Untitled - Monoskop

RANGE OF INTERESTS: ANALYSIS BY SUBJECT
PHILOSOPHY
With forty-eight books, philosophy accounts for nearly 10 per cent of all
published under privilege. This seems a high proportion, but it is not hard to
explain. The centuries-old reputation of Paris University as a centre of the
study of logic and philosophy was still attracting distinguished scholars and
students. The first quarter of the sixteenth century indeed saw a revival of
scholastic philosophy, mainly Nominalist. This was promoted, chiefly within
the ranks of the Faculty of Theology, by masters from all over France and
from some foreign countries as well. Certain Scottish, Spanish and Portuguese
theologians were particularly prominent in this revival. Paris publishers,
many of whom were in close touch with the university, eagerly sought new
works by the most celebrated of these scholars as they were completed, or new
editions revised by the authors, knowing that there would be a keen demand
for them from an educated public which reached far beyond the confines of
France, written as they were in Latin for an international clientele. Texts of
the older scholastic philosophers whose works had not been printed before,
many ofwhom had taught in Paris, were also forthcoming from the libraries of
Paris colleges and religious houses.
There were texts which had been the staple of university teaching and
research for so long that the fifteenth-century printers had put large numbers
of copies into circulation already, in addition to the stocks of manuscript
copies still in existence. Such were the Sentences of Peter Lombard, which in the
twelfth century had contributed to founding the celebrity of the Paris school of
philosophy. No privilege for his works could be expected by
a French
publisher of the early sixteenth century. But medieval and sixteenth-century
philosophers, like some of their successors in our own time, often found it
convenient to present the results of their inquiries in the form ofa commentary
on an existing text. The Sentences, or portions of them, were a favourite vehicle
for such presentations. These commentaries, whether accompanied by the
text to which they related or not, were themselves original works and eligible
to receive privileges, and many examples are in fact found among privileged
books on philosophy. Among the medieval masters, there appear in the
privilege-lists Dionysius Cisterciensis (PA 1511, 2), Adam Godhamus or
rather Woodham (CH 1512, i (2) ), Joannes de Bassolis (CP 1517, i), Petrus
de Palude (PA 1517, 7 (i)), Henry of Ghent or Goethals (CH 1518, 5),
Guillermus de Rubione (PA 1518, 3), Richard de Mediavilla or Middleton
Duns Scotus came in for
(CP 1519, 1 1), and Gabriel Biel (PR 1521, i). John
particular attention: privileges were obtained for his Reportata super primum
Sententiarum edited by John Mair (PA 1517, 6), for his Commentaria in duodecim
libros Metaphysice Aristotelis collected by Antonius Andreas (CP 1520, 15), and
Quaestiones quodlibetales edited by Pierre Tartaret (PA 1519, i).
The Dux dubitantium of Moses Maimonides, the twelfth-century Jewish
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