The Manuscript Tradition of Bradwardine´s `De causa Dei´

Thomas Bradwardine (ca. 1290-1349) was an outstanding theologian, Oxford Calculator, and archbishop of Canterbury whose major theological writing, De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum (1344) , exerted significant influence. In this work, Bradwardine reacted to contemporaneous problems of freedom and necessity and shaped central notions around them. De causa Dei remains accessible in approximately 50 manuscripts spread over Europe and in a printed edition dated 1618. Bradwardine`s ideas reached Central Europe soon after their publication. Evidence suggests that they circulated at the young university of Vienna. The early existence of the University of Vienna is a remarkably innovative period, several aspects of which are still to be explored. Moreover, the city stands out as possessing a remarkable collection of De causa Dei-manuscripts in the National Library, Dominikanerkloster, Schottenkloster, and in Klosterneuberg. Eleven manuscripts contain De causa Dei, and several unique adaptations, including abbreviations and extracts from De causa Dei as well as exemplars of Bradwardine`s scientific writings, are to be found in Vienna`s libraries. The reception of Bradwardine in Vienna appears therefore as a rich, but as yet unexplored field. This project aims at describing the manuscripts related to De causa Dei in the context of the Viennese textual and intellectual tradition and at establishing a reception-specific critical edition. This philological work has not yet been attempted, despite the ever-growing need for a manuscript-survey and critical edition of Bradwardine`s De causa Dei. The writings issued from De causa Dei - the abbreviations and extracts - also need to be described and analyzed in order to both clarify and complete the confused lists of manuscripts we possess, and to place them in the context of the related history of the University of Vienna and of the philosophy in Vienna of the 14th-15th centuries.

The FWF project M1304-G19 examined the manuscripts extant in Europe, and especially in Austria, of one of the key works of fourteenth-century Oxford theology, the treatise De causa Dei by Thomas Bradwardine. De causa Dei is extant in 53 manuscripts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In this project, I have studied the properties of each single manuscript, as well as the connections between them, in order to both delineate the transmission and to set scales to a new, critical edition of the work. In addition to an up-to-date list of the extant De causa Dei manuscripts, three groups could be distinguished within the entire tradition and the single manuscripts accurately assigned to them: (1) manuscripts with the exhaustive version of the work; (2) manuscripts with a shortened version; (3) manuscripts with parts from De causa Dei. Group (1) includes all the manuscripts which can be relevant for the critical edition of the work. Groups (2) and (3) are pertinent especially to the understanding of the German-Austrian history of the Bradwardine reception. The European reception history has outlined the transmission of the work from England to France and subsequently to Italy, Germany and Central Europe. The role of the universities of Oxford, Paris, and Vienna, the different religious orders, and some individuals in the transmission could be identified. The interaction of the academic and religious milieus was especially fruitful in Austria. The early reaction to the work before the foundation of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Vienna in 1384 is a further relevant discovery concerning the reception of De causa Dei in Austria. The material collected for this project has contributed (1) to the systematic study of the manuscripts of De causa Dei through the integral collection of copies now available at the Library of the IÖG; (2) to the completion and correction of intellectual and academic history through conclusions drawn from the history of transmission; (3) to the new, critical edition of the work through the collations made from each manuscript.