Radulphus Brito was a distinguished secular cleric at the University of Paris. He was both a Master of Arts and a Master of Theology. His academic career began sometime during the last decades of the thirteenth century and ended with his death around 1320 (his name disappears from the historical record in 1319). [1] Even though he was a regent Master of Theology at Paris, followed by a time as Treasurer of the Collège de Sorbonne from 1315 to 1320, it was his time as a Master of Arts that secured his reputation and influence during the Middle Ages. Brito was perhaps the most influential, or at least most well-known, member of the group of medieval thinkers known asmodistae or speculative grammarians who argued for a realist understanding of philosophy, especially in terms of grammar and logic. In this way, he opposed nominalism which was then gaining an increasing number of adherents in the universities.
Brito's texts reveal the challenges that the student of Scholastic philosophy and theology confronts when attempting to edit them. His questions on Aristotle's Prior Analytics are massive. They comprise nearly 100 questions, covering over 600 pages in Gordon Wilson's recently published edition. In these questions, Brito examined the nature of the syllogism, which was the fundamental means for philosophical and theological investigation and argument during the Scholastic period. Confronted with such a mass of material, one would be tempted to flee in horror. Fortunately for Brito, Wilson, an accomplished and highly-respected scholar and editor known especially for his work on the critical edition of the works of the Parisian theologian Henry of Ghent, did not flinch at the sight of so many questions. Indeed, the publication of this edition is the culmination of over thirty years of work, interrupted by the demands of teaching and other obligations, not least of which was the aforementioned edition of Henry of Ghent.
The Quaestiones super Priora Analytica Aristotelis by the Radulphus Brito presents a fine example of the difficulties presented when editing a Scholastic text that originated in the university's classrooms and were not transmitted via the official channel of the university's stationner or the well-commented on pecia-system. Brito's disputed questions treat material covered by Aristotle in his Prior Analytics, most significantly the nature of the syllogism and syllogistic reasoning. These disputed questions arose from Brito's teaching of that text in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris and probably date from sometime around the turn of the fourteenth-century. The dating is imprecise because of the fact that during his teaching career in the Arts Faculty, Brito, who no doubt lectured on this text every year, continuously revised his questions, resulting in what the editor of this volume, Gordon A. Wilson, identifies as three redactions among the six principal manuscripts, as well as one manuscript that preserves a fragmentary text.
That six manuscripts preserve such an important text is disappointing but not surprising for a university text that originated in the classroom among secular students. It was most likely a local product meant for local students and did not enjoy the circulation in the distribution network provided by the study-houses of the religious orders. It is a challenge for the editor to work with six manuscripts for such a large text. Wilson handles these challenges with sophistication and much erudition and experience.
According to Wilson, the transmission of the text can be divided into three stages or redactions that correspond temporally to the development of the text. All manuscripts evince a common model, of which three are the main transmitters. Wilson determines that these manuscripts contain what he calls the Redactio communis. It is these manuscripts upon which his edition is built. Two manuscripts of the six, however, are particularly problematic. Osimo, Biblioteca Campana, Ms. 39, preserves an eclectic witness to Book I of Brito's text, and Book II in this manuscript contains only 16 questions, 13 of which can be identified to Brito's near contemporary Simon of Faversham. On the basis of this evidence alone, it was wise to treat the Osimo manuscript with caution, but through his careful transcription and collation of the text, Wilson discovered that it does read at times with the Redactio communis and at times with the Parisian manuscript that preserves these questions and represents the last redaction of Brito's text. In this way, the manuscript preserved in Osimo represents a second stage in the transmission of the questions.
This brings us to the Parisian manuscript, which is perhaps the most interesting one of the lot edited by Wilson. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. lat. 14705, contains a colophon that indicates that this text was copied in 1312. This date situates the text during Brito's time as a Master of Theology and not of Arts. It seems probable, however, that Brito continued to lecture or teach on Aristotle's text while he was more properly engaged in other subjects. The variants in this manuscript, as Wilson notes, often evince a more stylistic revision, perhaps as he was preparing them for some sort of formal publication or distribution. The text in the manuscript also contains a completely new question in Book I and a unique version of q.10 also in Book I. Brito was obviously tinkering with his text and arguments.
Confronted with these three redactions, Wilson faced the difficult choice of selecting which witness to base his edition upon. The texts in all three manuscripts were not dissimilar, with the exception of the new questions in the Parisian manuscript. It would have been enticing to edit the Parisian witness as the best representative of the last stage of Brito's thought. It is, after all, a witness that clearly evinces the corrections and revisions of the master himself. Wilson considered this option but admitted that edited from one manuscript witness is less than ideal. If he chose to collate the other manuscripts to help with the sense and meaning of the text, his critical apparatus would have swelled enormously with so many variant readings. So while the use of the Parisian manuscript as the base text of the edition would have been perhaps the most desirable, Wilson adopted the more prudent choice to present an edition of the Redactio communis but allowing scholars to see the variant readings of the Parisian manuscript in the critical apparatus. This decision was doubtless the correct one for his edition, although one wonders how much space it saved in the apparatus.
If there is one small quibble with the disposition of Wilson's edition, it is the manner in which he presented the unique version of Book I q.10 which appears in the Parisian manuscript. Wilson presents other unique questions in an Appendix to the volume. This allows these questions to be readily available for any reader who wishes to consult them. When it came to Book I q.10, Wilson decided to present both versions of the question in the text. This was, once again, the prudent and correct thing to do. Unfortunately, perhaps for reasons of technology, the versions are presented seriatim. I would have preferred these to be presented face-en-face so that the reader could have a chance to compare them while reading, like a critical apparatus writ large.
Wilson has performed Herculean labor in presenting the scholarly community with this edition of an important Scholastic thinker. Indeed, because so many of the texts of Brito's main interlocutor, Simon of Faversham, are similarly understudied and unedited, Wilson was forced to transcribe manuscripts containing the texts of Simon to complete the references that appear in this edition's apparatus fontium. This text will be a great help to anyone who is interested in the development of medieval logic and will truly stand the test of time as a lasting contribution to the field.
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Notes.
1. The most comprehensive treatment of Brito's biography is given by William J. Courtenay, "Radulphus Brito, Master of Arts and Theology," Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Âge grec et latin 76 (2005), 131-58.