Conclusion

At the end of the fourteenth century, Paul of Venice composed a treatise on the truth and falsity of propositions (Tractatus de veritate et falsitate propositionis) that summarizes (by means of a long list of alternative definitions of truth) the two main approaches to truth in the fourteenth century, the one based on supposition and the one based on the signification of propositions. (Another interesting fourteenth-century approach to truth, not discussed here for reasons of space, can be found in the tradition of the theories of probationes terminorum, exemplified by Richard Billingham’s Speculum puerorum.) It is significant that, while in the first half of the fourteenth century one does not find treatises explicitly on the truth of propositions (discussions on truth were then to be found in treatises on the properties of terms and on insolubles), toward the end of the century such treatises started to appear. Also significant is that in the fourteenth century one does not encounter the attribution of truth to nonlinguistic objects, as with Anselm and Aquinas. Truth is then seen as an attribute exclusively of propositions (written, spoken, or mental), and the titles of such treatises invariably feature the genitive propositionis applied to De veritate (while both Anselm and Aquinas wrote treatises entitled ‘‘De veritate’’ tout court).