Logic in the Early Twelfth Century

Abstract

There is a marked divergence between the treatment of Topics (loci) in Garlandus Compotista’s Dialectica and the kind of treatment provided by the major terminist logicians in the first half of the thirteenth century. Garlandus in the eleventh century and the terminists in the thirteenth mark the poles between which lies the abundant twelfth-century work on the Topics. At least thirteen twelfth-century commentaries on Boethius’s De topicis differentiis have survived,¹ including one by Abelard.² And fourteen of the (mostly twelfth-century) treatises edited or excerpted by De Rijk in Logica Modernorum discuss Topics: two logic treatises apparently from the school of William of Champeaux,³ an anonymous commentary on Porphyry,⁴ Introductiones dialectice Berolinenses,⁵ Ars Meliduna,⁶ Summe Metenses,⁷ Introductiones Montane minores, Abbreviatio Montana, Excerpta Norimbergensia, Tractatus Anagnini, Introductiones Parisienses, Logica “Ut dicit”, Logica “Cum sit nostra”, and Dialectica Monacensis.⁸ The treatises presented by De Rijk tend to fall into two groups, each of which has its own pattern of contents and particular handling of the Topics.