Peter Thomae's Question on Divine Foreknowledge from His Sentences Commentary

1 Franciscan Studies 61 (2003) Peter Thomae’s Question on Divine Foreknowledge from His Sentences Commentary* Dedicated to the memory of John Slater III The Franciscan theologian Peter Thomae (ca. 1280-ca. 1340) was, according to notes in three manuscripts, from the province of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in Northwest Spain, and not from Barcelona, where he later taught. He is known as a follower of John Duns Scotus, but the general consensus is that he probably never studied under him directly. Among Peter’s many surviving writings, which include a critically-edited Quodlibet preserved in one manuscript, there is a commentary on the first book of the Sentences, also extant in a single manuscript: Vat. lat. 1106.1 On the basis of this single witness, an edition of distinction 39 of this work is presented below. 1. Peter Thomae’s Barcelona lectures on the Sentences, ca. 1323-26 If we are to believe the explicit, Peter’s surviving commentary is a Reportatio and thus more or less contemporary with Peter’s lectures on * I thank the Vatican Library for a microfilm of the manuscript, the University of Cyprus for funding research trips to Rome, and Russell Friedman for his comments. 1 For manuscript references connecting Peter with Santiago, see P.S. Azcona, “Apuntes de la historia del escotismo in España en el siglo XIV,” in De doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti IV: Scotismus decursu saeculorum (Rome, 1968), 3-11, at 13, n. 42. The Quodlibet edition is Petrus Thomae O.F.M., Quodlibet, M.R. Hooper and E.M. Buytaert, eds. (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: The Franciscan Institute, 1957). For a list of Peter’s writings and the manuscripts, see G.G. Bridges’ Identity and Distinction in Petrus Thomae, O.F.M. (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: The Franciscan Institute, 1959), 177-80, although there are several other surveys. Besides early modern editions of two of Peter’s works De modis distinctionis, (Venice, 1517), and the Liber de innocentia Virginis Mariae (Louvain, 1665) and the Sentences commentary editions mentioned below, there is Stephen Dumont’s edition of q. 13 of Peter’s De ente in S.D. Dumont, “The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Fourteenth Century: II, The De ente of Peter Thomae,” Mediaeval Studies 50 (1988): 186– 256, at 218-256; for a good bibliography of writings on Peter up to 1988, see ibid.187-188, nn. 3 and 4 (where it is stated that Charles Lohr has shown Pio Künzle’s identification of Peter’s Metaphysics commentary to be erroneous, and that Dumont himself opposes similar claims of P.T. Stella about some De anima questions). Since Dumont’s article appeared two extracts from Peter's Sentences commentary have been published: A. Maierú, “Logica e teologia trinitaria nel commento alle Sentenze attribuito a Petrus Thomae,” in Lectionum Varietates. Hommage à Paul Vignaux (1904–1987), J. Jolivet, Z. Kaluza, and A. de Libera, eds. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1991),177–98 (d. 2, q. 8, a. 4, dubia 9 and 10, on p189-95), and G. Gál, “Petrus Thomae’s Proof for the Existence of God,” Franciscan Studies 56 (1998): 115–51 (d. 2, q. 2, on 119-141; question list on 142-51). 2 PETER THOMAE the Sentences. Where and when these lectures were held has been a matter of some disagreement. The received opinion has been that Peter read the Sentences at Paris around 1320, but Isaac Vásquez’s suggestion that Peter lectured on the Sentences at the Franciscan studium in Barcelona around 1323-26 is most probably correct.2 We have a firm terminus post quem for all of Peter Thomae’s surviving writings, since in each of his known works he cites Peter Auriol’s Scriptum in primum librum Sententiarum, which was not completed until late in 1316. We know that Peter Thomae was already a lector in Barcelona in 1316, and manuscripts of at least four of his other works contain notes identifying him as a Franciscan lector at the Barcelona studium. Moreover, Peter’s Sentences commentary appears to be his earliest surviving writing, since there are references to Peter’s commentary on Book One in his later works...