Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters ;

In Part I the author draws on classical authors to illustrate three causes of error in his time and underscores the need for an integral understanding of the signification of terms. In Part II he proposes six themes: a new classification of signs; a theory that common terms signify principally objects, not concepts; connotation as natural signification; common terms signifying an entity and a nonentity are equivocal; terms can lose their signification; a non-Aristotelian classification of equivocation in six modes. Bacon was a very original semanticist and some of his theories helped pave the way for Ockham a few decades later. This treatise opens many windows on to the debate on semantics in the late 13th century.

This volume contains the first critical edition and a complete English translation of the well-known correspondence conducted by the fourteenth-century 'sceptic' author Nicholas of Autrecourt (c. 1300-1369), with Bernard of Arezzo and a Master Giles. In the Introduction the extant manuscripts are analysed and the different positions of Nicholas, Bernard and Giles are discussed; the purport of Giles' reply to Nicholas is, contrary to common opinion, identified as a defence of Aristotelianism rather than of Bernard's 'sceptic' views. Two appendices contain the first critical edition of the records of the Avignon trial against Nicholas found in the Vatican Archives, and the 'Condemned Articles' with an English translation. The volume is rounded off with extensive indexes, which facilitate the use of the book as a source for the history of fourteenth-century thought.