Description

This is the first critical edition of a major theological work by a Cistercian from a medieval university: the questions on book I of the Sentences by James of Eltville (Jacobus de Altavilla, d. 1392), monk and later abbot of the majestic Eberbach Abbey, the filming location of many of the scenes in The Name of the Rose. The product of bachelor lectures delivered in 1369-1370 at the magnificent Bernardins in Paris just south of Notre-Dame across the Seine, James' Lectura in libros Sententiarum survives in almost two dozen manuscripts. Based on a complete collation of all the witnesses, the editio princeps provides access to a text that illuminates a relatively dark period in the history of scholasticism, portrays the status quaestionis on many issues in philosophical theology between the Black Death and the Great Schism, and illustrates the importance of later-medieval Cistercian theologians and their symbiotic relationship with the Augustinian Hermits who dominated the field from the 1330s to the 1370s. Through the exodus of German scholars from Paris after the outbreak of the Schism, James of Eltville's ideas spread to the new faculties of theology founded in Germanic lands where they exerted a profound influence. This is the second of three volumes.