Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning/Appendix IV

by Reginald Lane Poole

IV. NOTE ON THE PRECURSORS OF NOMINALISM.

Dr. von Prantl was the first to ^[1]explain how John Scotus could be reckoned as the founder of nominalism, and to define the limits within which this ascription could be justly claimed. M. Hauréau had indeed previously interpreted the reference in du Boulay's chronicle ^[2]already quoted, in the same sense as Dr. von Prantl; but he was led to this conclusion by the help of a passage in the ^[3]De Divisione Naturae which he misread in an inexplicable manner. John Scotus omits grammar and rhetoric from the class of strict sciences, because non de rerum natura tractare videntur, sed vel de regulis humanae vocis, &c. ^[4]M. Hauréau understood this of dialectic and rhetoric, and thus actually inverted the real significance of John's position in respect of the function of logic.

Some commentaries attributed to Rabanus Maurus discover so close an affinity to John Scotus's logical theory

a Gesch. der Logik im Abendlande 2. 24-37 [26-39]; cf. pp. 76 sq. [78].

b supra, p. 280.

c lib. v. 4 p. 229, ed. Gale.

d De la phil. scol. 1. 174 sq.; cf. pp. 118 sq.; Hist. de la phil. scol. 1. 246 sq.; cf. pp. 44 sq. as to suggest that they are immediately derived from him.^[5] Dr. von Prantl, therefore, maintains that if genuine they can only be placed among Rabanus's latest productions, and thinks that they have been wrongly attributed to him. Dr. von Prantl's reasoning does not appear quite decisive, and the conflict asserted to exist between the views contained in these glosses and in Rabanus's other works is not perhaps so substantial as to be fatal to their common authorship. Nor is it impossible that the former are independent of John Scotus's influence.

The next symptom of a nominalistic tendency appears in certain glosses in a Paris manuscript (now numbered Fonds Latin 12,949), of which specimens are given by Cousin and M. Hauréau. The latter, and before him Charles de Rémusat, claimed their authorship for Heric of Auxerre. Dr. von Prantl, on the contrary, considers the major part to be by another, though contemporary, writer. But he is in error in saying that the codex itself gives a different author to one section of the glosses in dispute (those on the Isagoge). It is true that the line,

Iepa hunc scripsi glossans utcunque libellum,

stands in f. 52 b, but Iepa, which Cousin had noted with a query, is a later insertion, written over an erasure with room for about seven letters. This point was ascertained for me by the kindness of M. G. Saige.^[6]

The logical summary found in a metrical version in another Paris manuscript, to which Dr. von Prantl refers, can hardly be admitted as material for the history of the time before Roscelin, until we are better informed about its date. Cousin, who prints these hexameters, describes them as of the tenth or eleventh century, and hints the possibility that they were dedicated to a man who died in 1107. We cannot, then, be sure that they are anterior to Berengar of Tours, or even to Roscelin.^[7]

1. a
2. b
3. c
4. d
5. Extracts are printed by Victor Cousin, Ouvrages inédits d'Abélard, intr., pp. xvii, lxxviii, lxxix, and app., pp. 613 sqq.
6. [Subsequent examination has shown that the word is not Iepa but Icpa, and it has been suggested that the letters are the beginning of a Greek name, possibly ICPAHA. See L. Traube, in Neues Archiv, 18 (1892) 105, and E. K. Rand, Johannes Scottus, p. 84; 1906.]
7. [Further evidence of a nominalistic tendency is found in an anonymous commentary on the Categories attributed to saint Augustin, which is preserved in a tenth-century manuscript at Vienna. See Prantl, 2. 44 sq., in the second edition.]