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Manuscripta Wyclifiana Desiderata: The Potential Contribution Of Missing Latin Texts to our Image of Wyclif’s Life and Works

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

Williell R. Thomson
Williell R. Thomson*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Extract

Almost twenty years ago, one of our distinguished scientific colleagues, the late Jacob Bronowski, orchestrated a litany of remarks by other mathematicians and physicists to the effect that no system of theoretical constructs dealing with the universe, or indeed any conceivable set of prescriptive algorithms, could ever define their subject in its totality. In this century we have become uncomfortably aware of the extent to which the act of observation, the fact of our singling out some particular phenomenon for study and interpretation, itself affects the outcome of those observations. Even in striving to objectify ourselves, and in the very process of objectification, we still subjectivize the external world by touching it with the fingers of inquiry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 5: From Ockham to Wyclif , 1987 , pp. 343 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987 

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References

1 Bronowski, Jacob, The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (New Haven and London 1978) pp. 67–113Google Scholar. Also eminently germane here is Hofstadter, Douglas R., Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (New York 1979).Google Scholar

2 Presented originally in slightly different form at a session of the Nineteenth International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan, in May of 1984. I wish here to thank those who participated in that discussion for their helpful comments and insights.

3 Edited by the author. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Subsidia Mediaevalia 14, 1983.) MS and bibliographic details of all Wyclif pieces cited in this paper may be found under the appropriate heading in this Catalog.

4 See, for example, Thomson, W. R., ‘An Unknown Letter by John Wyclf in Manchester, John Rylands Univeristy Library MS. Eng. 86,’ Mediaeval Studies 43 (1981) pp. 531–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and especially the significant Harvard MS of the pteviously unknown and even unsuspected Summula summularum, Houghton Library Lat. 338.

5 Stegmüller, Friedrich, Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi II (Madrid 1951) pp. 452–560Google Scholar; Smalley, Beryl, ‘John Wyclif’s Postilla super Totam Bibliam ,’ The Bodleian Library Record 4 (1953) pp. 186–205.Google Scholar

6 For example, the [Differencia inter peccatum mortale et veniale]; rhe De incarcerandis fidelibus and the Degradibus ecclesie.

7 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MSS 3933, 3935, 4514; foliation and analysis in Polemical Works 1 (1883) pp. lix-lxxxiv.

8 Fasciculi Zizaniorum Magistri Johannis Wyclif cum Tritico (RS 1858) pp. 4-42, 433-80. For the authorship of the FZ, see Thomson, The Latin Manuscripts of John Wyclyf p. 26, n. 10.

9 Ibid. p. 307, item no. GDub. 15. The others that will bear further inspection are nos. GDub. 12, 13, and 18.

10 This issue is briefly addressed in Thomson, ‘An Unknown Letter…,’ pp. 532-3.

11 The very first Wyclif Society was evidently organized under the benevolent sponsorship of Mr Shirley sometime in the 1860s, but did not long endure. Whitney, J. P., ‘A Note on the Work of the Wyclif Society’, in Davis, H. W. C., ed.. Essays in History Presented lo Reginald Lane Poole (Oxford 1927; repr. 1069) pp. 98–114Google Scholar, in fact discloses very little of the operations of the second Society; those proceedings may be gleaned from the occasional pleas for funds and support in the Society’s various communications with its members.

12 See Thomson, , The Latin Writings of John Wyclyf p. 61, n. 5.Google Scholar

13 Portions have been published and analysed in Smalley, Beryl, ‘Wyclif’s Postilla on die Old Testament and his Principiam ’, in Oxford Studies Presented to Daniel Callus (OHS.ns. 16, 1064) pp. 253–96Google Scholar; idem, as cited in n. 5, above; and see especially Benrath, Gustav, Wyciifs Bibel-kommentar (Berlin 1966)Google Scholar; Thomson, The Latin Writings of John Wyclyf, pp. 192-215.

14 The chapter by Jeremy Catto.

15 Paris, BN MS fonds latins 15869 fols. 103r-108r.

16 See Trapp, Damasus, ‘Clm 27034. Unchristened Nominalism and Wycliffite Realism at Prague in 1381’, R.TAM 24 (1957) pp. 320–60.Google Scholar

17 (New York 1965).

18 Three vols, thus far printed: Oxford 1969,1977 and 1983.

19 Archives and Manuscript Repositories in the USSR. Moscow & Leningrad (Princeton 1972); idem, , Supplement 1: Bibliographical Addenda (Zug 1976)Google Scholar; idem, , Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belorussia (Princeton 1981)Google Scholar; vol. on Ukraine and Moldavia forthcoming. Some idea of the scope of Western MSS in the two biggest collections may be gleaned from Voronova, T. P., ‘Western MSS in the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, Leningrad,’ The Book Collector 5 (1956) pp. 12–18Google Scholar, and Zhitomirskaya, S. V., ‘Zapadnoye srednevekovye v rukopisyakh Gosudarstvennoy Biblioteka SSSR imyu V. I. Lenina’, Sredniye veka 10 (1957) pp. 285–305.Google Scholar