sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 10

Sears Jayne / Christopher Moore (eds.): Plato in Medieval England

This book elegantly traces, across eight chapters, the reception of Plato in England between 449 and 1423. Given that England was geographically and culturally distant from the main centers of Platonic source, the book highlights a remarkable situation: Plato's reception there was never stable, but rather fragmentary and indirect. By focusing on this phenomenon, the reader also comes to understand how intellectual transmission crucially depended on material factors such as access to manuscripts, the travels of scholars, and the interest of libraries in collecting specific texts.

From 449, when under Roman occupation the name of Plato probably first began to circulate in England, until 1423-1483, when eight of his works (Meno, Republic, Axiochus, Euthyphro, Crito, Letters, Apology, and Phaedrus) became known in different milieus, Plato was mostly perceived as a character, a legendary figure, a name to drop, or a rhetorical device used to embellish written texts produced in monastic settings, secular circles, or the universities.

The medieval English conception of Plato has little in common with our modern knowledge of him as the philosopher who authored dialogues and bore witness to the death of Socrates. On a broader scale, this is consistent with the medieval circulation of Plato's works tout court, since he was in fact known only through fragments of the Timaeus (in Latin), which began circulating in the XIIth century, later joined by the Phaedo and, in 1423, the Meno. For most of the medieval period, Plato was encountered only through second-hand sources (Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius, Apuleius, Martianus Capella, etc.), through misattributed works (on medicine, fortune-telling, alchemy), or through vague references to him as a pagan philosopher associated with Socrates.

At the same time, it is striking that until 1111 no authentic Platonic text was present in England. This extreme delay was not merely due to geography but above all to ecclesiastical hostility. From Gregory the Great onward, the Benedictines - who controlled education and manuscripts - regarded Plato with suspicion, seeing him as a dangerous pagan whose rationalism threatened Christian fideism. This hostility kept Plato "buried", replaced by spurious works (e.g. Plato's Calf, Plato's Herbal), which served practical purposes (medicine, agriculture, alchemy) and reinforced the misconception of Plato as a kind of medieval scientist-theologian. The power of the Church to control and filter knowledge did not ultimately withstand the inevitable rediscovery of Plato's ideas, once secular and aristocratic interests aligned with broader European currents.

During the XIIth century, interest in Plato began to radiate beyond the monasteries, as new channels of circulation were taken up by secular clerics, courtiers, bureaucrats, laymen, and friars. A further crucial stage in this reception was the founding of the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, which played a key role in spreading a more concrete interest in Plato. The corpus of Sentences commentaries produced in England provides the main source in which Plato is mentioned. Within theological disputations, themes such as divine ideas, creation, emanation, or the infinity of ideas in God can be traced back to Plato, though usually through the mediation of local authors. Still, Plato was rarely cited directly from his texts, but rather through anecdotes and commonplaces, often imported from French sources. Around the universities, the Franciscan, Dominican, Carmelite, and Augustinian houses also contributed to the collection of texts and the training of theologians, thereby indirectly fostering knowledge of Plato.

Notable figures include Robert Kilwardby, Robert Holkot, and Thomas Waleys, though their knowledge of Plato remained limited and often second-hand, largely concerned with the immortality of the soul (Phaedo, sometimes confused with the Phaedrus). For example, in his Commentary on Wisdom, Holkot includes nine quotations attributed to Plato, though most are borrowed from Augustine. Roger Bacon stands out as an English author with a broader knowledge of Plato, citing six dialogues by name. Yet overall curiosity for Plato remained weak: William of Ockham, for instance, opposed his own nominalism to Platonic realism. Among secular theologians, Thomas Bradwardine, in his massive De causa Dei (especially on the immortality of the soul and in his opposition to Pelagianism), and John Wyclif (focusing on universals) represent the high point of Platonic reception in XIVth-century England. From university debates and theological writings, echoes of Plato spread into poetry. Chaucer, influenced by Petrarch, likely encountered references to Plato through Petrarch's style and quotations.

After this survey of XIVth-century English sources, the author concludes with a striking remark: "Neither Wyclif nor any of the other seculars of this period knew anything more about Plato than their ancestors had; it was only that they were more willing to cite Plato as a way of opening windows for some fresh air." (282) Their acquaintance with Plato thus came less from his actual writings than from commonplaces, anecdotes, or fragmentary access to a few dialogues.

The book as a whole is a valuable contribution, illustrating the long suppression and late "rebirth" of Plato in England, and showing how cultural, religious, and institutional filters shaped the medieval image of one of antiquity's greatest philosophers. It closes with a very useful Appendix containing a table of works attributed to Plato in England before 1485, as well as a chronological list of manuscripts attesting to Plato's textual presence in England.

This is a meticulous reconstruction - period by period, source by source (catalogues, manuscripts, citations, anecdotes) - of what medieval English scholars actually knew about Plato. Such a book requires decades of research, and sometimes time moves faster than scholarship. Begun forty years ago, it was left unfinished by Sears Jayne, who sadly did not live to see it published. With great care and commitment, Christopher Moore has brought Jayne's manuscripts into print. In this light, any imperfections in secondary references or overly detailed descriptions of certain aspects of medieval intellectual life should not be regarded as criticism, but rather as part of the book's long and remarkable scholarly journey.