Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

620 E. Jennifer Ashworth
ties. In Italy, the fifteenth century was characterized by the enthusiastic reception
of fourteenth-century Oxford logic, not only as found in the works of Paul of
Venice, but also as found in original treatises by such men as Heytesbury, Strode
and Billingham. 53 As Charles Schmitt remarked, “Contrary to what is generally
thought, the most technical and most highly specialized products of medieval
scholasticism continued to remain popular during the Renaissance, precisely at
the same time as when humanism was at its height.” 54 Indeed, those humanists
such as Leonardo Bruni whose fulminations against the ‘barbari britanni’ are often
quoted, were dead long before the wave of British logic was spent in Italy. 55 Thus
the prescribed texts at Padua in 1496 included Paul of Venice’s Logica parva along
with works by Heytesbury, Strode, and the more recent Paul of Pergula (d. 1451),
who had taught at Padua. 56 As well as producing his own logic text, Paul of
Pergula had commented on Strode’s Consequences, as had his colleague Gaetano
di Thiene. 57 Outside Italy, matters were little different. At Erfurt in 1420, Billingham,
John of Holland and Thomas Maulvelt were read; 58 and the Erfurt statutes
of 1412 together with the additions of 1449 also mention Heytesbury, Albert of
Saxony, Buridan and Marsilius of Inghen. 59 Peter of Spain’s Summulae were read
at Ingolstadt in 1478. 60 Buridan was popular in Poland. 61 At Oxford, a loose
collection of largely anonymous texts containing similar material to that found in
Paul of Venice’s Logica parva was read. 62 I will not add more detail to this list; but
53See especially W. J. Courtenay, “The Early Stages in the Introduction of Oxford Logic into
Italy” in English Logic in Italy in the 14 th and 15 th Centuries, ed. Alfonso Maierù (Napoli:
Bibliopolis, 1982), pp. 13–32.
54Schmitt, “Alberto Pio and the Aristotelian Studies of His Time,” p. 49.
55See E. Garin, “La cultura fiorentina nella seconda metà del ’300 e i ‘barbari britanni’,” La
Rassegna della Letteratura Italiana 64 (1960), 181–195.
56Schmitt, “Philosophy and Science in Sixteenth-Century Universities: Some Preliminary Comments,”
p. 493, p. 520 note 43: “Deputati ad sophistariam teneantur legere Logicam Pauli
Veneti et Quaestiones Strodi cum Dubiis Pauli Pergulensis et pro tertia lectione Regulas seu
Sophysmata tisberi.”
57It is interesting to consider the title of the work published in Venice in 1517: Consequentie
Strodi cum commento Alexandri Sermonete. Declarationes Gaetani in easdem consequentias.
Dubia magistri Pauli pergulensis. Obligationes eiusdem Strodi. Consequentie Ricardi de
Ferabrich. Expositio Gaetani super easdem. Consequentie subtiles Hentisbari. Questiones in
consequentias Strodi perutiles eximii artium doctoris domini Antonii Frachentiani Vicentini.
For Paul of Pergula, see Paul of Pergula, Logica and Tractatus de Sensu Composito et Diviso,
ed. Sister Mary Anthony Brown (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: The Franciscan Institute; Louvain,
Belgium: E. Nauwelaerts; Paderborn, Germany: F. Schöningh, 1961).
58L. Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1944), pp. 296–
297.
59A. L. Gabriel, “‘Via antiqua’ and ‘via moderna’ and the Migration of Paris Students and
Masters to the German Universities in the Fifteenth Century,” Miscellanea Mediaevalia 9 (1974),
467–468.
60Heath, “Logical Grammar”, p. 49.
61M. Markowski, Burydanism w Polsce w Okresie Przedkopernikanskim (Wroclaw, Warszawa,
Krakow, Gdansk, 1971), passim.
62L. M. de Rijk, “Logica Oxoniensis: An Attempt to Reconstruct a Fifteenth Century Oxford
Manual of Logic,” Medioevo 3 (1977), 121–164; E. J. Ashworth, “The ‘Libelli Sophistarum’ and
the Use of Medieval Logic Texts at Oxford and Cambridge in the Early Sixteenth Century,”
Vivarium 17 (1979), 134–158.