The study of late medieval scholastic thought has been radically transformed by William Courtenay over a long and distinguished career. His achievements are formidable, all the more so as he incorporates into his studies of the -isms such as nominalism and Ockhamism extensive and original investigations into many of the scholars and institutions which sought to promote and to bring about the transfer of knowledge and ideas, develop curricula of study, support careers, produce books and hold disputations. There is a dark side too to these investigations, as disputations flanked controversies and quarrels which sometimes provoked condemnations and even judicial executions. This Festschrift, which Courtenay richly deserves to have received from former students and grandstudents, admirably and closely reflects the main facets of his achievements. Impressively too, following Courtenay's own example, several chapters include the first critical editions of texts that are under discussion, some of them being heavily redacted in the manuscripts and therefore in need of very close scrutiny in order to be correctly read and understood.

Thirteen studies are gathered here, seven of which are directly concerned with doctrinal and speculative questions. J. Matenaer looks carefully at attempts to solve the problem of the Virgin Mary's vow of chastity and her obligation to consummate her marriage to Joseph. Stronger differences of view occurred in debates over death and the resurrection of the human body (A. Canty), but these were overshadowed by still more intense disputes over the possibility that the world is eternal (W. Duba). Both Duba and C. Schabel focus on the Sentences Commentaries of Hugh of Novocastro and Landolfo Caracciolo, two early Scotists in Paris. Schabel's topic is atomism, but by careful comparison of the different versions transmitted in manuscripts and in incunabula, supported here by critical editions of selected sections, both Duba and Schabel extend one of Courtenay's most important perceptions, which is that early fourteenth-century Paris and Oxford did not develop two divided traditions; their scholars interacted both within their own schools and within a wider network of universities and studia that covered most of Europe and many of which Courtenay has himself studied in some detail. The contribution of R. Friedman and T. Jeschke takes us to the debates over divine fruition which engaged Michael of Massa, an Augustinian hermit, and the Dominican Durand of St Pourçain; a critical edition of one of Michael's questions gives support to the discussion. The next two doctrinal essays take us to Oxford. H. G. Gelber shows how the Franciscan Walter Chatton and the Dominican Hugh of Lawton, attacked Ockham's view that a supposit is identical with the nature it instantiates, for example, ‘Socrates is humanity’ or ‘the human being’. Walter and Hugh did not accept that Christ is humanity although he was a human being. But Robert Holcot, a Dominican, elaborated Ockham's arguments with a range of logical exercises known as obligationes; these receive their first edition here. Holcot's treatment of the question ‘Could God make a better world?’ is the subject of P. A. Streveler's chapter. The study of late medieval discussions of God's power and causality is without question one on which Courtenay has left a profound mark.

Six further chapters justly reflect the fact that Courtenay has done far more than unravel and trace medieval doctrinal and speculative problems. The authorship of some early thirteenth-century questions treated in the Douai ms 434 are attributed by Spencer E. Young to William of Auxerre and edited here too; they deal with the sins of curiositas and superbia, and, being reportationes of lectures, show the Paris Faculty of Theology at work in the 1220s and 1230s. Paris at work nearly a hundred years later is also illuminated by M. Crossnoe in a chapter on the Abbey of St Victor and its theology master Gerard; this chapter is based on little-studied manuscript texts and includes an edition of two brief questions. The responsibilities of monastic priors for the discipline, costs and progress of student monks in some of the universities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is the subject of a prosopographical enquiry by T. Sullivan. A monk who was an Irish Cistercian and an Oxford theologian in the later fourteenth century is brought to light by A. Larsen. This is Henry Crumpe, who was a member of commissions that pursued Wyclif and Lollards. Like his compatriot Richard FitzRalph, Crumpe had no liking for the mendicant orders or their privileges. E. D. Goddard contributes a study of the 1403 Rotulus Parisiensis which was complex in its making but successful in its outcomes. Four published volumes of editions of the fourteenth-century Rotuli Parisienses, which contain requests for provisions sent to the papacy by the University of Paris, crown Courtenay's work on official records; three of these were produced in collaboration with Goddard. Finally, we have a heresy trial, that of Ulrich Grünsleder of Regensburg, accused of being a Husssite. D. L. Sheffler's chapter looks closely at the educational backgrounds and the social links of those most involved in the case, including the judge, the interrogators, the bishop and the chronicler of the process which resulted in Grünsleder's execution.

A valuable feature of this volume is the list of Courtenay's publications, around two hundred of them, spanning more than fifty-five years and filling twenty-one pages. They are still in full spate.