The Greek Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. In the Latin Translation of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln († 1253) by H. Paul F. Mercken (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 408 longer and more cautious, but the quality of these first two efforts warrants hopeful anticipation of future work. LaSalle College Philadelphia, Pa. MICHAEL J. KERLIN The Greek Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. In the Latin T1·anslation of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (t 1253). Critical edition with an introductory study by H. PAUL F. MERCKEN. Vol. I. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973. Pp. XII+ 135* + 371. Guilders 108. This is the first volume of a three-volume edition of the Latin version by Robert Grosseteste of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (NE) plus several partial commentaries. Paul Mercken (Sarah Lawrence) has worked a long time on this important collection of ethical treatises. His excellent training and patient research at Louvain and Oxford are guarantees of the quality of scholarship evident in this book. The second and third volumes (Corpus Latinum Commentariorum in Aristotelem Graecorum) will be edited with the assistance of J. P. Reilly, Jr. (Yale) and will contain the last six books, plus scholia and indexes. Mercken published in 1964 (Brussels) a preliminary edition of the first two books of this collection, under the Flemish title, Aristoteles over de menselijke Volkomenheid (my review appeared in The Modern Schoolman XLIII, 1966, 198). The present volume adds two more books. Bishop Grosseteste perfected his knowledge of Greek in his mature years and seems also to have used the services of several Greek scholars in England to produce a number of Latin versions (many were revisions of earlier imperfect translations) of Greek works of science, philosophy, and theology. It is difficult to determine how much Grosseteste contributed personally to these translations and how much was done by assistants such as Robertus Graecus, Nicholas Graecus, John of Basingstoke, and possibly Adam Marsh. However, D. A. Callus, 0. P., who probably knew this field better than anyone, considered Grosseteste a very good Greek scholar-and Mercken agrees. At some point Grosseteste had procured a Greek codex of the NE, to which had been added several sets of annotations which formed a Greek commentary on all ten books. This collection is still extant in two Greek MSS at Oxford, where Mercken spent three years of research. Besides the text of Aristotle, the collection included a remarkable gloss on Books I and VI written by the Byzantine theologian, E\lstratius, who died in the 404 BOOK REVIEWS early twelfth century. Although he was learned in Aristotelian philosophy, especially logic, Eustratius' comments show him to have been a Christian Platonist in his personal convictions. The compiler of the collection filled the commentary gap with older Greek scholia on Books II, III, IV and V, probably dating from the end of the second Christian century. These anonymous glosses are inferior in quality to the work of Eustratius but historically of interest. So, this first volume prints a Latin version of NE, plus Eustratius on Book I, plus anonymous scholia on the next three books. Subsequent volumes will contain the main text and the anonymous scholia on Book V, commentaries by Michael of Ephesus (11th c.) on Books V, IX and X, another anonymous commentary on Book VII (possibly by a Greek physician (12th-early 13th c.) and finally a commentary on Book VIII by the Greek master, Aspasius, who taught in Athens at the start of the second century A. D. The whole compilation is important for the history of ethics, from classical, through Byzantine and Latin medieval scholarship. Grosseteste's translation of this gathering of moral treatises provided the only complete Latin text of NE, translated directly from the Greek, for thirteenth-century students at the universities and monastic houses of study. Aristotle's Ethics was eagerly studied all through this century. From the work of R. A. Gauthier, 0. P., and others, it now seems quite clear that there was never a version of NE made by William of Moerbeke, 0. P. Furthermore, the Bishop of Lincoln added his own notes (notulae) to these commentaries: they are printed within parentheses right in the text of Mercken's edition. Many of Grosseteste's comments are philological (after all, he was adapting Latin to a new terminology ), but some notes are longer and...