Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Developments in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 619
analyzed and tested against various logical rules. Since these rules were drawn
from the areas of investigation already mentioned, including supposition theory
and its ramifications, there was considerable overlap between these treatises and
those belonging to the first and second groups. Indeed, the latter treatises, as
well as commentaries on Aristotle and Peter of Spain, themselves made heavy use
of sophismata in order to test the rules they enunciated against possible counterexamples.
Thus we get a two-way movement. A treatise on sophismata begins with
the sophism and proceeds to the rules; a treatise on, for instance, consequences
begins with the rules and proceeds to the sophismata.
As well as treatises on individual topics, medieval logicians wrote summulae or
general textbooks. The most famous example is the thirteenth-century work by
Peter of Spain which gives a fairly complete outline of Aristotelian logic, including
categories, syllogisms, topics and fallacies. More than three hundred manuscripts
of this work survive, and about two hundred printed editions, mostly with a commentary.
50 However, it would be a great mistake to think that Peter of Spain
had no rivals. For those interested in medieval logic, Ockham’s Summa totius
logicae and the somewhat later Perutilis logica by Albert of Saxony must not be
overlooked. However, so far as the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries are concerned,
perhaps the most important textbook writers are John Buridan and Paul
of Venice. Paul of Venice’s Logica parva is worth considering more closely. Tract
1 presented the material of the summulae, and dealt with terms, nouns, verbs,
propositions, equipollence, conversion, hypothetical propositions, predicables, categories
and syllogisms — everything, that is, that Peter of Spain had covered,
except for topics and fallacies, but in much briefer compass. Tract 2 dealt with
the material of the parva logicalia, tracts 3, 5, and 6 dealt with consequences,
obligations and insolubles. Tract 4 was devoted to the proof of terms; and the last
two tracts took up objections to the summulae and to the consequences. Thus
the Logica parva was a compendium of mid- to late-fourteenth century logic, as
indeed was the very much longer Logica magna. 51 The Logica parva was very
popular. About eighty manuscripts survive and it was printed many times. 52 So
far as we know, it was the first medieval logic text to be printed, in 1472, and the
last edition was in 1614.
These medieval works dominated the curricula of fifteenth-century universi-
50 Peter of Spain, Tractatus called afterwards Summule Logicales, ed. L.M. de Rijk (Assen:
Van Gorcum, 1972), p. C. De Rijk comments that most of the printed editions are adaptations,
pp. C–CI.
51 In his Logica magna, Paul of Venice quotes verbatim (though without acknowledgement)
from various logicians of the second part of the fourteenth century: see Paul of Venice, Logica
Magna Part II Fascicule 6, ed. and trans. F. de Punta and M. M. Adams (Printed for the
British Academy by the Oxford University Press, 1978) and Paul of Venice, Logica Magna Part
II Fascicule 8, ed. and trans. E. J. Ashworth (Printed for the British Academy by the Oxford
University Press, 1988). (Other volumes in the series tend not to trace Paul’s sources.)
52 For a list of some 81 manuscripts, see Alan R. Perreiah, Paul of Venice: A Bibliographical
Guide (Bowling Green, Ohio: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1986). See also F. Bottin,
“Alcune correzioni ed aggiunte al censimento dei codici di Paolo Veneto,” Quaderni per la Storia
dell’Università di Padova 14 (1981), 59–60.