Union Académique Internationale

Project nº9-5, adopted in 1952

The mission of the Arnaldus de Villa Nova project (Arnaldi de Villanova Opera Theologica Omnia) is to publish a critical edition of the spiritual and theological works of Arnaldus de Villa Nova.

At its creation, the Institut d’Estudis Catalans gave proof of its interest in the personality of the thinker and doctor Arnaldus de Villa Nova. In 1948 the Institut d’Estudis Catalans put together a commission whose purpose was to promote the publication of the spiritual works of Arnaldus de Villa Nova. The commission comprised Doctors Ramon Aramon, Miquel Batllori, Pere Bohigas, Joaquim Carreras i Artau, Jordi Rubió and Ferran Soldevila. Ramon Aramon presented the project to the Union Académique Internationale during its session XXIV (Brussels, 1950) under the title Arnaldi de Villanova Opera Spiritualia. During session XXV (London, 1951) the UAI decided that the project should be part of the Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi.

Olga Marinelli, Josep Morató, Anscari M. Mundó and Joan Nadal joined the team later. The project put forth some remarkable publications: the Expositio super Apocalypsi (1971) and the Greek versions of the spiritual works of Arnaldus de Vila Nova (2002).

Between the years 2002-2004 the project was redefined. New research on the subject done by Josep Perarnau i Espelt vastly improved studies on Arnaldus de Villa Nova. On one hand, new manuscripts and new works by the doctor have been discovered. On the other, the Expositio super Apocalypsi, supposedly Arnaldus de Villa Nova’s most important work, is now considered to be apocryphal. His authorship of other works has also been reconsidered. The Les Trobades Internacionals d’Estudis sobre Arnau de Vilanova, held in Barcelona in 1994, 2004 and 2011, approached problems dealing with the works of Arnaldus de Villa Nova and their edition.

In 2004, the project’s name changed to Arnaldi de Villa Nova Opera Theologica Omnia (AVOThO). Its goals were to publish: a) the Latin works, b) the volume of his letters, as well as the rest of the early versions. To date, three volumes (numbers III, IV, V) were published and the fourth is currently being printed. The works already published are the Introductio in librum Ioachim de semine scripturarum, the Allocutio super significatione nominis tetragrammaton, the Alphabetum catholicorum sive de elementis catholicae fidei, the Tractatus de prudentia catholicorum scolarium and the Tractatus de tempore adventus antichristi.

The technical characteristics of the Arnaldi de Villanova Opera Theologica Omnia are the following:

• Edition of the text, with a three-fold critical apparatus including: 1) variants of diverse manuscripts known from the edited works 2) sources 3) commentaries. The lines of the text are numbered and the critical apparatus uses this numbering system as basis of reference.
• A study which offers readers the information necessary to undertanding the edited text: context, content analysis, information on known manuscripts, stemma codicum, ratio editionis, and bibliography.
• Complementary indices: 1) words used in the edited work 2) biblical citations 3) sources 4) anthroponyms 5) the general index.

In 2011, the Institut d’Estudis Catalans and the Facultat de Teologia de Catalunya (Ateneu Universitari Sant Pacià) created the Centre Internacional d’Estudis sobre Arnau de Vilanova (director: Josep Perarnau i Valls, associate director: Jaume Mensa i Valls) whose mission is to promote the edition and study of the works of Arnaldus de Villa Nova. Also in 2017, the Institut d’Estudis Catalans named a new commission comprising Josep Perarnau, Jaume Mensa, Josep Alanyà, Lluís Cifuentes, Sebastià Giralt, Francesco Santi, and Barbara Scavizzi.