Enrico di Herford lettore delle opere di filosofia della natura di Alberto Magno nel primo libro della Catena aurea entium

The Catena aurea entium by Henry of Herford is an important testimony to the dissemination of Albert the Great’s Aristotelian commentaries in the late medieval Germany. The fact that the scientific sections of Henry’s encyclopaedia (i.e., the parts dealing with geography, mineralogy, botany, zoology, anatomy, and the science of generation) rely on Albert’s works has already been established, though not sufficiently investigated, by scholars. This paper focuses on some interesting quotations from Albert’s treatises on natural philosophy in Book 1 of the CAE. These quotations show that Henry does not merely quote, but reworks Albert’s passages in a more or less substantial way through reformulations, shifts, omissions, additions, and so on. Book 1 of the CAE, which deals with divine being, associates the Christian God with the deities of the Gentiles, thus suggesting the idea that there is an agreement between Christian tradition and pagan wisdom. The quotations from Albert’s scientific works are part of this original project. Albert’s works provide Henry with a philosophical-scientific understanding of the events of myth as told by literary and mythographic sources. Moreover, Henry cites a passage from Albert’s De caelo et mundo that emphasizes the perfection of number three according to Pythagoras and Hermes and thus confirms that the ancient sages had already glimpsed the Christian dogma of the Trinity. The textual reworking and doctrinal rethintking that characterize Henry’s approach to the Albertinian sources reveal an authorial intention. More extensive and exhaustive research will be able to determine whether Henry’s rewriting of Albert’s works also inolves other parts of the CAE besides Boook 1. In any case, the CAE appears as an “original” work despite being a collection of quotations. The CAE not only reveals its author’s idiosyncrasies and interests regarding the choice of passages to be quoted, but also rearranges, manipulates, and combines its sources according to doctrinal intentions and a cultural project. In this sense, Henry’s encyclopaedia is a significant contribution to the German philosophical-theological debates of the fourteenth century.