| Resumo: | Dominicus Gundissalinus (ca. 1115-post 1181) is one of the most prominent figures of the Toledan translation movement, as well as an original philosopher. In collaboration with the Jewish philosopher Abraham Ibn Daud and Iohannes Hispanus, he translated over twenty Arabic works into Latin. These translations are used by the Toledan philosopher as main sources for his original speculation, concretized in five philosophical treatises which show Gundissalinus' conviction of the strong coherence between Christian, Islamic and Jewish philosophical traditions. These works are the first Latin treatises to analyze the main Arabic and Hebrew philosophical doctrines that will constitute the theoretical basis for Latin speculation in the thirteenth century. After a brief examination of Gundissalinus' biography and his work as translator in Toledo, this dissertation focuses on Gundissalinus' metaphysical reflection, as it is presented in his original treatises. The method used herein is the doctrinal and genetic analysis of the writings, dealing with the three main aspects of Gundissalinus' metaphysical speculation: the being of God, the creatural being, and the cosmogonic causation. The aim of this study is to delineate the theoretical structure by which Gundissalinus' original ontology is built on his peculiar use of the Arabic and Hebrew works he translated and how this structure is explicitly interpreted by Gundissalinus as doctrinally coherent with the Latin philosophical tradition he aims to update. In this respect, this analysis is a comparative examination - both doctrinal and textual - of Gundissalinus and his Arabic-Hebrew sources: Avicenna, Ibn Gabirol, al-Ghazali and Ibn Daud, and his main Latin sources: Boethius, Calcidius, Thierry of Chartres, William of Conches and Hermann of Carinthia. 1. The Biographical and Philosophical Context of Gundissalinus' Work Gundissalinus is first attested in the capitulary archives of Segovia's cathedral in 1148, as archdeacon of the small town of Cuéllar. These documents show that Gundissalinus spent at least fourteen years in Segovia or Cuéllar, as he first appears in the Toledan chapter in 1162. It is likely that his activity as a translator began in this year, an undertaking sponsored by the Toledan archbishop John II and strongly linked to the presence of Abraham Ibn Daud - or «Avendauth» - in the Castilian capital. In the scientific and philosophical context provided by the so-called «Gundissalinus' circle», Abraham Ibn Daud, Iohannes Hispanus and Gundissalinus translated more than twenty philosophical works from Arabic into Latin, including Avicenna's Metaphysica and De anima, Ibn Gabirol's Fons vitae, and al-Ghazali's Summa theoricae philosophiae. Concurrently, Gundissalinus and Ibn Daud created an original philosophical speculation on many issues found in the texts they translated. The results of this reflection have been concretized in five philosophical treatises - De unitate et uno, De scientiis, De anima, De divisione philosophiae, and De processione mundi - written by Gundissalinus during the second half of the twelfth century. In these writings, the archdeacon of Cuéllar shows his deep syncretism towards different, and often divergent, philosophical traditions. Using mainly the the Arabic-Hebrew speculations to which he had access, Gundissalinus built an original doctrinal system where many core theoretical concepts, such as Avicenna's Active Intellect or Ibn Gabirol's universal hylomorphism, are thematized in the horizon offered by the Latin tradition, especially the Chartrean speculation, the Weltanschauung through which Gundissalinus interprets his sources. Gundissalinus' debt toward Chartres leads our study to a preliminary acceptation of the hypothesis, proposed by many scholars, regarding his presence there before appearing in Segovia in 1148. For this reason, the Chartrean masters are examined as main sources for Gundissalinus' metaphysics in this study: only at the end of this work will it be possible to come to a definitive conclusion regarding this fascinating hypothesis. The second part of the dissertation's first chapter examines the philosophical corpus produced by Gundissalinus, which illustrates the coherence of the metaphysical program presented in the De scientiis and the De divisione philosophiae and analyzed in the De processione mundi. This comprehensive examination of Gundissalinus' philosophical production likewise offers the means of establishing the main theoretical bonds that link the De unitate et uno, the De anima and the De processione. The chapter ends with a specific analysis of the metaphysical works composed by Gundissalinus - the De unitate and the De processione - as preliminary illustrations of the main themes discussed in subsequent chapters. 2. The Thematization of God's Being The first metaphysical aspect of Gundissalinus' reflection analyzed herein is his thematization of God's being as ontologically different from the creatural one, a viewpoint which indicates a primary doctrinal shift. In the De unitate, God is primarily characterized as the metaphysical One, the absolute and perfect Unity from which the ontological unity that constitutes creatures' being is derived. However, in the De processione, this first divine attribute has less significance, as the primary characteristic of God is found in the causal and modal ontology elaborated by Avicenna. In this perspective, God is the Necessary Existent, the self-sufficient being that causes the being of every subsequent existent. These created beings have in themselves a possible being - neutrally liable of existence as well as non-existence - that constitutes the being they are entitled to and which become a necessary being only through the causal intervention of the Necessary Existent. In this way, there is a fundamental distinction between God and these beings: God is the Necessary Existent per se, while the other beings that actually exist are necessary per aliud only, i.e. thanks to their ontogenetic cause. While the doctrine of necessary and possible being offers the main characteristics of God's being, the De processione mundi further develops His divine attributes. Apart from His necessity and metaphysical Unity, God is also characterized as pure Act. It is the Goodness in se that, through its will and its wisdom, establishes the world in an act of creation ex nihilo, that by Gundissalinus' intention, avoids any misinterpretation of God's action as a demiurgic ordination of primordial chaos. In the second part of this chapter, these aspects of Gundissalinus' thematization are analyzed through the doctrinal comparison with its sources, beginning with Avicenna. From his Metaphysica, Gundissalinus receives the aforementioned doctrine of necessary and possible being and quotes a long excerpt from this text in the De processione mundi. Nevertheless, the reception of this theory, along with a lack of reference to other Avicennian doctrines regarding the analysis of God, is crucially influenced by two writings directly related to Avicenna: al-Ghazali's Summa theoricae philosophiae and Ibn Daud's ha-Emunah ha-Ramah. These two treatises play a decisive role in Gundissalinus' hermeneutics, as they lead the Toledan philosopher to propose a clear link between the doctrine of necessary being and that of act and potency. However, many aspects of God's thematization exposed by al-Ghazali and Ibn Daud have no place in Gundissalinus' reflection, showing his lack of interest in the traditional Islamic and Hebrew doctrines concerning God's attributes. Gundissalinus' conceptualization of God as pure and absolute Unity derives from a wider range of authors, who directly and indirectly influence his works. Textual analysis shows the main source for both the De unitate's and the De processione's treatment of this concept is Ibn Gabirol. Gabirol's Fons vitae provides the basis of Gundissalinus' conception of the role of God's will and wisdom in the cosmogonic dynamics, asserting the first joining of matter and form - the former derived from God's essence, the latter from his wisdom - is operated by the divine will. Nevertheless, other sources of these features can be detected in the Latin philosophical tradition, beginning with Boethius's De Trinitate and De hebdomadibus, both examined further in detail herein. In this viewpoint, the doctrinal analysis of Thierry of Chartres' speculation, especially his Commentum super Arithmeticam Boethii, sheds light on another important and peculiar aspect of Gundissalinus' metaphysics. Indeed, examination of these writings show strong similarities in the methods (the compositio/resolutio procedure) and sensibilities (in particular, the numerological and arithmological approach) between the two authors. This connection is further supported by a direct quotation from Thierry's Commentum on the De arithmetica in the De processione, as well as Gundissalinus' adherence to numerous outcomes of Thierry's numerological doctrine. William of Conches likewise plays an important role, particularly regarding the explanation of the creative role played by the Trinity. Initially, Gundissalinus' metaphysical treatises seem reticent on this fundamental doctrine of Christian theology, but a deeper examination of the writings shows an affinity with William of Conches' treatment of Trinity, which is thematized by the Chartrean master through its specific causality on the world's creation. This rendering was sharply attacked by William of Saint- Thierry in the mid-twelfth century, and the problems arising from this position of divine Trinity as only in reference to creation seem to explain Gundissalinus' reticence on this issue.
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