Simone Guidi

This paper delves into a pivotal issue of scholastic angelology, the problem of angelic self-knowledge. It compares positions ranging from Thomas Aquinas’s to João Poinsot’s. I stress in particular what I dub ‘the problem of immanent knowledge in presence’, i.e. the problem of the actual, immanent and presential interplay between the angelic intellect and the angelic substance, which Aquinas sees as the rationale for angelic self-knowledge. I then discuss the perspectives of Cajetan and Vázquez, which revolve around the identity between the angelic intellect and the angelic substance, and how they should interact so to enable self-knowledge in the angelic intellect. I finally deal with Poinsot’s account of the problem and its strong rebuttal to Vázquez. Poinsot’s view champions Aquinas’s original doctrine and is grounded upon the notions of “radical intellect” and “intelligible identity”.

The problem of Divine Ideas is one of the most consequential in the entire history of Western Thought, and effects of the Medieval debate on exempla-rism can still be found in Early Modern and Modern metaphysics. Speaking of the Middle Ages, such a topic provides a vivid example of the prominent role played by Platonism in the tradition of the Schools in the 13th and the 14th century, often associated with the sole authority of Aristotle. Among the different traditions animating the Schools at this stage, the Franciscan is surely one of the most sensitive to this topic, both because of the relevance attributed to Augustine as a fundamental authority of the Order, and of the turning point brought about by Bonaventure. These are just a few of the reasons why the collective volume Divine Ideas in Franciscan Thought (XIIIth-XIVth Century), edited by Jacopo Francesco Falà and Irene Zavattero, should be welcomed. The book is published within the series of medieval studies Flumen Sapientiae, directed by Irene Zavattero. It collects chapters in English and Italian, all dealing with Medieval Franciscan thought in the 13th to the 14th centuries, authored by a team made up of experienced and younger scholars. Five precious textual appendixes in Latin (Olivi, Trabibus, Novocastro, Caracciolus, Mayronis) accompany the essays, providing very useful study materials.