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Home , Paul of Venice

INTRODUCTION

1. Paul of ’s Intellectual Profile

Paul of Venice’s name is mainly spoken of in connection with his  ne log- ical works, the Logica Parva, the Logica Magna and the aurea. Paul, however, was one of the leading of his time and his con- tributions cover a vast area of discourse, including , psychology, and theory of knowledge. He also took a strong interest in Aris- totle’s philosophy and his commentaries may in a sense be regarded as the point of arrival of a long tradition of understanding and interpretation of ’s texts. We have rather scanty information about the details of Paul’s life. Also the dates of some of his major works are still uncertain.1 Paolo Nicoletti was born in , a town in the north-eastern part of Italy, in 1369. When he was fourteen he joined the Augustinian Order and entered the convent of Santo Stefano in Venice. He completed his literary and theological education in the general studium of the order in , a sort of excellence school for the most gifted pupils of the province. In the summer of 1390 Paul was sent to Oxford, where he remained for three years. The Oxford years were bound to have a lasting efect on Paul’s philosophical inclinations. It is in Oxford that he became acquainted with the works of the English reformer John Wyclif and with those of his immediate followers, and so chose the defence of ontological realism as one of the leading motives of his philosophical career. It is also in Oxford that Paul developed his strong interest in , which marked the  rst steps of his activity as a philosophical writer and remained constant throughout his life. Paul was back in Padua by 1395, where he became  rst Bachelor (1395– 1405/6) and then Master of Arts and Theology. His success and fame as a brilliant and teacher were also accompanied by an equally prestigious career within the order. He was nominated Provincial of the order in 1409 and took an active part both in the promotion of the and in the religious and political life of the .

1 For Paul of Venice’s life and works see: Momigliano (1907); Perreiah (1982); Bottin (1983). My brief presentation here is mainly based on the excellent state-of-the-art in Conti (1996). 2 introduction

The last years of Paul’s life were darkened by a series of conicts with the Republic, which culminated in his con nement to Ravenna in 1420. Paul’s political misfortunes did not overshadow his glory as an acclaimed philosopher. In the years 1420–1424 Paul stayed in Siena at the local convent of the Eremitans and was also allowed to teach at the University. He was also in Bologne, and Perugia, where he spent the most part of the years 1424–1428. In consideration of his severe health conditions, the Republic of Venice allowed Paul to go back to Padua in the summer of 1428. It is in Padua that Paul now rests, in the sagresty of the church of his order. We have fairly secure information about the dates of his major logical works. The Logica parva, Paul’s most fortunate work, was drafted for the most part in Oxford (1393–1395). The Logica Magna (1396–1399) and the Sophismata aurea (1399), instead, dates back to Paul’s teaching as a Bach- elor in Padua. No such certainty can be reached, however, with regards to his philosophical commentaries. Paul’s activity as a philosophical commen- tator was intense and spanned more than two decades. He also explored diferent literary genres of commentary. He composed, for instance, a series of Conclusiones on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Ethics and Politics, which should probably be dated back to the last years of his teaching as a Bach- elor (1403–1405). The Conclusiones are a rather peculiar genre of literary work, where the text which is being commented upon is reduced to a series of philosophical conclusions and any literal exposition is suppressed. Although Paul’s literal expositions are large and all but synthetic, there are still some signi cant connections between the Conclusiones and his most traditional commentaries. For Paul’s expositions are also in a sense domi- nated by the desire to put Aristotle’s text into logical form and so to reduce it to a series of arguments and philosophical conclusions. There are in fact two philosophical commentaries of which we know the date with certainty: the gigantic commentary on the Physics, which Paul completed in 1409, and the commentary on ’s Isagoge and on the ArsVetus, which was  nished in Perugia in 1428. We also know for certain the date of the composition of another related work, the Summa philosophiae naturalis, a synthetic expo- sition in six parts of diferent sectors of Aristotle’s philosophy. An early date (before 1407 and around 1406) suggests itself for the commentary on the Pos- terior Analytics, while the remaining Aristotelian commentaries belong to Paul’s maturity. The commentary on the De Anima is best assigned to the years 1415–1420, while the huge commentary on the was drafted between 1420 and 1424. Another important work by Paul also belongs to the same period as the Expositio Metaphisicorum, i.e. the Quaestio de universa- libus, the mature fruit of his ontological realism.