Articles / Aufätze
William of Champeaux (c.1070–1121), the Glosulae on Priscian and the Notae Dunelmenses

Anne Grondeux and Irène Rosier-Catach
CNRS | Paris Diderot | EPHE
Summary

William of Champeaux taught the arts of language, grammar, dialectic and rhetoric at the beginning of the 12th century. Abelard who studied with him often quotes and discusses the opinions of “his master”. The different versions of the Glosulae Super Priscianum Maiorem, Glosulae Super Priscianum Minorem and the Notae Dunelmenses, five sets of “notes” on Priscian (three on Priscian major, and two on Priscian minor), to which are added “notes” on Cicero’s De inventione, testify to the grammatical teachings of William and his influence. We first present the arguments that allow us to identify William’s teachings in these texts. Secondly, we expound Williams’ views of the meaning of the noun, verb, substantival verb and the consignifying parts of speech, as well as Abelard’s reactions to his views. These discussions involve a few logico-linguistic problems depending on a quarrel between realism and nominalism.

Table of contents

Research on the Notae Dunelmenses as well as on the Glosulae was initiated in the late 1930s by the pioneering Richard William Hunt (1908–1979). It was Hunt (1941–1943) who discovered the Notae Dunelmenses, exceptional in both size and philosophical content, contained in the manuscript C.IV.29 of the Dean and Chapter Library in Durham. There, Hunt found many references to another work called Glosulae and came to identify the latter with a commentary on Priscian that he managed to read in two manuscripts from Paris and Chartres. The dossier was resumed in the early 1970s: as for Priscian maior, by Gibson (1977, 1979) and Fredborg (1977); as for Priscian minor, by Kneepkens (1978). After several studies devoted, respectively, to the grammatical origins of some logical concepts (De Rijk 1967 II:1, chapter 16), to William of Champeaux’s (c.1070–1121) teaching (Iwakuma 2003a, b, 2009 inter alia; Giraud & Mews 2012), and to the grammatical sources of Abelard’s (1079–1142) philosophical thought (Fredborg, Kneepkens, Rosier-Catach: see bibliography), Rosier-Catach reopened the case in 2000 within the framework of a collaborative research program, the CNRS ‘Action Concertée’ entitled “Histoire des Savoirs” (2003–2007). This project resulted in a symposium on the “Arts of Language at the edge of the 11th–12th centuries”, which involved historians of grammar, logic, theology, texts, institutions, and so forth, and led to the publication of a rich volume of proceedings (Rosier-Catach, ed. 2011a).

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