Le questioni di Stefano Langton sui doni dello Spirito Santo e sul sacrificio di Abramo

The paper takes the edition of two of Stephen Langton’s Quaestiones theologiae as an opportunity to provide a summary of our knowledge of the manuscript transmission of this work. The two edited quaestiones, though not ideologically linked to each other, belong to a special group of eight quaestiones which are present in the same order in all four different collections that preserve Langton’s 200 theological quaestiones. Through a detailed philological analysis, the authors argue that a) the four sub-archetypes of the quaestiones (two preserved, and two lost after having been copied) all copied directly one and the same archetype; b) the archetype was copied at different stages of its life, which is characterised by the progressive introduction of small changes and by intentional corrections; and c) the archetype itself does not originate in an author’s “original”, but in reportationes of oral disputations. The paper concludes that the best way to edit Langton’s Quaestiones theologiae is to keep as close as possible to the most “archaic” form of the archetype and sometimes to emend it on the assumption that some misunderstandings may have occurred during the recording of the oral disputation. In an Appendix q. CAMB094 – Quare potius dicantur esse vii dona spiritus sancti quam patris et filii, q. CAMB102 –De ymolatione Ysaac et precepto Abrae, and Langton’s Commentary on 1 Tim. 4, 1-8 are edited.