PAUL OF VENICE
(1369–1429)

Paolo Nicoletto Veneto joined the Hermits of St. Augustine as a boy and later taught at the Augustinian convent and the University of Padua for most of his life. The order's Register lists him at the Studium in Oxford from 1390 to 1393 where he studied theology but not logic, as often believed. Briefly, he served as prior general of the Augustinian order and later as ambassador to Cracow, Poland. In 1420, he was implicated in sedition against the Venetian Republic, was banished, and spent his last years in Siena and Perugia.

More than twenty works, extant in some 270 manuscripts, are attributed to him, but Paul's authorship of some of those works is questionable. His popular Logica Parva transmitted elementary Oxford logic to Italy. His Lectura super librum Posteriorum Analyticorum and Summa Naturalium were similarly important for conveying the Oxford style of scientific investigation to Italy. Judged by the number of manuscripts, other works had less influence, for example, Lectura super librum de Anima.

The Logica Magna, a gigantic work (200 folios) attributed to Paul, exists in only one manuscript and two fragments. This encyclopedic album covers most topics of scholastic logic that were disputed at Oxford in the last half of the fourteenth century. Its author undoubtedly took part in those debates that occurred while Paul was yet unborn or still a youth. With few exceptions, inconsistencies of doctrine, rules, and examples between Logica Magna and Logica Parva, as well as other factors, make it highly unlikely that they were written by the same person.

Logica Parva contains the core of scholastic logic that remained resilient against Humanist criticism well into the modern world. Focusing on logical form, it distinguishes between the logical signs (e.g., of affirmation/negation, of quantification, of conjunction, disjunction and implication) and nonlogical signs (ordinary nouns and verbs) of a language. Next, it gives inference rules (consequentia ) keyed to the logical signs. Finally, it supports a truth-conditional concept of truth in which the truth of a sentence is decidable in virtue of its logical form. Material supposition serves as a quotational device within a meta language where any sentence of the object language can be quoted. Translation is understood as the substitution of one sentence for another in virtue of their common logical form and comparable nonlogical terms.

Paul of Venice organized and conveyed Oxford learning to Italy in the early fifteenth century. Humanists who urged a return to classical Latin usage and condemned the barbari britanni undoubtedly had works like his in mind, but few humanists read or understood them. Lorenzo Valla's Dialectica criticizes the logica vetus of Boethius but ignores the logica moderna. J. L. Vives rejects sophismata as a pedagogical method in Adversus pseudodialecticos but retains Scholastic concepts under a neoclassical nomenclature in De artibus.

See also Augustinianism; Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus; Humanism; Logic, History of; Philosophy of Science, History of.

Bibliography

primary sources

Logica Magna. Tractatus de suppositionibus, edited and translated by A. R. Perreiah. St. Bonaventure NY: Franciscan Institute, 1971.

Logica Magna. Part II, Fascicule 6: Tractatus de Veritate et Falsitate Propositionis, Tractatus de SignificatoPropositionis, edited by Francesco Del Punta, translated by Marilyn McCord Adams, 1978; Part I, Fascicule 1: Tractatus de Terminis, edited and translated by Norman Kretzmann, 1979; Part I, Fascicule 7: Tractatus de scire et dubitare, edited and translated by Patricia Clark, 1981; Part II, Fascicule 8: Tractatus de Obligationibus, edited and translated by E. Jennifer Ashworth, 1988; Part II, Fascicule 3: Tractatus de Hypotheticis, edited and translated by Alexander Broadie, 1990; Part II, Fascicule 4: Capitula de Conditionali et de Rationali, edited and translated by G. E. Hughes, 1990; Part I, Fascicule 8: Tractatus de necessitate et contingentia futurorum, edited and translated by C. J. F. Williams, 1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

modern editions

Ruello, F., ed. Paulus Venetus, Super Primum Sententiarum Johannis de Ripa Lecturae Abbreviatio. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1980.

Perreiah, A. R. trans. Paulus Venetus Logica Parva, (an English translation of the 1472 edition with introductory essay and notes). Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1984.

Perreiah, A. R., ed. Paulus Venetus Logica Parva, First Critical Edition from the Manuscripts with Introduction and Commentary. Leiden, NY: E. J. Brill, 2002. Bibliography, pp. 301–310.

secondary sources

Conti, Alessandro D. Esistenza e Verita: Forme e strutture del reale in Paolo Veneto e nel pensiero filosofico del tardo medioevo. Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1996. Bibliography, pp. 301–316.

Perreiah, A. R. Paul of Venice: A Bibliographical Guide. Bowling Green, OH: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1986.

Alan R. Perreiah (2005)