BETTER OFF DEAD: THE LATITUDE OF HUMAN MISERY IN THE OXFORD REPLICATIONES OF THE DOMINICAN ROBERT HOLCOT AND THE PARISIAN PRINCIPIA OF THE CISTERCIANS JEAN DE MIRECOURT AND PIERRE CEFFONS

Chris Schabel (1) , Monica Brinzei (2)

1 UCY - University of Cyprus [Nicosia]
2 IRHT - Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes

In "The Rage," one of the gems on Judas Priest's classic metal album British Steel of 1980, 1 vocalist Rob Halford bellows, "Is pain better than the grave?" He was not the first to ask the question, and Pasquale Porro and Guy Guldentops are among those who have investigated, respectively, the thirteenth-to early fourteenth-century discussion and the late-scholastic background to Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy. 2 There was a mid-fourteenth-century twist in this history, in terms of both doctrinal approach and institutional context. It is no secret that theologians in the mid-fourteenth century were obsessed with the mathematical language of limits and latitudes, 3 and it is thus no surprise that questions of life and death would be approached in a similar fashion. Inspired by their Oxonian predecessor the Dominican Robert Holcot, who debated with a socius on the issue in the early 1330s, in the 1340s the Parisian Cistercians Jean de Mirecourt and Pierre Ceffons expanded the limits of the topic of choosing death over life in their debates with their own socii in the context of their principia on the Sentences.

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Chris Schabel, Monica Brinzei. BETTER OFF DEAD: THE LATITUDE OF HUMAN MISERY IN THE OXFORD REPLICATIONES OF THE DOMINICAN ROBERT HOLCOT AND THE PARISIAN PRINCIPIA OF THE CISTERCIANS JEAN DE MIRECOURT AND PIERRE CEFFONS. XXIII Annual Colloquium of the SIEPM University of Leuven 11-12 October 2018,, 2022. ⟨hal-03607199⟩