The PhD examines all the works of Arnoldus Saxo ('Arnoldus Luca', 'Arnoldus de Saxonia'), a German encyclopaedist working c. 1225-1260, as can be inferred by the examination of the documentary sources ("auctoritates") of his works. His encyclopaedia, the De floribus rerum naturalium, was known since the work of V. Rose and E. Stange; this PhD identifies thoroughly the scholarly sources of the De floribus (Aristotle, Ps.-Aristotle, Avicenna, Constantine the African, Seneca, Boethius, Martianus Capella, Hermes, Aaron and Evax, Iorach...) and adds eight new manuscripts of the work to the four previously known. Furthermore, the research brings to the light and studies four other works of Arnoldus Saxo unknown before: 1. A Sermo de libris philosophorum (florilegium), 2. A medical treatise (Practica medicine), 3. A moral dialogue formatted like a 'disputatio' (De iudiciis virtutum et viciorum), 4. A Consolatio inspired from the 'De copia verborum' attributed to Seneca. All these works make use of the same sources, generally abbreviated the same way and probably collected in the beginning of Arnold's activity for teaching purposes. The research also shows the immediate reception in the Franciscan and Dominican milieu, through the use of the biological and mineralogical matter of the De floribus rerum naturalium by Bartholomeus the Englishman (De proprietatibus rerum), Vincent de Beauvais (Speculum naturale, VIII) and Albertus Magnuss (De mineralibus, tr. 2 and tr. 3); it also postulates that Arnoldus Saxo (called 'Arnoldus Luca Magdeburgensis' in the Ms. of Heidelberg) worked in Magdeburg during the '30 of the 12th century.

Language: French

HALId: tel-00700745