A catalogue of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries and selected Oxford colleges

Lincoln College MS. Lat. 95

Thomas Aquinas, Commentarius super primum librum Sententiarum; Italy (Rome), AD 1256 × 1281

Contents

Summary of Contents: A significant treasure of the Library, the unique copy of a work of St Thomas Aquinas long thought to have been only legendary. Thomas is said to have delivered his second set of lectures on the first book of the Sentences at the new Dominican studium provinciale of Santa Sabina in Rome, where he was lector between 1265 and 1268. In effect it was a studium personale since the curriculum was entirely entrusted to Thomas. This manuscript is the only known evidence for his teaching there. His Lectura romana is represented in the form of reportationes , in other words, as lecture notes taken down by a student in Aquinas’s very classroom.

Language(s): Latin

Fol. 1r.

Formerly pastedown, scholastic notes in four informal Italian hands of s. xiii/xiv, now faded and rather obscured by paste.

Fols. 1v–2v.

The notes that comprise item 2 begin here, on formerly blank flyleaves. They were written not long after the main text in an Italian hand that may belong to Frater Iacobus Raynucii, later bishop of Florence (see History). Additionally, at the top of fol. 2r is written ‘xlij s’ pro isto libro’, also Italian, the only visible part of a longer erased inscription which names two early owners (see History). And at the foot of fol. 2v, in a loose English Anglicana hand, is an ex dono inscription in favour of the College: ‘Liber Collegii lincoln’ in Oxon’ ex dono Magistri Willelmi chamberleyn primi Rectoris eiusdem Collegii Cuius anime propicietur deus \qui obiit/ anno domini 1433 in festo sanctarum Perpetue et Felicitatis’. This is struck through by another hand which writes below, ‘credo quod pertinet M’ Ricardo chester’. For William Chamberleyn and Richard Chester, see below under History.

1. (fols. 3ra–123va)
Incipit: (prologus Thome) EGo sapientia effudi flumina . ego | quasi trames trames aque | immense defluo ego quasi | fluuius dorix . et sicut aqueduc|tus exiui de paradiso. di|xi ego rigabo ortum plantationum . et inebriabo | partus mei fructum. eccli xxiiijo. (Ecclus 24:40). Inter multas sententias | que a diuersis de sapientia prodierunt . quid scilicet esset | uera sapientia unam singulariter ueram et firmam . apostolus | protulit
Explicit: . . . (5rb) . . . oportet argumen|tis uti . sicut etiam apostolus facit . ia. cor. xv. (1 Cor. 15:16) si Christus resurrexit . | ergo et mortui resurgent.
Incipit: (prologus Magistri) Huic operi magister prohemium premittit in quo tria facit | primo reddit auditorem beniuolum (sic)
Explicit: . . . (6ra) . . . Tertio ex ordinatione modi procedendi ibi . ut autem | quod queritur.
Incipit: (dist. 1, skipping art. 1–5 of proem) Veteris ac noue legis etc. Finito | proemio hoc est inicium presentis operis in quo magister | diuinorum nobis doctrinam tradere intendit quantum ad | inquisitionem ueritatis et destructionem erroris.
Explicit: (dist. 48, expl.) ubi et uerbum et res plene cognoscent. Cuius | cognitionis nos participes faciat ipsum uerbum dei filius qui | hanc cognitionem in nobis per fidem initiauit; cui est honor et | gloria per infinita secula seculorum. Amen.
Thomas Aquinas OP (c. 1225–1274), Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (book I)

Ed. P. Mandonnet & M. F. Moos, vol. 1 (Paris 1929); Stegmüller Sent. 846; Glorieux Rép. 14f. This is a copy of the first redaction. Aquinas wrote this first scriptum on the Sentences at the beginning of his career—as would be usual for a bachelor seeking to incept as master—in the Dominican studium in Paris, probably over the course of the years 1252 to 1256. This copy goes with extensive annotations (item 2) that represent his Lectura romana, a second set of lectures on the same book of the Sentences. At fol. 97v the beginning of d. 35 q. 1 pr. has been copied by one scribe without differentiation; it was marked for deletion, the following leaf cancelled, and the text continues without loss in a different hand on 98r.

2. (fols. 1va–2vb, 4r–54v, 67v–69v, 73v, 123va–125ra)
Incipit: (prol) Ego in altissimis habito et tronus meus in columpna nubis . eccli. xxiiij. (Ecclus 24:7). | Omnium hominum qui aliquas scientias tradiderunt intentio fuit ad duo . scilicet . ad de|monstrationem ueritatis . et ad aquisitionem beatitudinis . et ideo omnes scientie diuiduntur | in scientias speculatiuas et practicas . . . (2rb) . . .
Explicit: et tunc similiter propter illud periculum est odiosa illius ueritatis cognitio
Incipit: | ¶ Solutio argumentorum patet. ¶ D. prima (6v, dist. 1) ¶ Hic est duplex questio de duplici diuisione. Et primo de prima | secundo de secunda
Explicit: (73v, dist. 24, expl.) Quarto uitamus nomen quod tollit consociationem scilicet solitarium seu solitudinem | et predicamus consonantium . que est societas amoris qui est spiritus sanctus.
Thomas Aquinas, Lectura romana super primum librum Sententiarum (1265–6)

Comprising a prologue (fols. 2ra–b, 4ra–5vb), ninety-seven articles covering distinctions 1–17 (2va–b, 1va–2ra, 6v–54v) and 23 (67v–69v), and three short notes on distinctions 3 (124ra–125ra, 16v–17r) and 24 (73v). The text survives uniquely, and presumably only partially, in this copy, where it takes the form of reportationes placed in the margins near to relevant sections of the Paris scriptum. Tolomeo of Lucca, who had been Aquinas’s friend and confessor at Naples in 1272–3, stated that Thomas, ‘already a Master, wrote at the time he was in Rome on the first book of the Sentences’, and Tolomeo remembered once seeing a copy at his old home convent of Lucca. No such work had ever come to light to substantiate this claim until Fr Hyacinthe-François Dondaine OP, working for the Leonine Commission’s survey of Aquinas manuscripts, called attention to the marginal references to ‘alia lectura fratris Thome’ in our manuscript (for example, 2vb: ‘Isti articuli possunt poni in distinctione secunda primi libri secundum aliam lec(turam) fratris T(home)’). But he concluded that this phrase offered little evidence for the existence of the fabled second commentary: ‘il reste peu d’espoir de trouver appui dans le manuscrit d’Oxford pour l’hypothèse d’un second Commentaire du premier livre des Sentences’ (Dondaine, ‘Alia lectura fratris Thome?’, 335).

The identification of the lost lecture belongs to Fr Leonard Boyle OP (1923–1999), Prefect of the Vatican Library, who realized that Dondaine had erred in taking the phrase ‘secundum aliam lecturam’ to refer to the lost Roman commentary, when in fact it means the opposite: it is the way a student would have referred to the Paris commentary when taking notes from Thomas’s lectures in Rome. (See Boyle, ‘“Alia lectura fratris Thome”’.) Boyle’s elaborated thesis that our manuscript contains a reportatio of the long-lost Lectura romana has met with no challenge.

A listing of the ninety-seven articles was printed by Johnson, ‘“Alia lectura fratris thome”’, 41–60. A critical edition of the entire text has been published by Boyle & Boyle, Thomas Aquinas, Lectura romana (reprinting Father Boyle’s original article at pp. 58–69).

Fol. 125rb.

After the end of the annotated lectura in col. a, a coeval hand has copied a short alphabetical index rerum (A to Y) using two further columns.

Fols. 125v–126r
Rubric: Albertus in secundo suo de anima ¶ tractatu 3o. c. iiijo. ¶
Incipit: Dicimus igitur quod omne apprehendere est accipere
Explicit: representat speculum forma

Excerpts from the commentary of Albertus Magnus on Aristotle’s De anima: excerpts from Bk II tract. 3 c. 4, 7, 12, 14 (ed. C. Stroick, AMO, 7/1. 101–21). Written on long lines in a continental cursive of s. xiii/xiv.

Physical Description

Secundo Folio: secundum rationes
Form: codex
Support: Parchment, of middling quality: thin, flexible, somewhat cockled but with an even sit; it is ivory in colour, smooth and shiny on the flesh-side, yellower with follicles on the hair-side, sometimes quite dark. Arranged like to like, flesh-side outermost. There are flaws, not many, but a cluster in QQ6–7, 9. There are natural edges at fols. 14, 66, 68, 104; holes have been written around in 22, 34, 83 (large holes in the margins of 65, 70, 71, 107, 109, 115, very large in 122); there is a running cut to the foot of leaves 58–61; a slit has been sewn together at fol. 113; in Q7, leaves 3, 6 and 7, 10 are short at the foot.
Extent: 2 + 121 + 2; flyleaves are medieval parchment contemporary with the text-block, conjoint with pastedowns.
Dimensions (leaf): 280 × 200 mm.
Dimensions (written): 190–3 × 120–34 mm.
Foliation: 1–126, counting both pastedowns (the first only is lifted), in early twentieth-century Bodleian pencil.

Collation

i(2) (fols. 1–2) 1–7(12) (fols. 3–86) 8(12) (fols. 87–97, twelve cancelled, stub showing, no loss of text) 9(12) (fols. 98–109) 10(8) (fols. 110–116, eight cancelled, stub showing, no loss of text) 11(8) (117–124) ii(2) (fols. 125–126, two is pastedown). Catchwords were written by each scribe at the very bottom of the verso, leaving a large space below the end of the column for the addition of notes. The first scribe boxed his dicta probatoria and put them just to the left of the gutter rule. Hand A2 positioned his to the right of the central rule and added penwork filigrees at the corners and mid-points of his cartouche. Catchwords are missing at 62v, 86v, 109v. Quire signatures exist in two sets. The first is medieval and done in lead point, a rising roman numeral at the centre of the foot on rectos to the middle of the quire (seen most clearly in QQ7, 11). The second signature dates from the time of the Barnes rebinding and is familiar from other books in the library: an inked majuscule letter (here from the alphabet A–M) positioned under col. b on the opening recto of a quire and once (Q2) also on the final verso.

Layout

Ruled in lead point for two columns of 50 lines, with an intercolumnar space of 10 mm. Vertical rules are single and go to the edges with a central rule down the middle of the intercolumnar space. The first and last horizontal rules tend to run to the edges; other horizontals extend a little into the margins and cross between the columns. Written below top-line. Prickings are visible at the outer edge of the leaves in Q9 only.

Hand(s)

All the hands involved in the manuscript belong to the later thirteenth century, writing small, Italian cursive minuscules, much abbreviated. Boyle & Boyle dubbed the scribe of the Paris scriptum Hand A and the scribe of the reportatio Hand B. They named a further hand the Corrector. In fact, several men contributed to the main text. Preserving the current designation, we would identify Hand A1 (fols. 3ra–97vb), Hand A2 (98ra–116vb), and Hand A3 (117ra–123va). The first of these, who wrote most of the manuscript, is characterized by a leftwards lean and round, rather irregular forms; there are changes of ink and nib throughout his stint, but ductus and letter forms remain the same. Hand A2 is smaller, tighter and more consistent and, in spite of its tiny size, has more weight and definition. Hand A3 in aspect is something of a return to A1, but more upright and regular with different letter choices, notably a large, round s in terminal position rather than the leftwards leaning tall s found earlier.

Shortly after the manuscript was written, Hand B received it and added the reportatio in the wide margins at the outer edge and the foot. It is a small, thin glossing script in a light brown ink. It is clear that this scribe had the book first since all other corrections to the main text in other hands are subsequent, having to be fitted around Hand B’s work; only scribal self-correction of the main text ever stands in the way of Hand B. There is a strong argument for identifying this scribe as Iacobus Raynucii OP, who died in 1286 as bishop of Florence. He was an early owner of the manuscript and may have been one of Thomas’s students at Santa Sabina (see History). Johnson, ‘“Alia lectura fratris thome”’, 61, found a similarity between this hand and one in BAV MS Vat. lat. 781, a scribe who took over from one of Aquinas’s habitual secretaries, thereby raising the possibility that our scribe was likewise a member of Thomas’s retinue. (This specimen is illustrated by A. Dondaine, Secrétaires de saint Thomas, 2 vols in 1 (Rome 1956), pl. 18, dubbed Hand o.) While undoubtedly similar in aspect, the two hands are not the same, as is revealed by the many differences in duct and handling as well as individual letter forms (the g, for example, is very distinctive to each hand).

Decoration

The major initial E is historiated with the Dominican author, seated, his right hand raised in a teaching posture and his left hand behind a book open in his lap. His hood half covers his tonsure. The initial is plain blue with white modelling, foliated in orange at the upper and lower terminals, and is boxed on a pale rose ground. Two nicely drawn wyverns hang from the inner corner and descend the length of the column. The upper wyvern is more finely detailed, with an expression of hungry mischief, and is coloured blue with rose breast and legs and red wings, all modelled in white; the lower wyvern, who is held around the head by the first’s tail, has a rose-coloured body and blue wings.

There is much use of blue and red on all pages. Initials stand in the margins (the scribe’s guide letters remain visible) and are three-line lombards in one of the two colours with penwork flourishing in the other.

There are many paraphs in the same two colours, the horizontal element extended over neighbouring words, and the same artist was responsible for the running headings that cross the opening and label the distinction, in the form ‘¶ D’ | III’. This is all Italian work.

Additions:

The principal annotator is of course Hand B, the scribe of the Lectura romana given in the margins (discussed above under Script). There are other annotations in different hands, all broadly contemporary, which mostly make small corrections to the text. These are all later than Hand B for they are accommodated in spare space. An interesting note, in a hand that might just be English, is found at the foot of 81v. It connects with a sign like a simplified paraph of pilcrow type to words in d. 27 q. 2 a. 2 (‘Et idea dicendum est cum aliis quod hoc nomen uerbum ex uirtute uocabuli potest et personaliter et essentialiter accipi’): ‘Communitas parisiensis modo tenet quod uerbum tantum personaliter dicatur et quod etiam frater Th’ modo in hoc consentit non quod distinctio hic posita sit erronea . sed quia sancti communiter non utuntur hoc nomine nisi personaliter.’ The reference to ‘communitas Parisiensis’, as Fr Boyle suggests, probably refers to the general body of theological opinion in Paris. It is interesting that the annotator should have had knowledge that Thomas had come to accept the general opinion, while being reluctant to accept that his position a decade or so earlier was erroneous. There is a manicule at the edge of fol. 15r emphasizing the words copied below it, ‘uoluntas est vniuersalis motor v⟨irium⟩; this against d. 3 q. 3 pr. A head in profile is found at the edge of fol. 79r and seems to be a doodle rather than a pointing device; likewise, at the foot of 64r is a faint drawing in plummet of three heart-shaped vines placed in an upright arrangement each with interior foliate terminals.

Binding

By Roger Barnes of Oxford, an early seventeenth-century binding of reverse calf over pulpboard. Decoration on both boards is restricted to a rectilinear pattern of intersecting lines. Three-line blind fillets to the edges crossing unmitred at the corners, repeated inset at 45 mm to produce a pattern of panels, a rough square at each corner and a central panel, unembellished. Sewn on four double thongs of tanned leather, raised at the spine. Endbands of white thread are non-structural. Paired fore-edge ties of green cord are cut away flush to the boards. Fore-edges are sprinkled red. Marks of the usual college chain clip are at the fore-edge of the back board towards the foot, with verdigris inside. The joint has split entirely on the top board and is half split on the lower; but the condition otherwise is very good. Flyleaves of tough medieval parchment, contemporary with the text-block: the front pastedown is lifted; the rear pastedown is partly loose at the top corner and has been cut away at the bottom corner where the brass chain-clip was. Wormholes relating to an earlier binding extend through the first sixteen leaves and the last seven.

History

Origin: 1256 × 1281 ; Italy (Rome)

Provenance and Acquisition

The earliest date for the manuscript’s creation would be around 1256, when Aquinas is judged to have completed his first scriptum on the Sentences in Paris. The added Lectura romana dates from 1265–6, the year he began his lectorship at Santa Sabina in Rome with his exposition of the first book of the Sentences before embarking thereafter upon the Prima Pars of his Summa theologica. This copy could have been added to the book at any point thereafter from notes, but this must have happened before the early 1280s, for a terminus is provided by the career of Frater Iacobus Raynucii. He is referred to in an erased note at the top of 2r (partially read by Fr Dondaine under ultra-violet light and completed by Fr Boyle, his uncertain readings in angle brackets): ‘Frater lacobbus Ray. perusinus debet recipere de fratre ⟨Nicola de Mediolano⟩ .xlij. sol. pro isto libro. Et pro predicta pecunia predictus frater ⟨Nicola promisit⟩ (illegible)’. The vendor was almost certainly Iacobus de Raynucii, a Dominican of the Roman province who was elected bishop of Florence in 1286 short months before his death. When raised to the bishop’s bench, he was prior of Santa Sabina. He had been appointed preacher general of the order in 1281. This note describes him only as frater, referring to him neither as bishop nor preacher general, so presumably dates before 1281. Earlier than that, he had been appointed lector at Città di Castello in 1273; if that had been his first appointment as lecturer it would not be unreasonable to place him in 1265–6 as a student of Thomas’s at Santa Sabina. The reportatio which he copied into the manuscript would therefore be his own (Boyle & Boyle, 3–5, 67–8).

The name of the second man mentioned in the inscription is repeated at the foot of fol. 81v, where Fr Dondaine read ‘fratris nicholutii’. Nicholas of Milan (fl. 1273–93) was a Dominican friar serving the Congregation of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Imola in northern Italy. He has been identified as a plausible candidate for author of the anonymous Speculum humanae saluationis, a widely read work expressing a deep interest in Aquinas’s theology (see Vrudny, Friars, Scribes, and Corpses, 22–8). Nicholas was a lector by around 1273 but in 1283 he gave up teaching and devoted himself to preaching, which would mean that he bought this manuscript before 1283 and perhaps in or after 1281, if Iacobus sold it after his appointment as prior at Santa Sabina, having given up teaching. It is the case that Iacobus and Nicholas both became lectors at the same time and either could have been Scribe B, eager to transcribe his reportatio into this copy of the Paris scriptum, which had probably been acquired for that very purpose. But it is reasonable to favour Iacobus as the hand of the reportatio , since that text was added at a very early point, before any other note or correction was made beyond self-corrections by the scribes of the main text.

Two English owners are named in the inscription on fol. 2v (see above): William Chamberleyn, who reportedly gave the book to the College, and Richard Chester, whom a second scribe thought the book actually belonged to. He is also named at fols. 5r (‘liber M’ Ric’ Chester’) and fol. 97v (‘Constat Ric’ Ch’) and his monogram ‘TC’ appears at the foot of 112r. Richard Chester (d. before 1464) was fellow of Merton College in 1415, still in 1419, BTh by 1430 and DTh by 1433. He went on to amass a considerable preferment, which included canonries of Dublin, Hereford, and St Paul’s, London, as well as a couple of rectories in Lincolnshire; Bishop Fleming licensed him to preach in the diocese of Lincoln in 1421. He was present at the Council of Basel in 1433 in the entourage of Robert Fitzhugh, bishop of London. He was king’s clerk in 1442, when granted a stipend of 12 d a day for ten years for good service to the king at the Roman curia and about the king’s person, and is reported as chaplain to the king in 1444 and 1447. (Emden summarized Chester’s career in BRUO 407–8.) Much less is known about William Chamberleyn, and there is nothing to say that he ever travelled. He was the first rector of Lincoln College, nominated by the Founder, 19 December 1429 (BRUO 386). He died, as per the inscription here, on the feast day of Sts Felicity and Perpetua in 1433, which is 7 March 1433/4. He is known as the donor of two other books: Lat. 12 and 36. The priority in the ownership of this manuscript is difficult to establish. Chamberleyn had better links to the College but Chester, the younger man, seems to have had it after Chamberleyn. He also had better opportunities to acquire the book, during continental travel and missions to Rome, were the book then still in Italy. Alternatively, it is possible that it had been brought to Oxford from Italy by a friar and escaped there on to the second-hand market, to be acquired by Chamberleyn. Had Chester acquired it at Basel in 1433 he could hardly have had time to give it to Chamberleyn before the latter’s death in the spring of 1434. And yet it is Chamberleyn’s name which is struck through in the ex dono and Chester’s which is inserted with the comment ‘credo quod pertinet’. One way to read that would be that the manuscript had been left by Chamberleyn to the College with a lifetime’s reversion to Chester. In 1474, a decade or more after Chester’s own death, it was reported in the inventory of the College library as his gift, at which time it was kept chained to the second desk on the north side of the room: ‘Item sanctus Thomas super primum librum Sentenciarum ex dono magistri Ricardi Chester 2o fo. secundum raciones’ (UO38. 124).

The College’s medieval ex dono is at the foot of fol. 2v (see above). No visible James number. In the top corner of the first page of the text proper, in brown ink of s. xvii, is the College press-mark ‘E. 47. 5’, offset on the facing verso. The College bookplate of 1703 is affixed in normal position at the centre of the front board, which shows that the pastedown had been lifted before this time. Below this the Victorian pencil mark reads ‘Linc 95 C.28’. The Bodleian shelf-mark is pencilled below: ‘MS. Linc. Coll. (d) Lat. 95’. On the spine, square paper labels: in the top compartment, an arabic numeral 28 on the small, printed label; in the fourth compartment the larger, blue-bordered label is almost entirely rubbed away, as is the pale blue Bodleian label at the foot with printed shelf-mark, ‘MS. Linc. Coll. Lat. 95’. The fore-edge label is present but rubbed, reading ‘⟨.⟩2’.

Booklists: Vetus Registrum, fol. 17r; James, Ecloga, no. 32.

Record Sources

Description by James Willougby, 2024.

Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)

Bibliography

    H. O. Coxe, Catalogus codicum mss. qui in collegiis aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur (Oxford, 1852) I [individual sections separately paginated], Lincoln College, pp. 45-46 (open access at HathiTrust Digital Library)
    H.-F. Dondaine & H. V. Shooner, Codices manuscripti operum Thomae de Aquino, 3 (Rome 1985), no. 2117
    H.-F. Dondaine, ‘Alia lectura fratris Thome? (Super 1 Sent.)’, Mediaeval Studies 42 (1980) 308–36
    L. E. Boyle, ‘“Alia lectura fratris Thome”’, Mediaeval Studies 45 (1983) 418–29
    M. F. Johnson, ‘“Alia lectura fratris thome”: a list of the new texts of St Thomas Aquinas found in Lincoln College, Oxford, MS. Lat. 95’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 57 (1990), 34–61
    L. E. Boyle & J. F. Boyle, Thomas Aquinas, Lectura romana in primum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi (Toronto 2006)
    J. F. Boyle, ‘Thomas Aquinas and his Lectura romana in primum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi’, in Mediaeval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Volume 2, ed. P. W. Rosemann (Leiden/Boston, 2010), 149–73
    K. J. Vrudny, Friars, Scribes, and Corpses: A Marian Confraternal Reading of The Mirror of Human Salvation (Speculum humanae salvationis) (Paris/Leuven 2010), 22–8.

Last Substantive Revision

2024-06: New description: James Willoughby.