03 juin 2024
30 septembre 2024
Maurits Sabbe Library, Charles Deberiotstraat 26, 3000 Leuven
Exhibition "Scotism Made in Louvain. The Scholastic Culture of the Franciscans in Belgium", du 3 Juin au 30 septembre 2024.
Description
The exhibition will be inaugurated on June 3 (4-6 pm) with a seminar on Early Modern Franciscan thought, featuring a talk by Ian Campbell (Belfast), “Franciscans, Scotists, and Early Modern Culture,” and short presentations by the curators and Dom Abbott (KULeuven). 2024 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Theodor Smising’s giant volume De Deo Uno (printed in Antwerp in 1624), which was soon followed by a second volume De Deo Trino (printed in Antwerp in 1626). Smising’s work was the first printed output of what developed into a specific tradition within Early Modern thought, the Louvain tradition of Scotism, itself but one part of the broad Scotist tradition that build on the thought of John Duns Scotus (ca. 1266–1308). This Louvain tradition was primarily based in the Flemish Franciscan Convent, also known as the Minderbroedersklooster, of the famous university town of Louvain. The Convent itself was much older, dating back to 1228, when the Franciscan Order was in its very beginnings and long before the University of Louvain was founded (in 1425).
In 1607 a second Franciscan Convent was founded in Louvain, St. Anthony’s College, one of a series of convents established by the Irish Franciscans as a result of their persecution in their homeland by the English Protestant rulers. The Irish Franciscans in Louvain, and in their other Convents on the European continent, too cultivated the thought of Duns Scotus, editing and commenting on his works and writing new works “ad mentem Scoti.” Both of the Franciscan convents in Louvain were closed in the turmoils of the Napoleonic wars. The buildings of St. Anthony’s College still exist, whereas the Minderbroedersklooster (on our exhibition poster) completely vanished from the cityscape.
During the past decades, the Maurits Sabbe Library has acquired a large fundus of Franciscan books, mostly from various former houses of the Franciscan Order in Belgium. Our exhibition “Scotism Made in Louvain – The Scholastic Culture of the Franciscans in Belgium” explores this material, complemented by material from the KULeuven Central Library’s Special Collections and two manuscripts from the archives of KADOC (Documentatie- en Onderzoekscentrum voor Religie, Cultuur en Samenleving). The exhibition tells the story of a significant local scholarly tradition and places it in the context of the broader Scotist tradition of the Early Modern period. Whereas Scholasticism as such is often seen as an exclusively Medieval phenomeon, our exhibition highlights one important aspect of Early Modern scholastic culture.
Organisation
Claus A. Andersen and Jacob Schmutz (Centre De Wulf-Mansion)