Robert Grosseteste at Munich

"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 Munich--indeed, 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"--P. [4] of cover.