jamesgray2

 

When I look for books, or rather as I look for books, it seems as though I am always looking at books, book descriptions, bibliographies or reading histories of ideas, I look for authors and titles, which I have never seen before, or mentioned in other sources. Leo Magentinnus is an author, who some how escaped most of the books on the philosophy of the middle ages I have read, thus I begin a re-education and will try and locate his place in the world of obscure commentators!

 

Leo Magentinnus flourished around  1200 while others place him as late as 1350 AD, what we know about him is that he wrote commentaries on the works of Aristotle, giving definitions and explanations and not really adding any profound interpretations. But in the High Middle ages, the aftermath of the Golden Age of Aristotelian commentators including: Averroes, Avicenna, Aquinas, and Peter Lombard, there was little room left in the controversy between Faith and Reason, Leo seems to have kept his head down and worked at ‘divine recapitulation’ of ‘’The Philosopher’s’ work

Venice: Girolamo Scoto, 1545                        $1,900

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Quarto,7.75 x 6 inches .   A-I4,K6 (lacking final blank k6)  Bound in modern half calf. .

      Leo Magentinus – bishop of Mytilene (Lesbos) was widely read in the late Medieval and Renaissance periods. Several of his works are listed in bibliographical records of late Medieval commentators and commentaries on the works of Aristotle. Georgius Scholarius (Gennadius) records that his exegesis on “Ars vetus” was among the favored sources of 15th Century scholars. Some in the 16th Century still read Leo. His commentary of “Prior Analytics” was printed in several editions and even translated into Latin.

Leo’s life remains indeterminate and shrouded in mystery, but he probably worked primarily sometime between 1200 and 1250, though some questionable sources (Papadopoli) conjecture the early 14th Century as a possible period of scholarship for Bishop Leo.

There is an interesting discussion of Leo at

 http://books.google.com/books?id=Lw0VAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA302&ots=p5zn4gpz4S&dq=Leo%20Magentinus%20-%20bishop%20of%20Mytilene&pg=PA302#v=onepage&q=Leo%20Magentinus%20-%20bishop%20of%20Mytilene&f=false

OCLC lists only three copies of this

UNIV OF CHICAGO, UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA, UNIV OF OXFORD