Fernand Bossier

Fernand Bossier (* 4. October 1933 in Bruges , † 13. January 2006 in Leuven , Belgium ) was a Belgian classical philologist and historian of philosophy , professor of Greek language and literature at the University of Antwerp and editor of the Series Latina Edition series Corpus Christianorum .

Life

Raised up in Bruges, he studied classical philology and philosophy from 1952 to 1962 , first as part of his novitiate in the Societas Jesu in Drongen near Ghent , then from 1957 at the Catholic University of Leuven . In Drongen, Émile de Strycker was his teacher. In Löwen, as part of the license he acquired in 1962, Bossier wrote a dissertation on Plato's concept of the soul with the philosopher Gerard Verbeke , which opened the way for him to the history of transmission and the edition of ancient texts. For this dissertation he had read all of Plato's works.

After his decision not to continue his theological studies within the Societas Jesu, in 1966 he became a research assistant at the Center De Wulf-Mansion of the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie in the Institute of Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven, a position he held until 1978. His subject of research was now Aristotle and the transmission history of Greek texts in the field of ancient philosophy and natural sciences. In 1975 he completed his dissertation for the purpose of a doctorate , a fundamental study of the Latin translations of the works of Simplikios , with particular reference to his writing De Caelo.

Meanwhile, in 1973 Bossier had become a research associate at Aristotle Latinus , a project of the Union Académique Internationale . In 1973 the company moved from Leuven to Oxford , Gerard Verbeke was its director and Bossier its editor-in-chief from 1973 to 1978.

His own research focused on the translations of Aristotle's works. He published the oldest Greek-Latin translation of physics . Together with Jozef Brams, he analyzed the rich handwritten tradition and uncovered the relationships between the various reviews. The first part of Wilhelm von Moerbeke's translation of the Historia animalium followed . Finally, he published the first book of Wilhelm von Moerbeke's translation of Simplikios' commentary on Aristotle's De caelo ("Over the sky").

In 1978, Bossier succeeded Émile de Stryker as Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Antwerp , a position he held until his retirement in 1999. Parallel to this professorship, Bossier taught Latin palaeography at the Catholic University of Leuven. In Antwerp he also taught the active mastery of ancient Greek prose.

In 1995 Brepols Verlag and Dom Eligius Dekkers asked Bossier whether he would take over the continuation of the series Latina of the Corpus Christianorum as the leading editor of a scientific committee . As a result, Bossier 1997 succeeded Dom Eligius Dekkers (1915–1980), who founded the Corpus Christianorum in 1949 and was its editor for almost half a century. Bossier became chairman of the governing body of the Series Latina and the Continuatio Mediaeualis. 1997 began his first five-year period in this function, in 2002 the second, which he could no longer complete.

Fonts (selection)

• Bibliography de Fernand Bossier. In: Sacris erudiri. Volume 45, 2006, pp. 12-14.
• Filological-historical navorsingen over de middeleeuwse en humanist Latijnse vertalingen van de commentaren van Simplicius. 3 volumes, Löwen 1975.
• as ed. with Jozef Brams: Physica - Translatio Vetus (= Aristoteles Latinus. Volume VII). Brill, Leiden 1990.
• as ed. with Pieter Beullens: Translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeke (= Aristoteles Latinus. Volume XVII). Brill, Leiden 2000.
• as ed. with Christine Vande Veire and Guy Guldentops: Simplicius, Commentaire sur le Traité du Ciel d'Aristote , traduction de Guillaume de Moerbeke. Édition critique (= Corpus Latinum Commentariorum in Aristotelem Graecorum. Volume 8,1). Lion 2004.

literature

• Rita Beyers, Jozef Brams, Dirk Sacré, Koenraad Verrycken (eds.): Tradition et traduction. Les textes philosophiques et scientifiques grecs au moyen age latin. Homage to Fernand Bossier. Leuven University Press, Leuven 1999 (Festschrift on the occasion of his 65th birthday; excerpts online ). Therein without indication of the author p. 1–8: Fernand Bossier: une vie au service de la philologie .

Web links

• Literature by and about Fernand Bossier in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Bossier, Fernand .  Publications in the bibliographic database of the Regesta Imperii .
• Corpus Christianorum (Ed.): In memoriam Fernand Bossier. 2006, ISBN 978-2-503-52441-2 (PDF)