This study examines the historical originality of Thomas Aquinas’s (c. 1225–1274) Expositio in Iob ad litteram, revealing that it is a self‑claimed literal exegesis of Scripture that breaks with the tradition of interpretation of the book of Job initiated by Gregory’s Moralia and carried forward by the Carolingians. Following Maimonides, Thomas mobilizes the biblical text of Job for addressing concerns that emerged from philosophical currents beyond the Latin Christian West.
At stake is the Jewish and Islamic question of whether God may possess knowledge of particulars, and more broadly, the problem of God’s interaction with singulars within the Peripatetic depiction of reality that Thomas partly adopts. In the Super Iob, Thomas constructs a distinct paradigm in which divine providence and divine knowledge are articulated, allowing scriptural milestones to chart the course of his reflection. This paradigm is based upon the depiction of God’s relationship to the world not primarily as a creator but as a governor and judge, whose providence extends to the most particular details of reality, including singular evils to judge them.

During the time of the first crusades, when knighthood was being established, a knight seemed to be a model of a successful man who achieved the desired wealth and fame through his military service. In reality, however, the hard and dangerous yet poorly paid fight for foreign rulers often meant that they lived in poverty, making tchem similar to Job, who asked: ‘His days like a hired‑hand’s day?’ (Job 7:1). Perhaps it was precisely to revive the idealised image of the knight and encourage young people to take up the sword and lance to help establish God’s justice in the world why the first romance novel was written, entitled Libro del caballero Zifar (The Book of the Knight Zifar). The protagonist, the model knight Zifar from India, is very successful on the battlefield, but suffers from a curse that kills one of his horses every ten days. Since the Spanish word for knight (caballero) is based on the word for horse (caballo), the death of his steed can be interpreted as the cyclical loss of his very knighthood. However, Zifar humbly endures the misfortune that befalls him, for ‘what was to be lost was lost, for God reclaimed it for himself, for it was his property’. The patient and humble knight is guided by Job’s maxim: ‘YHWH has given, and YHWH has taken. May the name of YHWH be blessed’ (Job 1:21). This justifies a comparison of these two characters, leading to the conclusion that the first chivalric novel in Castilian carries a similar sapiential message as the biblical text.

Aljamiado literature, a product of the Hispanic Islamic community in Early Modern Iberia, reflects an identity in tension between cultural assimilation and religious re-sistance. Its bilingual nature and its use of Arabic script respond both to a practical necessity and an identity issue. In this context, the figure of Job (Ayyūb) appears in aljamiado literature in various forms, particularly in “explicit and focused” narratives, where he embodies patience and submission to God. The aljamiado version of the story of Job stands out for its expressiveness, symbolic elements, and emotional di-mension, which are absent from its biblical and Quranic sources. El Mancebo de Arévalo, in his Tafçira, presents an etopoeia of Job that portrays him as a model of wisdom, patience, and generosity, in a narrative that, beyond preserving Islamic iden-tity, reflects the cultural friction of the Morisco community with its Christian surroundings.

The article focuses on the reception of the book of Job in the mystical‑ascetical treatise On the Ground of Humility Called Nothing by the Polish Carmelite Stefan Kucharski (1595–1653). The author argues that the references to the book of Job found in this work are not merely superficial biblical embellishments but that they emerge from the tradition of Carmelite scripturalism. Therefore, they testify to a profound exege-sis of this biblical book and to Kucharski’s familiarity with the diverse traditions of Christian mysticism, ranging from Gregory the Great’s Moralia, through Rhenish mysticism, to the writings of St. John of the Cross.
The comparative analyses undertaken in the article demonstrate that Kucharski developed an original image of Job as a figure of the human being progressing toward a perfect union with God. This image participates in the centuries‑long formation—within both Jewish and Christian mysticism—of the paradigm of Job as a mystic. The author further notes that this area of the reception of the book of Job remains insufficiently explored in existing scholarship. At the same time, drawing on Bernard McGinn’s research, the article underscores that Kucharski’s interpretation is part of the late‑medieval and early‑modern self‑critique of mystical language, which was subjected to radical denudation.
Kucharski’s Job thus stands as one of the most notable examples of a distinct mystical tradition that no longer turns to imagery and the senses as analogies for the spiritual and immaterial. By renouncing all imagery in this way, the text enacts a keno-sis of thought, expressible not through the figurativeness of the Song of Songs but through the pure disinterestedness of the book of Job. The ultimate horizon here is the idea of a naked, fully non‑human language.

The Gratulationes in promotione […] Martini Smiglecii was composed in 1594 in Vilnius to celebrate the promotion of Marcin Śmiglecki, a Jesuit and professor at the Vilni-us Academy, to the degree of Doctor of Theology. This work constitutes a handwritten panegyrical cycle authored by four philosophy students—Wawrzyniec Koch, Jan Prze-ciszowski, Stanisław Młodecki, and Sebastian Rozmusewicz—and was likely presented to Śmiglecki as a gift in a single copy. Beyond its function as a tribute to the honouree, the panegyric focuses on the description and praise of the liberal arts and philosophy. In their treatment of philosophy, the authors draw upon a wide range of the then-popular representations, opinions, proverbs, and commonplaces concerning wisdom and the system of knowledge. They explicitly reference the widely circulated view—found, among others, in Erasmus’ of Rotterdam Institutio principis Christiani—which, following Plato’s Republic, emphasizes the connection between philosophy and gov-ernance. In defining individual arts and philosophy, the text reflects the influence of medieval and early modern encyclopaedic traditions, and in expressing the idea of the whole system of knowledge, it employs the allegory of the tree of knowledge—a motif known since at least the eighth century, echoed in sixteenth‑century works such as Johannes Artopoeus’s Arbor eruditionis. Through the composition of the cycle, and likely drawing from the broader tradition of representing the artes liberales and the circulation of motifs already detached from their original sources, the authors express an idea of a hierarchical system of knowledge rooted in late ancient theories of the liberal arts and philosophy, such as those found in Augustine’s De ordine. The present edition includes a brief introduction outlining the Gratulationes manuscript and its connections to contemporary Jesuit panegyrical prints, a transcription of the manu-script with explanatory notes—clarifying, among other things, key references and traditions relevant to the cycle—and a translation of the text.