HANNA WOJTCZAK, Benedict Hesse’s Commentaries on the Ars Vetus in the Light of Newly Established Data

SUMMARY

It has been established through studies on the Cracovian commentaries on the ars vetus dating from the first half of the 15th century that Hesse’s commentaries are extant in three copies i.e.: BJ 2037, BJ 2043, BJ 2455, held to date as texts of an unidentified student of Hesse. An analysis of all extant copies of the Quaestiones super artem veterem permits one to believe that Hesse edited two versions of commentaries on the logica vetus. The first, issuing from a written tradition, is preserved in full in codices BJ 2037, BJ 2043 and fragmentarily in BJ 2455. The second, probably a later one, in relation to a longer edition and probably issuing from oral tradition, is a shorter version, solely preserved fragmentarily in codex BJ 2455. In this shorter version, the following texts are preserved: the complete commentary on the Isagoge, the first three questions of the commentary on the Categories together with the beginning of the fourth question and three last questions of the commentary on the second book of Hermeneutics. Both fragmentarily preserved versions of the longer and shorter commentaries in BJ 2455, are joined in such a way that they give the impression of being a homogeneous commentary.
Moreover, it has been established that the commentaries on the Isagoge and Categories, hitherto ascribed to Benedict Hesse and preserved in codex BJ 1900, are, in fact, Paul of Pyskowice’s works, written by his own hand.
A detailed elaboration of the results of these studies, which justified the revision of the hitherto held viewpoint regarding Benedict Hesse’s logical works, is presented in the paper.