The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were formative for the university in western Europe, in part because the definitive genres of university literature were created during that time. The Sentences commentary, the epitome of the medieval university text, achieved its classic form in those centuries. So did the Bible commentary and the commentary on Aristotle's works, the theological treatise and summa, and the university sermon. These and other text types recorded the daily practice of masters and scholars in the lecture and disputation halls. They also shaped and directed the scholarly activity that occurred in those locations.
The collection of quodlibetal questions was another genre of university literature that was created and circulated widely during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Quodlibetal collections appeared in Paris c. 1230, and then later at Oxford, the papal curia, and elsewhere. These collections were written products of special disputations that were held twice a year under university auspices, mostly but not exclusively in the theology faculties. In these disputations, masters and advanced students investigated and answered questions "about anything" (de quodlibet). Because of their origin in public and oral venues where the involved masters and advanced students did not control the questions being asked, the written records of the disputations cover a wide range of topics. In a single quodlibetal collection, for example, one can find questions about the existence and attributes of God, the moral character necessary in a priest who hears confession, and the physics that controls the fluctuations of sea tides. Quodlibetal disputations were important parts of university training throughout the medieval period. For us, the surviving collections are important sources of insight into late medieval thought.
Brill publishing, editor Christopher Schabel, and an impressive cadre of international experts have produced a major study of this university genre in Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages. Anyone seriously interested in medieval scholastic theology and philosophy, scholastic theologians from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the early history of the university, or other related topics will find the work invaluable. The two handsome and hefty volumes of Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages are subtitled, respectively, The Thirteenth Century and The Fourteenth Century. They are also Volumes 1 and 7 in Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, "a series of handbooks and reference works on the intellectual and religious life of Europe, 500- 1700."
According to Schabel, Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages aimed to be "the most extensive single work on the genre published over the past seventy years" (vol. I, 3). The choice of seventy years was not arbitrary, for the last major study of this genre, and a recognized classic in the field, was PalÄmon Glorieux's La littÄrature quodlibÄtique de 1260 ê 1320, whose two volumes appeared in 1925 and 1935. Schabel elaborated on the purpose of Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages, and on its relation to Glorieux's classic study: "The goal of these two volumes was threefold: to provide a convenient and stimulating guide to the quodlibetal writings of theologians in a format different from that chosen by Glorieux; to update and correct Glorieux; to encourage further research on and publication of these texts" (vol. II, 13). The first two goals were met late last year when the second of the two volumes was published, and the third goal is no doubt being met even now.
Jacqueline Hamesse's introductory article in Volume I, "Theological Quaestiones Quodlibatales," surveys the origins, character, and evolution of quodlibetal questions. Hamesse reminds future investigators that gray areas remain, that more evidence needs to be recovered and more work needs to be done so that we might make further generalization about quodlibeta and fully assess their impact. William Courtenay's "Postscript: The Demise of Quodlibetal Literature" closes Volume II, and it challenges the received account of the disappearance of quodlibetal collections. Courtenay shows that the apparent decline in the number of collections published after c. 1330 does not prove that quodlibetal disputations were discontinued.
Between Hamesse's introductory survey and Courtenay's postscript, two dozen studies address a range of topics related to quodlibeta. Half of the two dozen studies treat individuals. Quodlibetal questions of well known theologians--Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham--receive their own chapters, as do questions of other lesser known theologians such as William de la Mare, Henry of Ghent, Giles of Rome, Godfrey of Fontains, Peter of Auvergne, John of Pouilly, Thomas Wylton, Peter Auriol, and Nicholas of Bar. All of the studies of individuals approach the questions in a way that becomes paradigmatic. They (1) identify and describe the manuscript(s) in which the questions appear; (2) they list the questions themselves; and then they (3) offer careful reflection on selected topics considered in the questions.
After the studies of individuals, the second largest group of studies focuses on religious orders. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the major Christian religious orders secured chairs in the theology faculties of the universities. Members of the orders became theology masters, filled their orders' chairs, and taught their brothers from those chairs. In some places and periods, the masters from the religious orders were the ones who provided creative leadership for the university's work. Discrete chapters in Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages survey quodlibetal collections produced by Dominicans, Carmelites, Augustinian Hermits, and Franciscans, as well as monks and canons regular. These surveys are essentially aggregate studies, which is to say they apply the paradigmatic approach to the questions produced by a group of masters from the same order. Few and careful generalizations are drawn from these studies, as was true with the studies of individuals, and as Hamesse suggested. We learn from Russell Friedman's close analysis of "Dominican Quodlibetal Literature, ca. 1260-1330" that Thomas Aquinas was "the overwhelming--although not exclusive--doctrinal anchor in nearly all the literature dealt with here" (vol. II, 474).
The remaining chapters are topical, and along with the studies of individuals and orders, they reiterate another generalization about quodlibeta, that theology masters did not answer only theological questions. Political and economic quodlibeta are considered in two separate chapters, and the ontological principle of individuation is considered in a third. Elsa Marmursztejn's "A Normative Power in the Making: Theological Quodlibeta and the Authority of the Masters of Paris at the End of the Thirteenth Century" is exceptional in terms of method. Marmursztejn took an anthropological approach to show how masters asserted and exerted their competence via their quodlibetal determinations.
One of the obvious strengths of Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages is the considerable amount of previously unavailable quodlibetal material that it contains. Several chapters in Volume I, and ten of the fifteen chapters in Volume II contain lists of actual questions and/or complete (Latin) editions of questions. These lists and editions offer the reader an actual sense of the texture and tone of quodlibetal questions. Researchers will return to this material, and also to the indexes (one of authors, one of manuscripts, and one of "names and places") and to the work's one appendix, Richard Cross's "Natural Philosophy: An Analytic Index."
Probably more than as a "reference work," the two volumes of Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages will likely be used as "guides" and "companions" to the study of quodlibeta. For example, someone interested in Gerard of Saint-Victor, a Victorine canon who was also a regent master in the theology faculty at Paris between 1306 and 1317, would receive valuable background information and a necessary perspective for understanding Master Gerard's quodlibeta from reading both volumes cover to cover. Moreover, several studies particular chapters would offer additional specific and focused help. Thomas Sullivan, OSB, commented on the Victorines who were canons regular and comments on Master Gerard in particular in the chapter entitled, "The Quodlibeta of the Canons Regular and the Monks." Master Gerard's quodlibeta are preserved in a Vatican library manuscript that is analyzed in detail in "Reflections on Vat. lat. 1086 and Prosper of Reggio Emilia, O.E.S.A" by Courtenay. And one of Master Gerard's questions on natural philosophy appears and is categorized in Cross's Analytic Index.
Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages is an important contribution to our growing understanding of quodlibetal questions. It goes well beyond what is offered in Glorieux's classic volumes, and in the other required guide to this literature, Bernardo C. Bazên, John W. Wippel, GÄrard Fransen, and Danielle Jacquart, eds., Les questions disputÄes et les questions quodlibetiques dans les facultÄs de thÄologie, de droit, et de medecine. Typologie des Sources du Moyen Age Occidental, 44-45 (Turnhout; Brepols, 1985). Aided by Bazên and Glorieux, and now by Schabel, new generations of investigators are well equipped for further exploration. We can expect greater synthesis of and deeper insight into this important genre of university literature.