The Philosophical Foundations of Medicine – Digital Critical Edition of the Conciliator (Differentiae 1 to 10) by Peter of Abano

Description

The DFG-funded project aims to produce a digital critical edition of the first part (Differentiae 1 to 10) of the Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et praecipue medicorum, one of the key texts of medieval medicine and natural philosophy. Its author, Petrus of Abano (Pietro d’Abano; ca. 1250 to ca. 1315), was concerned with providing a detailed and critical account of the divergent doctrinal opinions that existed within the medical and philosophical literature of his time, and with methodically and systematically resolving or “reconciling” (conciliare) their apparent contradictions. Due to its considerable reception and printing history, the Conciliator served as an authoritative foundational text of pre-modern scholarship. Its content is of great importance for the history of philosophy and medicine, but also for literary and cultural history.

In order to make this source accessible for interdisciplinary research according to current editorial standards, the present project combines philological, philosophical and medical-historical expertise with the know-how of digital editing and provides basic research in the humanities on the basis of current digitization technologies. In addition to the constituted main text, the critical apparatus, the fontes and the subject commentary, the digital critical edition will present a research portal that goes far beyond the possibilities of printed editions. In the present case, these consist, most importantly, in a

1. more comprehensive indexing and interlinking of source documents that can record forms of medieval intertextuality and make them retraceable in their historical reference system, and
2. in an investigation and presentation of the transmission history of the work, which can be experienced beyond the framework of the edited part with the help of select digitized manuscripts and prints, extended transcriptions, explanatory texts and stemmatological assessments, and can thus be made accessible to scholars in a new way.

The stemma, which will be compiled and presented for the first time as part of the project, will make an important contribution to the reliable referencing of the complete works by re-evaluating the early modern prints in particular and presenting textual evidence of the genealogies that are considered to be particularly valuable. A detailed introduction will describe the manuscripts and prints and explore the hitherto unexplained history of the text. The references to historical sources, in particular the Greek, Latin and Arabic philosophical and medical literature, will not only be shown in the source apparatus and linked from there to available source texts, but also discussed and contextualized in an accompanying commentary on the history of philosophy and science.

Publications / Presentations

Oliver Schrader, Sebastian Gassmann, Tessa Gengnagel, “Automation and CI/CD in digital editions using the example of Conciliator,” in: Conference abstracts of DHd2024 Quo Vadis DH?, Passau, February 21, 2024, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10698406.

Sebastian Gassmann, Tessa Gengnagel, Christian Kaiser, Rebecca Schleuß, Oliver Schrader, “Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Medizin – Digitale kritische Edition des Conciliator (Differentiae 1 bis 10) des Petrus von Abano,” poster presentation, Institute for Medical Humanities, Bonn, June 22, 2023.

Sebastian Gassmann, Tessa Gengnagel, Oliver Schrader, “Digital kritisch edieren: Potentiale der Automatisierung in der Edition des Conciliator von Pietro d‘Abano,” Colloquium Digital Humanities: Aktuelle Forschungsprojekte, University of Cologne, May 25, 2023 [see the student summary in the event blog].

Sebastian Gassmann, Tessa Gengnagel, Christian Kaiser, Oliver Schrader, “Digital Critical Edition of Peter of Abano’s Conciliator,” 15th International Congress of SIEPM, Paris, August 25, 2022.

Tessa Gengnagel, Christian Kaiser, Oliver Schrader, “Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Medizin – Digitale kritische Edition des Conciliator (Differentiae 1 bis 10) des Petrus von Abano,” Institute for Medical Humanities, Bonn, July 18, 2022.

Picture credits

Bavarian State Library Munich, Rar. 853, fol. 3r, direct link to this page in the digitization: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb00068392?page=7 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).