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TWO QUESTIONS ON THE CONTINUUM: WALTER CHATTON (?), O.F.M. AND ADAM WODEHAM, O.F.M.* INTRODUCTION I To the natural philosopher of the later Middle Ages, the sixth book of Aristotle's Physics clearly demanded that no continuum, be it space, time or motion, could be composed of indivisibles; the atomistic structure of magnitudes was, Aristotle had proved, not permissible. Yet the first quarter of the fourteenth century gave birth to doubts concerning the Stagirite's stricture in this regard. His arguments were not only criticized, but there were those who blatantly espoused the superiority and absolute vabdity of the atomist view: continua were composed of indivisibles (though, to be sure, the number and kind of indivisibles, and exactly how they did the composing, often varied from author to author). Henry of Harclay,1 chanceUor of Oxford University in 1312, was perhaps the earliest of these "atomists." He detailed his anti-Aristotelian position in a questio which began by asking of the possibility of a future eternity for the world but at whose focal point were the problems of unequal infinites and the composition of continua.2 Not long after * Though all sections of the present article were examined and discussed by both authors, the following distinctions of primary responsibility may be made : Part I of the Introduction is due to Murdoch, while Part II was written by Synan; Synan transcribed the text of the two questions, though this was then checked by Murdoch against his own transcription; the footnotes to the texts are largely due to Synan, while the parallel passages to the two questions are the responsibility of Murdoch. 1 For biographical and bibliographical details concerning Harclay see A. B. Emden, University of Oxford. A Biographical Register to A.D. 1500 (Oxford, 1957—59) vol. 2, pp. 874—-75, and the fundamental article of F. Pelster, "Heinrich von Harclay, Kanzler von Oxford, und seine Quästionen ," Miscellanea Ehrle, vol. 1 (= Studi e Testi, 37) Rome, 1924, pp. 307— 355· 2 MSS Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale, Fondo principale, II. IL 281, ff. 94G—ioiv and Tortosa, Catedral 88, ff. 82G—94v: Utrum mundus poterit durare in eternum a parte post. Although we have known of Harclay's atomist views for some time from their citation by William of Alnwick and others (Cf. F. Pelster, op. cit., pp. 328—-331, and Anneliese Maier, Die Vorläufer Two Questions on the Continuum213 Harclay's work, Oxford was witness to a second proponent of indivisibilism , this time in the person of the Franciscan, Walter Chatten,3 who, presumably in 1323, included an exhaustive examination of the continuum problem in the second book of his Commentary on the Sentences? In defying Aristotle's proscription of atomism both Harclay and Chatton drew an almost immediate fire of criticism, as we shall see, from other Engbsh philosophers and theologians. Yet even while the refutation of these two early atomists was being prepared and meted out, similar tracts of indivisibilist sympathy were being written, quite independently, it seems, on the Continent. Gerard of Odo,5 Minister General of the Franciscan Order in 1329 had become one with Harclay and Chatton when, in 1326—1328, he embraced indivisibilism in his own Commentary on Lombard's Sentences. Indeed, he foundhis resolution of the question ofwhether continua could be composGalileis im 14. Jahrhundert (Roma, 1949) pp. 161—162), his own work relative to the matter was only discovered by the present author (J.E. M.) in 1961 in the Firenze MS (anonymous and appreciably corrupt) indicated above. Interestingly enough, it turns out that the reporting of Harclay's views by William of Alnwick in his Determinationes (see note 25 below) is extremely reliable due to the fact that Alnwick quotes long passages from Harclay (a fact which made the anonymous question in the Firenze MS identifiable in the first place), giving not only his arguments for his position, but also several of Harclay's arguments against his own opinion. Subsequent to the discovery and transcription of the Firenze MS, a second, fortunately more sound, copy of Harclay's questio was discovered in the Tortosa MS listed above. The subject announced by the incipit of the question (viz. the future...

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