This is an interactive database containing the quotes mentioned in the university discourses from Medieval Central European Universities.

Due to the nature of the sources (undiscovered manuscripts can still exist), this database will never be complete. But, even to the current extent, it can be useful for drawing statistical conclusions and for exploring particular subjects.

This web application and database was set up for a particular goal: to identify and map the political philosophical sources from the university discourses from the 14^th–15^th centuries in Central Europe. Therefore, it started as a research on the history of medieval philosophy and the history of political thought.

The transmission of the political ideas and texts has modeled the history of European thought during its entire course, however not uniformly, but rather differently for each specific geographic and temporal occurrence. There are still gaps in our representation of this transmission, and one of them concerns the end of the Middle Ages in Central Europe.

Facing the theoretical, political, religious and social problems in the 14^th–15^th centuries, the University masters used their own weapons, and among them is the public discourse. There are many recommendaciones and sermones which have survived in manuscript form; these discourses were parts of University ceremonies (graduation, inauguration of the academic year, installation of a new rector etc.), parts of the mandatory student curriculum (collationes and sermones in the Sacred Scripture and other mandatory subjects, principia in Peter Lombard's Sentences etc.), sermons of the cleric masters (regular sermons, sermons on special occasions in the presence of the king or other authorities etc.), occasional discourses. The affirmations and political allusions from these discourses are often motivated, justified or illustrated by quoting authorities from political philosophy (e.g. Aristotle, Augustine, John of Salisbury etc.)

These references to the political philosophical authorities have the role of reception, transmission and reinterpretation of the political tradition, and also the role of propagating these ideas in a larger audience. Their exploration can shed a clearer light on the circumstances around some major events from the end of the Middle Ages: the birth of Central European Universities, the theological and philosophical crises, the emergence of Reform movements and the reactions against them, the particular concept of nation and nationalism which appeared in this context, the premises of fundamental changes in European thought which led to the modern way of thinking.

The research in this project is financed by Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, through its "Young Researchers" program, under the project no. 31797/2016, led by Dr. Mihai Maga, with the title “The Impact of the Political Philosophical Sources on the University Discourses from the 14^th–15^th Centuries in Central Europe”.

Presentation materials used in conferences about this project: FAM2016-MihaiMaga-beamer.pdf FAM2017-MihaiMaga-beamer.pdf

Reusing the information from this website is allowed free of charge for research and teaching purposes and only if this source is explicitely mentioned:
Mihai Maga, Recommendaciones Database, URL: http://www.mihaimaga.ro/recommdb/
For any other intention of using this website, database and information within, please contact the author: mihai.maga@ubbcluj.ro.