Meister Eckhart and the Parisian
University in the Early 14th Century
AHRC PhD studentship on
Meister Eckhart and the Parisian University
Applications are invited for an
AHRC-funded PhD at Kings College London on a topic related to Meister Eckhart
and the Parisian University. This is offered under the AHRC funded Project
‘Meister Eckhart and the Parisian University in the early 14th
century’ and located in the Department of Theology
and Religious Studies at King’s College London. The post will involve reading,
editing and commenting on codices of Quaestiones
which are held in libraries at Rome, Erfurt, Worcester and elsewhere. The
student will be supervised by Professor Markus Vinzent and co-supervised by
Professor Oliver Davies.
The Studentship
‘One of the most important documents for early
fourteenth-century thought is the Sentences
commentary and “notebook” of … Prosper of Reggio Emilia … Vat. Lat. 1086. The
manuscript contains a remarkable amount of information on and material from
theologians active at Paris in the 1310s.’[1]
The project will
investigate Cod. Vat. Lat. 1086 which
dates from before 1323, containing over 500 Quaestiones
(Qu.) with names and opinions of
students and masters at Paris University. In addition,
there exist several parallel codices in various manuscript collections
elsewhere which may need investigation. On this basis, the studentship will
focus on a specific topic which will be defined in conversation with the
applicant to develop a Phd thesis on a specific aspect to explore Meister
Eckhart’s (ca. 1260-1328/9) research environment and culture of the Parisian
University in those challenging years between Aristotelianism, Thomism,
Neo-Platonism, the Beguine-movement and the impact it had on his prior and
posterior career at Erfurt.
These were
tumultuous times when in the year 1310 Marguerite Porete was burned at the
stake at the Place de Grève after 21 theologians of the University had passed
judgement against her book The mirror of
simple souls, Philip IV burned fifty-four Templars near Paris,[2] and
the condemnation of core statements by Meister Eckhart in 1329. Amongst all the
theologians from this period Eckhart, the only one after Thomas Aquinas to hold
the chair of theology in Paris for a second time, is still the most widely read
(and certainly one of the most controversial) theologians of that time. Amongst
his surviving works, Eckhart's Qu.
Parisienses are regarded as 'one of the most famous set of texts that’ not
only he, but generally ‘medieval thinking has produced'.[3] Until
recently, only five of such Qu. were
known: three that were dated to his first magisterium in 1302/3, the other two
from his second in 1311/2. While Professor Markus Vinzent wrote his Art of Detachment,[4] he re-discovered
precisely in the codex under question, Cod.
Vat. Lat. 1086, four more Qu. Par. that he thought were authored
by Eckhart, texts which had previously been excluded as dubious. Here, the
upper part of fol. 222v with the beginning of the first re-discovered Qu.:
Professor
Vinzent presented his findings as invited main speaker at the International
Medieval Congress Leeds in 2010.[5] As a
result, the Eckhart editors (Prof. L. Sturlese and G. Steer) encouraged him to
undertake a major research project to check this extraordinary discovery. In
the same year, Professor Walter Senner (Angelicum, Rome) found another relatio of an unknown Qu. belonging to Eckhart in a Manuscript
in Troyes, which the project aims to compare.
The
re-discovered Qu. will be the core of
the proposed project, and together with their source, the Cod. Vat. Lat. 1086, studied in detail to embed Eckhart and his Qu. into their codicological, historical
and cultural environment: this manuscript is of crucial importance in shedding
light on our Master and the broader development of philosophical, theological
and juridical teaching in Paris at the beginning 14th century. Prosper's
collection contains names and opinions of students, bachelors and masters
(regents) of the university and preserves all the documentation which gives
detailed insight into the atmosphere of learning of this European cultural
centre, unparalleled by any other document. For many of those named by Prosper,
this will be a first scholarly study of their bio-bibliography and their
thinking.
After
preliminary studies,[6] there
is need for a thorough study of the manuscript (codicological and content),
also in comparison with further manuscripts of similar content (which have not
yet been taken into account), for example several important codices which will
need to be studied in situ at Erfurt University, others in Venice, at Worcester
Cathedral and in the Vatican library.
Eckhart
scholarship developed primarily since F. Pfeiffer began to publish Eckhart’s
German, and H. Denifle the Latin works. A new step in the critical engagement
with the Dominican master was taken both by the Dominican order (who in 1935,
also included the four, as they called them, ‘dubious’ questions that we are
studying in this project) and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(1936-ongoing). Almost simultaneously both parties started competing critical
editions of the works of Meister Eckhart: a competition that was politically
and ideologically driven, and which resulted in the withholding of vital
manuscript information by the Nazi-governed German state. After the first few
fascicles of the Dominican venture in Italy, their project collapsed, and Josef
Quint took over the German project. After intensive preliminary studies, he
published the first volumes of Eckhart’s German works in the major critical
edition of the Kohlhammer Verlag (Stuttgart), while a team around Josef Koch
provided the Latin works. In volume V of the Latin works, Eckhart’s hitherto
known and accepted five Qu. Par. had
been included, two from Cod. Vat. Lat.
1086, while four more - the so-called ‘dubious’ questions - from the same
Manuscript were discarded. Since this time, the critical edition of Eckhart’s
Latin works has been completed, and only a few supplementary texts are still to
be added (including our newly re-discovered Qu.,
as the main editor L. Sturlese has indicated to the PI), and the German works
are approaching completion. In a recent application to a German funding
institution (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften), the PI has been asked by
L. Sturlese (Lecce, Italy) and F. Loehser (Augsburg, Germany) to collaborate in
the major revision of the publication of Eckhart’s German and Latin works (a
long-term project lasting from 2012 to 2025).
Scholarship
on the QQu., especially related to
the University of Paris, has been advanced by P. Glorieux, W.J. Courtenay and a number of other
scholars. M. Grabmann researched Eckhart’s Qu.
and first discovered the accepted five Qu.
Par. (of which two derived from Cod.
Vat. Lat. 1086). E. Longpré also drew attention to them. Ever since, they
have attracted considerable scholarly interest and are regarded as the ‘most
contested chapter of his [Meister Eckhart’s] thinking’.[7]
Scholarship
on Eckhart’s German and Latin works is extensive, and there exist several
continuously updated bibliographies, two major international Eckhart Societies
and several histories of research on Eckhart. One of the gaps in this
scholarship however is the re-location of his teaching into the Parisian University.
Until today, very little is known about the precise nature of it (see W. Senner
in the forthcoming Handbook of Eckhart,
Leiden, 2012), in which the PI is involved as academic peer reviewer and
reader. More will come to light when the proposed project works through what is
contained in Cod. Vat. Lat. 1086.
A. Pelzer’s Catalogue description of the Vatican library, although
written 80 years ago, is presently still considered the most important
contribution to the study of Vat. lat. 1086. He provides a description of this
manuscript, but it needs further examination and subsequent updating concerning
scribal and marginal notes. P. Glorieux tried to identify not only the internal
order of “reportationes”, but he also tried to assign a date to them. He supposes
that Prosper might have prepared this collection from Qu. which ensued during the course of his lectures on the Sententiae as a bachelor (before 1311) and during his regency.
Using the chronology of Prosper’s academic career as his basis, Glorieux argued
that the ordinary and quodlibetal Qu.
in group A were disputed in Paris
during the academic year 1311-12. The Qu.
in group B, which are grouped according to their authors, “occurred
sequentially and preserved reportations of questions disputed at Paris during
the academic years 1312-14”. More recently W. Courtenay has questioned the date
proposed by Glorieux; instead, he proposes 1314-15 as the likely timeframe for
Prosper’s lectures on the Sententiae.
After underlining the problem with the chronology of group A, Courtenay
hypothesizes that this collection was assembled before Prosper was sententiarius.[8] Given
that nobody has until now, analyzed the content of Cod. Vat. Lat. 1086 in relation to Eckhart’s second Parisian magisterium, this research will be of
importance in shedding light not only on the authenticity of Eckhart’s Qu., but also on their historical
context and indeed on the Parisian University’s theological teaching at that
time.
How
and where we work: When not working at King’s College London, using photocopies
and ultraviolet images of the mentioned manuscripts, we spend several months in
research stays at various places where libraries hold important manuscripts
(Erfurt, Venice, Rome and elsewhere) to have frequent access to the manuscripts
in autopsy.
Eligibility criteria
- Open to
residents of the following countries
European Union, United Kingdom - Applicants
must hold a relevant MA/MPhil or a Masters-level advanced research
training or equivalent.
- Applicable
subjects
Medieval Codicology, Medieval Latin, Philosophy, Theology, Classics or another related field
Application details
Applications
may be submitted
from 26-Jul-2013 until 15-Aug-2013
from 26-Jul-2013 until 15-Aug-2013
Information
about the funding
Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded PhD at Kings
College London on a topic related to Meister Eckhart and the Parisian
University. This is offered under the AHRC funded Project ‘Meister Eckhart and
the Parisian University in the early 14th century’ and located in
the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College
London. The post will involve reading, editing and commenting on codices of Quaestiones which are held in libraries
at Rome, Erfurt, Worcester and elsewhere. The student will be supervised by
Professor Markus Vinzent and co-supervised by Professor Oliver Davies.
It is a fixed-term appointment for 2
years and 11 months, starting 1st September 2013.
Application procedure
Applicants should submit via email a two-page
curriculum vitae, a brief letter outlining their qualification for the
studentship, and the names and contact details of two academic referees to Professor
Markus Vinzent, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Kings College
London (markus.vinzent@kcl.ac.uk) no later than Friday 15 August 2013. Interviews are scheduled to be held in London within the following 7 to 100 days. For further information concerning the project, please contact Professor Markus Vinzent before Thursday, 08 August 2013.
[1]
W.J. Courtenay, ‘Reflections …’, in: C. Schabel (ed.), Theological Quodlibeta (Leiden, 2009), 345-57, 345.
[2]
R. Lerner, in: Marguerite Porete, The
Mirror, trans. and intr. By E.L. Babinsky (New York, 1993), 19.
[3]
Kurt
Flash, Meister Eckhart (Freiburg i.
Br., 2010), 113.
[4]
Eckhart: Texts and Studies I (Leuven, 2011).
[5] See JTS
63, 2012.
[6]
See W.J. Courtenay (above with further lit.).
[7] W. Schüssler, ‘Gott – Sein oder Denken?’, in: Transzendenz (Paderborn, 1992), 165.
[8] W.J. Courtenay, “Reflections”, in Theological Quodlibeta II (Leiden, 2007),
352.
