The two parts of this publication, together forming volume VII of Brepols’s Studia Sententiarum series, focus on an “uncharted scholastic philosophical genre,” principia. The editors characterize the contributors as “explorers” of “terrain unfamiliar to modern scholarship” (I, xxvi). The work has a pan-European focus. Volume I discusses fourteenth-century examples of theprincipia genre at the Universities of Paris and Oxford. Volume II includes Bologna and Florence, and as the view turns east to Heidelberg, Vienna, Prague, and Cracow, the emphasis is very much on the fifteenth century.
But what exactly were principia? This is the subject of the opening article by Monica Brînzei, “A Guide for Understanding Principia on the Sentences of Peter Lombard.” While in thirteenth-century Paris, the term was used for inaugural sermons by theologians prior to lecturing on the Sentences, by the 1320s principia had evolved to become an event on the university calendar with a formalized structure. Each of the sententiarii (those bachelors lecturing on Peter Lombard that academic year) would deliver a speech often in praise of Peter Lombard or theology, preceded by a biblical thema. The bible text might be chosen because it made a reference in some way to the bachelor’s identity (known as a heraldic pun), and the speech followed the structure of a scholastic sermon. After this the bachelor would include a protestatio, excusing himself from possible error, before proceeding to the quaestio collativa, the discussion of a theological question, which included debates with the other bachelors. These debates are at the heart of this book, since they have allowed the contributors to draw attention to little-studied positions of well-known figures like Francis of Marchia or John Hus, but also to “draw a rudimentary doctrinal portrait of...forgotten theologians” (I, 31) who would otherwise be unknown. At Paris at any rate, the bachelors could cast their net very widely for the theological questions in what was clearly a performance. As Brînzei remarks “the bachelors’ goal was to demonstrate openly their rhetorical skills, brilliance, wit, charisma, and knowledge in defending and attacking doctrinal positions, while exhibiting their intimate familiarity with canonical authorities and recent trends, and displaying their eloquence in speech and maturity of thought” (I, 3). That these principia were performances is also evident from their final section, the actio gratiarum, where the bachelor acknowledged the attendance of distinguished attendees from the university, not all of whom were from the theology faculty.
At the end of her article, Brînzei refers to the “written heritage of these oral performances” (I, 37), and the contributions show that this takes various forms. Florian Wöller in “Inaugural Speeches by Bachelors of Theology: Principial Collationes and their Transmission (1317-1319)” shows how authors like Peter Auriol and Landolfo Caracciolo only added the written version of their principia, now rewritten and revised, at the final stage of publishing their commentaries on the Sentences. This he argues “emphasizes the prefaces’ own temporal distance from their originating events” (I, 96). Among his numerous contributions to the volumes (more of which later), Chris Schabel shows how the written records of principia come down to us in various ways: Francis of Marchia’s principia is his own expanded revision; that of Jean de Moyenneville survives because Étienne Gaudet recorded it in his notebook not for its “doctrinal contents, but as a model for how to perform in the principial debates” (I, 302); the Principium of Guglielmo Centueri of Bologna is concealed as a “giant question” (II, 15) in his commentary on book II of theSentences.
The contributors also show that, from a doctrinal point of view, principia can be difficult to interpret. This also has to do with their origin in a kind of performance. The bachelor would debate his socii, those also lecturing on the Sentences that year. While this section of the principia might often begin with courteous expressions of politeness toward one’s fellows, it was often, as Brînzei says, “replaced by irony and sarcasm, for pointing out the weaknesses of one’s opponents helped highlighting one’s own intellectual abilities” (I, 24). Chris Schabel remarks of Pierre Ceffons’s replies to his socii that “it is impossible not to wonder whether half of what he says is tongue in-cheek, and if so, which half” (I, 254). Brînzei, discussing John Hus’s critique of a socius, notes that one must “differentiate between a principiating sententiarus’s real theses and sincere reasoning and his arguments marshalled against the theses of his socii” (II, 262).
The contributions to the volumes range in length from just under thirty pages to just over one hundred. Many also include transcriptions and editions from the manuscripts, making the work an important resource. Special mention must be made of Chris Schabel, who through his five articles is responsible for 422 of the work’s 1118 pages (excluding the indices). Three of these focus on the University of Paris. The first, “Francis of Marchia on Instrumental Causality: The Conclusion to Principium in IV in Question 2 on IV Sentences” adds significantly to an already well-known aspect of Marchia’s work, his discussion of projectile motion (virtus derelicta). Schabel shows how essential his principia is for understanding his views on this subject. While Marchia’s principial questions are some of the earliest to survive from Paris, Schabel’s next article, “The Genre Matures: Parisian Principia in the 1340s from Gregory of Rimini to Pierre Ceffons,” reconstructs the principia of three academic years, 1343-1344, 1344-1345 and 1348-1349. This long article includes an admirable prosopographical study of the participants, and illuminates the debates themselves, on topics such as the salvation of Judas and the infallibility of the church. Schabel’s third article on Paris, “The Forgotten Principia of a Forgotten Theologian: Jean de Moyenneville, 1356-1357 and Parisian theology in the late 1350s” aims to shed light “on a comparatively dark period of Parsian theology, the 1350s” (I, 261). This article, like the previous one, builds up a picture of principial debates including an outline of the structure they followed.
The section on the University of Paris also includes articles by Florian Wöller (discussed above), Alexandra Anisie, and William J. Courtenay. Courtenay’s first article, “The Transformation of Sentential Principia in the Early Fourteenth Century,” examines the critical period between 1300 and 1320 whenprincipia changed to include the quaestio collativa. He also contributes a list of sententiarii at Paris in the fourteenth century, “Principial Cohorts at Paris in the Fourteenth Century.” For each name on the list, detailed footnotes provide further information and references. In the overall introduction, the editors describe this article as a “rich catalogue” (xvii), and indeed it is: scholarship distilled to its very essence. Anisie’s article “Verbum Dominum super Iohannem: John Brammart on the Word of God in the Beatific Vision,” is related to the author’s field on beatific cognition. A notable feature of this article is the treatment of Peter Lombard himself. It was customary to praise him in the sermo section of the principia, and Brammart compares him to John the Evangelist (and to a lesser extent John the Baptist). The use of a few lines of verse in this section was also customary, and Brammart uses rhyming couplets to argue that Lombard surpassed Aristotle. He showed things to be true that “Aristotle merely stated” (I, 372).
There are four articles on the University of Oxford, all focusing on the 1320s and 1330s. Siegfried Wenzel, in “Introductory Speeches on the Sentences by ‘Frisby,’” discusses Ralph Frisby, who lectured on the Sentences in 1320, and included four inaugural sermons and a closing sermon. Wenzel shows how these follow in the tradition of the scholastic sermon. He also provides a critical edition of these sermons. It is notable, however, that while these sermons do feature what the volume editors refer to as “the technical elements of a principia sermon” (I, xvii), Wenzel himself does not use the word principia. It is clear that the Paris format of the principia was not yet occurring in Oxford; but in the next article, “Between Old and New at Oxford: The Introitus Sententiarum of Richard FitzRalph and the First Collatio of Adam Wodeham,” Michael Dunne raises the possibility that it was introduced there by Adam Wodeham. His article also includes a fine treatment of Richard FitzRalph’s inaugural sermon on the Sentences. For Richard, Peter Lombard is “like a second David against Goliath,” defeating “the spiritual enemies of the city of God” (I, 527). To me, comparisons like this, along with those mentioned above by Brammart, show that while principia are not the place to look for direct engagement with the specifics of Peter Lombard’s theology, they do underline how central his work and reputation was to the life of theology faculties in the universities of Europe.
The other two articles on Oxford seem to indicate that the debate with socii was beginning to emerge in Oxford by the 1330s. Pascale Bermon’s article “À la recherche des Principia aux Questions sur les Sentences de Robert Holcot O. P. (†1349)” suggests that a text of Holcot known as the sex articuli, which includes responses to socii, originates in his principia. Chris Schabel rounds out the treatment of Oxford with “The Oxford Franciscan Robert Halifax’s Principial Debate over Grace and Merit with his Pelagian Socius and Other Colleagues in 1332-1333.” This article redates Halifax’s lectures on the Sentences to 1332-1333. Halifax’s debate with an unnamedsocius on grace and merit, a topic which Oxford at this time was “obsessed with” (I, 580) is the main subject of the article, and an edition is included. One has the sense that there is certainly more to be said about the development ofprincipia at Oxford in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The second volume includes two articles on principia in Italy. The first is focused on Peter of Trabibus, who lectured on the Sentences at the Franciscan studium in Florence in the late thirteenth century. His commentary includes a principium as it then existed--an inaugural sermon with clearly defined elements, much like that of Frisby mentioned above. This text is discussed and edited in Duba and Friedman’s article “A(nother) Florentine Principium on the Sentences. The Mystery of the Two ‘Prologues’ in Peter of Trabibus’ I Sentences.” Bologna is represented in Chris Schabel’s final article in the volumes, “The Franciscan Guglielmo Centueri of Cremona’s Bologna Principium of 1368, with an Appendix on Whether God Can Make the Past Not to Have Been.” Bologna’s faculty of theology was founded in the 1360s and surviving principia can be found from the end of that decade on. The quaestio edited by Schabel here includes no debate with socii because it is thought to be an expanded revision of the original oral version.
Wojciech Baran’s “Survey on Principia on Peter Lombard’s Sentences at the University of Cracow” begins with the role of the Piast and Jagiellonian dynasties in the creation of the university of Cracow. The theology faculty was established in 1397, so it “embraced the practice of principia on the Sentences following the model of other European universities” (II, 64). A unique feature, though, was that in Cracow the debate is with one other person, referred to as the concurrent master, rather with than several socii. Baran surveys seventeen surviving principia from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A notable feature of Baran’s catalogue is his discussion of the wider historical context. These include possible references to the crusades against the Hussites in Budziszyn’s discussion of theologia militantium (II, 80), and the principia of Matthias of Łabisyzn, “delivered in the shadow” (II, 109) of the crusade of Varna. Often at Cracow the question debated was related to the discipline of theology itself. In his conclusion, Baran explains the reasons for the decline of teaching the Sentences at Cracow in the late sixteenth century, giving his contribution a chronological breadth that is unique in these two volumes.
That sense of wider historical context is also present in the articles on the universities of Heidelberg and Prague. Andrea Fiamma’s “John Wenck’sPrincipia on the Sentences (1431) at the University of Heidelberg” examines a figure who was involved at the Council of Basle where he “opened the well-known polemic against Nicholas of Cusa” (II, 163). Principia came to Heidelberg in the later fourteenth century when Marsilius of Ingham, who had studied in Paris, began the tradition of lecturing on the Sentences. Fiamma shows how Wenck’s principia followed the tradition set by Marsilius. A notable feature of this work, which Fiamma edits, is the inclusion of the actio gratiarum, where Wenck thanks various figures from the university for their attendance. This shows that “in Heidelberg, principia were open to members of all the faculties from the university and that they were probably important events for the faculty of theology” (II, 199).
Mention has already been made of Brînzei’s article “The Cistercian Matthew of Zbraslav, socius of a Pre-Radical John Hus and Their Prague Principial Debate.” It is remarkable to read that although Hus’s principia has been available in the edition of his commentary of the Sentences since the early twentieth century, “there is no study investigating the doctrinal exchange between Hus and his socii” (II, 240 n5). Hus’s debate gives a clear sense of how principial debates would function, and Brînzei shows how “the European academic practice of Principia was fully embraced at Prague” (II, 263), with all the elements that have been described throughout these volumes.
Finally, the volumes conclude with four articles on principia at the University of Vienna in the fifteenth century. Anna Lukács’s article “Prêcher sur lesSentences: sermons sur l’œuvre du Lombard à la bibliothèque des Dominicains de Vienne” covers a collection of principial sermons in the library of the Dominican convent. Since they contain the familiar elements of principial sermons, they may have served as models for those lecturing on the Sentences at the university. The remaining three articles on Vienna are closely related to one another, focusing on the principia of Conrad of Rotherburg and Peter of Pirchenwart. Ueli Zahnd in “Disputing without Socii: The Principium on Book I of Conrad of Rothenburg, Vienna 1408/09” shows that Conrad was the only bachelor to read the Sentences that year, hence the lack of socii. He also shows how the tradition of lecturing on the Sentences was conservative and standardized in Vienna, with the theologian relying on “a manual that originally had been compiled by Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl” (II, 322). The principia seem to be even more formalized, “reduced to a procedure that had to be followed only because it was a procedure that had to be followed” (II, 328-9). Notably, Zahnd does not exempt Paris from this (II, 329), and his concluding remarks on the question of whether fifteenth-century theology was “uninspired, derivative” (II, 329) are certainly worth reading. Matteo Esu’s “Peter of Pirchenwart’s Textual Workshop from his Principium IV (1417)” begins with an accessible biography of the author which is followed by an extensive study of the sources of hisprincipia. This article also has significant relevance for a point discussed above, the written versus oral aspect of principia. Finally, Esu and Zahnd present “A joint Edition of Conrad of Rothenburg’s and Peter of Pirchenwart’sPrincipia on Book IV of the Sentences.”The volumes include an index of names (pre-1500 and post-1500) and of manuscripts. It would have also been beneficial to include an index of subjects, since one of the great achievements of these volumes is to reveal and discuss hitherto unknown doctrinal positions by theologians known and unknown. Overall, this is a tremendous achievement which will undoubtedly stimulate further work on the principia genre.