Remigio, Auriol, Scotus, and the Myth of the Two-Year Sentences Lecture at Paris (original) (raw)

2017, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales

William Duba and Chris Schabel, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 84:1 (2017), 143-179 In his sermo finalis on the Sentences, Remigio de’ Girolami OP introduced the next bachelor to read the Sentences, Bernard of Auvergne. This detail allows us to date Remigio’s lectures on Peter Lombard’s Sentences at Paris to the year 1297-98 and to confirm that he read the four books in the order I-IV-II-III. It also indicates that, by that time, bachelors at Paris read the Sentences over the course of a single academic year, thereby falsifying the myth that, until around 1318, their lectures took two years. Thus Peter Auriol OFM read the Sentences in the order I-IV-II-III at Paris in the academic year 1317-18, not in 1316-18, and John Duns Scotus lectured in the sequence I-IV-II-III in 1302-03, stopping midway through book III when he refused to adhere to the king of France’s appeal against Boniface VIII. These findings raise the question whether a two-year lecture cycle was ever the rule. When compared against what we know about Sentences lectures, even the case for Thomas Aquinas teaching the Sentences across two years is, in its current state, unconvincing. (The article can be had from http://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=article&id=3212078&journal\_code=RTPM or an offprint may be requested from the author)