Ad cognitionem scientiae festinare: Gli studi nell'Università e nei conventi di Padova nei secoli XIII e XIV by Paolo Marangon (review)

294book reviews cal verve and wit. Every student of the early Preachers wUl look forward to the appearance of the future volumes of this project. Augustine Thompson, O.P. University ofOregon Ad cognitionem scientiaefestinare: GIi studi nell'Università e nei convenu di Padova nei secoli XIII e XIV. By Paolo Marangon. Edited by Tiziana Pesent í. [Contributi aUa storia dell'Universita di Padova, 31.] (Trieste: Edizione Lint. 1997. Pp. xxxüi, 531. Lire 82,500 paperback.) In commemoration of the early death of the young Paduan historian, Paolo Marangon (1947-1984), the Centro per Ia storia deU'Università di Padova has pubUshed a coUection of his essays representative of the scholar's wide-ranging interests in the reUgious and inteUectual Ufe of Padua in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Marangon knew thoroughly the contents of Padua's archives and Ubraries, and these essays offer a wealth of material for scholars interested in Italian Aristotelianism, early Italian humanism, and the history of religion and education in late medieval Italy. Marangon's interests in the role of the reUgious orders in Padua and especiaUy that of Sant'Antonio, its patron saint, are reflected in a series of essays concerned with various aspects of Sant'Antonio's career, with his influence on the devotional, ecclesiastical, and intellectual Ufe of the city, and the contribution of the reUgious orders to higher education in the city. In what is his most cited article, "La Quadriga e i Proverbi di maestro Arsegino . Cultura e scuole a Padova prima del 1222" (pp. 2-46), Marangon provides a census of the numerous teachers and scholars at work in the city before the creation of the Studium in 1222 and characterizes the institutional structure of both lay and clerical education in the period. He interprets avaUable evidence as pointing to the role of the bishop, Giordano, in the estabUshment of both the communal Studium and the studia of the Dominicans and FrancisA group of essays deals with early Paduan Aristotelianism. On the basis of a careful examination of Paduan sources, Marangon convincingly demonstrates in his "MarsUio tra preumanesimo e cultura deUe arti: Ricerca suUe fonti padovane del I discorso del Defensor pads" (pp. 380-410), that MarsigUo of Padua's supposed Parisian "Averroism" was rather a reflection of views common to the medical and "prehumanistic" mUieux of his native city around the turn of the fourteenth century. In "Principi di teoría política nella marca trevigiana : Clero e comune a Padova al tempo di MarsUio" (pp. 41 1-430), Marangon, continuing his study of Paduan intellectual life in the early fourteenth century, analyzes the first political treaties written in the Paduan region in the early four- book reviews295 teenth century, including those of the Franciscan Paolino da Venezia, the Domenicans Enrico da Rimini, Guido Vernani, Borromeo of Bologna, and Bartolomeo CapodiUsta of Padua, and Agostino da Ancona,who also had close links with Padua. Although Marangon's essays often lack conceptual framework, the rich panorama of medieval Padua's intellectual life they offer helps to explain why the relatively smaU city produced the leaders of the first two generations of Italian humanism and the foremost European political thinker of the fourteenth century. Ronald G.Witt Duke University Jews in the Notarial Culture: Latinate Wills in Mediterranean Spain, 12501350 . By Robert I. Burns, SJ. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1996. Pp. x, 267. $45.00.) In this fascinating volume, the reader enters the multilingual, multicultural world ofJews in the medieval Crown of Aragon through a unique set of documents : the wills of Jews—both men and women—written in Latin, when the vast majority of medievalJewish wills are presumed to have been written in Hebrew only. The Latin wills, however, were not simple translations of a Hebrew text, because the norms of Jewish and the Romanizing law of the Crown of Aragon had quite different prescriptions for testamentary dispositions. According to Burns, there were two basic reasons why aJew would go to the trouble of drawing up a Latin will paraUeling another in Hebrew. First, a Latin wiU was enforceable under the normal legal procedures avaUable to all citizens of the realm, thus ensuring the testator that if theJewish...