History

When in 1973 Gerard Verbeke took over the direction of the Aristoteles Latinus from Lorenzo Minio-Paluello and founded the Centre Aristoteles Latinus in Leuven, he liked to tell that the project had moved to its "natural place". Indeed, Verbeke's teacher, the famous Augustin Mansion, had been one of the "founding fathers" and early directors of the edition. In fact, for the last thirty years Leuven has been the seat of this international enterprise, and this situation will probably not change very soon. For the continuity of the series it was a very important fact that a scientific collaborator of the Institute of Philosophy was entrusted with the practical administration of the project. The persons responsible for this task were successively Fernand Bossier and Jozef Brams, and, after Brams succeeded Verbeke as director in 2001, Pieter De Leemans has become the secretary of the Aristoteles Latinus.

When the seat of the enterprise moved to Leuven, the edition of the Nicomachaean Ethics, made by R.A. Gauthier in five fascicles, had just begun to be published (1972); this work was completed in Leuven in 1974. It was followed by B.G. Dod’s edition of the De sophisticis elenchis in 1975, G. Vuillemin-Diem’s edition of the Metaphysica ‘Media’ in 1976, and B. Schneider’s edition of the Rhetorica in 1978. In the meantime, some new collaborators had been engaged in order to prepare the edition of the important corpus of Aristotle’s physical works, and especially the Physics, the study of which had been undertaken by A. Mansion. However, it was the De generatione et corruptione (Translatio vetus), edited by J. Judycka, which first came from the press (1986). This Polish collaborator had been working in Leuven as a fellow and an assistant for more than one year. In 1990, F. Bossier’s and J. Brams’s edition of the Physics (Translatio vetus) was published. G. Vuillemin-Diem’s edition of all the Greek-Latin translations of the Metaphysics was completed, in 1995, with the publication of William of Moerbeke’s version. By the turn of the millennium, an important step was taken with respect to the edition of the Books on Animals, which had started in 1966 with the De generatione animalium, edited by H.J. Drossaart Lulofs: the first five books of the De historia animalium were edited by P. Beullens and F. Bossier in 2000. Moroever, the Aristoteles Latinus published – in close collaboration with the Centre de Traitement Electronique des Documents (CETEDOC) and, from October 2001 on, the Centre “Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium” (CTLO) of Paul Tombeur – two versions of the Aristoteles Latinus Database (2003 and 2006). And finally, G. Vuillemin–Diem published in 2008 William of Moerbeke’s translation of the Meteorologica.

It can be concluded that the Centre Aristoteles Latinus in Leuven was not only concerned with the regular publication of editions made by collaborators from abroad, but that its own researchers also contributed considerably to the progress of the series. Four new editions, made by collaborators from Leuven, are presently in progress: the De progressu animalium and De motu animalium, edited by P. De Leemans, the De sensu (tr. vetus), edited by G. Galle, the De bona fortuna and fragments of the Eudemian Ethics, edited by V. Cordonier, and the De historia animalium, Books VI–X, edited by P. Beullens and † F. Bossier. On the other hand, the Centre Aristoteles Latinus actively takes part in the organization of international meetings, e.g. on William of Moerbeke (1986), the text tradition of the De historia animalium (1996), the reception of Aristotle’s physical works in the Middle Ages (2002), Aristotle’s Problemata from Antiquity until the Renaissance (2003), and Bartholomew of Messina and the cultural life at the court of Manfred of Sicily (2009). Moreover, it engages in interdisciplinary research, e.g. with a project on translating medical texts, set up with the department of linguistics (2006-2009), and it is in permanent contact with numerous (both Belgian and foreign) centres for the study of medieval culture.