Medieval Aspects of Renaissance Learning by Paul Oskar Kristeller, and: Alessandro Achillini (1463–1512) and His Doctrine of ‘Universals’ and ‘Transcendentals’ by Herbert Stanley Matsen (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 769 Medieval Aspects of Renaissance Learning. Three Essays by PAUL OsKAR KRISTELLER. Edited and translated by Edward P. Mahoney. Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies No. I. Durham: Duke University Press, 1974. Pp. 187. Alessandro Achillini (1463-1512) and His Doctrine of 'Universals' and 'Transcendentals.' A Study in Renaissance Ockhamism. By HERBERT STANLEY MATSEN. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, and London : Associated University Presses. 1975. Pp. 332. 27.50. The first title above inaugurates a new and welcome series of scholarly publications, Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and this is indeed an auspicious volume to mark the series' beginning. Kristeller 's three essays, each in its way a masterpiece, were first published between 1960 and 1970 and have as their common theme the continued presence of medieval traits in the civilization of the Renaissance. Briefest of the three (25 pp.) , the first essay is entitled " The Scholar and His Public in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance " ; it appeared originally in German as a contribution to a Festschrift honoring Walther Buist, Kristeller's friend and fellow student at Heidelberg in the 1920's. The second essay (65 pp.), "Thomism and the Italian Thought of the Renaissance ," was written in French for the annual (1965) Conference Albert-leGrand at the Institute of Medieval Studies of the University of Montreal. The concluding essay (65 pp.), the only one of the three to be published previously in English, was given at St. John's University, Collegeville, under the auspices of its Monastic Manuscript Microfilm library; entitled " The Contribution of Religious Orders to Renaissance Thought and Learning," it contains a valuable bibliography and two appendices, one listing selected monastic and conventual libraries (many in Italy and Austria) from which most of the source materials mentioned in the essay were obtained, the other listing members of religious orders who achieved reputations as humanists or scholars between 1400 and 1530. The volume also contains two prefaces: one by the editor, Edward P. Mahoney, who translated the first two essays into English and obtained the author's collaboration in bringing the footnotes up to date and expanding the appendices; the other by Kristeller himself, wherein he explains the provenance of the essays and some of the points they were intended to make. Since much of the material covered in all three essays, and particularly the second, pertains to Thomism and its history, it was deemed appropriate to have the volume published in 1974, the seven-hundredth anniversary of the death of St. Thomas. As might be expected of this eminent expert on Renaissance thought, Kristeller's essay on the scholar and his public is a masterful exposition of the confusing variety of written and published works in the late Middle 770 BOOK REVIEWS Ages and the Renaissance-a multiplicity that becomes intelligible once one understands not only the different types of literature (e. g., scholastic, humanistic, vernacular) but also the different reading publics to which they were addressed (e. g., students, colleagues, adversaries, sponsors, interested laymen) . Previous students of this mass of literature have tended to impose arbitrary divisions on authors, to locate them in one school or another on the basis of their being, say, either scholastics or humanists, and even to disregard some of their writings when they do not conform to Procrustean categories. Galileo, although not discussed by Kristeller in this context, is an excellent case in point: he used practically every form of scholarly and literary communication discussed in this article, as dictated by the varying audiences he had in mind, and yet his scholastic quaestiones on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle have never once been edited, presumably because they did not conform to expectations of what Galileo, the anti-Aristotelian scientist, ought to have thought and said. Those who have to deal with Italian authors of the quattrocento and the cinquecento, in particular, will find in this first essay a corrective to biases of very long standing, and certainly it will become required reading for any student beginning serious studies in this area. The second essay was reviewed by the present writer in these pages when it first appeared in French [see The Thomist, 31 (1967), pp...