Juan de Segovia

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Juan Alfonso de Segovia or John of Segovia (* around 1395 in Segovia , † 14. May 1458 in Aiton , Savoy ) sat down as a Spanish theologian of the 15th century for the position of the Basel conciliarists and thus against the supremacy of the pope over the Council .

Life

Juan was born around 1395 in Segovia, Spain, and studied Artes and Theology at the University of Salamanca . After taking his master's degree in theology in 1422 , he soon rose to become one of the most influential professors at the University of Salamanca . So he represented them in the negotiations on their statutes in Rome . In 1432 he was sent by the university and King John II of Castile as its representative to the Basel Council . There he proved himself to be the most capable defender of the rights of the Council against the Pope. In addition, he also defended the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, debated with the Orthodox Christians from Greece about the processio Spiritus sancti and with the Hussites about the communio sub utraque specie .

As a staunch advocate of conciliarism , he first tried to calm down the conflict between the council and Pope Eugene IV , whom he still knew from Florence around 1435. Later he became one of the main supporters of the revolutionary faction of the council. He was present when the Council the Pope as a "persistent" called (28th meeting, on 1 October 1437) as well as the Pope for heretics was declared (33rd meeting, on 16 May 1439). In March 1439 Juan de Segovia represented the council in Mainz . After Pope Eugene IV had been removed from office by the council, he was appointed to the committee that was to choose the theologians who would elect the new pope. And he was also one of the 33 theologians who the Duke on November 5, 1439 Amadeus VIII. "The peacemakers" of Savoy to historically recent so-called anti-pope Felix V. chose.

For this he appointed Segovia cardinal on October 12, 1440 . Segovia represented Felix V at the National Assembly of Bourges in the same year, at the Reichstag in Mainz in 1441 and in Frankfurt in 1442. When the schism ended in 1449, he resigned from his cardinal office and was appointed titular archbishop by the new "common" Pope Nicholas V Appointed by Caesarea , that is, without a scope of duties. From the seclusion of the Spanish monastery of Aiton in Savoy , Segovia wrote most of his writings that have survived to this day, which he bequeathed to the library of the University of Salamanca. During these years he corresponded with leading theologians and humanists of his time, including Nikolaus von Kues , Jean Germain (1400–1460), Bishop of Chalon-sur-Saone and Enea Silvio Piccolomini . Segovia died in Aiton in 1459.

Work and contribution to political theory

Segovia's most important work, Historia generalis concilii Basiliensis, is an extensive history of the Basel Council. In this context there are also a few writings in defense of the sovereignty of a general council over the Pope. His other works include a treatise on the conception of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary , a discussion of Islam based on the translation of the Koran by Robert von Ketton De gladio divini spiritus in corda mittendo Saracenos , who strongly advocate peaceful dialogue with Muslims and a defense of the " Filioque " against the Orthodox in De processu Spiritus Sancti .

Segovia used traditional legal models of thought to prove that a single person, no matter how much he is able to surpass other individuals in terms of cleverness and diligence, nonetheless, even as a ruler ( presidens ), cannot be superior to the totality of those ruled by him. Therefore the Pope could not stand above the council either.

Whoever becomes the leader of a crowd “ attracts a public person [...] Because he represents two people, he is still a private person , but due to a legal fiction he is a public person. “Follow the ruler's orders and his judgments because of this fiction, and because it serves the common good. For the canonists and jurists of Roman law , the persona ficta was merely the bearer of certain public rights. Segovia now uses this legal fiction to emphasize a “ ruling role that allows its bearer to step back from another manifestation of the collective will, the representative body of the council. “He saw in the transition from the suzerainty of the Pope to the suzerainty of the Council, which was now granted full judicial power ( iurisdictio ), even without and against the Pope, a progress towards more virtue .

Among the already to Segovia's lifetime, by the since the late Middle Ages fracturing sized constitutional struggles , facing new problems of the rule of justification , his work does not provide suggestions. Despite the widespread use of his and other conciliar arguments in the 15th century, they hardly had any effect on the class struggles of the 15th and 16th centuries.

Literal translation of the Koran

Together with the Muslim lawyer and Koran scholar Yça Gidelli , head of the Muslim Mudejar community of Toledo , Juan de Segovia undertook a literal translation of the Koran from 1456, three years after the fall of Constantinople . In Robert von Ketton's Latin translation, which was then three hundred years old , Segovia found translation errors and gaps. In its translation, Segovia no longer wanted to interpret piously in the sense of a Cusan pia interpretatio , but intended to preserve the style of the Arabic original in Latin as well. The Koran was - and is still valid today - as untranslatable because of the many ambiguities. Gidelli translated from Arabic into Spanish, Segovia from Spanish into Latin. In order to maintain the semantic faithfulness to the word, Segovia, the philologist among theologians, - as Reinhold F. Glei and Segovia himself in the preface - crossed the syntactic boundaries drawn by the Latin grammar in places. The trilingual work is - with the exception of the preface sent by Segovia to his friend Enea Silvio Piccolomini - as lost. In 2010, scientists from Bochum published a newly discovered, longer, handwritten marginal note by Segovia ( Sura 5 , 110-115).

See also

literature

  • Ana Echevarria: The Fortress of Faith. The Attitudes towards Muslims in Fifteenth Century Spain (= Medieval Iberian Peninsula. 12). Brill, Leiden et al. 1999, ISBN 90-04-11232-4 , pp. 34-40, (also: Edinburgh, University, Dissertation, 1995).
  • Johannes Helmrath : The Basel Council. 1431-1449. State of research and problems (= Cologne historical treatises. 32). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 1987, ISBN 3-412-05785-1 .
  • Jürgen Miethke : Political Theories in the Middle Ages. In: Hans-Joachim Lieber (ed.): Political theories from antiquity to the present (= Federal Center for Political Education. Series of publications. 299). 2nd, revised edition. Federal Agency for Political Education, Bonn 1993, ISBN 3-89331-167-X , pp. 47–156.
  • Dennis Pulina: Juan de Segovia. In: Marco Sgarbi (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. 2018, DOI: 10.1007 / 978-3-319-02848-4_1192-1 .
  • Klaus Reinhardt :  Johannes von Segovia. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 3, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-035-2 , Sp. 561-563.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Stefan Sudmann: The Basel Council. Synodal practice between routine and revolution (= tradition - reform - innovation. Studies on the modernity of the Middle Ages. 8). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2005, ISBN 3-631-54266-6 (also: Münster, University, dissertation, 2004).
  • Ulli Roth (Ed.): Johannes von Segovia: De gladio divini spiritus in corda mittendo Sarracenorum. Edition and German translation with introduction and explanations (= Corpus Islamo-Christianum. Series Latina . Volume 7). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-447-06747-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
  2. ↑ Juan de Segovia, cit. after Miethke: Political Theories in the Middle Ages. 1993, p. 134.
  3. ↑ Miethke: Political Theories in the Middle Ages. 1993, p. 134.
  4. ↑ a b Latin fragment of the Koran discovered
  5. ↑ Ulli Roth , Reinhold F. Glei : The traces of the Latin translation of the Koran by Juan de Segovia - old problems and a new find. In: New Latin Yearbook . Vol. 11, 2009, pp. 109-154.
predecessor Office successor
Louis de La Palud Bishop of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne
1451–1452 		Guillaume d'Estouteville
personal data
SURNAME Juan de Segovia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Juan Alfonso de Segovia; John of Segovia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish theologian, representative of conciliarism at the Basel Council
DATE OF BIRTH around 1395
PLACE OF BIRTH Segovia
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1458
Place of death Aiton (Savoie)