Book Reviews / CHRC . () –
Pavel Blazek,ˇ Die mittelalterliche Rezeption der aristotelischen Philosophie der Ehe. Von Robert Grosseteste bis Bartholomäus von Brügge (/–) [Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions ]. Brill, Leiden/Boston , xiii + S. isbn . us; .
The process by which the social philosophy—by which I broadly meanthe fields of ethics, politics, rhetoric, and economics—attributed to Aristotle came to be known to and disseminated during the Latin Middle Ages has been widely studied in recent times. An international cast of scholars, including Roberto Lambertini, James Blythe, Janet Coleman, Odd Langholm, Christoph Flüeler, Vasileios Syros, Steven Williams, and (in all due modesty) the present reviewer (to name a few), have labored to enhance the understanding of the complex and often muddy circumstances surrounding the translation, circulation, and reception in Europe of the genuine texts of the corpus Aristotelicum (Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, Rhetoric), as well as spurious writings misascribed to Aris- totle (Secreta secretorum, Economics), that illuminate the Aristotelian system of ‘practical knowledge.’ To this burgeoning body of literature must now be added Pavel Blazek’sˇ Die mittelalterliche Rezeption der aristotelischen Philosophie der Ehe. The accomplishments represented in this volume (a revised German doctoral dissertation) are numerous and striking, and contribute notably to the field of thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century intellectual history. The first and perhaps leading facet ofBlazek’sˇ contribution is the organiza- tion of his study of Aristotelianism thematically around the idea of marriage. Of course, considerable scholarly attention has been devoted to the theory as well as practice of wedded life and domestic relations during the Middle Ages (one thinks of the germinal and still useful books by Georges Duby and Christopher Brooke from the latter part of the last century). But this scho- larship has concentrated primarily on canon law and theological sources, as well as on literary and visual representations of the marital state, rather than on scholastic philosophy. By contrast, as Blazekˇ rightly points out, the dif- fusion of Aristotelian texts in European universities provided a distinct alter- native tradition of thought about the nature of marriage, one grounded in a naturalistic philosophical perspective. In the initial substantive section of the book, Blazekˇ provides a synoptic overview of the Aristotelian position on the proper ordering of marital relations as found in the main thirteen-century Latin translations of the Nicomachean Ethics, Politics,andEconomics (including an edition and German translation of the latter, contained in Chapter ). For- tunately, he is not overly concerned about potential problems posed by the authorship and provenance of the Economics; since medieval readers took it
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, DOI: 10.1163/187124109X506295 Book Reviews / CHRC . () – to be authentic, it deserves to be counted as part of the body of Aristotelian doctrine received and appraised during the Middle Ages. Blazekˇ thereafter sur- veys a number of the central attempts to integrate Aristotelian teaching about marriage into a scholastic Christian framework during the second half of the thirteenth century, including works by Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, and Engelbert of Admont as well as the florilegium Auctoritates Aristotelis ascribed to Johannes de Fonte. Blazekˇ highlights the great diversity of uses to which the Aristotelian materials were put, depending upon the intel- lectual (and sometimes political) context and agenda of the author in question. Another significant dimension of Blazek’sˇ scholarship is his particular em- phasis on the reception of the Economics, a topic that has not been widely discussed among current scholars of Latin Aristotelian ideas (perhaps precisely because of its spurious status). Although there are some exceptions to this gen- eral tendency to neglect the Economics (such as research by Lambertini, Flüeler, and Langholm), Blazek’sˇ volume is the first recent account of which I am aware to trace the fuller story of how that text came to be disseminated in the Latin West. In this connection, Blazekˇ is especially insightful concerning the contri- bution of Bartholomew of Bruges, a largely unknown and sadly underappre- ciated schoolman who around the dawn of the fourteenth century produced a series of commentaries on many of the minor works within the Aristotelian corpus, among which was an exposition (dating to about ) of the Eco- nomics. In Part of the book—by far the single lengthiest section—Blazekˇ introduces his readers to Bartholomew’s text and explicates the importance and originality of his thought. Although concentrating upon Bartholomew’s inter- pretation of pseudo-Aristotle’s ideas about marriage, Blazekˇ makes it evident how this commentator’s philosophical hermeneutic is innovative and deserving of wider attention from historians of medieval thought. Blazekˇ closes his survey with a brief coda that draws some conclusions about the significance of his inquiry for the study of conceptions of marriage during the Middle Ages. Here one might have hoped for a somewhat more extensive and bolder discussion of how the Aristotelian tradition interacted with other (canonistic and theological) teachings over the course of the fourteenth cen- tury. Moreover, I am curious about the extent to which Aristotelianism shaped later political debates surrounding the nature and basis of marital relations. One such dispute occurred during the s and s in Germany, when a number of eminent philosophers and lawyers (such as Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham) wrote substantial polemic tracts in support of King Lud- wig of Bavaria’s attempts to build dynastic ties by marrying his son off to an heiress at a time when he and his family were under papal interdict. Another