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The fourteenth-century thinker Thomas Bradwardine is well known in both the history of science and the history of theology. The first of the Merton Calculators (mathematical physicists) and passionate defender of the Augustinian doctrine of salvation through grace alone, he was briefly archbishop of Canterbury before succumbing to the Black Death in 1349. This new edition of his Insolubilia, made from all thirteen known manuscripts, shows that he was also a logician of the first rank. The edition is accompanied by a full English translation. In the treatise, Bradwardine considers and rejects the theories of his contemporaries about the logical puzzles known as "insolubles," and sets out his own solution at length and in detail. In a substantial introduction, Stephen Read describes Bradwardine's analysis, compares it with other more recent theories, and places it in its historical context. The text is accompanied by three appendices, the first of which is an extra chapter found in two manuscripts (and partly in a third) that appears to contain further thoughts by Bradwardine himself. The second contains an extract from Ralph Strode's Insolubilia, composed in the 1360s, repeating and enlarging on Bradwardine's text; and the third consists of an anonymous text that applies Bradwardine's solution to a succession of different insolubles.

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Bos and Read present here two medieval treatises on concepts. These treatises were first unearthed by one of the editors in the course of a different project, namely the search for the origins of the notion of 'suppositio collectiva'. They appear to have attracted no attention since the middle of the fifteenth century. These are two of only three medieval treatises known to the editors explicitly devoted to discussion of concepts. That is not to deny that other works treat extensively of concepts among other matters. In the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it became increasingly common to devote single treatises to single matters-supposition, consequences, exponibles, obligations and so on. A more famous treatise on concepts is Peter of Ailly's Concepts, given a modern translation by Paul Spade. Peter's treatise was written in Paris in the early 1370s, and printed there and in Lyon several times in the 1490s. Thomas of Cleves' treatise was also written in Paris in the early 1370's, and that of Paul of Gelria some ten years later, if not in Paris then in Prague. Neither has been printed before. To preface the edition of the two texts, the editors provide an introduction discussing the origin of medieval conceptions of concepts and commenting in detail on the content of the two treatises. They also provide some biographical information on the authors and attempt to date and place their texts.

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