Vide in alio quaterno: The Complex Genesis of James of Metz’s Commentary on the Sentences

Abstract

This study reconstructs the complex textual evolution of James of Metz’s Commentary on the Sentences, a pivotal yet problematic work of 13th-century Dominican thought. Drawing on a comparative analysis of the three surviving textual versions – the first redaction, the second redaction, and the Additiones – the paper reassesses previous hypotheses by Koch, Decker, Ullrich, Köhler, Olszewski, and Schabel. By tracing the stages of textual evolution, the study proposes a chronology of James’s revision process and situates his work within the broader dynamics of the reception of Thomas Aquinas’s texts.