Dear All,
Within a fortnight I shall upload a translation of Dietrich von Freiberg’s De visione beatifica. The Latin text can be consulted here:
http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost13/Theodoricus/the_vi00.html
Dietrich is a highly speculative theological and scientific mind (in fact the first to produce the correct optical theory of the rainbow!), and a Dominican who worked alongside the likes of Meister Eckhart at the turn of the 14th century. He wrote at a time when the doctrinal status quo of the Order was still being settled and open assaults on Thomas Aquinas’ teaching could be heard coming from their German-speaking province of Teutonia, of which Dietrich’s voice was certainly the loudest. This text gives us a window onto this debate opened by Aquinas’ position (see QQ.77-79 in Prof. Kirby’s post) concerning the relation of soul to her intellectual powers. Dietrich responds with a pretty astonishing synthesis of Augustine and the Greco-Arabic Peripatetic tradition, and develops his theory of the “imago Dei” which will be crucial to Meister Eckhart’s more infamous preaching and teaching.
With all good wishes,
Evan