Richard Rufus of Cornwall and Aristotle's Physics

RICHARD RUFUS OF CORNWALL AND ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS1 Richard Rufus of Cornwall entered the Franciscan Order at Paris as a master of arts, as Thomas Eccleston tells us in The Coining of the Friars Minor to England. Born in Cornwall, Rufus returned to England in 1238 to make his profession.2 He lectured on Peter 'This paper was originally presented in Ottawa at the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, August 1992. 2Thomas de Eccleston, The Coming of the Friars Minor to England, ed. Andrew G. Little (Paris, 1909; Manchester, 1951) 24, 37, 65; 18, 30, 51. Thomas provides inconsistent information on the date of Richard's entry: one passage suggests the date 1230, the other 1238. In 1951, Little adopted the view that the earlier date was to be preferred (30n.). Most other scholars have opted for the later date, as Little himself did in the first edition, because it accords better with the other evidence we have on Richard's life, his other writings, and the provincial chapter at which he spoke. In his review of the evidence for Richard's entry, Peter Raedts reaches the same conclusion. However, Raedts suggests that Rufus may not have entered as a master on the grounds that the phrase "magister Richardus Rufus" may not refer to his status on entry, but rather the position he achieved later in life (Richard Rufits ofCornwall and the Tradition of Oxford Theology [Oxford, 1987] 2-4). This suggestion is untenable; the passage in question comes from Eccleston's section on masters whose entry added greatly to the fame of the order; "Post hos intraverunt quidam magistri, qui famam fratrum magnificaverunt, frater scilicet Walterus de Burgo. . . ." (Eccleston [1951] 15). Richard Rufus is the last master listed; his name is followed by a list of the English knights who entered the Order. Neither knights nor masters gained their position after they joined the Order. Raedts himself quite rightly does not consider the suggestion seriously in the remainder of his interesting book on Richard Rufus. Raedts's Richard Rufus ofCornwall and the Tradition ofOxford Theology (Oxford, 1987) is a valuable monograph. Raedts offers a close and intelligent reading of many passages in Rufus's Oxford Sentences commentary; he provides a very useful summary of scholarly discussion of Rufus's life and works. Raedts's study is not without flaws, however. Raedts too easily dismisses as inauthentic a number of works attributed to Rufus, giving too little credence to the conclusions of earlier scholars. Raedts does not appreciate Rufus's relation to his mentors, Alexander of Hales and Robert Grosseteste. He fails altogether to note Rufus's dependence on Alexander of Hales, a phenomenon documented in detail by the editors of Alexander's Glossa. He mistakes Rufus's genuine veneration of Grosseteste and his eager deference to Grosseteste's views for the equivocations of a scholar bowing to political pressure. Finally, in my view, he underestimates the significance of Rufus's own work. Despite my reservations, as the reader will see, I am indebted to Raedts for his work on Rufus. His scholarly standards are high; particularly impressive is the close study of the Abbreviatio in which Raedts documents the care Rufus took to introduce his quotation and paraphrase of Bonaventure as the views of another scholar, even Franciscan Studies 52 (1992) 248 REGA WOOD Lombard's Sentences at Oxford in 1250.3 In 1253, he traveled to Paris, where he read the Sentences for a second time, this time basing his lectures on St. Bonaventure's Sentences commentary. Rufus returned to Oxford about 1256, where he succeeded Thomas of York as the fifth Franciscan regent master in theology. Rufus died in England sometime after 1259.4 Before joining the Order in 1238, Richard Rufus had already made a substantial scholarly contribution as an Aristotle commentator.5 His commentary on the Metaphysics is preserved in four manuscripts. From the Metaphysics commentary, we know that Rufus also wrote a Physics commentary; but until now there has been no indication that that commentary survived. It now appears that Rufus's Physics commentary has been preserved in an Erfurt codex, Quarto 312.6 Originally part of the same large collection of numbered...