Postscript: The Demise Of Quodlibetal Literature

Abstract

In the first volume of his masterwork on quodlibetal literature, Palemon Glorieux limited his survey to Parisian masters of theology and set the range of dates for his subject as 1260 to 1320, specifically from Gerard of Abbeville through Peter Auriol. Glorieux believed that the genre was abandoned in the early fourteenth century because it had lost its importance to masters, who came to prefer other forms of disputation. This chapter reexamines the evidence for the claim that masters of theology ceased participation in quodlibetal disputations in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. The gradual disappearance of published quodlibeta in the second quarter of the fourteenth century coincides with the gradual appearance of principal questions of bachelors reading the Sentences . The almost total disappearance of quodlibeta at Oxford after the mid-1330s coincides with a period of reduced productivity of Oxford masters. Keywords: fourteenth century; Gerard of Abbeville; masters of theology; Oxford masters; Palemon Glorieux; Peter Auriol; quodlibetal disputations; quodlibetal literature