The Fountain of Life (Fons Vitae)

Introduction

The Arabic original by Solomon ibn Gabirol, a Jewish poet from Málaga, is lost; the work survives in a twelfth-century Latin translation made in Toledo by John of Spain and Dominicus Gundissalinus, under the author’s name “Avicebron”. Christian scholastics took Avicebron for a Muslim or Christian thinker; only in 1846 did Salomon Munk identify him with Ibn Gabirol, using Hebrew excerpts made by Shem Tov ibn Falaquera. In five treatises, framed as a dialogue between master and student, the book argues for universal hylomorphism – even spiritual beings consist of a “universal matter” and form – and gives a central role to the divine will. Franciscan thinkers such as Bonaventure adopted the doctrine; Thomas Aquinas rejected it.

Connections

Builds on

• Enneadsc. 270 · Plotinus