Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

The Latin Tradition of Logic to 1100 37
Glosses to the ‘Categories’ and ‘On Interpretation’
There is no Gloss Tradition for the text of Aristotle’s own Categories, norforOn
Interpretation, but individual manuscripts contain some glosses. For example, MS
Paris BN 2788 (end of tenth century), which contains Boethius’s genuine translation
of the Categories and MS Cologne Dombibliothek 191 (eleventh century),
containing the more widely available composite translation, probably made up
from two versions both by Boethius (cf. above, p. 8), both have glosses which
draw from Boethius’s commentary.
Glosses to On Interpretation are exceedingly rare, but one, in Leiden Voss. lat.
F 70 (tenth century), to Chapter 9, is very interesting:
Whatever exists which is impossible not to exist, always exists. Whatever
is impossible to exist, always does not exist. And whatever exists
that is possible not to exist, does not always exist. Whatever exists
that is possible to exist, does not always not exist. Now two are eternal
and two temporal. For fire, which is never cold, always heats. Therefore
it [heat] is always and eternally in it, but the other [cold] is always
absent. Now, of those that are temporal, some are substantially, some
accidentally. And substantially not always is whatever is corrupted,
and also not always is whatever is generated. What accidentally does
not always exist and does not always not exist is whatever is varied
by the changeability of some accident in such a way that it is changed
from existence into non-existence or from non-existence into existence.
These two therefore are contingents, because they happen one way or
another (utrumlibet). The two above, however, are from simple necessity
and can never come about contingently. [Latin text: Marenbon,
1997a, 30, n. 31]
Although the ideas here can be found in Boethius’s commentaries, this comment
is exceptionally clear-minded in its analysis of modality in terms of time — the
statistical view that was one of the dominant models in antiquity and the earlier
Middle Ages [Knuuttila, 1993, 1-62].
Gloss Traditions and logic within medieval education
The existence of logical Gloss Traditions (on De Nuptiis IV, the Ten Categories
and the Isagoge) is important, not for any logical innovations, since they contain
none, but for two other reasons. First, it shows that logic had a full part in the
course of studies followed in this period mainly in monastery schools. Second, the
fullest tradition, that of the glosses to the Ten Categories, shows how scholars
turned away from the Eriugenian interests of the ninth century to concentrate on
trying to assimilate basic Aristotelian logic. This change of direction is born out
by the wider developments, beginning in the year just before 1000, which we shall
now consider.