From Regional Approach to Transnational Perspective: Philological Insights into John Picard’s Quaestiones

Abstract

This article offers the first systematic philological reconstruction of the sources underlying John Picard of Lichtenberg’s Quaestiones, newly available through 2025 critical edition. Traditionally regarded as an early representative of Thomism in the German Dominican milieu, Picard emerges here as a thinker deeply embedded in a wider transnational scholastic network. By comparing Picard’s text with works by Albert the Great, John of Paris, William Peter of Godin, Godfrey of Fontaines, Hervaeus Natalis, James of Viterbo, and the Oxford master of arts John Dymsdale, the study reveals previously unnoticed literal correspondences and shared argumentative structures. These findings rethink the long-standing narrative of a distinctly German philosophical Sonderweg, showing that medieval intellectual life in Cologne was shaped by dynamic exchanges with Parisian and Oxonian debates. Picard’s Quaestiones thus exemplify a microhistorical case whose ‘exceptional normality’ illuminates the broader patterns of medieval scholastic culture.