Sometime before World War II a number of scholars, including J.G.
Sikes, B.L. Manning, R.F. Bennett, H.S. Offler and R.H. Shape, set
out to edit Ockham's Opera Politica. The first volume,
edited by J.G. Sikes, was published in 1940 by Manchester
University Press. After the war the same publisher brought out a
second edition of the first volume, and two other volumes, edited
by H.S. Offler with some participation by R.F. Bennett. The front
matter of Volume 3 gives an outline of the project. Eight
volumes were planned, of which volumes 5-8 would contain the Dialogus.
In 1997 Oxford University Press for the British Academy published
Volume 4, edited by H.S. Offler, as number14 in the series Auctores
Britannici Medii Aevi. Professor Offler had died in 1991,
and the final preparation of Volume 4 was overseen by Professor
David Luscombe, chairman of the Medieval Texts Editorial Committee
of the British Academy.
In the foreword to Volume 4 Professor Luscombe announced that the
rest of the Opera Politica project -- that is, the Dialogus
-- would be edited in the Auctores series, that it would
be published electronically, and that it would include both Latin
text and English translation. The first editors appointed by the
Medieval Texts Editorial Committee were John Kilcullen and John
Scott, who were joined successively by Volker Leppin and Jan
Ballweg, George Knysh, Karl Ubl and Semih Heinen. The editors did
not form a committee; the project was overseen by the Medieval
Texts Committee. The website was overseen by the British Academy
Publications Officer. This was one of the early uses (1995) of the
World Wide Web for scholarship in the humanities.
A critical edition of the whole of the Latin text of the Dialogus
has now been published in print in five volumes. One volume of
English translation has also been published in print. The rest of
the
English translation
(except for some chapters previously published in 'A
Letter to the Friars Minor' and Other Writings and
some not yet translated) is available on this website. It is not
intended to publish in print any more of the translation. Some
parts of our critical Latin text have been translated into German
and some into Italian.
The website has been updated
many times and will be again when necessary.
February 2024.
This edition of Ockham's Dialogus is work in progress,
with different parts at different stages. We began by posting on
this site a transcription of the text of the Dialogus as found in Melchior
Goldast's Monarchia. The whole of the text, however, has
been corrected by comparison with at least the more promising
manuscripts. One volume
has now been published in print: William of Ockham: Dialogus Part 2; Part 3,
Tract 1 Edited by John Kilcullen, John Scott, Volker Leppin,
and Jan Ballweg OUP/British Academy | Auctores Britannici
Medii Aevi 20. Four more volumes are projected.
The project was begun in 1995 by John Kilcullen and John Scott. They were joined by George Knysh in 1998, and later by Volker Leppin, Jan Ballweg, Karl Ubl and Semih Heinen. The editorial group has been enlarged to bring the work to completion sooner and to provide the benefit of close scrutiny of text and translation by a larger team. It is being published on the Web so that interested people can use it while it is still in draft and so that the editors can have the benefit of comment. Comment is very welcome, either on the editorial policy or on matters of detail. Contact information is given below.
Cologne Ockham project: Karl Ubl joined the team of editors in
2010. He acquired a funding from the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) which enabled him to recruit Semih
Heinen to work on Ockham's 3.2 Dialogus. Together with student
research assistants (Jonas Berghaus, Lennart Steinhoff and Fabian
Kröning) Karl Ubl and Semih Heinen prepare the edition of the last
part of Ockham's opus magnum.
John Kilcullen and John Scott are grateful to Dr Christine Asmar, who keyed in most of the Goldast text, to Juanita Ruys, who keyed in Part 1 book 7 and Part 2, and to Robert Nash, who collated some of the manuscripts. We are grateful also to Professors A.S. McGrade, D. Luscombe and J. Miethke for encouraging the original editors to undertake the project and for helping it along in various ways. We are grateful to the British Academy for its sponsorship and for a grant of some funds. We wish to thank the Australian Research Council and Macquarie University for research funds. We are grateful to the staff of the Macquarie University Library and to staff of many libraries who have answered our inquiries or provided microfilms (for a list of libraries whose staff kindly answered our inquiries, see "Witnesses to the Text", Search for More Manuscripts). For Part 3, Tract 2, Book 3, chapter 6, we have made use of H.S. Offler, 'The Three Modes of Natural Law in Ockham: A Revision of the Text', Franciscan Studies, 37 (1977), pp. 207-18.
George
Knysh
thanks the University of Manitoba and the Ukrainian Academy of
Arts and Sciences in Canada for the grant of research funds.
He is grateful to those academics who commented on his
preliminary postings of Dialogus, Part I,
Books 6 and 7, and to his students at the University of
Manitoba as well as to John Kilcullen for their computer
technical support over the years.
Messages about the web site should be sent to The Publications Officer, The British Academy (postal address: 10 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH).
January, 2001; September 2006; March 2010; June 2015
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