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.

more Latin scans online

Anticipating disappointment with your Christmas gift? Looking for more Latin texts but short on cash? Your family doesn't know the difference between Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon and wants you to bring home the bacon? Look no further for a holiday munus legitimum, provided you have sufficient bandwidth and hard drive capabilities.

Two extremely useful sites for scans of Latin texts, especially those regarding scholastic philosophy  from the Medieval period onward:

VIRTUAL LIBRARY:  DIGITIZED BOOKS

AN ANALYTIC BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ON-LINE NEO-LATIN TEXTS


For each link, the readers of this blog may notice the works of a number of Scotistic Franciscans and certain Dominicans who opposed them. And Suarez is there to boot.

Stocking stuffers: 

• a short op-ed on Christmas he-haw: "Even Christians Taking Christ out of Christmas"
• and "Confessions of a One-Season Santa"

Marenbon on Textual Editions

The following is from a flyer for the Auctores Britannici series from the British academy, via  Brunellus (but I can't remember where). It was written by John Marenbon

Scholarly editing

Bringing a work like Anselm’s or Wylton’s into the form of an

accessible, edited, printed text is an extraordinarily time-consuming

and skilled job. First, the manuscripts must be transcribed. Whilst

scribes in the earlier Middle Ages used an easily-readable form of

handwriting that was revived in the Renaissance and provided the

model for print, most medieval philosophical manuscripts are

written in difficult to decipher Gothic and late medieval scripts.

Since parchment and then paper was precious, the hands are often

tiny; and a complex system of abbreviations was used to save more

space. Only someone specially trained in the reading of medieval

handwriting, with an excellent command of Latin, and who also

fully understands the often highly technical discussions in the text

can set about the task. Usually, there will be more than one

manuscript, and often dozens. They are rarely authorial autographs,

and so the editor needs to collate and classify the manuscripts, so as

to reconstruct as well as possible the text the author intended. And

then, if the text is to be accessible and useful, the sources it uses and

references it makes must be sought out, a translation provided, and

an introduction written on the work’s context and contents.

Unfortunately, universities and funding bodies in Britain today seem

blind both to the fundamental value of such editions for scholarship

and to the extraordinary skills needed in those who make them. Any

genuine scholar of the Middle Ages, even one not personally

inclined to text-editing, recognises that, without new editions,

scholarship in the area is condemned to try to build without

foundations, and that editing a text is one of the supreme tests of a

medievalist’s training and ability. Yet officially far less credit is given

for the years of patient work required to produce a good edition than

to a few articles or a monograph that catch a fashionable theme and

will probably no longer be read in a few years – whereas a good

edition can still be useful a century later. It is a tribute to a certain

self-sacrificing integrity that so many scholars continue to come

forward to make available, through their painstaking work, more of

the philosophical heritage of medieval Britain – but sad that so few

of them have been trained or work in this country.

Scotus Texts at 'Per caritatem'

Cynthia Nielsen has scanned some texts of Scotus and posted them on her site.  She has posted the critical texts of Ord. III d. 37 (on natural law) and QQ. in Met. IX q. 15 (on the will).