PREFACE

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.

Acknowledgements

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.

Contact Information

John Kilcullen (postal address: Humanities, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia).
George Knysh (postal address: 1216 Wolseley Ave., Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3G 1G7)
Volker Leppin (postal address: Evangelisch-theologischen Fakultät, Liebermeisterstr. 12, 72076, Tübingen, Germany ).
John Scott (postal address: Humanities, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia).
Karl Ubl (postal address: Universität zu Köln, Historisches Institut, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Köln, Germany).

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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