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08676_Field_TCGG T441.txt
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1996-03-19
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claim the standing of an ‘author’ of a new unit in the
chain of transmitted knowledge? We are guilty of an
anachronism if we imagine that the medieval student
regarded the contents of the books he read as the
expression of another man’s personality and opinion. He
looked upon them as part of that great and total body of
knowledge, the scientia de omni scibili , which had once
been the property of the ancient sages. Whatever he read
in a venerable old book he would take to be not
somebody’s assertion but a small piece of knowledge
acquired by someone long ago from someone else still
more ancient. (p. 113)
Not only were users of manuscripts, writes Goldschmidt,
mostly indifferent to the chronology of authorship and to the
“identity and personality of the author of the book he was