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An Anonymous Oxford Commentary on Aristotle's ‘De generatione et corruptione’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

James K. Otte
James K. Otte*
Affiliation:
University of San Diego
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Extract

In the Spring of 1985, I visited the Bodleian Library in Oxford, to examine in situ Alfred of Sareshel's commentary on Aristotle's Metheora. Although they were listed in the Aristoteles latinus as anonymous, I had already identified the linear and marginal comments in manuscript Selden supra 24 ff. 84r-114r, as another, and to date, the oldest known version of Alfred's commentary on that Aristotelian treatise. That codex also contains a Graeco-Latin version of Aristotle's De generatione et corruptione which is also accompanied by an anonymous commentary (ff. 41r-63r). I decided at the time to transcribe the commentary, and to prepare it for an edition with the aim of publication, a process in which I am still involved.

Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 46 , 1991 , pp. 326 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © The Fordham University Press 

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References

1 Otte, J. K., ed., Alfred of Sareshel's Commentary on the Metheora of Aristotle (Diss. University of Southern California, 1969 ). The commentary has survived in four known manuscripts, the first of which was discovered by George Lacombe in 1935, ‘Alfredus in Metheora,’ Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Suppl. III (Münster 1935) 463–71. My edition was published as: Alfred of Sareshel's Commentary on the Metheora of Aristotle (Leiden-Cologne 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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24 Minio-Paluello, , ‘Iacobus Veneticus’ 292.Google Scholar

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26 Minio-Paluello, , ‘Iacobus Veneticus’ 294.Google Scholar

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29 Otte, , Metheora 31–3.Google Scholar

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32 Otte, , Metheora 13, 49: 5: Quare autem vapor et calor invisibiles flammam visibilem producant, in libro De generatione et corruptione discussimus.Google Scholar

33 Ibid. Google Scholar

34 Judycka, , De generatione et corruptione 49 (328a20): ‘Hec quidem igitur convertuntur, quorum eadem materia est, et activa invicem et passiva ab invicem, hec autem faciunt impassibilia entia, quorum non eadem materia.’ The text is the same in the Oxford version, Bodleian Library, MS Selden supra 24 fol. 54 r: 17–18. The English text was taken from Aristotle, On Coming-to-be and Passing-away (ed. E. S. Forster; London 1965) 259 (328a20). Cf. The Works of Aristotle II (ed. Ross, W. D.; Oxford 1970): De generatione et corruptione 110 (328a20).Google Scholar

35 Hidden in the left margin of Oxford, Bodleian, Selden supra 24 folio 54 r at line 17, the following loss is found: ‘Hoc facet enim album in nigro et pacitur.’Google Scholar

36 Baeumker, C., ‘Die Stellung des Alfred von Sareshel (Alfredus Anglicus) und seiner Schrift De motu cordis in der Wissenschaft des beginnenden XIII. Jahrhunderts,’ Sb. Akad. München 9 (1913) 33.Google Scholar

OtteJames K.