Aristotle.- Philosophical miscellany, manuscript on paper, 217 x 165mm., I +55 + I leaves, fol. 53 blank, in a cursive script, with a slight tendency to bâtarde shading cursive, the manuscript has been resewn and rebound, resulting in leaves being pasted on to the recto of the following leaf and consequently their conjugates are lacking, some staining and light browning, minor loss to the lower blank margins of a few ff., 19th century cloth-backed marbled boards, rubbed, sm. 4to, Mainz, 1550.

⁂ This interesting miscellany contains the text of commentaries on Aristotle, in particular an expositio on the Octo libros Physicorum, and a commentary on the Analytica, with several didactic remarks. It is in all likelihood the notebook used by a professor or magister active at the University of Mainz in South Germany, founded in 1477, or at a school of the city, as the colophon on the recto of fol. 52 attests: 'Moguntiae decimo nono Junij finit legere'. There are corrections in text and some additions in the margins.

The structure and style of the manuscript reflects the traditional learning at the German universities and schools in the late middle ages and early Renaissance, and the lasting influence of Albertus Magnus's commentaries on Aristotle's physics and logical writings. The texts are divided into different quaestiones, containing other subdivisions, with the terminology and the philosophical abbreviations used as well as the argumentative method employed confirming our date of the manuscript to the sixteenth century, possibly the first half.

The first text is introduced by the heading Disputatio Proemialis ad Octo libros Physicorum, and the commentary is divided in eight quaestiones. The section devoted to the Analytica contains eleven quaestiones. The texts seem to be original writings, and not copies of commentaries circulating in the age. Curiously, the anonymous commentator has not added quotations from others authors or works considered as authorities on the subjects, as usual for the time.