Recent Study on Peter Olivi

RECENT STUDY ON PETER OLIVI Peter Olivi, the late thirteenth century Franciscan, received considerable attention from scholars around the seventh centenary of his death (March 14, 1998). The attention resulted in two conferences, and the conferences led to two publications. One conference took place on December 4-5, 1997, in Grottaferrata, near Rome. It focused formally on Olivi's writings, edited and unedited. V. Sanchez gathered the papers presented during the sessions into a double issue of the Archivum Franciscanum Historicum.1 The other conference, on March 11-15, 1998, brought the participants to Narbonne, the place of Peter Olivi's death. A. Boureau and S. Piron published the results under a title which summed up both the papers presented in Narbonne and Olivi's career.2 Recent study of Peter Olivi has resulted in more than further information and opinion about him. The information has laid out new grounds for such study. Although it might not repair Olivi's reputation as a troublemaker, it does require we see him in a larger and different context. The context is now larger because we see better how Olivi involved himself in so many of the day's intellectual debates. It is different, for the information lodges him unmistakably in the line of the Franciscan school. The order's constitutions expected its trained scholars to work with the methods and theses of their Franciscan masters. Peter Olivi did just that, albeit with a talent which made colleagues uneasy. However stimulating the papers presented in Narbonne, it is the survey of Olivi's writings conducted in Grottaferrata which manifests concretely the great advance in Olivi scholarship. We begin with A. Ciceri's list of manuscripts containing texts of Olivi.3 In his introduction to his "census of Olivi manuscripts," Ciceri explains how the book came about and what it contains. Given that Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 91 (July-December 1998), Fase. 3-4. ^Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248-1298). Pensée scolastique, dissidence spirituelle et société. Vrin, Paris, 1998, 412pp. At the beginning of their introduction, Boureau and Piron explain the various forms of Peter Olivi's name. I abide by Peter Olivi, as is common in English. ''Petri lohannis Olivi Opera. Censtmento dei manoscritti. (Collectio Oliviana I.) Grottaferrata, 1999, 248pp. Ill Franciscan Studies 58 (2000) 112David Flood, O.F.M. he wanted to edit Olivi's questions on marriage, Ciceri had to locate his manuscript material. He started off with the information on the questions offered by Doucet (1935) and Cenci (1964)4 and from there went on to scour catalogs and monographs for further information. He did not find much for his editorial project. However, he did end up with a great deal of information on manuscripts with writings of Olivi and, in 1997, published the results in the Archivum.5 Easy to consult, Ciceri's list not only proved helpful; it grew rapidly through the interest and contributions of other scholars. And so we have the Censimento of 1999, the census of Olivi manuscripts. Ciceri explains what the book contains and does not contain. The first chapter lists Olivi's writings and then the manuscripts containing the texts. Although he makes no attempt to describe and analyze the manuscripts, Ciceri went to great lengths to footnote the literature on the material. The second chapter lists the manuscripts, according to the cities where they can be found, and indicates which writings the manuscripts contain. An index then gives the beginnings (the incipits) of every text.6 While A. Ciceri listed the writings of Peter Olivi that have reached us by manuscript, S. Piron set out to identify those writings which have not yet been found or which have been lost.7 By industry and with acuity, in a remarkable historical performance, 4C. Cenci, "Un manoscritto autógrafo di san Bernardino a Budapest," Studi Francescani 61 (1964), 345-346. V Doucet, "De operibus manuscriptis fr. Petri Ioannis Olivi in Bibliotheca Universitatis Patavinae asservatis," AFH 28 (1935), 172-175. V. Doucet had wanted to make Peter Olivi the focal point of his research when he first went to Quaracchi in 1929. He was warned away from such dangerous material by those who appointed...