Lexicographic and syntactic explorations of doubt in twelfth-century Latintexts

What follows is a preliminary sortie into the largely untouched field of do ubt in twelfth-century Europe. That the word "doubt" in English is ambiguou s soon became clear when I had to keep explaining that my study was not int ended simply as a chapter in the history of philosophical scepticism or as an investigation of medieval atheism, but was to encompass uncertainty in a ll its forms. Obviously if there were problems about the meaning of doubt i n English, identifying doubt in twelfth-century Latin texts would not be st raightforward. This papers tests the correspondence between our current ide as on doubt and their expression in English, and doubt in twelfth-century L atin writings not only enabled me to identify a rich array of doubt-words b ut to suggest an explanation for their underlying ambiguity and to determin e the methods by which it was countered. Analysis of the words and images e xpressing doubt in these passages also provides a preliminary indication of medieval attitudes towards doubt.