As part of our upcoming celebration of the many publications by members of our department in 2016 and 2016 this Friday (4 PM, at Alumni House, 61 Summit Street, Burlington, VT 05401), we are featuring several of the books that will be celebrated.
This featured title is by Senior Lecturer Charles Briggs.
Dr. Briggs was kind enough to share some insights into the process of creating this work:
“Over a decade ago at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Leeds, England, I was approached by one of the commissioning editors at the Netherlands-based publisher Brill about organizing and editing a volume on Giles of Rome (c. 1243/7–1316). The volume would be published in Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition series, which describes itself as “a series of handbooks and reference works on the intellectual and religious life of Europe, 500-1800.” I agreed with the commissioning editor, Julian Deahl, that such a volume was needed. Giles of Rome was not only one of the most influential intellectuals of the European later Middle Ages, he also was (and still is) the Doctor (i.e., most authoritative theologian) of the Hermits of Saint Augustine, one of the four orders of “mendicant friars” which had originally formed in the thirteenth century (the other three being the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Carmelites). Giles was, arguably, the most talented student of Thomas Aquinas at the University of Paris, and a brilliant and prolific scholar who played a key role in the study and interpretation of the recently rediscovered works of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Some sixty works can be plausibly credited to his authorship, the most famous of which, both in his own times and today, is his treatise on statecraft, the De regimine principum (“On the Rule of Princes”). He also managed to become embroiled in several important controversies, first gaining fame for his principled stand against the censorship of new, Aristotelian ideas by university authorities in 1277 (which got him kicked out of the university, though he soon returned to teach there) and later for being the chief architect of the theory of papal supremacy in Pope Boniface VIII’s acrimonious dispute with King Philip IV of France, and then for supporting that same king’s bid to destroy the military order of the Templars (for more on this last, see the work of my colleague, Sean Field).
Given all this, it comes as no surprise that a prodigious body of scholarship has been published over the last few decades on various aspects of Giles’s works and ideas. Yet, for all the mass of published articles and monographic studies, no one had yet attempted to produce a comprehensive, interpretive study of Giles’s life, works, and contributions to intellectual history. This is likely because the shear enormity of such a project had frightened off people less foolish than myself. Still, since I had already published a goodly amount of work on Giles, I felt like I might be up to the task. But the fact is that I am an intellectual historian, not a philosopher. So, I knew I could only manage the task if I could secure the partnership of a co-editor who knew more about the philosophical aspects of Giles’s works, and I found him in Peter Eardley, a professor of medieval philosophy at Guelph University in Canada. We got together in Toronto and came up with a proposal for the volume, which included a rough outline of chapter topics and of scholars who were qualified to write those chapters. I agreed to write the introductory chapter, on Giles’s life, works, and legacy, and Peter volunteered a chapter on his moral psychology. Then we started approaching the other scholars. To our great good fortune, we secured contributions from seven of the very best scholars in the field. It was to be a truly international collaboration, with five Italian, one German, and one British contributor, and the Canadian and American editors.
Had I known how much time and effort Peter and I would have to expend on the volume, I likely never would have agreed to Julian’s request. Because the Companion to Giles of Rome (published in 2016) is meant to be a work of reference, Peter and I had to compile a massive comprehensive bibliography of Giles of Rome scholarship, as well as a chronology of Giles’s own works and a bibliography of all the published editions of those works (including all the early printed editions, starting in the fifteenth century). Moreover, in addition to having to write our own chapters, Peter and I had to coax chapters out of some of the more slow-moving of the contributors, and then do substantial editing of several chapters, especially because English was the second (or indeed third or fourth) language of several of the authors. One chapter I translated from Italian. Fortunately, despite whatever linguistic, stylistic, and formal quirks which had to be ironed out, the scholarship of the chapters was universally excellent, so the volume made it through peer review, and has, so far, been reviewed positively in scholarly journals. For the foreseeable future, then, the Companion will likely remain the “go-to” resource for people working on Giles of Rome, on the Augustinian Order, and on later medieval scholastic philosophy and theology. Indeed, from time to time I actually find myself consulting it.”
Please join us this afternoon for our celebration of all of our authors! Refreshments will be served.
