Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2017
The recovery of the work of an author previously known only through citations and references in other manuscripts is always an exciting event. Although rare in any area of medieval studies, such finds broaden our knowledge of the intellectual development and open up new aspects for study. It was through a fortuitous paralleling of citations in Gregory of Rimini with an anonymous Sentences-commentary at the Franciscan convent in Fribourg that Damasus Trapp, a ground-breaker in fourteenth-century scholastic studies, discovered the Sentences-commentary of an English Benedictine still known only as Monachus Niger. More recently Jan Pinborg has connected the fourteenth-century citations to the Magister Abstractionum with a work otherwise known as the Sophismata of Richardus Sophista. The following discovery, although not at present of the same importance to the field, shares one thing in common with Trapp's discovery. It provides us with yet another text from the same period of Oxford thought and may in fact also be by a Benedictine, a group that was numerically strong at Oxford but from which we have had almost no extant work to study.
1 Trapp, D., ‘Augustinian Theology of the 14th Century,’ Augustiniana 6 (1956) 146–274 at 201–213.Google Scholar
2 Pinborg, J., ‘Magister Abstractionum,’ Cahiers de l'Institut äu. Moyen-âge Grec et Latin 18 (1976) 1–4.Google Scholar
3 Hugolino, . Sent. 1 dist. 3 q. 1 a. 3 (Paris, B.N. lat. 15840 fol. 52v; Paris, B.N. lat. 14559 fol. 66v).Google Scholar
4 Trapp, 222–223.Google Scholar
5 Stukle, , Sent. q. 1 a. 1 D (Troves 505 fol. 87rb).Google Scholar
6 Trapp, 201.Google Scholar
7 Stukle, , Sent. q. 1 a. 2 (Troyes 505 fol. 103va).Google Scholar
8 Stukle, , Sent. q. 1 a. 2 (Troyes 505 fols. 102va–103ra). The argument is that a future contingent, once revealed, must happen of necessity. The opinion is first described by Adam Wodeham in his Oxford lectures, book III q. 4 e–f (Paris, Univ. 193 fols. 186rb–187vb; Paris, Mazarine 915 fols. 180vaff.) and then by Robert Holcot in his quodlibet entitled: ‘Utrum generalis resurrectio’ (Oxford, Balliol 246 fol. 246va; Cambridge, Pembroke 236 fol. 185rb; London, British Museum Royal 10.C.VI fol. 162va).Google Scholar
9 Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford III (Oxford 1959) 1809; Stegmüller, F., Repertorium Biblicum III (Madrid 1951) 432.Google Scholar
10 Bale, John, Index Britanniae scriptorum (Oxford 1902) 258; id., Scriptorum illustrium Maioris Brytanniae… catalogus (Basle 1557–59) II 101.Google Scholar
11 Trapp, 251 254.Google Scholar
12 Trapp, D., ‘Hiltalinger's Augustinian Quotations,’ Augustiniana 4 (1954) 412–449 at 418; id., ‘Gregory of Rimini Manuscripts: Editions and Additions,’ Augustiniana 8 (1958) 425–443 at 427f.; Courtenay, W. J., ‘Alexander Langeley, O.F.M.,’ Manuscripta 18 (1974) 96–104 at 101.Google Scholar
13 For the literature on Monachus Niger and a list of the manuscripts of his commentary see: Trapp, , ‘Augustinian Theology,’ (supra n. 1) at 201–213; Courtenay, W. J., Adam Wodeham (Leiden 1978) 91–94. In addition to the list of manuscripts provided by Trapp, see Doucet, V., Commentaires sur les Sentences (Quaracchi 1954) 61.Google Scholar
14 For the literature on Roger Swineshead see: Weisheipl, J. A., ‘Roger Swyneshed, O.S.B., Logician, Natural Philosopher, and Theologian,’ Oxford Studies Presented to Daniel Callus (O.H.S. n.s. 16; Oxford 1964) 231–252; id., ‘Ockham and Some Mertonians,’ Mediaeval Studies 30 (1968) 163–213 at 207–213; Coleman, J., ‘Jean de Ripa O.F.M. and the Oxford Calculators,’ Mediaeval Studies 37 (1975) 130–189 at 150–152; Courtenay, W. J., Adam Wodeham 94–95, 120–121.Google Scholar