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PETER OF AUVERGNE'S QUESTION ‘WHETHER ONE IS TO BELIEVE A GOOD ANGEL REVEALING SOMETHING GOOD ABOUT THE ADVENT OF CHRIST OR ANTICHRIST’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2021
Abstract
This note provides an edition of the Latin text of a quodlibet by the Parisian master Peter of Auvergne concerning the knowledge of angels about the coming of Antichrist. The introduction to the edition argues that this quodlibet was not made in response to Arnald of Villanova's De tempore adventus Antichristi. Rather, it is best understood as a hypothetical inquiry regarding the ability of angels to communicate revelation to human beings.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fordham University
Footnotes
The author is deeply grateful to Tobias Hoffmann, Jay Rubenstein, and an anonymous reader for seeing to the great improvement of this study and edition.
References
1 Schabel, Chris, “The ‘Quodlibeta’ of Peter of Auvergne,” in Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages: The Fourteenth Century, ed. Schabel, Chris (Leiden, 2007), 81–130CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 84 and 119–20. For exhaustive bibliography on Peter's career and works, see www.paleography.unifr.ch/petrus_de_alvernia/ (accessed 8 October 2020).
2 On the procedures in Paris concerning Arnald of Villanova in the autumn of 1300, see Arnaldi de Villanova Tractatus de tempore adventus Antichristi ipsius et aliorum scripta coeva, ed. Josep Perarnau (Barcelona, 2014), 53–74 (henceforth AVT). But Perarnau's assumption that Arnald took two separate trips to Paris, one in 1299 and one in 1300, has been disproven. See McVaugh, Michael, “Arnau da Vilanova and Paris: One Embassy or Two?” Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 73 (2006): 29–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Potestà, Gian Luca, “L'anno del Antichristo: Il calcolo di Arnaldo da Villanova nella letteratura teologica e profetica del XIV secolo,” Rivista di storia del cristianesimo 4 (2007): 431–64Google Scholar, at 444, n. 39. An assembly of theologians in September condemned Arnald for writing “temerariously” against the faith, and Arnald subsequently complained that this assembly had been called at the behest of the Parisian secular masters, one of whom must have been Peter. See Arnald, “Notificatio . . . ad regem Francorum,” in AVT, ed. Perarnau, 351. Moreover, Peter was the only named Parisian Master who was present as a witness to Arnald's appeal from the theology faculty to the pope on 12 October 1300: “Instrumentum alterum appellationis Arnaldi de Villanova,” in AVT, ed. Perarnau, 349.
3 AVT, ed. Perarnau, 376–90.
4 AVT, ed. Perarnau, 379: “Ad tertium rationem, que videtur certissima illi, qui hoc anno publicavit libellum De adventu Antichristi.”; and AVT, ed. Perarnau, 384: “asserens Antichristum venturum tempore futuro determinato, puta decimo quarto vel septuagesimo quinto vel quocumque alio.” The manuscripts of Arnald's treatise display divergences regarding the date, but in addition to “septuagesimum sextum” and “septuagesimum octavum” we also find “septuagesimum quintum”: AVT, ed. Perarnau, 214 (variant readings for line 725).
5 Pelster, Franz, “Die Quaestio Heinrichs von Harclay über die zweite Ankunft Christi und die Erwartung des baldigen Weltendes zu Anfang des XIV Jahrhunderts,” Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 1 (1951): 25–82Google Scholar, at 41–42.
6 AVT, ed. Perarnau, 274.
7 A superlative state-of-the-art description of the manuscript by Amandine Postec is available online at: https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc75316q (accessed 5 October 2020). For a complete listing of all known manuscripts containing Peter's Quodlibet V, see Schabel, “The ‘Quodlibeta’ of Peter of Auvergne” (n. 1 above), 98–99.
8 Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.1 (Bekker 1378a).
9 This is an Aristotelian term for “equitable” or “perfectly just,” as in Ethics 5.10 (Bekker 1137a).