F-eo5z — Richard of Middleton, De gradu formarum
- Identification: identified; high confidence. Richard of Middleton, Quaestio disputata de gradu formarum. The leprosy argument followed by the ass/intellective-soul argument agrees in distinctive wording and sequence with the excerpts in Hocedez, Richard de Middleton (1925), p. 392. The familiar leprosy maxim alone does not establish this attribution. The comparison identifies the text but does not independently establish authorship of the underlying work.
- Transcription: selected, source-assisted readings; accuracy unmeasured. Two isolated readers transcribed separate crops, and CATMuS recognized the first crop. All raw outputs were preserved before comparison. They contain substantial errors and gaps. The selected readings below are the coordinator's source-assisted image readings with candidate transcriptions and Hocedez available. No specialist has checked these readings.
- Verification: manuscript crops compared with a scanned printed source. The coordinator inspected native crops of fol. [2]v column b and fol. [1]r column a, and the image of Hocedez p. 392. Hocedez supplies selected Latin quotations and French discussion, not a full edition of the fragment. Zavalloni's complete edition and apparatus remain unchecked. The remaining columns, proposed leaf order, and witness novelty remain unverified.
Catalogue: Gent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, HS.2582/290. Fragmentarium record. Hocedez p. 392.
Selected manuscript evidence
Physical line numbers refer to the crops specified below, including clipped edge lines. Parentheses mark proposed abbreviation expansions; square brackets describe uncertainty or interventions. This is a selected expanded reading, not a diplomatic edition.
Crop A: manifest canvas 0, fol. [2]v column b; native region 2000,1550,2000,1800, no rotation. Lines 4–8:
4 … Item hoc idem pro- 5 bo p(er) viam aliam. Certum est q(uod) [word cancelled in red, unresolved] leprosus 6 g(ener)at leprosum semp(er) vel frequen(ter). H(oc) a(utem) non esset 7 verum si in adventu intellective fieret resolutio usq(ue) 8 ad essentiam m(ater)ie prime sicut probabo. Ergo cum intellectiva …
A marginal abbreviation beside line 5 is provisionally expanded p(er)f(ec)te(?). Its role as the replacement is plausible from the placement and printed parallel; the cancelled word is not reconstructed. The image-only reader independently noticed both the cancellation and the marginal writing but could not resolve the latter.
Crop D: manifest canvas 0, fol. [1]r column a; native region 4650,1450,1950,1500, no rotation. Selected lines 2–8:
2 introduceretur forma asini [abbreviated words unresolved here] 3 anima intellectiva infunditur a deo m(ater)ie ipsius hominis 4 in illo eodem [instanti?] m(ater)ia ipsius asini equaliter esset 5 apta ad recipiendum animam intellectivam sicut 6 m(ater)ia ipsius hominis. Quia dispositio ipsius m(ater)ie ad hoc 7 q(uod) sit nata recipere formam est denudatio ab omni alia 8 forma. …
These connected clauses provide better evidence than the common leprosy maxim. They agree with Hocedez's quoted argument about an ass's matter being equally ready to receive an intellective soul once stripped of every other form. A material difference remains: the manuscript appears to have equaliter, where Hocedez prints sequeretur. This must stay a reported variant, not be silently harmonized. The isolated reader's denudata on line 7 differs from the assisted reading denudatio.
The crop also shows the transition to another impossibile at lines 16–18, consistent with Hocedez's sequence, but its last line is clipped. No complete transcription of that next argument is claimed. The isolated reader had no candidate source, while the coordinator inspected the passage with source knowledge.
Limits
The image-only and CATMuS outputs contain substantial recognition errors. The selected readings rely on source-assisted image comparison; the raw machine outputs do not establish transcription accuracy or unique authorship.
The complete Zavalloni edition and apparatus would permit a fuller comparison. The identification is supported by the selected passages; leaf reconstruction and witness novelty remain unresolved.
Preserved readings
Initial isolated image-only response · Separate ass-argument image-only response · CATMuS output · Source-assisted revision · Additional short-crop isolated response
The additional short-crop isolated response also contains substantial errors and gaps. None of these raw outputs is a verified transcription.