Showing posts with label Tortor Infantium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tortor Infantium. Show all posts

Monday, 21 April 2008

Rimini as Torturer of Infants (II)

Oreste Delucca's biographical contribution to Gregorio da Rimini filosofo (2003) makes the origins of the nickname Tortor Infantium seem even murkier:

‘Quanto al casato di Gregorio, taluno lo dice appartenere alla famiglia Tortorini, o Tortorucci, o Tortorici; ma non si hanno prove documentarie al riguardo, per cui l'affermazione viene accolta con prudenza, ignorata o addirittura rigettata da molti storici.’ (p. 46)

‘As for Gregory's surname, some say he belongs to the Tortorini, Tortorucci, or Tortorici family; but there is no documentary evidence in this regard, because of which the statement is greeted with caution, ignored, or even rejected by many historians.’

Delucca cites Battaglini (1794), L. Tonini (1880), C. Tonini (1884), and Perini (1929) as being of the former persuasion; earlier we saw Trapp (1980) using yet another variant, 'Tortoricci'.

I'd like to follow up Delucca's references, but the Bodleian – which doesn't even stretch to Gregorio da Rimini filosofo – only has the Perini. The others are all at the Warburg (ENH 360, HNB 174, 175).

Friday, 11 April 2008

Rimini as Torturer of Infants

Historians of philosophy like to point out that Gregory of Rimini's views on baptism and salvation earned him the nickname Tortor Infantium, but they are remarkably coy about supporting this with references. The nickname was supposedly derived from Rimini's family name, Tortoricci (Trapp, "Notes on the Tübingen Edition of Gregory of Rimini II", 1980). But when did it first appear in print?

A preliminary search puts an upper bound on the date: 1709, when Leibniz wrote in his Essais de Théodicée (§92): ‘Grégoire de Rimini, général des Augustins, avec peu d'autres, a suivi saint Augustin contre l'opinion reçue des écoles de son temps, et pour cela était appelé le bourreau des enfants, tortor infantum.’

But surely it can't be hard to find something that antedates Leibniz.