Repastinatio Dialectice et Philosophie (review)

236 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 22:2 APR 1984 ual and simple beings as well as to the components of composite individuals (Sects. I, VI, et statim). The volume opens with a brief introduction which explains editorial policy and closes with a section on biographical information on medieval authors, a bibliography , and indices. The biographical section again reflects the inclinations and preferences of the editors rather than the relative historical importance of medieval figures. For example, William of Haytesbury, whose importance in the history of Western philosophy is limited, is given as much space as Francisco Suarez. And while some important authors such as Durandus of St. Pourgain (still quoted in the eighteenth century) are altogether omitted, relatively minor and, indeed, early ones such as Garlandus Compotista and Geoffrey of Hasphall are included. The bibliography is very selective: authors who contributed to the volume have all of their pertinent (including those forthcoming) works listed, while important works from other well known scholars of the period are omitted. And the bibliographical information on the various medieval authors is uneven. Unlike the useful notes on every author mentioned in Gilson's History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955), little or no information is given on many of the individuals mentioned in The Cambridge History, even in cases where there is substantial scholarship available in English and other major European languages (exx.: Guido Terrena, Walter of Bruges, Thomas Bricot, etc.) This practice diminishes considerably the usefulness of the volume as a research tool. The indices likewise reveal the tone of the volume: there are almost as many references to 'grammar' as there are to 'God.' We can only wonder what Peter Damian would have said about this if he were alive today. The criticisms made above are not meant to detract from the value of this book, but rather to place the work in its proper context. Indeed, although The Cambridge History is not a history of late medieval philosophy properly speaking and has some obvious limitations, it is certainly a book which needs to be taken seriously by historians of the period. JORGE J. E. GRAC1A State University of New York at Buffalo Laurentii Valle. Repastinatio Dialectice et Philosophie. Edited by Gianni Zippel. 2 vols. Padua: Antenore 1982. cxiii + 636 pp. NP. Lorenzo Valla's Dialectic is now seen as the most revolutionary and one of the most important logical works of the fifteenth century. From the standpoint of a thorough historical knowledge of the Latin language, he attacks elementary scholastic logic, and its basis in Boethius and the Latin translations of Aristotle. Many of the staples of the textbooks are savaged: the five predicables, the ten categories, the analysis of the proposition, the square of contraries, the six modals, the three figures of the syllogism . Valla aims to simplify the semantic sections of traditional logic as much as possible, wishing to concentrate instead on finding and shaping arguments which can be of practical use. Although his more radical positions were neither taken up nor BOOK REVIEWS ~37 refuted, later humanist dialecticians pursued similar aims and exploited some of his arguments. In recent years, even given the general upsurge in studies of Valla, who has come to seem intellectually the most interesting of the early fifteenth century Italian humanists , the dialectic has attracted special attention, and there are now important studies of the work by Vasoli, Trinkaus, Camporeale, Gerl and (in this journal) Jardine. As with many of his works, Valla continued to revise and republish the Dialectic after its first circulation, so that the work has till now remained difficult of access. Students and scholars have had to rely on the 116 large, closely printed folios in the Turin reprint of the Basel Opera Omnia of 154o which give a good but not error free account of the second version, or on whatever selection of manuscripts (usually the microfilms of those in the Vatican Library) was available. The guide to these explorations in the manuscript tradition has been an article which Gianni Zippel contributed to the Archivio Storico per le Provincie Parmensi, in 1957 . This outlines three principal recensions, identifies their manuscript witnesses, and promises the critical...