Jacqueline Hamesse

Les Instruments De Travail Philosophiques Médiévaux. Témoins De La Reception D'Aristote

It is possible to study the reception of Aristotles natural philosophy by means of the various tools that were used by intellectuals during the thirteenth century. This type of literature is often forgotten. Four samples are taken here to illustrate the interest of such works, and the information that we can extract from them. The examples are the sermons by Anton of Padua (ca. 1230); an encyclopedia composed by Arnold of Saxony during the second quarter of the thirteenth century, which includes extracts from recent translations mixed together with Neoplatonic passages; an Aristotelian florilegium, which illustrates thirteenth-century censorship of Aristotelian texts; and a translation of the Meteorologica into the vernacular, which documents the popularity of this treatise at the end of the thirteenth century and the creation of a technical vocabulary in old French texts. The third example is an anthology that originated in a Franciscan milieu and was compiled in its definitive form at the end of the 13th century. This latter presents a series of purged texts about natural science. Finally, it discuss the French translation of Aristotles Meteorology by Mahieu le Vilain, master at the Arts Faculty of the University of Paris at the end of the 13th century. This is the first translation of an Aristotelian treatise into vernacular, allowing us to understand the popularization of this treatise and its importance for the technical vocabulary of this discipline.