Paul of Venice

Paul of Venice, who lived from 1369/72 to 1429, had a varied and successful career as a leader of his religious Order, as a diplomat for the Council of Venice, and as an academic. His most successful work was the Logica Parva , but his most substantial treatise was the Logica Magna . Both works were closely based on the writings of earlier fourteenth-century logicians from Oxford, where Paul had studied, and from Paris, where he may have visited. The Tractatus de Obligationibus is a particularly rich source for mid to late fourteenth-century doctrines. In it Paul describes the rules which logic students were obligated to obey in disputations designed to test their logical skills. In the sources of his discussion of these rules, Paul raises problems not only in formal logic but also in the philosophy of language. The author has provided notes to explain the more obscure parts of Paul's discussion, and which contain full references to his sources. There is an up-to-date bibliography of secondary sources on Obligationes . Specialists in history of logic and philosophy.