Abstract

In the commentary on the Isagoge ascribed to John Pagus, one of the major figures in the mid-thirteenth century Parisian Faculty of Arts, we encounter a statement according to which uniuersale per continentiam et ambitum is the sort of universal that is relevant in the context of the Porphyrian question about the ontological status of genera and species. The aim of this article is to decode this enigmatic phrase. We proceed in two steps, first examining some thirteenth-century texts in which this phrase is found, and second providing a careful analysis and original interpretation of decisive passages in Pagus’ commentary. By means of this hermeneutical analysis, we develop a more precise understanding of the nature and significance of the realist teaching about universals, which was promoted by the vast majority of mid-thirteenth-century Latin thinkers