Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Logic at the Turn of the Twelfth Century 67
are, then, distant formally from the model of Boethius, and they are usually distant
in content too, whereas some composite commentaries contain many passages
borrowed from, or closely based on, Boethius. ‘Literal’ and ‘composite’ should not,
however, be thought of as designating two completely distinct classes: literal commentaries
contain some more discursive comments, and composite commentaries
can have sections where the exegesis is merely literal. There were also ‘problem
commentaries’ (the best known is Abelard’s Logica Nostrorum petitioni sociorum),
which concentrated on discussing the difficult issues, with very little or no literal
commentary. None of these has been dated to before c. 1120, but they should be
born in mind, since it will turn out that the chronology of the commentaries is far
less fixable than has been believed.
All these commentaries belong to the activity of teaching and learning logic in
the cathedral schools, and especially in the schools of Paris, which were beginning
to become important in the early twelfth century. But what exactly is their relation?
Were they drawn up to be read out by the master, or are they, rather,
lecture-notes taken by students? A few commentaries — notably one on On Interpretation
(H5) — contain passages recording questions, discussion and humorous
(sometimes obscene) asides that appear to be a very direct record of what went
on during a particular set of lectures [Iwakuma, 1999, 94-7]. Other commentaries
give the impression of having been more formally written up. Probably there is
a range of different relationships between the various texts that survive and the
lectures with which they are connected, and it goes beyond a simple choice between
teacher’s text or lecture notes, since lecture notes might be presented to a
teacher for correction or they might form the basis of a student’s own lectures,
with passages revised ands his own particular take on controversial issues added.
These are conjectures, but one thing at least is clear: the twelfth-century logical
commentaries were not usually conceived of or created as literary works, produced
by a given, single author. They are, for the most part at least, records of teaching
and learning, in which individual masters’ views on issues may well play an important
role, but which draw often on many sources. The relations between different
versions of the same basic commentary show how freely one master would feel he
could borrow from and adapt the teaching of another: an example is provided
by the ‘C8 complex’ (see [Marenbon, 2000+] in the revised web-based version of
the Categories list). The result is that commentaries have a layered form, with
extra material added, perhaps in a number of stages. Where we have manuscripts
of different versions, it is easy to see how the later versions are layered, with a
stratum that follows the earlier commentary, and one or more strata added. For
example, in P3, after a discussion of Porphyry’s questions shared by the three
manuscripts, one of the manuscripts, now in Paris, adds a passage giving an alternative
discussion of the phrase ‘only in bare, pure thoughts’, in which it is related
to non-existents, such as chimaeras. If we had only the Paris manuscript, it would
not be so clear that this paragraph was an added layer. We should suspect, therefore,
that there are often layers of this sort within commentaries for which only
one manuscript survives, or in the earliest version we have of a commentary that