The famous Epistola Luciferi, written in late 1351 or early 1352, caused quite a stir in the Avignon of Pope Clement vi, quickly became a medieval best-seller, and thereafter remained topical, being ...copied and printed down to the present day. Traditionally ascribed to Nicole Oresme or Henry of Langenstein, the letter was attributed to the Cistercian Pierre Ceffons by Damasus Trapp in 1957. Trapp merely took Ceffons' authorship for granted, however, and in the most thorough study of the Epistola Luciferi and of the entire genre of Devil's letters, her 1982 PhD dissertation, Helen C. Feng rejected the attribution. Presenting codices and works of Ceffons of which Trapp was unaware, this article argues in favor of Ceffons' responsibility for the Epistola Luciferi, while offering a new critical edition of the letter, an English translation, and a supplemental list of manuscripts and editions.
Gerard of Abbeville (†1272) was a secular master of theology at the University of Paris and a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. In the context of reviewing Stephen Metzger's new ...two-volume book on Gerard, this paper first adds some new information about Gerard's early career, notably concerning benefices he claimed in Saint-Omer, Tournai, and Amiens. Afterwards, the salient features of Metzger's volumes are presented: his placement of Gerard in his institutional context; his characterization of Gerard's doctrines of wisdom, knowledge, and contemplation in comparison with those of Gerard's contemporaries; and his editions of texts. In the end, the chronological repercussions of maintaining that Vat. lat. 1015 reflects the original sequence of Gerard's Quodlibeta, Metzger's future focus, are discussed.
In the third decade of the fourteenth century, the first definitive steps were taken to replace Aristotle's theory of projectile motion and to apply the new theory to explain finite motion in a ...vacuum. The main actors in this shift were the Franciscan theologians Francis of Marchia, Gerald Odonis, and Nicholas Bonet, as well as Francesc Marbres, the artist formerly known as 'John the Canon,' but there is some confusion about their respective roles. Over the past decade, critical editions and manuscript studies of the pertinent texts of Marchia, Odonis, and Marbres have provided the raw materials to straighten out what some have considered the early background to the Galilean theory of projectile motion.
