• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

THE MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY OF AMERICA PUBLICATION NO. 82 ANALECTA DVBLINENSIA ANALECTA DVBLINENSIA THREE MEDIEVAL LATIN TEXTS IN THE LIBRARY OF TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN edited by MARVIN L. COLKER The University of Virginia THE MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY OF AMERICA CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 1975 The publication of this book was made possible by grants of funds to the Mediaeval Academy from the Carnegie Corporation of New York Copyright ©1975 By The Mediaeval Academy of America Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-1954 ISBN 910956-56-1 Printed in the United States of America To Philip Ian Colker This Book Is Dedicated Contents Preface 1 1. CONTRA RELIGIONIS SIMVLATORES Introduction 5 Summary 9 Text 17 Notes 52 Index Nominum 59 Index Rerum Memorabilium 60 Index Auctorum et Operum Romanorum ac Medii Aeui Citatorum 62 2. EPISTOLAE AD AMICVM AND THREE POEMS Introduction 65 Summary 75 Text 91 Appendices 161 & 162 Notes 164 Index Nominum 173 Index Rerum Memorabilium 174 Index Verborum uel Significationum Inusitatiorum 177 Index Auctorum et Operum Romanorum ac Medii Aeui Citatorum 178 CONTENTS 3. A COLLECTION OF STORIES AND SKETCHES: PETRONIVS REDIVIVVS Introduction 181 Summary 189 Text 195 Notes 236 Index Nominum 253 Index Rerum Memorabilium 254 Index Verborum uel Significationum Inusitatiorum 256 Index Auctorum et Operum Romanorum ac Medii Aeui Citatorum 257 Preface OVER the past decade I have been privileged to work on the re-cataloging of the medieval Latin manuscripts at Trinity College Dublin. In the course of this effort, I came upon three unpublished medieval Latin texts that were of out- standing literary merit: a vigorous dialogue about the hypocrisy of sinful monks, which provides valuable insights into the psychology of monks who have strayed from the monastic ideal; a series of letters which reveal internal politics at the monastery of St Albans and narrate the sufferings of a student persecuted by his jealous teacher; and a collection of mainly realistic and often racy stories which derive much of their language from Petronius-the collection also contains critical descriptions of various segments of medieval society. Through Analecta Dublinensia I wish to share with the reader these three remarkable texts, each of which, when generally known, should attain the status of a medieval classic. I transcribed them directly from the Dublin manuscripts; in the case of the letters, I depended upon an extremely clear microfilm for my collation of the Hereford manuscript, which is probably a copy of the Dublin manuscript. To provide ease of citation I divide the Latin texts into sections, marked by numbers inserted in square brackets. As closely as possible I adhere to the orthography, but not to the capitalization or punctuation, of the Dublin manuscripts. Square brackets in the texts are used to set off scribal errors which should be disregarded, whereas angular brackets enclose my editorial additions. There remains the pleasant duty to thank the authorities of Trinity College Dublin and of Hereford Cathedral who have permitted the use of their manu- scripts, and to name gratefully the sources of the generous grants which enabled me to carry on the cataloging at Trinity College Dublin: Trinity Trust, the University of Dublin Fund, the University of Virginia, the American Philosophi- cal Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endow- ment for the Humanities, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. I am indebted, for very helpful comments, to Paul Meyvaert, Executive Secretary of the Mediaeval Academy of America, to Giles Constable, Professor of History at Harvard University, and to William O'Sullivan, Keeper of Manuscripts at Trinity College, Dublin. Marvin L. Colker 1 CONTRA RELIGIONIS SIMVLATORES s 4§tl«i# ft t»f Trinitv Collese Dublin MS 97. fot 227V Introduction THE first text in Analecta Dublinensia is an unpublished and apparently unknown work with the full manuscript title of Tractatus Beati GregoriiPape Contra Religionis Simulatores, found in Trinity College Dublin MS 97 (B.3.5).1 The work is cast in the form of a dialogue and is directed against hypocrisy in monastic life.2 The participants in the dialogue are given the names of Romanus, who is a wayward monk, and Gregory. Romanus regards himself as saintly [3] ,3 but among other faults, he hates to obey his superiors [9,13] and indulges in romantic fantasies to escape the discomforts of his existence [4-7]. Gregory regards Romanus as a hypocrite [11] and succeeds in getting him to admit that his life is a horrible obscenity [31]. In the course of the satiric dialogue Gregory assails the evils of contemporary monks, including gluttony [43,64-78], garrulousness [41,43], practicing medicine [46-48], and singing with a high- pitched voice [45]. Who is the author of this spirited dialogue? The incipit assigns it to a "beatus Gregorius papa" who is evidently also the speaker Gregory in the dialogue. "Beatus Gregorius papa" without further qualification instantly suggests Gregory the Great (pope, 590-604). In fact, "Gregorius" alone or accompanied only by "papa" and/or "beatus" regularly stands in medieval manuscripts for Gregory I,4 who wrote dialogues about Italian saints in which he was a speaker.5 More than 1. I find no trace of the work anywhere, and the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, Paris, has no record of the initium. 2. The Dialogus Contra Hypocrisim assigned to Poggio and printed by O. Gratius in his Appendix Ad Fasciculum Rerum Expetendarum Et Fugiendarum, 2 (London, 1690), 571-583, bears no relationship to the earlier dialogue apart from the general theme. An English summary of this earlier work follows the Introduction. 3. The bracketed numbers refer to the sections of the text. 4. For example, in Oxford Balliol MSS 14,15,280A (cf. R. A. B. Mynors, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College Oxford [Oxford, 1963], pp. 10-11,296) and in Oxford Lyell MSS 4,8 (cf. Albinia De la Mare, Catalogue of the Collection of Medieval Manuscripts Bequeathed to the Bodleian Library Oxford by James P. R. Lyell [Oxford, 1971],pp. 6,356). 5. The Dialogi of Gregory I are edited by U. Moricca in Fonti per la storia d'Italia (Rome, 1924). 6 CONTRA RELIGIONIS SIMVLATORES one Romanus appears in Gregory I's correspondence.6 But the attribution in the incipit seems fictional, and the use of the name Romanus in the dialogue against hypocrisy may have been inspired by the monk Romanus who figures in Gregory the Great's account of St Benedict (DialogiMiraculorum 2.1).7 The potentially autobiographic elements in the dialogue are elusive: Gregory describes an exceptionally fat monk whom he saw [44], reports his acquaintance with an ignorant monk who practiced medicine [48], discusses an encounter with a disagreeable brother [53], declares that he himself read many books and heard innumerable stories about saints [64], and records his presence in a monastery where a pig was all too magnificently served as part of a lavish meal [73]. Another person named in the dialogue is St Benedict [66], but he could have been mentioned by any writer after the sixth century. On the other hand, the attention to fancy foods [73,76] suggests the great abbeys of the later Middle Ages and therefore a later date.8 Indeed the work appears to have originated in the twelfth or thirteenth century (the manuscript is of the late thirteenth century). Bernard of Clairvaux's censure of monastic gluttony,9 Gerald of Wales's antipathy toward monastic involvement with medicine,10 John of Salisbury's disapproval of religious hypocrisy,1' and the typical twelfth- century interest in the theory of friendship12 are all compatible with the spiritual climate in which the dialogue was produced. One might, at first, interpret "Circumspicio namque mendicancium innumerum populum" [63] as intending to contrast the Benedictines with the mendicant friars, in which case the work would appear to have been composed about the middle of the thirteenth century, after the friars had become estab- lished. But what follows in [63] proves that the Latin statement merely aims to 6. But none of these men is clearly a monk: see the Index Personarum et Locorum for Gregory'sRegistrum, ed. L. M. Hartmann, MGH Epistolae 2,1 (1893), 506. 7. Ed. Moiicca, op. cit., pp. 71-78. 8. Cf. David Knowles, "Essays in Monastic History, 1066-1216: VII, The Diet of Black Monks," The Downside Review 52 (1934), 279-288, and idem, The Monastic Order in England (2nd ed., Cambridge, Eng., 1966), pp. 460,463,465. 9. Apologia 20-21 (PL 182:908-911). 10. Speculum Ecclesiae 3.9, in Gerald's Opera, 4, ed. J. S. Brewer (RS; London, 1873), 173-174. See text below, section 46, note a. 11. Policraticus 7.21, ed. C. C. J. Webb, 2 (Oxford, 1909), 190-201. 12. The dialogue discusses the nature of friendship in section 16. Cf. Christopher Brooke, The Twelfth Century (London, 1969), p. 89. For a bibliography on medieval theories about friendship see Adele Fiske, "Paradisus Homo Amicus," Speculum 40 (1965), 436-437, n. 3, and John Conley, "The Doctrine of Friendship in Everyman, "Speculum 44 (1969), 374, n. 1. See also J. Leclercq, "L'amitie" dans les lettres au moyen Sge," Revue du moyen age latin 1 (1945), 391-410, and R. Gelsomino, "S. Bernardo di Chiaravalle e il De Amicitia di Cicerone," Analecta Monastica 5 (1958), 180-186. INTRODUCTION 7 contrast the wealth of monks with the poverty of the genuinely indigent. Phrases such as "inopiae mendicancium fraterne compassionis optentu" [67], "uera compassione confratrum mendicorum mouemini" [76], and "compassione mendicancium" [77] occur in contexts that suggest nothing more than refer- ences to beggars in general. The subject of compassion for the poor is first raised by Romanus [67], and Gregory comments upon this theme afterward [76, 77].

Load more

  264

Copy Link