Congratulations to our recent PhD graduate who defended in the last months:
Jason Brown: “St Antonin of Florence on Justice in Buying and Selling: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Translation.”
This dissertation presents an extensive introduction to the Summa of St Antonin (Antoninus, Antonino) of Florence and his teaching on justice in buying and selling. It also presents, for the first time, critical editions and English translations of three chapters of his Summa: 2.1.16 (On fraud), 3.8.1 (On merchants and artisans), and 3.8.2 (On the various kinds of contracts). St Antonin was a Dominican friar and archbishop of Florence from 1446 to 1459, and composed one of the most comprehensive medieval manuals of moral theology, his Summa. In his preaching and writing, Antonin sought to teach the merchants and artisans of Florence about the proper conduct of trade and exhorted them to practice virtue and moderation in the pursuit of profit. The first part of this dissertation is an introduction with four chapters. Chapter One provides a brief literature review on St Antonin and a biography. Chapter Two is a study of his Summa: its conception, textual witnesses, and process of composition. This chapter demonstrates that the manuscripts traditionally considered to be the originals are indeed the author’s autographs, and offers the most extensive analysis of these manuscripts yet produced. Chapter Three expounds the development of scholastic teaching on justice in buying and selling in the thirteenth-century faculties of canon law and theology. Chapter Four explains Antonin’s teaching: its social context in renaissance Florence; its content, sources, and method; and its purpose, namely, helping the clergy in their pastoral duties of preaching, hearing confessions, and resolving moral dilemmas. A postscript comments on Antonin’s place in the history of moral theology. The second part of the dissertation, the appendices, is the critical edition and English translation, preceded by an explanation of the edition and followed by tables illustrating the recensions of each chapter, as well as a description of Antonin’s handwriting.