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BOOK REVIEWSUl L. M. de Rijk. Nicholas of Autrecourt. His Correspondence with Master Giles and Bernard ofArezzo: A Critical Essay and English Translation. Leiden-NewYork-Cologne, E. J. Brill, 1994. ix + 241 pp. Professor Lambert Marie de Rijk brings a veritable lifetime of experience and erudition to his critical edition of Nicholas of Autrecourt's correspondence together with his edition of the "articles" of Nicholas condemned by an Avignon Commission. In his introduction, de Rijk outlines the history of Nicholas's letters which were no doubt responsible in part for his condemnation by ecclesiastical authorities. The editor also details and evaluates the surviving historical source-data, including reports (in extremely bad condition) which survive in the secret, Vatican archives. De Rijk rehearses and occasionally criticizes previous attempts by Vignaux, Weinberg, and Imbach-Perler to produce critical editions of Autrecourt's letters. This most recent edition includes the text of the condemned articles along with Nicholas's recantations. The edition of the articles is based on surviving manuscripts, the text of the Vatican's secret archives document and early editions of Peter Lombard's Sentences which included lists of errors and condemned articles. To assist the readers, de Rijk includes a glosssary of terms and a thorough-going seies of explanatory notes, the modern correlate of a medieval expositio litteralis of the text of Nicholas's letters. The first two letters are addressed to Bernard of Arezzo, A Franciscan, who took exception to many of Autricourt's opinions. The next letter is from a shadowy figure known only as Giles (Prof. Zenon Kaluza believes him to be Giles of Foeno, see p. 29 note 78) to whom Nicholas had shown his first two letters to Bernard. Giles's over-riding concern is to defend Aristotle against some of Nicholas's criticisms. The final letter of this edition contains Nicholas's response to Giles. The following are some of this reviewer's reflections on a number of doctrinal issues raised by Nicholas. His doubts raised regarding the evidence of causality (page 50 number 9) were anticipated by Ockham, reacting perhaps to the frequently-invoked theological principle of his Franciscan predecessors (e.g. William de 368BOOK REVIEWS la Mare), that whatever the First Cause can do in conjunction with secondary causes, can be done by the First Cause without any intermediary causes, e.g. create or conserve prime matter without any form. Ockham's reaction is that if this principle is regularly invoked as de facto operative, then there is no way of experiencing (my interpretation of Ockham) that one thing is the cause of another. De Rijk's choice of reading colorem (Nicholas to Giles, page 110, number 19; explanatory notes, p. 138) over valorem is a good one. Scotus uses the verb colorari in trying to improve Anselm's ontological argument. Scotus says: "Per illud potest colorari ilia ratio Anselmi de sumtoo bono cogitabili, et intelligenda est eius descriptio sic: Deus est quo cognito sine contradictione maius cogitari non potest sine contradictione" (Ordinatio, I d.2 p.l g.1-2 n.137 (ed. Vatican8 VII 208-209). In this context, the verb colarare can mean "to improve" or "to make better." As used by Autricourt, viz. licel haberei colorem, might best be rendered as "although it might have the appearance of validity." Nicholas's reservations concerning any direct knowledge of substance were clearly anticipated by most scholastics and particularly by Scotus who denied that we have any 'direct' (immediately evidential) knowledge of substance, as proved by the situation in the Eucharist where there is no longer the substance of bread, although this is belied by the intuitive knowledge of the accidents which are naturally thought to require a substance. Autricourt's stance that one thing's "existence"(?) cannot be inferred with certitude from something else which is known to exist (page 64 number 1 1 and passim), was clearly anticipated by Ockham in his critique of Scotus's doctrine of continentia virtualis, whereby a species would be "virtually contained" in the genus. In general, I found the Latin text to be well-chosen, at times from conflicting readings in the source materials. The punctuation and paragraphing are helpful in understanding...

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