Love and Friendship in the Western Tradition comprises a collection of essays written over a 25 year period by the late Rev. Professor James McEvoy on the theme of friendship. The book traces the genesis and development of philosophical treatments of friendship from Greek philosophy, through the Middle Ages, to modern and postmodern philosophy. The collection's three major concerns are: (1) the history of philosophical discussions of friendship; (2) the role of friendship in the cultivation of the philosophical life; (3) the marginalization of friendship as a theme for philosophical reflection and practice in the modern period. As the author was primarily a medievalist, a great deal of the focus of the essays is on the development of the theme of friendship in the Middle Ages (in the thought of Augustine, Aquinas, Aelred of Rievaulx, Henry of Ghent, Robert Grosseteste, etc.). However, this focus, while a value in itself, also serves to connect philosophical perspectives on friendship from before and after the middle ages. It connects to the time before inasmuch as much of the work done on friendship in the Middle Ages is anchored in interpretations of Aristotle and Plato, and it connects to the time after by providing a counterpoint to the modern paradigm of what constitutes the philosophical life. The collection combines historical with thematic approaches to scholarship on this issue and is one of the only books of its kind to do so. It is, perhaps, unique in its historical sweep and will prove to be a canonical source for further research on this topic.

Robert Grosseteste (c.1168-1253) was the initiator of the English scientific tradition, one of the first chancellors of Oxford University, and a famous teacher and commentator on the newly discovered works of Aristotle. In this book, James McEvoy provides the first general, inclusive overview of the entire range of Grosseteste's massive intellectual achievement.

Robert Grosseteste at Munich contains an edition, translation, and careful study of a short and hitherto completely neglected text from a manuscript in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS. clm 8827. This codex - a collection of extracts from a broad range of texts conducive to spiritual contemplation - includes an abbreviatio of Robert Grosseteste's commentaries on the corpus dionysiacum. Professor McEvoy's detailed introduction identifies the author of the abridgment as one Friar Andreas, a Franciscan of the southern German province who worked in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. McEvoy is able to identify a series of early owners of the codex, which turns out to be intimately connected with the history of the Franciscan community at Munichindeed, with the history of Munich itself. For, as McEvoy shows, MS. clm 8827 did not remain unaffected by historical turning-points such as the secularization of 1802 and even World War II.Friar Andreas's text is accompanied by the glosses of Finehand, a mystically inclined mind who may well have been a Franciscan nun. Finehand represents another layer in the tradition of the reception of the Pseudo-Dionysius, and of Robert Grosseteste's commentary upon the Pseudo-Dionysius, which this volume minutely chronicles.

This is the second volume of Maynooth Aquinas Lectures. The annual series was founded by the late Professor James McEvoy in 1995. Its aim is to examine the thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas and his legacy with a view to exploring new aspects of his philosophical and theological writings, and to foster the interrelationship between the sapiential tradition and contemporary concerns. The present volume contains articles by established experts in the field, as well as by some young scholars. The papers consider the Angelic Doctor as a teacher and examine this prolific scholar's thought on a wide range of topics: the Eucharist, the problem of suffering, the meaning of being, Thomistic realism, Aquinas' lost second Sentences commentary, virtue and the Beatitudes, and the four cardinal virtues as an ideal ethical basis for the practitioner-patient interaction in all its dimensions. The book considers such questions as whether God thinks and if we are justified in taking it for granted that Thomistic theology is superior to the theology of the Book of sentences. It also examines Aquinas' particular contribution to the Latin reception of Dionysian mystical thought and draws to a close with Heidegger's thoughts on Aquinas and God.

The treatise by the Pseudo-Dionysius "De Mystica Theologia" was translated into Latin in the ninth century, but it had to await the first decades of the thirteenth to receive interpretation and commentary. Thomas Gallus, a member of the Victorine School at Paris, glossed the Latin version of Iohannes Sarracenus in 1233. This new, critical edition and translation are based upon all five manuscripts, two of which are recent discoveries. The commentary by Bishop Grosseteste was made at Lincoln around 1242. It was based upon his new version of the Greek text. Both are published here with a translation.These earliest Latin commentators ventured a full-scale reappropriation of the contents of "The Mystical Theology". They explored the trans-conceptual ecstasy of the individual soul that passes through purification and illumination to union with God by means of an exceptional grace of divine love. Between them they provided the context which not only the later mystical theology of monastery and university but also the actual spiritual experience of countless souls was formed.