Original scientific paper
MARTIN OF ZADAR ALIAS JOHN BLUND: AN (UN)KNOWN MEDIEVAL TEXT ABOUT THE SOUL AND ITS POWERS
Tomislav JANOVIĆ
Abstract
The author reports on a manuscript, held in the capitol library in Urbania, near Urbino in Italy, consisting of two separate texts: the first being a commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sententiae (Abstractiones de Libro Sententiarum) and the second a psychological treatise on the soul and its powers (De anima et de potentiis animae). Leaning on bibliographical notes left by two distinguished historians of the Dominican order (one by Herman D.
Christianopulo from the end of the 18th century and the other by Thomas M. Kaeppeli from the second part of the 20th century) and two notes from a notary office in Split dating from the 14 century, Croatian scholar Franjo Šanjek (as far back as 1981) has attributed
both texts to a Dominican friar Martin of Zadar (Martinus de Jadra). A paleographical analysis of the manuscript confirmed that it originates from the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century. In the year 2006 a critical edition of the first part of
the manuscript, Martin’s comments on the Sententiae, has been published. The analysis of the second (and much shorter) part of the manuscript (comprising 18 folia) revealed that its text consists of larger excerpts from John Blund’s (Johannes Blundus’) Tractatus
de anima, an important piece of Aristotelian-Avicennian philosophical psychology that was most probably written between year 1200 and 1204. Parallel presentation of the two texts, the critical edition of Blund’s treatise (edited by D. A. Callus, R. W. Hunt and M. W.
Dunne) and the transcribed text of the second part of the manuscript from Urbania, shows interesting similarities and dissimilarities which might prove useful both for the study of the reception of Blund’s philosophy in the 13th and 14th centuries and for the critical edition
of his only preserved work (hitherto based on three known manuscripts: from Cambridge, Prague and Vatican). A plausible assumption concerning the purpose of Martin’s compilation of parts of Blund’s Treatise is that it was used for teaching (perhaps in a
Dominican monastery school, either in Zadar or in Northern Italy). However, even if this assumption proves right, there remains a baffling question: Why did Martin, among an abundance of psychological works from the 13th and the beginning of the 14th centuries, of which some were written by greatest Dominican thinkers (like Albert the Great or Thomas Aquinas), picked out a more than a century old text which – as one might plausibly assume
– was not even among the more popular representatives of its kind. The choice ofBlund’s Treatise appears even more peculiar knowing that its author draws extensively on natural-philosophical sources – not only Greek and Arabic, but also medieval ones (e.g. Quaestiones Salernitanae or Adelard of Bath).
Keywords
Martinus de Jadra; John Blund (Johannes Blundus); medieval manuscript; powers of the soul; Aristotle; Avicenna; philosophical psychology; natural-philosophical sources; Dominican order
Hrčak ID:
110182
URI
Publication date:
26.9.2013.
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