Extracts from the Commentaries on the works of Porphyry, in Latin, manuscript on paper

Porphyry (233-c.309) was a Neoplatonic philosopher, who is best known for his "Introduction to Categories", which ultimately became the standard textbook on logic for at least a millennium after his death. In his Isagoge Boethius (480-524/5) provided a Latin translation with extensive commentary, drawing ideas from other philosophers such as Aristotle. The resulting work formed the basis of all medieval philosophical-theological developments of logic and considerations of the problems of universals. It was only superseded by the commentary of Peter Abelard (1079-1142), his Glossae in Porphyrium, composed at the height of his teaching career at Paris.

The present manuscript is an interesting record of the education of a fifteenth-century Italian student of logic, perhaps in the University of Pisa, which existed from 1338 onwards. Under the general title of Auctoritates porphirii this compilation extracts the principal elements of a series of books on logic, including universal elements which have survived from Porphyry's original work (see Omnis scientia est in anima. Omnis color in corpore est ...,  in the second paragraph of the first column on fol.1r), alongside references specific to Boethius' work (note the references directly to libro divisionum boetii and libro thopicorum p. boetii in the margin of fol.1v, which refer to Boethius' "On Division", and his digest of Aristotle's Topica; and the reference to a libro elencorum, which must be Boethius' Questiones Elencorum), and a general awareness of Abelard's interpretation of Porphyry's ideas. This notebook shows numerous signs of active use by its student-owner, and clearly the last few paper leaves were intended to be filled by a commentary on the libri Ethicorum mentioned on fol.6v.