XO11 Questiones super octo libros Phisicorum Aristotelis; necnon super libros De celo et mundo

Jean de Jandun, Questiones super octo libros phisicorum Aristotelis; necnon super libros De celo et mundo (Paris: Venales reperiuntur in via diui Iacobi apud Oliuerium senant sub signo Beate Barbare, 1506)

Penn Libraries, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, GrC Ar466 T19 1506

Jean de Jandun (d. 1328) was a Parisian professor whose ideas and exegeses of Aristotle were deemed controversial because of his interest in Averroism, that is, the interpretation of the Aristotelian texts proposed by the Arab medieval commentator Averroes or Ibn-Rushd (1126-1198). The title page of this edition of his Questiones is decorated by a woodcut representing a teacher (a larger figure, reading from a text, seated on a throne) and a student (smaller and taking notes, while seated on a lower stool). An angel flies over their heads, with a blank cartouche that was probably meant to include the names of the two characters. As in other instances, these typographical devices were standard to make it possible for the woodcut to be reused for other title pages. While the identification of the two characters is only tentative (Jandun himself and a student?), the woodcut nonetheless gives us a glimpse of the pedagogical settings from the early modern period.