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IV. The Questions on the Second Book of the Sentences 1. Redactions Three redactions of Francis’ commentary on book II of the Sentences survive , and an awareness of the relationship between these redactions is necessary to evaluate Francis’ thought as contained in these texts. The present volume presents the first part of the major redaction, Reportatio IIA. This text exists in 14 manuscripts, namely ABCFGKLNPTVWYZ. E, that is, Vatican City, BAV, vat. lat. 943, reports a different text (and will appear in an edition directed by Girard Etzkorn). To distinguish these two redactions, Friedman and Schabel have proposed the titles Reportatio IIA and Reportatio IIB, which we have adopted, abbreviating them as IIA and IIB for the discussion that follows. In addition, Friedman and Schabel noted that manuscripts DH “share a rather different text.”95 While the text in DH has strong textual similarities with IIA, at times it deviates greatly. From soundings in the manuscript tradition , it became evident that DH reports a different redaction, although closely related to IIA. As an appendix to this introduction, we have edited q. 1 as it appears in DH in order to illustrate the range of differences from IIA. Friedman and Schabel also suggested that V contains an abbreviation of IIA, and yet they observe that a note in the manuscript calls the text a Scriptum .96 Our soundings suggest that V could just as easily contain an extremely faulty copy. For all of V’s faults, however, our reconstruction of the stemma codicum places V in a privileged position with respect to the original, and so we cannot discard V’s observations as entirely inauthentic. So at least three redactions exist, and, while no unambiguous, explicit indications permit us to state the relationship between the texts with certitude, we can advance hypotheses with respect to the three texts. First, IIB is an early reportatio , perhaps reflecting Francis’ Parisian lectures. Second, DH reflects the text in an intermediate state, possibly a revised reportatio. Third, IIA revises and completes the text as found in DH. In order to support these statements, then, we need to consider the relation between two groups of texts: IIA-IIB, and IIA-DH. The following examination considers examples from throughout Francis’ commentary on book II, and not just those related to the first twelve questions of IIA. Particular questions in these works are indicated in the format redaction:question, where redaction can be IIA, IIB or DH, and question re95 R. Friedman and C. Schabel, “Francis of Marchia’s Commentary on the Sentences ”, p. 55. 96 R. Friedman and C. Schabel, “Francis of Marchia’s Commentary on the Sentences ”, p. 56. XXXVII THE QUESTIONS ON BOOK II fers to the number, for example, IIA:4. Paragraphs are indicated using the abbreviation n. A. Reportatio IIA and Reportatio IIB The content of IIA and IIB is largely the same, at the level both of the questions considered and of the argumentation within those questions. In the actual structure of the commentary as well as its explicit and implicit articulation , IIA reflects a text composed in written form, while IIB presents strong evidence of orality. Since both commentaries treat the arguments of Peter Auriol , we suspect that both IIA and IIB relate to Francis’ Paris lectures. Structure According to Friedman and Schabel’s numeration, IIA has 49 questions, and IIB 65. A comparison of the questions reveals that, with the exception of IIA, q. 1 (derived from the Principium secundi), IIB has one or more questions parallel to each of IIA’s discussions, and, for the most part, there are strong correspondences between the internal structures of the questions. We have prepared a table of corresponding questions (or discrete groups of questions) between IIA and IIB, along with distinctions from Lombard’s Sentences to which these questions would presumably belong, the latter determined from a comparison of question titles with those in the Sentences commentaries of Peter Auriol, Landulph Caracciolo and John Duns Scotus, which are divided according to distinction. An asterisk (*) marks the cases where, in IIB, Francis specifies the distinction, along with, in cases of divergence , the “traditional” distinction such questions marked in parenthesis: Table 1: Question Order in Reportationes IIA and IIB Reportatio IIA Reportatio IIB II Sent. distinction q. 1 - d. I q. 2, a. 1 q. 1 d. I q. 2, a. 2 q. 2 d. I q. 2, a. 3 q. 3 d. I q. 3 q. 4 d. I q. 4 q. 5...

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