Albert of Saxony, Sophismata. Critical Edition

Albert of Saxony lived from around 1320 to 1390 and was a renowned philosopher at the universities of Paris (1351-1362) and Vienna (1363/64-1366), before he became bishop of his home diocese Halberstadt (1366-1390). His philosophical and scientific writings were widespread and influential still in the early modern period, as is shown by their tradition in some 300 manuscripts and some 50 early prints. Most of the more important of these writings are accessible now in modern editions, but a few still are unedited. The most urgent desideratum in this respect is certainly Albert`s collection of at least 250 sophisms, simply entitled Sophismata. The work was composed at Paris in the 1350ies and is extant in more than 20 manuscripts, four incunabula, and an early print. The latter, Paris 1502, octavo, comprises 92 folios with four columns each. Albert`s Sophismata are divided into four parts: The first one deals with problems concerning affirmative logical constants (syncategoremata), the second one deals with problems concerning negations, the third one deals with problems concerning grammatical tenses and modal expressions determining the verb, the fourth one deals with problems concerning modal expressions determining the whole sentence. The by far largest part is the second one, comprising some 145 sophisms; the by far smallest part is the last one, comprising no more than seven sophisms. As was the case until recently with Albert`s Logica, the large extent of the Sophismata and large numbers of manuscript witnesses of the work proved to be obstacles for the undertaking of a critical edition according to nowadays standards. This project aims at a critical edition as a reliable basis for future research and will comprise the following steps: Collection of reproductions of the 21 known complete and larger incomplete manuscripts. Selection of (say, some five) manuscripts according to the usual criteria (completeness, physical quality, textual quality). Transcription of a basic manuscript (to be determined at the first step) and collation of it with the other selected manuscripts. This procedure will yield a wealth of textual variants which will be documented in a critical apparatus. An introduction to the edition will give the essential information regarding the author, his work, and its tradition and will explain the main theoretical and doctrinal contents of the work.

The projects aim was to establish a critical edition of Albert of Saxonys Sophismata, a latin scholastic logical treatise, written around 1360 in Paris. The author presents and solves a lot of logical and semantical problems arising from certain parts of propositions, such as from the word all in All apostles are twelve, or from the word not in Yourre not able to truly deny that youre not an ass. The treatise was famous enough to be edited in print five times at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century. These editions, however, present a very poor text full of mistakes and editorial interventions. So the history of late medieval logic, and especially of the sophismata genre, will gain some additional clarity from the critical edition of the Sophismata Alberti. This task has now been achieved for parts I, III and IV of the treatise. Due to unexpected difficulties, part II has remained unfinished; it will be edited and the whole edition thereby completed in a follow-up project in 2016.There are known to exist 28 manuscripts of the work (including fragments, even very small ones), 26 of which have been accessible to the editor. The manuscripts and early editions have been grouped in several traditions, or families, as well as judged according to their textual quality. One manuscript was chosen as the best with regards to the number and severity of manifest errors; however, even this text had to be corrected in many ways, and it raised doubts whether it is closest in style to Alberts original work. In many cases, the apparently correct variant was found only in one or a few manuscripts that otherwise had been classified as bad copies, not being worth to be compared throughout with the others. To be able to profit from these dispersed treasures, the editor decided to collect the variants of only four manuscripts in the apparatus criticus from the beginning to the end of the whole text, so that there was room enough for additions from other testimonies occasionally, where it seemed to be useful.In addition to the critical text, the editor also provided a classification of several commentaries on Alberts Sophismata, written at universities (mainly in Prague and Erfurt) during a period of approximately 150 years after Albert had finished his work.