In the 14th century, hypotheses about a lying God, deceived Christ, and the changeability of the past circulated. At the new University of Vienna, three German masters attempted in their lectures on the Old Testament to counter them. Their commentaries are the longest, the most influential, and perhaps even the most inspiring commentaries on the Bible written at Vienna. This book offers a glimpse into their most unusual ideas, apocalyptic expectations, heretics, toads, and devils; assessments of Amalric of Bena, Moshe Taku, and Petrarch; and, last, but not least, the search for an immovable truth that fills their pages.

Calculating Ethics in the Fourteenth Century addresses a moment in the history of ethics, when discoveries in natural philosophy blurred the boundary between the possible and the impossible, and made the impossible a preferred territory in discussions on practical reason. The volume studies the onset and expansion of a new movement in constructing ethics, as the methods, arguments, and cases adopted from logic and natural philosophy came to be extensively applied at Oxford and swiftly disseminated among other Oxonians eventually making their way outside Oxford. It shows how the Oxford Calculators triggered a unique and durable transformation in ethics. Contributors are Pascale Bermon, Valeria Buffon, Michael W. Dunne, Marek Gensler, Simon Kemp, Edit A. Lukács, Monika Michałowska, and Andrea Nannini.

Fascinating discussions about English theologyʼs lying God, pantheism, logic of the divine, time, freedom, and fixity, if any, in biblical commentaries at the medieval University of Vienna.