Brill's Companion to the Reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

For the first time, the reader can have a synoptic view of the reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, East and West, in a multicultural perspective. All the major themes of Pythagoreanism are addressed, from mathematics, number philosophy and metaphysics to ethics and religious thought. Contents Acknowledgements List of Illustrations and Tables Notes on the Contributors Introduction: Pythagoras, from Late Antiquity to Early Modernity: A Multicultural Approach • Irene Caiazzo, Constantinos Macris and Aurélien Robert Part 1: Pythagorean Number Theory and the Quadrivium 1 Pythagoras and the Quadrivium from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages • Cecilia Panti 2 Music and the Pythagorean Tradition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages • Andrew Hicks 3 Nicomachean Number Theory in Arabic and Persian Scholarly Literature • Sonja Brentjes 4 The Tribulations of the Introduction to Arithmetic from Greek to Hebrew Via Syriac and Arabic: Nicomachus of Gerasa, Ḥabib Ibn Bahrīz, al-Kindī, and Qalonymos ben Qalonymos • Gad Freudenthal 5 Medieval Jewish Pythagoreanism: Remarks on Maimonides and on Sefer Melakhim • Tzvi Langermann Part 2: Pythagorean Way(s) of Life, East and West 6 Popular Pythagoreanism in the Arabic Tradition: Between Biography and Gnomology • Anna Izdebska 7 Pythagoras’ Ethics and the Pythagorean Way of Life in the Middle Ages • Aurélien Robert Part 3: Theology, Metaphysics and the Soul 8 Pythagoras’ Philosophy of Unity as a Precursor of Islamic Monotheism: Pseudo-Ammonius and Related Sources • Daniel De Smet 9 The “Brethren of Purity” and the Pythagorean Tradition • Carmela Baffioni 10 “Pythagoras’ Mistake”: The Transmigration of Souls in the Latin Middle Ages and Beyond • Irene Caiazzo 11 Pythagoras Latinus: Aquinas’ Interpretation of Pythagoreanism in His Aristotelian Commentaries • Marta Borgo and Iacopo Costa 12 Latin Christian Neopythagorean Theology: A Speculative Summa • David Albertson Part 4: New Trends in Early Modern Pythagoreanism 13 Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Renaissance: Philosophical and Religious Itineraries from Pico to Brucker • Denis J.-J. Robichaud 14 Pythagorean Number Mysticism in the Renaissance: An Overview • Jean-Pierre Brach Index of Names "A wide range of specialists provide a comprehensive overview of the reception of Pythagorean ideas in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, shedding new light especially on the understudied 'Medieval Pythagoras' of the Latin West. They also explore the survival of Pythagoreanism in the Arabic, Jewish, and Persian cultures, thus adopting a multicultural perspective. Their common concern is to detect the sources of this reception, and to follow their circulation in diverse linguistic areas. The reader can thus have a panoramic view of the major themes belonging to the Pythagorean heritage - number philosophy and the sciences of the quadrivium; ethics and way of life; theology, metaphysics and the soul - until the Early Modern times. Contributors are: Constantinos Macris, Cecilia Panti, Andrew Hicks, Sonja Brentjes, Gad Freudenthal, Tzvi Langermann, Anna Izdebska, Aurélien Robert, Daniel De Smet, Carmela Baffioni, Irene Caiazzo, Marta Borgo, Iacopo Costa, David Albertson, Denis Robichaud, Jean-Pierre Brach"-- Provided by publisher