John of Segovia: Opera minora - edition, translation, and commentary of the smaller works of John of Segovia about Islam and from the period ca. 1450-1458

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ulli Roth
• Subject Area: Roman Catholic Theology ; Medieval History
• Term: from 2020 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 441858187

In 1453, the Western Christian world was shocked by the fall of Constantinople. While a lot of theologians and leaders of the Latin church focused on a military answer to the threat of Islam, some theologians of the Council of Basel developed non-violent ideas and conceptions how to face Islam. Among those scholars, John of Segovia (d. 1458), a friend of Council fellow Nicolas of Cusa (d. 1464), is one of the most important. He clearly saw the necessity of an adequate theological and intellectual and not military answer to Islam. He wrote three major works on this subject in form of letters or treatises which are often discussed in publications. But besides of these texts, he also wrote a series of smaller texts. He planned them to be a part of the corpus of texts with which he tried to influence important leaders and decision-makers in Rome and Burgundy. Until now, only some of them are edited and all of them are not translated from Latin. Despite of their quality and inner systematic value they are hardly read or taken into account when writing on the Western way of facing Islam in the 15th century. These smaller texts and fragments are:I. Errores legis MahumetiII. Allegationes de peccatis primi parentisIII. XVI Scholastica documentaIV. De spiratione activaV. Praefatio in translationem secundamVI. Fragmenta translationis AlkoraniVII. Epistola ad Guillielmum de Orliaco.While the texts I.–VI. aim at Islam in a direct or indirect way, text VII. reveals the spiritual and Christological background for John of Segovia’s engagement at that time. Together with others the applicant has edited the texts I., II., and VI. In the new project „Opera minora“ all texts I.–VI. will be edited, translated, commented, interpreted, and published together according to their context. This edition will be published in the series Corpus Islamo-Christianum, where the applicant has published John of Segovia’s major work "De gladio divini spiritus".The applicant will work together with Dr. Jesse D. Mann (Drew University, Madison, New Jersey) who has agreed to contribute text VII. with an English translation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Jesse D. Mann