Quaestiones de Duodeciù Quodlibet. de Thomas d'Aquin - 1475

A large crisp copy. This is the fourth edition.

Johann Zainer was the first printer to set up shop in Ulm in 1472, with the encouragement and financial support of Heinrich Steinhöwel, Johann was the brother of Günther Zainer, with whom he had worked in Augsbourg. It is likely that they had both worked for Mentelin in Strasburg.

A very fine printing by the first Ulm printer Johann Zainer, using his first typeface and the beautiful wooden initials of his so-called romanesque alphabet.

First published in 1470, it contains a collection of treatises on many issues of religious and secular life. The present edition was probably produced at the instigation of the Dominicans in Ulm.

The disputatio de quolibet was the most solemn form of disputatio in the medieval university. The sitting master regents announce, rarely every year, often every two or three years, that they will answer any question put to them by the audience gathered for the purpose. An opponent presents his or her objections to the master's answer, and a bachelor defender supports the master's thesis. The masters show their science, their technique and their presence of mind in the face of insidious or burning questions. A second session allows them to put the dispute in order and to write an account of it, which makes us measure the echo of current events in the university setting: quodlibetal questions on the powers in the parish at the time of the quarrel between mendicants and seculars, on the trials of the Templars in the 14th century. The genre is illustrated by the greatest names of scholasticism; Henri de Gand, Thomas Aquinas, Jacques de Viterbe, Gilles de Rome, Guillaume d'Ockham, Alexandre de Halès, Durand de Saint-Pourçain. (Jean-Pierre Bordier).

Thomas Aquinas had a high awareness of his vocation as a doctor, in the service of the truth. He was aware of the intellectual revolution which had been taking place in the West since the beginning of the century, under the influence of pagan philosophy, and, in particular, of Aristotelianism. He set himself the task of elaborating an authentic philosophy, commensurate with the needs of the Christianity of his time, and then of rethinking, with the help of this philosophy, all the theological problems. The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas is truly a new philosophy, the fruit of an original synthesis of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism: it is the first philosophy worthy of the name that Christian civilization has produced.

If one thinks of the role played by the University of Paris in the 13th century and throughout the rest of the Middle Ages, one cannot overemphasize the influence exerted there by the man who would one day become, in the eyes of the Church, the Doctor communis. He had many friends and admirers in Paris, beginning with the king of France, Saint Louis.

Goff T185; HC 1403; BMC ii524; BSB-Ink T-251; Bod-inc T-146; GW M46338; Grosjean & O'Connel 110.

Provenance: William O'Brien, booklabel dated 1899.