MONOGRAPHS
The book is both the first monograph-length output of the ACADEMIA project and the inaugural volume in the newly established series Intellectual Practice and Thought at Late Medieval and Early Modern Universities.
Drawing on research funded by the European Research Council within the ACADEMIA project, this volume focuses on what was perhaps the greatest quodlibet ever held: the Prague disputation of 1409, in which as many as 148 scholars presented contributions, with many more in attendance. The importance of this event is underscored by its probable two-week duration and by its timing at a decisive moment for the future of knowledge production in Central Europe. Around the close of the disputation, the Kutná Hora Decree was issued, prompting the departure of the German masters from Prague and strengthening nearby Central European universities, most notably the University of Leipzig. The volume situates the 1409 disputation in its broader context and explores the genre of arts-faculty quodlibeta more generally. It provides an overview of Central European quodlibeta as a scholarly form, updates the state of research on Prague quodlibeta, and offers analyses of selected topics debated in 1409, together with editions of texts associated with the event — the last “international” scholarly debate at the University of Prague before the outbreak of the Hussite wars.
F. Galli, L. Lička, M. Mantovani (eds.), Sight and Light in the Late Middle Ages: Textual Insights and Research Perspectives (a thematic section), Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 92.1 (2025): 137–221.
The thematic section intends to provide new insights in late medieval perspectiva. The case studies are intended to give readers a sense of the significance and scope of the discourses on sight and light between the mid-thirteenth
and the late fifteenth centuries. The authors investigate the dynamic interplay between philosophy and theology ranging from preaching to academic disputation, from the invisible light of the celestial spheres to the mechanisms of
human visual perception. The thematic section explores a diverse range of written sources, including self-standing treatises, commentaries on Aristotle and Peter Lombard’s Sentences, sermons, and university disputations.
The articles may also be read as probes into the intellectual practices of scholars active in three interrelated environments: university theologians, who expand the explanatory scope of Aristotelian natural philosophy to cover the
claims of Biblical physics and cosmology; masters and students at the arts faculties, debating the intersections between Aristotelian philosophy and perspectiva; and preachers, applying perspectiva to Biblical exegesis
to render it not only more intelligible but also more engaging for both academic and vernacular audiences. Particular attention is given to unpublished texts and the material characteristics of manuscripts, several of which have
remained largely unstudied.