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The Thomist 68 (2004): 601-32 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF JEAN CAPREOLUS, O.P. EDWARDP. MAHONEY Duke University Durham, North Carolina ON SEPTEMBER 2-4, 1994, a conference was held at Rodez, France, honoring the Dominican Jean Capreolus, the princeps thomistarum, on the 550th anniversary of his death.jean Capreolus en son temps (1380-1444) is a collection of studies originally presented at that conference.1 The editors present the volume with the hope that it will lead researchers to return to Capreolus's own text. Two of the three editors have since published an English translation of Capreolus's On the Virtues.1 Special attention is paid in these studies to the context of Capreolus's life and labors, particularly his Defensiones theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis, during the fifteenth century. The editors have wisely divided the volume into three parts. Part 1 presents the historical context in which Capreolus lived, part 2 sets forth his thought and intellectual activities, and part 3 studies the questions of the early editions of his writings and his influence on such Dominican thinkers as Cardinal Cajetan and Silvestro da Prierio. In an extremely helpful introductoryessay, Reudi Imbachtakes up the intellectual context of Capreolus's work ("Le contexte 1 Jean Capreolus en son temps 1380-1444: Colloque de Rodez, ed. Guy Bedouelle, 0.P, Romanus Cessario, O.P., and Kevin White (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1997). 2 John Capreolus, On the Virtues, trans. Romanus Cessario, O.P., and Kevin White, with introduction by Servais Pinckaers, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001). The editors ofJean Capreolus en son temps express their admiration as well for the 1900-1908 edition of Paban and Pegues. 601 602 EDWARD P. MAHONEY intellectuel," 13-22). Capreolus labored as a Bachelor at Paris from 1407 to 1411, was then at Toulouse, and thereafter pursued the editing of his work at Rodez (from 1426 to 1432). Imbach observes that if one wants to know the intellectual climate in which the Defensiones was written, one should turn to the intellectual life of the last decade of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth century. He himself presents just such an informative sketch of the intellectual scene at Paris during that period. One approach would be to situate Capreolus in the history of Thomism. Imbach himself appears to approve a different approach, that is, to examine attentively the milieu in which the project of the Defensiones was born. He is convinced that it is possible to interpret the Defensiones as a reply to the intellectual problems of the period. Imbach identifies some marks of the boiling intellectual world in which Capreolus lived and certain of his preoccupations. He notes the anti-Thomist stance of various theologians and suggests that Capreolus represents one of the attempts to return to past viewpoints. In this case, the return is to the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The picture thatImbachsketches emphasizes humanism, which he takes to involve philosophical thought and to have reached its zenith in the fifteenth century. He mentions its most celebrated proponents andpractitioners, namely, Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, and Poggio Bracciolini. He alludes to the discussions and debates regarding the superiority of medicine over law and the superiority of the practical life over the theoretical. He points to the connection between Italian humanism and Parisian humanism in figures like Nicolas de Clamanges and Jean de Montreuil. However, during the period when Capreolus was at Paris the two thinkers who dominated the scene were Pierre d'Ailly and Jean Gerson. Both men served at different times as chancellor of the University of Paris and both played major roles at the Council of Constance from 1414 to 1418 (15). Three debates at Paris during this period enable us to form some idea of the intellectual life at Paris during Capreolus's youthful years. The first was the debate regarding the Roman de THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF JEAN CAPREOLUS, O.P. 603 la Rose. Jean Montreuil wrote a short treatise in praise of it, which provoked various sharp replies, two of which were authored by Christine de Pisan and Jean Gerson (ibid.). The second debate followed upon the assassination of the...

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