Lot 206
ARISTOTLE
S. Thomae Aquinatis in quatuor libros Aristotelis De coelo, et mundo commenatria
Auction: 8 July 2003 at 12:00 BST
Description
... Woodcut portrait of Aristotle on the titlepage, decorative woodcut initials and diagrs. in the text, text in two columns, contemporary limp vellum, some water staining of the lower outer corners throughout, folio, Venice: apud Hieronymum Scotum, 1562
Note: BM STC Italian Books p. 45 Not in Adams or the Index Aureliensis
The volume offers Aristotle's text in the translation prepapared by Joannes Argyropylos, Professor of Greek at Florence where he had fled after the fall of Constantinople, and what is decsribed as a "Tranlatio antiqua" presumbaly the textus communis, a version of the translation of William of Moerbeke, which usualy accompanies the works of St. Thomas in these later editions. Petrus de Alverna completes the commentary which remained unfinished at the time of Aquinas's death.
" with the rediscovery of Aristotle in the 11th century there comes a new kind of scientific and cultural mentality, so that Aquinas can affirm (in his commentary on Aristotle: De caelo et mundo) that " the study of philosophy does not have the goal of knowing what men thought but of knowing what is the truth of thought." - Smith 'Textual deference: the role of commentarors' in American Philosophical Quarterly 28: 1, 1991 pp. 1-13