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STEPHEN MOSSMAN Ubertino da Casale and the Devotio Moderna Ubertino da Casale is best known to modern scholarship as a fervent partisan of the Spiritual Franciscans, and as one of the most radical exponents of the apoca- lyptic doctrine of Joachim of Fiore in the fifth book of his principal theological work, the Arbor vitae crucifixae Iesu Christi. He presents a rather enigmatic figure, who disappears from the historical record in the later 1320s, and is presumed to have died – in precisely what circumstances is a matter of controversy – around 1330. In the later Middle Ages, his Arbor vitae continued to enjoy a certain popularity across southern Europe, notably amongst the Franciscan Observants in Italy and Spain. It was less well known in northern Europe, with the significant exception of the Low Countries. This exception has attracted some comment, without ever being explained. Kurt Ruh, for instance, remarked in his entry on Ubertino in the Verfasserlexikon: ‘Kaum ein Zufall wird es sein, daß sich fast die ganze (bisher bekannte) H[ubertinus]-Rezeption im germanischen Raum auf die Niederlande konzentriert, auch wenn man die These des P. Optatus […] von der ‘Ubereinstimmung’ H[ubertinus]’, zumal in seinem christozentrischen Denken, ‘mit der niederländischen Frömmigkeit’ nicht als ausreichenden Erklärungsgrund anerkennen will.’1 The Capuchin friar Optatus, to whom Ruh here refers, is the only other scholar to have attempted any kind of assessment of the influence of Ubertino’s Arbor vitae in the Low Countries. He provides just three pages of summary indications, which then formed the material basis for C. C. de Bruin’s discussion of the topic in his survey of the medieval vita Christi tradition.2 ¶ An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, 10-13 May 2007, at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, in session 89, ‘The Devotio Moderna and its Creative Use of Sources’. My thanks to Mathilde van Dijk for the invitation. I thank Mathilde, Anna Dlabacová and Nigel F. Palmer for reading earlier drafts of this article; Rahel Bacher, Sabrina Corbellini, Paul Lachance OFM, Marianne Hansen, Thom Mertens, Renée Nip and Rowan Tomlinson for help with individual points; and Mark Bainbridge for his assistance in preparing the translations from Latin texts. My thanks for the provision of manuscript copies to the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Brussels, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag, and the Staats- bibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz; and to the John Rylands University Library, Manchester, for permitting me to inspect a manuscript in its possession. — All translations from medieval texts are my own, with the exception of the single quotation from the trilingual Ruusbroec edition. A modern punctuation and capitalisation has been interposed uniformly on all quotations from such texts cited from original manuscripts and early printed books. 1 Kurt Ruh, ‘Hubertinus von Casale’, in: idem, Burghart Wachinger et al., Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, 14 vols (Berlin and New York, 21977-2008) [hereinafter 2Verfasserlexikon], 4 (1983), cols. 211-19 and 11 (2004), col. 694, here 4, col. 215. 2 Optatus, ‘De invloed van Hubertinus van Casale op het geestelijk leven in de Nederlanden’, Franciscaans leven 30 (1947), pp. 112-14; C. C. de Bruin, ‘Middeleeuwse Levens van Jesus als leidraad voor meditatie en contemplatie’, Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 58 (1978), pp. 129-55; 60 (1980), pp. 162-81; and 63 (1983), pp. 129-73, at 58 (1978), pp. 153-55, and 63 (1983), pp. 154-55 and pp. 165-66. Ons Geestelijk Erf 80(3), 199-280. doi: 10.2143/OGE.80.3.2045818. © Ons Geestelijk Erf. All rights reserved. 992875_OGE_3_04_Mossman.indd2875_OGE_3_04_Mossman.indd 119999 114-01-20104-01-2010 116:05:056:05:05 200 STEPHEN MOSSMAN The transmission of the Arbor vitae in the Low Countries, both in Latin and in Dutch translation, is in fact considerably more substantial than previously noted. The particular enthusiasm for this work in the region is not coincidental. Its reception can be traced back to the years around 1400: and not in the milieu of the Franciscan Observance, which would only reach the Netherlands some decades later, but amongst the Augustinian canons regular of the Windesheim congregation. The interest of the early Modern Devout in the Arbor vitae had nothing to do with its apocalyptic theology, but with its status as a sophisticated and highly-structured contemplative work; one which contained certain distinctive features that correspond precisely to particular features of the contemplative practice and devotional works of the Devotio Moderna. Beyond these common formal aspects, the Arbor vitae contains a distinctive and original theology of the interior suffering of Christ, which Ubertino connects to the image of the sacred heart and describes as Christ’s dolores cordiales. This was directly influ- ential on the conceptualisation of the suffering of Christ, and in turn on the nature of imitating his life, amongst the early writers of the Devotio Moderna. This is most evident in the case of Jan van Schoonhoven – the individual who had defended Ruusbroec’s works against the criticism of Jean Gerson, and whose historical significance, so Ruh again, ‘beruht indes darauf, daß er die maßgebliche Persönlichkeit ist, die den Schwerpunkt der Spiritualität von Groenendaal zu den Windesheimern verlagerte.’3 This article is an attempt to provide a systematic survey of the transmission and reception of the Arbor vitae in the Low Countries to c. 1520. We will thus begin with an analysis of the extant Latin manuscripts, the testimonies from library catalogues and other sources of manuscripts now lost, and of the manu- scripts containing portions of the text in Dutch translation. The evidence for the transmission of the work in Germany, such as it is, will be adduced to provide a comparative perspective. We will then examine certain aspects of the work that help to explain its popularity in the region, with specific focus on the Devotio Moderna in the period up to c. 1410. Finally, we will define the sub- sequent patterns of use of the Arbor vitae through the fifteenth and early six- teenth centuries, relying in this later period on the evidence supplied by existing case studies of particular authors and works. Before we look at all this evidence for the work’s transmission, we should take a moment to ask exactly what the Arbor vitae actually is. THE ARBOR VITAE At the simplest level, the Arbor vitae is a life of Christ with two prologues and five books. It is also extraordinarily long. The sole printed version, a Venetian incunable from 1485, runs to nearly five hundred folio sides, in two columns 3 Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, 4, Die niederländische Mystik des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1999), pp. 124-25. 992875_OGE_3_04_Mossman.indd2875_OGE_3_04_Mossman.indd 220000 114-01-20104-01-2010 116:05:056:05:05 UBERTINO DA CASALE AND THE DEVOTIO MODERNA 201 of 59 lines of heavily abbreviated text.4 It is exactly contemporary with the Meditationes vitae Christi of Johannes de Caulibus, another north Italian Franciscan, and these two works are the earliest in the genre of exhaustive vitae Christi in Latin prose. As such, the Arbor vitae occupies an important position in this literary tradition,5 but it is very different in character both to the Meditationes, and to the subsequent fourteenth-century works in the same genre.6 Structured around the image of a tree, the Arbor vitae proceeds from the roots upwards to the fruits of the branches, adopting an earlier model from Bonaventura’s Lignum vitae. Within this structure, the Arbor vitae covers not merely the life of Christ on Earth, but the entirety of salvation history seen through the lens of Christ’s involvement – from creation through to the second coming and the end of the world. Carlos Mateo Martínez Ruiz, who has recently dedicated a major study to the Arbor vitae, describes the work as a theological summa: a work that expounds the essential content of Christian doctrine, in this case freed from the formal constraints of academic writing in a university con- text, but with the same concern to present the totality of theological knowledge, and with a similarly intimate knowledge of scholastic theology and biblical exegesis. Ubertino binds salvation history to christology in such a way that every theological issue is explicable only in terms of a moment in Christ’s existence, with the church (and thus Ubertino’s treatment of ecclesiology) appearing as the ‘fruits’ of the tree in the fifth book.7 At the centre of the work stands the fourth and longest book, dealing with Christ’s Passion. It is here that Ubertino sets out his unique and exceptionally complex mystical theology. He presents a contemplative ascent in which union with God is made accessible to the believer through the cross as the culmination of Christ’s earthly existence, and ultimately through the transformation of the individual into the crucified Christ – a transformation that had been realised most perfectly by Francis of Assisi.8 4 This edition is cited from the modern reprint: Ubertinus de Casali, Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu, with an introduction and bibliography by Charles T. Davis [Monumenta politica et philosophica rariora series 1/4] (Turin, 1961). 5 See Tobias A. Kemper, Die Kreuzigung Christi. Motivgeschichtliche Studien zu lateinischen und deutschen Passionstraktaten des Spätmittelalters [Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen 131] (Tübingen, 2006), pp. 86-88. 6 See Michael Cusato, ‘Two Uses of the Vita Christi Genre in Tuscany, c. 1300: John de Caulibus and Ubertino da Casale compared. A Response to Daniel Lesnick, ten years hence’, Franciscan Studies 57 (1999), pp. 131-48, at pp. 141-46. 7 See Carlos Mateo Martínez Ruiz, De la dramatizacion de los acontecimientos de la pascua a la cristologia.