New Evidence for Nicholas Aston’s Principia on the Sentences: Basel, UB, A.X.24

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Codex Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, A.X.24 is a miscellaneous collection of theological treatises that the Dominican Henricus of Rinfeldia brought from Vienna to Basel 6 . The Basel convent of the Friars Preached had sent Rinfeldia to Vienna to read his Sentences at the new Faculty of Theology. In preparation for his doctorate, in the period 1389-1400 Rinfeldia conscientiously attended public disputations, which he recorded in his notebooks, for example manuscript Basel, BU, A.X.44. In parallel with these notes, the current subject of investigation of the RISE project in Cluj 7 , Rinfeldia also assembled various theological treatises that he annotated in his own hand. Codex Basel, BU A-X-24 8 contains one of these collections, the first folio of which, added when the manuscript was bound, contains the following list of Contenta huius libri 9 : Text 1: Primo: questiones notabiles diverse et diffuse (1-73v) Text 2: Item questio Nicolai de Lyra contra Iudeos fo 78 (deest) 10 Text 3: Item questiones notabiles et singulares fo 102 (74r-140v) 11 6 For a short biography of this author see M. Brînzei, 'Unknown Fragments of Petrus de Treysa in the Codex Basel, Universitätsbibliotek A-X-44', Chora 14 (2016), pp. 285-293. 7 A presentation of the project can be found on the website www.rise-ubb.ro. See also the report by Edit Lukacs of a first workshop held in Cluj-Napoca in 2019: "Decoding a Medieval Notebook: The Case Study of MS Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, A-X-44", Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale 2019 (forthcoming). 8 A detailed codicological description of the manuscript will be published by RISE project. 9 The foliation introduced by 'fo' is the one indicated by the tabula, and the one that I introduce in square brackets is the one following the modern numbering. 10 This text is missing from the manuscript and contained the Tractatulus ad quendam Iudaeum ex verbis evangelii secundum Matthaeum contra Christum nequiter arguentem composed by Nicholas of Lyre in 1334 as a response to the anti-Jews polemic launched in 1309 in the Questio de adventu Messie. The Tractatulus is a defense of the Gospels against Jewish disbelief in the New Testament. Although the Tabula indicates the text, this one is missing and probably has been torn from the codex. In the initial composition of the codex this missing treatise ran from fo 79r to fo 101v. 11 This is an interesting series of ten questions related to the Vienna Faculty of Theology and connected to the topics of Sentences' commentaries. Actually, the titles of nine of these ten questions are also in Basel, BU, A-X-44. Although the two manuscripts share the titles of these questions, the content is not the same and a comparison of the texts in the two codices shows that the size and the content of each question is different. This parallel is under investigation right now by the team of project RISE. This codicological unit also contains a copy of the Questio de anima Christi of Conrad of Ebrach. Another copy of this text is found in manuscript Basel, BU, A-VI-22. According to manuscript Munich, Clm 27034, this question is the resumpta of Conrad of Ebrach and it should be added here that this codex also contains some folios in Rinfeldia's hand. This allows us to conclude that the three copies of this question in Vienna 15 The first entry in this Tabula consists of a list of questions on the Sentences that I propose to identify with the so-called Articuli of Nicholas Aston stemming from his lectures on the Sentences. In the appendix to this paper I have compiled a list of Aston's question titles along with references to the questions listed in the other manuscripts of Aston's texts as the first piece of evidence for the authenticity of the questions in the Basel manuscript (B). I have also collated some fragments from B with the other manuscripts of Aston and with what Bender edited in order to solidify the attribution.
Besides the attribution of this text to Nicholas Aston, the present paper aims to determine how much of Aston's so-called Articuli stems from his principia debates with his socii. Bender noted that Aston's style should be understood in the context of the Oxford trend of commenting on Lombard, which Trapp characterized as the 'English-essay-style' 16 . The varying contents of the manuscripts and even the composition of each question pose some problems, and neither Bender nor Kaluza managed to clarify in full the nature and chronology of this set of questions on the Sentences. Perhaps different assumptions will prove more fruitful. If we read at least part of the text, if not the whole, as a principium, more aspects of Aston's style can be deciphered. Thus the 'welter of arguments and counter-arguments that he brings to any issue' 17 an his non-informative 'response per se to any of the articles' could simply reflect a typical attitude in the principia text current in Aston's day, and the parallel principia of Jean Regis and James of Eltville 18 provide clues to better understand Aston's text. Moreover, since two of the manuscripts preserve the same text, Kaluza proposed labels to explain this variation, calling O and W respectively a reportatio and a ordinatio. (He did not investigate C and F.) When we associate Aston's texts to the practice of principia, however, we arrive at another explanation for the differences between the manuscripts. Prague: Prague Sentences Commentaries, ca. 1375-1381, with a Redating of the Arrival of Wycliffism in Bohemia", Historia Universitatis carolinae Pragensis 55 (2015), pp. 19-40. 12 Actually, under this title we can identify some fragments from the Summa Hallensis, 4, De sacramento Eucharistie. 13 Bender, Nicholas Aston: A Study in Oxford Thought, p. 7. 14 In this part of the text we read some fragments extracted from Henricus de Frimaria, Tractatus de quattuor instinctibus. This is not a surprise, since the De quattuor instinctibus divino, angelico, diabolico, et humano ("About the four instincts -divine, angelic, diabolic and human") was a very popular text, being an original discussion of the discernment of spirits, surviving in over one hundred and fifty Latin manuscripts, as well as in eighteen Dutch and German versions. An edition of this text has been done by A Zumkeller, T.G. Aarnock, Der Traktat Hienrichs von Friemar über die Unterscheidung der Geister. Lateinsch-mittelhochdeutsche Textausgabe mit Untersuchungen, Würzburg, 1977. 15 Actually, the Tabula does not mark the fact that between f. 181r and f. 210v we find a variety of excerpte. 16 Trapp, "Augustinian Theology", p. 231. 17 Bender, Nicholas Aston: A Study in Oxford Thought, p. 27. 18  When Kaluza and Bender were working on Aston in the late 1970s, not much was generally known about principia 19 . Kaluza proposed to identify the first question from W, or what we find in the manuscripts as Questio primo die, with the "principium du livre premier du commentaire de Nicolas Aston" and added that 'Je l'appelle aussi prologue" 20 . The latter remark confuses matters, since prologues and principia belong to two very different genres and conflating these terms hinders efforts to discern the nature of the text. Kaluza also goes a bit too far when he states that "il nous est, en conséquence, impossible de penser que ce principium reste inachevé", since this exercise "était toujours solidement préparée et bien à l'avance" 21 . It is true that the preparation was quite solid, but one cannot deny that principia also circulated in unfinished versions. Although Kaluza and Bender went to great lengths to understand and to explain the nature of the text, its chronology and its composition, both overlooked certain details that suggest a different line of interpretation. Taken together, the following examples indicate that at least a part of what Kaluza reconstituted as Book I 22 should be read as notes from the debates in which Aston participated during the four principia before reading the books of the Sentences: (1) The text abounds in references to socii, the fellow bachelors with whom the Aston engaged in debate during the principia. We usually witness two tendencies in principia. Some authors are very open with personal information about their socii, quoting their names and their affiliations or even providing details about their origins. The second attitude is when the authors are very discreet about their socii, making only vague comments. Aston belongs to the second category, citing his socii like this: patet per magistrum reverendum qui tertio loco intravit ad Sententias isto anno (p. 210), contra istum magistrum arguitur (p. 210), ratio sua stat in isto (p. 211), probat opinionem suam et respondet ad argumenta sua (p. 211), quia magister reverendus negat antecedens (p. 215), in ista materia dicit quidam magister reverendus (p. 219), Istis visis dico quod si istud intelligas …dico quod sicut iste discursus est paralogismus (p. 237) 23 This manner of referring to socii can be the source of misunderstanding 24 . Damasus Trapp proposed identifying some of his socii with the Carmelite Osbert Pickingham and Thomas Buckingham 25 , but so far no clear reference has been found among Aston's quotations. Although I have not been able to identity Aston's socii, there are recurrent mentions of them in his Articuli. Through the inspection of surviving questions on the Sentences and principia from same authors, it becomes apparent that references to socii are common in principia but normally absent in questions on the four books. There is no reason to believe that Aston's case is unusual, so the high number of references to socii suggest that the text stems from principia.
(2) The text can be easily read as a dialogue because of the libido arguendi. The title libido arguendi is taken from the principia debate between the Benedictine Pierre Roger (later Clement VI) and the Franciscan Francis of Meyronnes in Paris in 1320-21, characterizing the succession of arguments that helps sketch how an idea is defended: pro, contra, answer to the 19 Except for the pioneering article of Trapp from 1956, "Augustinian Theology", the first scholar who dedicated some attention to this genre was F. contra, answer to the answer to the contra 26 and that sometime look like an arguing for the sake of arguing. This is common in principia, unlike in questions on the Sentences, where one usually finds pro and contra arguments not in the succession of a dialogue, but more like a quaestio. One can follow the libido arguendi in Aston's text 27 , which is cast in the form of a confrontation between two opponents, perceptible in the succession of paragraphs. The verb's voice indicates the position of each of the socii: one speaks actively as arguo and the other's position is introduced with arguitur. The waltz between the two persons of the verb arguere in Aston's questions and the constant switch from arguo to arguitur is very similar to what we find in the majority of principia that we have identified so far. To this we can add the obvious traces of dialogue: … Quando tu ultra ponis quod aliquid erit, quero a te, numquid tu ponis aliquid erit stante primo casu posito, ut pote quod nihil est, vel non… (p. 281) or … quando tu ponis… quero a te, numquid ponis (p. 280).
(  29 In this respect we can add a remark of Bender, Nicholas Aston: A Study in Oxford Thought, p. 104 : " Aston's style of argumentation is clearly exemplified by the above proof. We can almost imagine him leading his nodding opponent down the path to self-contradiction. If the consequence is not valid, it then follows that, in spite of God's existence, a proposition signifying 'Deum non esse' does not entail a contradiction. Let such a proposition be A, and let its contradictory be called B. Since God exists, A is false ". 30 See the situation with Jean of Regis, where the four principia are not finished and at the end we just find a notebook with fragments of text from his socii. 31 See the same confrontation between Jean Regis and James of Eltville in Paris in 1369 reported in two different manuscripts from two distinct positions, one of Eltville and one of Regis. See Brinzei, 'When Theologians play Philosopher', pp. 43-77. 32 See the situation with Jean Mirecourt: among the ten copies of his principia, some variants contain more personal details, namely concerning the confrontation with his socii, especially the manuscript Metz, Bibliothèque Nationale 211. from principial debates 33 . It is possible that the articuli was a common textual-division-unit specific to Oxford principial debates 34 . As discussed above, articuli is a confusing term here, since it seems to be used for two different things. First, an articulus is a general question proposed for debate with the socii. Second, each articulus-question is normally divided into three articuli, which are subdivided into conclusions and then propositions and corollaries. At this level an articulus is a textual unit.
The titles of Aston's questions are identified in some manuscripts as Articuli. Manuscript B is very precise and consistent with this terminology. We do not have this denomination at the University of Paris, so it could be particular to Oxford. At the same time, we must keep in mind that there were two uses of the term articuli, one corresponding to the titles of the questions denoting the theses to be debated and the other referring to parts of the divisions of questions. Aston's questions were normally divided into three articuli, although the manuscripts are not always complete and may only contain one article, while announcing three 35 . For example, the first question announces in the division of the question the three articuli that divide the question, but in the manuscripts we find only two of them developed, with the second article in O and W becoming the first article in B. This shows that the transmission of the text was not uniform and that different versions from different redactional stages circulated. Even the testimony in P, via Gaudet's notes, contains more material than the list of questions from O and W 36 . What we should add here is that the list of questions from the Basel manuscript is so far the most complete among all the witnesses to this text. This manuscript includes four more questions, numbers 11 and 14-16 according to the appendix, that are not in any other manuscript containing Aston's questions. The questions are interspersed among those that are certainly by Aston and stylistically it is possible to establish some connection with Aston's writings with consistency in the vocabulary 37 , but probably a deeper analysis will uncover more evidence in the future.
One last issue needs to be addressed: the circulation of this material in Vienna. Since the section with Aston's questions in the manuscript can be identified as an individual codicological unit, this could be one of the texts that German students in Paris, such as Henry of Langenstein, Henry Totting of Oyta, Peter of Gelria and Conrad Zollern, brought with them once they were forced to leave Paris during the Schism because of their adherence to Urban VI in Rome rather than Clement VII in Avignon. The presence of some watermarks in the paper employed for this set of questions reveals that the paper of this section of Basel, BU, A.X.24 was produced in Vienna, where the codex was thus probably copied. The manuscript could be the copy of a document imported from Paris, but Prague should also be taken in consideration as a possible source. At the end of the fourteenth century, Prague students had a very dynamic exchange with Oxford 38 and it is possible that they did not introduce just Wycliffite texts into Eastern Europe, but also other doctrinal material. In fact, codex Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 27034 also contains some principial questions of a student from Prague educated in Oxford, and this manuscript was probably in circulation in Vienna' theological milieu. Besides this, the codex also contains some theses that Trapp suggested 39 might be linked to Aston's questions. This may constitute interesting new evidence for the reception of Oxonian philosophy in Vienna.
Manuscript Basel, BU A-X-24, is thus an interesting testimony to the circulation of Nicholas Aston's text on the Sentences in Vienna at the end of the 14 th century. Henry of Rinfeldia brought the codex to Basel when he returned from studying in Vienna. The manuscript definitely requires more investigation, with a transcription and a comparison with the other Aston witnesses, in order to clarify the structure and the transmission of this text.

Appendix:
New list of manuscripts of Aston's questions stemming from his lectures on the Sentences:  47 In the manuscript F the folia are not numbered, but the columns. This numbering is from 3 to 80. From column 81 I am numbering myself following the microfilm. The codex ends with blank folia. For this reason, since I did not been able to check the original it is possible to introduce some errors. The first folio has been ripped out and the text starts abruptly in column 3 : "… tali propositione formaliter includente affirmatur aliquid de aliquo". This beginning can be identify in Bender's edition. See Bender, Nicholas Aston: A Study in Oxford Thought, p. 284. 48 The title is slightly different in O: Utrum veritatem creatam poterit veritas <in>creata hypostatice sustentare. 49 est et add. B 50 Tertius-iste Quia alias posui tales conclusionesduas scilicet sequantes: Antichristus erit et tamen non est ita quod Antichristus erit, nec ab eterno fuit ita quod Antichristus erit; secunda fuit hec: qualitercumque poterit esse qualiter nunc non est, poterit incipere esseideo pro declaracione istarum sit iste articulus tractandusthis part is given by Kaluza as the beginning of the third article, but in B it is inserted in a different ink at the end of f. 12v at the end of the second article: "Alias posui tales duas conclusiones sequentes: Antichristus est et tamen non est ita quod Antichristus erit, non est ab eterno fuit ita quod Antichristus erit. Secunda fuit hec: qualitercumque