On This Work (De hoc opere)
Posted here are the Erfurt redactions of Richard Rufus of Cornwall’s De anima commentary, books 1-3. The Erfurt redaction is a question commentary, as opposed to the longer redaction which includes literal exposition and extended outlines of the text (divisiones) as well as questions.
The longer redaction of Rufus’ De anima commentary is complete in Florence (F) G.4.853 fol. 193ra-222va, while Madrid (M), Bibl. Nacional. 3314, fol. 68ra-89rb contains book 3 and most of book 2. A critical edition of the longer redaction will be published. From the variants in the critical edition, it will be possible for readers to reconstruct the shorter redaction. However, that will involve some complicated manipulations. So we present here a critical edition of the shorter redaction preserved in Erfurt (E), UB Dep. Erfurt, CA, Quarto 312, folios 19ra-20va and 22va- 28ra.
Appearing with the Erfurt redaction are notes indicating Rufus’ sources in Aristotle, Averroes, etc. Also included in the notes are quotations from subsequent authors who borrowed from Rufus in commenting on Aristotle’s De anima or whose comments on parallel passages seem to us to make clearer what Rufus intended. Some of these notes include extensive quotations and do not appear on the page unless the reader clicks on them. Clicking once on a series of highlighted blue dots will reveal the material that has been omitted; clicking twice conceals it once again.
Where we judge differences between Erfurt and the other manuscripts are redactional, the Erfurt reading appears without variants. Where differences appear to result from errors in the Erfurt manuscript, we have corrected them, and the original manuscript reading appears as a variant. Since what is posted here is a critical edition of the shorter redaction, variant readings from the longer redaction do not normally appear. Readings from the longer redaction in F and M appear only where they indicate the reason for the emendation made. When a word omitted from the Erfurt manuscript has been supplied from manuscripts of the longer redaction, that word does not appear in brackets as a simple editorial addition would do. Instead there is a variant that includes both the FM reading and the Erfurt reading. Variants are color coded.
Red is a serious warning. It marks readings that are not actually in E or readings from E that have been omitted -- normally unclear or illegible marks. Red variants are emendations: often readings that do not appear in E but seem to be required.
Yellow suggests caution; variants highlighted in yellow include repetitions, possible alternative readings, sometimes more common expansions of abbreviations than the readings we have adopted, editorial exclamations, and editorial suggestions.
Green is for variants that probably can safely be ignored. Green variants include indications that the manuscript has been expunged or corrected in some way; most often they indicate that a reading appears above the line or in the margin. Also here are doubtful readings about which the editors have no further suggestions.
In case readers have access to manuscripts and the printed edition and wish to check, we provide indications of column changes. In the case of Erfurt Quarto 312, the 13th century folio numbers are indicated as well as the modern numbers. The edition published by Manuel Alonso, as a work attributed to Pedro Hispano, Obras Filosoficas III, Instituto Luis Vives 1952, appears as V. Folio changes appear within bars, marked, for example, as follows: |E 22rb|, |E O72 28va|, |F 215rb|, |M 82va|, and |V 327|. Here "O" stands for old foliation.
References to the Aristotle text (book number, chapter number, and line number in the Bekker edition) on which Rufus comments appear in square brackets. In the printed critical edition of the longer redaction (Redactio longior), there will be notes on the text of Aristotle and its deviations from the text published by R. Gauthier in Anonymi Magistri Artium (c. 1245-1250) Lectvra in librvm de anima, Grottaferrrata 1985. Also indicated will be the text preserved in F & M and variants indicating the readings in the edition published by M. Alonso. None of these appear in the html edition of the shorter redaction.