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A Note on Thebaid Commentaries: Paris, B.N., lat. 3012

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Brian Stock*
Affiliation:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

Extract

The Thebaid of Statius was one of the most widely read classical texts of the Latin Middle Ages. Commentaries on it however are rather rare. Of some 300 manuscripts of the work described in the files of the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, Paris, only about thirty contain glossae, argumenta, or marginalia. The majority of the additions to the original are of a late date: two-thirds fall within the period 1100-1300, while the rest, with only three exceptions, are later. In this census, moreover, there are only three commentaires intégraux, that is, autonomous commentaries which do not consist of glosses on isolated words or phrases. Of the three, one has been attributed by P. Courcelle to Rémi of Auxerre; a second is thought to have been written in the thirteenth century by a certain Martianus de S. Benedicto; and the third has been printed under the authorship of Lactantius Placidus.

Type
Miscellany
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 This brief list was completed before I had access to R. D. Sweeney, Prolegomena to an Edition of the Scholia to Statius (Mnemosyne, Supplement 8; Leiden 1969). The statements in this paragraph should therefore be supplemented by Sweeney's work.Google Scholar

2 'Étude critique sur les commentaires de la Consolation de Boèce (IXe-XVe siècles),’ Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen ǎge 12 (1939) 1819.Google Scholar

3 Paris, Bibl. Nat., lat. 5137, fols. 103r-116 v. A similar accessus is found in Vat. lat. 1663, fols. 56 v-57.Google Scholar

4 ed. Jahnke, R., Statius (Leipzig 1898) iii. For a proposed stemma of MSS of this commentary, a prologue to a new edition of it, see Sweeney, op. cit. 51-90.Google Scholar

5 CCL 91-91A ( 1968 ). Cf. Langlois, P., ‘Les œuvres de Fulgence le Mythographe et le problème des deux Fulgences,Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 7 (1964) 94-105.Google Scholar

6 ‘Addidi commentatiunculam “super Thebaiden,” quae utrum Fulgentii sit necne, firmis argumentis diiudicari non posse … demonstravi’ Fulgentiiopera (Leipzig 1898) xv. Google Scholar

7 Fulgentius and the Carolingian Age ,’ MélangesM. Hruschewsky (Kiev 1928), 448.Google Scholar

8 Das griechische Element in der abendlāndischen Bildung des Mittelalters,’ Byzantinische Zeitschrift 44, 51 n. 3 [= Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Studien II (Stuttgart 1967) 271 n. 38].Google Scholar

9 See Bibliothèque Nationale: Catalogue général des manuscrits latins 3 (Paris 1952) 401 f. The difficulties of the MS, along with the literary-historical problems raised by it, are discussed by Helm, R., ‘Anecdoton Fulgentianum,Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, N.F. 52 (1897) 177-186.Google Scholar

10 Op. cit. 47, 90-93.Google Scholar

11 Ibid. 92-3. Dr. Sweeney has suggested that Pierre Daniel, the author of the Berne MS of the commentary, was working from a copy other than the Paris codex. This argument in itself however is not proof that the commentary is actually by Fulgentius. The variants from the Paris MS which he cites could all be the product of another version of the twelfth-century text, including the conscious archaism of the script and the occasional use of Greek.Google Scholar

12 On the doubtful attribution of the Aeneid commentary to Bernard Silvester, see Vernet, A., Bernardus Silvestris: Recherches sur l'auteur et l'œuvre suivies d'une édition critique de la ‘Cosmographia(Diss., Paris, 1938); mentioned in École Nationale des Chartes, Positions des thèsesde 1937, 167-174. A second commentary thought to be by Bernard, the previously mentioned glosae on Martianus Capella contained in Cambridge, Univ. Libr. MS Mm.I.18, fols. 1r-28 r, was discovered by Jeauneau, E. and announced in his ‘Note sur l'école de Chartres,’ Studi medievali, 3rd Series 5 (1964) 855-64. In assigning this commentary tentatively to Bernard, Jeauneau himself indicates that his evidence rests on the assumption that Bernard was also the author of the Aeneid commentary. In the absence of conclusive evidence, it may be preferable to discuss these two commentaries as ‘associated with’ the name of Bernard Silvester.Google Scholar

13 Based upon a fresh reading MS of the Paris, I have made slight alterations in Helm's version, Fulgentiiopera p. 180.Google Scholar

14 Or integumento ? The MS is admittedly unclear at this point, and it is worth adding, against my own hypothesis, that neither Helm nor his associates, Rossbach and Gundermann, saw integumento; nor, indeed, did Dr. Sweeney, in his list of variants, op. cit. 91f. Google Scholar

15 Horace, , Ars poetica 333f. The same lines of Horace are cited and garbled by William of Conches, <Glosae super Macrobium> in MS Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. Kgl. S. 1910 4°, fol. 8 v.+in+MS+Copenhagen,+Kongelige+Bibliotek,+Gl.+Kgl.+S.+1910+4°,+fol.+8+v.>Google Scholar

16 See, in general, Hunt, R. W., ‘The Introductions to the “Artes” in the Twelfth Century,Studia medievalia R. J. Martin (Bruges 1948) 85100; Edwin A. Quain, ‘The Medieval Accessus ad Auctores,’ Traditio 3 (1945) 215-264; and the corrections to this article by R. C. B. Huygens, ‘Notes sur le Dialogus super auctores de Conrad de Hirsau et le Commentaire sur Théodule de Bernard d'Utrecht,’ Latomus 13 (1954) 423.Google Scholar

17 See Jeauneau, E., ‘L 'usage de la notion d'integumentum à travers les gloses de Guillaume de Conches,’ Archives d'histoire doct. et litt. du moyen ǎge 24 (1957) 3587.Google Scholar

18 1.2.18-19 (ed. Dick-Préaux [Leipzig 1969] p. 4): ‘Si uero concepta cuius scaturriginis uena profluxerint properus scrutator inquiris, fabellam tibi, quam Satura comminiscens hiemali peruigilio marcescentes mecum lucernas edocuit, ni prolixitas perculerit, explicabo' (my italics).Google Scholar

19 I codici di Marziano Capella (Milan 1959-60) 470-479.Google Scholar

20 Cf. fol. 10 ra: ‘Protheus, id est, protho<s> theos, id est, primus deus.’ On the discovery of the commentary, see above, n. 12, in the article of E. Jeauneau.+theos,+id+est,+primus+deus.’+On+the+discovery+of+the+commentary,+see+above,+n.+12,+in+the+article+of+E.+Jeauneau.>Google Scholar

21 Commentum Bernardi Silvestris super sex libros Eneidos Virgilii, ed. Riedel, W. (Greifswald 1924) 3 ff. The Cambridge commentary on Martianus Capella does not cite Horace, but the same idea is expressed in the section on sermo and ratio, fol. 1va-1 vb.Google Scholar

22 Helm, Helm, p. 180: ‘In nuce enim duo sunt, testa et nucleus, sic in carminibus poeticis duo, sensus litteralis et misticus. Latet nucleus sub testa; latet sub sensu litterali mistica intelligentia.’ The comparison, of course, is derived from the physical sense of tegumentum and consciously moves towards its non-physical sense as ‘allegory.’Google Scholar

23 de Conches, Guillaume, Glosae super Platonem, ed. Jeauneau, E. (Paris 1965).Google Scholar