Walter Burley’s de Relativis

WALTER BURLEY’S DE RELATIVIS I The following edition of W alter Burley’s little tract, De Relativis, is based upon the only two copies of the work known to the present editors to be extant. One copy, designated in our apparatus as M , appears in Cod. Vat. lat. 2146, fols. 248ra— 249va; the siglum P represents an edition printed at Oxford in the year 1518.1 In this latter work, Burley’s De Relativis occurs on fols.3V— jr . Neither copy is perfect: nonetheless, we believe that our edition, based upon a collation of the two, represents a safe text. There seems no reason to doubt Burley’s authorship of the De Rela­ tivis. The codex in which M appears fairly bristles with works attributed to Burley by the scribe2 — a certain H. Frank — all of which appear to be authentic. More significant, perhaps, is the fact that De Relativis, in M , is immediately preceded by another of Burley’s works, De Deo, Natura et Arte3 — and these two works appear in just that sequence in P 4— an edition, it should be noted, prepared in the early 16th century by scholars well-versed in the 14th century tradition. There is also internal evidence to confirm the attribution of De Relativis to Burley. Full doctrinal agreement obtains between this work and the chapter, “ De Suppositione Relativorum,” in Burley’s undoubtedly genuine, De Puritate Artis Logicae,5 although the second part of the De Relativis 1 Th e full title of this w ork is: Tractatus perbrevis de materia et forma: M agistri Walteri Burlei doctoris planissimi. A liu d perbreve compendium de relativis eiusem doctoris utile tamen admodum novellis togicis. For an analysis of the D e materia et forma, see: H. Shapiro, " A N ote on W alter B u rley’s E xaggerated R ealism ,” Franciscan Studies 20, no. 3, (i960), pp. 205— 214. 2 A m on g these, for exam ple, are: D e toto et parte, fols. 250r— 260v ; De divisione entis, 249V— 25or; D e modis definiendi, 244r— -245V; D e formis, 235 ra— 244 ra; D e qualitatibus, 245 r— -245 V ; D e puritate artis logicae, 211 r-— ■ 237V. 3 O n fols. 247 V— 248 r. 4 I. e., D e Deo, Natura et Arte, although n ot listed in the title of P (see supra n. 1.), appears on fols. 2 v — 3 V. For the te x t of D e Deo, see: H. Shapiro, “ W alter B u rley’s D e Deo, Natura et A rte,” soon to appear in Mediaevalia et Humanistica. 6 S ee: W . Burleigh, D e Puritate Artis Logicae, Tractatus Longior with a Revised Edition of the Tractatus Brevior, ed. b y P. Boehner (St. Bonaventure , N . Y ., 1955), Prim a Pars, Cap. IV , pp. 28— -33. 155 H. SH A PIR O & M. J. K IT E L E Y contains material that goes beyond that dealt with in the work on logic. Again, the treatment of relative terms in our tract agrees in substance with the material found in yet another work attributed to Burley: a short treatise found on fols. io v a — lir a of Columbia University's Plimpton Ms. 171 (incifiit: "circa relativa multa sophismata concederunt ■ ■ ” ) ■ Finally, there is a clear stylistic correspondence between De Relativis and other of Burley’s writings known to be authentic. The arrangement and division of the text into sentences and para­ graphs is, of necessity, almost wholly the work of the present editors. Neither M nor P is particularly consistent or careful about these matters, either internally or with respect to one another. Double quotation marks have been used to enclose words and sentences employed in the text with what the mediaeval logician called “ material supposition” — i. e., used to denote not what they mean, but rather for themselves as words or verbal expressions. Punctuation has been supplied throughout with the aim of making the texts as readable and intelligible as possible, although the wide variation in present-day modes of punctuation makes it inevitable that the method adopted will fail to conform to all tastes. II Burley opens his little treatise by...