Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

612 E. Jennifer Ashworth
what we find is glossed texts, that is, texts with marginal notes, some of a very
simple nature, and some very lengthy and elaborate. 13 By the mid-thirteenth
century, the fully-fledged commentary had come to dominate, and during the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries all the great names in philosophy such as Albert
the Great, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, wrote
commentaries on at least some of the books of the Organon. There were two main
types of commentary. 14 First, there is the literal commentary, typified by those
of Aquinas. The author of a literal commentary divided the work into a series of
lectiones, and then treated it passage by passage. A paraphrase would be offered,
together with an explanation of difficult or important phrases, and points of doctrine
would be investigated. Especially in the later middle ages, dubia were often
added and discussed at some length. Second, there is the question-commentary,
whose author did not divide or paraphrase the text, but instead considered a
series of questions which arose from points in the text. During the fifteenth century
the distinction between the two types of commentary became blurred, and
we find question-commentaries which contain paraphrases, and literal commentaries
which contain dubia whose length and structure allies them to the quaestio.
Moreover, literal commentaries ceased to be divided into lectiones, instead being
organized in accordance with the accepted division of Aristotle’s text into chapters
and tractates. 15 The Coimbra commentary of 1606 is an excellent example
of the hybrid question-commentary with its chapter divisions, chapter summaries,
textual commentary and lengthy quaestiones.
The Coimbra commentary illustrates another trend which became important in
the fifteenth century, that towards commentaries on the entire Organon. 16 Indeed,
the very name Organon when used as a title rather than a description seems to be
a late fifteenth-century innovation. Commentaries on individual books continued
to be written; but the fifteenth-century Thomists at the Bursa Montis in Cologne
produced a single commentary on the Logica vetus and another on the Logica
nova, as did Johannes Versor in Paris. 17 Also at Paris we find George of Brussels
and Pierre Tartaret, whose respective commentaries on the entire Organon were
first published in 1493, and enjoyed considerable success during the first decades
of the sixteenth century. Later sixteenth-century commentaries included that by
Authors,” ibid., 30 (1974), 119–144. For a listing of Aristotle commentaries in the period 1500–
1650, see C. H. Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries. II. Renaissance Authors, Firenze: Leo S.
Olschki, 1988. See also C. H. Lohr, “Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries: Authors A-B,”
Studies in the Renaissance 21 (1974), 228–289; “Authors C,” Renaissance Quarterly, 28 (1975),
689–741; “Authors D-F,” ibid., 29 (1976), 714–745; “Authors G-K,” ibid., 30 (1977), 681–741;
“Authors L-M,” ibid., 31 (1978), 532–603; “Authors N-Ph,” ibid., 32 (1979), 529–580; “Authors
Pi-Sm,” ibid., 33 (1980), 623–734; “Authors So-Z,” ibid., 35 (1982), 164–256.
13 Dod, “Aristoteles latinus”, pp. 73–74.
14 Green-Pedersen, The Tradition of the Topics, pp. 88–89, distinguishes three.
15 Green-Pedersen, The Tradition of the Topics, p. 91.
16 For comment, see Lohr, “Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries: Authors A-B”, pp.
230–231 or Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries II, p.XIV.
17 For publication details, see W. R. Risse, Bibliographia Logica Band I. 1472–1800
(Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965).