178 Petrus Martyr Vermigli This Volume Is a Fine Critical Edition of Pietro Martire Vermigli's

178 Book Reviews Petrus Martyr Vermigli Kommentar zur Nikomachischen Ethik des Aristoteles, ed. Luca Baschera and Christian Moser (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, vol. 158). Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011. viii, 689 pp. ISBN 9789004218734. This volume is a fine critical edition of Pietro Martire Vermigli’s (1499-1562) relatively unexplored but rich commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. When Vermigli lectured on the Nicomachean Ethics during his second professorship at Strasbourg 1553-1556, he most likely continued the practice he had learnt at the University of Padua, which in the first half of the sixteenth century had distinguished itself by installing an ordinary professorship in moral philosophy devoted to the exposition of the Nicomachean Ethics. Vermigli comments on his own Latin translation of (most likely) Erasmus’s Greek edition. He follows the mediaeval tradition of both literal comments and topical digressions, but his analysis of Greek terminology and grammar as well as the generous use of classical and patristic sources shows his debt to his Renaissance context. The style of his Latin is classical, fused with mediaeval philosophical terminology. On the surface the commentary of Eustratios appears to be more important than those of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and Jacques-Louis d’Estrebay. Each section usually begins with a statement of the subject or even a summarizing syllogism and Vermigli then argues for the major and minor premises in the commentary. Many of the subsections end with digressions on difficulties and problems. Although Vermigli does not con- form to the fixed scholastic genres of quaestio, dubia and solutio, he uses them informally. He regularly ends sections with a comparison of the teaching of Aristotle and Scripture. Although he lectured every other week for 2 1/2 years, his lectures end in book 3, chapter 2, of the Nicomachean Ethics, and the post- humously printed commentary runs to 600 pages in this edition. Formerly, one of the primary aims of critical editions was to make texts available. Yet with the Internet, access to original editions is perhaps greater than to critical ones (unless of course the critical editions themselves are available on the Internet). Since all three sixteenth-century editions of Vermigli’s commentary are readily at hand at, for example, the Post-Reformation Digital Library (www.prdl.org), a new edition needs to provide more than accessibil- ity. This critical edition basically corrects the first posthumous edition of 1563 (since the second and third edition of 1582 and 1598 contained no significant changes) and alters the spelling and punctuation to contemporary conven- tions. This makes for easier and nicer reading. The editors supply an introduction that is strangely brief on the historical background. The importance of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Eustratios is formulated in general terms, but there is no analysis of the questions by whom or in what way © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��4 | doi �0.��63/�5685349-��34��63 Book Reviews 179 Vermigli was influenced and in what way his commentary is distinctive and original. In particular one would have expected that something would be said about Vermigli’s training in ethics at the University of Padua. The edition is equipped with three apparatus containing textual remarks, passages from Ingram Bywater’s Greek edition and Robert Grosseteste’s Latin translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and explicative footnotes. Textual criticism mainly concerns abbreviations and misprints. No reason is given for using Bywater’s nineteenth-century edition rather than Erasmus’s fifteenth- century edition that Vermigli commented on. Many of the explicative footnotes are devoted to brief biographies of ancient and medieval authors. In addition, these footnotes supply not only sources that Vermigli refers to, but also sources that he may or may not allude to, and thus involve many conjectures. It is not possible to evaluate all 1919 explicative footnotes of this edition, but let me take an example found both in the introduction and in the footnotes that should make us cautious. According to Baschera and Moser, Vermigli “tends to a more nominalistic view of the natural process of knowledge, pre- sumably influenced by Gregory of Rimini, in that he identifies the singular as the first object of knowledge” (p. 17; similarly p. 158 n. 477). Although it is commonly acknowledged that the label “nominalism” is confusing generally, and particularly so as applied to Gregory, it is clear that it does not mean a view according to which singulars are the first object of knowledge. This is because everyone agreed that singulars and not universals are the first object of human knowledge. Even in Plato’s Phaedo, anamnesis is caused by particu- lars (73c-75c). This misuse of “nominalism” is based on a misinterpretation of Aquinas’s statement in Summa theologiae I.85.3 (as taken by Baschera and Moser to be representative of the opposite view): “knowledge of the more general [com- munis] is prior to the less general.” However, in this context Aquinas uses “the more general” for “incomplete,” “indistinct” and “confused” knowledge of a singular, and “the less general” for “complete,” “distinct,” “determinate” and “per- fect” knowledge of the same material thing. Moreover, both in this quaestio and in the previous one, Aquinas explicitly states that knowledge of singulars is prior to knowledge of universals. Even in Baschera’s and Moser’s quotation from Gregory of Rimini, the latter is simply defending the priority of the imper- fect and weak knowledge of the singular (p. 158 n. 477). So, Thomas Aquinas and Gregory of Rimini do in fact agree that the singular is the first object of human knowledge. (Another misinterpretation of Aquinas is found on p. 223 n. 749.) Perhaps Baschera and Moser are on safer ground with reference to Vermigli. If Vermigli were influenced by Gregory’s epistemology, one would expect to discover in the former the latter’s central distinction between intuitive and Vivarium 52 (2014) 173-186.

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