Ages seemingly take up a background position in Moretti’s methodology as an anomalous precedent to the type of literary (re)production that is typical to a literary market in the age of the printing press. This type of text is printed on a scale determined by supply and demand, a condition which appropriates it for digitization today. Even within medieval scholarship, much of the digital scholarship still seems to hinge on well-conserved and therefore well-known theological and literary authorities, whose texts have been reproduced continuously in subsequent editions and translations.

Secondly, over the last decades, medieval studies have become very sensitive to the materiality of textual transmission in the Middle Ages. This is reflected in the New Philology, coined as such by Stephen G. Nichols, which gained momentum in the 1990s. This New Philology, noticeably influenced by post-structuralist theory from the 1960s, drew explicit attention to the conviction that one cannot separate medieval texts from their manuscript context and to reader response. It postulated that analyzing and understanding the various physical appearances of medieval written texts is an essential hermeneutic criterion, and argued that gaining an overview of all stages allowed them to be chained together into a reception history. At first glance, such a “praise of the variant” appears antithetical with the virtual, normative and reductive character of a digital environment, where only little attention has gone out to readers. Yet, both Franco Moretti as Stephen G. Nichols explicitly present their “new” philology – the digital and material respectively – as a cure to a similar ailment: both their “manifestos” symbolically overthrow Ernst Robert Curtius’ iconic Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter. The means by which they aspire to change Curtius’ “old” philology, however, are very different.

As voices increasingly proclaim the emancipation of the digital humanities from their merely supportive role, and as the tools for digital medieval studies proliferate (e.g. digital scholarly editing, computational stylistics, digital palaeography, digital stemmatology, …), this conference seeks out a confrontation between the two “new” philologies and their respective approaches towards a canon that has been formed under an “old” philology. It welcomes research that both problematizes the specialized character of medieval literary production, and yet demonstrates the potential for computational criticism to “breach” or “widen” the medieval canon through digital tools. At the same time, the conference aims to tackle the following questions:

– How has the digital era changed our reading of medieval literature?
– How, exactly, can we understand computational approaches to the Middle Ages as radically transforming our disciplines?
– Are digital approaches bound to remain auxiliary in nature?
– Does it make sense to speak in terms of “new” and “old”, “digital” and “traditional”, “distant” and “close” readings? If so, where should one locate the differences? If not, where should one locate the overlaps?
– To what extent is the New Philology’s advocacy for an object-oriented approach respected or disregarded in computational criticism?
– How can theoretical concepts such as Franco Moretti’s “distant reading” question the medieval canon and the underlying principles or instances that have calibrated it towards an evaluative instrument (Gr. κανών, a “measuring rod”)?
– Which are the governing powers that underpin medieval canon formation, and are these in any way institutionalized (schools, markets, authorities, …)? How are they best described and/or best captured?

Informations pratiques :

17-18 September 2018

The conference will be held in the Jozef Plateau Conference Room of the Plateau-Rozier building (Campus Book Tower, Ghent University). The venue is located in the city centre, within walking distance of public transportation (Jozef Plateaustraat 22, 9000 Ghent).

Enter the building through the main entrance, go left in front of the central staircase on the ground floor, the room is at the end of the hallway. The building is accessible for people with disabilities (treshold ramps).

You can register by sending an email to jedgusse.degussem@ugent.be. Registration closes on Monday, September 3rd.

There is a € 40,00 registration fee for both days, including coffee breaks and lunches. Conference speakers and members of the Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies are exempt from this fee.

This conference is organized by the Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies (HPIMS) of Ghent University in collaboration with the research group RELICS (Ghent University) and the University of Antwerp (Department of Literature). It is supported by the Scientific Research Network Digital Humanities Flanders (DHu.f), funded by Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO).

Source : The Henri Pirenne Medieval Institute