Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Developments in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 613
Franciscus Toletus, published in Rome in 1572 and republished many times.
Another feature of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which should be
mentioned here is directly due to the invention of printing, and concerns the wide
dissemination of the medieval Latin commentators. Walter Burley and Antonius
Andreas were particularly important at the beginning of the sixteenth century; and
the commentaries of Aquinas reached a peak of popularity in the mid-sixteenth
century. 18 The commentaries by, and attributed to, John Duns Scotus were also
published throughout the century. 19 This publication history was to have the interesting
result that in the Aristotle commentaries of the second half of the sixteenth
century we find much more attention paid to Aquinas and Scotus, along with other
thirteenth-century figures such as Albert the Great and Giles of Rome, than to the
perhaps greater logicians of the fourteenth century such as Ockham and Marsilius
of Inghen. This is clearly illustrated by the marginal references throughout the
Coimbra commentary. The reprinting and reediting of the great medieval Arab
commentator Averroes is also a noteworthy part of sixteenth-century publishing
history, which was to have its impact on the style of Aristotle commentaries in the
latter part of the sixteenth century. 20 The influence of Averroes on Zabarella (see
below) is of particular importance, but his name occurs with some frequency in
the already-mentioned marginal references of the Coimbra commentary.
So far I have only mentioned the medieval tradition of Aristotle translation and
commentary, but one cannot understand sixteenth-century developments without
also considering the impact of humanism. During the fifteenth century Greek
manuscripts became increasingly accessible, and proficiency in the Greek language
became more and more widespread, first in Italy and then, gradually, in other European
countries. The first printed edition of the Greek text of Aristotle was
produced in Venice by Aldus Manutius from 1495 to 1498; but before that the
Byzantine humanist and philosopher Joannes Argyropulos (ca. 1415–1487) had
already produced new Latin translations of the works of the Organon. As more
and more attention was paid to the actual Greek text, more and more dissatisfaction
was felt with the old translations, including those of Argyropulos himself. 21
People came to realize that Aristotle’s Greek “was more ‘literary’ and less technically
consistent than early translations had suggested,” 22 and this realization
could be used to cast doubt on earlier interpretations of his work. In his preface
to a translation of the Prior Analytics by Johannes Franciscus Burana, first published
in 1524, Hieronymus Bagolinus wrote scathingly of the medieval translators
18 F. E. Cranz, “The Publishing History of the Aristotle Commentaries of Thomas Aquinas,”
Traditio 34 (1978), esp. p. 163.
19 The commentaries on the Prior and the Posterior Analytics are not by Scotus.
20 See C. B. Schmitt, “Renaissance Averroism Studied Through the Venetian Editions of
Aristotle-Averroes (With Particular Reference to the Giunta Edition of 1550–2),” Study VIII in
The Aristotelian Tradition and Renaissance Universities (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984).
21 See C. B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (published for Oberlin College by Harvard
University Press, 1983), p. 72.
22 L. Jardine, in an earlier version of her chapter “Humanistic logic” in The Cambridge History
of Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 173–198.