R. de Staningtona: An Unknown Writer of the Thirteenth Century

R. de Staningtona: An Unknown Writer of the Thirteenth Century RICHARD C. DALES I THE Gl~DUAL ASSIMILATIONof the "new Aristotle" by the medieval universities is a problem to which scholars have given much attention over the past century. The broader outlines of this penetration are now fairly clear, although many dark spots remain to be illuminated. Dr. Daniel Callus has shed a good deal of light on this question for the University of Oxford, both by his masterly article, "The Introduction of Aristotelian Learning to Oxford," 1 and in numerous less ambitious contributions . One of the authors Dr. Callus mentions as an early teacher of the libri naturales at Oxford is a friar known only as R. de Staningtona. ~ While I was preparing an edition of Robert Grosseteste's Commentary an the Physics, I had occasion to read through the only known work of Stanington in order to see if he had used Grosseteste's Physics commentary. As it turned out, he had not, but the little work proved to be extremely interesting in its own right and worthy of further study. It contained quotations from Alfred of Sareshell's glosses on the Meteorology, it showed a strangely ambivalent attitude toward the non-Christian nature of Aristotle 's works, and it shed some light upon the teaching of the Arts by the mendicants in the mid-thirteenth century. About the author, R. de Staningtona, very little is known2 IIe was clearly an Englishman from Stanington in Yorkshire or Northumberland; he was a friar, although an exhaustive check of the standard reference works has failed to yield any information as to his order; and his writings make it clear that he was a teacher, probably at Oxford, between about 1240 and 1255 at the latest. We hope by investigating his work more closely to discover more about him. The codex in which this work is contained, Bodleian MS Digby 204, is made up of three distinct parts. The first part, in two different hands, contains a fragment zProceedings of the British Academy, XXIX (1943). 2Ibid., p. 259. aHe is mentioned in T. Tanner, Bibliotheca Brittanico-Hibernica, ed. D. Wilkins (London: 1748), p. 689; A. G. Little, Initia Operum Latinorum (New York: 1958), pp. 32, 66. 170, 210, 240; M. Grabmann, Forschungen i~berdie lateinischen Aristoteles~bersetzungen des ,~III Jahrhunderte (Miin~ter i. W. : 1916), p. 75, n. 1; and J. C. Russell, Dictionary of Writers of Thirteenth Century England (London: 1936), Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Special Supplement No. 3, p. 121.All these, however, simply cite his name and work from the colophon of Digby 204, fol. 108B. Apparently, Callus, who calls attention to the citations of Alfredus Anglieus, is the only one who has previously had occasion to read the work, and even he remarks ("Introduction," p. 259) that aside from this colophon, Stanington is completely unknown . [199] 200 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of Seneca's De paupertate, followed by De clementia and excerpts from several of his other works, written in an early thirteenth-century English hand (fols. lr-3r). Near the bottom of fol. 3r is the rubric "Hic incipiunt regule quas bone memorie Robertus Grosseteste fecit comitisse Lincolniensi," written in a script dated by S. H. Thomson as the second quarter of the thirteenth century.4 The second section, in which the works of Stanington are found, is the largest part of the codex. Its script is the clear English gothic book hand quite common in Oxford codices and would seem to date from the period 1300-1325. It contains none of the degenerate "chartish" characteristics which crept into the book hand after that date: e. g., there is no tendency to loop the ascenders of the "d" or "1"; the "a" and "e" are gothic rather than round; and the "c" and "t" are usually clearly distinguishable. The first item in this section is Robert Kilwardby's De ortu scienciarum (fols. 6A-47~). This is followed (fols. 48A-75c) by Sumule magistri Rogeri Bacun which, despite the ascription, A. G. Little has suggested may be by Robert Bacon. 6 Next (fols. 75c-81 A) come the Fallacie of fratris Thome Haukyn, who turns...