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The In De Ente et Essentia is a polemical work of a brilliant young Dominican professor, Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469-1534), eager to defend the philosophical legacy of Thomas Aquinas. Drawing from the full range of St. Thomas's writings, the work offers a coherent Thomistic metaphysical theory set against the rival Scotist and Averroist positions defended at Italian Universities in the 1490s. This new English translation is an invitation to philosophers and historians to re-engage with Cajetan, with his 15th Century rivals, and, of course, with Thomas Aquinas himself. It is also a challenge and inspiration to do metaphysics through dialectical engagement with the greatest rival theories of our own time and place.

This volume provides the first full length English translation of the commentary on the Book of Job by Didymus the Blind. One of the earliest line-by-line commentaries on Job to survive from late antiquity, it covers the entirety of the first sixteen chapters of the LXX text of Job with a few unfortunate lacunae. It represents the third commentary of Didymus published in the Fathers of the Church series (preceded by Didymus’ On Genesis and On Zechariah translated by Robert C. Hill) and the last of the commentaries discovered at Tura in 1941 that was edited for circulation in late antiquity, since Didymus’ comments on Ecclesiastes and Psalms are unedited transcripts of his public lectures, replete with student questions. The Book of Job has garnered perpetual attention because of its intriguing dialogues between God and the Devil, Job and his wife, Job and his three friends and inevitably between Job and God. In recent years, it has become the focus of attention among scholars seeking to make sense of the horrors of the Holocaust and other 20th century atrocities where unlimited human cruelty and injustice strained any notions of Providence and the salvific nature of suffering by the righteous. Written at a pivotal time when Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism were emerging as distinct interpretive traditions, Didymus’ commentary on the book of Job offers important insights into the interpretation of Job based on the LXX translation which was a foundational text for early Christian doctrine, spirituality and liturgy. His presentation of Job as the icon of a student-loving teacher stands in contrast to the portrait of a blasphemous Job more familiar to modern audiences that value a bold iconoclastic character who puts God on trial for allowing human injustice. Didymus’ comments on Job hint at the blind teacher’s own mature consideration of his experience as a Christian teacher, concerned to train other potential leaders in the burgeoning post-Constantinian Church, whether as an ecclesiastical minister, monastic abba, governor, or teacher. As such, this early Christian commentary on the Book of Job merits further study because it illustrates an early exegetical trajectory that was already embedded in the Christian tradition prior Jerome’s advocacy of the Hebraica Veritas.

Even prior to his death on 15 November 1280, the Dominican master Albert of Lauingen was legendary for his erudition. He was widely recognized for the depth and breadth of his learning in the philosophical disciplines as well as in the study of God, earning him the titles Doctor universalis and Doctor expertus. Moreover, his authoritative teaching merited him the moniker Magnus, an appellation bestowed on no other man of the High Middle Ages. This volume contains the second half of Albert the Great’s commentary On Job (on chs. 22-42), translated into English for the first time; a translation of the first half of the work appeared in an earlier volume of the Fathers of the Church, Mediaeval Continuation series (vol. 19, 2019). Albert completed Super Iob in 1272 or 1274, when he was over seventy years old, at the Dominican Kloster of Heilige Kreuz in Cologne, where, as lector emeritus of the Order, he likely lectured on this profound biblical book. Significantly, Albert may have been inspired to produce On Job by his most famous student, Thomas Aquinas, who had written his own Joban commentary, the Expositio super Iob ad litteram, while serving as conventual lector at San Domenico in Orvieto from 1261 to 1264. Yet Albert occupies a unique position in the history of the interpretation of Job: he is the first and only exegete in history who explicitly reads the whole book as a debate in the mode of an academic or scholastic disputation among Job and his friends about divine providence concerning human affairs. Albert understands God, in the final chapters of Job, to determine the disputed question in favor of Job and against his friends, namely declaring that He (i.e., God) rules human life with no consideration of human works, but rather that divine governance is dissimilar to every mode of human rule.

William of Auvergne was a long-reigning bishop of Paris (1228-1249) with notable political influence, wide intellectual interests, and an appetite for ideological contest. William’s On Laws (De legibus) is a major treatise on the Law of Moses, its nature and purpose in ancient Judaism and contemporary Christianity. William’s fundamental objective in the work is to show the abiding power of the Law, including its ritual and other seemingly non-moral commands, as a counterforce to perennially recurring idolatries. In this, he shows his debt to, but also his distance from, Maimonides, whose Guide of the Perplexed had, in William’s time, only recently appeared (c. 1223) in a partial Latin translation. Along the way, On Laws includes lengthy sections on non-literal biblical interpretation and its abuses; on the life of Muhammad and the law of Islam; and on contemporary superstition, sorcery, and paganism. On Laws is a work of broad significance for the cultural history of thirteenth-century Europe, including the histories of medieval Jewish-Christian relations, Christian-Muslim relations, heresy, paganism, and witchcraft, as well as the histories, more broadly, of biblical interpretation, philosophy, natural science, and magic. A product of the academic world of early thirteenth-century Paris, On Laws is not a lovely or literary work, but neither is it technical, formulaic, or derivative. The book, like its author, cuts its own paths through the cultural thickets of the day. And by its relative intellectual informality, On Laws gives frequent, inadvertent insight into the intellectual, religious, and social experiences of thirteenth-century people. On Laws has never before been translated from Latin into any other language.

In his monumental On Justice and Rights, the Jesuit Luis de Molina (1535-1600) discussed the legal and ethical aspects of the Portuguese trade in African and Asian enslaved persons. Molina surveys, develops, and problematizes the criteria necessary for the legitimate possession, sale, and purchase of human freedom. He insists that, even under legally valid slavery, persons who have sold or lost their freedom have inalienable rights as human beings, such as the freedom to make contracts, to marry, and even, under certain circumstances, to sue their owners in court. Molina also devotes attention to the ways in which slavery could be ended and whether and under what circumstances slaves had the right to escape from their owners. Well informed about the political structures and customs of many peoples in Africa, as well as Japan, China, and India, Molina paints a vivid and detailed picture of Portuguese trade. He gives specific accounts of the origins and development of the slave trade, region by region, and of the nature of the relationship between local rulers and the Portuguese kingdom. In doing so, he carefully describes the deception, coercion, and general indifference that pervades this trade regarding the rights to freedom of these people. It also attempts to identify the political, ecclesiastical, and market agents involved in this great injustice and their varying degrees of culpability. While Molina does not condemn slavery as a legal institution, the deeply flawed and even immoral behavior of sellers, buyers, regulators, and political rulers both in Portugal and in the slave-supplying regions that Molina denounces casts a heavy shadow on the morality of the trade.

The Immediate Mouth of Cicero in His Letters, consists of two books. An audiobook presents the integral Latin and English texts of 51 letters Cicero wrote to family and close associates all recited by Reginald Foster. A printed book presents the teaching method of Reginald exemplified by 160 imagined dialogues between a teacher and students working with original thoughts of Cicero to learn the Latin language from the first encounter. This companion volume to The Bones' Meats Abundant analyses how Cicero expressed himself in the Latin of these same 51 letters, with cross references to fuller explanations in The Mere Bones of Latin. Audio book LISTEN to Cicero writing to family and close associates recited by Reginald Foster who embodies that living voice of the master Latinist. READ along while listening and RECITE together with the audio. CONSULT the English text of our translations. Printed book LEARN from the first encounter with the Latin language by reading from Cicero's letters and COMPLETE your understanding through regular readings. Teach the Latin language using excerpts from Cicero's letters from the first day. Understand how Reginald taught the Latin language using solid, unmodified, original Latin texts. Learn to teach from Reginald.

Beginners and experts alike will find a complete immersion into the workings and nature of the Latin language embodied in the incomparable, insuperable epistles of the great Marcus Tullius Cicero, something which other commentators pass over or scorn. This second volume puts “meat on the bones” of the Latin language presented in the first volume: Ossa Latinitatis Sola: The Mere Bones of Latin. The personal letters of Cicero provide ample meat to enflesh the skeletal structure of the language, thus the title: Ossium Carnes Multae: The Bones’ Meats Abundant from the epistles of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Part 1 presents 51 complete letters from the Tyrell-Purser text. Facing each letter is an image of its oldest manuscript edition as early as the ninth century, which are preserved and guarded in the Medicea Laurentiana library in Florence, Italy, witnessing to the human hand preserving this monument of world heritage for over two millennia. Part 2 follows with a most careful rendition into English of Tully’s living, telephone-like Latin discourse. A thorough treatment and explanation of noteworthy elements of his natural talk follows with numerous references to the Encounters in Volume I. All this has students, learners, teachers, experts of the Latin language in mind and is humbly designed to deepen the understanding and appreciation of specific expressions and peculiarities of Cicero’s language itself. Part 3 provides 500 sentences consisting of from 1 to 5 words and suited for the beginnings or continuation of Latin conversations: 200 declarations, 100 questions, 100 exclamations, 100 injunctions drawn from his letters. The volume is amply indexed. All this has been done to enhance the study and use of Latin, to popularize Cicero’s correspondence, to prepare the reader for Volume III which will deal again with the letters and their usefulness for Latin conversation.