Taking Notes on Italian Logic at Paris

Étienne Gaudet’s Notebooks and James of Piacenza’s Lost Questions on Posterior Analytics

Abstract

In one of Étienne Gaudet’s many notebooks, specifically manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 16408, there survives a set of notes on questions concerning Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (fols 183r–190r). This article proposes to identify the author of these previously unattributed questions as the Italian scholar James of Piacenza. The attribution rests on a previously overlooked reference to his toponymic surname found in one of Gaudet’s tabulae within the same codex. This internal evidence is corroborated by additional clues, which also help to situate Gaudet’s notes and James’s original redaction within a chronological and institutional framework. This contribution showcases the kind of unexpected findings that can emerge from close work with often-neglected scholastic material, such as medieval notebooks. A list of the questions is provided in the Appendix.