Peter of Spain: Summaries of Logic: Text, Translation, Introduction and Notes by Brian P. Copenhaver (review)

Although some study of logic was preserved through the centuries following the fall of Rome and the disruption to civilization in Western Europe that ensued, it was not until the twelfth century that any really creative work in logic was possible. That century saw the rise of the studia generalia and the universities of Paris and Oxford in particular, and the dissemination of those works of Aristotle’s known as the logica nova, that is, the Prior and Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations. Slow to be fully assimilated, they nonetheless had a profound effect, leading to the development of the logica modernorum (the logic of the “moderns”), the medievals’ original contribution.

Medieval logic would not reach it heyday until the fourteenth century. The thirteenth saw a consolidation of the recovery of Aristotle’s logic, dominated by textbooks and commentaries. Among the former is that of Peter of Spain, composed around 1240, which had the widest circulation and strongest influence. It went under two titles, originally simply Tractatus (Treatises), later Summulae Logicales (Summaries of Logic, as rendered in the volume under review). It starts with a presentation of the old logic (logica vetus), summarizing the doctrines of the “predicables”—“what is predicated of many” (see 25–27), that is, universals—categories, syllogism, and topics (locis). These doctrines had been known and studied for centuries, though mainly through the accounts in Porphyry’s Isagoge and various treatises of Boethius’s. There follow the distinctive doctrines of the moderns, which L. M. De Rijk (who edited Peter’s Tractatus in 1972) suggests was stimulated by the recovery of the Sophistical Refutations and the study of logical fallacies. Peter seems to have based this part of his work on an earlier account of the logica moderna. Foremost was the development of various “properties of terms,” signification, supposition, and more. Peter’s treatment of fallacies runs to nearly half the work, preceded by an account of supposition, and followed by specific discussion of the doctrines of relatives (anaphora), ampliation, restriction, appellation and distribution, and fallacies that they serve to diagnose.

But who was Peter of Spain?—or rather, which of the countless Peters from Spain wrote the Summulae? For centuries, from the fifteenth to the twentieth, the author was universally believed to be the Portuguese Peter who became Pope John XXI in 1276 and died when the roof of his library fell on him. But in recent years, largely due to research by Angel d’Ors, this identification has been rejected, and the author is now thought to be a Dominican from the Basque country, Petrus Ferrandi Hispanus. It seems that this revised identification caught up with the present editors rather late, for their introduction opens with a full description of the career of Pope John, including a picture of his tomb, only to be set aside (8) in the light of the new evidence. Indeed, nothing in Paolo di Giovanni’s illustration of “Pietro Spano” in Canto XII of Dante’s Paradiso (which adorns the dustcover) or in Dante indicates he might have been a Pope.

The Summulae have appeared in modern editions several times (notably, in a partial translation by J. P. M. Mullally in 1945, and in De Rijk’s critical edition—the basis of the text here) but none as extensive and useful as the present volume, which contains not only the Latin text and English translation on facing pages, but an introduction analyzing the text in detail. There are extensive indexes to both the English and the Latin. The three editors have clearly been through the text closely, and add very useful comments. It is unfortunate that they do not distinguish for the reader what is truly medieval from what is already in Aristotle—for example, most of the material summarizing Tract IV on Syllogisms (outlined 31–41) is already in Prior Analytics, apart from the...