Johann Eck’s Textbooks as a Continuation of the Oxford Calculators. A Case Study into Sixteenth-Century German Scholasticism

Abstract

Johann Eck (1486–1543) has been introduced to modern scholarship as a prominent figure of the pre-Tridentine Counter-Reformation. As part of the curricular transformations of the University of Ingolstadt, he wrote commentaries on logical and scientific works by Aristotle and Peter of Spain. Utilising a variety of sources, the two volumes dedicated to physics and natural philosophy published in 1518 and 1519 were self-contained textbooks including annotated translations of the texts and quaestio-commentaries. These developed the doctrines of the Oxford Calculators mediated through Continental sources, reproducing their conceptual and mathematical apparatus, including the famous middle degree theorem and Bradwardine’s law.