Pini's Edition of Scotus' Metaphysics

Giorgio Pini has published a critical edition from two manuscripts of a lost commentary on the Metaphysics by John Duns Scotus. I have not seen the text, so it has hard to tell from the publisher's blurb what it is like. But it sounds like a series of notes. It seems to correspond to cross references in Scotus' Quaestiones super Metaphysicam to a literal commentary. Anyway, here is the link to the publisher, and I have pasted the info below:

Corpus Christianorum

Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (CCCM 287)

Ioannes Duns Scotus
Notabilia super Metaphysicam 

G. Pini (ed.)

LXXII+256 p., 155 x 245 mm, 2017
ISBN: 978-2-503-57785-2
Languages: Latin, English
Hardback
The publication is available.
Retail price: EUR 190,00 excl. tax    

John Duns Scotus’s Notabilia super Metaphysicam comprises a series of remarks on Bks. II–X and XII of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The extant evidence points to their originally being either marginal notes on Duns Scotus’s own copy of the Metaphysics or scrapbook entries linked to the relevant portions of Aristotle’s text by caption letters. It appears that Duns Scotus kept adding to those notes in the course of his career.

The Notabilia offers a unique perspective on Duns Scotus’s interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It also contains several original insights on key philosophical issues.

This work disappeared from circulation at Duns Scotus’s death and was consequently thought to have been lost. Several cross-references to and from other writings by Duns Scotus demonstrate both that the Notabilia here edited for the first time is a genuine work by Duns Scotus and that it is his allegedly lost commentary on the Metaphysics.
The current edition is based on the two extant witnesses, manuscript M (Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, C 62 Sup., f. 51ra-98rb), which contains the text in its entirety, and manuscript V (Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2182, f. 58vb-60ra), which contains Bks. II–IV in what is probably an older stage of the text.

Giorgio Pini (PhD, 1997) is professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, NY. He studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy) and was a visiting fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto), Katholieke Universities Leuven, and All Souls College (Oxford). He has published extensively on later medieval metaphysics and theory of cognition, with a particular focus on the thought of John Duns Scotus.

New Volume of the Scotus Opera omnia Released!

Announced here.

Available for 215 euros, here.

Note it is the first of two volumes of indices,  not texts.

Here is the google-translated announcement:

The first volume of indices, the XV.1 the Vatican series, collects onomastici indexes, bibliographic, of direct and indirect sources of all the volumes of the Ordinatio and the Lectura, as well as the full list of parallel loci of the two works and a concordance updated edition of the Vatican and that of the Wadding-Vives. More than a simple collection of the indexes already appeared in the individual volumes, it is a real reprocessing of those data. A meticulous work was made, first of all, necessary to even out the inevitable methodological inconsistencies within the indexes of the individual volumes published so far, and this extensive revision is also an opportunity for many additions and corrections. The indices have also been updated keeping in mind the publication over the years of numerous critical editions of many scotiane sources. Thus, for example, for all citations of Augustine's works we are now the reference to the three most famous editions: the Corpus Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL); the Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (CCSL) and the Patrologia Latina (PL), while in the first volume there was limited only to Patrologia Latina; while quotations of the works of Aristotle has been added, where absent, the reference all'Aristoteles latinus, in addition to those already present all'incunabolo published in Venice in 1483, to that edition Iuntina of 1562 and, of course, to Bekker . The same principle has been clearly adopted for all authors.

The book is thus composed of 546 pages of material that, for printing needs, has a typographical body slightly lower than that of other volumes, but thanks to which it is now possible to search the entire work of the Ordinatio and the Lectura as well from a single reference.

All material is preceded by an introduction of some forty pages, which has a triple ambition. First, it constitutes, as is natural, a true to the book's introduction in which you seek to clarify, through examples, the criteria used in the indexing of the sources, in the hope of helping the reader to become familiar with the system of citations. Beyond that, it is, if not primarily, a sort of conclusion to the Commentary on Book IV, which had been published without his editorial annotations. And finally, from these considerations on the Commentary on Book IV are of course also sprung more general considerations on the entire work which, although modest, can be regarded as conclusive.

For these reasons, in this introduction, it was considered useful to offer also the complete list and ordered the manuscripts and editions that have been used for the edition of each volume, clarifying, through a pattern, distribution and use in comment by Scotus to several books Ordinatio is that the Lectura. The codes have been grouped, according to the criterion that led all the work in accordance with their "classes", or the breakdown by key families, and their "reviews", ie according to their greater or lesser harmony with the code in the famous code 137 of the Municipal Library of Assisi, considered by publishers the closest version to unfortunately lost Liber Scotus, which regularly reports on the margin any abnormalities.

Another issue on which we focused in this introduction is that the external and internal evidence proving the authenticity of the work and, in particular, the Commentary on Book IV. It refers here, in particular, to those marginal notes or to those internal textual references that, referring to other parts of the Commentary, in addition to certify the authenticity, also sufficient to enable a work internal chronology.

New Grosseteste Edition

An important new edition of Grosseteste has come out, his commentary on pseudo-Dionysius' De caelesti hierarchia. Available here. For a cool 210,00 euro (!)

I've already added it to the notes of my edition of Petrus Thomae's De ente. (yes, Scotists read Grosseteste and ps.-Dionysius: Mayronis wrote commentaries on the Dionysian corpus).

This edition was begun in the 60's as a dissertation, and handed on to several generations of scholars being published only in 2015. What I found utterly shocking was the mention that McEvoy taught in a department of "Scholastic Philosophy", which eventually closed, perhaps in the 70's. Such bygone times I can't conceive of them, or even imagine what it would be like to be part of a mainstream movement (even if only in the Catholic world).

One nice thing about this edition is that they have retained the internal divisions of the text as it was read in the middle ages. Maybe this wasn't an issue since it is a medieval book. I'm thinking here of the Aristoteles Latinus and Avicenna Latinus editions, which do not report the medieval chapter and book divisions, only Bekker's. This makes it difficult to actually find anything with medieval citation practices (aside from sitting down and reading it straight through, of course). This I find stupid because scholars who work on Aristotle and Avicenna read their works in the original language and pay no attention to medieval translations. And rightly so. These editions are only going to be used by people working on medieval latin material, but the editors have made it more difficult for us on purpose! But, again, happily this is not the case for the volume under discussion here.

Anyway, buy this book and read it:

Corpus Christianorum


Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (CCCM 268)

Robertus Grosseteste

Versio Caelestis Hierarchiae Pseudo-Dionysii Areopagitae cum scholiis ex Graeco sumptis necnon commentariis notulisque eiusdem Lincolniensis

D. A. Lawell (ed.)


XLII+330 p., 155 x 245 mm, 2015

ISBN: 978-2-503-55593-5

Languages: Latin, English

Hardback

The publication is available.

Retail price: EUR 210,00 excl. tax





Robert Grosseteste's translation of and commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius.


This volume contains Robert Grosseteste's translation of the Pseudo-Dionysius's Celestial Hierarchy. The Latin text is accompanied by Grosseteste's translation of the Greek scholia as well as his commentary and notes made on the Celestial Hierarchy and scholia. Grosseteste's work presents another insight into the renaissance of Dionysian studies which took place in the thirteenth century, as witnessed by commentators on the Areopagite such as Aquinas, Albert and Thomas Gallus. Grosseteste's commentary is greatly informed by his command of the Greek language which resulted in not only a detailed philological understanding of the Greek but also in a rich interpretation of the mind of Dionysius.


Declan Lawell is a Teacher of Latin in Liverpool. He has already published volumes by Thomas Gallus in the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis series.

New Eckhart Edition

King's College London has started up a Meister Eckhart Project. See here for details.

Some selections (bold is my emphasis):

To study this towering figure of Meister Eckhart and his early 14th c. humanist environment of philosophy and theology at the University of Paris an AHRC-Major Research Grant (£571.000 for the years 2013-2016) was awarded for the project 'Meister Eckhart and the Parisian University in the early 14th century - Codex Vaticanus Latinus 1086', directed by Professor Markus Vinzent (PI) and Professor Oliver Davies (CO-I). The project includes one postdoctoral researcher (Chris Wojtulewicz), two Phd studentships (one held by Maria O'Connor, the other is advertised now) and several associated teams (Professor Denys Turner, Yale and King's College London; Professor Walter Senner, Rome with his team; Professor Loris Sturlese, Lecce with his team; Professor Dietmar Mieth, Erfurt with his team and the Max-Weber-Kolleg, Erfurt). The project teams intend to rewrite the history of this time, broadening the textual basis for Eckhart and reading his texts against the background of other, largely unexplored scholars of his time.

That's a lot of money for a medieval philosophy project. I dare say if one were to check the NEH website, one would find that this group has been funded more generously than the Richard Rufus of Cornwall project or the Scotus Parisian Reports project. Note, there is a PhD "Studentship" available. I don't know what that is, exactly. Note also the big names associated with the project. Finally, note that the part at the end about rewriting the history of early 14th c. philosophy (my own favorite sub-sub-subfield)

Here's some more from higher up on the same page, where they talk some more about rewriting history, and some re-discovered questions of Eckhart:

Although the re-discovered Questions are already worth a detailed study, the source from where the four derive will shed further light on these questions: The manuscript Vat. Lat. 1086 ranks as a document of crucial importance which will help us understand the development of philosophical, theological and juridicial teaching at Paris in the beginning XIVth century. Prosper's collection contains names and opinions of students, bachelors and masters (regents) of the university and preserves the documentation of a detailed insight into the atmosphere of learning of this European cultural centre as no other document does. For many of the named people, this will be a first scholarly study of their bio-bibliography and their thinking.

Here just a few examples of people who's questions are contained in Ms. Vat. Lat. 1086 :
Prosper, Jacques d'Ascoli, Gregoire de Lucques, John de Monte s. Elygii, Gregoire de Lucques, Henricus (de Gand?), Gilles de Rome, Aegidius Romanus, Simon de Corbeia?, Bertrand de Turre, Gerardus de s. Victore, Gregoire de Lucques, Pe de sto dyo, Henricus Amandi, Jean de Pouilly (142ra1), Jean, de l'ordre du Val des Ecoliers?, Martin d' Abbeville, François Caraccioli or de Caroccis di Napoli, Brito: Raoul Renaud, Gui Terreni or de Perpignan, Durandus, Thomas de Aquino ...

[of course, for most in the list they give, there already are bio-bibliographical studies and texts published; interestingly, they make no mention of the previous detailed studies of this ms. by Courtenay and Glorieux. But it is just a webpage blurb, after all]

Only after a few monhs into the running of the project - Eckhart's new Questions have already been published in the authoritative critical edition of his works with Kohlhammer under the research associate's pen of Professor Loris Sturlese. And in the near future, the first fascicle of the indices for the entire Deutsche and Lateinische Werke of Meister Eckhart will follow (authored by Professor Markus Vinzent).

As a next step, the project will provide a critical commentary of Eckhart's Parisian Questions together with further studies on those colleagues of him with whom he debated at Paris University and elsewhere, taking into account Vat. Lat. 1086 and other parallel manuscripts, in order to read Eckhart against the background of the network of University teachers in Paris and elsewhere.

Hmm... no mention of Gonsalvus Hispanus, Eckhart's opponent in a famous debate at Paris ca. 1300. Also, they don't mention Scotus, no doubt because Scotus and Eckhart scholarship are worlds to themselves, but they were in Paris at the same time. Surely there is some point of comparison? I see in their translation there is one on the attributes, but it doesn't seem to have anything useful, being mainly what seems to me a restatement of some of Godfrey of Fontaines' principles.

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