The Hebrew-into-Latin Maimonides: A critical edition of the Dux neutrorum

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Speer, since 11/2021
• Subject Area: History of Philosophy
• Term: from 2020 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 436184513

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

The general purpose of this project was to present a critical edition of the Dux neutrorum, the Latin translation of Moses Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. This work counts among the most influential Jewish philosophical and theological texts. Crossing cultural and religious borders, the Latin version of the Guide had a tremendous impact on the Latin speaking world from the 13th century onwards. At the same time, the Guide is an outstanding example of the translation movement from Arabic into Hebrew into Latin in the 12th and 13th century. Originally composed in Judeo-Arabic between 1180 and 1191, the Guide was translated into Hebrew twice. During the first half of the 13th century, a Latin version appeared. There neither is information on the identity of the Latin translator nor on the time and place of its production. Concerning its geographical origin, scholars formulated different assumptions: the court of Frederick II, Southern France, Paris and Catalonia. This Latin version is today transmitted by thirteen manuscripts and has never been edited before. For more than a century, the critical edition of the Dux neutrorum has been an open desideratum of the scientific community. The absence of a reliable text raised several interpretative problems for the understanding of Maimonides’ reception among Latin authors. The project has been structured according to four tasks: a) The Dux neutrorum III has been critically edited for the first time; b) The relation with the Hebrew text has been inquired; c) The Dux Neutrorum’s reception in the Renaissance has been investigated; d) Arrangements have been made in order to make a digital version of the complete text available in the future. The project was built on substantial preliminary results achieved over the past years by the PI. On the basis of the investigation onto the manuscript tradition of parts I and II, the relations within the manuscripts have been reconstructed and the critical edition of Dux neutrorum I and II has been completed and published by the publisher Peeters in the series “Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales – Bibliotheca” (2019; 2023). With the edition of Part III, the critical edition of the Dux neutrorum is now complete. The project has been characterized by an interdisciplinary and multi-linguistic approach, which provided the conditions to complete for the first time a thorough study of Maimonides’ Latin reception based on a philologically reliable text and to contextualize the Dux neutrorum in relation with its Hebrew source.

Publications

• “Note autografe di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola a un esemplare della Guida dei Perplessi”, in Noctua, 7/1 (2020) - ISSN 2284-1180 -, pp. 133-157.
  Diana Di Segni
  
• “Pico della Mirandola, Maimonides and Magic”, in Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales, 87 (2020) - ISSN 1370-7493. - 87:1(2020), pp. 193-209
  Diana Di Segni
  
• “Die Marginalien in der handschriflichen Überlieferung des Dux neutrorum von Moses Maimonides”, in Verweiskulturen des Mittelalters, hrsg. v. Sabine Griese, Claudine Moulin, Wolfenbüttel: Harrassowitz 2022 - ISBN 978-3-447-11684-8 -, pp. 87- 103.
  Diana Di Segni
  
• Moses Maimonides, Dux neutrorum vel dubiorum, Pars II. Peeters Publishers.
  Di Segni, Diana (Ed.)