Thought about emotion among Dominicans in Pisa and the Roman Province in the thirteenth century

• Main Author: Townson, Nicholas
• Other Authors: Biller, Peter
• Published: University of York 2014
• Subjects: 900
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.632571

This dissertation’s subject is the discussion of emotions in the Order of Preachers in the thirteenth century. In order to provide precise and concrete context, it focuses on a single convent and region, Pisa and the Roman Province. The first part sketches the community at S. Caterina, describing its early history and introducing aspects of the order’s commitment to study. This is followed by a summary of the connection between the thought of the friars-preacher at Paris and the preaching of the Pisan archbishop, Federico Visconti. The second part addresses ideas about emotion put forward in Dominican theological texts and Sentences commentaries more directly. The first step is a consideration of the importance of the Sentences commentary genre as a means for the diffusion of thought about emotion, taking the discussion of Christ’s passions as an example. The next offers a detailed summary of different treatments of hope, outlining developments in the concepts and vocabulary which the friars used in their teaching. The final chapter is an attempt to bring the different threads together by considering the use of thirteenth-century academic thought about emotion, both in later conventual teaching at S. Caterina and in regular preaching to lay men and women in a central Italian commune.