Boetius of Dacia

2.4 (2) Quaestiones super librum Topicorum Quaestiones super librum Topicorum) 2.4.1 Incipit 2.7 (5) Quaestiones super IVm Meteorologicorum Quaestiones super IVm Meteorologicorum) 2.7.1 Title 2.11 (9) Sophisma “Omnis homo de necessitate est animal” Sophisma %E2%80%9COmnis homo de necessitate est animal%E2%80%9D) 2.11.1 Incipit No details are known about Boethius’s life. Near-contemporary sources call him Boetius de Dacia or B. Dacus. “Boet(h)ius” must be a Latinization of some vernacular name, most probably the one that appears as “Bo” in modern Scandinavian languages. “De Dacia” means “from Denmark”. Because of the organization of the arts faculty at Paris into “nations”, scholars regularly had a designation of origin attached to their name. In the case of scholars from far-away lands this was standardly the name of their kingdom rather than their town of origin. In the university context “Dacia” unequivocally means “Denmark”, but the fact that the Dominican order of “Dacia” comprised the other Nordic kingdoms as well caused some confusion in the historiography of philosophy prior to the study by SKOVGAARD-JENSEN in 1963. In older literature the philosopher sometimes occurs as “Boethius of Sweden”. The condemnation is probably responsible or co-responsible for the disappearance of some of Boethius’s writings, and for the fact that some others have been transmitted anonymously or with false attributions. There is good evidence that in the first years after 1277 some scholars felt it unsafe to possess works by the men targeted by the condemnation. This notwithstanding, Boethian attitudes continued among philosophers for generations to come, and some of his works continued to have readers for two centuries. Written questions and sophismata generally have a pre-history as oral events in class, but the process leading from oral teaching or disputation to a written version varies considerably from one case to another. Boethius’s sophismata contain some remarks that indicate use of minutes taken during the oral disputation, such as “No answer was given to this argument”. Boethius's works are characterized by clarity in thought and expression, and a certain bold vigour. Difficulties are attacked head-on rather than avoided, and enlivened by apostrophes to the reader. No certain chronology has been established for Boethius’s writings, but self-references suggest that the Topics commentary is later than Modi Significandi, which in turn is later than several of the lost works. MCDERMOTT, A.C.S. 1980: Godfrey of Fontaine’s Abridgement of Boethius of Dacia’s Modi Significandi sive Quaestiones super Priscianum Maiorem (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Ser. 3 – Studies in the History of Linguistics vol. 22), Amsterdam. Et cum omnium rerum deus sit causa, quia primum in entibus est causa posteriorum, ideo relinquitur, quod omnis nostrae scientiae causa est ipse deus, qui est benedictus in saecula saeculorum. Amen. Modi significandi consists of a prologue and 134 questions on Priscianus Minor (= Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae I–XVI). Of these the first 28 are “quaestiones grammaticae in generali” treating of the proper field of study of grammar, its delimitation from other sciences, its elementary notions, and the like. There follow questions about each part of speech, namely the noun (29–77), the verb (78–95), the participle (96–101), the pronoun (102–107), the preposition (108–116), the adverb (117–126), the interjection (127–129), and the conjunction (130–134). The work was used by John of Dacia and seems to have had a lasting influence on the development of the “modistic” theory of grammar. Although it never acquired wide popularity, its circulation was larger than usual for texts of its kind: the modern editors knew of ten extant manuscripts from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, plus two with near-contemporary excerpts by Godfrey of Fontaines and one lost manuscript. A further lost (p