Walter Burley's "De Consequentes.": An Edition

WALTER BURLEY'S «DE CONSEQUENTES. AN EDITION A. List of Manuscripts i. B: Brugge, Bibliothèque de la Ville, 500, ff. 9Sr-IOiVb.1 14th century, EngUsh hand. The manuscript contains works by Burley, Ockham, Bradwardine, Suiset, etc. It contains the whole text of our work without omissions or changes of order. There are few individual variants, and only such as are due to trivial errors. A different hand inserted corrections here and there. The text of B in most places makes sense. Our work is ascribed to Walter Burley at the end. 2.C: Cambridge, University Library, Gonville & Caius 434I434, ff. ira-6ra.2 14th century, English hand. The manuscript contains logical works by Burley, Bradwardine, and William of Heytesbury. From§ 75 onwards C does not give the full text, but normally only the rule and a few other extracts from each paragraph; some sections are omitted altogether. C stops abruptly in § 163. Everywhere in the text C has numerous individual readings, often long ones, normaUy due to deliberate changes. Its text nearly always makes sense, except for trivial errors. Our work is anonymous in C. 3.F: Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, S. Cruets, Plut. XII, sin. 2, ff. 203vb-2i2rb.3 14th century, probably ItaUan hand. The manuscript contains logical works by Burley and Ockham. F gives the full text of our 1 A. De Poorter, Catalogue des manuscrits de la bibliothèque publique de la ville de Bruges (Gembloux-Paris, 1934), PP- 581-584. 2 M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College, Vol. II (Cambridge, 1908), p. 504. 8 G. de Ockham, Summa Logicae, ed. G. Gal & S. Brown, Opera Philosophica, I (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1974), p. 21*. Walter Burley's De Consequentiis103 work without omissions or changes of order. After § 3, F adds about 6 lines of its own, but otherwise F has very few individual variants, and only of a trivial character. Its text usuaUy makes sense. Our work is ascribed to Walter Burley at the end. 4.L: London, British Library, Royal 12 F XIX, ff. Ii6ra-i22rb.4 Early 14th century, English hand. On f. I48rb the same hand which wrote our work gives the year 1302. The manuscript contains grammatical and logical works by Burley and various other authors, often anonymous. L has no changes of order in the text, but it surpasses all the other manuscripts in individual readings, both concerning single words and whole sentences or passages, practicaUy all of them due to deUberate changes. The list of whole sentences or passages which L has changed takes up six full handwritten pages. L omits §§ 167-168. Only in very few cases does the text of L not make sense. Our work is anonymous in L. 5.O: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 24, ff. 47ra-55rb.s 14th century, English hand. The manuscript contains various logical works, most of them anonymous. O has a somewhat confused text of our work: it omits §§ 58-72; it breaks off in the middle of§ 159 and does not contain §§ 160-168, except for § 167, which it has added to the end of § 153. Instead of §§ 160-168 it has a rather long tract on exceptive words (ff. 52va~55rb) which is written together with our work, as if part of it. Only after this tract foUows an explicit which claims to be the end of Walter Burley's work on consequences. This tract on exceptives is not identical with the one which is ascribed to Burley in B (ff. 85va-8grb) and L (ff. 126V-129V). The text of O contains many individual variants including rephrasings of whole sentences and passages and omissions of varying length. Normally such changes appear to be deUberate, but there is also a high number of trivial errors which often distort the meaning so that it makes bad sense or none at all, as can be seen in the appendix of long variants. 4 L. M. De Rijk, Lógica Modernorum, II, I (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1967), pp. 36-41. - I owe my knowledge of most of the manuscripts of our work to De Rijk's notice on p. 39...