A Scotist on the Eve of the Reformation

I've been reading into Ioannes Anglicus of late, known in the vernacular as John Foxal/Foxalls/Foxholes/Foxoles. He was born ca. 1415 and died in 1475 as bishop of Armagh, Ireland, though he never took up his seat owing to his lack of funds. He taught in England, Erfurt, Cologne (?), Bologna, and Rome. During his Italian period he participated in a symposium on future contingents with Cardinal Bessarion. His most famous work as a commentary on not Porphyry's Isagoge, but Scotus' questions on the same. This was a pattern for John the Englisman: he also wrote a commentary on Antonius Andreas' Metaphysics, as well as commentaries on a few works of Francis of Meyronnes. Thus he was quite learned in the lore of the early Scotists, which explains my interest in him. His Scotus-commentary on Porphyry was the most famous, however, being printed nine times in the years following his death. I quote here a passage from this commentary, on the two sciences of metaphysics:

Ioannes Anglicus, Expositio universalium Scoti in Porphyrium q. 11 (ca. 1460-62, ed. Venezia 1483):

...ut alias superius dixi videtur probabile valde ponere tales duas metaphysicas, scilicet unam propter res non dependens ab intellectu, qualem solummodo posuit Philosophus in sua Metaphysica, cuius subiectum est ens reale et non ens in sua communitate maxima, ut alias videbitur, et aliam metaphysicam logicalem vel rationalem propter intentiones secundas et entia rationis, cuius subiectum erit ens rationis vel forte realius(?) unam aliam metaphysicam communem utrique, cuius subiectum erit ens in quantum ens sive ens in sua maxima communitate, ita quod metaphysica tradita a Philosopho non est totaliter sufficiens et omni enti conveniens sed solum entibus realibus, quae aliter secundae intentionis quae non pertinent ad scientiam realem saltem ut incluse in ea, licet bene per attributionem ad eam, essent omnino non ens et nihil, quod est falsissimum, quia ut probavimus, de eis est scientia verissima.

Translation:

...As I said above, it seems greatly probable to posit that there are two metaphysics, namely, one on account of things not depending on the intellect, of the sort that the Philosopher posited in his Metaphysics, the subject of which is real being and not being in its maximal community, as will be seen elsewhere, and another metaphysics which is logical or rational on account of second intentions and beings of reason, whose subject will be being of reason or perhaps real beings [something seems wrong here; I have no mss. to check this against], and one other metaphysics common to each, whose subject will be being qua being or being in its maximal community, so that the metaphysics handed down by the Philosopher is not totally sufficient and pertaining to every being, but only to real beings, otherwise second intentions -- which to not pertain to real science except as included in it, although indeed they are attributed to it -- would be entirely non-being and nothing, which is false, because, as we have proven above, there is a truest science concerning them.

A Strange Remark of William of Varouillon

The following comes from the commentary on the Sentences by William of Varouillon, a fifteenth-century Franciscan theologian. Scotist, maybe, probably with Bonaventurian modifications. In his discussion of the divine ideas he makes the following weird comment, which I shall not bother to translate.

Guillelmus de Varouillon, I Sent. d.36 q. 1 (ed. 1502 f. 61ra)

"Et si obicitur quod sic dicetur est doctori subtili contradicere qui posuit quidditates rerum et essentie esse distinctas ab esse essentie et ab eterno, quantum mihi dicens intelligere doctorem subtilem dedit.

Dico quod non est opinio sua imo in presenti distinctione ex intentione oppositum dicit inveniendo quod totum quod est in creatura est ex tempore bene tamen est ibi distinctio formalis sicut inter humanitatem et animalitatem et ceteras quidditates non enim videt quomodo posset esse creatio aut annihilatio si istud poneretur. Unde rerum ante suum existere solum ponit esse ydeale quod est ens rationis in mente divina nec apparet de qua serviret istud esse essentie unde patet quod ista opinio est aut gandista a Gandavo aut provincialis a Francisco de mayronis qui fuit de provincia provincie aut turonica a Boneto non scotica a doctora subtili sicut eroum quidam somniando dicit quod iste quidditates ortum habuerunt non in scotia aut francia verum dicit sic accipiendo sed locis predicti.

The Fifteenth-Century Shift

Another philosophical shift, though much more pernicious than Levering's. From Zenon Kaluza, "Late Medieval Philosophy 1350-1500" in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Marenbon, p. 443:

"... Indeed, strange to say, round about the year 1400 philosophers decided that they would no longer do philosophy on their own account and no longer take any personal responsibility for their philosophical positions. Rather, they spent the whole of the fifteenth century fighting among themselves, with prescriptions and prohibitions as their weapons, not in order to impose on everybody their own thought, but that of their distant models: Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, Duns Scotus, Giles of Rome and Buridan. Universities passed statutes to remove undesirables and to close themselves to new ideas. None of these decisions rose above the level of factional in-fighting.

This upholding of traditions and the related and unceasing conflicts (especially in the German universities) were institutional rather than doctrinal in their basis. Historians describe them by the German word Wegenstreit. Sometimes by their violence and length these conflicts turned universities into a battleground where scholars fought to re-establish one of the old schools, whether realist or nominalist. The courses in these universities were limited to the revival of the thought of one or another great master of the past. Likewise, the practice of teaching centered on the great names of the past. In England, Wyclif was attacked in the name of St. Thomas. In Paris, a predominantly Thomist realism became the established doctrine by the last quarter of the century. In Germany, the choice of doctrine was regulated by the statutes of the different universities. Since this return to old scholasticism was the first of a series of such deliberate returns, it is certainly right to call it the first neoscholasticism. In Italy alone this type of institutional conflict had no place: there philosophers at once followed the English tradition of 1300-50 and the Parisian traditions of Averroism and Buridanism, as well as the traditions of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.

Nicolaus de Orbellis on the Formal Distinction

Today's quotation is from Nicolas de Orbellis, the 15th century philosopher. He is much more famous for his treatise on currency, and for holding that heliocentrism was more consonant with reason and experience than geocentrism, but he was also a Scotist who wrote commentaries on Scotus and wrote logical works. The text below I reproduce from a treatise attributed to him by a colophon, which I quote because it singles out one of the most common criticisms of the formal distinction, to wit, that it violates the law of excluded middle. I think Nicholas' solution is rather clever, and I have come to think this way myself in the past few years. This puts the formal distinction squarely on the side of the real in the strict loose sense, and the strict sense rules out the possibility that it is a version of the rational distinction (ruling out as well the possibility of harmonizing it with a thomist theory).

The Thomistae will probably object with "Absolute divine simplicity", but this causes no problems here; all the scholastics accept a fully real distinction between Trinitarian persons as consonant with divine simplicity, so positing a diminished real distinction between the attributes, and between persons and the essence, will not violate it either. But that is an argument for another day, and not germane to the following quote.

Nicolaus de Orbel, Quaestio de distinctionibus Scoti

"omne ens aut est reale aut rationis ex quinto Metaphysicae, ergo omnis distinctio est realis aut rationis, tenet autem quia distinctio est passio entis, ex quarto Metaphysicae moveo....

Ad primum, quando arguitur omne ens aut est reale aut rationis, dico, quod distinctio realis est duplex, scilicet est large sumpta, alia vero stricte sumpta. Large sumpta est omnis distinctio, quae habet esse circumscripto omni operatione intellectus et non fabricata per opus intellectus aut rationis; stricte sumpta distinctio est distinctio inter rem et rem, et de ista non est verum quod omnis distinctio sit realis aut rationis. Distinctio enim formalis non est realis illo modo, quia non est inter rem et rem nec est rationis quia non est fabricata per opus intellectus, ut patet ex dictis."

Translation:

Every being either is real or rational, from Metaphysics V; therefore every distinction is either real or rational; this holds because distinction is an attribute of being, from Metaphysics IV.

To the first, when it is argued 'every being is either real or rational,' I say that the real distinction is two-fold, namely, taking it loosely, and taking it strictly. Loosely taken it is every distinction which obtains with every operation of the intellect circumscribed and not fabricated through the work of the intellect or of reason; the distinction strictly taken is a distinction between thing and thing, and of this it is not true that every distinction is real or rational. For the formal distinction is not real in that way, because it is not between thing and thing, nor is it of reason because it is not fabricated through the work of the intellect.

A Note from Ioannes Bremer

Ioannes Bremer was a 15th c. franciscan theologian working at the studium generale at Erfurt. Here is a comment from the prologue of his commentary on the Sentences, which I just had to share (cited. by L. Meier, "De schola Franciscana Erfordiensi saeculi XV" in Antonianum 5 p.72):

"Sicut sunt quatuor sensus Sacrae Scripturae, ut iam dictum est, ita sunt quatuor scriptores eam scribentes ac quatuor Evangelistae; et sunt quatuor antiqui Sancti Doctores Ecclesiae, eam exponentes, scilicet Hieronymus, Ambrosius, Gregorius, Augustinus. Et quatuor sunt etiam moderni fideles Doctores legis divinae, eam cordibus imprimentes, scilicet Nicolaus de Lyra et Franciscus de Maronis, Bonaventura et Ioannes Scotus."

Just as there are four senses of Sacred Scripture, as has now been said, so there are four writers writing it and four evangelists; and there are four ancient holy doctors of the Church expositing it, namely Jerome, Ambrose, Gregory and Augustine. And there are also four modern faithful teachers of the divine law, impressing it in their hearts, namely Nicholas de Lyra and Francis of Meyronnes, Bonaventure, and John Scotus.

Robert Andrews on Augustinus de Ferraria

The following quote is from the introduction to the edition of Augustinus de Ferraria (died Dec. 1 1466), Quaestiones super librum praedicamentorum Aristotelis, p. xxv-xxvi.

"Augustinus de Ferraria was a Scotist, and by that standpoint he stood in contrast to the Ockhamism and nominalism which was the other major philosophical school of late-medieval Europe. To be a Scotist was not necessarily to agree with Scotus, or to follow closely in his work. In fact, Scotus' logical works (all of the manuscripts of which are relatively late) circulated more commonly in the clarifying versions of Antonius Andreas. And Augustinus never explicitly names Duns Scotus, although two of his scribes cite him ("quam tangit Doctor") in a note (q.7 final note). Rather, the Scotism of Augustinus takes the form of an agreement with the major principles of Scotus, such as a realism as regards universals; the univocity of being, and the unity of forms. In practie, Augustinus follows the tendencies of Scotus which most irritated his rivals: a willingness to draw numerous distinctions, and the inclination to hold that distinctions in language correspond to ontological states of the world. Thus Augustinus subscribes to the existence of quiddities, haecceities, aliaeties, and other suspicious entities which were anathema to the Ockhamists. Indeed, Augustinus' work is filled with distinctions, different wasy, types, modes, and grades; so much so that his work might be regarded as a dictionary of philosophical distinctions."