United Kingdom, Oxford, Balliol College Library, 106

United Kingdom, Oxford, Balliol College Library, 106

Averroes, Long Commentary on the Physics
Physical Description
  • Material: Parchment
  • Pages: 222 leaves
  • Leaves Format: not available
  • Dimensions: 325 x 225 mm
Detailed Description
  • Foliation:
    1-222. Foliation made by a recent hand. A note on f. 222r that the manuscript consists of 220 folios is wrong.
  • Decoration:
    The numbers of the books are given in red Arabic numbers at the top of the pages. The book initials are done in blue letters; smaller initials done in simple red and blue lines.
  • Layout:
    Text is set in two columns.

    52 lines to the page.

    Aristotle 's textus is given in bigger letters than Averroes ' commentary. The commentary takes the whole column, whilst for the textus, the space of one column is again divided in two columns, one for each translation.
  • Hand Description:
    Probably done by two hands in a thin script.
  • Provenance:
    The fly-leaf has at the top, in a faint straggling hand, perhaps "liber...". On the verso folio is the early title "Commentator super 8 libros phisicorum cum commento et duplici textu"; also an erased ownership-mark, perhaps "Liber communitatis scolarium ale de ... pro anima magistri Johannis D...," below which in another hand is Octavus liber. Langbaine says "Donum magistri Johannis Donkes quodam socii" and Balliolo and Donkys are possible supplements. Though if this is a College inscription, one would not expect to find it erased, unless the volume was at some date alienated. At the top of f. 2r is a late 14th century Balliol inventory-mark: 13us commentator philosophie pret. xi°8 (the numeral written over an erasure); this, and Langbaine's note, forbid us to identify the volume with the "Averroes super octo lib: Phys: M.S." given, according to the Library Donors' Book, by George Day bishop of Chichester in 1543, unless he was restoring a College book which had been lost.
History
  • Origin Date: Late 13th century
  • Origin Place: England ?
  • George Lacombe , Aristoteles Latinus Vol. Pars Prior, Rome (1939) , p.401
  • Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors , Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College Oxford, Oxford (1963) , pp.87f.
Content
Averroes Long Commentary on the Physics 2r - 222r
  • Incipit:
    Incepit hunc librum a causa propter quam...
  • Explicit:
    ...nec virtus in corpore.
  • Note:
    Textus: both translations (vetus and Scotus ) are given. Prologue is missing. Each section of comment (numbered by a later hand as in the printed edition) is preceded by the relevent section of Aristotle's text in this two versions, written in parallel half columns: 1. in the two outer half columns the Vetus-translation from the Greek ("Quoniam quidem intellegere et scire contingit..."); 2. in the two inner, the Arabic-Latin version ascribed to Michael Scot, normally found with this commentary ("Quoniam disposicio sciencie et certitudinis in omnisbus viis..")