Peter of Spain : Summaries of logic : text, translation, introduction, and notes

555 Pages·2014·13.678 MB·English

by  Copenhaver, Brian P., Calvin Normore, Terence Parsons

Peter of Spain:
Summaries of Logic
Text, Translation, Introduction, and Notes
Brian P. Copenhaver
WITH
Calvin Normore and Terence Parsons
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Brian Copenhaver, Calvin Normore, and Terence Parsons 2014
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First published in 2014
Impression: 1
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ISBN 978-0-19-966958-5
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Libellum suum
David Kaplan
logico exsuperantissimo
magna cum admiratione pietateque
collegae eius
dedicant.

Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
I Who Wrote the Summaries of Logici 1
II When Was the Summaries Written? 5
III The Place of the Summaries in the Story of Medieval Logic 9
IV The Audience, Aims, and Structure of the Summaries 16
V The Sources and Content of the Summaries 19
A Sources 19
B Introductions 21
C Predicables 25
D Predicaments 27
E Syllogisms 31
F Places 38
G Suppositions 42
H Fallacies 46
1 Disputation, Dialectic, and Sophistry 46
2 Equivocation 50
3 Accident 52
4 Questions Begged and Refutations Misconceived 58
I Relatives 62
J Ampliations, Appellations, and Restrictions 67
K Distributions 72
VI A Contemporary View of the Summaries 79
A Introductions 79
B Syllogisms 81
C Suppositions 81
D Relatives 83
E Ampliations, Appellations, and Restrictions 83
F Distributions 85
VII The Manuscripts of the Summaries 86
VIII Practices of Translation 87
IX Bibliography and Abbreviations 89
Latin Text
Tractatus I De Introductionibus 100
Tractatus II De Predicabilibus 130
Tractatus III De Predicamentis 146
Vlll CONTENTS
Tractatus IV De Sillogismis 170
Tractatus V De Locis 196
Tractatus VI De Suppositionibus 240
Tractatus VII De Fallaciis 256
Tractatus VIII De Relativis 426
Tractatus IX De Ampliationibus 440
Tractatus X De Appellationibus 446
Tractatus XI De Restrictionibus 448
Tractatus XII De Distributionibus 464
English Translation with Notes
Chapter 1 On Introductions 101
Chapter 2 On Predicables 131
Chapter 3 On Predicaments 147
Chapter 4 On Syllogisms 171
Chapter 5 On Places 197
Chapter 6 On Suppositions 241
Chapter 7 On Fallacies 257
Chapter 8 On Relatives 427
Chapter 9 On Ampliations 441
Chapter 10 On Appellations 447
Chapter 11 On Restrictions 449
Chapter 12 On Distributions 465
Index of English Words and Phrases 511
List and Index of Latin Words 528
Preface
This book started in a series of seminars taught by the authors in UCLA’s Department
of Philosophy; the first was a seminar given by Terry Parsons on the medieval doctrine
of fallacies. That experience convinced us that a new and complete English translation
of Peter of Spain’s logic textbook would be useful. After Brian Copenhaver made a
draft translation, all three of us reviewed it—sentence by sentence—discovering from
that process where explanations were most needed. Copenhaver then wrote notes
for the English translation, eventually transferring most of them to the present Intro­
duction. All three of us reviewed both the notes and the Introduction, always checking
them against both texts, Latin and English. The book has been greatly improved by
criticisms made in several meetings of the E. A. Moody Medieval Philosophy Con­
ference presented annually by UCLA’s Philosophy Department with support from
the University’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. We are especially
grateful to Greg Copenhaver, Rebecca Copenhaver, Sander De Boer, Lambertus
De Rijk, Patrick Geary, Peter King, Gyula Klima, Henrik Lagerlund, Chris Martin,
Keith McPartland, Lodi Nauta, Teo Ruiz, and Joke Spruyt for advice, criticism, and
help.
We hope the book will be read by students and teachers of philosophy, especially
those who study medieval philosophy and logic, but also by students and teachers of all
subjects in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences. But why would anyone
but a philosopher read an old logic textbook? In the case of Peter’s Summaries of Logic,
because his book was the basis for teaching logic for nearly four centuries when that
subject was the heart of what we now call the ‘undergraduate curriculum.’ Since no
book about logic was read by more people until the twentieth century, the Summaries
has extensively and profoundly influenced the distinctly Western way of speaking
formally and writing formal prose by constructing well-formed sentences, putting
them together in valid arguments, and then defending those arguments in debate
against refutation. Few works, apart from the Authorized Version of the English Bible
and the collected plays of Shakespeare, have been more influential than Peter’s
Summaries.
Brian Copenhaver
Calvin Normore
Terence Parsons
Los Angeles
September 2013

Introduction
I Who Wrote the Summaries of Logic?
1276 was a year of four popes: one had already been in office, three were newly elected
in that year, and one of those three has been called the author of the Summaries of
Logic. That the Church had to choose so many popes so quickly was a sign not only
of momentary misfortune but also of institutional failure. At the beginning of the
century, Innocent III (1198—1216) had led the Roman papacy to the peak ofits power.
Early in the next century, by contrast, the popes would live as exiles in Avignon, under
the thumb of the French monarchy. A recent innovation empowering the government
of Innocent III was collective management by highly-placed clerics—the ‘cardinals’
who were also the papal electors. Jealous of their power, the cardinals restricted their
own number. Although there were enough places for fifty-four cardinals, only seven
were in service when Pope John XXI died in 1277.’
John XXI, the pope who is often credited with writing the Summaries of Logic, rates
only one sentence in a recent history of the papacy—to mark this nadir in the size of
the College of Cardinals. Since it took so few electors to make a pope, the French
eventually saw to it that enough French cardinals were named to force the papal
court out of Italy, thus subjecting the Church to its ‘Babylonian Captivity’ (1309-77)
and reversing victories against lay authority won by earlier popes, before and after
Innocent III.2
For centuries, a great contest in European politics had been between emperors—the
‘Holy Roman Emperors’ who succeeded Charlemagne—and popes. As of 1250,
when Emperor Frederick II died as his power waned, the popes had long seen German
rulers as dangerous opponents, but now the struggle with this northern enemy
centered on southern Italy and Sicily. To challenge the foreigners, papal policy after
1250 encouraged Charles of Anjou, another foreigner, to campaign south of Rome.
Although the popes saw Charles as a counterweight to Frederick’s successors, the
Angevin adventurer had his own plans, including control of southern Italy. The new
policy traded a waning German threat for a waxing French threat.
Duffy (2006), pp. 138-9,144-5. 2 Duffy (2006), pp. 131,158-9.
2 PETER OF SPAIN
The cost to the papacy, in money and public esteem, was huge. The third quarter of
the thirteenth century, ending with the brief reign of John XXI, began a long period
of decline for the popes, whose fortunes improved and stabilized only in the middle of
the fifteenth century. The high cost of military resistance forced the popes to alienate
key constituencies by taxing too much and interfering in local affairs. For ordinary
parish priests—‘secular priests’—day-to-day guidance came from bishops whose
prerogatives were eroded by papal mismanagement from far-off Rome. And in Rome
there was constant trouble for the popes from factions that controlled urban affairs and
ran the city’s churches. To make matters worse for the seculars, between 1209 and 1223
the popes authorized two new religious orders and gave them privileges that outraged
other clerics. Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzman, founders of the Order of
Lesser Brothers and the Order of Preachers, were charismatic leaders and hard to resist.
Unceasing combat on many fronts wore the popes down. During the first half of the
thirteenth century, papal reigns lasted ten years on average, but after 1250 the average
was three years. High turnover and too many French cardinals convinced Gregory X
(1271-6) to tighten up procedures for the conclaves in which the cardinals conducted
papal elections. Had his successors respected the new rules, as they did not, the
sequel to Gregory’s death in 1276 might still have been overwhelming. Innocent V,
Gregory’s successor, lived only six months. Hadrian V, picked by Charles of Anjou to
replace Innocent, lasted only a month.3
When Hadrian was still Cardinal Ottobono Fieschi, Pedro Juliäo had been part of
his familia, at a time when the papal court attracted such intellectual luminaries as
Witelo of Thuringia, William of Moerbeke, John Peckam, and Giovanni Campano
of Novara. Pedro, a well-connected churchman who had won a red hat as Cardinal of
Tusculum, was elected to succeed Hadrian on September 8, 1276, taking the name
‘John XXI.’ Everyone wished him the long reign that he predicted, but other omens
were not good. Even the simple task of counting went wrong: the new pope should
have been the twentieth John, not the twenty-first.4
John’s time on the throne of Peter was short and unimpressive, especially if we
believe critics disposed to belittle him by their stands on papal politics. By one account,
he was considered very learned, but he brought more harm than honor to the papacy by his
ignorance of what needed to be done. Many things he did lazily and stupidly, but for one he
deserves praise—that he gave much help with church benefices and money to poor young
students. He was quick with words but timid and clumsy in deeds,. . . quite well read but not
very practical. He wrote a great deal, especially certain rules bearing on medicine, for he was very
skilled in the art of healing. Imitating Aristotle, he also published Problems and much else.5
Once elected, and having turned his official duties over to a cardinal, the new pope
withdrew to a palace in Viterbo and built himself a study: this is how late sources
3 Duffy (2006), pp. 154-9; Maxwell-Stuart (1997), pp. 113-19.
4 Paravicini Bagliani (1991),pp. 28—32,78,136—7,242-3; Maxwell-Stuart (1997), p. 119.
5 MS Bergamo, Bibl. Civ., Delta IV34, fols. 38v-9', cited in De Rijk (1972), p. xli.