Dissertation Fellow 2004-05
Eleonora Bonocuore (Spring 2005)
Università degli Studi di Siena
In Search of the Middle Term: Pseudo-Lullian Logic
and the Work of Bernhard of Lavinheta as a Link between Ramon Lull’s
Thought and Renaissance Lullism in Europe
The development of Lullism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance has
been considered by philosophical historiography in the pioneering
works of Catalan scholars, Carreras y Artau and Batllori, and, subsequently,
in the research of Yates, Hillgarth, Platzeck and Bonner; in Italy
these studies were pursued by Rossi, Zambelli and Pereira. What
makes this topic so rich is the possibility of exploring how, during
the 15th century through the work of the so-called “minor”
thinkers, there emerged a new, revolutionary reading of Lullian
thought. This shift in understanding reality and in the thought-structures
used to perceive the world occurred first in the small circle of
Lullists, and then through them, in other influential European intellectual
environments (e.g., Lefèvre and his followers in Paris and
the circle of St. Justina in Padua), resulting in a reinterpretation
of Lullism both as a mnemonic technique (Agrippa, Bruno) and as
an encyclopaedia of knowledge (Alsted). Within this shift, the works
of Bernhard of Lavinheta, though generally ignored, are central
because they contain elements of both the medieval and Renaissance
Lullisms, thus allowing us to glimpse how and why these developments
occurred.
My dissertation first reconstructs the beginning of a Lullian tradition
in 14th-century Europe (Catalunya, Italy, France) and proceeds in
the second and third chapters to a study of two almost unknown texts
(editions of each are offered in the Appendix). The first of these,
entitled Loyca discipuli magistri Raymundi Lulli, provides
an introduction to logic that is striking because it combines various
crucial Lullian features with a classical Scholastic outline of
the main logical problems and with the new Ockamistic trends. The
second text, called Novem Introductiones, is an earlier
treatise of Lullian logic of Italian origin, probably to be identified
with the pseudo-Lullian Logica Parva; these two Italian
texts provide evidence for the existence and the importance of two
Lullian centres of study in Italy, at Genoa and at Venice, in the
early 15th century. The remaining chapters study the Franciscan
friar Bernhard of Lavinheta, who occupied the first official chair
of Lullism at the Sorbonne in 1515. They focus on his Explanatio
compendiosaque applicatio artis Raymundi Lulli (1523), examining
the origins of the author’s thought and the texts which influenced
it. To such an end, it will be necessary to study the convergence
within the studia Franciscana between Lullism, Scotism
and Ockhamism, as is suggested by Lavinheta’s own intellectual
formation, largely influenced by the philosophic tradition of Duns
Scotus.
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