‘Vocales,’ or Early Nominalists

In Section 1 of the present essay I present evidence that in the early twelfth-century nominalists were calledvocales, a name that only later was replaced bynominales.In Section 2 I argue that ‘vocalism' arose about 1080, one generation of scholars before Roscelin. Since Garlandus' vocalisticDialecticacould be thought to provide evidence of an even earlier origin of the theory, Section 3 will deal with the date of this work, which has wrongly been assigned to the mid-eleventh century or earlier. Sections 4–6 will present a number of unpublished texts by vocalist authors, and the Appendix will supply editions of vocalist texts commenting on or otherwise discussing Porphyry'sIsagoge.