WOJCIECH WCIÓRKA, Does Merit Depend on the Future? A Critical Edition of Stephen Langton’s Quaestio 134

Volume XXII: 2016

Philosophy — Theology— Spiritual Culture of the Middle Ages
ISSN 0860-0015
e-ISSN 2544-1000

SUMMARY

The paper contains a critical edition of Stephen Langton’s (d. 1228) theological question Vtrum si aliquis meruit, necessarium sit illum meruisse (no. 134 in Quinto’s catalogue). Placed by an anonymous medieval compiler within Book III of what we now call Langton’s Quaestiones Theologiae, q. 134 asks whether the moral value of actions or mental “movements” (motus) is immediately decided and remains fixed once they have been performed. The potential problem lies in the future contingent events that might be regarded as an ex post threat to that value. The edition is preceded by an introduction focusing on textual transmission and followed by a transcription of a corresponding fragment of Geoffrey’s of Poitiers’s Summa (Appendix).