An Author's Exemplar in Transition: The Third Book of the Commentary on Sentences by Durandus de S. Porciano (Critical Edition, Study of the Genesis and Discourse History)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Fiorella Retucci
• Subject Area: History of Philosophy
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 456759934

The Commentary on the Sentences by Durandus of St. Pourçain can be seen as a model of a Commentary on the Sentences at the beginning of the 14th Century, which shows the growing importance and innovations of this genre in an exemplary way. This Commentary can not only be used to demonstrate the working methods within the University teaching system, but also offers a comprehensive insight into the contemporary philosophical and theological debates at the beginning of the 14th Century. The aim of this project is the critical edition of the third book of this Commentary on the Sentences and, in parallel, the verification of the newly sharpened thesis of the author's copy in transition. This hypothesis takes up current research on the Durandian Commentary on the Sentences and offers a unified explanatory model that not only connects the developmental phases of the text (which can be discerned in the manuscript tradition) with the concrete academic situation of Durandus, but also provides orientation in the debates of the early 14th Century. The idea of an author's copy in transition proposes as an explanatory model an author's copy as a model for the manuscripts that have come down to us, which was in transition over a longer period of time. It is the author himself who continuously edits, abridges or expands his text. This explanatory model makes the very continuity of the text, which in many places is not changed at all, compatible with the discontinuity of the selective changes Durandus made in his Commentary. This model at the same time makes it possible to reconstruct the history of discourse along the lines of one of the exposed actors in one of the preferred discourse formats: namely the Commentaries on the Sentences. The edition of the third book will therefore be able to make a substantial contribution to the orientation in the debates of the beginning of the 14th Century, but also to the clarification of the development of Durandus' thought, since important topics such as anthropology, moral philosophy and the doctrine of virtue are dealt with in the third book. The edition is to be published both in print and digitally on the Digital Durandus Research Portal (DDRP).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants