NOMINALISM IN COLOGNE: THE STUDENT NOTEBOOK OF THE DOMINICAN SERVATIUS FANCKEL WITH AN EDITION OF A DISPUTATIO VACANTIALIS HELD ON JULY 14, 1480 “UTRUM IN DEO UNO SIMPLICISSIMO SIT TRIUM PERSONARUM REALIS DISTINCTIO”

Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen

1.1 Student Notebooks

As is apparent from the statutes of the universities and the study pro- grams of the religious orders, disputations played a crucial role in the academic life of the late-medieval and early modern period. Some dis- putations took place on a daily basis in the diff erent colleges or bursae attached to the university (disputationes nocturnae), others weekly during the summer recess from academic courses (disputationes vacan- tiales). Also, disputations were held at special academic occasions, for example when the bachelor opened his lectures on Peter Lombard’s Sentences (principia), when he applied for his license (disputatio de forma) or when the licentiate acquired his doctor’s degree (vesperiae and aulae).1

1 Particularly instructive here are the statutes of the arts faculty and the theological faculty of the University of Cologne, which provide many details on the diff erent kinds of disputations. See Franz J. von Bianco, Die alte Universität Köln und die spätern Gelehrten-Schulen dieser Stadt, vol. 1/1: Die alte Universität Köln (Cologne, 1856), Appendices, pp. 34–50 (Th eological Faculty), and pp. 59–73 (Arts Faculty); and Franz Gescher, “Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät an der alten Universität Köln,” in Festschrift zur Erinnerung an die Gründung der alten Universität Köln im Jahre 1388 (Cologne, 1938), pp. 43–108. As for the religious orders, the importance of the dispu- tation is underscored by the rules issued at the Dominican General Chapter held in Rome 1501, in: Acta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum IV: 1501–1553, ed. Benedictus M. Reichert, Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica 9 (Rome, 1901), pp. 4–17, esp. p. 15: “(…) nullus de cetero promoveatur ad baccalau- reatum seu ad legendum sentencias pro forma et gradu magisterii, nisi in aliquo studio generali per tres annos studuerit et in disputacionibus et circulorum frequencia exer- citatus fuerit (…).” For further information, with extensive bibliographical references, see Mariken Teeuwen, Th e Vocabulary of Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages, Études sur le vocabulaire intellectuel du moyen âge 10 (Turnhout, 2003), p. 440 (index II s.v. “Disputatio”-“Disputationes Sorbonicae”). 86 maarten j.f.m. hoenen

Each of these disputations had its own participants and public audi- ence. Th e principia were each scheduled on a single day, the one aft er the other, with no other classes or academic obligations, so that all members of the faculty could attend. Also the disputationes vacantiales, the aulae and the vesperiae were open to a wide academic public, unlike the disputationes nocturnae, which as a rule took place only within the limited circle of the inhabitants of a college or bursa.2 Students had to attend these disputations and maintained notes on how oft en they visited each kind of disputation, to comply with the conditions for earning their degrees. Several early printed editions sur- vived with hand written notes on their pages, distinguishing the diff er- ent disputations and indicating with vertical bars the total number of visits for each disputation.3 Other students kept special notebooks in which they recorded the arguments put forward during the diff erent disputations—sometimes over a period of many years covering their career from student to master—presumably to have a stock of argu- ments which would assist them in preparing for the disputations in which they had to act as an opponent or respondent.4

2 See the sources mentioned in the preceding footnote. For information about the daily practiced disputatio nocturna, see, for example, Th e Mediaeval Statutes of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, eds. Hugo Ott and John M. Fletcher, Texts and Studies in the History of Mediaeval Education 10 (Notre Dame, 1964), p. 119, n. 48: “Statuit arcium facultas atque ordinavit ut quilibet conventorum in qualibet via per diem habeat unam disputationem pro omnibus suppositis, baccalau- reis et scolaribus, per integram horam durantem (…).” 3 A good example is an edition of the Expositio Petri Tartareti super textu logices Aristotelis, printed in Lyon by Claude Davost shortly aft er 1500, and preserved in the University Library of Freiburg. Th e top of the title page reads: “Complevi disputationes magistrorum 14, baccalaurii 15, bursales 5.” Th e fi rst two numbers are represented by vertical bars, whereas the last is written as “iiiii.” 4 Th at producing arguments was diffi cult for young students who had to act as opponent is documented in the preface of the Promptuarium argumentorum, written to help the students preparing for disputations and printed several times in Cologne. Here the anonymous author explains that he has published the treatise because the students were not able to make up the arguments themselves and therefore needed a booklet that provided them. See Promptuarium argumentorum, Cologne 1496, fol. Aiiv: “(…) libellus (…) ad novellorum scholarium in logicis exercitium collectus, quo- rum saepius audivi lachromosas petitiones pro argumentis ut opponendi tempore sat- isfacerent magistrorum praeceptis.” For further information on this treatise (oft en wrongly attributed to Heymericus de Campo on the authority of Martin Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben. Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Scholastik und Mystik, 3 vols. (München, 1926–1956), 2:382, who provides no proof however), see my “Late Medieval Schools of Th ought in the Mirror of University Textbooks. eTh Promptua- rium Argumentorum (Cologne 1492),” in Philosophy and Learning. Universities in the Middle Ages, eds. Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, J.H. Josef Schneider and Georg Wieland,