Benedikt Konrad Vollmann

The abbreviated version of Thomas of Cantimpré’s Liber de natura rerum, the so-called “Thomas III”, is a striking example of the liberty medieval copyists of specialist prose took in copying a text. They add, omit, rearrange, rewrite the original work in order to improve its contents, acting more as co-authors than as mere copyists. Several versions of the text are recognizable, and MSS trasmitting different stages of rewriting are grouped.

A translator of Pier de’ Crescenzi’s manual on agriculture Ruralia commoda (about 1305-1307) has to surmount various obstacles put as well by the author’s compilatory method and his use of nonlatin vocabulary as by scribal errors in the manuscripts, flaws in the critical edition, and bouts of drowsiness the translator himself is now and then suffering from.

An examination of the meaning of auctoritas in Salutati’s writings reveals remarkable changes in the use of the term: official authority has to liaise with individual qualities, and the authority of superior knowledge cannot be accepted without previous assessment of reasonable proof. The submission of authority to individual criticism leads the way from the middle ages to modern times.