Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Developments in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 627
Agricola’s work was one of the most widely-published dialectic texts of the
sixteenth century, receiving more than forty editions. 89 Nonetheless, its fit with
the university curriculum in logic was not good, both because it was awkward to
place Topical invention before the rest of logic, and because it contained virtually
nothing about the rest of logic. The obvious answer to this problem was either to
provide supplementary texts, or to write new texts containing appropriate formal
material. As Monfasani has pointed out, in the earlier part of the sixteenth century
we often find that the Isagoge dialectica of George of Trebizond (1395–ca. 1472),
which gave a brief outline of Aristotelian logic, was paired with Agricola. 90 A good
example of the other approach, that of writing a new text, is provided by Philip
Melanchthon, the so-called Praeceptor Germaniae. His logic text, first published in
1520, as Compendiaria dialectices ratio, but replaced by two later versions, became
very popular. In it we can see how the insights of Agricola were transmuted to
serve the textbook needs of educational institutions, in much the same way as the
Ramist innovations were to be transmuted in the last years of the sixteenth century.
On the one hand Melanchthon enjoyed the Agricolan emphasis on clarity of style
and the use of literary allusions, which he supplemented by a large number of
Biblical allusions; he accepted the importance of the Topics, although he restored
discussion of the maxims; and some remarks on order in the first version of his
text grew into a full section on logical method as a way of ordering discourse. 91
On the other hand, Melanchthon remained a convinced Aristotelian, who believed
that students needed to be taught some formal logic. He placed judgement before
invention, and the formal techniques he used were those of syllogistic, while his
work included a discussion of the other standard Aristotelian subjects, including
the categories and the square of opposition for propositions. At the same time, he
purged Aristotle of medieval accretions, approaching him through new readings of
the Greek text and of the Greek commentators. Any references to the specifically
medieval contributions to logic are most unfavourable, and he relegates supposition
theory to grammar. 92
Such was not the case with the first important English logical text of the sixteenth
century, John Seton’s Dialectica, published in 1545. Seton explained in
89 Mack, Renaissance Argument, p. 257.
90 See John Monfasani, George of Trebizond. A Biography and a Study of his Rhetoric and
Logic (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), pp. 333–335. For the text, see Georgius Trapezuntius, De Re
Dialectica Libellus (Coloniae, 1539; repr. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva G.M.B.H., 1966).
91 See Philip Melanchthon, Compendiaria Dialectices Ratio in Opera (Corpus Reformatorum
XX, Brunsvigae 1854, repr. New York and Frankfurt am Main, 1963), columns 724–726; and
Erotemata Dialectices in Opera (Corpus Reformatorum XIII, Halis Saxonum, 1846; repr. New
York and Frankfurt am Main, 1963), columns 573–578. Sections on method became a standard
component of logic textbooks. Particularly after the publication of Zabarella’s Opera logica, it
became customary to add remarks on scientific method as well, in a mixture of subject-matters
that was not always happy.
92 Melanchthon, Erotemata Dialectices, cols. 750–752. He writes (col. 750): “Addita est
Aristotelis Dialecticae, doctrina verius Grammatica quam Dialectica, quam nominarunt Parvalogicalia,
in qua dum praecepta immodice cumularunt, et labyrinthos inextricabiles, sine aliqua
utilitate finxerunt, ut: Nullus et nemo mordent se in sacco, etiam illas admonitiones, quarum
aliquis est usus, tenebris involverunt.”