The title of William Duba's masterful volume does not do justice to the content of the work. This microhistory of a year in the life of the faculty of theology at the University of Paris expands our knowledge of a wide range of topics that should be of interest to those studying the intellectual history of the early fourteenth century, the educational program of the Franciscan Order, and the University of Paris.
Guillelmus de Brena, or Brienne, was first noted in the Chatularium Universitatis Parisiensis (H. Denifle and E. Chatelain eds., vol. 2 [Delalain, 1891], no. 914), as a Franciscan bachelor of theology promoted to the doctorate at Paris by mandate of Pope John XXII, but it was Victorin Doucet, in Commentaires sur les Sentences, who linked Brena's name to a 1330 Parisian reportatio of lectures on Peter Lombard's Sentences found in the library of the University of Prague (now the National Library of the Czech Republic), Ms. VIII.F.14 and dated 1330 ([Collegium Sancti Bonaventurae, 1954] 37–38). Discussed subsequently by Katherine H. Tachau and Chris Schabel, Duba's work is the first full study of Brienne and his questions on the Sentences. Although admittedly a minor figure in fourteenth-century intellectual history, Brienne's work is of considerable significance. It is “the oldest surviving complete original [of a reportatio] known to us” (15), and it is the earliest reportatio on paper (238). It is a window into a classroom at the University of Paris that would otherwise be inaccessible to us.
After an introduction to Brienne, an “eminently obscure Franciscan theologian” (2), the first chapter is a thorough examination of the Prague manuscript. The list of lectures and questions is provided toward the end of the book in Appendix A. Chapter 2 discusses how bachelors lectured on the Sentences in the 1320s and 1330s, with particular attention to the principial debates and the questions disputed among the bachelors at the beginning of their lectures on each of the four books. Duba's remarks on the circulation of written texts of their questions, their replicationes, and their responsiones to the arguments of other bachelors is particularly informative. Chapter three examines Brienne's own principial questions, with particular attention to his Dominican socius, Durand of Aurillac. Chapter 4 then moves on to the questions in Brienne's lectures themselves.
Chapter 5 locates Brienne as a defender of Scotism. Duba uses three sections of the reportatio to explore Brienne's faithfulness to Scotus in light of earlier Franciscans, especially Peter Auriol, Francis of Marchia, and Francis of Meyronnes. Except on a few points, Brienne shows himself to be a close follower of Scotus, using the latter's Oxford Ordinatio as his guide and countering some of Auriol's and Meyronnes's departures from the Subtle Doctor. Chapter 6 examines Brienne's sermon at the time of his inception as a master of theology in 1331 and his participation in the royal convocation at Vincennes in 1334 on the Beatific Vision.
In his concluding chapter, Duba summarizes his major discoveries, noting the importance of Brienne's principia to revealing the opinions of his fellow bachelors, most of whom remain anonymous, but which show the ebb and flow of ideas at that time and place. Perhaps more significantly, Duba stresses the institutional and economic implications of the introduction of paper as a writing surface in the 1330s. Far cheaper than parchment, it became used for notes and drafts for lectures and disputations, reportationes, minutes of meetings of the nations and faculties, financial collections of the University, and other written material that was considered to have short-term use before, in some cases, being revised or transferred into a permanent copy on parchment. Brienne's reportatio is the earliest of its kind on paper and allowed principial debates to be conducted through the exchange of quires between bachelors, something that would probably not have been financially possible if the medium were parchment. Whether the low-cost and availability of paper made principial debates and multiple reportationes of an oral performance possible because it was cost-effective, or whether the introduction of principial debates into the curriculum of the faculty of theology and the need for more record keeping increased the use of paper within the university community, these developments occurred simultaneously.
The remainder of the book, almost half of it, comprises eight appendices containing a list of the lectiones, editions of Brienne's principia and various lectiones, and Brienne's magisterial sermon. A bibliography, photographic images from the manuscript, and indices complete the work.
Duba makes the argument that in the opening decades of the fourteenth century, the opposition of schools of thought, and even divisions within schools of thought, remained strong. It is certainly the case that Scotus became a major figure among Franciscan theologians in the second and third decades of the fourteenth century, but I don't think it would be accurate to say that Durand of St. Pourçain represented a particular branch of Thomism or that Peter Auriol represented one branch among others within Scotism. It is significant that the Franciscan Order did not follow the Dominicans and the Augustinian Hermits by declaring one doctor to be followed and defended by all bachelors and masters within the order. The adoption of Scotus's arguments and conclusions was a choice for bachelors, although Franciscans may have felt it useful to have a doctor of their order whose opinions were worth defending. The second half of the fourteenth century in this regard is a different landscape. But given Duba's extensive knowledge of Franciscan authors in the second, third, and fourth decades of the fourteenth century, one hopes that in the future he might bring that knowledge to bear on reactions to and dissemination of Scotus's thought among Franciscans and others, both before and after the year 1330–1331.
