Iohannis Scotti Annotationes in Marcianum
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THE MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY OF AMERICA PUBLICATION No. 34 IOHANNIS SCOTTI ANNOTATIONES IN MARCIANUM IOHANNIS SCOTTI ANNOTATIONES IN MARCIANUM EDITED BY CORA E. LUTZ Wilson College THE MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY OF AMERICA CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 1939 The publication of this book was made possible by grants of funds to the Academy from the Carnegie Corporation of New Tork and the American Council of Learned Societies. COPYRIGHT BY THE MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY OF AMERICA '939 Printed in U. S. A. PUNTED BY THE WAVISLY FKES3, INC. BALTIMORE, MARYLAND PREFACE EDIAEVALISTS have long felt the need for an edition of the M only work of John the Scot which has hitherto remained un- published, his commentary on the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella. I first became interested in this problem while a student at the Yale Graduate School. There, under the guidance of Professor E. T. Silk, I made a study of the ninth-century commentaries on the seven liberal arts with especial reference to John the Scot, and presented it, together with a critical edition of four books of his commen- tary, as a dissertation for the doctor's degree. Since then, I have com- pleted the text, and have incorporated, with some revision, the pertinent conclusions of the earlier study into the introduction to the present edi- tion. I have taken the opportunity to suggest a few of the interesting problems which a consideration of the commentary has brought to my attention, although my main purpose has always been simply to make available this important treatise. Constantly, during the course of my work, I have taken advantage of the knowledge and interest of Professor Silk. Professor Rand has been very kind in encouraging the project. The Bibliotheque Nationale gave generous permission to have the manuscript of the commentary photo- graphed. The librarians of Yale University, Trini ty College, and Wilson College have been gracious in cooperating with me in my research. The publication of the edition has been most generously undertaken by the Mediaeval Academy of America with the assistance of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the American Council of Learned Societies. CORA E. LUTZ Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 20 September /pj8 CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1. History and Authorship ix 2. Content xiv 3. Sources xx 4. Style xxv 5. Description of the Manuscript xxviii 6. The Present Edition xxx ANNOTATIONES IN MARCIANUM 3 APPENDICES I. Note on Two Dates in the Annotationes 225 II. The IKTTXOS of Theophrastus 227 HI. Dunchad 229 INDEX NOMINUM ET LOCORUM 237 Vll INTRODUCTION i. HISTORY AND AUTHORSHIP REEMINENT among the Irish scholars who made important P contributions to the intellectual life of Europe in the ninth century stands John the Scot. A long series of studies, from the early edition of the De divisione naturae made by Thomas Gale1 down to the recent exhaustive treatment of Cappuyns,2 have been successful in solving a great many of the problems connected with the life and writings of this great thinker. Yet until comparatively recently one of his works, a commentary on the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella, was almost unknown.8 It is this commentary, entitled Annota- tiones in Marcianum in the unique manuscript, which I have undertaken to edit.* 1 Oxford, 1681. •M. Cappuyns, Jean Scot £riglne, sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensie (Louvain, 1933). This book contains a very complete bibliography of John the Scot. 1 Some others of his philological works have suffered similar neglect. The commentaries on the Opuscula sacra of Boethius were first brought to light by Rand in 1906 ('Johannes Scottus,' Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinhchen Philologie des Mittelalters, 1). Since then, Cappuyns ('Le plus ancien commentaire des Opuscula Sacra et son origine,' Recherches de Thiologie ancienne et tnldilvale, 111 [1931], 237-272) has made an impressive case for the identification of the work as that of Remigius, but Rand maintains his original position ('The Supposed Commentary of John the Scot on the Opuscula Sacra of Boethius,' RSvue Nioscolastique, xxxvi [1934], 67-77). The question of the authorship of the Excerpta Macrobii de differentia et societatibus Graeci Latinique verbi is still being debated. Cf. P. G. Thery, 'Scot £rigene, Traducteur de Denys, 'Bulletin Du Cange, vi (1931), 217-218; J. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (3rd ed., Cambridge, 1921), 1, 495; H. Keil, Grammatici Latini (Leipzig, 1878), v, 595; L. Traube, 'O Roma Nobilis,' Abhandlungen der koniglich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-philologische und historische Klasse, xix (1892), 355; M. R. James, Cambridge Medieval History, m, Ch. 20, p. 525; F. Vernet, Dictionnaire de Thfologie catholique (Paris, 1913), v, 409. M. Melandre ('Iepa ou Scot Erigene,' Archives a"His- toire doctrinale et littiraire du moyen age, vi [1931], 277-286) would make John the Scot the author of some glosses on the Jsagogae of Porphyrius which are ascribed to the unidentified Iepa. Recently E. T. Silk has presented very convincing evidence to support the thesis that an important anony- mous commentary on the Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius is the work of John the Scot. Cf. Saeculi noni auctoris in Boetii Consolationem Philosophiae commentarius, Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome, ix (1935), xxvii-1. 4 There is no mention of John the Scot's commentary on Martianus Capella in any of the sources. The little information that has been preserved relevant to the subject serves only to indicate that it is not improbable that the Irish scholar should have written glosses on the De nuptiis. For instance, one sentence in a letter by an unknown student who calls himself A to his master E, written sometime between the years 862 and 875, vouches for John the Scot's pursuit of grammar. He says: 'Imitatote etiam ... qualiter cantetur apud vestrates in responsorio "Domine pater," et "animo" (vel "animae") "inreverenti et infrunito" (aut "infronito" sive "infrodito") antepenultimo acuto secundum doctrinam Iohannis Scotti' (E. Dummler, 'Epistulae variorum inde a saeculo nono medio ix x Introduction The history of our knowledge of the commentary is very brief. It began in 1849, when Cardinal Pitra happened upon a manuscript of Mar- tianus Capella with scholia. He was led to the conclusion that the glosses originated with John the Scot. H. Floss, editor of the monu- mental edition of 1853 of the works of John the Scot, expressed his opinion that an anonymous commentary in a Paris manuscript, Bibli- otheque Nationale, jonds lat., MS 12960 (which will hereafter be called C for Corbeiensis),1 would bear investigation, since he suspected that the work could be identified as that of the Irish philosopher.2 Quite unaware of Floss' acquaintance with the manuscript, but defiant of the judgment of earlier scholars that no commentary of John the Scot existed,* Haureau made a thorough investigation of the subject. At last, in the Bibli- otheque Nationale, in the same ninth-century manuscript, C, which had been referred to by Floss, he came upon the anonymous commentary on Martianus Capella, and immediately set out to prove it the work of John the Scot.4 At that time a superficial study had been made of some three or four copies of a Martianus commentary written by a young contemporary of the Irishman, Remigius of Auxerre. From these glosses, which seem to be little more than an amplified copy of the older commentary, Haureau derived three proofs for the identity of John the Scot's commentary. On folio 27' of B.N.lat. 8674 °ftne Remigius 5 commentary he found the gloss: 'HEUS vocantis adverbium est. Joannes Scotus HEUS UBI ES resolvebat.' On folio 697 of the anonymous commen- usque ad mortem Karoli II imperatoris collectae,' Monumenta Germaniae Hislorica, Epistulae, vi, 184). In a record of the bishops of Auxerre, given in Gallia Christiana, one finds the following entry in the account of Wibaudus, bishop in the year 879: 'Nobilissimus parentibus Leutfrido atque Doda in civitate Cameracensi satus Wibaudus, adhuc juvenis Johanni Scoto, per Gallias magistro quam famosissimo, traditus est erudiendus, sub quo divinis aeque ac humanis disciplinis apprime fuit informatus' (D. de Sainte-Marthe, Gallia Christiana, XII, 277, 278). Of far greater significance, however, is a charge made against John the Scot by Prudentius, bishop of Troyes, in the course of his great denunciation of the treatise De praedestinatione. Instead of following the Scriptures and the Fathers, the Irishman, Prudentius maintains, made himself adept in the wiles of the rhetoricians and at last became inextricably enmeshed in the labyrinth of error through Martianus Capella: 'Nam ille tuus Capella, exceptis aliis, vel maxime te in hunc labyrinthum induxisse creditur, cujus meditatione magis quam veritati evangelicae animum appulisti. Quin etiam cum legeres beati Augustini libros, quos De Civitate Dei adversus paganorum fallacissimas falsissimasque opiniones mirabili affluentia digessit, invenisti eum posuisse ac destruxisse quaedam ex libris Varronis, quibus, quoniam Capellae tuo consona videbantur, potius assentiri quam veridici Augustini allegationibus fidem adhibere delegisti' (J. Migne, Patrologia Latina, cxv, 1294). 1 The history of this ninth-century manuscript, originally from Corbie, is given below. * Cf. Migne, P. L., cxxn, xviii, xix. • E.g., J. Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina mediae et infimae aetatis, iv, 407: 'Omitto tanquam incerta vel alii tribuenda Joanni—Commentaries in Martianum Capellam.' * B. Haurlau, 'Commentaire de Jean Scot £rig£ne sur Martianus Capella,' Notices et Extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothique Imphiale, xx, 2 (1862), 1-39. • Martianus Capella, ed. A. Dick (Leipzig, 1925), 58, 21. Introduction xi tary in C he found the following gloss: 'HEUS ubi es, adverbium loci.' On folio 32T of the Remigius work a passage explaining an obscure sentence of Martianus1 reads: Locus iste corruptus scriptorum vitio, et ideo a nonnullis prave exposi- tus.