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https://doi.org/10.52685/pihfb.48.1(95).1
Federik Grisogono vs. John Duns Scotus: Three aspects of Grisogono’s reception of Paduan Scotism (1506, 1507, 1528)
Ivica Martinović
orcid.org/0000-0003-0424-1242
; Dubrovnik, Hrvatska
Sažetak
The reception of Duns Scotus’s thought, confined to the reception of his two works Scriptum Oxoniense and Quęstiones quo[d]libetales edited by the Irish Franciscan and Paduan Professor Maurice O’Fihely in 1506, should, on the basis of the conducted research, be placed in the following three years: 1506, 1507 and 1528, which enables a clear periodization of that reception. In addition, Grisogono’s attitude towards the philosophical legacy of Duns Scotus features in three different forms. The first phase is determined alone by tetrastich Ad lectorem on the title page of Duns Scotus’s Quęstiones quo[d]libetales (1506), in which the Zadar-born student of philosophy and medicine at the University of Padua warns the reader about Duns Scotus’s five books which Maurice O’Fihely, professor of Scotistic theology at the Padua University and already a consecrated archbishop of Tuam, prepared for print in 1506 with the Venice printers Andrea Torresani and Simone de Luere. In the gist of the tetrastich, “You will fulfil the bosom with flowers” (poteris flore implere sinus), Grisogono alludes to O’Fihely’s nickname Flos mundi, in order to commend the endeavour and contributions of the editor. Grisogono’s tetrastich was published at least one more time – on a decorative page of the 1513 Paris edition of Duns Scotus’s Questiones quolibetales. In his first book Speculum astronomicum (1507), published 38 days after his promotion as Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine (artium et medicinae doctor) of the University of Padua, Grisogono refers to Duns Scotus in two of his writings. In the treatise “on the nobility and excellence of astrology” (de nobilitate et excellentia astrologiae), fourth within his Speculum astronomicum, the nobleman of Zadar emphasizes three important philosophemes of Duns Scotus: limitation in God’s necessary action, free will, and God’s preknowledge. While examining the axiomatic system of Euclides’s geometry according to the Liber elementorum Euclidis (1482), edited by Campano of Novara, Grisogono refers to Duns Scotus in his objections to Euclides’s two definitions: in the proof that the point does not exist and in logical disputing of the definition of circle. In the 1520s, Grisogono’s assessment of Duns Scotus’s philosophy changed fundamentally regarding a topic from natural philosophy – explanation of tides. In his second book published in 1528, in the introduction to the Tractatus de occulta causa fluxus et refluxus maris, Grisogono ridicules Duns Scotus’s account of tides expounded in Secundus scripti Oxoniensis super Sententias (1506), at the same time as Pliny’s discussion in Book Two of the Historia naturalis (1513): “like mice jumping in flour” (ut mures super farinam saltantes). The nobleman of Zadar objects that both scholars neglected to focus on the three main problems in the explanation of tides, and in so doing actually offers a catalogue of open problems which he tackled in his own treatise and for which he submitted his own solutions. In his assessments of Pliny’s and Duns Scotus’s accounts of tides, Grisogono evidently exaggerates, as he refuses to acknowledge even what is being explicitly stated in their texts. In the introduction to his treatise on tides, Grisogono once again mentions Pliny and Duns Scotus, but he takes a different approach to each of them. Pliny is unjustly presented as skilful compiler, incompetent to develop a synthetic approach to a relevant topic, and in his final assessment of Duns Scotus he resorts to allegory, which links Scotus’s religious vocation with the New Testament pericope at the Lake of Gennesaret (Mt. 14, 22–36), in which the faith of Peter the fisherman is being tempted. By employing a syntagm “for he had no shoes,” Grisogono reminds that Duns Scotus is a barefoot Franciscan. With the metaphor of “bare foot,” treading and feeling the thorns, Grisogono describes Duns Scotus’s dual relationship towards astrology – an attempt to challenge astrology as opposed to the abandonment of this attempt. With the “dry foot” metaphor, the nobleman of Zadar attributed an unexpected New Testament role to Duns Scotus – the role of Peter who walks on the water of the Lake of Gennesaret towards Jesus, fearless and in faith, and sinks the minute he begins to doubt it, in order to apply it, no more or no less, to the topics on the sea in Duns Scotus’s commentary of the second book of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Finally, Grisogono nicknames the famous Scot “the father of logic,” and thus separates him from the Roman natural philosopher Pliny. A clear-cut line between Pliny and Duns Scotus, according to the understanding of the Zadar nobleman educated in Padua and taught about Scotism on the lectures of Maurice O’Fihely, apparently lies in the field of logic: Pliny is ignorant in logic, while Duns Scotus is “the father of logic.” The study of Grisogono’s attitude towards the philosophical legacy of Duns Scotus has taken divergent paths, producing certain major results:
1. In Grisogono’s published works, three variants of his name and surname appear. On the title page of Duns Scotus’s Quęstiones quo[d]libetales (1506), on his first appearance in the literary republic, the student of philosophy and medicine at the University of Padua features as Fredericus Grisogonus. Young editor of Grisogono’s first book, Marco Antonio Contarini, in his epistle to the young Zadar scholar, suggests a Grecized form of his lastname Chrisogonus, with an aim to emphasize that Grisogono was “golden inside and out,” i.e., in his philosophy and work, and changes his name into Federicus. While preparing this edition, Contarini used the Grecized variant Chrysogonus on nine occasions in the book, the title page included, and that surname version was adopted by Grisogono himself in his second book in 1528.
2. In the Archives of the Padua University, in three entries of the doctoral promotion in 1507, Grisogono is recorded as Fedricus de Iadra, while in the official records of the city administration of Zadar the nobleman uses the ablative form of his last name: de Grisogonis.
3. In the first years of his study of philosophy, Grisogono listened to the lectures of Pietro Pomponazzi on Aristotle’s two works De caelo and Physica, and thus gained elementary knowledge in Aristotle’s natural philosophy, paving the path for his later research in astronomy and natural philosophy.
4. On the pages of his own works Grisogono recorded three valuable testimonies of his relationship towards major Greek philosophers: one on Plato, and two on Aristotle. In his inaugural lecture at the Padua University in 1507, his early passion for mathematics, after having abandoned the study of law, and prior to becoming a student of philosophy and medicine in 1501, he described as follows: “Then I totally dedicated myself to the divine mathematics. I followed the doctrines of the divine Plato and Pythagoras.” Simultaneously, in his introduction to Euclides’s Elements, Grisogono uses Averroes’s metaphor while referring on two occasions to Aristotle as the “rule in nature” (regula in natura), that is, a leading figure in natural philosophy. Two decades later, Grisogono provides an even clearer description of his attitude towards Aristotle, when in the introduction to his treatise Tractatus de occulta causa fluxus et refluxus maris (1528) he states: “I would not have dared explain the tides had my path not been paved by the whole doctrine of Aristotle, as servant of astrology, over which, swimming steadfastly since my earliest childhood, I have never stopped watching.” In these three testimonies Grisogono shows the two-fold aspect of his philosophical orientation: early adherence to Plato and Pythagoras in mathematics, and lasting leaning on Aristotle in natural philosophy. Grisogono’s two testimonies of Aristotle’s influence on his works have hitherto been ignored in the assessments of Grisogono’s philosophical orientation.
5. While writing the introduction to Euclides’s Elements, which eventually developed into a treatise Plusquam expositio (1507), Grisogono leans on the edition Liber elementorum Euclidis (1482), edited by Campano of Novara. In Chapter Ten, although entitled “On postulates and axioms,” presumably those of Euclides, he discusses only one axiom which Campano had added to Euclides’s system of axioms, places it in the marginal field of mathematics, logic and physics, and accepts Aristotle’s views on the continuum and the infinite in numbers and geometrical quantities. By studying Campano’s Euclides, Grisogono entered the field of the philosophy of mathematics and logic.
6. Grisogono’s tetrastich on the title page of Duns Scotus’s Quęstiones quo[d]- libetales (1506) reveals that the nobleman of Zadar was familiar with all the five volumes of Duns Scotus’s works which Maurice O’Fihely, professor of Scotistic theology at the Padua University, was planning to publish in 1506. More importantly, on O’Fihely’s lectures Grisogono became well acquainted with Duns Scotus’s main philosophemes, and especially with Duns Scotus’s natural theology. The discussion of young Grisogono on “God’s potency” (de potentia Dei) in the university aula could be relating to Duns Scotus’s seventh quodlibetal question which discusses God’s omnipotency from the perspective of the cognitive abilities of man. His participation in the discussion “on God’s ineffable modus of understanding and production” (de eius [= Dei] inefabili modo intelligendi et producendi) with almost utmost certainty is relating to the “productions in God” (productiones in Deo) as a topic of Duns Scotus’s second quodlibetal question. His discussion in the university aula “about our happiness and perfection” (de felicitate et perfectione nostra) may at least partly be relating to Duns Scotus’s 21st quodlibetal question about the “good fortune” of man from the perspective of Pseudo-Aristotelian writing De bona fortuna. Even the testimony of young Grisogono about his interest “in the secrets and arcana of nature” (de secretis et arcanis naturae) could be referring to natural philosophical topics in Duns Scotus’s Quæstiones quodlibetales, notably to the understanding of place in the 11th quodlibetal question and the necessity of natural law for the falling of heavy bodies (principium determinativum ad descendendum) in the 16th question. Therefore, Grisogono matured both spiritually and philosophically alongside Maurice O’Fihely, the leading figure of Paduan Scotism.
7. With the tetrastich Ad lectorem, printed in 1506, Grisogono earns his place in the history of Croatian literature as a Latin poet. Moreover, he belonged to a small group of Croatian poets who published their Latin verses prior to 1510.
8. Grisogono’s tetrastich makes reference to all the five books written by Duns Scotus, published in the course of 1506 by their editor Maurice O’Fihely, and in the point expresses his acknowledgement to the editor by alluding to his nickname Flos Mundi. Therefore, at the beginning of the sixteenth century he established a direct relationship with Paduan Scotism, and earned his place in the Renaissance reception of Duns Scotus among Croatian scholars, and equally so in the Croatian philosophical heritage. As a result, the scope of the Croatian philosophical heritage is expanded by two bibliographical items, i.e., by two editions of Grisogono’s tetrastich in 1506 and 1513, that of Venice in 1506, and of Paris in 1513.
9. Owing to the treatises published in his two books, Grisogono is not only the first Croatian physician and the first Croatian music theoretician who published his own treatise, as has been established to date. He is the first Croatian mathematician, astronomer/astrologist and physicist/natural philosopher who printed his own treatise on these subjects.
10. Irish Franciscan Maurice O’Fihely is not only the first Irishman who prepared a book for print. Doubtless, he is also the first Irishman who had his own treatise printed: “Epithomata castigationum, conformitatum atque elucidationum in questiones Metaphysicae, De primo principio tractatum, atque Theoremata Doctoris subtilis Fratris Joannis Duns Scoti eiusdem ordinis” (1497) – extensive comments accompanying three works by Duns Scotus, which he prepared for print. The Epithomata belong just as equally to Irish philosophical and theological heritage. Therefore, Maurice O’Fihely has rightly deserved another three primacies in the history of Irish culture: the first Irishman who published his own work, the first Irish philosopher who published his own work, the first Irish theologian who published his own work.
11. O’Fihely occupies a prominent place in the history of editing and publishing of Duns Scotus’s works, but his persistent editorial work also included his own works. Among his major works are the two extensive treatises which fall within the ‘commentary of the commentary’ genre, and belong to the age of incunabula: the earlier mentioned “Epithomata” (1497) and a treatise in logic “In quæstiones dialecticas Divi Joannis Scoti expositio accuratissima” (1500).
12. Included in the gallery of the forty famous students of the University of Padua, the Sala del Quaranta (1942) at the Palazzo Bo, seat of the University, are as many as sixteen students from the sixteenth century, but neither Grisogono nor O’Fihely are among them, although the research conducted until the 1930s spoke in their favour.
In this article Grisogono’s tetrastich Ad lectorem (1506, 1513) is published in the Latin original, here also accompanied by its first Croatian translation by the author of this study, and with the interpretation of its cultural and philosophical significance.
Ključne riječi
Federik Grisogono; John Duns Scotus; Maurice O’Fihely; University of Padua; Euclid; Campano of Novara; Pliny the Elder; Abū Maʽshar; Aristotle; Pietro Pomponazzi; quaestiones quodlibetales; Duns Scotus’s works printed in Venice; Renaissance reception of Duns Scotus’s philosophy; Croatian reception of Duns Scotus; natural theology; natural philosophy; geometry; philosophy of mathematics; logic; God; creature; free will; soul; point; circle; tides
Hrčak ID:
284050
URI
Datum izdavanja:
12.7.2022.
Posjeta: 528 *