Colophon: Imprinted Venice, by Octavianus, Scotus, 1521-1522.

Contemporary full vellum, spine professionally rebacked. Sporadic dense marginalia in first part, monastic inscription, stamp of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary and Rev. Luke McCabe on title page. Dark stains at end of second part.

Maurice O'Fihely (d.1308), a Franciscan, who saw this work through the press, was born in Baltimore, County Cork. Hence the name "Mauritius de Porty" by which he was widely known to his contemporaries who also bestowed on him the flattering nickname "Flos Mundi." There is also a school of thought with other writers who see it as deriving from the Augustinian monastery St Maria de Portu Puro in the western diocese of Clonfert. After teaching in Milan and Padua, he became censor of the press in Venice to Octavianus Scoti and thus may also lay claim to being the first Irishman to play a major role in the new world of printing. He was appointed Archbishop of Tuam by Pope Julius II in 1506. He did not return to Ireland till 1513, in the meantime attending as Archbishop of Tuam the first two sessions of the Fifth Lateran Council (1512). On leaving for Ireland to take formal possession of his See, O'Fihely procured from the Pope an indulgence for all those who would be present at his first Mass in Tuam. However, he was destined not to reach Tuam, for he fell ill in Galway and died there in the Franciscan convent. O'Fihely's significance lies primarily in his promotion of the work of the philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus. Though initially regarded by the Franciscans as an important commentator on the standard theological textbook of the middle ages, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Scotus was later adopted as the basic authority in Franciscan studia. The invention of printing further fuelled this revival of interest in his work, and O''Fihely was responsible for editing an number of his works for the press as well as publishing commentaries on key aspects of his doctrine. His edition of Scotus's Questiones subtilissme Scoti in metaphysicam Aristotelis (Venice, 1497) has the distinction of being the first work prepared for the printing press by an Irishman. Though his efforts do not seem to have had any direct impact on his contemporary confreres in Ireland, he laid the foundations for the revival of interest in Scotism that was such a feature of Irish Franciscan intellectual activity in the seventeenth century. Friar Luke Wadding and other members of the Irish friary at St Isidore's College, Rome, drew extensively on O'Fihely's editions and commentaries in their edition of the Opera omnia of Scotus (12 volumes, Lyons, 1639). As for the Irishness or otherwise of Duns Scotus, it is a matter that may never be finally resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Modern scholarship argues against Ireland, and Scotland seems more likely, but this was certainly not the opinion entertained by early Irish editors who devoted so much effort to producing a definitive edition of the corpus of this late 13th-century Franciscan.

Physical description: 142, 85 [4] leaves, illustrations, 31 cm