Parisian Licentiates in Theology, A.D. 1373-1500: A Biographical Register (review)

This is a book that I once intended to produce myself. In compiling a similar register of 474 Paris licentiates in the early Reformation era (Toronto, 1980), I became convinced of the need to do the same for the Middle Ages, in order to identify and place in their historical context the graduates of the most important theological faculty in northern Europe. Thomas Sullivan has saved me the trouble.

Palémon Glorieux had earlier begun this task with his two répertoires of thirteenth-century masters in theology (Paris, 1933, 1934) and in arts (Paris, 1971). The lacuna between his terminus ad quem of 1300 and my a quo of 1500 had previously been partially addressed by Heinrich Denifle, whose Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis (Paris, 1889-1897) supplied in bare-bones fashion the pre-1452 names drawn from the Ordo licenciatorum, 1373-1694 (BnF lat. 5657-A). Compiled by Philippe Bouvot in the seventeenth century, it is the authoritative listing of Paris theology graduates. But Denifle's excerpts, scattered among the myriad charters of his splendid volumes, were hard to locate and use—and they covered only 1373-1452. Thomas Sullivan began to redress this situation with his Benedictine Monks at the University of Paris, A.D. 1229-1500. A Biographical Register (Leiden, 1995). By exploiting a wide range of texts and secondary literature, Sullivan described all that we can know about every Benedictine who spent any time, in any of the four faculties, at the University of Paris.

In the present work, Sullivan again begins with Bouvot and then uses a myriad of other sources to build the structure. He describes, as far as possible, the careers of the 583 Paris graduates in theology who were members of religious orders. For the Benedictines he refers the reader to his previous work on them. The result is a book that will be a standard reference work for scholars of the late Middle Ages.

At the head of the book (pp. 13-49) Sullivan lists all the graduates, 1373-1500, including the 453 secular masters that he will describe in a subsequent volume. For the limited period of 1454-1500, I find some twenty misreadings of graduates' names that could hinder research about them. This is no discredit to Sullivan. Everybody who has set out to decipher Bouvot's difficult script, from Denifle to myself, has made similar mistakes. Bouvot himself transcribed inaccurately some names that Sullivan has been able to correct by resorting to textual evidence emanating from the religious orders.

I must admit some discomfort at Sullivan's repeated use of the term "incepted" for a new doctor of theology. In the medieval university this term was reserved to initiation into an early stage of a theologian's studies, the primus cursus. It is in this sense that William of Ockham has always been known as the "Venerabilis inceptor"—precisely because he did not advance to the license or the doctorate in theology.

But that distraction will not prevent any reader from reaping the harvest of the enormous amount of research that Sullivan gives us in this volume. These 583 graduates are no longer mere names on a list. They have become living actors and authors in the intellectual and religious life of their era. We look forward now to Sullivan's next volume on the secular graduates. Dare we hope that, after completing it, he may then turn his attention to the one lacuna that will yet remain in the full biographical register of the theology licentiates of Paris: the graduates of 1300-1372?