Richard de Fournival et les sciences au XIIIe siècle

Poet, bibliophile, surgeon, expert in mathematical disciplines, canon and chancellor of the Cathedral of Amiens, Richard of Fournival was a unique figure in the cultural panorama of the thirteenth century. Richard and his multifaceted activity have attracted scholarly attention in recent years, but this volume is the first comprehensive attempt to locate this atypical intellectual in the context of the development of the sciences in the Latin world in his century and clarify his contribution to this process. The fifteen essays contained in the volume examine different areas of his scientific activity. Christopher Lucken and Joëlle Ducos provide a general framework by respectively accounting for Richard’s biography and its historical context and describing the main features of his unconventional bilingual production. Of the remaining thirteen chapters, seven concern the Biblionomia, a catalogue of his personal library, where the students of the city of Amiens could be introduced into the “secret chamber of philosophy”. At Richard’s death, in 1260, the collection was donated to Gerard of Abbeville, canon of Amiens, and from him, in turn, bequeathed to the library of Robert de Sorbon in 1272. Jean-Marc Mandosio describes the Biblionomia, conceived by Richard as an allegorical garden divided into three areolae or sections, namely philosophical, lucrative (medicine and law), and theological sciences. All three sections are always orderly arranged, even if, as in the case of the class of mixed books of philosophers, the subsequence of the works and manuscripts may appear random. Regarding the scientific sources, Isabelle Drealants argues that the compilers of the main coeval encyclopedias did not use Richard’s library. Moreover, while sharing with the encyclopedias the fascination with the new Arabic-Latin translations, Richard’s catalogue was not intended to collect all learning for didactic purposes. On the contrary, it betrays a higher level of specialization, evident in its search of rare works of ancient authors, in the interest in the originalia and contemporary writings, and in the richness of the medical section. According to Marc Myon and Laure Miolo, the Biblionomia is a witness to the corpus of mathematical sources available to the Latin West between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century (the ancient Boethian quadrivium, the Greek and Arabic-Latin translations, and the Latin writings of Jordanus of Nemore, an important mathematician contemporary of Richard), with very few exceptions (Leonardo Fibonacci, John of Holywood, and Alexander de Villa Dei). Laure Miolo adds that Richard’s manuscripts contributed to the renewal of the traditional quadrivium in use at the University of Paris and made the library of the Sorbonne a place where it was possible to read sources other than the basic texts included in the university teaching curriculum. Three essays focus on medical sciences. Monica H. Green regards Richard of Fournival as responsible for creating a broad corpus comprising all medical traditions available in the Latin West at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Only after Richard assembled this corpus, do we find evidence of significant circulation of hitherto neglected translations and of the emergence of a collection of new Galenica. Laurence Moulinier-Brogi gives an overall account of the science of urines in Richard’s time by surveying the tradition of the uroscopic writings mentioned in the Biblionomia. Martina Giese investigates the tradition of the works of horse medicine listed in the Biblionomia, exploring their complex textual relationships with the so-called Albertus-Vorlage, the earliest medieval treatise on veterinary medicine also used by Albert the Great. Four chapters deal with three different works allegedly ascribed to Richard. Antoine Calvet discusses the De arte alchemica, which he is inclined to take as authentic, and provides the edition and a French translation of the text. Jean-Patrice Boudet and Christopher Lucken confirm Richard’s authorship of the Nativitas, his astrological chart, through the examination of Richard’s astronomical and astrological competences witnessed in the Biblionomia, his astrological manuscripts, the Roman d’Abdalane and the poem De vetula. This poem is further investigated. Marie-Madeleine Huchet sees a hierarchy of the mathematical sciences in it: rhythmomachy, a mathematical game inspired by Boethius’ De institutione arithmetica, is subordinate to algebra, and both of them to astronomy and astrology, the latter being regarded as the crowning of the hierarchy. Cecilia Panti maintains that the attribution of the poem to Richard was only on circumstantial grounds, remarking, by contrast, that several features suggest a link between the poem and an English Franciscan context, and possibly Roger Bacon. Another two chapters address Richard’s relation to the Speculum astronomiae. Regarding the “secret books” evoked in the Biblionomia, Nicolas Weill-Parot investigates the concept of “secret” in a few astrological works and a magical text contained in two of Richard’s extant manuscripts (Paris, BnF, lat. 16204 and lat 16208) and in the Speculum astronomiae. Charles Burnett takes up once again the controversial issue of the authorship of the Speculum, adding further arguments in support of the attribution to Richard recently advanced by Bruno Roy. In particular, he remarks that in addition to the knowledge of the same books and verbatim parallels – both aspects already noted by David Pingree and Paola Zambelli – the Speculum and the Biblionomia share terminology, methodological concerns, and interest in names. The volume, complemented by four indices (names, places, things, and manuscripts), affords us a deep insight into the scientific side (works, manuscripts and interests) of Richard of Fournival’s activity (specifically the Biblionomia and the other Latin works traditionally ascribed to him). Moreover, his library’s connections with the library of the Sorbonne and the university of Paris are better clarified. In general, the volume sheds fresh light on the condition of medieval sciences in the thirteenth century, making a substantial contribution to the scholarship on this topic.