QUODLIBETI. — The q., as is evident from the surviving manuscripts, are literary redactions of those solemn disputations inaugurated as early as the thirteenth century by the Faculty of Theology of Paris, and subsequently imitated by the Faculties of Arts, Law, and Medicine.
Alongside the ordinary disputations, dialectical exercises in which bachelors and students engaged under the direction of the master and within the school, a more solemn exercise developed in the Faculty of Theology of Paris around 1230, under the responsibility of the master himself; it spread throughout the thirteenth and the following century: the quodlibetal disputation, so called because it is de quolibet, a quolibet, or ad voluntatem quoalibet.
A quolibet: the initiative in proposing the question and consequently in choosing it was removed from the master and depended on the assistants, neighboring masters, bachelors, or other persons external to the school. Each had the right to propose his subject, raise objections, and argue against the master. De quolibet: any subject connected with the field of instruction could rise to the honor of discussion: theology, Sacred Scripture, morality, pastoral care, canon law, sacramental theology, philosophy, cases of conscience, etc. The master could refuse a subject that seemed unsuitable to him; in that case, however, those present expressed their disapproval. The session was therefore not without its difficulties, both because of the number and because of the variety of the questions proposed. On average there were 20–25; sometimes there were as many as 34–39 (Trivet), 44 (Pietro de Trabibus), and even 53 (Peckham).
The master had one or more bachelors under his authority, who bore the first attack and gave an initial answer to the objections (the statutes established, in fact, that no bachelor could present himself for the license without having taken part at least once in the de quolibet). It was the master, however, who, after the initial dialectical skirmishes, presented the solutions, treated the question in depth, “determined” it, and gave the definitive answer to the objections. A few days later, on the first day of the «legibilis» course, the master took up again at school, for the students alone, the questions debated in the preceding session; he established a certain order, classifying as he thought best the questions proposed disorderly in the discussion, and gave them their definitive form. It was after this second session that the master drew up his text. It sometimes happens (the case of St. Thomas’s Quodlibet XII is typical in this respect, for example) that what survives of the text is only the «reportatio» made by a listener. In certain very rare cases, there are notes taken during the discussion, which reveal the improvisation, disjointedness, and course of the solemn disputation. The periods reserved for the q. were two: at Christmas, in the second and third weeks of Advent; at Easter, around the fourth week of Lent. On the day of the quodlibetal discussions, all courses were suspended, so that masters and bachelors could take part. It was therefore called disputatio solemnis, or disputatio communis. At the session in which Ruggero Marston took part, there were perhaps no fewer than 25 masters in theology. No regulation obliged a master to undergo this trial. Some, in fact, never submitted to it; others did so once or twice in the whole of their teaching career; there were those who exposed themselves more frequently, nor were there lacking others who underwent the trial at every session. Gerardo d’Abbeville, for example, had 20 q. to his credit; Enrico di Gand and Goffredo di Fontaines, 15; Giovanni di Napoli, 15; St. Thomas, 12; Nicola Trivet, 11; Raimondo Rigaud, 9.
The importance of these discussions for the history of philosophical and theological thought is considerable, both because of the breadth and value of their documentation and because of the chronological precisions they provide. Their very nature as quodlibetal disputations prevents them from being confined within too narrow a framework; an infinity of problems find their way into them. It is sufficient to glance at the subject indexes to form an idea of this: all the burning issues, all the discussions then in progress, all the newly proposed theses, and sometimes the very events of contemporary public life emerge with clarity; the publicity accorded to them spread knowledge of them in a singular manner. On the other hand, they provide on these subjects the genuine and profound thought of the master defending his own point of view. He was not taken by surprise, even though the choice of the questions was external to him (in some cases, moreover, he could resort to cunning, having himself been consulted in advance by interested persons on those questions on which he wished to express an opinion); he had studied at length the problems that might arise from them. It was thus possible to obtain first-rate clarifications both concerning his personal doctrine and concerning the great currents of thought in the university milieu. Furthermore, unlike so many works of the Middle Ages, these documents can be dated with great precision, often to the year, more frequently to the month, and sometimes to the day. In addition to the indications supplied by manuscripts through the colophons they bear, the magisterial career of their author already narrows the field of hypotheses. Above all, the frequent allusions both to contemporary events and to discussions known and dated «aliunde», or to other works likewise dated, help to provide more precise indications. It is enough for a single one of the 20 or 30 questions contained in a q. to be datable for all of them to be dated; all, in fact, were proposed and defended in the same session. These disputations thus become extremely useful sources of information and dating for the history of medieval philosophical and theological thought. The flourishing period of this kind of literature extends from 1320 to 1320; the preceding q. are merely attempts, while the later ones undergo imprecise developments and abound in subtleties;
more than 117 names of authors who took part in such disputations are currently known, with a total of 358 q.
The example set by the University of Paris was followed elsewhere, in Oxford, undoubtedly at the suggestion of Giovanni Peckham, in Bologna, Toulouse, Cologne, and almost everywhere. This scholastic exercise was soon adopted, with appropriate adaptations, in the «Studia generalis» of the religious orders—Dominicans, Franciscans, Hermits of St. Augustine, etc. The other Faculties, besides those of theology, also held their solemn disputations; the regulations existing in the Faculties of Arts and Medicine are very well known, whereas those of the Faculty of Law are less so. To form a judgment on the evolution and degeneration of the q., useful reference may be made to the q. defended by Giovanni Hus in the Faculty of Arts at Prague in January 1411, edited by Bohumil Ryba (Prague 1948).