Omnium Magistra Virtutum: Studies in Honour of Danuta Shanzer (German Edition) (Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin, 15) (English and German Edition) 9782503598444, 2503598447

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PUBLICATIONS OF THE JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL LATIN 15

PUBLICATIONS OF THE JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL LATIN Publications Editors: Michael W. Herren Alexander Andrée Robert Getz Gregory Hays

York University and University of Toronto University of Toronto University of Toronto University of Virginia

Journal Editor: Greti Dinkova-Bruun

PIMS and University of Toronto

Review Editor: Cillian O’Hogan

University of Toronto

Founding Editor: Michael W. Herren

York University and University of Toronto

Associate Editors: Alexander Andrée Robert Getz Andrew Hicks Bernice M. Kaczynski John Magee Tristan Major Jean Meyers Stephen Pelle David Townsend Gernot Wieland

University of Toronto University of Toronto Cornell University McMaster University University of Toronto Qatar University University of Montpellier University of Toronto University of Toronto University of British Columbia

Advisory Board: Walter Berschin James P. Carley Paolo Chiesa Michael Lapidge Danuta Shanzer Brian Stock Jan M. Ziolkowski

University of Heidelberg York University and PIMS University of Milan Clare College Cambridge University of Vienna University of Toronto Harvard University

“OMNIUM MAGISTRA VIRTUTUM” STUDIES IN HONOUR OF DANUTA R. SHANZER

Edited by Andrew Cain and Gregory Hays

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© 2022, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978-2-503-59844-4 e-ISBN 978-2-503-59845-1 DOI 10.1484/M.PJML-EB.5.127486 ISSN 2033-883X e-ISSN 2565-9987 D/2022/0095/48 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper

Table of Contents Gregory Hays, Introduction

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ROMAN AND LATE ANTIQUITY Roger S. O. Tomlin, Intermittent Fever: A Latin Textual Amulet from Roman London

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Daniel Markovich, “Sum ipsa Rhetorica”: Rhetoric’s Exordium in Martianus Capella

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Michael Winterbottom, Late Antique Theories of Latin Prose Rhythm

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James J. O’Donnell, Why Boethius Had to Die

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Benjamin Garstad, “Merito nonnulli Alexandro Magno conparavere maiores”: The model of Alexander the Great in Jordanes’ Getica

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Florin Curta, Pseudo-Martin of Braga and the Slavs: A Re-examination of the Poem In Basilica

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PATRISTICS Victoria Zimmerl-Panagl, Textkritisches zu Prophetenzitaten bei Ambrosius von Mailand und ein problematisches Stemma (De fide)

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Andrew Cain, Rufinus of Aquileia’s Historia monachorum in Aegypto: Authorship, Hagiographic Aemulatio, and the Antony Legend

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Philip Polcar, Setting up a Straw Man: Helvidius and Jerome on Matt. 1.25

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Dorothea Weber, Zu Struktur und Datierung des Corpus der Felix-Gedichte des Paulinus von Nola

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Stephen M. Beall, Seeing is Believing: Iconic Prose in the Confessions of Saint Augustine 213 Gillian Clark, True or False? Augustine on Text and Translation

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LATE ANTIQUE AND EARLY MEDIEVAL GAUL Kurt Smolak, Von den Phäaken nach Amiens. Martin von Tours und der Bettler im literarischen Kontext

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Maurus Mount, “O quotiens urguente Deo ventura fatentur”: A Strange Case of Clerical Demoniac Manipulation in the Vita Sancti Martini of Paulinus of Périgueux

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Amy Oh, Timing in Avitus’s De spiritalis historiae gestis

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Gregory Hays, Surprised by Sorrow: Avitus, Carm. 3.209–12

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Ian Wood, Gundobad’s Return to his Homeland

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Table of Contents Edward James, Materiality and the Holy in Gregory of Tours

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Julia Barrow, Bishops as Uncles in Merovingian Gaul

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INSULAR AND CAROLINGIAN TEXTS Lukas J. Dorfbauer, Zu einem karolingischen Handschriftenfragment aus Mondsee: Ein unbekannter mythographischer Text und seine Verbindung zu den Scholia Bernensia sowie zu irischen Orosius-Glossen

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Thomas D. Hill, Symbolism and Typology in Bede’s Passion of St Albanus

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Michael W. Herren, Teach Yourself Greek: The Textbook Example of John Scottus Eriugena

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Thomas F. X. Noble, Politics and Religion: Ideal and Reality in the Carolingian Specula Principum

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LATER MIDDLE AGES Robert G. Babcock, Egbert of Liège and St Martin, or Where did Egbert Teach?

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Greti Dinkova-Bruun, Scylla and Charybdis: Classical Marine Perils in Two Verse Bibles of the Later Middle Ages

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Winthrop Wetherbee, Goliae Dialogus inter Aquam et Vinum: A New Edition

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Paul R. Hyams, St Edmund’s “Privatae Convenciones” and the Cockfield Case of 1201

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Danuta R. Shanzer: Bibliography 1982–2021

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Index of Manuscripts

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General Index (Authors, People, Places, and Texts)

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Introduction Gregory Hays University of Virginia Danuta Shanzer was born in 1956 in New York City. After initial training at the Brearley School she arrived in 1974 at Bryn Mawr College, from which she would emerge three years later with a double major in Greek and Latin and honors in Greek. Our contributor Jim O’Donnell was then teaching at the college and recalls an early episode: At the dawn of time, I taught a course in medieval Latin at Bryn Mawr College and found that the students had highly variable Latin skills and medieval interests, so for the second half of the term, I let each pick a text to work on themselves with my guidance. Ms. Shanzer volunteered for the sequences of Adam of St Victor, which seemed unexceptionable to me. I was mildly startled the next week when she reported that she had read them all and what should she try next? After two or three more weeks of fobbing her off with increasingly extensive and difficult texts, and with her rate of consumption increasing alarmingly, I resorted to the desperation strategy of a dogsled driver in the Arctic being pursued by a wolf and heaved what I took to be the entire carcass of a grizzly bear off the back of the sled, viz., a battered copy of the Teubner edition of the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella. This did succeed in slowing down the chase, but only for a little while. …

From Bryn Mawr it was on to Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship. There, in 1981, O’Donnell’s desperate strategy paid off. Danuta received her D. Phil. with a dissertation consisting of a commentary on the first book of the De nuptiis. Martianus was an audacious choice for doctoral work, particularly in the Oxford of the late 1970s. His date is uncertain (though Danuta made important contributions here), his biography a virtual blank. Then there was the first book itself, a delirious mythological nightmare on a cosmic scale, narrated in ornate and often impenetrable Latin. As C. S. Lewis famously said, “this universe, which has produced the bee-orchid and the giraffe, has produced nothing stranger than Martianus Capella.”1 The writing of a commentary on any text will inevitably take the scholar into unfamiliar areas, but in Martianus’s case the areas are stranger than most: Neoplatonism, haruspicy, Varro’s Menippea, theurgy, lapidaries, seasonal symbolism, the music of the spheres. All these Danuta handled with aplomb, and the resulting commentary has yet to be superseded. The dissertation was supervised by two of the great latinists of their time, Robin Nisbet and Michael Winterbottom (the latter happily still with us and a contributor to this volume). The preface to the published version pays tribute also to Colin Macleod, “a supervisor in fact, though not in name.” Another important influence was the great Roman historian Ronald Syme, retired from the Camden Professorship of Ancient 1 

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History since 1970 but still hugely present and productive as a fellow of Wolfson College. One can trace to Syme’s influence a concern for style (one’s own and others’) and a fascination with dates and prosopography that would continue to inform Danuta’s work. There were other mentors too. Nigel Palmer and Margaret Gibson (then at Liverpool but a frequent visitor to Oxford) both helped to foster a developing interest in Boethius. The medieval Germanist Peter Ganz and his wife Rosemary offered hospitality to younger scholars, often issuing invitations to generous Sunday lunches en famille. (Their son, the palaeographer David Ganz, would cross Danuta’s path often in later years.) It was not all work, of course. There was rowing, for Corpus Christi and for Wolfson, and a variety of other diversions: bookstores (many of these now gone, alas), garden parties, afternoons in Duke Humphrey, invitations to High Table. Michael Winterbottom recalls that “I had Danuta to dinner in Worcester College early in her time at Oxford, and asked her beforehand what she thought dons talked about at High Table. She said: ‘I expect they talk about how tired they are.’ Very true.” The three years at Oxford were followed by a year as Lees Research Fellow in Latin at Manchester, where H. D. Jocelyn was a valued mentor. In 1981 Danuta was appointed Assistant Professor of Classics at Berkeley (rising in 1987 to Associate Professor). This period saw the revision and eventual publication of her Oxford dissertation. It also saw important articles on Alan of Lille and Boethius, especially the Consolation of Philosophy. A year in Munich on an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship afforded access to the TLL’s slips and library, as well as other Münich attractions: the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the English Garden, and “litres of Starkbier.” The year 1989 (eventful in other respects too) brought a move to Cornell, where Danuta would remain for the next fifteen years. The first woman to be promoted to a full professorship in the Department of Classics, she also served for eight years as director of the Medieval Studies Program. Ithaca’s icy winters were ameliorated by good friends in Classics: the Indo-Europeanist Alan Nussbaum, the Pindar scholar Hayden Pelliccia, the Greek epigrapher Kevin Clinton, and the historian of philosophy Charles Brittain. Equally sustaining was the presence of a large and active medieval community, including Andy Galloway, Tom Hill, Paul Hyams, and Pete Wetherbee, along with the Spenser scholar Carol Kaske. Their collective influence surely encouraged a developing chronological shift in Danuta’s work, from late antiquity into the early middle ages. A growing interest at this point was Insular Latin. An early product was an article on St Patrick’s Confessio, and one can trace this thread through to later work on the Hisperica Famina, Aethicus Ister, and Bede. The topic found its way into Danuta’s graduate courses too; I recall one student presentation in which the presenter illustrated the difference between the Roman and Irish tonsure with a large magic marker, the instructor gamely donning a shower cap to serve as one of his models. The later Cornell

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years also saw the first of what would be a continuing series of “Platinum Latin” panels at the International Congress on Medieval Studies; I was nominally the co-organizer, though in the early years mostly as a silent partner. The title was Danuta’s: as she would explain to the perplexed, Platinum Latin is what comes after Golden and Silver. The series became a mainstay of the Kalamazoo program, bringing Latin back to a setting where it ought always to have been central. Over the years it lured a wide range of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic, luminaries and newcomers alike. All came equipped with Danuta’s informational email (“Frank Talk about the Zoo”), which offered wise counsel on everything from mattresses to breakfast tickets. The approach of the millennium brought worldwide concern about the “Y2K” computer bug. In Danuta’s case it brought a turn toward later Roman Gaul. The early fruits include a 2001 volume edited in collaboration with Ralph Mathisen, as well as articles on authors like Gregory of Tours and Orientius. Above all there was the annotated translation of the letters of Avitus of Vienne for the Liverpool Translated Texts for Historians series. Her collaborator, Ian Wood, recalls the early stages of the work: In 1997 Danuta arranged a research grant for me to spend time in Cornell. … [She] had a vast study, so she occupied one half of it, and I  settled in to the other.  Danuta would draft the translation of a letter, and throw it across to me, to comment on the draft and offer suggested changes in the light of my knowledge of the history and context, and to start the commentary – so drafts and revised drafts were crossing the floor at an industrial rate!  Then every evening ended with a good meal  – sometimes cooked by Danuta, but often in a local Mexican restaurant, with large jugs of margaritas. As near bliss as scholarly cooperation can be!

Like Martianus, the Avitus book was an ambitious project. Avitus’s Latin is ornate, difficult, often corrupt. It is never easy to make out what he is saying, even on a purely literal level. Yet just as important is what is not said: the interpreter must read between the lines, ever alert to subtle implications, political silences, private jokes, and veiled insults. (The expertise thus acquired would inform later work, including a 2018 article on “Detecting Epistolary Unfriendliness Across the Abyss of Time.”) Not surprisingly, Shanzer and Wood’s volume goes well beyond the normal limits of its series, both in length and depth. It rescues the bishop from the MGH pages in which he had lain entombed and presents him as both an individual voice and an engaged participant in his era’s central controversies. In 2003 Danuta moved to the University of Illinois in the twin cities of Urbana and Champaign. Here too there were congenial classical colleagues, including the learned Howard Jacobson and the colorful William M. Calder III, as well as an active medieval community. One attraction was certainly the outstanding holdings of the university’s library, in particular the dedicated Classics Library, whose excellence goes back to the department’s glory days under William Abbott Oldfather. Daniel

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Markovich, an Illinois graduate student at the time, recalls one of her regular practices there: I remember that Danuta would always display the book she was currently reading on the book stand on her library desk. The desk was right at the entrance to the Classics library, so it was difficult not to notice it. I think in one way or another about half of the reference system I built as a graduate student can be connected with Danuta’s “library window.”

Proper respect for the maiores was always one of the things Danuta taught. Her students learned to use and value Norden’s Antike Kunstprosa and the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, alongside newer classics like the Herzog-Schmidt history of Latin literature. But her admiration was never uncritical, and careless work from nineteenthcentury editors never passed unnoticed. I still recall a quietly devastating comment about one of the early MGH volumes: “X printed things he couldn’t possibly have translated.” The faculty at Illinois often praised Urbana to visitors with the observation that “Here there’s nothing to do but your work!” In addition to scholarship, this was a period rich in service to the profession, including seven years as editor of Illinois Classical Studies and eleven as North American editor for Early Medieval Europe. Together with Ralph Mathisen, Danuta co-organized the sixth Shifting Frontiers conference in 2005. The enlarged proceedings appeared in 2011. In that same year came the call to Vienna as Universitätsprofessorin für Lateinische Philologie der Spätantike und des Mittelalters. It gave her particular pleasure to inherit a chair previously held by Kurt Smolak, a valued collaborator and friend. *** A glance at Danuta’s list of publications leaves a first impression of limitless variety. Yet on closer inspection one can perceive some continuities. One constant has been St Augustine – especially, but not only, the Augustine of the Confessions. This interest has yielded important articles on “latent narrative patterns” in the work and on the famous pear theft in Book 2. Another recurrent topic is the relationship between Augustine and Varro’s lost Disciplinae. Danuta’s interest has extended also to the people around Augustine, like his pupil Licentius or his unnamed concubines. Several recent contributions focus on the bishop of Hippo’s correspondents: Evodius, who asks Augustine about visions of the dead, or the enigmatic Publicola, whose questions may mark him as a Jew on the threshold of conversion. Boethius, like Martianus, is a Menippean author, though in a somewhat different vein. He has been another continuing interest, from early articles on the Consolation to a 2009 Cambridge Companion chapter. The ill-fated magister officiorum also illustrates Danuta’s affinity for authors who straddle literature and history. From many examples in her catalog one might cite two important articles on the date and political context

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of Ausonius’s Mosella – a superficially escapist poem that Danuta shows to be closely bound up with contemporary imperial politics. The interest in dating is characteristic. One  favorite tactic is the analysis of verbal borrowings to establish the order in which three undated but interrelated authors wrote. (On one occasion, two undergraduates who turned in versions of the same plagiarized paper were surprised to find that Danuta had not only identified the original source but knew which of them had copied the other.) In general Danuta has never been afraid to tackle questions with precise answers: When was Clovis baptized? How long was Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus? When did Prudentius write the Contra Symmachum or the Psychomachia? Which Proba wrote the Cento? These discussions have often taken new approaches to old problems, and have sometimes produced unexpected or controversial results. Danuta is fond of quoting the late Charles Murgia (a beloved colleague at Berkeley): “Let’s look at it upside-down.” In Danuta’s oeuvre, as in Martianus’s, the sacred – philology – often coexists with the profane: many of her articles involve laughter, food, sex, scandal, or obscenity, often in various combinations. This is no more than one would expect of a scholar who once organized a Platinum Latin panel on “Reading Between the Sheets.” But the scatological coexists with the eschatological. Danuta’s work is concerned not only with what lies beneath but also – and in recent years increasingly – with what lies beyond: journeys to other worlds; heaven and paradise; death and resurrection. “Men and dynasties pass,” wrote Syme, “but style abides.”2 Danuta has often interested herself in the style of her auctores, as in her 2007 inquiry into the origins of Bede’s style or her 2010 reexamination of Augustine’s sermo humilis. Her own style too is distinctive and individual, even if one can point to some formative influences. From Syme she learned the power of the abrupt (or seemingly abrupt) transition. Also of the one-word sentence. (“Two manuscripts omit ‘In … mutus,’ and the words were bracketed by Krusch. Erroneously.”) There is also the unexpected homely comparison (a technique she perhaps learned from Peter Brown). Thus she compares Gregory’s hagiography to “opening the fridge and cooking with whatever is available” – though as she hastens to note, “in every household the contents of the fridge can vary considerably.” She has always had an eye for a good title: “Pears before Swine”; “Two Clocks and a Wedding”; “Augustine’s Spare Rib”; “The Tale of Frodebert’s Tail.” In recent years many articles have begun as conference papers or invited lectures, and they retain the freshness and vivacity of oral presentation. Editing and textual criticism have always played a significant role in Danuta’s own work, from her earliest parerga on Martianus to a 2020 article on the anonymous poem De laudibus Domini. Her appointment in Vienna was soon followed by membership of the editorial board of the CSEL. Another time-consuming project has been the 2 

Tacitus, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1958), p. 624.

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Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. As editor of the Latin sub-series (first under the Library’s founding editor, Jan Ziolkowski, and lately his successor, Dan Donoghue) Danuta has overseen more than thirty volumes to date, ranging from Amalarius of Metz to the Ysengrimus, from the Benedictine Rule to the “Appendix Ovidiana,” and from the Carmina Burana to medieval lives of Mohammed. Si monumentum quaeris … *** Unlike some scholars, Danuta has never sought to clone herself or to build an empire. The dissertations she has directed have been on authors and topics distinct from (if often linked to) her own work: Aulus Gellius, Fulgentius the Mythographer, Jerome, Claudius Marius Victor, Paulinus of Périgueux, Fortunatus’s prose vitae, as well as North Italian bishops and early medieval ethnonyms. Rather than a “school,” she has worked to create communities – through program-building, conferences, roundtables, summer courses, seminars, and gatherings of all sorts. Not least among these is the informal reading group, whose value she may have learned in her Berkeley days. (As flowers sprang up where Homer’s Aphrodite walked, so with Danuta and the reading group.) Her Cornell colleague Paul Hyams remembers one of them: Danuta and I used to run the Cornell Medieval Studies “Medieval Latin Reading Group.” … We called ourselves the Click and Clack of medieval Latin.3 I made the mistakes and Danuta explained a)  why I  got it wrong and b)  what the Latin name for the grammatical rule was. I, at least, learned a lot. I was getting almost ready for the second declension by the time Danuta left Cornell, and as a result became known to Cornellians as an authority and linguistic expert with my own mantra: ‘Subject, Object [if any], and Main Verb: Find them!’

Participants in these groups will recognize her enthusiasm for sight-reading, even of material far from her own interests, as well as her patience with newcomers and beginners. Another Cornellian recalls: When I first got to know Danuta I was impressed, as most people would be, about how smart she was and how well she knew Latin. As a result when I joined one of the various reading groups which she sponsored, I was afraid of how she might respond to someone like me who could at best be called a mid-level Latinist, and I was a bit concerned about my peers in the group as well. But what I was struck by was how gentle Danuta was with us – she didn’t tolerate error but she did it gently.

Cornell colleagues and former graduate students will also remember, as I do, the endof-semester dinners and other events she hosted zu Hause. The weather outside may have been frightful, but the wine flowed freely within. Distinguished visitors, having delivered themselves of their public lectures, let their hair down on Danuta’s capacious As American readers will recall, Click and Clack were the noms de broadcast of Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the co-hosts of National Public Radio’s popular Saturday morning call-in show “Car Talk.” 3 

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sofa. From the stereo one might expect to hear anything from Handel’s “Nò, di voi non vo’ fidarmi” to Teresa Stratas’s rendition of “I’m a Stranger Here Myself.” Permitte divis cetera. *** The contributors to this volume have known Danuta Shanzer in various contexts and in various capacities: as former teachers, commilitones, and doctoral students; as past or present colleagues from Cornell, Illinois, and Vienna; as editors of DOML volumes and CSEL editions; as friends and admirers, both old and new. (Many, of course, fall into more than one of these categories.) Their contributions pay homage to the variety of the honoree’s interests. Her earliest work on Martianus is reflected in Daniel Markovich’s piece on the entrance of Rhetoric in De  nuptiis  5. Martianus also figures in Michael Winterbottom’s paper, which examines late antique theorists of prose rhythm in relation to their own practice. Augustinian studies are represented by two papers. Stephen Beall shows how Augustine’s visionary journey is mirrored in the prose of the Confessions. Gillian Clark looks at Augustine as a textual scholar. James O’Donnell (to  whom we are also indebted for our title) offers a refreshingly revisionist reading of the death of Boethius. These studies of Shanzerian authors are complemented by articles on other patristic texts. Viktoria Zimmerl-Panagl studies the textual tradition of Ambrose’s De excessu fratris Satyri and De fide, showing how variations in biblical quotations raise some uncomfortable questions about the received stemma of the latter. Philip Polcar revisits a familiar episode in Jerome’s career, his controversy with Helvidius over the virginity of the Virgin Mary – but this time from Helvidius’s side. (“Let’s look at it upsidedown.”) Andrew Cain examines Rufinus of Aquileia’s History of the Monks of Egypt, arguing that there is more – or perhaps much less – to Rufinus’s allegedly autobiographical account than meets the eye. Dorothea Weber deals with Paulinus of Nola, in particular the corpus of poems celebrating his patron saint, Felix. She argues that the first poem is deliberately framed as a praefatio, and that the collection as a whole shows signs of deliberate arrangement that belie the hypothesis of a purely chronological ordering. Not surprisingly, the literature of late Roman Gaul is well represented. Kurt Smolak deals with a famous episode from the life of Martin of Tours with an approach that recalls Danuta’s work on “latent narrative patterns” in Augustine. Two papers deal with Avitus, but focus on the poetry rather than the prose. Amy Oh explores patterns of time in the De spiritalis historiae gestis, while Gregory Hays suggests an emendation with an Ovidian pedigree. Two other papers can be seen as inspired by or responding to Danuta’s work on the miracle stories of Gregory of Tours: Edward James takes another look at Gregory himself, while Pr. Maurus Mount studies some episodes of demonic possession in Paulinus of Périgueux. The historical side is not neglected: Ian

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Wood offers some trenchant pages on the career of Gundobad, while Julia Barrow studies the relationships between Merovingian bishops and their nephews. Other papers expand the focus, both geographically and chronologically. Benjamin Garstad looks at Jordanes’s comparison of the Gothic king Hermanaric to Alexander the Great, asking whether the comparison is really as flattering as it might seem. Florin Curta casts a similarly sceptical eye on a poem attributed to Martin of Braga that has been alleged to offer early evidence for the Slavs. Danuta’s interest in insular Latin is represented by Thomas Hill’s paper on Bede’s account of the martyrdom of St Alban. Michael Herren deals with another insular writer, John Scottus Eriugena, exploring how John managed to teach himself Greek and how his knowledge of the language developed over his career. Thomas F. X. Noble surveys four Carolingian mirrors for princes, asking what they can tell us about real-life government and politics in ninthcentury Francia. Several contributors move us beyond the Carolingians and into the later Middle Ages. Little is known about Egbert of Liège, author of the eleventh-century verse proverb collection called the Fecunda ratis (“Well-Laden Ship”). Robert Babcock tries to tell us a bit more, arguing from allusions in the work’s prefatory letter that Egbert may have taught at the school of St  Martin in Liège rather than the cathedral school of St Lambert, as previous scholars had assumed. Greti Dinkova-Bruun sheds light on the use of classical myths (in particular Scylla and Charybdis) in two understudied biblical poems, Peter Riga’s Aurora and Lawrence of Durham’s Hypognosticon. Paul Hyams takes us into the wild and woolly world of early English law at the turn of the thirteenth century, as a monastery tries and fails to preserve its property rights in a case that marked an inflection point for the developing legal system. Finally, three contributors pay homage to the honoree’s interest in editing. Their contributions include two hitherto unpublished texts: Roger Tomlin edits an amulet from Roman London which appears to supply the first attestation of malaria in Roman Britain. Lukas Dorfbauer publishes a new mythological fragment from Mondsee with links to Irish Orosius glosses and to the Bern scholia on Vergil. And Winthrop Wetherbee offers an improved edition and new translation of a text already known: the anonymous Goliardic debate between water and wine. It culminates in a clear victory for the latter, a result we feel sure Danuta would approve.4

We are grateful to our contributors for sharing memories of the honoree, and for their patience and cheerfulness in an editing process extended by the 2020–21 Covid pandemic: all of them have been a pleasure to work with. 4 

Roman and Late Antiquity

Intermittent Fever: A Latin Textual Amulet from Roman London Roger S. O. Tomlin University of Oxford Danuta, for all her energy and erudition, is a sympathetic listener and will not mind an old friend sharing this old problem with her, a Roman “manuscript” he cannot quite read and interpret. He thinks it is a Latin textual amulet of the late third century, the first evidence in writing that intermittent fever (“malaria”) was known and feared in Roman Britain.1 This metal tablet or lamella was found2 in 1989 on the site of the Roman Thames foreshore, in what is now Upper Thames Street in the City of London, together with four other tablets of similar appearance. The most important of these was an elaborate Greek metrical charm against “plague.” Two were little more than rows of magical letters (charakteres) and were evidently carried for unspecified protection. The fourth was a list of valuables, of unknown relevance.3 The present tablet, the fifth, is published last since it is the most difficult.4 It was inscribed like the others on a rectangular “page” cut from a very thin pewter sheet, tin melted with lead, an alloy used in Roman Britain not only for solder but also to make tableware as a cheap substitute for silver. Ten pewter ingots have also been found in the Thames at London.5 This tablet measures Rejecting – like the editors – one of the early variant readings of The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, Volume I: Inscriptions on Stone, ed. Robin G. Collingwood and Richard P. Wright (Oxford, 1965), no. 1209 (Risingham), an altar of Diana now lost, which saw it “in part by conj(ecture)” as being dedicated to the goddess of tertian fever, deae Tertianae. Although Cicero (De natura deorum 3.24) warns against making a cult of her, there is no inscription which attests it. Surely one would have survived from Italy; Risingham, at the very northern edge of the Empire, is an unlikely place to be the unique provenance. 2  By controlled metal-detecting during excavation by the Museum of London Archaeological Service before the site was redeveloped. The tablet (VRY 89 ) now belongs to the Museum of London, which made it available for examination. It has been drawn from multiple photographs, with constant reference to the original under a microscope. 3  Respectively, Roger S. O. Tomlin, “Roman Britain in 2012. III. Inscriptions,” Britannia 44 (2013), 381–96 at p. 390 (no. 21); Roger S. O. Tomlin, “Roman Britain in 2014. III. Inscriptions,” Britannia 46 (2015), 383–420 at p. 406 (no. 42); Roger S. O. Tomlin, “Roman Britain in 2017. III. Inscriptions,” Britannia 49 (2018), 427–60 at p. 446 (no. 38); Roger S. O. Tomlin and Mark W. C. Hassall, “Roman Britain in 1998. II. Inscriptions,” Britannia 30 (1999), 375–86 at pp. 375–77 (no. 1). 4  It is noticed more briefly as Roger S. O. Tomlin, “Roman Britain in 2019. III. Inscriptions,” Britannia 51 (2020), 470–525 at p. 486 (no. 18). 5  The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, Volume  II: Instrumentum Domesticum, fasc.  1, ed.  Sheppard  S. Frere and Roger S. O. Tomlin (Oxford, 1990), pp. 68–70 (nos. 2406.1–10). When analysed, all five tablets were found to be pewter; this one is approximately tin 52%, lead 48%. 1 

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60 × 84 mm, but it is now incomplete. Looking at face (a), most of the top edge, lefthand edge and bottom edge are original, but the lower left-hand corner is badly frayed and the right-hand edge is broken all the way down. The state of the tablet is due to what happened after it had been inscribed: it was folded upon itself vertically three times, and then folded horizontally six times, so as to make a compact lump probably for insertion into an amulet case. As a result, the text is broken by two zigzag vertical cracks which have widened in places into irregular holes, and it is further interrupted by the six horizontal folds. But worse still, one vertical strip has broken off entirely and been lost, leaving all twenty lines incomplete.6 The seventeen lines of face (a) have all lost their endings, and likewise the three lines of face (b) their beginnings. Many lines of face (a) have also no real beginning, since they start with the end of a word (now lost) which began at the end of the line above. This all makes it difficult to retrieve any continuous text. Both faces (figs. 1–4) were inscribed with a fine-pointed stylus, in letters which are probably late third-century. This dating cannot be certain, but the script has letterforms (fig. 5) which are variously found in Old Roman Cursive (ORC) and the New Roman Cursive (NRC) which replaced it by the early fourth century. Some letterforms are common to both, but the letter a with two diagonal strokes is typically ORC. There is no instance of NRC  b with its loop to the right, but there may be an ORC b in line 13. d is upright, as in NRC, but q is diagonal as in ORC; there is no instance of the typical NRC e made with two “hooks,” but m with its two loops is typically NRC, and yet the four diagonal strokes of ORC m are also found. p is “capital-letter” and typically NRC, and so is r, with its second, sinuous stroke to the right of the first vertical stroke; but s, with its long downstroke and second, diagonal upstroke, is typically ORC. In NRC, s is made with a downstroke leading directly to a diagonal upstroke, as indeed it seems to be at the beginning of line 13 and the very end of (b)2. Here then is a diplomatic (i.e. letter-by-letter) transcription of both faces, (a) and (b), but separating words when this can be deduced from the reading. However, there is almost no word-separation in the original, and many letter-sequences cannot be resolved into convincing words. A recurrent problem is that of distinguishing between iu, n and ri, since all three were made with much the same sequence of strokes. The following conventions have been used for the transcription:

The right-hand edge of face (a) is broken from top to bottom, down the third vertical fold. The certain restoration of the gap between lines 8 and 9 as si quid quarta s[i quid]| quinta shows that only one strip has been lost, with enough space for about five letters. 6 

Intermittent Fever: a Latin Textual Amulet ] [ [.] […] . .. … a. (a)

5

10

15

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text lost to the left text lost to the right one letter lost three or more letters lost trace of one or two letters trace of three letters or more letter probable but not certain auetes.. pri. mum ui. di.i ..[ .ria di secundan.a uaauet. [ tiari no.n. salut uto.tta …u[ m tertiana tenet. dis mit.[ illum tertian.a tur[ t.ar. et si quid tertia.[ quid cottidiana si quid. [ turne si quid quarta s[ quinta es cantaui am.a[ tio ista . a n. qui ref.re.[ f. es cantaui. [.]m.a.u. r[.]ntio ..[ ..olo e[…]ntiasu..a…[ r. i. is. et candat.i uia p.e.dib..[ r. i. is. aue … cil[.]q.uis[ … … …

(b) ]t.rra mater ]. m.aurentio tertiaanus ]. s. retteli sanitatem

Line-by-line notes on the reading and interpretation (a) 1, primum. i and u are incomplete, but the reading looks certain. Both m’s are NRC, like those in illum (5), mater and sanitatem ((b)1 and 3). This word (“first”) punctuates the first line and initiates a sequence of ordinals: “second” in line 2, “third” in 4, 5 and 6, “fourth” in 8, “fifth” in 9.

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Before primum there are eight letters: the last two have been almost destroyed by the vertical fold, but the first six are clear enough, auetes, given that the curve of e was made twice (suggesting confusion with c) and that s is cut by a horizontal stroke from the right. The sequence aue recurs at the end of line 2, and once more near the beginning of 14; it should mean “greetings to you” (singular, and in the plural, auete), but that seems out of place here. caue (“beware”) cannot be read. After primum, the word uidi (“I have seen”) can be read, but that too is unexplained. Its third and fourth letters (di) are cut by a horizontal stroke which extends to the broken edge. This is too long to be part of a letter, but since it runs parallel with two other strokes, it is probably casual damage or even a crossing-out. 2, secundana. The fourth letter is damaged by the fold, but the two verticals of u are still there; visually the word terminates in either -ana or -aria, but -ana is preferable by analogy with tertiana (4, 5) and cottidiana (7). Like primum above, this word (“of the second”) punctuates the line. It is preceded by five or six letters which surely complete a word from the line above: they certainly end in -adi, but the rest is a puzzle. The first letter might be o with an extended second stroke, or ci crammed together, or even p reversed by mistake; it is probably followed by ia. But what can be made of -oriadi (etc.)? After secundana, there is another puzzling sequence, uaau. If the two a’s (an impossible sequence) were separated, aue again might be read; this would not explain ua but perhaps the scribe wrote the letters twice by mistake. The line apparently begins with tiari non, which only shows how similar ri and n can be. tiari must be a word-ending. The next word, the negative non, is followed by salut, but this cannot be extended into salutem or salutis (“well-being”). Instead, ut is repeated. The rest of the line is undecipherable. 4. Since tertiana is certain, initial m must be another word-ending. tertiana seems to be followed by the verb tenet (“holds”). 5. After illum (a demonstrative pronoun or perhaps a diminutive word-ending), there is what looks like tertiana again; but there is damage after tertia, and although the next letter might be n, it is not followed by a. Also the sequence after it, atur, would suggest a verb-ending. 6. The  first letter is probably t, but the scribe dragged his stylus-point up lightly before making the downstroke, so it is possibly a clumsy  h. The  third letter is prob­ably r, but not quite like r elsewhere; however, an ORC b seems unlikely. Although habet (“has”) and tabet (“wastes away”) must be considered, the reading is probably taret, the end of an imperfect subjunctive in the line above. It is tempting instead to take et separately as a conjunction (“and”), but difficult to think of a word ending in -tar except altar (“altar”) or nectar (“nectar”). 3.

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6–9. These lines contain the longest and most comprehensible sequence in this difficult text: “si quid tertia[… si] | quid cottidiana si quid […]|turne si quid quarta s[i quid] quinta.” It is a series of ordinals each introduced by si quid (“if anything”): “third,” “fourth” and “fifth,” interrupted by the adjective cottidiana (“daily”) and a word ending in -turne, perhaps [noc]|turne (“by night”). 7, cottidiana. This word (“daily”) is the key to the text. Its prime sense is “quotidian,” meaning a fever (febris, understood) which reaches its peak every twenty-four hours. This sense is reinforced by its companions, tertiana (a fever which peaks every third day) and quarta, taking this to be a variant of quartana (a fever which peaks every fourth day).7 “Intermittent” fever is characteristic of malaria, its “periodicity” depending on which species of the parasite Plasmodium has invaded the victim.8 7–8, [noc]turne (“by night”) would either be an adverb or a “Vulgar” spelling of the adjectival feminine plural [noc]turn(a)e. Greek textual amulets contrast “daytime” (or quotidian) fever with “night-time” fever.9 A Latin curse tablet from Rome lists all sorts of fever, including “onsets by day or night.”10 9. After quinta, the sequence escan is clear but difficult to explain. c cuts into s, as if it were meant to be a correction, but escan recurs at the beginning of line 11. There is space after escan, as if to mark a word-ending, and then the meaningless sequence tauia. This is followed by what looks like an ORC m (with four diagonal strokes) which, in spite of NRC m in lines 1, 5 and (b)2, is much more acceptable than

secundana and quinta cannot be explained in this way, and it must be supposed that they were added to “complete” the series, like the early medieval Christian “narrative-style fever charm” discussed in its “endless permutations” by Don C. Skemer, Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2006), pp. 106–107. Christ heals St Peter of fever, and at his request turns the story into an amulet. To quote the copy now in Princeton University Library (Princeton MS 25), Christ orders “these quotidian, biduan, tertian, quartan fevers” to depart from God’s servants Pietro and Alasia: “imperat his febris cotidianis biduanis tercianis quartanis ut exeatur ab hoc famulo dei petro vel famula dei alasia.” Fevers which peaked “every two days” (biduanis) would really be “tertian,” since the days were counted by inclusive reckoning. 8  Counting by inclusive reckoning, as already noted. See Robert Sallares, Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy (Oxford, 2002), ch. 2 (“Types of malaria”), esp. pp. 10–11: “It is above all the characteristic periodicity of intense fever recurring on the second day, in the case of P. falciparum and P.  vivax, or on the third day, in the case of P.  malariae, which distinguishes malaria from other diseases.” 9  Supplementum Magicum, ed. Robert Daniel and Franco Maltomini, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1992), 1:39 (no. 14.5), 48 (no. 18.13), 79 (no. 29.4–5); 2:167 (no. 82 fr. B.5). 10  Amina Kropp, Defixiones: Ein aktuelles Corpus lateinischer Fluchtafeln (Speyer, 2008), dfx 1.4.4/4: “obripilationes meridianas, interdianas … nocturnas.” 7 

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aa, especially since this is preceded and followed by yet another a.11 In view of tio at the beginning of the next line, an attractive conjecture would be a ma[uren]|tio (“from Maurentius”), since this can be read in (b)2 and probably in 11 below. -taui might then be taken as a verb-ending, and even amalgamated with escan, to make cantaui (“I have sung,” in the sense of “charmed” or “incanted”), but this would isolate es after quinta. However, if es were then taken to be a slip for est (“is”), it would make sense of a sort: “Whether tertia[na] is anything, or cottidiana anything, or [noc]turne anything, or quarta(na) anything, or quinta(na) anything, I have incanted (it) from Maurentius …” 10. tio is undoubtedly a word-ending (see the note above). But apart from the relative pronoun qui (“who,” presumably Maurentius) in the middle of the line, nothing more can be made of it. 11. The sequence escantaui repeats line 9, with again the possibility of cantaui; which again raises the problem of es. If this were indeed a slip for est (see note above), it would not explain the previous letter, the first in the line. This is damaged, but looks like f or possibly k. To the right of escantaui is an irregular hole caused by the vertical fold, and then acceptable traces of maurentio, if the incomplete m is taken to be ORC (see note to line 9 above). If so, the preposition a (“from”) has been lost in the hole to the left. The first letter resembles the first letter(s) of line 2, whether it is ci or even reversed p; it is apparently followed by olo and a badly damaged e. In the middle of the line, the sequence ntiasu is clear enough and is followed by what looks like another ORC m. But nothing can be made of it. 13. The line begins with another word-ending, ius, ris or nis, followed by the conjunction et. But what can be made of the sequence candatiuia? After this, the letters are clumsily made, but may include an ORC b, as if to read pedibu[s] (“with the feet”). 14. The line begins with a word-ending like that in the line above, followed by the sequence aue again (compare line 1 above, with note). Next come damaged letters, followed by cil, a hole, then a, and the diagonal of a damaged q, its loop lost but suggested by the u which follows. 15–17. The last three lines are badly damaged in their left-hand half, and overlap one another because the downward slope of the lines above forced the scribe to pack too much into the narrowing space. Letters can be recognized here and there, for example or in the middle of the bottom line, but no words. 12.

aaaa would be quite impossible except as a uox magica, a “magical” sequence of vowels; but there is no sign of one elsewhere. 11 

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(b) t[e]rra mater. There is almost no trace of the first e, but otherwise the reading looks certain. The rest of the line is uninscribed, as if terra mater (“mother Earth”) were the subject of the illegible text at the foot of face (a), or (more likely) the “heading” of face (b). Terra Mater or Tellus was goddess of the Earth, and symbolised its fertility. Augustus invoked Terra Mater by night during the Secular Games; “Tellus,” in the words of Horace at the time, “fertile in fruit and cattle.”12 Aeneas invoked Tellus “before all other gods” when he landed in Latium.13 But this tablet seems to be the first amulet to invoke her. maurentio. The name Maurentius is not common, but is sufficiently attested. It is clearest here, but should probably be read also in (a)9–10 and 11. It is preceded by a long diagonal stroke, broken by the edge; this is probably an exaggerated a, like that in mater just above, to give a Maurentio (“from Maurentius”). Again, this letter can be read or restored before Maurentio in face (a). The adjective tertianus follows, with the letter a repeated by mistake and the final s being made in NRC fashion without lifting the stylus. retteli. The reading is quite clear, and the end of the word is guaranteed by the word sanitatem (“health”) which follows. But there is no such word as *retteli, and what the scribe intended can only be guessed: most likely rettulit (third-person singular of the perfect of refero), with the first vowel (e) inadvertently repeated by mistake for u and a “Vulgar” omission of the final –t, “… has restored (health).” tertianus  (2), qualifying a word now lost at the beginning of the line,  [die]s for ­example (“the third day”), would then be the subject.

1,

2,

3,

Some Tentative Conclusions By now there is no need to stress the obscurity of this text, but it does end with a spark of light, the word sanitatem: a last-minute hint of what it is all about, and something to do with “health.” But this is not a curse tablet intended to destroy health, even if it resembles one at first sight. It was surely intended to “restore” health, and certainly so if we understand rettulit (“has restored”) for retteli. A curse would have been written on a (thicker) sheet of lead and would have been simply rolled up or folded, not redoubled into a compact lump. This tablet is made of pewter and was found with three textual amulets made of pewter; it is surely another.14 Its text may be obscure and too Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 5050, ed. Hermann Dessau, 3 vols. in 5 (Berlin, 1892–1914), 2.1: 282– 87, with Dessau’s note 37 (p. 286) citing Carmen saeculare 29 (“fertilis frugum pecorisque tellus”). 13  Virgil, Aeneid 7.136–37: “primamque deorum / Tellurem.” 14  The metal is not definitive, since some of the Bath curse tablets are made of tin alloyed with lead, which would have been available as scrap from the local pewter industry. But pewter, as a substitute for silver, would be an appropriate medium for protective texts. “Tin” and “tin or silver” are prescribed for 12 

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fragmented for translation, but there is no sign of the formulas familiar in British curse tablets, such as “defixing,” “devoting” or “giving,” complaints of “theft” or cursing a thief “whether slave or free.” However, its language does echo five curse tablets from Rome which in great detail require the goddess Proserpina to “rob” someone of their “health,” a process which includes infecting them with “quartan, tertian, quotidian fever.”15 But the London tablet echoes the subject-matter, not the intent: it was surely aimed against such fevers, and intended to keep them “from” Maurentius. Perhaps also – but only a guess – it was addressed to Mother Earth because the Romans associated malarial fevers with low-lying, marshy ground.16 Abracadabra is the magical word everyone has heard of, but it was first used (probably in the third century) by the author of a medical handbook in Latin verse, Quintus Serenus, who describes how to make a textual amulet against semitertian fever, the most malignant form of malaria: write the word down on papyrus, repeat it line by line but remove one letter each time, so as to form what the Greek Magical Papyri call a klima (“slope”). And finally, “remember to tie it around one’s neck with a linen thread.”17 This wearing of neck-amulets against fever is taken for granted by the fourthcentury historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who complains that a malicious inquisitor of the emperor Constantius II treated it as evidence of black magic and treason: people were executed “for wearing amulets on their necks against quartan fever or other complaints.”18 His words are echoed by the Augustan History, which attributes the same atrocity to Caracalla.19 The word they both use for “amulets” was used by Valerius Maximus in the early first century, when noting the three temples dedicated to Fever at Rome: remedia “which had been attached to the bodies of the sick” were textual amulets against gout in the Greek recipes quoted by Christopher Faraone and Dirk Obbink, Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion (Oxford, 1991), pp. 118 and 134. Roy Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets: The Inscribed Gold, Silver, Copper, and Bronze Lamellae, Part I: Published Texts of Known Provenance (Cologne, 1994), p. 347, notes from autopsy that GMA 59, an Egyptian fever amulet, “is certainly not lead; however, it is also not pure silver, but probably a silver alloy debased with lead or tin.” 15  Kropp, Defixiones, dfx 1.4.4/8–12: “eripias salutem … tradas illanc febri quartanae tertianae cottidianae.” This “extraordinary list of body parts” is fully translated by John Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (Oxford, 1992), pp. 240–42 (no. 134). 16  Sallares, Malaria and Rome, ch.  4.2 (“Malarial environments”). But  the only extant prayer addressed to dea sancta Tellus, the so-called precatio Terrae, makes no reference to fever. See Poetae Latini minores, ed. Emil Baehrens, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1879), pp. 138–40. 17  Sallares, Malaria and Rome, p. 54, translating Liber medicinalis 51.935–40: “his lino nexis collum redimire memento.” For an actual example of such a klima, see Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets, no. 37, with note. 18  Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae 19.12.14: “Si qui remedia quartanae vel doloris alterius collo gestaret.” Compare 29.2.26: Valentinian’s inquisitor Maximinus executed an old woman for treating intermittent fever with charms (“anum … intervallatis febribus mederi leni carmine consuetam”). 19  Augustan History, Caracalla 5.7: “Qui remedia quartanis tertianisque collo adnexa gestarent.”

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placed in them, by which he must mean fever amulets which had actually worked.20 They would have been displayed like the ex-votos of healing in a modern church, in the spirit of the altar-base dedicated to Hercules and the Springs by a man who was “freed of tertian fever” by bathing in the water.21 This last inscription is in Latin, but the language of the amulets is not stated. Many textual amulets against “fever” are known, but they are all written in Greek.22 It has not been possible to find one in Latin. When the Latin author of the abracadabra amulet catalogued herbal remedies against quartan fever, he resorted to Book 4 of Homer’s Iliad for a textual amulet.23 For the encyclopaedist Pliny, the best remedy for quartan fevers was to wear as an amulet a frog with its claws removed, or the guts of a toad wrapped in cloth.24 So it is frustrating not to check the London amulet against other Latin texts, but their paucity must be due to the dominance of Greek-speakers in Roman medicine and magic, meaning that “only one Latin magical papyrus has ever turned up.”25 The dark world of curse tablets is quite different, of course, and no doubt future discoveries of Latin fever amulets will set the London amulet in its context, but for the moment it remains something of a mystery. But its value will endure as the first textual evidence for malaria in Roman Britain.26

Valerius Maximus, De factis et dictis memorabilibus 2.5.6: “Remedia quae corporibus aegrorum adnexa fuerant.” All of these passages are cited by Sallares, Malaria and Rome, pp. 50–55, in his very helpful survey of the “ecology of malaria.” 21  AE 2008, 527: “liberatus tertiana eo die quo descenderat.” 22  Sallares, Malaria and Rome, p. 54, cites sixteen from Daniel and Maltomini, Supplementum Magicum, vol.  1, to which vol.  2 adds three more (no.  79.33, 92.14 and 94.10). Others may be added from ­Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets, no. 32.30; Kotansky here cites Pieter Sijpesteijn, “Amulet against ­Fever,” ­Chronique d’Egypte 57 (1982), 377–81. 23  Quintus Serenus, Liber medicinalis 48.895–909. 24  Historia naturalis 32.114, “Maxime autem quartanis liberant ablatis unguibus ranae adalligatae et rubeta, si iocur eius vel cor adalligatae in panno leucophaeo.” 25  William Brashear, “The Greek Magical Papyri,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.18.5 (Berlin, 1995), 3380–3684, at p. 3425, referring to what is now Supplementum Magicum, no. 36. He comments: “Taking into consideration all the other languages employed in the magical papyri, whether real or artificial, the paucity of Latin and the absence of anything specifically Roman in general is striking.” “Outside of Egypt,” comments Christopher Faraone, The  Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times (Philadelphia, 2018), p. 260, “the Greeks apparently inscribed few, if any, metal amulets for this or any kind of fever.” Latin amulets are still harder to find. Skemer, Binding Words, does not cite any Latin texts earlier than the historiola of St Peter healed of fever at the Latin Gate (see above, n. 7). 26  Confirming the insight of Sallares, Malaria and Rome, pp. 156–60, who shows that “P. vivax probably already existed and operated … in Britain in classical antiquity.” 20 

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Figures (all by R. S. O. Tomlin)

FIG. 1 London amulet face (a): photograph

Intermittent Fever: a Latin Textual Amulet

FIG. 2 London amulet face (a): drawing

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FIG. 3 London amulet face (b): photograph

Intermittent Fever: a Latin Textual Amulet

FIG. 4 London amulet face (b): drawing

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FIG. 5 London amulet: letter-forms

“Sum ipsa Rhetorica”: Rhetoric’s Exordium in Martianus Capella* Daniel Markovich University of Cincinnati In the “Acknowledgments” to her 1986 commentary on Book 1 of Martianus Capella, Danuta Shanzer wrote: “If I were writing the commentary now, I would devote much more space to linguistic analysis and questions of style. I can only hope that someone will soon write on Martianus’s prose; it would richly repay detailed analysis.”1 Sometimes, Mercury and Philology are grudging deities; this wish they have not yet granted. Even though the scope of this paper is too limited for a comprehensive analysis of the prose of the first two books of De nuptiis, I propose to make a small step forward and shed more light on Martianus’s prose style by focusing on one interesting passage: the exordium of the speech of personified Rhetoric in Book 5. The particular interest of this passage lies in the fact that it can be usefully compared with its two classical sources, namely the exordia of Cicero’s Divinatio in Q. Caecilium and De imperio Gnaei Pompei. As exordia, the three passages have, broadly speaking, the same function. Their speakers, occasions, and audiences are significantly different, but each aims to make the audience receptive, well disposed, and attentive. More specifically, in each of them the speaker argues that he or she is the right person to deliver the speech, anticipating surprise and removing possible objections on the basis of attendant circumstances. Conveniently, the passages have approximately the same length. The goal of this comparative analysis is on the one hand to highlight the debt of Martianus to Cicero, and on the other to explain the main differences between their styles with special attention to their specific contexts. This last point is particularly important: one of the traditional problems of stylistic analysis lies in the possibility of passing a general judgement about an author without much attention to their historical context and their literary or rhetorical goals (e.g., Quintilian’s condemnation of Seneca’s style). Such judgements about style are always more than just that – they are judgements about the entire set of circumstances reflected in it. Negative judgements about *  I would like to thank Angelica Wisenbarger for her help with running the type-token application (developed by Steven C. Howell), and Samuel Carpenter and Lindsay Taylor for their help with statistics. All remaining errors are my own. I also thank Marcus Heckenkamp for his comments on an earlier version of this paper. 1  Danuta Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella’s ‘De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ Book 1. University of California Publications in Classical Studies 32 (Berkeley, 1986), p. vii. D O I 10 .14 8 4/ M . P J M L . 5 .1 2 8 7 0 6 : 0 3 3 – 0 4 7 ©

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Martianus’s style can be traced back to Joseph Scaliger, who described Martianus as a “barbarus scriptor.”2 Despite their longevity, these judgements persist. Modern readers phrase their bewilderment differently: for example, Stahl writes that “To inflict a heavy dosage of Martianus even upon a promising graduate student […] could cause him to abandon thoughts of a career in classical philology.”3 It  goes without saying that Stahl’s graduate student would be a student of classical authors, above all, Cicero. In light of this tacit assumption, a direct comparison with Cicero could certainly help us shed more light on the main stylistic principles of Martianus’s prose. In the following sections the three selected passages will be first contextualized, then divided into cola,4 and analyzed under two main subheadings: the selection and the arrangement of words.5 The results will be summarized in a table and followed by general conclusions.

Cicero, Divinatio in Q. Caecilium 1–3 The “Preliminary Hearings against Caecilius” is Cicero’s speech against Quintus Caecilius Niger. The speech was given in the extortion court early in 70 BCE, to a senatorial audience of jurors. Cicero’s goal in this hearing is to show that, although it is not his custom to act as a prosecutor in court, but rather as a defender, in this particular case he would be a better prosecutor of Verres than the former governor’s quaestor, Caecilius. It is the Sicilians themselves, he claims, who prefer him to take this role, so that in this case he might be regarded as their defender. The speech was successful and ultimately led to one of the major successes in Cicero’s career, namely the complete See the discussion of style in William Harris Stahl, Richard Johnson, and Evan Laurie Burge, ­ artianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, vol.  1 (New  York, 1971), pp.  28–39 (quoting Scaliger at M p. 28 n. 23). 3  Stahl, Johnson, and Burge, Martianus Capella, vol. 1, p. 34. See also Anders Cullhed, The Shadow of Creusa: Negotiating Fictionality in Late Antique Latin Literature (Berlin, 2015), p. 371. In his less prejudiced assessment, Cullhed calls Martianus “a hard read.” 4  The principles I follow in this division have been formulated by Eduard Fraenkel’s life-long work: “Kolon und Satz: Beobachtungen zur Gliederung des Antiken Satzes I,” Nachrichten der Göttinger Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Philologisch-historische Klasse (1932), 197–213, reprinted in Fraenkel, Kleine Beiträge zur Klassischen Philologie, vol. 1 (Rome, 1964), pp. 73–92; “Kolon und Satz: Beobachtungen zur Gliederung des Antiken Satzes II,” Nachrichten der Göttinger Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Philologischhistorische Klasse (1933), 319–54, reprinted in Fraenkel, Kleine Beiträge, vol. 1, pp. 93–130; Noch einmal Kolon und Satz (Munich, 1965); and Leseproben aus Reden Ciceros und Catos (Rome, 1968). The work was continued by Thomas N. Habinek, The Colometry of Latin Prose, University of California Publications in Classical Studies 25 (Berkeley, 1985) and Barbara Sträterhoff, Kolometrie und Prosarhythmus bei Cicero und Livius: ‘De imperio Cn. Pompei’ und Livius 1, 1–26, 8 kolometrisch ediert, kommentiert und statistisch analysiert (Oelde, 1995). 5  For ἐκλογή and σύνθεσις ὀνομάτων as traditional headings in style analysis, see Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Compositione 1. 2 

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defeat of Verres in the late summer of 70 BCE.6 Even if its genre is formally forensic, the content and tone of the speech are actually political. Here is the opening of the Divinatio, divided into cola: 1. Si quis vestrum, iudices, aut eorum qui adsunt forte miratur me, qui tot annos in causis iudiciisque publicis ita sim versatus ut defenderim multos, laeserim neminem, subito nunc mutata voluntate ad accusandum descendere, is, si mei consilii causam rationemque cognoverit, una et id quod facio probabit, et in hac causa profecto neminem praeponendum mihi esse actorem putabit. 2. Cum quaestor in Sicilia fuissem, iudices, itaque ex ea provincia decessissem, ut Siculis omnibus iucundam diuturnamque memoriam quaesturae nominisque mei relinquerem, factum est uti cum summum in veteribus patronis multis, tum non nullum etiam in me praesidium suis fortunis constitutum esse arbitrarentur. 3. Qui nunc populati atque vexati cuncti ad me publice saepe venerunt, ut suarum fortunarum omnium causam defensionemque susciperem; me saepe esse pollicitum, saepe ostendisse dicebant, siquod tempus accidisset, quo tempore aliquid a me requirerent, commodis eorum me non defuturum. 4. Venisse tempus aiebant non iam ut commoda sua, sed ut vitam salutemque totius provinciae defenderem; sese iam ne deos quidem in suis urbibus ad quos confugerent habere, quod eorum simulacra sanctissima 6 

For historical background, see Dominic Berry, Cicero: Political Speeches (Oxford, 2006), pp. 3–12.

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Gaius Verres ex delubris religiosissimis sustulisset. Quas res luxuries in flagitiis, crudelitas in suppliciis, avaritia in rapinis, superbia in contumeliis efficere potuisset, eas omnes sese hoc uno praetore per triennium pertulisse. 5. Rogare et orare ne illos supplices aspernarer, quos me incolumi nemini supplices esse oporteret. 1. If some of you, judges, or some of those present, are perhaps surprised that I, who have for all these years in legal disputes and criminal actions accumulated such experience that I defended many accused persons, and attacked nobody, having now suddenly changed my policy, have entered the arena as a prosecutor, if you only understand the motives and reasons that govern my action, you will not only recognize that I am doing right, but will certainly, regarding the matter of conducting this case, take the view that no one can be held better fitted than myself to take it. 2. When I served in Sicily as quaestor, judges, I so discharged my duties there as to leave behind in the minds of all Sicilians lasting and agreeable memories of my year of office and of myself, and the result was that, while they regarded a number of their ancient champions as the main bulwark of their fortunes, they felt they had gained something of the sort in myself as well. 3. Thus it is that now they have all, plundered and despoiled, repeatedly and officially approached me to get me to undertake the cause of defending their common fortunes; they have been telling me that I made many promises and that many times I assured them that, if the time should ever come when they needed something from me, I would not fail to forward their interests. 4. They have declared that now the time has come for me, not merely to forward their interests, but to stand up for the life and existence of the whole province: that now they have not even the gods left in their cities to fly to for protection, since the holiest images of the gods have been carried off from their most sacred shrines by Verres. All things that outrage in torture, cruelty in punishment, greed in spoliation, and insolence in insult could have achieved, all these they say that they have endured in the three years in which this man has been their praetor. 5. And they pray and beseech me not to spurn the appeal for help of men who, so long as I am alive, should have no need to appeal for help to anyone.7

Regarding the choice of words, although the tone of the passage is fairly elevated and marked by absence of colloquial vocabulary, Cicero clearly eschews archaic, poetic, or newly coined words.8 Also, he does not use any Greek words. Statistical study of the Translation after Leonard Hugh Graham Greenwood, Cicero. The Verrine Orations, vol.  1, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1928), pp. 3, 5. 8  These were permitted in rhetorical theory, although rather reluctantly. See Cic. De or. 3.170 and Quint. Inst. 8.3.37. See further Heinrich Lausberg, David E. Orton, and R. Dean Anderson, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study (Leiden and Boston, 1998) at § § 547–51 and Adriano 7 

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vocabulary used in this section shows relatively low density, or, to put it differently, a relatively high degree of repetitiveness. The text contains a total of 214 words (or tokens), out of which 136 are distinct dictionary lemmas (types). The ratio between these two categories (type-token ratio) is 0.6355.9 In terms of the arrangement of words, we should first note the regular use of clausulae marking the endings of various segments:10 for example, in the first section we have forte miratur (–⏑– –⏑), iudiciisque publicis (–⏑–⏑–), defenderim multos (–⏑– – –) and laeserim neminem (–⏑– –⏑⏑). Another obvious feature of Cicero’s style are parallelisms of various kinds. Isocola are rather frequent: for example, defenderim multos, laeserim neminem (section one); or luxuries in flagitiis, crudelitas in suppliciis, avaritia in rapinis, superbia in contumeliis (section four). Other types of parallel arrangement, such as tum … cum clauses (section two), and anaphora (saepe, section three), are also prominent. There is a marked preference for doublets as a form of amplification: for example, causis iudiciisque (section one), iucundam diuturnamque and quaesturae nominisque (section two), causam defensionemque (section three), vitam salutemque (section four), rogare et orare (section five). Less than half of the vocabulary, that is 48.57%, consists of polysyllabic words (three syllables or longer). Most cola are not very long; the average length of a colon in this exordium is 9.89 syllables. In terms of general architecture, the composition is periodic. The verbum regens is most often found in the final position, except in one case of deliberate inversion for emphasis: rogare et orare (section five).

Cicero, De imperio Cn. Pompei or Pro lege Manilia 1–3 The speech was delivered in 66 bce to the popular assembly held in the Comitium in the Roman forum, in front of the Senate House. It supports the bill, proposed by the tribune C. Manilius, that grants Pompey extraordinary powers in the war against Mithridates VI. Although the speech was probably not the only one delivered at the gathering, it did contribute to the success of Manilius’s law.11 At the beginning of the Pennacini, La  funzione dell’arcaismo e del neologismo nelle teorie della prosa da Cornificio a Frontone (­Turin, 1974). 9  For an overview of type-token analysis, see Michael Stubbs “Quantitative Methods in Literary Linguistics,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics, ed. Peter Stockwell and Sara Whiteley (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 46–62. Also useful is Gilbert Youmans, “Measuring Lexical Style and Competence: The Type-Token Vocabulary Curve,” Style 24.4 (1990), 584–99. 10  For Cicero’s clausulae, see his own remarks in Or. 204–33 and other evidence collected by Eduard Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa vom VI. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis in die Zeit der Renaissance (Leipzig and Berlin, 1909), pp. 926–60. See also Adolf Primmer, Cicero numerosus: Studien zum antiken Prosarhythmus, Sitzungsberichte, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 257 (Vienna, 1968), pp. 161–72. 11  For details, see Paul Lachlan MacKendrick, The Speeches of Cicero (London, 1995), pp. 7–12.

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speech Cicero justifies his first appearance on the rostra by his success in the recent elections for the praetorship. The speech can be classified as deliberative, with certain epideictic elements. 1. Quamquam mihi semper frequens conspectus vester multo iucundissimus, hic autem locus ad agendum amplissimus, ad dicendum ornatissimus est visus, Quirites, tamen hoc aditu laudis qui semper optimo cuique maxime patuit non mea me voluntas adhuc sed vitae meae rationes ab ineunte aetate susceptae prohibuerunt. Nam cum antea nondum huius auctoritatem loci attingere auderem statueremque nihil huc nisi perfectum ingenio, elaboratum industria adferri oportere, omne meum tempus amicorum temporibus transmittendum putavi. 2. Ita neque hic locus vacuus fuit umquam ab eis qui vestram causam defenderent et meus labor in privatorum periculis caste integreque versatus ex vestro iudicio fructum est amplissimum consecutus. Nam cum propter dilationem comitiorum ter praetor primus centuriis cunctis renuntiatus sum, facile intellexi, Quirites, et quid de me iudicaretis et quid aliis praescriberetis. Nunc cum et auctoritatis in me tantum sit quantum vos honoribus mandandis esse voluistis

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et ad agendum facultatis tantum quantum homini vigilanti ex forensi usu prope cotidiana dicendi exercitatio potuit adferre, certe et, si quid auctoritatis in me est, apud eos utar qui eam mihi dederunt et, si quid in dicendo consequi possum, eis ostendam potissimum qui ei quoque rei fructum suo iudicio tribuendum esse duxerunt. 3. Atque illud in primis mihi laetandum iure esse video, quod in hac insolita mihi ex hoc loco ratione dicendi causa talis oblata est in qua oratio deesse nemini possit. Dicendum est enim de Cn. Pompei singulari eximiaque virtute; huius autem orationis difficilius est exitum quam principium invenire. Ita mihi non tam copia quam modus in dicendo quaerendus est. 1. Although I have always particularly enjoyed the sight of you thronging this place, and have always thought that the spot where I am now standing is the most distinguished one in which a magistrate may transact business with you and the most honorable one in which a private citizen may address you, nevertheless, citizens, this means of becoming famous, which has always been fully available to every decent citizen, has until now been closed to me, not because of any wish of mine to avoid it, but rather because of the path I  set myself when I  embarked upon my career. For  until now I  have never dared to speak from this place of influence, and I was determined that I should never present anything here that was not the fruit of my mature powers and the product of long practice: hence I judged that I would do better to devote the whole of my time instead to defending my friends in their hour of need. 2. So, while this place has never been short of men ready to defend your interests, my exertions, which have been honestly and irreproachably devoted to defending private citizens, have now received the highest possible reward through the choice that you yourselves have made. For when, because of successive reruns of the election, I was formally declared, three times over, as the first of the candidates to be elected to a praetorship, and by the votes of all the centuries, then it was made very clear to me, citizens, both what you had concluded about me personally and what you were recommending to others. Now, since I possess as much authority as, by electing me to this office, you have wished me to have, and since I also possess as much

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skill in legal advocacy as anyone who is reasonably energetic could acquire from almost daily practice in speaking in the courts, I  will accordingly deploy whatever authority I have among those who have bestowed it upon me, and similarly, if I can achieve anything by my oratory, I will display it before those people particularly who in choosing me have judged that that art too is deserving of some reward. 3. And I am aware that I have especially good reason to be happy because, despite having no experience of making the type of speeches that are required from those who stand before you on this platform, the subject on which I now have the opportunity to address you is one on which no one could fail to be eloquent. This is because my subject is the outstanding and unique merit of Gnaeus Pompeius – a subject on which it is more difficult to finish speaking than to begin. In making my speech, therefore, my task will not be to strive after abundance so much as moderation.12

The vocabulary used in this exordium (e.g., Quirites) reflects the solemnity of the occa­ sion, further emphasized by features such as the heroic clausula (see below). But this tone is well measured and not taken too far. Cicero’s vocabulary steers the middle course and does not contain any notable poeticisms or colloquialisms. The density of vocabulary in this passage does not depart significantly from the density we have seen in the exordium to the Divinatio in Q.  Caecilium. This exordium contains a total of 247 words (tokens), out of which 152 words are unique lemmas (types). The type-token ratio for this passage is thus 0.6153, slightly lower than the type-token ratio of the preceding exordium. This excerpt also shows regular use of clausulae: in the first section, for example, we note Quamquam mihi semper (–⏑– –⏑), visus Quirites (–⏑– –), me voluntas adhuc (–⏑– –⏑–), aetate susceptae (–⏑– – –), and prohibuerunt (⏑⏑⏑– –); to this group we can add one instance of the heroic clausula (meae rationes, –⏑⏑ – –). Parallelisms are frequent again, for example perfectum ingenio  | elaboratum industria (section one); they are often combined with figures of repetition such as symploce, for example in ad agendum amplissimus and ad dicendum ornatissimus (section one), and et quid de me iudicaretis and et quid aliis praescriberetis (section two). In addition, homoioteleuton can appear independently from isocola, for example in Quamquam mihi semper | frequens conspectus vester (section one); or si quid in dicendo consequi possum,  | eis ostendam potissimum | qui ei quoque rei fructum (section two). Cicero’s preference for doublets is also visible in this passage, for example caste integreque (section two), singulari eximiaque (section three). The percentage of polysyllabic words amounts to a bit over one-third, 37.71%. The average length of colon is even lower than in the preceding exordium: 8.49 syllables. The structure is periodic and the verbum regens tends to be placed at the end, with occasional exceptions that introduce variation (such as fuit and est … consecutus in section two).

12 

Translation by Berry, Cicero: Political Speeches, pp. 110–11.

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Martianus Capella 5.436–38 Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis is an allegorical tale about the wedding of Mercury and Philology. The first two books of the work describe the events that lead to the marriage; the following seven books consist mostly of oral presentations of the seven artes liberales, allegorized as female figures, who speak at the wedding, at Jupiter’s request, in order to publicly display Philology’s dowry. All the events described take place in mythical time with some vaguely contemporary traits (e.g., the silence of the oracles in Book 1). The audience at the wedding consists of the assembled gods, heroes, and the spirits of divinely inspired humans (poets, philosophers, and orators). During the celebration Rhetoric speaks after Grammar and Dialectic as the third and the last art of the trivium. As was the case in the speeches of these two arts, the body of Rhetoric’s speech consists of dry technical rules. In order to excuse herself from the inevitably poor impression that her speech is going to make on her audience, Rhetoric explains that she is bound to follow the orders of Jupiter himself. Here is how she begins: 1. Patrem maximum Iovem ceterosque caelites, quos in causis pluribus saepe sum deprecata, atque ipsum conventum superae consessionis attestor nihil mihi magis inconsentaneum atque indecens aestimari, quam ut, quae semper in foro iudiciisque quampluribus accusaverim multos aliosque defenderim et viribus gloriam deluctationis annixa mihi de discriminum fatis promeriti eventus praeconia compararim, nunc apud vos, superi, quis placere immortalitatis instar ac pretium videbatur, invita compellor scholarium iuvenilium monitus et exilia decantatae artis praecepta memorare. 2. Neque enim hoc nobis adscribit inopia, cum redundantes turmae suppetant consequentum. nam absque his qui, perturbantes pectora sensusque cunctorum, cognoscentum quoque perfregere subsellia,

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etiam alios habeam, qui minutias praeceptorum et artis intimae commenta perscripserint, inter utrumque vero columen sectatorum praeniteat Tullius meus, qui non solum in foro senatu rostrisque grandiloquae facultatis maiestate tonuerit, verum etiam ipsius artis praecepta commentus libros quamplures saeculorum usibus consecrarit. 3. Quod cum ita sit, emeritae granditatis pudor et celebrati quantum pote nominis gloria haec inchoamentorum primordia detrectaret excurrere, ni et hoc ad immortalitatis praemium proficeret, quod iubetis, ac fiduciam perennitatis accendat exsequi vel primora tamen Iove cum superis imperante. 4. Accingar igitur haec aridiora percurrere, minus quidem quam publicitus soleo placitura; quamquam si Pallados aures atque Arcadiam rationem benivolae maiestatis participarit assensio, ne nunc quidem apud vos, maximi caelites, displicebo. Quippe sum ipsa Rhetorica, quam alii artem virtutem alii dixere, alteri disciplinam; artem vero idcirco, quia doceor, licet Plato huic vocabulo refragetur; virtutem autem dicunt, qui mihi bene dicendi inesse scientiam compererunt; qui edisci vero dicendi intimam rationem et percipi posse non nesciunt, fidenter me asserunt disciplinam.13 1. It is the great father Jove and the other heavenly gods, whom in many cases I have often invoked, and the very assembly of the celestial senate that I call to witness that there is no more unsuitable and more inappropriate opinion of me than that I, who have constantly in the forum and in many courts acted as accuser for many and defender for others, and who, having pursued with all my might the glory of the contest, have obtained for myself from De nupt. 5.436–38, ed.  James Willis, Martianus Capella, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et ­Romanorum Teubneriana (Leipzig, 1983). 13 

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the hazardous fates the public announcement of a well earned result, should now amongst you, gods, whose pleasure seemed to me to have a value equivalent to immortality, be compelled against my will to recall the advice given to school children and the dry rules of a vexed subject. 2. Nor is it poverty that brings me to this, since I have thronging crowds of followers. But apart from those who bring turmoil to the hearts and senses of all, and those who knowing me even break the benches (sc. with enthusiasm), I also have other devotees who have written detailed instructions and commentaries on the most esoteric points of the art. And indeed in each category as a crown of my followers shines out my Cicero who not only in forum, senate, and public assembly has thundered forth with the grandeur of his capacity for magnificent speech, but also in writing the rules of the very art has produced many immortal books for the use of future generations. 3. Since this is so, regard for the dignity I have earned and the fame of my reputation spread as widely as possible would deter me from expounding these elementary first principles were it not that the fact that you command me contributes to my reward of immortality and the pledge of everlasting fame inspires me nevertheless to set forth even the rudiments of my subject when Jove and the gods ordain it. So I prepare myself to traverse these rather arid topics, giving less pleasure indeed than I usually do in public performances; although if the ears of Pallas and the mind of the Arcadian have been, by the approbation of his majesty (i.e., Jupiter), allowed to participate, not even now in your presence, mighty deities, shall I cause displeasure. For I am Rhetoric herself, whom some term an art, others a virtue, and yet others a method; an art on account of the fact that I am being taught, even though Plato opposes this title; I am called a virtue by those who have discovered that I possess the knowledge of how to speak well; those who are aware that the innermost secrets of speaking can be studied and learned proclaim confidently that I am a method.14

As in the two Ciceronian passages discussed above, the speaker secures the benevolence of the audience through a carefully constructed self-portrayal (the approach is called ab nostra persona).15 Both Cicero and Rhetoric avoid anything trivial, but they use separate means to achieve this goal. The principles that guide Martianus’s choice of words are clearly different from those of Cicero. First, Martianus’s Rhetoric is surprisingly fond of archaic, poetic, and newly coined words. In this exordium we see six such words: consessio, inconsentaneum, deluctatio, scholaria, inchoamenta, and publicitus. Also, Martianus does not eschew Greek words (although admittedly they are all proper names), such as Pallados, Rhetorica, and Plato.16 The overall density of his vocabulary is remarkably higher than that of Cicero’s exordia. Statistical analysis shows that the opening of Rhetoric’s speech contains a total number of 252 words (tokens), out of which 187 words are distinct dictionary entries (types). This brings the typetoken ratio for this passage to 0.7420, notably higher than in Cicero’s passages. Translation after Stahl, Johnson, and Burge, Martianus Capella vol. 2. Cic. Inv. 1.22, Rhet. Her. 1.8, Quint. Inst. 4.1.6–14. 16  A glance at the indices verborum in Jean-Fédéric Chevalier, Martianus Capella: Les noces de Philo­ logie et Mercure, Livre 1, Collection des Universités de France, Série latine v. 372 (Paris, 2014), pp. 165–85 quickly reveals that Martianus uses Greek words frequently even in non-technical contexts. 14  15 

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As for the arrangement of words, Martianus’s use of clausulae is as frequent as Cicero’s (ceterosque caelites, –⏑– ⏑–; saepe sum deprecata, –⏑– –⏑– ⏑; consessionis attestor, –⏑– –⏑; indecens aestimari, –⏑– –⏑– – etc.).17 Martianus also likes doublets, but his are heavier than Cicero’s and sometimes distributed into separate cola (inconsentaneum | atque indecens, and instar | ac pretium in 1; pectora | sensusque, and minutias praeceptorum | et artis intimae commmenta in 2; Pallados aures | atque Arcadiam rationem in 3). In addition, Martianus goes one step further than Cicero in his fondness for triplets (e.g., in foro senatu rostrisque in 2). Some of these triplets are heavy and constitute cola, within which Martianus seeks chiastic arrangement of words (e.g., quam alii artem | virtutem alii dixere, | alteri disciplinam in 3). Unlike Cicero, who shows preference for parallel constructions, Martianus prefers chiastic word order (accusaverim multos | aliosque defenderim in 1; sensusque cunctorum | cognoscentum quoque and minutias praeceptorum  | et artis intimae commenta in  2; quam alii artem  | virtutem alii dixere and virtutem autem dicunt … | me asserunt disciplinam in 3). The percentage of polysyllabic words is relatively high, namely 56.66%. The average length of colon in this exordium is 10.19 syllables, higher than in Cicero’s two exordia (particularly in comparison with the second one, delivered in a contio). Martianus does not place his verbum regens at the end as often as Cicero, which adds to the impression of variety. Summary Table   Clausulae Figures  isocolon  symploce  anaphora  homoioteleuton  doublets  triplets  chiasmus Archaic, poetic, and new words Type-token ratio Polysyllabic words Avg. no. of syllables per colon

Cic. Div. in Caec. yes   yes — yes — yes — — 0 0.6355 48.57% 9.89

Cic. Leg. Man. yes   yes yes — yes yes — — 0 0.6153 37.71% 8.49

Mart. Cap. yes   — — — — yes yes yes 6 0.7420 56.66% 10.19

Martianus also seeks coincidence of long and accented syllables, combining quantitative and ­accentual patterns. 17 

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Conclusion A simple comparison of content shows that Martianus produces a clever adaptation of Cicero’s exordia: his Rhetoric justifies her appearance as a presenter of arid rules by Jupiter’s order, evoking Cicero’s explanations of his unusual roles of a prosecutor in the Divinatio and as a speaker on the rostra in Pro lege Manilia – and perhaps also his efforts, in his mature theoretical works, to distance himself from the dry rhetorical precepts of his iuvenilia.18 However, unlike Cicero the politician, Martianus’s Rhetoric is a personification, a paper figment; her speech sits more comfortably on the page of written text than on the lips of an orator. This creates a stark contrast between the style of Martianus’s Rhetoric and her main classical model, Cicero. For example, the relatively low type-token ratio we have observed in Cicero’s exordia is a result of their oral nature; both passages come from speeches that purport to be records of real delivery to real historical audiences in real time. As a standard feature of oral communication, repetition provides greater clarity and facilitates a sense of order. In addition to lexical density, probably the most important difference between the prose of Martianus and Cicero lies in their choice of words: while Martianus’s Rhetoric freely uses archaic and newly coined words to enhance her lofty style, Cicero in his exordia carefully avoids such extravagance, since it would only make him appear strange.19 Martianus uses clausulae with approximately the same frequency and effect as Cicero,20 but his cola are often longer and heavier than those of Cicero (see for example the accumulation of nouns and adjectives in 2 grandiloquae facultatis maiestate tonuerit, and the “padded” clausula usibus consecrarit in 2, –⏑– –⏑– ⏑ where usibus is not strictly necessary). He also shows a clear preference for polysyllabic words. His doublets are heavier, and he also employs triplets, some of them rather intricate. As we have seen, Martianus prefers chiastic order over isocola and other forms of parallel word arrangement. The overall effect of Cicero’s carefully selected vocabulary, presented in symmetric and periodic arrangement, is a general impression of fullness, roundness, balance, and control. The exordia enable Cicero to project the persona of a levelheaded speaker of authority, dignity, and power. These features are ultimately tied to the main goals behind the publication of the respective speeches. Among these multiple and complex De orat. 1.4. See Michael von Albrecht, Cicero’s Style. A Synopsis (Leiden, 2003), p. 11. 20  He may be regarded as a follower of the criticized Asianistic aspects of Cicero’s prose. Cicero defended himself against these critics in his Orator, but they will remain a part of the reception of his work. In Tacitus’s Dialogus, for example, Aper points out that “even Cicero was not without his disparagers, who thought him inflated, turgid, not sufficiently concise, but unduly diffuse and luxuriant, and far from Attic” (18). 18 

19 

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goals the most important are political and didactic. In other words, by publishing his speeches after they were delivered Cicero wanted both to promote his political agenda and to provide exempla to be studied by Roman youth.21 Martianus’s De nuptiis, on the other hand, is a narratologically complex work of fiction that does not purport to record any real oral deliveries. The fascinating mixture of allegory, satire, and mystical initiation that characterizes the work is held together by the generic frame of Menippean satire.22 At the level of content, this generic frame explains personifications, such as Rhetoric; personifications commonly appeared in Menippeans as actors and speakers on the scene, and so did the motif of the assembly of gods (e.g., in Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis or Lucian’s Concilium deorum and Icaromenippus). At the level of style, the generic frame also explains the coining of new words, which is one of the characteristic features of Menippean satire. We can therefore conclude that the address of Rhetoric to the assembly of gods in De nuptiis 5 is coloured by Menippean tone, and that the number of new and unusual words in her exordium can be seen as a result of generic crossing. The context of Rhetoric’s speech in De nuptiis is thus quite different than that of Cicero’s two speeches. In one of them Cicero spoke to a senatorial group of judges, and in the other to the popular assembly; in both he spoke on political or politically charged subjects. These cases require a down-to-earth approach and projection of dignity. Martianus’s Rhetoric, on the other hand, speaks in a fictitious allegorical plot devised for reading pleasure. The circumstances and the audience of her speech allow for additional ornatus and interplay of prosaic and solemn elements. Martianus also aims at providing amusement, and the comical side of the speech of his Rhetoric is obvious from the very beginning. Her speech begins with an invocation of Jupiter, a hackneyed commonplace-opening mentioned by Cicero in his Divinatio with explicit disdain as a worn-out rhetorical strategy.23 In  the presence of Jupiter himself, however, this old commonplace becomes appropriate in an unexpected way. Despite her efforts to dissociate herself from the exilia praecepta, Rhetoric’s speech actually confirms them. Scholarly literature on this topic is extensive. I refer the reader to the balanced accounts of Jonathan Powell and Jeremy Paterson, Cicero the Advocate (Oxford, 2004), pp. 52–57, and Xavier Espluga, “Cicero: Speeches, An Overview,” in From the Protohistory to the History of the Text, ed. Javier Velaza (Frankfurt am Main, 2016), pp. 55–73. 22  For conventions of this genre in Martianus, see Shanzer, Commentary, pp.  29–44; Bernhard Pabst, Prosimetrum: Tradition und Wandel einer Literaturform zwischen Spätantike und Spätmittelalter (Hildesheim, 1994), pp. 105–33. 23  Div. in Caec. 43. The Greek poetic practice of beginning a song by mentioning Zeus was imitated both by Roman poets (as in Verg. Ecl. 3.60, “Ab Iove principium…”) and by Roman orators (as in Val. Max. 1 praef., “Nam si prisci oratores ab Iove Optimo Maximo bene orsi sunt…” See Robin G. M. Nisbet and Margaret Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace, Odes, book 1 (Oxford, 1989), p. 150. 21 

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In the final analysis, style is a functional category: in order to judge it properly, one must use the criterion of appropriateness (τὸ πρέπον, decorum). Instead of counting Martianus’s departures from Cicero as faults, we should begin by recognizing his De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii for what it is, namely a late and polyphonic work, an anthology of adopted and adapted literary tones, styles, and genres that absorbs and assimilates entire libraries of Greek and Latin literature. Martianus is clearly familiar with Cicero and his prose style, and departs from it in ways that suit his own authorial purposes, such as solemn and comic effect. He creates a rich, mannered, and intricate text that conveys both his firm control over his sources and his ability to outdo these sources in his fascinating literary game.24

For this view on the nature of Martianus’s game, see Konrad Vössing, “Augustinus und Martianus Capella: Ein Diskurs im spätantiken Karthago?,” in Die  christlich-philosophischen Diskurse der Spät­ antike, ed. Therese Fuhrer (Stuttgart, 2008), 381–404, at p. 404. 24 

Late Antique Theories of Latin Prose Rhythm The Fragmenta Bobiensia, Martianus Capella, and Marius Plotius Sacerdos Michael Winterbottom University of Oxford In this contribution to the Festschrift for a scholar I have admired ever since I was fortunate enough to be one of her graduate supervisors, I discuss in a wider context the chapters that Martianus Capella, the focus of Danuta Shanzer’s doctoral research, devoted to Latin prose rhythm.1 I shall be examining three texts whose authors found themselves confronted, at different (and uncertain) dates, with an ever evolving system of Latin prose rhythm. All three tried to make more sense of it (as Martianus specifically says) than Cicero had.2 But all followed Cicero in regarding it as a metrical or quantitative system. They produced different schemes; but a point of special interest, in retrospect, is the extent to which they were conscious of what looks obvious to us today, the dual nature of the system in their day. For it was, throughout their period, one that gave weight to accent as well as to metre (for accentual and metrical clausulae, see the Appendix). It was, in modern terms, a cursus mixtus system.3 I begin with the text from which can be educed the clearest picture of this system.

The texts discussed here, and some others, are assembled handily in Henri Bornecque, Les clau­ sules métriques latines (Lille, 1907), with helpful notes. I do not touch on Caesius Bassus, whose possibly abbreviated libellus looks to me little more than an (unsuccessful) attempt to produce a check list of all possible clausulae (see below, n. 28). The field is succinctly surveyed in Steven Oberhelman, Prose Rhythm in Latin Literature of the Roman Empire (Lewiston, 2003), pp.  54–64; I  have tried to take his conclusions somewhat further. In his L’origine du “cursus” rhythmique et les débuts de l’accent d’intensité en Latin (Paris, 1930), Mathieu Nicolau covered some of this ground (in particular Sacerdos), but we differ so widely that I have not systematically registered his views, with many of which I disagree. 2  Quintilian was no more successful. 3  On this we now turn especially to the work of the American scholars Steven M. Oberhelman and Ralph G. Hall from the 1980s onward. But the term, more loosely employed, was already current much earlier: see Albert Curtis Clark, The Cursus in Mediaeval and Vulgar Latin (Oxford, 1910), p. 10. Note Édouard de Jonge, Les clausules métriques dans saint Cyprien (Louvain and Paris, 1905), p. 99: in Cyprian “nous avons constaté que la césure était placée généralment de façon à ce que l’accent grammatical se confonde avec l’ictus metricus.” 1 

D O I 10 .14 8 4/ M . P J M L . 5 .1 2 8 7 0 7: 0 4 9 – 0 71 ©

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FHG

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The Fragmenta Bobiensia De Structuris The fragments4 were divided by de Jonge into three groups, I–III.5 I discuss them in turn. Fragment I comes from a letter written by an unknown to an unknown. It starts: “Quattuordecim tibi structurarum praecepta transmisi, ex quibus velut gubernaculum compositionum teneres; hinc enim reliquas aut per ampliationem aut per solutionem nasci, si animadverteris, comprobabis.”6 We therefore expect a list of fourteen clausulae to follow. In fact we are given two such lists. After the first, we read: “Hae quattuordecim clausulae possunt et ita esse,” upon which follows the second list. At the end of that, some dark words: “Sed et has quas memoravi clausulas, si acrius advertas, in duarum generalium numerum reputabis, ex trochaeo et molosso, tribrachi et ditrochaeo.” A second manuscript that also transmits the fragments omits List 2.7 From this fact, and from certain differences of terminology and ordering as compared with List 1, de Jonge rightly deduced that List 2 might well not be the work of the author of List 1.8 I draw attention, however, as de Jonge did not, to the two cases of et italicized in the two passages cited at the end of my last paragraph. In both places, et was either removed by someone abbreviating the fragment by removing List 2 or added by someone lengthening it by adding List 2. We shall see reason to suppose that the latter scenario is likely to be correct (below, p. 53). More important is the general unity of the fragment, which is ensured by the epistolary form (tibi, vale), but also by the similarity of wording between the opening and closing sentences, signalled above by italics.9 I now turn to List 1. I give the data, arranged according to the different metrical feet seen in the penultimate word,10 but in a more systematic form than the author’s:

Grammatici Latini [= GL], ed. Heinrich Keil, 7 vols. (Leipzig, 1855–1880), 6:627–29 (from Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS  16  (B)); de  Jonge, Les  clausules métriques, pp.  100–104 (with excellent discussion); Bornecque, Les clausules métriques latines, pp. 123–28 (not adding much). Numeric references in this section are to page and line in GL 6 unless otherwise indicated. 5  de Jonge, Les clausules métriques, p. 104. 6  GL 6:627.1. 7  Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS lat. 7530 (P). 8  Les clausules métriques, p. 106. 9  It is odd, on any account, that B signs off List 1 with explicit feliciter (627.14). 10  In every case the foot named by the author is exemplified by a single word of that shape; see ­Diomedes (GL 1:469): “Singulis … pedibus orationis singulos pedes dabimus.” 4 

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Trochee – ⏑ | – – x 11

doctus orator, sacra maiestas 1

Pa12

– ⏑ | ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑

poena capitalis

1c

Tra

– ⏑ | – ⏑ ⏑ ⏑

fracta navicula

1a

Ta

– ⏑ | – – ⏑ ⏑

vita felicior

2

Ta

timidus auditor, misera libertas13

1*

Trb

fulmen tonantis14

D

Pa

– ⏑ ⏑ | – ⏑ – ⏑

Romulus amputavit

D

Va

– ⏑ ⏑ | ⏑ – – ⏑

dedecus amicorum

1*

Va

⏑ ⏑ – | – ⏑ – ⏑

oculus virginalis

D

Va

⏑ ⏑ – | ⏑ – – ⏑

cupidus voluptatum [cf. Sall. Iug. 95. 3]

1

Va

– ⏑ – | – ⏑ – ⏑

optime cantitastis

3

Va

– ⏑ – | ⏑ – – ⏑

impetus retardavit [Cic. Phil. 5. 23]

1

Va

Tribrach ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ | – – x Spondee – – | ⏑ – – Dactyl

Anapaest

Cretic

*

signals resolution of one long syllable

The system of clausulae recommended coincides almost exactly with the system I summarize in the Appendix. We have here a full picture of what has become known as the cursus mixtus, where each metrical type (on the familiar earlier system) has an

Unlike the author of the list, I make no distinction between final syllables, which I mark as “x,” so that e.g. here palimbacchius and molossus fall together. 12  I follow, here as elsewhere, the notation for metrical and accentual clausulae laid out in the ­A ppendix. Accented syllables are printed in bold. 13  facere consuerunt is also given as an illustration in manuscript P. 14  The final syllable must be long, this being a bacchius. If it is meant to be an accusative plural, the author has not made himself very clear. One should doubtless read tonanti, as at 628.12 (see de Jonge, Les clausules métriques, p. 101). See also below, pp. 52, 54. 11 

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accentual equivalent (on what will become the new cursus system).15 I draw attention to the following features: (a) There is no mention of the less favored types Pb, Tb, Vb. On the other hand, Trb does feature.16 (b) There is no case where accent is allowed to override metre: they go hand-in-hand. (c) Thanks to the absence of Pb and cleft Veloxes (for which see below, p. 60), final disyllables are not permitted.17 (d) It looks very much as though a final dichoreus is allowed to constitute a (metrical) clausula.18 But an important restriction is implied. If the dichoreus makes up a single word, a proparoxytone must precede to complete the rhythmic unit (as in Rómulus amputávit). On the other hand, when the dichoreus covers part of the previous word (as in fulmen tonantis), the only concern is about the length of the final syllable of the penult (which must of course be long).19 The basic principle here is that a clausula should not be made up of a single word: one remembers Quintilian’s objection to the “soft” clausula archipiratae.20 (e) There may be a one-for-one correlation between the accentual and metrical types: Pa can = 1, Ta 2 and Va 3. But as the table above shows, other correspondences are possible, especially for Va.21 (f) Most fundamentally: the author does not mention word-accent. He talks entirely in terms of the quantitative scansion of the two words closing a sentence. But his So Oberhelman, Prose Rhythm, pp. 63–64. He fixes the start of the system to c. 250 (e.g., p. 8); but it had its roots in much earlier practice; see Michael Winterbottom, “On Ancient Prose Rhythm: The Story of the Dichoreus,” in Culture in Pieces: Essays on Ancient Texts in Honour of Peter Parsons, ed. Dirk Obbink and Richard Rutherford (Oxford, 2011), pp. 262–76. Earlier, de Jonge, Les clausules métriques, p. 100, claimed that the clausulae found in the Bobiensia coincided with those favored by Cyprian (d. 258). 16  I do not know why Oberhelman, Prose Rhythm, p.  62 says that trispondaei are frequent in the fragments. 17  Commented on by de Jonge, Les clausules métriques, p. 108. Note Sacerdos (GL 6:493.20): “Disyllaba structura, quae non valde quibusdam placet.” 18  As in Cicero, Orat. 212–14, 224. His examples include poenas persolutas, where there is no proparoxytone preceding, though there would be in fili comprobavit if we spell filii. Quintilian finds ausus est confiteri a “full” ending; it is true that a proparoxytone (phrase) precedes, but for Quintilian the fullness lies in the long final syllable of the infinitive (see Inst. orat. 9.4.93). Both Cicero and Quintilian (Inst. orat. 9.4.103) speak of the dichoreus as an Asianic clausula; see Winterbottom, “On Ancient Prose Rhythm,” pp. 263–65. There was room for doubt whether the dichoreus was a single foot (Quintilian, Inst. orat. 9.4.95). 19  This is true of List 2 also; see the last three items in the list as opposed to calcans amicum and mentes nocentum earlier. 20  Inst. orat. 9.4.97. For the rationale, see Diomedes, GL 1:469.17–18. 21  So rightly Oberhelman, Prose Rhythm, p. 8, n. 11. 15 

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approved combinations of metrical feet coincide with the accentual system we call the cursus.22 We may turn briefly to List 2. While omitting some items in List 1, it has some novelties of its own. Two are mere details: under trochees, it provides a companion for poena capitalis, but with the final syllable long: fata repararint (similarly, under dactyls, it gives a dichoreus with a final long, arbiter imperandi, classing it as dactyl + second epitrite). Much more important, it finds room for two eccentric items: (a) tribrach + major ionic, with the illustration numerat inpendia; this (in Janson’s notation) is pp4pp, and is excluded from the cursus system as I have defined it (see n. 22), though it would pass metrically as Type 2 (the first long being resolved); and (b) a final five-syllable ending, exemplified by felicitates. Metrically, this will be a dichoreus. It would count accentually as Vb, but only if a trochee were added (e.g., ipse), and no such addition is hinted at. These two novelties alone prevent us from calling List 2, as I did List 1, a full picture of the cursus mixtus system. It is a botched job,23 and it is hard to see the man who wrote List 1 admitting such a faulty List 2 alongside it, even supposing there was any point in giving a second list at all. All the same, List 2 is not without merit; indeed, in a way, it improves on List 1, which, as we saw, includes an instance of Trb. Accentually, it gives examples of Pa, Ta, Va and Tra (but also of Trb). Metrically, it gives examples of 1, 1b, 1c, 2, 3 and D. It covers, that is, virtually all the major accentual and metrical types. Even numerat impendia will scan metrically (2, with the first long resolved). And we can, if we like, think of felicitates as an example of a dichoreus (see above), with the extra long before it preventing it being a one-word clausula. List 2 also observes the “rule” about dichorei (above, p. 52). Two problems remain in Fragment I; they concern words cited above (p. 50). One, the matter of ampliatio and solutio in the first sentence, must be held over till later (below, p. 56). The other is the meaning of the final sentence. As to its text, I feel doubt about reputabis. It may be relevant that B before correction read reportabis, while P has portabis. (re)portabis would give a better construction He would have done well to add a line or two rejecting certain combinations: they would not have been many, for the system allows most combinations of a penult of at least two syllables followed by a final word of three or four syllables; see my playful remarks in Michael Winterbottom, “The ‘Tribunus Marianus’ and the Development of the Cursus,” in Ingenio facilis. Per Giovanni Orlandi (1938–2007), ed. Giovanni Chiesa et al. (Florence, 2017), pp. 231–47, at 244–46. But there are some exceptions to the combinations allowed: p2 (vidétur díctum), ruled out anyway if final disyllables are banned; p3pp (fínem fácio); pp4pp (indúbia tutámina). For the last of these see below on numerat impendia. 23  Bornecque, objecting to a doublet presented by the manuscript (spondee + amphibrach, with two different examples), emended it away, too boldly, I think; this list is not the work of a very meticulous grammarian. De Jonge’s treatment of the doublet (Les clausules métriques, p. 101, n. 5) is vitiated by his regarding the final syllable of nocentum as long. 22 

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with in numerum, though I lack parallels for the sense “bring” in such a context. But the sense must be that the previously listed clausulae can be classed under trochee + molossus or tribrach + dichoreus. If we take the comment to apply only to List 1, we might just about persuade ourselves that all the types starting with a trochee are followed by a molossus (by making groups of two shorts equivalent to a long, and by counting a final short as long). If we follow de Jonge in extending the meaning of tribrach here to proparoxytone words in general, certain other items fall into place: dactyl or anapaest + dichoreus (Romulus amputavit, oculus virginalis, optime cantitastis). But what of tribrach  + molossus (misera libertas), spondee  + bacchius (fulmen tonantis), dactyl + antispast (dedecus amicorum)? Even if, like Bornecque,24 we interpret generalium to imply that not all the cases are meant to be covered, it does not seem a very helpful observation.25 I come to Fragment II. This consists of a short paragraph (628.1–4): Clausulae his placentes temporibus huius modi esse noscuntur: ex trochaeo et antibacchio, ut templa deiecit; ex trochaeo et paeone tertio, ut corpus animavit; tertia [clausula], si quemcumque pedem ditrochaeus terminet [finem], ut accepit cantilenam. [feliciter]

Three clausulae are mentioned here. The first two are, in my notation, types 1 and 1c. In the example given for the third clausula, the foot preceding the dichoreus is a molossus (accepit, with the last syllable long by position). But we have been told that any foot would do.26 One deduces that the dichoreus alone is taken to form an acceptable clausula. We are moving in a different world from that of List 1 in Fragment I, where a final dichoreus is preceded by not any foot but by a dactyl, an anapaest or a cretic (above, p.  52). Even if we (with de  Jonge) supplement feliciter (deleted by Keil)27 to make a proper example, feliciter comparavit, we are still left with the key words quem­ cumque pedem to show us that the dichoreus is able to form a clausula whatever precedes it. (For such clausulae see above, p. 52, and below, p. 55). If the text means what it says, and is correctly transmitted, one may be sure that Fragment II was taken from a text different from Fragment I, and inconsistent with it.28

Les clausules métriques latines, p. 125, n. 5. “On reconnaîtra facilement le cursus planus et le cursus velox” (Nicolau, L’origine du “cursus” rhyth­ mique, p. 124). 26  If “any foot” could be made (or emended) to mean “any three-syllable proparoxytone,” the principle would be helpful and true, but the example given would not be valid. A dichoreus with any other sort of word preceding would not in that case be regarded as making a valid clausula. Thus emended, Fragment II would be a far more valuable summary of the field than that just given at the end of Fragment I. 27  Might it not be left over from an explicit feliciter (cf. n. 5)? 28  de Jonge, Les clausules métriques, p. 108. He speculates that the author of the fragment is in the tradition of e.g. Caesius Bassus (GL 6:308–12), who allowed a wide range of feet to precede a dichoreus. But Bassus’s list is worse than useless, for it includes virtually all possible clausulae. 24  25 

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Finally, something needs to be said about Fragment III. Bornecque regarded it as a compilation of material drawn from different authors.29 Two items certainly fall into this category; they are attributed by name to Cicero and Probus. We find at once, and with no introduction, yet another list of favoured clausulae (List 3, starting at 628.5). First are given five types where a trochee is the first element. They exemplify metrical types 1 (accentually Pa); 1c (Tra); 2 (Ta); 1a (Ta), accompanied by two examples, differing in the length of the final syllable, canticuli and legiti­ mus). Then we move (628.8) to trisyllabic penults with a central short (cretic, dactyl, tribrach: anapaests are not mentioned, perhaps by accident), which may be followed by a dichoreus or an antispast. Examples are given only of dactyl + dichoreus (sidera iudicabant [sic]) and of tribrach + antispast (Helena maritalis). Cretic + dichoreus is metrical type 3 (Va); all the other combinations give only accentual type Va. Finally (628.11), we have a spondee as first element; this must be followed by a bacchius, exemplified by fulmen tonanti (D Pa).30 The examples given sometimes resemble, but never coincide with, those in Lists 1 and 2.31 List 3, though, is similar to List 2 (see above, p. 53) in allowing for a wide range of types and in avoiding b-forms. It, too, conforms to the dichoreus “rule;” indeed it comes close to specifying that a one-word dichoreus must be preceded by a proparoxytone. It is, one presumes, the work of a new hand. De Jonge thought of a commentator on Fragment I.32 The hypothesis of such a commentator would explain the way in which we now find allusion to the processes of solutio and ampliatio that recalls mention of those terms in Fragment I (627.3–4, quoted on p. 50), where we are told that the list of clausulae can be extended by these two means. Resolution is discussed, however opaquely, in 628.14–16. We first have a statement that of the types listed above the best is trochee + molossus (natus Aeneas, listed in first place at 628.6). What follows is corrupt, but there is talk of resolution first of (one syllable in?) the molossus, and then of the trochee preceding it, so that it becomes a Les clausules métriques latines, p. 122; cf. de Jonge, Les clausules métriques, p. 109. In 628.12–14 (deleted by Keil) I suggest that we should add e.g. iungas after uel. An interpolator (as it would seem) adds a new variant on spondee + bacchius: “You may alternatively conjoin molossus and amphibrachys, invadit tonantem, so adding a syllable [invadit instead of a spondee like vadit], for that counts as a metrum too [for this use of metrum, cf. Sacerdos: “Cum una syllaba metrum non sit” (GL 6:493.1–2)]. Some metricians [he adds helpfully] give the example fulmen tonantis [an apparent allusion to 627.9–10, where this is given in Fragment I as the example of spondee + bacchius].” 31  carina repercussa (628.10–11), obelized by Keil, would fall into a new category, of trochee + antispast. It could be the interpolation of someone who wished not only to exemplify a new combination but also to point out that a trochaic penult could take the form of a word ending in a trochee; that is unparalleled in the Fragmenta, except in the interpolation discussed in the previous note (“ut addas syllabam”). For Martianus, note e.g. his (13), where parentibus illustrates an iambus. 32  Les clausules métriques, p. 110. 29  30 

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tribrach (but the illustration is corrupt).33 We have in effect already heard of resolution of the molossus; so perhaps what originally stood in the lacuna marked by Keil after solvis was not, as he thought, an example,34 but a reference back like ut dixi. Resolution of the trochee into a tribrach, however, does add something to what has been said earlier: tribrach + molossus has not previously been mentioned. What then is to be made of the discussion of ampliatio that follows in 628.17–21?35 I offer a translation: “But if you wish to make an ampliatio, you place, before these feet consisting of five syllables,36 any other [feet] you like, in elocutione.37 These [five-syllable feet] are not looked for to see if they are long or short38 (for this will be required only of the penult and the last [foot], not of the antepenult and preceding [feet]). To be excepted is the clausula that has five short [syllables], and is the African type of barbarism,39 or [five] longs, [which is] the Spanish [type of barbarism].” The exception limits the “feet containing five syllables” (on which see n. 36) by excluding those consisting of five longs or five shorts. But I cannot see why the author troubled to say any of this. Keil next deletes as a gloss words meaning “[feet] which we should observe at the end of clausulae.” 40 We are now done with five-syllable endings, and move to a ragbag of forbidden endings: (a) 3 longs or/and 4 shorts (a strange remark; if “or” is meant, a molossus is surely admissible); (b) monosyllaba pars orationis, i.e. “a monosyllable” (see below, p. 58); (c) 3 trochees (perhaps a valuable though veiled statement that a trochee should not precede a dichoreus); (d) beginning or end of a hexameter41 (illustrations follow at 628.30–31 see below); and (e) “2 shorts, 3 longs, 3 dactyls.” 42 I am not quite convinced by de Jonge’s emendation (Les clausules métriques, p. 103, n. 2) to tribuit naturae. At least we can be sure that the tribrach must be tribuit. 34  Or a group of examples. The forms suggested by de Jonge, Les clausules métriques, p. 103, n. 1 (also p. 109), duplicate ones already listed in 628.6–8. 35  “Si autem volueris ampliationem facere, praeponis istis pedibus quinarum syllabarum quosvis alios in elocutione, qui quidem non quaeruntur, si longi sunt aut breves (hoc etenim tantum requiretur, paenultimus et ultimus, non antepaenultimus et superiores), excepta haec structura, quae quinque breves habet, et est barbarismus Afer, vel ex longis Hispanus.” 36  Only two of the clausulae just listed contain five syllables: trochee + molossus and spondee + bacchius. De Jonge, Les clausules métriques, p. 103, n. 3 thinks the reference is “probably” to the former combination. Less simply, Bornecque, Les clausules métriques latines, p. 127, n. 3. 37  I see no point in this specification. 38  Poor Latin! 39  Irrelevant to this are two mentions of African barbarism in Consentius (GL 5:392.11: orator given a short initial syllable) and Julian of Toledo. See also below, n. 88. 40  “quos debeamus in fine clausularum observare.” Read quos 〈pedes〉. 41  Misunderstood by Bornecque, Les clausules métriques latines, p. 127 n. 6. 42  But short and long syllables are not on the same footing as dactyls. De Jonge, Les clausules mé­ triques, p. 103, n. 5 and Bornecque, Les clausules métriques latines, p. 127, n. 6, do not address this problem. 33 

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More fragments follow. 628.25–26 is hardly intelligible, and seems irrelevant to a­ nything in Fragment III. The remark about the Orator in 628.26–27 may be “une glose sur une glose” 43), referring presumably to Cicero’s views on verse runs in prose (Orat. 189–90). Then a snatch of doggerel44 versifies some of what has preceded: it bans, successively, 5 shorts (the African fault), 5 longs (the Spanish fault), 3 trochees, beginning and end of a hexameter. Bornecque compared Cassiodorus, Inst. 1.15.7, a passage where the reader is encouraged to neglect various secular rules.45 But he should have made the point that Cassiodorus’s wording shows beyond doubt that he knew the snatch of doggerel.46 Next, 628.30–31 give illustrations of what the doggerel has said about the start and end47 of a hexameter. Now we read (628.32–33): “Optimae structurae hae sunt duae: ex trochaeo et molosso, ut laetus Aeneas, item ex trochaeo et paeone tertio, ut poena capitalis.” The former combination was placed second in List 1; it headed both List 2 (fortis Aeneas) and List 3 (natus Aeneas). The latter came third both in List 1, with the same example, and in List 2, with a different example.48 We have here some sort of cherry-picking of “best” clausulae from the text (or texts) we have been analyzing.49 There is not enough material to say much about the rhythm employed by the authors of this fragment. But we may note in 627.3–4 the dichorei ending compositionum teneres and animadverteris comprobabis, which conform to the rule set out above (p. 52), but also both scan as cretic + dichoreus. Last of all comes the paragraph attributed to Probus;50 but this I reserve for later discussion (below, n. 89). Bornecque, Les clausules métriques latines, p. 128, n. 1. Resembling the verses of Rufinus (see GL 6:554–78). 45  Les clausules métriques latines, p. 127, n. 6: see Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones, ed. Roger A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1937), p. 45. Cassiodorus mentions the quadriga Messii, i.e. Arusianus Messius’s Exempla elocutio­ num (GL 7:449–515). But he does not mean to imply that Arusianus dealt with these metrical matters. 46  The two lines of verse were transposed by Bornecque to follow tres dactyli in 628.25, for they take up points made in 628.21–24. But the prose and verse versions will not have been taken from the same source, and do not need to have been copied out here together. 47  Vera potestas happens to form a hexameter end in Paulinus Petricordiae, Vita  S. Martini 6.495, ed. Michael Petschenig, CSEL 16.1 (Vienna, 1888), p. 159. 48  In List 3 we have, with a final long, ipse Diomedes. 49  Rather as in Fragment II, where it may be noted that of the three clausulae picked out one is the same as here (corpus animauit), while another is the same except for the final syllable (templa deiecit). 50  This person is only a pseudo–Probus, to whom was attributed the so–called Catholica, a version of Book 2 of the ars of Marius Sacerdos (perhaps of the late third c. ad): see GL 6:3–43 (our passage at 43.7). For all this see Robert Kaster in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower et al., 4th ed. (Oxford, 2012), under “Sacerdos, Marius Plotius” and “Valerius Probus, Marcus.” It also comes in the main text of Sacerdos (GL 6:495.23–26 + 493.2–6), but collation suggests, not quite unambiguously, that our fragment did indeed draw on “Probus.” 43 

44 

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Martianus Capella When Martianus Capella came to discuss the feet best adapted to making prose rhythmical, “pedes … quibus clausulae decenter aptentur,” he says of them: “Quos quidem Cicero quadam permixta confusione perturbat.”51 That is a considered and justified criticism of the great orator.52 Martianus promises something better:53 “Ego tamen compendiosiora percurram, ut in hac silua quibusdam uidear praeire tramitibus.” His brief treatment (520–22), sadly truncated in the manuscripts, repays closer examination than it has so far received. For the sake of clarity, I present his precepts schematically, not always preserving his order. We shall see that, like the author of the Fragmenta Bobiensia, he is largely explicating the cursus mixtus. As before, I mark the accentual and metrical rhythms he approves. But it is the combinations of metra that he rejects that are of new interest. In three paragraphs, he treats successively:54

Monosyllabic endings These are in principle undesirable, except in mid-sentence. But if they are used, a long monosyllable should be preceded by a trochee: (1) – ⏑ | –

non scripta sed nata lex

2

Ta

(2) debet esse legum in re publica prima uox while a short one should be preceded by an iamb: tota autem insula modica et cultibus variis est55 (3) ⏑ – | ⏑

2

Ta

or by an anapaest: (4) ⏑ ⏑ – | ⏑

(the previous illustration will serve here too)

De nuptiis 519, ed. Karl Halm, Rhetores Latini Minores (Leipzig, 1863), pp. 476–77; James Willis, Martianus Capella (Leipzig, 1983), p. 180. 52  For the sort of difficulties he raises, and general background, see my discussion in Jakob Wisse, Elaine Fantham, and Michael Winterbottom, M. Tullius Cicero De Oratore Libri III. A Commentary on Book III, 96–230 (Heidelberg, 2008), pp. 232–301. 53  He does not mention the rather less baffling treatment in Quintilian, Inst. orat. 9.4.45–137. Quintilian orders his material in 97–110 by reference to what should precede final spondees and other feet; compare the procedure of the Fragmenta Bobiensia. His treatment is vitiated by his favouring all or virtually all possible combinations. 54  A clausula cannot be formed by a single final word (or in the case of disyllables even by two final words: hence the need for supplement in (12)), and Martianus, accordingly, specifies what has preceded. He leaves it to us to work out what group of syllables counts as a clausula in each case. 55  The vowel is short by nature, as in (5). No recognizable clausula seems indicated, and the text may be corrupt. 51 

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In these cases, a long follows a short or a short follows a long. For a short to follow a short, or a long a long, is undesirable: (5) ⏑ | ⏑ ista res mea56 est (6) – | – non tu eum patria privare, qua caret, sed vita uis57

Dissyllabic endings Recommended are (7) ⏑ – | – –

patria continet bonos cives

1

Va*58

(8) (same)

asserat caput legis

1

Va*

(9) – ⏑ | – ⏑

haec est bonorum civium magna cura

3

Va*

(10) – ⏑ | – –

haec sunt quae maximi principes sola curant

3

Va*

Martianus disapproves of (11) – – | ⏑ –

tenui servos meos

(12) – – | ⏑ ⏑

〈senatus haec intellegit,〉59 consul videt

(13) ⏑ – | ⏑ –

pugnare iuvenes pro parentibus suis

(14) ⏑ – | ⏑ ⏑

no illustration

(15) ⏑ ⏑ | ⏑ ⏑

perdidi bona mea

(16) ⏑ ⏑ | – ⏑

conqueritur sua fata

(17) ⏑ ⏑ | – –

imputat sibi demens

(18) – ⏑ | ⏑ –

omnia nempe vides

(19) – ⏑ | ⏑ ⏑

aspice facta mea

Here we see at work the pressures on the longest and grandest metrical clausula of all, cretic + dichoreus (Type 3). In every case, except (13), Martianus gives us clausulae that end in two paroxytone disyllables. Some he rejects, some he approves. On what basis?

Martianus does not comment on the hiatus. “… quod voluntate orator, non errore composuit.” Harold Gotoff, Cicero’s Caesarian Speeches (Chapel Hill, 1993), p. 134, comments: “Short, alliterative, abrupt; its effect, one of stinging and harsh inevitability.” 58  “Va*” indicates a “cleft” Velox (see below). 59  These three words are essential to the argument, and must be added. Compare 517  = Cicero, Cat. 1.2. 56  57 

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Martianus accepts (7) and (8), I think, because they work metrically: – ⏑ – – – (metrical Type 1).

He can readily accept (9) and (10), for they are straightforward cases of metrical Type 3; and they recall the rule we deduced (above, p. 52) from the Fragmenta Bobiensia that a dichoreus forming a single final word must be preceded by a proparoxytone. To turn to the types of disyllabic clausula that Martianus rejects. (11) and (12) go together. Martianus objects to the iambic metron (⏑ – ⏑ x) with which each ends; indeed he has already made this point (specifically for (12)) at 517. He is not therefore being inconsistent in rejecting these while accepting (7) and (8), which ends like limping iambic (choliambic) lines. He specifically objects to (13) and (14), again as giving two iambs, and to (15) as giving four successive shorts at the end of the sentence. (16) and (17) give (bad) hexameter endings, though Martianus does not mention this.60 But he does specifically object to (18) and (19) as giving pentameter endings. In (7)–(19), with the sole exception of (13), the clausula, taken accentually, is a “cleft Velox.” This is the term Janson coined for the combination pp 2 2, and for which he supplied the example aeternáliter díes bónos; two dissyllables of iambic shape follow a normal velox proparoxytone.61 This grouping is found sporadically in patristic texts, and even in Cicero, doubtless by chance.62 I suggest that Martianus is well aware of the cleft Velox in contemporary practice, and wishes to warn his readers off it. He had, as we have seen, other reasons to reject (11)–(19); but, though he does not say so, he will have found all these clausulae wanting because they do not provide a metrical dichoreus as (9) and (10) did. In short, Martianus chooses his examples63 to illustrate disyllabic endings that can be accepted because they resemble metrical Type 3, and disfavours the ones that do not yield to metrical analysis.

60  61 

p. 99.

So Bornecque, Les clausules métriques latines, p. 156, n. 4 bis. Tore Janson, Prose Rhythm in Medieval Latin from the 9th to the 13th  century (Stockholm, 1975),

I once thought it might be a bold extension of the familiar substitution, for the final quadrisyllable of the velox, of an unaccented monosyllable + a paroxytone trisyllable (in my Martianus sample e.g. 5 Cypridis non sinebant). But I now think that it is merely the accentual counterpart of the Type 3 metrical clausula when, as occasionally happens, the final dichoreus is split into two words: for example, Cicero, Sull. 88 misericordia [abl.] digna multa. 63  He does not illustrate another type of disyllabic ending that comes up in his practice (haberetur aura: see below, p. 64), where a word ending with a trochee precedes a trochee (metrically a dichoreus, not viable accentually). 62 

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Trisyllabic endings Martianus recommends (20) – ⏑ | – – x

mare fluctuantibus, 64 litus eiectis

1

Pa

(21) – ⏑ | ⏑ ⏑ – –

mare fluctuantibus, litus agitanti

1c

Tra

(22) – ⏑ | – ⏑ ⏑ –

litus Aemiliae

1a

Ta

(23) – ⏑ | – – ⏑ ⏑

litus aequabile

265

Ta

(24) ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ | ⏑ ⏑ – – illustration lost66

(Va)

But he rejects (25) – – | – – –

mare fluctuantibus, rupes eiectis

(26) ⏑ ⏑ | – – –

mare fluctuantibus, apex67 eiectis

(27) – ⏑ | ⏑ – –

litus amicis

(28) – – | – – ⏑ ⏑

si te semel ad meas capsas admisero

The interest here lies in the contrast between (20) and (25). In the latter the long final syllable of rupes spoils the metrical clausula seen in (20). Martianus’s mention of (25), only to reject it, probably displays his consciousness that at his period spondees were beginning to encroach on this type of ending. He does not say, perhaps even did not see, that this was because the accent in each case falls on the first syllable, and that that might now be felt to be more important than the length of the second. Equally, the rejected (26) seems to witness to the existence of those who were prepared to lengthen the short but accented first syllable of apex. In accordance with traditional doctrine, (27) is specifically rejected as giving a hexameter ending. As for (28), taken from Cicero though it is, Martianus rejects capsas for the same reason as he did rupes (see above).68 Martianus has now sanctioned examples (all of the “favored” a-type) of Planus, Tardus, Velox and Trispondaic rhythms: though that is not how he puts it. We may say, more appropriately to his way of thinking, that he has covered metrical clausulae Types 1 and 2. Type 3 is (for the most part) yet to come; much relevant to it has been These two preceding words are specified or implied in (20) to (23) and (25) to (27). In each case, the final cretic extends the rhythm of the favoured clausulae. 65  Alternatively, this might be taken as a cretic + a spondee with the second syllable resolved. 66  The example found in many manuscripts, curas regere animorum, is admissible, so long as we allow a hiatus (as seen in (5)). 67  Obelised by Willis, but defended by Bornecque, Les clausules métriques latines, p. 157, n. 3 (“la finale est brève de nature”); the genitive apicis forms a tribrach. 68  For capsas see below, p. 67. 64 

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lost to us in a lacuna. For a section on quadrisyllabic endings must have dropped out.69 Martianus has smuggled some four-syllable endings into his section on trisyllables by allowing resolution of long syllables in the final molossus (21–24, 28).70 But obviously he can find no place there for final words where two shorts do not occur together. What would he have said about such words? We have to turn to a sample of his own practice to get a clue. My sample71 of a hundred clausulae shows eighty-six that can be taken metrically,72 but as many as ninety-five (including eight Trispondaei) that can be taken accentually: an approximation to the cursus mixtus system.73 Martianus, unsurprisingly,74 conforms to such rules as I have so far elicited from his theoretical remarks. To put it in cursus terms, he invariably uses the type of Planus that I call Pa (sixteen cases out of a hundred), never the alternative type that I call Pb. In every case, the final syllable of the penultimate word is short. Similarly, he almost invariably uses the type of Tardus (my Ta) that, whether he knows it or not, he recommends in (23) (twenty-one cases);75 only once does he use the alternative type of Tardus, my Tb (11 tótius pópuli). Again, he never lengthens the final syllable of the penultimate. Finally, the Trispondaeus. Martianus uses the type I call Tra seven times out of the hundred;76 the alternative that I call Trb occurs once only (16 elementaque gestabant). But we have not yet discussed the Velox, and Martianus’s practice, looked at accentually, shows a very marked preference for that: fifty items out of 100, and always in the “normal” form pp4p (my Va), not the alternative p5p (my Vb; we do not know if Martianus warned his readers off pentasyllabic endings in general, but there are none in my sample).

So Bornecque, Les clausules métriques latines, p. 157, n. 6. Halm had already marked a lacuna on different grounds. 70  For resolution in the molossus, see above, p. 55; Augustine, De musica 4.11, ed. Martin Jacobsson, CSEL 102 (Berlin and Boston, 2017), p. 148.23–24. 71  I examined the first hundred clausulae in the prose of De nuptiis (1.2–38). 72  Breaking down by types, we find twenty-seven examples of Type  1; eight of Type  1a; three of Type 1c; thirteen of Type 2; eleven of Type 3; and twenty-four dichorei. 73  I employ the criteria I used for a series of authors in Winterbottom, “The ‘Tribunus Marianus,’” pp. 236–37. On these figures, Martianus (c. 475–500) is very much in line with Ennodius (d. 521) and Cassiodorus (d. 580). 74  But reassuringly, for it suggests that his theoretical discussion is not just copied from some other source. 75  In 2 this involves accenting a Greek word according to Latin rules (ὑμνόλογεις). In 5 elision is enforced in ducer(e) instituit. 76  The metrical counterpart (cf.  p.  52 with n.  21) may be Type  1 (as in  7 adhibebat quiescenti), 1c (11 ­rauca quatiebat), or dichoreus (18 erat hauriebat); or there may be no such counterpart (as in 8 esset adiretur). All this may perhaps suggest that Martianus is “feeling” the accentual shape. 69 

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We are now in a position to speculate what Martianus might have said in his lost theoretical treatment of final quadrisyllables. His practice shows a wide variety of combinations. One of them we have already come across (above, p. 61): (24)

⏑ ⏑ ⏑ | ⏑ ⏑ – –

No illustration has been preserved, but my sample happens to throw up two, 14 iacere cupiebant and (with short final syllable) 25 solitus aperire. But what Martianus would have said of the other possible groupings is a matter for conjecture: to which I shall now resort, on the basis of my sample. In the preserved part of Martianus’s theoretical discussion, he prefaces the one-, two- and three-syllable words with a two-syllable foot (iamb, trochee or pyrrhicius). Let us assume that he would have done that for quadrisyllables also. Further, Martianus would have had to prescribe what forms the quadrisyllable itself could take. All of this would have to be fitted out with examples, as in the earlier discussion. His practice, as seen in my sample, and put in his own terms, shows a preference for the groups (29)

⏑ – | – ⏑ – x (14 instances)

(30)

⏑ ⏑ | – ⏑ – x (13)

(31)

– ⏑ | – – ⏑ x (11)

Less favored are (32)

– ⏑ | – ⏑ ⏑ x (9)

(33)

⏑ – | ⏑ – – x (8)

(34)

⏑ ⏑ | ⏑ ⏑ – – (cf. (24)) (5)

(35)

⏑ ⏑ | ⏑ – – x (3)

There is one instance each of (36)

⏑ – | – – – x and (correspondingly)

(37)

⏑ ⏑ | – – – x77

When the first element is a trochee ((31) and (32)), we have a Tardus accentual clausula; elsewhere, the accentual clausula is a Velox. Martianus’s theory presumably recommended at least (29)–(31), which his practice favours. As to (29): in my sample, a long more often (ten cases out of fourteen) 77 

At 16 opprimere non quiverunt the variant opprimere nequiverunt would move the item into (35).

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64

precedes, giving cretic + dichoreus, a metrical clausula. In the other four cases a short precedes, giving an anapaest + dichoreus, an accentual clausula. As to (30): Martianus precedes with dactyls nine times and tribrachs four times. His theoretical approval can have stemmed only from an acceptance of the accentual rule that the penultimate word here has to be proparoxytone, not from the metrical rule that it must be a cretic.78 But in (31) the metrical Type 2 coincides with the Tardus rhythm. In all this, Martianus is not straying far into the domain of accent. Martianus’s theory may not have pronounced on the dichoreus. His practice suggests that he accepted the rule I deduced from the Fragmenta Bobiensia (above, p. 52; though see p. 55 on Fragment II), that a dichoreus can form a clausula on its own (i.e. with no proparoxytone preceding) so long as it is not constituted by a single word. The evidence is tenuous. The clearest case is 7 sociale vinclum (crinibus precedes). In 11 the word incredibilis precedes haberetur aura, and we could scan as resolved cretic + dichoreus; and in 18 the dichoreus forms part of the metrical clausula (me)are cogebat orbem (cretic + dichoreus). But theoretical recommendation of a clausula like sociale vinclum should have appeared under disyllables. Nor, equally, do we find in Martianus anything corresponding to the approval of fulmen tonanti(s) in the Fragmenta; and my sample shows no trisyllable clausula of this kind. To summarize: Martianus groups clausulae according to the length of the final word (from one to three/four syllables), approving ones that scan quantitatively (and also, though he does not mention this, accentually), and rejecting cases where metre is ignored or where a clausula resembles the end of a line of poetry. He is in fact recommending in almost all its elements a system that we should call the cursus mixtus but for him was based on quantitative considerations. There are only the slightest signs that he is aware of tensions between metre and accent. Like a true grammarian, he was defending the citadel of a system whose outposts had in his day long ago fallen to the enemy.

Marius Plotius Sacerdos79 Sacerdos, unlike Martianus and the authors of the Fragmenta Bobiensia, arranges his discussion of structurae according to the final word of a sentence. He draws welcome comparisons between past and present practice, and he will give us valuable indications that he is far more aware than Martianus of the trend towards an accentual system. But his exposé is intricate and requires detailed discussion. In an introductory section (492.25–493.11), Sacerdos establishes a contrast between the “strong” clausulae of Cicero and the “pleasing” clausulae of the present day. perculerit explicabo (2) might be regarded as a variant (by resolution) of cretic + dichoreus. GL 6:492–95; Bornecque, Les clausules métriques latines, pp. 130–36. In what follows, again, references are to page and line in GL 6. 78 

79 

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65

His examples from Cicero will show the great man “as if on purpose”80 preferring the strong to the pleasurable. Sacerdos surely implies that we should do the same. We start with monosyllables. Cicero, says Sacerdos, in his preference for strength over pleasure, was prepared to end a sentence with a monosyllable (Martianus gave examples: p.  58 above). But  “we” are not,81 and Sacerdos re-writes some Ciceronian clausulae to bring them up to date, thus: (1) (2) (3)

non est licitum conservare82 civitatibus copulata extincta sit atque deleta

3 1

Va Va Pa

Commenting on (1) and (2), he calls licitum a tribrach and the last three syllables of civitatibus a dactyl, despite the consonants that open the succeeding words and give length by position.83 This practice is followed in the lists of examples that start  in 494.20. There, accordingly, Sacerdos scans differently e.g. penultimate curiam before renovare (–⏑⏑) and (con)temneres before persuadenti (– ⏑ –),84 though we should call them both cretics. The difference, for him, is between a word ending in a syllable long by nature, like contemneres, and one ending in a syllable short by nature (even if long by position), like curiam before renovare.85 We shall soon come across the same concern for the length of the final syllable of the penult. Next, disyllabic endings. They do not much please “some” (that is, “nowadays,” as Bornecque explains86), but the old orators very much liked them, as being strong; and they also (even?) avoid the “barbarismus of our time”87 if hexameter endings like primus ab oris and (Cicero, Verr. 1.34, casually cited) perspicere possit are eschewed. The ban on hexameter clausulae is a long established doctrine, but both here and apparently also below (493.27–28)88 Sacerdos attributes it to modern qualms, provocatively putting a Ciceronian clausula alongside the end of the first line of the Aeneid. In the process, As though, that is, he was consciously intending to displease Sacerdos’s contemporaries. For “strength” compare Quintilian, Inst. orat. 9.4.97, where forte is best, molle worse, mollius worst. 81  Sacerdos is not trying to improve on or to “correct” Cicero (contra Nicolau, L’origine du “cursus” rhythmique, p. 108), only to show how practice has changed since Cicero’s day. 82  Sacerdos wrongly calls this word a ditrochee. 83  Contrast Martianus, who e.g. in his (12) calls consul before videt a spondee; equally, the Fragmenta Bobiensia make cupidus an anapaest before uoluptatum. 84  In fact he calls the whole of contemneres a third epitrite (– – ⏑ –). He perhaps treated civitatibus as (ending in) a dactyl because that word has more than four syllables. 85  However, Sacerdos offends against his rule by making condidimus a choriamb (–⏑⏑  –) before sepultura. 86  Les clausules métriques latines, p. 131, n. 7. 87  i.e. what in our day is regarded as faulty (equivalent to nostro tempore vitiosum above). Sacerdos harps on this formulation with some ironical intent: see 493.32 and 494.3. 88  Nostro tempore applies to both aut clauses, though barbarism is only mentioned in the second. 80 

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though, he manages to make a dactyl out of (per)spicere, though only the proparoxytone accent can “lengthen” the i. There are pitfalls in using trisyllabic endings too “nowadays.” A trisyllabic clausula has to be careful “ne aut versum heroicum faciat … aut, ut quibusdam placet, barbarismum, si ex spondaeo vel iambo vel quovis pede cuius sit novissima syllaba natura longa componatur et aliquo pede trisyllabo qui positus bene sonet.”89 The first proviso is familiar. The second tells us that some people (again meaning some moderns) think a clausula faulty if it consists of a penultimate spondee or iamb whose final syllable is long by nature, together with a trisyllable “of a kind that sounds well in this position.”90 Sacerdos is as before talking of moderns, who see barbarism where there is none, as contrasted with Cicero, who was less constrained by rules. He  tells us that (some) moderns insisted on a short syllable at the end of the penult when a trisyllable follows. Accordingly, when we comes to his lists we find that a syllable short by nature91 does always precede a trisyllable; for both lists are intended to conform with modern practice, though not necessarily with the author’s own preferences. The next sentence explains (nam) why caution is needed with a trisyllabic clausula:92 “For if it [sc. a trisyllabic clausula] does not prove worthy of applause unless it avoids what our time regards as faulty, neither will a clausula that pleases us [moderns] be found in e.g. [from Cicero] …” That is, Sacerdos says ironically, if moderns are not satisfied with a three-syllable clausula unless their pedantic93 rule is observed, then they will certainly not like a Ciceronian clausula that breaks it! I think we are meant to conclude that if Cicero can do such a thing, it cannot be altogether bad. Examples of his practice follow, showing the ablatives sua (iamb) and causa (spondee) in penultimate position.94 When Sacerdos comes to quadrisyllables, we find ourselves on familiar ground. Final four-syllable words will avoid the “barbarism of our time” in the same way that disyllables did, namely, by eschewing heroic endings.95 And, just as, in respect of This double proviso is repeated in different words at the end of the book (495.24–6). Thence it passed to “Probus” and the Fragmenta Bobiensia (see above, p. 57 with n. 50). It is much more easily understood in the present phrasing and context. 90  I doubt if the text is secure: perhaps 〈hic〉 positus? The allusion seems in any case to be to a trisyllable allowable on the system in use. 91  That of course includes coheredem before detraxit; see above, p. 65. 92  Bornecque added non before vitans, ruining the rhythm(!); I should add nisi after fuerit. But what follows is not quite secure, and the overall meaning is by no means certain. 93  Cf. the contrast of their obscuram peritiam with illorum [Cicero’s and others’] nobilissima neglegen­ tia (494.16–17). 94  One is tempted to delete this second example, for “illud inter multa similia Tullianum” has preceded. But it is clear that causa laboro is cited in 494.10 just because it has been cited earlier. And there are two Ciceronian examples for quadrisyllables below. 95  So Bornecque, Les clausules métriques latines, p. 132, n. 5. 494.3–4 picks up 493.12. 89 

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trisyllables, he pointed to moderns who saw barbarism in a syllable long by nature at the end of the previous word, so now he tells us of “many” who non sapienter have “here too” seen the same fault. The (counter-)examples from Cicero are: (5) (6)

ad meas capsas admisero industriaeque meae contenderem

Ta96 Ta

Thus, explicitly for quadrisyllables and implicitly (as I argued) for trisyllables,97 Sacerdos thinks this modern rule “injudicious,” for in each case Cicero can be shown to have broken it. If we look at the lists to come, we deduce that what the moderns (whose practice they reflect) objected to was a naturally long final syllable specifically in penultimate words that constituted a spondee or an iamb, like Cicero’s capsas and meae.98 They had no quarrel with longer words ending in such feet (optime navigavi, and many other examples). Sacerdos now (as it might seem) puts forward a remedy that applies both to threeand to four-syllable words. “So  [apparently resumptive] if for some reason we are forced to use clausulae like that [i.e. with long final syllables in the penult], we shall be able to win approval99 for reproaching the ignorance of such people [i.e. those who dub such phenomena barbarisms] if we do our bit by lengthening short syllables or shortening long ones.100 For instance, we can pronounce causa101 and capsas with short final syllables.”102 This seems a desperate expedient,103 and it is odd in this context, for we would have expected Sacerdos merely to say that Cicero’s authority outweighs the cavils of the moderns. Sacerdos appears to defend Cicero against the charge of barbarism in making a clausula out of capsas admisero by saying, if I interpret him aright, that if we shorten a long in these circumstances there will indeed be barbarism, but it will lie in these Disapproved by Martianus (see p. 61). Sacerdos has become more and more open as his argument proceeded. For  when discussing mono­s yllables he changed his Ciceronian examples to conform to modern practice, only showing his own opinion by pointing to Cicero’s “strength” in this respect. 98  He seems wrong to admit to his second list the clausula diu machinatur, where the penult (identified as an iamb) ends in a long by nature. Cicero’s clausula iam diu machinetur scans for us as a cretic + dichoreus (Verr. 1.15). If iamdiu is taken as one word, or metrical unit, this is a good Velox, and the moderns would have embraced it. 99  Reading comprobari (comprobare B; reprobare Bornecque). 100  We would expect “producentes syllabas breves et corripientes longas.” But only shortening is in question, and we should reduce to corripientes syllabas longas (with rhythm). 101  Yet that would give a heroic clausula. 102  Reading, as we surely must, sas corripientes (cf., of the same syllable, correptae in 494.11–12). 103  Bornecque compares Consentius (GL 5:393): the clausula copiam esse ciborum can be remedied (though barbarously!) by lengthening the first syllable of the final word. 96  97 

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syllables only,104 not in the clausula as whole, for barbarism “in una parte orationis fit, pluribus numquam.”105 For, Sacerdos goes on, if this were so (i.e. apparently, if it were possible in more words than one),106 Cicero would have been aware of it! In the last two paragraphs, I have tried to make sense out of the text as it is, I suppose, ordinarily understood, though this has involved making several emendations. I shall now tentatively suggest a way out of this thicket of problems. From ergo a representative of the moderns gives a riposte that Sacerdos wants us to see to be absurd: “Well, then, if we have to use such clausulae [as Cicero did] we can always get over the problem by shortening long syllables.” An interpolator then tries, with hopeless inefficiency, to illustrate this point (494.10–11 “ut est …”). correptis next takes up cor­ ripientes, and the modern speaker proceeds with his casuistic defence of this not being a barbarism.107 And, it is casuistic, for there is barbarism here (see n. 105). Finally, Sacerdos speaks again (494.14): “If this were so” (sc., if this doctrine on shortening long syllables at will were true),108 Cicero would have known it.109 In 494.18–20 Sacerdos, not without ambiguity, tells us what he has been doing, and what he will now go on to do: “Now, since we have taught that things foolishly criticized by us [i.e. us moderns] were deployed without a qualm (indifferenter) by earlier writers [sc. Cicero], let us now assemble110 (componamus) clausulae that are pleasing to us [moderns111].” Under this head, Sacerdos lists twenty-eight clausulae. Metrically, they break down as follows: ten of Type  1; one of Type  1c (esse videatur); none  (!) of Type  2; four of Type  3; three dichorei; ten fitting none of these categories. Accentually, they break down as follows: eight Planus; one Tardus; seventeen Velox; two Trispondaei. In each case the “favoured” form is employed (Pa, Ta, Va, Tra). There are no disyllabic endings The reference of his syllabis seems to be to the word capsas. Cf. e.g. Sacerdos himself (451.4): “Barbarismus est vitiosa dictio unius verbi.” The first types are per productionem and per correptionem. 106  Contra Bornecque, Les clausules métriques latines, p. 132, n. 9. 107  istis syllabis (494.11) may now have wider reference (contrast n. 104). 108  So Bornecque (rejected in my n. 106). The introductory nam is mysterious; perhaps read iam? 109  All is not well with the end of this sentence; there seems to be a lacuna containing words which gave quorum a reference (it can only be to the misguided persons who believed in the doctrine of ad libitum shortening). 110  See 495.7–8: “Has … a nobis repertas structuras composuimus” (also 495.8 componamus, of the Cicero list). “Found” where? Of the 28 illustrations on the first list, one, esse videatur, is acknowledged to be Tullio peculiarem; one, esse delectum, is found in Cicero, Div. Caec. 15 (not noticed by the editors; the Verrines are a fertile source for the second list); the rest seem to be invented. There is no overlap with any of the other lists I have been examining, or with Caesius Bassus and Diomedes. 111  Rather than “me.” This seems to follow from what I have said and will say, and from Sacerdos’s remark at the end of his Cicero list (495.7–8): “Aliquas Tulli  … quae possint auditores [unqualified in 495.26] nostri temporis delectare.” 104  105 

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(see above, p. 52 with n. 17, and p. 65). All the trisyllabic endings are preceded by a trochee (see above, p. 66).112 No quadrisyllabic ending is preceded by an iamb or spondee (see above, p. 66–67). I give the comparative figure for clausulae “of a kind to please listeners of our time,” nineteen in number, that Sacerdos culls from Cicero (usually from the Verrine corpus).113 Metrical: nine of Type 1; one of Type 1c: (esse videatur); none of Type 2; none of Type 3; five dichorei; four fitting none of these categories. Accentual: eight Planus; no Tardus; nine Velox; two Trispondaei (all a-type). These figures are in line with the earlier list. They reflect, of course, not Cicero’s own preferences but Sacerdos’s choices. Particularly striking overall are the almost complete absence of Tardus/Type  2 rhythms114 and the fact that, while all the clausulae can be taken accentually, twelve (ten Sacerdos + two Cicero) are not viable metrically. Sacerdos’s own rhythmic practice is relevant, though he does not write much consecutive Kunstprosa. But in the first twelve (non-technical) sentences at the start of Book 3 we find the following:115 Metrical: two of Type 1; none of Type 2; one of Type 3; two dichorei;116 seven fitting none of these categories. Accentual: two Pa; two Ta117; eight Va. This may be more than a straw in the wind. Oberhelman’s judgement that Sacerdos was expounding the cursus mixtus system seems highly questionable.118 The Fragmenta Bobiensia and to a large extent Martianus do assume that system. Sacerdos, in both theory and practice, is tipping over in the direction of a purely accentual system. In fact, I very much doubt whether this part of Sacerdos can have been written, in this form, as early as the second half of the third century, soon after Cyprian and in the heyday of the cursus mixtus. It might be as late as the sixth century.119

Conclusion Of the three texts I have been discussing, two cannot be dated at all exactly, and though Martianus may have been writing last we cannot be sure of the date of his sources, if he For coheredem detraxit see n. 91. Once his choice seems provocative metrically: composuit rationem (heroic!). But this (like voluerit vindicare) is not to be found in our Cicero. Sacerdos’s list supplies further material for Ciceronian anticipation of the Velox rhythm (see Winterbottom, “On Ancient Prose Rhythm,” pp. 269–70). 114  Noted by Oberhelman, Prose Rhythm, p. 60. In my figures in Winterbottom, “The ‘Tribunus Marianus,’” pp. 236–37, Tardus very rarely comes so low in the ranking (only in Cicero, until very late). 115  Cf. Nicolau, L’origine du “cursus” rhythmique, p. 122, with n. 2. 116  The presence of dichoreic clausulae in Sacerdos’s theory and practice alike is significant (cf. above, p. 52). 117  Including sónum instítuit, with hiatus. 118  Oberhelman, Prose Rhythm, p. 60. 119  See again the figures in Winterbottom, “The ‘Tribunus Marianus,’” pp. 236–37. 112  113 

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had any (or indeed of the sources of the other two).120 But the three do show a development, though it may not have anything to do with chronology. The Fragmenta reflect a system where metre and accent largely coincide. Martianus is analysing the same system, but accent has clearly made some progress over metre; in his own writing he largely follows his own theory. In Sacerdos, in both theory and practice, there are clear signs of the system breaking down. But tradition was in one respect triumphant in all three. They all discuss rhythm as though words had quantities but no accents. In doing this, they are not being blind or stupid. On the contrary: so long as the cursus mixtus system lasted in some form and in some quarters, and that was until well after Martianus, analysis by metre is just as valid as analysis by accent.121 The tradition goes back many centuries, and was not to be overthrown lightly. Exactly when the full cursus system took over is uncertain. It appears, in any case, that no one thought to formulate its accentual principles until very much later: as late, in fact, as the twelfth century, almost a millennium after the rise of the cursus mixtus. And even then theoreticians still spoke in terms of dactyls and spondees.122

None known to Hans-Werner Fischer, “Untersuchungen über die Quellen der Rhetorik des Martianus Capella” (Ph.D. diss., University of Breslau, 1936), p. 84. 121  The analyses come to the same thing. A grammarian who called for a trochee followed by a molossus was calling ipso facto for two successive paroxytone words. 122  See Janson, Prose Rhythm, pp. 80–103 (texts in Appendix 3). 120 

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Appendix 1 Accentual clausulae p pp 2 and 3

paroxytone (réddit, reddidérunt) proparoxytone (réddidit) number of syllables in the final word

Thus p3p = a paroxytone word followed by a trisyllabic paroxytone word Planus Tardus Velox Trispondaeus

Pa Pb Ta Tb Va Vb Tra Trb

To be avoided:

p3p (íllum dedúxit) pp2 (víneam nóstram) 4pp (resilíre tentáverit) pp3pp (plúribus áttulit) pp4p (hóminem recepístis)2 p5p (vestrárum largitióne) p4p (ágnos admittátis) pp3p (brácchio exténto) p2 (vidétur díctum) p3pp (fínem fácio) pp4pp (indúbia tutámina)

Metrical clausulae –⏑––x

1

esse delatam ([corresponding to] Pa) moribus dicam (Pb)

1a

– ⏑ – ⏑⏑ x

ista suspicio (Ta)

1b

⏑⏑ ⏑ – – x

sceleris exarsit (Trb)

1c

– ⏑ ⏑⏑ – x

esse videantur (Tra)

2

–⏑––⏑x

mentesque convertere (Ta)

–⏑––⏑–x

foedissimi criminis (Tb) innocens iudicetur (Va)

3

For accentual clausulae I adopt the terminology and examples of Janson, Prose Rhythm, pp. 14–15, though the division between Pa (usually more favored) and Pb (less favored) etc. is my own. For the essentially arbitrary nature of any system (whether accentual or metrical) that one might choose, see Winterbottom, “On Ancient Prose Rhythm,” pp. 266–67. 2  Including the group pp 2 2 (hóminum ésse débet), the “Cleft Velox.” 1 

Why Boethius Had to Die James J. O’Donnell Arizona State University Per vedere ogne ben dentro vi gode l’anima santa che’l mondo fallace fa manifesto a chi di lei ben ode.

Within it rejoices, in his vision of all goodness, the holy soul who makes quite plain the world’s deceit to one who listens well.

Lo corpo ond’ ella fu cacciata giace giuso in Cieldauro; ed essa da martiro e da essilio venne a questa pace.  Paradiso 10.124–29

The body from which it was driven out lies down there in Cieldauro, and he has risen from martyrdom and exile to this peace.   (Trans. Jean and Robert Hollander)

Dante, at least, was convinced that Boethius really does lie in San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro in Pavia, below Augustine and near king Liutprand, and those of us who have made the pilgrimage may as well endorse his confidence. The author of the Consolatio Philoso­ phiae earned that respect with his masterpiece and has enjoyed nothing less than respect and often indeed veneration for many centuries.1 A curious masterpiece it is, though. I can think of no other work of literature so highly praised that escaped the century within which it was written without a surviving mention by any contemporaries or near-contemporaries. Pace Fabio Troncarelli, who made the best possible case for posthumous intervention by Boethius’s peer Cas­ siodorus, there remains no sixth-century Rezeptionsgeschichte to recount, though there are plenty of surviving sources that might have at least mentioned the work.2 Who read it and preserved it, how it survived, and how eventually it came to light – on those points we remain firmly in the dark. One bald fact surely contributes to that obscurity: Boethius, the philosopher, the statesman, came to lie in Pavia – or wherever – because he was killed in his very prime, at the order of the Roman state, tried and found guilty by the prefect of the city of Rome, with the consent or indeed perhaps at the direction of the legitimate Roman ruler of Italy. The golden heaven of Pavia arches over a convict’s, indeed a traitor’s, grave. Was his book, which avows that it was written in prison under charges, smuggled, hidden, I quote Boethius from De consolatione philosophiae, opuscula theologica, ed.  Claudio Moreschini (Leipzig, 2005), and Ennodius from MGH AA 7, ed. Friedrich Vogel (Berlin, 1885). Translations are my own except where specified. 2  For the Cassiodoran claim see Fabio Troncarelli, Tradizioni perdute: la ‘Consolatio Philosophia’ nell’ alto medioevo (Padua 1981); Troncarelli has since sketched a different afterlife for Boethius in the sixth century and beyond, tracing the embarrassments variously felt by affected parties at the turn of events: see his “Forbidden Memory: The Death of Boethius and the Conspiracy of Silence,” Mediaeval Studies 73 (2011), 183–205. 1 

D O I 10 .14 8 4/ M . P J M L . 5 .1 2 8 7 0 8 : 0 7 3 – 0 9 2 ©

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FHG

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kept in samizdat, and passed along among family and, well, co-conspirators until it was safe for it to see the light of day?3 The gap between condemnation and veneration is wide. Boethius, the philosopher and statesman, has enjoyed a high reputation in modern as well as medieval times, while those who condemned and killed him have been objects of indignant and sometimes slanderous reproach. The historian, however, should not take sides in the adversarial politics of other centuries. How can this particular gap be explained? A dispassionate review of the evidence is in order.

Who was Boethius? Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius to his contemporaries, was a prodigy thrice over, as public figure, as philosopher, and as author of a nearly miraculous book. Though the Anician family has attracted more than its share of overinterpretation and lionization in the last decades, now quietly abandoned and parked by the side of the road by Alan Cameron, in Boethius’s lifetime the family was at its apogee.4 Boethius was orphaned in childhood and brought up in the fosterage of the household where he would find his bride. He emerges to view with three kinds of sightings around the year 510. He received three letters from Theoderic that were later incorporated in Cassiodorus’s Variae and that are dated to 507/11, and he was mentioned with praise for youthful erudition in the Paraenesis didascalica of Ennodius from the year 511. In both cases he is named with the grand title of patricius, “patrician,” the highest civilian dignity possible in that time, a title variously held by Liberius, Cassiodorus, and Theoderic himself. Remarkable as that distinction may be, yet more remarkably he was consul solus for the year 510.5 Since Theodosius, the consulship had been shared between eastern and western holders, as long as there were two coordinate courts, but in the second half of Such hidden possession could also endure through the instrumentality of oblivion. A  sixth- or seventh-century manuscript of the Latin Psalter now in Dublin (Royal Irish Academy, MS 12 R 33) came there because it had been carried into battle as a good luck charm for warriors, a cathach, by a great princely family for centuries, cherished in a bejeweled case dating to the eleventh century. The  case was put into safekeeping in the sixteenth century, whereupon the family’s military fortunes collapsed. For over two hundred years the case was cherished, but its owners forgot there was a manuscript inside until its rediscovery in 1813. See Douglas Chretien, The Battle Book of the O’Donnells (Berkeley, 1935). (The fortunes of at least some members of the princely family have since improved slightly.) 4  The classic overstatement is Arnaldo Momigliano, “Cassiodorus and Italian Culture of His Time,” Proceedings of the British Academy 41 (1955), 207–45, along with his “Gli Anicii e la storiografia latina del VI secolo d. C.,” now in Momigliano, Secondo Contributo Alla Storia degli Studi Classici (Rome 1960), 231–53; contrast Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford, 2011); id., “Anician Myths,” Journal of Roman Studies 102 (2012), 133–71. 5  Theodor Mommsen, “Ostgotische Studien,” in his Gesammelte Schriften 6 (Berlin, 1910), pp. 362– 484, remains the best guide to the annals of the sixth-century consulship. 3 

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the fifth century eastern holders at Constantinople dominate, with some interesting exceptions. In 480, 485, 487, 495, 504, and 509 western consuls had been appointed in years without eastern nominees, while in 488 and 494, both consuls were western. After Boethius in 510, years with only a single western consul were not unknown, notably 514, 516, 523, and 527. Dual western consuls were attested in 522 and 530, while the last western consul was seen sharing the title with the emperor Justinian in 534. The last serially appointed consul served for the year 541. Consul solus in the West was not an especially unique title, then, but it was a distinction. Boethius’s fellow holders in his lifetime included both his father and his fatherin-law (in 487 and 485 respectively), as well as the elder stateman of Theoderic’s Italy, Flavius Rufius Petronius Nicomachus Cethegus, consul of 504, head of the senate in the  540s as war and ruin prevailed in Italy, active among western refugees (or one might say exiles, or one might say collaborators) in Constantinople in the 550s, and last seen in Sicily in 558. Cassiodorus in 514 was the other most notably distinguished and active figure singled out for the unique consulship but the other names are mainly those of families of eminence. It is easy to see allusion to the patriciate and the consulship (and confirmation of precocity) in a line of the Consolatio, “sumptas in adulescentia negatas senibus dignitates.”6 The dual consulship of westerners was less frequent, but must be mentioned here, getting a little ahead of the story, because the two western consuls of 522 were none other than Boethius’s own sons, a distinction in which we know Boethius took considerable pride. That is all a complicated way of marking the level of public dignity that Boethius achieved: the highest. From what we know of his father (alive in 487 but dead while Boethius was young enough to require a foster home) and sons (consuls in 522), we infer that he must have been born around or not much later than 480, putting his consulship towards his thirtieth year. What had to have happened in the interim is acquisition of the most remarkable philosophical education seen in any Latin writer after Marius Victorinus, born almost 200 years before him. Where and how he was educated has been hotly debated, but the only evidence is frustrating. We have the books he wrote and the erudition they display (considerable) and the teasing sentence in Cassiodorus’s letter in Theoderic’s name now in Variae 1.45 saying that Boethius had entered the schools of Athens while longe positus – or, as we say nowadays, by way of distance learning. Pierre Courcelle argued for interpreting this phrase as pointing to time spent in Alexandria,7 but few if any have been persuaded by him. But we cannot allow our ignorance to make us minimize the extent and the quality of the education Cons. 2.P3.7, ed. Moreschini, p. 35. Pierre Courcelle, “Boèce et l’école d’Alexandrie,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 48 (1931), 185–223, esp. pp. 221–23; id., Les lettres grecques en Occident (Paris, 1948), pp. 257–312, esp. 268–69. 6  7 

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Boethius received or the commitment with which he transmuted that education into the substantial corpus of books that he wrote. Boethius was undeniably a man of his time. He applied his philosophical skills to the interpretation of current controversies of a theological nature.8 His engagement with theological controversy begins to bring us closer to the political world in which he met his fate, but here again we must be cautious about overreading evidence. What we can take away is no more than that in a time of lively theological contact and controversy shared by Roman and Constantinopolitan Christians, Boethius wrote things that had the effect of seeking theological rapprochement between the churches of east and west. From his earliest days, Rome and Constantinople had been divided by the so-called Acacian Schism of 484, not resolved until 519. Within Italy, congruent theological and ecclesiastical division had led to the Laurentian Schism provoked by a disputed papal election in 498 and resolved only in 514. If we knew nothing more than what I  have just described, we would persist in being impressed with Boethius the intellectual and public citizen. The early 520s, however, certainly saw Boethius reach a peak. The dates can blur slightly and there has been much controversy, but the two facts are that Boethius’s sons became consuls for the year 522, their father presiding at the consular games, and Boethius himself was raised to the dignity of Master of the Offices (magister officiorum). As always, we can have some difficulty imagining just how someone with that lofty dignity passed his days at the office, but the official tasks included supervision of the various administrative offices of the state and probably often effectively the ruler’s calendar and thus effectively controlling who would be admitted to the Presence.9 His control as well of the agentes in rebus, as they gradually permeated the other administrative bureaus, led him to a point of becoming what today might be regarded as the ruler’s chief of staff, where the praefectus praetorio served as de facto prime minister. It would be a good position from which to supervise governmental operations and either root out or empower corruption of various kinds. On the best reading of dates, however, Boethius did not stay long in office and was replaced (by Cassiodorus) by late 523. So far the career of a paragon. No modern that I know ever pauses in a narrative of this sort to breathe a word of criticism of a philosophical martyr,10 but it is worth The standard work, now almost impossible to find in a copy that will withstand reading (so bad was the paper on which it was printed) and therefore scarcely read is Viktor Schurr, Die Trinitätslehre des Boe­ thius im Lichte der “skythischen Kontroversen” (Paderborn, 1935), demonstrating the connections between the “theological tractates” that we have and the current state of debate in Constantinople in the 510s. 9  A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284–602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1964), 1:103 et alibi. 10  Thomas More led a similarly charmed afterlife, even to winning an Academy Award, until Richard Marius’s Thomas More (New York, 1984) and Hilary Mantel’s more recent Cromwell chronicles allowed for more measured judgement. 8 

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recalling here that there were those in Boethius’s world who were not completely in his thrall. Ennodius was a few years older than Boethius and much lower on the social scale, while Maximianus was a few years younger, still not Boethius’s equal, and wrote his elegies only in the 530s. But both are in accord as expressing (and when not expressing, suggesting) a somewhat more, shall we say, louche character than hagiography usually makes room for. Ennodius in particular sees in Boethius a typically avaricious landlord, an image we should keep in mind when we come, as we will shortly, to the other great student of Platonic philosophy in sixth-century Italy, the rapacious landlord and future ruler Theodahad.11

Decline and Fall In the next few paragraphs, I will outline what can be securely known about the events and context of Boethius’s last years. Only after I have laid out those facts will I turn to the problems of interpretation, which contain within themselves the clue to a more successful understanding of why Boethius had to die. Theoderic has to be the starting point. What I say here will all be factually accurate and indeed I think indisputable, for all that it will have a certain dissonance from what is conventionally said of him. Theoderic the Amal was as much a paragon as Boethius. He came from a family every bit as distinguished as the Anicii, but with very different social coloration. His family, the Amals, was famous enough to have history written of it in his later years rich with preposterous claims to antiquity – claims rivaling in preposterity those of the Anicii.12 Of his religious background, we know for certainly only that his mother was Catholic. His father was ruler of a migrant nation in the Balkans and highly respected for his military successes. He came into alliance with the Romans of Constantinople when Theoderic was still a boy, around 460.13 At that point, Theoderic was sent into fosterage For Ennodius, see particularly his Carm. 2.132, ed. Vogel, p. 249 (“de Boetio spatha cincto”), and Ep. 8.31, ed. Vogel, p. 286 (late 510). For Maximianus, see now A. M. Juster, The Elegies of Maximianus (Philadelphia, 2018); one reviewer (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/a-mjusters-translation-of-maximianus-the-last-roman-poet) characterized Maximianus’s treatment as describing the “hijinks” of Boethius, very likely the first time that word has ever been used of any sixthcentury man of letters. 12  Cassiodorus’ Historia Gothica, known to us through one obscuring review from Jordanes’ Getica (now best approached through Lieve Van Hoof and Peter Van Nuffelen, Jordanes: Romana and Getica [Liverpool, 2020]). 13  I am obviously being careful in describing Theoderic’s family and native community. Apart from my reading of recent scholarship on the subject, I am strongly influenced by Christopher Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Princeton, 2009), who pilots a way of doing history that offers full respect to migrant nations of and beyond the Asian steppes and works to speak of them as functionally equivalent with settled nations huddled by rivers and seas in unhealthy and class-riven “cities.” Whether migrant nations were more of a military threat to the urban “peripherals” (another of Beckwith’s terms) or vice versa may reasonably be debated. 11 

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at the court of Constantinople, there to receive a serious imperial education.14 At age 18, Theoderic returned to his family and nation, served as understudy to his father, and by about age 20, in 474, he became ruler of his people. Their various campaigns had them in the 480s as nearly settled as possible on the Danube in Lower Moesia. In the course of his career Theoderic allied himself with the emperors of Constantinople as often as made sense for him and his people. In 476 (or no later than 478 at least), the emperor Zeno acknowledged his support by granting him the ranks of patrician and magister militum praesentalis, naming him as well amicus and adopting him as a “son in arms.”15 Few young men in their twenties ever stood so high in the estimation of a monarch with whom they had no ties of kinship. The good relations were imperfect, however, and at various times in the 470s and 480s, Theoderic’s community was attacked by and attacked Roman forces periodically, with no lasting damage, as they ranged from the Danube to the Adriatic. By 483, Theoderic was back along the Danube, proud to be named consul for the east for the year 484. The next few years saw fluctuations in hostility and trust until in 488 Zeno dispatched Theoderic and his people to supplant Odovacer in Italy. An eastern source writing after Theoderic’s death describes the deal: “Cui Theodericus pactuatus est ut, si victus fuisset Odoacar, pro merito laborum suorum loco eius, dum adveniret, tantum praeregnaret.”16 Theoderic arrived in Italy in 489 and by 490 had Odovacer cornered in Ravenna, where he stayed for three years while Theoderic consolidated his authority elsewhere. In 493 reconciliation and betrayal gave Theoderic the opportunity to kill Odovacer (with his own hands?) and rule henceforth unchallenged in Italy from the Alps to Magna Graecia, building relationships with the rulers of Africa, Spain, and Gaul in a stable and consistently peaceful reconstitution of the western Roman provinces. Though Theoderic clearly believed that he ruled in Italy by right of delegation from Constantinople (and it was to his advantage to continue believing that), and though he sent several embassies east to negotiate an explicit recognition, he contented himself with the title of king of his own people.17 Ennodius (Pan. 11, ed. Vogel, p. 204: “Educavit te in gremio civilitatis Graecia”) may be accused of exaggeration, but if so, it is very likely an exaggeration that Theoderic welcomed. It may not be exaggeration. The hostile story that he could not write his name may also be an exaggeration, further suspect for being a duplicate of a story already being told of his contemporary, the emperor Justin. 15  Zeno had not been brought up in a palace, but preferred to go by that name rather than answer to any of the variants of his native name: Tarasicodissa, Codisseus, Aricmesius, Trascalissaeus. The name Zeno he plagiarized from his fellow Isaurian, who had reached the ranks of consul and patrician a generation earlier. 16  “Theoderic struck a deal with him so that if Odovacer were defeated, Theoderic would rule, as a reward for his services, in the emperor’s stead until he could arrive in person.” Anonymus Valesianus, Pars Posterior, Historia Theodericiana 11, ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH AA 9 (Berlin, 1894), p. 11. 17  I am most closely aligned in this discussion with Jonathan Arnold, Theoderic and the Imperial Ro­ man Restoration (Cambridge, 2014), but have learned most before that from Patrick Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554 (Cambridge, 1997). 14 

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But his people did not take over or replace the imperial government in Italy. Theoderic’s followers were, or at least led, the military, while the civilian offices of state were consistently held by representatives of the traditional upper classes, people with the social status and education to deserve to ascend, still, through the cursus honorum. ­Financial comites, legal quaestors, prefects, and the master of offices all discharged their responsibilities and consuls, when their turns came, celebrated their glory at Rome. Theoderic himself remained mainly in Verona and Ravenna, with only one ceremonial visit we know of to Rome, in 500. We are quite well informed about the names and accomplishments of high-ranking members of those upper classes in Theoderic’s time and quite strikingly ignorant even of the names of associates from among the people who came with him into Italy. And so time passed. In  the absence (striking) of a modern attempt to write the history of Italy from 489–554 (the years of Theoderic and his successors), it cannot be repeated often enough: time passed. Theoderic, with thirty-three or thirty-seven years on the throne (contemporaries were seen to count both ways), himself would become the second longest-serving ruler in Roman history after only Theodosius II, slipping into third place after Justinian when the latter died in 565. Only in the fullness of Byzantine time did it become common for rulers to abide in the great palace for longer than a third of a century. And thirty-seven years is a long time. It was a successful time. Roman aristocrats contended with one another over ecclesiastical affairs in the time of the Laurentian schism from 498 to 514 and welcomed Theoderic’s judicial intervention then as appropriate. There were no uprisings, insurgencies, rebellions, or usurpations in all those decades – indeed, until we come to the case under consideration here, no dramatic depositions of officials, no purges of the unruly. For reasons about to become clear, the year 519 marked a turning point in the affairs of Theoderic’s realm, so imagine that as a place to stand and survey the horizon. Thirty years on from the migration to Italy, it was unlikely that any ordinary soldier in Theoderic’s army could even materially remember the time before settlement in Italy. Few would be the men in arms who had already served at the time of the conflict with Odovacer. Theoderic led an army of people whose world had been Italian, prosperous and peaceful. Senior dignitaries from the native Italian aristocracy (e.g. Cassiodorus and Boethius) were in scarcely a better position to remember the turbulent years from the 450s to the 480s. Italy had known no such extended tranquility since the reigns of Constantine and Constantius two hundred years before. Two hundred years is a long time. Could that tranquility have gone on forever? There were no compelling reasons why not. After all, the Visigoths ruled in Spain untroubled for almost four hundred years and the Franks rule in Gaul to this day. Constantinople was busy with its world, Africa, Spain, and Gaul were self-contained and self-absorbed, and the worst the sixth century could do in bringing “barbarian” invaders into traditionally Roman territory

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turned out to be, another forty years after Theoderic (forty years is also a long time), the ragtag and feckless “Lombards,” who, arriving in a near-vacuum interrupted by isolated outposts of Constantinopolitan authority, could never muster the authority to dominate the peninsula or even – most remarkable – manage to govern themselves as a united power, letting their own kingship lapse for a full decade only half a dozen years after their arrival. Had Justinian’s forces not chosen for their own reasons to break, and leave broken, the political and military unity of Italy, nothing we know would have prevented its long-term endurance. In retrospect, Theoderic could as easily have appeared as the great restorer of Roman authority in the western Mediterranean and left Gibbon to find another subject for his pen. It was not to be. Anastasius, who I think has a claim to be the best Roman emperor of all – stolid, steady, unbellicose, leaving a substantial surplus in the treasury – was clearly suspicious of Theoderic but those suspicions led to no more than mild skirmishing. In fact, it was Theoderic’s great good luck to flourish in the time of such an emperor and we should perhaps give Anastasius some credit for Theoderic’s success. But in 518, Anastasius was succeeded by an improvidently chosen officer, Justin, who brought with him to the palace an even more improvidently chosen nephew, Justinian. Justin was already advancing in years and Justinian’s future was clear, as might be the case of a “reformist” Saudi crown prince. Theoderic felt the chill and reacted in an interesting way. For the first thirty years of Theoderic’s time in Italy, he performed admirably as a Roman prince and patrician. To be sure, he depended on an army of Goths and had Gothic followers settled in Italy, most likely in the ways Walter Goffart first outlined a generation ago,18 and was happy to carry the earned title rex. But he performed as a Roman and rarely (indeed, never in a way we can see from here) played “the Goth card.” The year 519 marks a turning in that presentation, one that I think showed him preparing to defend himself against suspicion and hostility from Constantinople. What he knew of Justin and Justinian, we have no way of knowing; but it is reasonable to surmise that he had contacts in the capital and had a good idea what he was dealing with. He acted quickly. The most visible strategic move Theoderic made was to marry his daughter Amalasuintha to the Goth Eutharic, brought in from Spain to serve a purpose, and to engage with Constantinople to have Eutharic named consul for the year 519. The western consuls appointed before this under Theoderic were all of the western senatorial aristocracy. Perhaps only Ricimer in 459 had taken the consulship with a clear “barbarian” heritage. That Eutharic was approved in Constantinople shows that relations between the two realms remained appropriately formal and polite.

18 

Walter Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, AD 418–584 (Princeton, 1980).

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Theoderic made sure that the public attended to this great event by patronizing and sponsoring two important literary productions from his loyal courtier Cassiodorus: the works we call his Chronicon and his Historia Gothica. The first, an annalistic tabulation, was familiar in form and therefore striking in effect when, the first such, it culminated in the Gothic consul and emphasized in its note on the year 519 that it was the combined wealth of Goths and Romans that was brought to bear on consular games lavish beyond imagining. That work made Roman history culminate in a Gothic triumph. The Historia Gothica, on the other hand, reversed that polarity and told, with a show of elaborate learning, that the history of the Goths, first glimmering to view in Scandinavian mists, culminated in their own advance to the apex of civilization, embodied in a royal family of whom Theoderic was the most magnificent member.19 It is then from 519 (and to be sure, this is a bit a trick of the sources surviving, particularly the “Anonymus Valesianus”) that we see Theoderic in his last years playing the Goth card at last and emphasizing that identity independent of Constantinopolitan control. Eutharic had been brought in not merely to succeed but to breed and he succeeded at least in that he sired Athalaric, thus a direct male descendant of Theoderic’s branch of the Amals, but he otherwise disappointed his father-in-law by dying in 522. Where Theoderic had thought he had achieved a succession plan that would maintain control of Italy in the hands of his family and thus sustain his regime, in his last four years he had to imagine what would happen when he died and his daughter as regent and grandson as a minor would succeed him. Others would have their own imaginations. I will divagate on Boethius’s misfortunes shortly and in detail, but for now I should just outline the microhistory of the ensuing years. Theoderic dies in 526, is succeeded by Amalasuintha (born 495 – very much a creature of her father’s world) in the name of Athalaric, who in turn dies in 534. That succession crisis was managed by Amalasuintha’s choice to adlect as partner in rule the Gothic prince Theodahad, himself born 480 in the Balkans and so perhaps barely remembering a world before Theoderic’s Italy and so himself essentially a creature of it. If we ignore his name and presumed ethnicity, Theodahad was a very traditional choice for such a part – great landlord in Tuscany, patron of letters, everything a Roman senator could be without the lineage (stemmata quid faciunt?). But the doom of Theoderic’s Italy was by then already meditated in the court of Constantinople and the years of invasion, destruction, and ruin lay starkly ahead, with neither Amalasuintha nor Theodahad surviving. The nineteen years from Theodahad’s accession to the Pragmatic Sanction by which Justinian imposed his rule in Because we have only Jordanes’s Getica to judge by, it is easy to fail to realize just how preposterous, or perhaps exotic, a history of the Goths in twelve full books could have seemed to readers accustomed to more Roman tastes. 19 

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Italy broke apart the polity that had been built on and beyond the Tiber for more than a millennium. The ruins of the city of Rome over which Gibbon could muse were the responsibility of no one more than Justinian. Boethius? Collateral damage in the upheaval of nations, one might say. We take an interest in his fate because he was so prominent, a prominence that impresses itself upon us chiefly through his philosophical works and there chiefly through his Conso­ latio. If we did not have his books, he would merit at most a paragraph. Boethius was executed at Theoderic’s orders and we lament his passing and revile his killer. The ­story is worth hearing in its near archetypal form, from Procopius, in Dewing’s translation. He introduces the account with the words: “ἐτελεύτησε δὲ τρόπῳ τοιῷδε” – “This is how he [Theoderic] died.”20 Symmachus and his son-in-law Boethius were men of noble and ancient lineage, and both had been leading men in the Roman senate and had been consuls. But because they practised philosophy and were mindful of justice in a manner surpassed by no other men, relieving the destitution of both citizens and strangers by generous gifts of money, they attained great fame and thus led men of the basest sort to envy them. Now such persons slandered them to Theoderic, and he, believing their slanders, put these two men to death, on the ground that they were setting about a revolution (νεωτέροις πράγμασιν), and made their property confiscate to the public treasury. And a few days later, while he was dining, the servants set before him the head of a great fish. This seemed to Theoderic to be the head of Symmachus newly slain. Indeed, with its teeth set in its lower lip and its eyes looking at him with a grim and insane stare, it did resemble exceedingly a person threatening him. And becoming greatly frightened at the extraordinary prodigy and shivering excessively, he retired running to his own chamber, and bidding them place many covers upon him, remained quiet. But afterwards he disclosed to his physician Elpidius all that had happened and wept for the wrong he had done Symmachus and Boethius. Then, having lamented and grieved exceedingly over the unfortunate occurrence, he died not long afterward. This was the first and last act of injustice which he committed toward his subjects, and the cause of it was that he had not made a thorough investigation, as he was accustomed to do, before passing judgment on the two men.

I prefer to quote this account to the possibly anterior version of the Anonymus Valesianus because it is less often taken seriously by those looking for the plain facts of history (as if there were such a thing). But it is important because it represents the received version of the events of the 520s in Constantinople at the time Procopius was writing. What are its essential elements? (1) Boethius and Symmachus were innocent. (2) They were slandered as machinators of revolution. (3) Theoderic believed the slanders and acted therefore as one would act if the slanders were true. (4) Theoderic repented. But (5) an obviously divine vengeance visited itself upon him, to confirm the BG 1.1.31–39, ed. Jakob Haury and Gerhard Wirth, Procopii Caesariensis Opera Omnia, 3 vols. in 4 (Leipzig, 1962–1964), 2:9–10. Translation from Henry Bronson Dewing, Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars: Books 5–6.15 (Cambridge, Mass., 1916), pp. 13, 15. 20 

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error of his ways. The conflation of events in time (the three deaths were separated in time by probably about three years) and the causal link between the judicial murders and the wretched demise of Theoderic is anything but factual as regards the original events, but was necessary to telling the received version. It was important in Constantinople for this version to be true, even though it was not. (That Procopius might think that the claims of revolutionary behavior were untrue is generous, but does not erase the fact that he believed that those claims were in play at the time of the events.) That in itself is an important piece of historical information. Why would Constantinople care? The likely earlier account of the Anonymus Valesianus is much gaudier and no less remarkable.21 In it, Theoderic turned against the Christians (meaning the Catholic Christians) before the slanders flew and Theoderic is granted the same gruesome death as Arius had suffered, to emphasize his unexplained swerve into the role of a persecuting tyrant when the only earlier mention in that text of Theoderic’s religion had praised his generosity and tolerance.22 (Hear again Procopius’s assertion of the single act of injustice and silence on any issue of religious persecution.) Given all that we know of Gothic “Arianism” and of Theoderic, it should be doubted whether his religion had anything to do with the events of his last years. The two accounts have a fundamental partisanship in common: good king Theoderic, late in life, irresponsibly takes against the two eminent Romans, has them murdered, and suffers a grisly end as a result. Symmachus and Boethius themselves were, on an assumption incontestable in the texts of the Anonymus and of Procopius, innocent of all disloyalty or wrongdoing. For all that, one oddity creeps into the Anonymus Valesianus: “Falsa est insinuatio Cypriani; sed si Albinus fecit, et ego et cunctus senatus uno consilio fecimus; falsum est, domne rex.”23 At the very least, we are left asking what the senate might in fact have done. My view is that we can answer that question. But for now, observe only that belief in the Romans’ innocence and an unexplained belief in the irrationality of Theoderic are, then and now, standard components of the interpretation of these events.24 Anon. Vales. 14.85–16.96, ed. Mommsen, pp. 326, 328; a probably slightly later and still more lurid version of Theoderic’s death appears in Gregory the Great, Dialogues 4.31.3. 22  Anon. Vales. 12.60, ed. Mommsen, p. 322. 23  “Cyprian’s innuendo is false: but if Albinus did it, then the whole senate and I together did it. It’s false, lord king.” Anon. Vales. 14.85, ed. Mommsen, p. 328. 24  I expand here on my Ruin of the Roman Empire: A  New History (New York, 2008), pp. 160–70. In the various literature, I find the most relevant arguments in William Bark, “Theodoric vs. Boethius: Vindication and Apology,” American Historical Review 4  (1944), 410–26, at p.  425: “There is then all the more reason to believe that there was strong indication of treason. What could it have been but Boethius’s unmistakable sympathy with Justinian’s imperial policy, a sympathy made plain both by his support of the Scythian theology and by his close contact with those who strove for an ecclesiastical 21 

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If we are not skeptical of that interpretation, we should at least be puzzled. For the third account of the critical events, from an undoubted eyewitness, is not only quite compatible with that of other contemporaries and moderns, but curiously missing in the sixth century itself: the Consolatio Philosophiae. If it is not to be discarded as fictional (a claim I have seen no one make), then it was written by Boethius while accused and imprisoned and was then somehow rescued before or after his execution and preserved silently for a very long time. If it were known in Constantinople, it would surely have been exploited against Theoderic and his successors. If  it were known in elite circles in Italy, then it would surely have been mentioned in the ordo generis Cassiodor­ orum, also known as the Anecdoton Holderi.25 Boethius’s wife and sons survived and even flourished, but his “golden volume not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully” both disappears and reappears.26 Each event is remarkable and unexplained. The received version of the end of Boethius has had a very long history and has not been seriously reassessed in recent years, but much else has changed. Ostrogothic Italy has become a rich field for scholarly investigation and much good work has been accomplished. When I first came to visit that turf in the 1970s, the most recent serious work on the subject was Ensslin’s biography of 1947 and we still used Sundwall’s prosopography from 1919 and Pfeilschrifter’s study of Theoderic and the Church from 1896 as the standard works.27 Now in only one recent year, the Journal of Roman Studies could publish an essay review of no fewer than seven current works on Theoderic and his legacy.28 The fundamental Romanness of Theoderic’s regime and de-barbarization harmony which they hoped would be followed by political unification based on the destruction of Theodoric’s power.” There is little to support this interpretation, to be sure, but one important scholarly work gave inadvertent aid and comfort to its supporters: Schurr’s work, infrequently actually read, has been digested into two “elevator messages”: Boethius must have been indeed a sincere Christian to write such things, and therefore the sincerity of his Constantinople-aware Christianity must show that he was indeed suspect to the wicked Arian Theoderic. The first message needs to be qualified, the second needs to be treated very skeptically. See also John Matthews, “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius,” in Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, ed. Margaret Gibson (Oxford, 1981), pp. 15–43 at 35–37. 25  Its absence in Cassiodorus’s short text is explained, when it is explained at all, either as testimony to Cassiodorus’s embarrassment at having profited from the overthrow of his colleague or, more improbably still, by dating the Cassiodoran original to before the fatal events. Nothing resembling evidence supports either argument. 26  Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 4 (New York, 1994), p. 162. 27  Wilhelm Ensslin, Theoderich der Grosse (Munich, 1947); Johannes Sundwall, Abhandlungen zur Geschichte des ausgehenden Römertums (Helsinki, 1919); Georg Pfeilschrifter, Der Ostgotenkönig Theode­ rich der Grosse und die katholische Kirche (Münster, 1896). 28  Marios Costambeys, “The Legacy of Theoderic,” Journal of Roman Studies 106 (2016), 249–63. Not yet available for that review: the massive edition/translation/commentary on the Variae led by Andrea Giardina and Shane Bjornlie, The Variae: The Complete Translation (Oakland, 2019). The newest such Hilfsmittel on which I could rely in the 1970s was Mommsen’s MGH edition of 1894.

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of our interpretations of the regime and its events had been under way for some years, most signally embodied in Patrick Amory’s People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy (1997).29 The underlying moralistic interpretation with which we lived for centuries and the automatic inclination to side with the saintly philosopher against the heretic king have been exploded. Where does that leave us? One thing must be made clear. The thing that surely did not happen is what everyone who comes this way seems to assume. We know that Justinian would invade Italy a decade later, so we assume that any connivance with Constantinople was clearly focused on the possibility of military action – even of inviting Justinian in. There is no reason to think that. I do not see that a very different possibility has ever been reviewed: that movements Theoderic would interpret as subversive were designed not to surrender the independence and autonomy of Italy, but rather to ensure it. Italy needed a regime that would be able to maintain itself in the face of Justinianic suspicion, more capable than that of a Gothic woman and a Gothic child.

Boethius’s Confessions For the argument I will now make, I intend to rely directly and almost exclusively on the most important evidence we have, the Consolatio. It might be thought that this work has been long exhausted by its students, but alas, it too has suffered from excessive reverence. It is a beautiful book, meticulously and brilliantly crafted, a book no one else later than, I suppose, Claudian or Proba could have even imagined constructing, much less carrying off to completion.30 It was written in dismal circumstances and indeed carried off to conclusion – as against so many other ancient works where we surmise incompletion, this one is never suspect.31 The book contains Boethius’s account, unquestionably one-sided, of how he came into his predicament. We will have to read the text against the grain with a hermeneutic of suspicion that it has been too long denied. At the outset, let me say that while I have myself very strong confidence in the strong form of the argument I am about to make, others may dispute its probability. But the most important thing to say to

Amory was also the producer for early records by the Boston band Lemonheads, which included in its assemblage from 1989 to 1992 the soon-to-be distinguished Roman historian Corey Brennan, for part of which time he taught at our honoree’s alma mater, Bryn Mawr College. 30  The honoree of this Festschrift is assuredly entitled to disagree, but I think that on purely technical grounds, the Consolatio shows a craftspersonship that was beyond the reach of Martianus Capella. 31  The closest I have seen to such a suspicion is the claim, which I blush to admit I have reported before, that the problem of Boethius’s Christianity can be resolved if we imagine that he were intending to supplement the consolation of philosophy with a second volume on the consolation of theology. I now regard that possibility as laughable, but even if it were true it would not take away from the literary completeness of this one. 29 

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scholarly readers of this article is that I believe that the weak form of the argument I make is, by comparison, very nearly certainly true.

Wie es eigentlich gewesen ist Some things about Boethius’s account of himself need to be said though they may seem obvious. First, he must have been an amazingly cool customer to be able to craft this gemlike book while facing at least the ruin of his hopes and most likely the end of his life. That courage is both praiseworthy but also a mark of the character of the man as we attempt to understand what happened to him. Second, the book is unambiguous in the way it chooses to portray “Boethius”: philosopher first and last. Would everyone who knew him and had seen him engage in public affairs have thought that? Everyone? Unlikely. And the philosophy of Boethius is of the oldest, most austere kind. The first thing dame Philosophy says of him is that he was “brought up on the studies of the Eleatics and the Academics” – nothing later, nothing less austere or more recent than Plato and his school.32 Wrapping contemporary ideas in the cloak of Plato’s authority was standard practice, to be sure, but always as just this sort of claim to antiquity, austerity, and thinly-veiled disdain for the latecoming Stoics and Epicureans. What Boethius gets by establishing himself as a philosopher is the noblest possible excuse for the position he has found himself in. For the life of the philosopher is the life designed for attack by the unworthy (improbi, repeated in several forms through the opening pages).33 It is easy to seize the high ground when the names Philosophy can list as comparable to yours are Anaxagoras, Socrates, Zeno, Canius, Seneca, Soranus. While we are busy looking up the obscure Canius (a Stoic martyr in the reign of Caligula), we might glide right over Seneca. There’s the real congener for Boethius, a point quietly reiterated on the several occasions when Nero recurs as the textbook anti-philosopher king. So in the first substantial intervention of the character Boethius, he is on solid ground remonstrating with Philosophy for the plight into which he has fallen. “Are these our rewards for following you?,” he asks.34 And then an extraordinary assertion, the very first thing he throws up in Philosophy’s face: Tu hanc sententiam Platonis ore sanxisti, beatas fore res publicas si eas vel studiosi sapientiae regerent vel earum rectores studere sapientiae contigisset. Tu eiusdem viri ore hanc sapientibus capessendae rei publicae necessariam causam esse monuisti, ne improbis flagitiosisque civibus urbium relicta gubernacula pestem bonis ac perniciem ferrent.35 Cons. 1.P1.10, ed. Moreschini, p. 6. Cons. 1.P3.6, 9–10, ed. Moreschini, pp. 9–10. 34  Cons. 1.P4.4, ed. Moreschini, p. 12: “Haecine praemia referimus tibi obsequentes?” 35  Cons. 1.P4.5–6, ed. Moreschini, p. 12. 32  33 

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You approved this saying from the mouth of Plato, that republics would be truly happy if either students of philosophy ruled them or if their rulers studied philosophy. From the mouth of the same man, you cautioned that the need for the wise to take over the republic was to keep the governance of cities, left to the wicked and the criminal, from bringing plague and ruin down on good men.

Sure, he goes on, I chose to go into the business of public office, but nothing took me to magistracy except commune bonorum omnium studium.36 That is what led to all my quarrels with the improbi, led to my incurring the wrath of the powerful by my zeal for the rule of law. Philosophers should be kings and kings philosophers. Here we reach the end of the introduction to his complaining account of his misfortunes and we turn to as much as he will give us of the specifics of recent events.37 The improbi from whom he has suffered are named – Conigastus and Trigguilla (jarringly non-Latin names) and, generally, the “impunita barbarorum avaritia” – his only use of some form of barbarus to describe fellow residents in Italy. He opposed the praetorian prefect (not a barbarian) over a proposal to tax Campanian grain and persuaded the king (rex) to quash the proposal. He defended two viri consulares, Paulinus and Albinus, against, respectively, “palace dogs” (“Palatinae canes”) and the delator Cyprianus. He is clearly persuaded by this evidence of his own virtue, but what we can see of these episodes would not impress anyone else that his actions were those of a philosopher. The dates of these events are debated, with some such as Gruber dating the Campanian controversy to more than a decade earlier in the prefecture of Boethius’s rival Faustus Niger,38 but that would have him saying that he was always a victim of his own virtue in public affairs. I think that stretches the text too far. And this preface lets him plunge into the question of the charge against him now: “Senatum dicimur salvum esse voluisse.”39 To which we must say respectfully: hogwash. That is not a charge; it is a self-serving paraphrase/rephrase designed to claim the high moral ground for whatever the accusation was. The true charge would have been blunter and more embarrassing. But he repeats the oddity a few lines below: “At volui nec umquam velle desistam.”40 One more specific clue he gives us: “Delatorem, ne documenta deferret quibus senatum maiestatis reum faceret, impedisse criminamur.”41 Much clearer: a charge of maiestas. That much seems solid and worth our attention. He then has an opportunity to grasp for the high ground in a different way. “I’ve told it to you straight, so posterity will know. But why,” praeteritionally, “should I say Cons. 1.P4.7–9, ed. Moreschini, pp. 12–13. Cons. 1.P4.12–14, ed. Moreschini, p. 13. 38  Joachim Gruber, Kommentar zu Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae (Berlin, 2006), p. 10. 39  “They say we wanted the senate to be safe.” Cons. 1.P4.20, ed. Moreschini, p. 14. 40  “That’s what I wanted – and I’ve never stopped wanting it.” Cons. 1.P4.22, ed. Moreschini, p. 14. 41  “We’re accused of trying to keep an informer from handing over evidence that the senate was guilty of maiestas.” Cons. 1.P4.21, ed. Moreschini, p. 14. 36  37 

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anything about the forged letters by which I  am accused of holding out hopes for libertas?”42 Here he gets to dismiss the charge of subversive writing merely by claiming the texts forged. We would know the truth if we could have used the confessions of the delatores – in other words, if we had been allowed to have them tortured. I find it useful at this point to think of contemporary examples of political figures defending themselves against serious charges and to think about how I decide whom to believe and how. I do not always believe them. But then his bravest outburst, fully framed in the righteousness of a defender of law and liberty: ‘“For what libertas is left to hope for? Would that there were any!” If they’d asked me if I were aware of any conspiracy, he says, I would have answered as Canius answered Caligula: “If I’d know about it, you wouldn’t have known.”’43 Hardly a denial of dissidence, but not an admission of capital culpability. But, in the only specific reference to a human encounter in this sequence, he evokes how at Verona (Theoderic’s customary residence), the king tried to make the whole senate accept responsibility for the accusation against Albinus, and Boethius defended the whole senate at great risk to himself.44 “You see where that got me,” he concludes, jailed hundreds of miles from home and condemned to death and proscription. Here, as before, he adds an exculpatory accusation. “They also charged me with sac­ rilegium, with seeking the support of vilissimi spiritus,” cut-rate demons.45 He’s been up to the black arts, a charge no better founded than in the common suspicion of all those who delve into … philosophy. Now we can see how the public saw his philosophical pursuits, not as setting him up as a man for all seasons standing up for law and conscience against the king, but as a two-bit magician.46 Imagine that you could read this book while its author was still alive, however brief that period was. What sense should you make of this series of posturings and evasions? What was actually going on? Let us say it is the year 523. Boethius, who has never held office at court before, has seen his sons share the consulship of 522 and fêted them with great games and shows. He has come to court himself, wherever Theoderic might be, Verona or Ravenna, as magister officiorum, with responsibilities that include, remarkably, what we might call “foreign affairs,” the receiving of ambassadors and the like. As he does so, the ground Cons. 1.P4.25–26, ed. Moreschini, pp. 25–26. Cons. 1.P4.27, ed. Moreschini, p. 15. 44  Cons. 1.P4.32, ed. Moreschini, p. 16. This claim matches closely the response attributed to Boethius by the Anon. Val. and quoted above at n. 22: “Sed si Albinus fecit, et ego et cunctus senatus uno consilio fecimus; falsum est, domne rex.” 45  Cons. 1.P4.37–41, ed. Moreschini, p. 17. 46  The plausibility of the charge would have been grounded in the memory of a nasty trial of Basilius and Praetextatus around the time of Boethius’s own consulship; see Charles Coster, The Iudicium Quin­ quevirale (Cambridge, Mass., 1935). 42  43 

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has shifted under Theoderic’s feet with the death of Eutharic. Where four years earlier he thought he had solved his most pressing and strategic problem by installing his son-in-arms Eutharic as heir and successor, now suddenly he had no better succession plan to offer than a woman and a child. He was himself approximately seventy years old, time enough for his court to pay attention to his every cough and every abruptly cancelled or shortened public appearance with anxiety. The wider political situation was still uncertain, with Justin halfway through his brief reign, also of an age to encourage thoughts about succession. But  it was clear that Constantinople was casting what I have called its Sauron-like eye on Theoderic’s realm with no great affection and some hunger. How that hunger might manifest itself could not have been clear, but the Italy of Theoderic and Boethius and Cassiodorus had not known the bother of material imperial interference since Theoderic’s own invasion. What, in such a situation, shall we expect a man who is the most visible, the most aristocratic, perhaps even the richest, and certainly the most highly-placed of the Italian nobility to do – or to think about doing? A man who thinks philosophers should be kings and kings philosophers? A small digression: the sixth century does not often receive its due as the age of philosopher kings, but it was. We should remember that the Cassiodoro-Theoderician presentation of the king in the Variae is certainly at pains to give him the appearance of learning at least very nearly the equal of a philosopher’s, if not to be taken as philosophy itself. Leaving aside but noticing the philosophical leanings of Chosroes, shah of shahs, to whom, according to Agathias, people attributed a thorough knowledge of Aristotle and Plato (specifying the Phaedo, the Gorgias, the Parmenides, and “even the Timaeus, bristling as it does with geometrical theorems and scientific speculations”),47 we can bear in mind the effort that Justinian put into representing himself as what we might call a theologer-king, but then revert to the case of Theoderic’s successor-butone in the male line, Theodahad. Procopius, who had no particular reason to dignify the doomed king, repeatedly credited him with Platonic learning in his own right.48 (I will not here recall that the Isaurian emperor who sent Theoderic west chose to pass under a philosopher’s name: Zeno). I see three hypotheses to consider at this point that can help make sense of the end of Boethius. First, that he imagined himself a philosopher-king in posse and did nothing to pursue such a role. Second, that he was credited with such ambitions by at least some around him, enough that rumor would get about. Third, that he actively and consciously sought to position himself to be Theoderic’s successor. On his testimony in the Consolatio, at least the first must be true. The third hypothesis cannot be ruled out 47 

p. 77. 48 

Hist. 2.28.1–2, ed.  Rudolf Keydell, Agathiae Myrinaei Historiarum Libri Quinque (Berlin, 1967), Procopius, BG 1.3.1, 1.6.10, ed. Haury-Wirth, 2:15, 30.

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and would indeed make sense of the evasive, high-minded account he gives of what happened. If indeed Boethius were pursuing the throne himself – waiting for it to be offered to him, in rivalry with the designated heirs of Theoderic – it would hardly be irrational of Theoderic to take action and to determine that decisive action was the only recourse. But the second hypothesis is scarcely less interesting than the third. Even if Boethius were realistic enough to know that Theoderic would get his way – he had the only army in Italy, for one thing – his own predilections, the inevitable gossip of the political situation, and only a small amount of indiscreet action or speech on his part could very easily get him spoken of as having an ambition that he might or might not have had in reality. Think again of modern political figures doing the dance of indecision whether to press themselves forward for high office. Before clarity is imposed by reality, the cloud of rumors, expectations, and gossip will canvass every possible position. In what I am calling the second hypothesis, Theoderic again could very well have felt pressed to do something about “the Boethius problem.” In that event, the actions that Boethius admits to in the Consolatio would scarcely have helped him. Look again at the underlying politics. The  received interpretation of Boethius’s case is that he was accused of connivance with Constantinople in treasonous form designed to subvert and overthrow the government of Theoderic. But that is surely improbable in the extreme. Nobody in peaceful, prosperous Theoderician Italy needed Constantinopolitan soldiers or bureaucrats or even just meddling churchmen to come and set things right in their land.49 The anxiety that all would have shared in 523 and 524 is precisely that some such intervention would be forthcoming and the reasonable debate in Italy would have been over the best way to thwart it. The case that a woman and a child, even with an army, would not suffice had to have been made. The countercase was that the full unified support of the senate – the ancient and landed leadership of Rome – for a candidate of their own, a man with ancient lineage, would have produced a ruler in Italy after Theoderic who could very well be recognized as an appropriate candidate for imperial title.50 The case is strong that Boethius wanted, or was thought to want, to take an imperial throne for himself (not forgetting his consular sons and heirs to form a line of succession). In that case, Theoderic had every reason to act firmly and decisively in the only way that would be effective, as emperors had acted against usurpers and would-be usurpers for centuries. Boethius had to die. I said at the outset of this argument that I understand that this strong form of my argument is unlikely to be universally accepted. I cannot prove that Boethius had the ambitions I discern in him. But on my reading of the political situation of the 520s, Western outrage over Zeno’s attempt to weaken the definition of Chalcedon in his Henotikon had left Rome and Constantinople in schism with each other from 484–519 and still skeptical of each other’s orthodoxy afterwards. 50  This is what happened in fact ten years later with the selection of Theodahad. 49 

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I think that the weak form of my argument has a much stronger claim on the assent of scholarly readers. Perhaps Boethius was unjustly killed. Perhaps he had no such ambitions. Perhaps he thought he could coyly await the moment of transition and blushingly accept a “draft.” But on his own evidence, it is at least likely that others would have attributed such ambitions to himself and acted accordingly, no matter what his reaction might be. If that were the case and we judge that he was unjustly killed, we may be treating Theoderic unfairly: even if Boethius were not the problem, Theoderic had an undoubted problem. He killed Boethius. His own intended succession was carried out – with whatever disastrous results a decade later. It is hard in such a case to condemn him. To the skeptical reader who resists even the weak form of my argument, I would have a few questions. What would someone in senatorial circles in Italy think about the succession Theoderic proposed? What ancient models of governance would have been in the minds of the self-satisfied members of the revived senate – a revival dependent on Theoderic’s generosity, of course? And if not Boethius, who else might a reasonable observer of the Italian world of the 520s have considered as a superior candidate to the claims of a woman and a child? I can think of no other. In short: I conclude that Boethius’s death makes no sense unless either the strong or the weak form of my argument be accepted. The alternative is the traditional baseless imagining of a raving heretical Theoderic losing his amazing talent at last and sabotaging his own legacy in a blind fury. That view, I think, is harder to accept than either version of what I have proposed. One last note on the Consolatio and its fortunes. By the time Boethius wrote, he cared intensely for his own reputation and for the fate of those around him, but he allowed himself at least a little frank expression of his opinions. I close with the text of Cons. 4.M2, usually read as an abstract description of tyranny in the midst of Philosophy’s explanation of the mechanisms of worldly temptations. Read it now as Boethius’s last word on Theoderic and it takes on a different cast. Quos vides sedere celsos solii culmine reges, purpura claros nitente, saeptos tristibus armis, ore torvo comminantes, rabie cordis anhelos, detrahat si quis superbis vani tegmina cultus, iam videbit intus artas dominos ferre catenas; hinc enim libido versat avidis corda venenis, hinc flagellat ira mentem fluctus turbida tollens, maeror aut captos fatigat aut spes lubrica torquet. Ergo cum caput tot unum cernas ferre tyrannos, non facit quod optat ipse, dominis pressus iniquis. The high-sitting kings you see on on their lofty thrones, splendid in their gleaming purple, hedged in by gloomy men-at-arms, threatening and glowering, panting out their maddened hearts – take away the protection of their arrogant appearance and you’ll see these

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“Merito nonnulli Alexandro Magno conparavere maiores” The model of Alexander the Great in Jordanes’s Getica Benjamin Garstad MacEwan University In the Getica Jordanes opens his account of Hermanaric with a remarkable comparison of the Gothic king to Alexander the Great: Nam Gothorum rege Geberich rebus humanis excedente post temporis aliquod Hermanaricus, nobilissimus Amalorum, in regno successit, qui multas et bellicosissimas arctoi gentes perdomuit suisque parere legibus fecit; quem merito nonnulli Alexandro Magno conparavere maiores. Habebat siquidem quos domuerat, Golthescythas, Thiudos in Aunxis, Vasinabroncas, Merens, Mordens, Imniscaris, Rogans, Tazans, Athaul, Nauego, Bubegenas, Coldas.1 Once Geberich, the king of the Goths, had shuffled off this mortal coil, after a short time Hermanaric, the most noble of the Amals, succeeded in the kingship, he who subjected many peoples, the most warlike in the north, and made them to obey his laws. For good reason not a few of our forebears compared him to Alexander the Great. To be sure, he held in subjection the Golthescythae, Thiudi in Aunxi, Vasinabroncae, Merens, Mordens, Imniscaris, Rogans, Tazans, Athaul, Nauego, Bubegenae, and Coldae.

In a work that attempts to fashion the past of the Goths into a classical history an allusion to one of the most famous figures of antiquity and a common rhetorical exemplum is hardly surprising. But when we take into account the broader context of Jordanes’s literary milieu, the most significant image of Alexander for Jordanes and his contemporaries, and the whole record of Hermanaric’s reign in the Getica, the suggestion that Hermanaric was like Alexander gives a new and not very flattering complexion to his life and deeds. As we shall see, it also serves the wider concerns of the Getica. In its immediate context the comparison with Alexander seems altogether laudatory and Jordanes makes no explicit comment to suggest that it was intended otherwise. The general tendency amongst Jordanes’s sources and contemporaries, however, was to present Alexander in a negative light, and this should make us suspicious of an allusion to the Macedonian king. Rather than traditional Gothic sources, the nonnulli maiores to whom Jordanes ascribes the comparison of Hermanaric and Alexander are more likely to be Greek or Latin texts whose bearing on Jordanes’s discussion appears contrived. The most authoritative text to mention Alexander was the Bible, particularly Get. 116, ed. Antonino Grillone, Iordanes, Getica (Paris, 2017), p. 103; compare Theodor Mommsen, ed. Iordanis Romana et Getica, MGH AA 5.1 (Berlin, 1882), p. 88. 1 

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the prophecies of Daniel and the opening of 1 Maccabees, and these biblical passages informed the most common image of Alexander in Late Antiquity. The chief themes of this image are the brevity of Alexander’s life, the mercurial nature of his accomplishments, and the dissolution of his kingdom after his death. These themes resonate with Jordanes’s full account of Hermanaric, who pursued an impressive career of conquest, but was unable to resist the attack of the Huns, and the end of whose reign saw the division of the Goths into Visigoths and Ostrogoths. The model of the biblical image of Alexander’s career, once it appears in regard to Hermanaric, seems to recur in the demise of Attila and his short-lived empire. Ultimately, however, for Jordanes to liken one of the greatest kings of the Goths to Alexander is also to suggest that, just as the Greek kingdom founded by Alexander passed to Rome in the scheme of translatio imperii, so it was the by no means invidious fate of the Goths to be absorbed into the Roman Empire. At first glance this comparison to a mighty king and a wide-ranging conqueror whose fame resounded down the ages must seem like unalloyed praise of Hermanaric. Hodgkin understood the comparison in Jordanes as a recollection of the flattery employed by the civilized contemporaries of Hermanaric, “the new Alexander, as his Greek neighbours called him, when they wished to propitiate his favour.”2 What is more, the comparison seems explicable entirely in terms of the immediately preceding statement that the Gothic king conquered many warlike peoples and compelled them to obey his laws. Jordanes’s account of Hermanaric is, in this regard, certainly consistent with what was said of Alexander’s accomplishments in sources of which we would expect Jordanes to be aware. Alexander had an undoubted reputation as a conqueror, but the way in which his conquests were presented seems to be imitated in the record of Hermanaric’s reign. In the same way that Orosius, an author with whom Jordanes was familiar, sets Alexander’s conquests in the East, saying that “the whole of the East fell into the power of the Macedonian Empire” (“totusque Oriens in potestatem Macedonici cessit imperii”), Jordanes orients Hermanaric’s conquests toward the North with a single word (arctoi), a cardinal direction thus being reserved to each of the kings as the proper theatre of his victories.3 The list of unfamiliar tribes and peoples ruled by Hermanaric, from the Golthescythae to the Coldae, also seems reminiscent of the way in which Orosius presents the eastern peoples conquered by Alexander as a litany of unelaborated exotic names.4 A similar list of oriental nations conquered by Alexander occurs in the De aeta­ Thomas Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1892–99), 1.1: 246. Orosius, Hist. 3.17.4, ed. Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, Histoires (Contre les païens) Tome 1: Livres I–III, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Paris, 2003), p. 167. Compare Hist. 3.20.3, p. 172; 6.21.20, ed. Arnaud-Lindet, Orose, Histoires (Contre les païens) Tome 2: Livres IV–VI (Paris, 2002), p. 233. 4  Orosius, Hist. 3.18.5–7, ed.  Arnaud-Lindet, p.  169; 3.18.11, p.  170; 3.19.4, pp.  170–71; 3.19.6, p.  171. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, 1.1:76–77, remarked that Jordanes “enumerates thirteen nations with barbarous names (scarcely one of which corresponds to any that was ever mentioned by any historian before or since).” On this list of names, see Irma Korkkanen, The Peoples of Hermanaric: Jordanes, 2  3 

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tibus of Fulgentius, a work written at the same time as the Getica on the basis of the same principal sources.5 The insistence that Alexander had conquered a number of different peoples, though without giving their names, also appears in the summary of his life and deeds at the end of the Alexander Romance (“he subjugated twenty-two barbarian nations and thirteen Greek tribes”), whence it is taken up by two texts roughly contemporary with Jordanes, the Excerpta Latina Barbari and the Chronicle of John Malalas.6 His reputation for daunting military success and wide conquests, moreover, is one of the few things affirmed of Hermanaric in the only source on the Gothic king to precede the Getica, that is, Ammianus Marcellinus, and so seems a firm basis for comparison with Alexander.7 Hermanaric’s role as a lawgiver would also have recalled Alexander, especially, it seems, to a sixth-century audience. There is some evidence that the historical Alexander took an interest in the framing of law codes and that he came by his reputation as a legislator honestly, but this reputation was really cultivated by the more enthusiastic adulators of his memory.8 Plutarch depicts Alexander undertaking the divine task, at the instigation of Virtue, of imposing laws and an ordered way of life on the benighted and savage peoples of the earth.9 In the standard histories of Alexander any hint of such ‘Getica’ 116 (Helsinki, 1975); Michel Kazanski, “Les arctoi gentes et ‘l’empire’ d’Hermanaric: Commentaire archéologique d’une source écrite” Germania 70 (1992), 75–122; Arne Søby Christensen, Cassiodo­ rus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths: Studies in a Migration Myth, trans. Heidi Flegal (Copenhagen, 2002), pp.  161–92; Vladimir Napol’skich, “Ermanarichs arctoi gentes (Jordanes Getica, 116): Versuch einer Interpretation,” Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 22 (2016), 26–54. 5  Fulgentius, De aetatibus 10, ed. Rudolf Helm, Fabii Planciadis Fulgentii V. C. Opera (Leipzig, 1898), p. 166: “Dehinc nudos Bragmones, exustos Eoas, Foebeos Passadras, Caucasii montis incolas, Drancas et Uergetas, Hyrcaniae populos, Corasmos et Daas, Ocionitidis quidem Amazonas ut ferus adit, ut inportunus prouocauit, ut praedo peruasit.” On the work see also Rudolf Helm, “Fulgentius, de aetatibus mundi,” Philologus 56 (1897), 253–89; Massimo Manca, Fulgenzio. Le età del mondo e dell’uomo (Alessandria, 2003); Gregory Hays, “A World without Letters: Fulgentius and the De aetatibus mundi et hominis,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 29 (2019), 303–39. Fulgentius is normally placed in the late fifth (so Manca, Fulgenzio, pp. 45–53) or early sixth century, although Gregory Hays, “The Date and Identity of the Mythographer Fulgentius” The Journal of Medieval Latin 13 (2003), 163–252, at pp. 243–44, has proposed a date of shortly after 550 for at least the Mitologiae. 6  Hist. Alex. 3.35.1, ed. Wilhelm Kroll, Historia Alexandri Magni (Pseudo Callisthenes) vol. 1. Recensio Vetusta (Berlin, 1926), pp. 145–46; Exc. Lat. Barb. 1.8.6, ed. Benjamin Garstad, Apocalypse. Pseudo-Metho­ dius; An Alexandrian World Chronicle, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Cambridge, Mass., 2012), p. 220; Malalas, Chron. 8.3, ed. Johannes Thurn, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia (Berlin, 2000), p. 147. 7  Amm.  Marc. 31.3.1, ed.  Wolfgang Seyfarth, Ammianus Marcellinus. Res Gestae, vol.  2 (Stuttgart, 1978), pp. 166–67: “Ermenrichi late patentes et uberes pagos … perruperunt, bellicosissimi regis, et per multa variaque fortiter facta, vicinis nationibus formidati.” 8  Peter Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1972), 1:113 with n. 174; 2:207. 9  Plutarch, De Alex. fort. 1.4 (328B); 5 (328E); 9 (330D); 2.11 (342A); see Annamaria D’Angelo, Plutarco, La fortuna o la virtú di Alessandro Magno, Prima Orazione (Naples, 1998), pp. 217–18; Maria Cammarota,

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a role is entirely eclipsed by the king’s military exploits. In Late Antiquity, however, reference was often made to Alexander giving laws to his subjects. According to Orosius, Alexander and the Romans had this in common, that after afflicting their enemies with war they later provided them with laws; it was for him one of the few justifications of their atrocities as conquerors.10 Jordanes not only used Orosius as a source and acknowledged doing so, he also expresses a remarkably similar sentiment at the opening of the Romana, although he attributes it to Iamblichus.11 The Excerpta Latina Barbari mentions the imposition of laws no less than three times in its account of Alexander, summing up a cursory description of his reign by saying that “he bestowed laws upon the world” (“leges posuit mundo”), then noting that he gave laws to the various territories of his realm before embarking on war with the Persians, and finally that he imposed law on the cities of Darius and ruled them as their rightful king.12 This last statement is paralleled by the indication in John Malalas’s account of Alexander that once he and the Macedonians had defeated Darius and inherited his subjects, he “bestowed laws upon their land and ruled over them.”13 The emphasis on Alexander’s role as a lawgiver in these sixth-century texts may reflect Justinian’s understanding of legislation as one of the emperor’s principal responsibilities.14 In Jordanes the theme of subjection to a ruler’s laws in general is found again, just after his account of Hermanaric, when the Visigoths offer to submit themselves to the laws and commands of Valens in exchange for land in Moesia and Thrace.15 It also appears in the Romana, where Augustus is presented as reinforcing the subjection of various barbarian peoples and their obedience to Roman laws.16 Jordanes’s own emphasis on the ruler’s role as legislator might bolster Goffart’s suggestion that the Getica, as well as the Romana, were intended to accompany Justinian’s legal ordinance for the newly conquered territories in Italy, the Pragmatic Sanction of 554, and ease its acceptance amongst his Italian subjects.17 The comparison of Hermanaric to Alexander might be explained with reference to the two points that seem to form its basis, the conquests and legislation of the Gothic Plutarco, La fortuna o la virtú di Alessandro Magno, Seconda Orazione (Naples, 1998), pp. 270–71. 10  Orosius, Hist. 3.20.12, ed. Arnaud-Lindet, p. 174. 11  Rom. 6, ed. Mommsen, p. 3. 12  Exc. Lat. Barb. 1.6.6, ed. Garstad, p. 194; 1.8.4 (bis), pp. 214, 216. 13  Malalas, Chron. 8.3, ed. Thurn, p. 147. 14  Gunnar af Hällström, “The Duties of an Emperor According to Justinian  I,” in Aspects of Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium, ed. Lennart Rydén and Jan Olof Rosenqvist (Stockholm, 1993), p. 160. 15  Get. 131, ed. Grillone, p. 115. 16  Rom. 249, ed. Mommsen, p. 32; see Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550– 800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, 1988), p. 53. 17  Goffart, Narrators, pp. 100–105. But on Goffart’s alternative dating of Jordanes’s works, see Peter Heather, Goths and Romans, 332–489 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 47–49; Brian Croke, “Jordanes and the Immediate Past,” Historia 54 (2005), 473–94.

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king, both of which reflect salient details in accounts of Alexander current in Jordanes’s day. The general tenor of these same late antique recollections of Alexander, however, should give us pause before we accept the comparison as simply an acknowledgment of Hermanaric’s laudable accomplishments. In the literary and historiographical context of the composition and initial reception of the Getica Alexander’s reputation was at best ambivalent and at worst damning.18 Orosius, on whom Jordanes depended for his knowledge of Alexander’s story, depicts Alexander as a glutton for human gore and a homicide on a staggering scale, slaying both his enemies and his kith and kin alike.19 In his Panegryic to Theodoric Ennodius offers the only other ancient comparison between Alexander and a Gothic king, and in it Alexander fares rather badly; his deeds, negligible beside those of Theodoric, are supposed to have been exaggerated by the lies of sycophantic speechifiers and poets and he failed to apprehend the religious truth by which Theodoric ordered his steps.20 In the De aetatibus of Fulgentius, Alexander appears as a “renowned evil” (clarissimum nefas) born of a fortune swollen by the gusts of turmoil, led along by an insatiable passion for conquest and expansion, never content with the extent of his realm until he was compelled to make do with a mere three cubits of turf.21 John Malalas does not explicitly condemn Alexander, but his account of him lays stress on a variety of – wholly fictional – acts that undermine his good repute, namely, performing a human sacrifice, conforming to the deeds of the strange daimon who assumed his identity in the time of Elagabalus, and being outwitted and captured by a woman, the Ethiopian queen Candace.22 The Excerpta Latina Barbari’s critique of See George Cary, “Alexander the Great in Medieval Theology,” Journal of the Warburg and Cour­ tauld Institutes 17 (1954), 98–114; id., The  Medieval Alexander (Cambridge, 1956), pp.  118–42; Rüdiger Schnell, “Der ‘Heide’ Alexander im ‘christlichen’ Mittelalter” in Kontinuität und Transformation der An­ tike im Mittelalter, ed. Willi Erzgräber (Sigmaringen, 1989), pp. 45–63; Ory Amitay, From Alexander to Jesus (Berkeley, 2010), pp. 140–45. 19  Orosius, Hist. 3.16–20, ed. Arnaud-Lindet, pp. 163–75, esp. 3.18.8–10. 20  Ennodius, Pan. In Theod. 78–80, ed. Friedrich Vogel, Magni Felicis Ennodi opera, MGH AA 7 (Berlin, 1885), pp.  212–13. See Benjamin Garstad, “Authari in Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum, ­Secundus of Trent, and the Alexander Tradition in Early Lombard Italy,” Journal of Late Antiquity 9 (2016), 218–66 at pp. 246–50. 21  De aetat. 10, ed.  Helm, p.  167. On  Fulgentius’s treatment of Alexander, see Christof Stöcker, “­A lexander der Grosse bei Fulgentius und die Historia Alexandri Macedonis des Antidamas,” ­Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1979), 55–75; Gregory Hays, “A Second Look at Fulgentius’s Alexander,” Vigiliae Christianae 54 (2000), 204–207. 22  Malalas Chron. 8.1, ed. Thurn, p. 146, is our only witness to the assertion that Alexander sacrificed a virgin girl at the foundation of Alexandria and this charge must be read in the context of the other accounts of maiden sacrifice in Malalas; see Benjamin Garstad, “The Tyche Sacrifices in John Malalas: Virgin Sacrifice and Fourth-Century Polemical History,” Illinois Classical Studies 30 (2005), 83–135. Rather than having Alexander cross over to Asia at the Hellespont, where in fact he did, Malalas (ibid.) says that Alexander crossed from Byzantium to Chrysopolis, which mirrors the route of the daimon who took Alexander’s name and progressed through the Balkan provinces and across to Asia (Cass. 18 

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Alexander is rather more subtle, but becomes apparent when his record is compared to that of Nebuchadnezzar, a comparison that was surely intended by the compiler of the Excerpta.23 Such treatments of Alexander must at least raise the suspicion that Jordanes’s praise of Hermanaric is more equivocal than it appears. The intention of the comparison might be sought in the identification of the non­ nulli maiores to whom Jordanes credits it. They have been taken to be Gothic tribal elders.24 Jordanes himself claims to be of Gothic stock, and we might assume he had some awareness of the traditions of his people.25 He refers to just such traditions being preserved in the songs and fables of the Goths.26 And if Alexander seems an unlikely subject for Germanic poetry, we may point to his appearance in the Old English Wid­ sið.27 The date and integrity of the Widsið are disputed,28 but we still find Alexander in an early Germanic poem,29 and one in which Hermanaric (as Eormanric) figures prominently and which is characterized by lists of people (thulas) much like the Geti­ ca’s roll of nations conquered by Hermanaric.30 Dio, 79.18.1–3). Malalas’s rendition of the Candace episode (Chron. 8.3, ed. Thurn, p. 147), based on the Alexander Romance (3.18–23), receives a disproportionate amount of space in such a brief account of Alexander, and is given a remarkably salacious and scandalous twist, inasmuch as Alexander, who was the object of Candace’s maternal admiration in the Romance, here marries her. 23  See Benjamin Garstad, “Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander in the Excerpta Latina Barbari,” Iraq 77 (2015), 75–100. 24  Karl Müllenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde, Zweiter Band, rev. ed. (Berlin, 1906), pp. 73–4; Korkkanen, Peoples of Hermanaric, 16; 79; Brian Croke, “Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes,” Classical Philology 82 (1987), 117–34 at p. 124; Wolf Liebeschuetz, “Making a Gothic History: Does the Getica of Jordanes Preserve Genuinely Gothic Traditions?,” Journal of Late Antiquity 4 (2011), 185–216, at pp. 190– 93. But see Goffart, Narrators, p. 30 and n. 49. 25  Get. 316, ed. Grillone, p. 263; compare 266, p. 223; see Stanislav Doležal, “Who was Jordanes?,” Byzantion 84 (2014), 145–64. 26  Get. 28, ed. Grillone, p. 23; 43, p. 35; 72, p. 63; 79, p. 69. 27  Widsið 14–17, ed. Bernard J. Muir, The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, vol. 1 (Exeter, 1994), p. 241. 28  Kemp Malone, Widsith, Anglistica 13 (Copenhagen, 1962), pp. 37–38; Leonard Neidorf, “The Dating of Widsið and the Study of Germanic Antiquity,” Neophilologus 97 (2013), 165–83; Eric Weiskott, “The Meter of Widsith and the Distant Past,” Neophilologus 99 (2015), 143–50; compare Albert Cook, “The Possible Begetter of the Old English Beowulf and Widsith,” Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 25 (1922), 281–346, at pp. 345–46; Joyce Hill, “Widsið and the Tenth Century,” Neu­ philologische Mitteilungen 85 (1984), 305–15. 29  Karl Müllenhoff, “Zur Kritik des angelsächsischen Volksepos,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum 11 (1859), 275–94 at p. 276; Raymond Wilson Chambers, Widsith: A Study in Old English Heroic Legend (Cambridge, 1912), pp. 190–91. 30  Widsið 8, 18, 88–92, 109–11, ed. Muir, pp. 241, 244–45. See Chambers, Widsith, pp. 13–36; Caroline Brady, “The Eormanric of the Wīdsīð,” University of California Publications in English 3 (1937), pp. 225–36; Caroline Brady, The Legends of Ermanaric (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1943), pp. 149–75; Malone, Wid­ sith, pp. 146–49.

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Croke has taken Jordanes’s references to maiores and to the ancestral songs of the Goths together to indicate his dependence on oral tradition, but there is actually little correspondence between these two sets of references.31 Rather, in the one instance of the maiores indisputably appearing as the source for an ancestral tradition they are the ancestors of the Vandals and Alans, not the Goths.32 When Jordanes mentions the maiores in connection with the Gothic songs, these “ancestors” are the subject, not the source, of an oral tradition.33 Jordanes may seem to be claiming to follow oral sources at one point (“maiorum sequens dicta revolvi”),34 but it is more likely he is referring to the same sources as in a similar phrase from the conclusion of the Getica (“maiorum secutum scripta”).35 And if the words (dicta) of the maiores are equated with their writings (scripta), they do not represent an oral tradition. On the contrary, Jordanes claims to rely on sources he has read and to have added to Cassiodorus’s Gothic history from several Greek and Latin histories (“ex nonnullis historiis Graecis ac Latinis”).36 Is the repetition of nonnulli here and in the references to the maiores who compared Hermanaric to Alexander merely accidental? At one point the testimony of the maiores is distinguished from, if not contrasted with, the ancient songs of the Goths and Ablabius, their foremost historian.37 Here maiores refers to the standard historians, who took no particular interest in the Goths (Josephus is offered as an example of their number).38 Jordanes opens the Romana claiming he will draw his material “from the sayings of the elders” (“ex dictis maiorum”) and from the several volumes of previous authorities (“ex diversis voluminibus maiorum”).39 As his subject is Roman history, the maiores must be historians, authors of texts – certainly not Gothic elders! Even when Jordanes speaks of “our ancestors” he means such authors. He  says that “our ancestors” (“maiores nostri”), as Orosius relates, determined that the earth was bounded by the Ocean and divided into three continents.40 This is explicitly knowledge derived from standard textual sources. Likewise, whenever Jordanes cites the maiores for geographic or ethnographic information, these must be Greek or Latin authorities.41 But to which Graeco-Roman textual sources in particular does Jordanes refer the comparison of Hermanaric and Alexander? Croke, “Cassiodorus and the Getica,” pp. 146–49. Get. 162, ed. Grillone, p. 139. 33  Get. 43, ed. Grillone, p. 35; compare Get. 206, pp. 171–73. 34  Get. 246, ed. Grillone, p. 205. 35  Get. 316, ed. Grillone, p. 263. 36  Get. 2, ed. Grillone, p. 263; see Croke, “Cassiodorus and the Getica,” p. 124. 37  Get. 28, ed. Grillone, p. 23. 38  Get. 29, ed. Grillone, pp. 23–25. 39  Rom. 2, ed. Mommsen, p. 1; 6, p. 3. 40  Get. 4, ed. Grillone, p. 5. 41  Get. 59, ed. Grillone, p. 51; 74, p. 65; 148, pp. 127–29. 31 

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The most obvious source for the comparison would seem to be Cassiodorus. Jordanes himself confesses that his Getica is an abbreviation of Cassiodorus’s twelve books of Gothic history, elaborated with material from Greek and Latin histories, but what this means for the relationship between Jordanes and Cassiodorus is altogether unclear, since Cassiodorus’s Gothic history is completely lost.42 Scholars have understood Jordanes’s Getica to be everything from a slavish paraphrase of Cassiodorus’s history, reflecting its original at every turn, to a largely independent work with its own style and agenda, only loosely based on what Cassiodorus wrote.43 Some of those who have paid particular attention to the passage in the Getica on Hermanaric have, with more or less justification, attributed it to Cassiodorus. Herwig Wolfram simply gives Cassiodorus as the author of the comparison of Hermanaric and Alexander, but Peter Heather presents a careful and complex case for taking the whole account of Hermanaric as Cassiodorus’s highly literate elaboration on the words of Ammianus Marcellinus, seizing upon a king without a reputation as an opportunity to provide Eutharic, the son-in-law of Theodoric, with an appropriately distinguished Amal genealogy.44 The suggestion that the Getica’s account of Hermanaric, and especially the comparison with Alexander, goes back to Cassiodorus, however, is highly improbable on two different grounds. The corpus of Cassiodorus’s surviving works is relatively extensive and technically accomplished; he makes impressive use of the tropes and commonplaces of classical rhetoric. But at no point in his voluminous oeuvre do we find

Get. 1–2, ed. Grillone, pp. 3–5. Arnaldo Momigliano, “Cassiodorus and the Italian Culture of his Time,” in his Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome, 1960), pp. 207–18; Norbert Wagner, Getica: Untersuchungen zum L ­ eben des Jordanes und zur frühen Geschichte der Goten (Berlin, 1967), pp. 30–59; Barry Baldwin, “The Purpose of the Getica,” Hermes 107 (1979), 489–92; James J. O’Donnell, Cassiodorus (Berkeley, 1979), pp. 43–54; id., “The Aims of Jordanes,” Historia 31 (1982), 223–40; Samuel Barnish, “The Genesis and Completion of Cassiodorus’ Gothic History,” Latomus 43 (1984), 336–61; Croke, “Cassiodorus and the Getica”; Goffart, Narrators, pp. 23–42, 58–62; Peter Heather, “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals: Genealogy and the Goths under Hun Domination,” Journal of Roman Studies 79 (1988), 103–28 at pp. 109–16, 127; Heather, Goths and Romans, pp. 38–52; Dennis Bradley, “In altum laxare vela compulsus: The ‘Getica’ of Jordanes,” Hermes 121 (1993), 211–36; Giuseppe Zecchini, “Cassiodoro e le fonti dei Getica di Giordane,” in his Ricerche di storiografia Latina tardoantica (Rome, 1993), pp. 193–209; Christensen, Cassiodorus, pp. 115–23; Andrew Gillett, “The Goths and the Bees in Jordanes: A Narrative of No Return,” in Byzantine Narrative: Papers in Honour of Roger Scott, ed. John Burke, et al. (Melbourne, 2006), 149–63 at p. 152; Liebeschuetz, “Making a Gothic History,” pp. 185–216; Shane Bjornlie, Politics and Tradition between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople: A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae, 527–554 (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 109–13. 44  Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Berkeley, 1988), p.  86; Heather, “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals,” pp. 110–20; see also Theodore Murdock Andersson, “Cassio­ dorus and the Gothic Legend of Ermanaric,” Euphorion 57 (1963), 28–43; Heather, Goths and Romans, pp. 23–27, 52, 57; Christensen, Cassiodorus, pp. 191–96. 42  43 

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Cassiodorus making reference to Alexander the Great.45 This is by no means unusual for an author in sixth-century Italy, but it does suggest that the mention of Alexander belongs to another author.46 The Getica also terms Hermanaric “the most distinguished of the Amals” (nobilissimus Amalorum).47 This may seem consistent with Cassiodorus’s assumed intention to glorify Theodoric’s forebears, but it is not consistent with what we know Cassiodorus to have actually written about the Amals. In a letter, written in 533, to the Senate in praise of Amalasuntha Cassiodorus lists nine of her ancestors, famous Amal kings, and the virtues associated with each of them;48 Hermanaric is not in their number. Heather takes Hermanaric’s absence from this list as evidence that he was not important to “Amal and Ostrogothic memories” and so provided a tabula rasa on which Cassiodorus could inscribe a suitable ancestry for Eutharic.49 But this argument does not work on account of the chronology of our evidence. In a letter also of 533 from King Athalaric commending Cassiodorus to the Senate, a letter written by Cassiodorus himself, the composition of a Gothic history is counted amongst the accomplishments of the king’s faithful minister.50 This means that Cassiodorus’s Gothic history was already published by the time he drew up his list of famous Amals.51 His list should reflect the image of the Amal kings he had tried to cultivate in his history, and he had no less reason to play up the prominence of Hermanaric in the one than in the other. The absence of Hermanaric from Cassiodorus’s list does not suggest the regard in which that king was held when Cassiodorus set about writing his Gothic history; rather it indicates that a history that counts Hermanaric the greatest of the Amals cannot have come from the pen of the same author who left Hermanaric out of a list of Amal kings entirely. Ablabius, that descriptor Gothorum gentis egregius, is another possibility. While the extent of Jordanes’s dependence on Ablabius has been seriously questioned, if not In fact, Cassiodorus seems to go out of his way to avoid mentioning Alexander. There are a few scattered historical notices in his Chronicle, and one of them, under the consulship of C. Poetelius III and L. Papirius (a.u.c. 428) reads: His conss. Alexandria in Aegypto condita; Theodor Mommsen, “Die ­Chronik des Cassiodorus Senator vom J.  519 n.  Chr.,” Abhandlungen der philologisch-historischen Klasse der Königlich-Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 3 (1861), 604; Theodor Mommsen, ed. Chronicorum Minorum saec. IV. V. VI. VII, vol. 2, MGH AA 11 (Berlin, 1894), p. 126. Cassiodorus selects the passive voice and so avoids naming the founder of Alexandria, for no apparent reason. In contrast, when Jordanes discusses the same event in the Romana he clearly makes Alexander the founder of Alexandria (Rom. 71, ed. Mommsen, p. 8): “Alexander Magnus Macedo … qui Alexandriam in suo nomine condidit.” 46  Garstad, “Authari,” 246. 47  Get. 116, ed. Grillone, p. 103. 48  Cassiodorus, Var. 11.1.19, ed. Theodor Mommsen, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae, MGH AA 12 (Berlin, 1894), p. 330. 49  Heather, “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals,” pp. 110–11, 115–16. 50  Cassiodorus, Var. 9.25.4–5, ed. Mommsen, pp. 291–92. 51  Goffart, Narrators, pp. 32–36. 45 

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definitively refuted, he is the only author cited by name in the course of the Getica’s account of Hermanaric (apart from Priscus in the digression on the Huns).52 But Ablabius is cited specifically for the habitation of the Heruli and the etymology of their name.53 This material is consistent with the ethnographic information, especially on the migration of the Goths, for which Ablabius is cited elsewhere in the Getica.54 There is no clear indication that Ablabius gave an account of semi-historical Gothic kings like Hermanaric. Jordanes distinguishes the testimony of Ablabius from that of the maiores when he mentions them together, and in regard to what is said of the reign of Hermanaric we would expect reference to Ablabius and the maiores likewise to point to two different sources, not one.55 Ablabius has also been taken to be an intermediary for traditional Gothic material, and so becomes something of a cipher for ascribing material to the Gothic oral tradition, but we have seen that a reference to the maiores in Jordanes usually indicates standard literary sources.56 Ablabius, moreover, is ultimately a shadowy figure, almost entirely unknown to us except for the three citations found in Jordanes’s Getica and a single reference in Cassiodorus (and that the result of a textual emendation).57 To ascribe the comparison of Hermanaric with Alexander to Ablabius is to shift the problem of its meaning and intention from the realm of the enigmatic to that of the unfathomable. Instead of trying to ascribe what Jordanes credits to the maiores to one of his more obvious sources, we might have recourse to the other instances in which he refers to the maiores. One seems particularly telling. Jordanes says that “not a few authorities” (nonnulli maiorum – note the nonnulli as in c. 116) concur with the essence of the account of Gothic migration offered by the old songs and Ablabius.58 Immediately after noting the argument of the maiores he introduces the name of Josephus, presumably as one of the maiores. Although Jordanes concedes that Josephus omitted what he himself has said about the origins of the Goths, he insists that this eminently reliable conveyor of annals (“annalium relator uerissimus”) attests that the Gothic nation, under the Mommsen, Iordanis Romana et Getica, pp. xxxvii–xxxix, considered Ablabius to be the principal source behind both Cassiodorus’s Gothic History and, consequently, Jordanes’s Getica, but see Wagner, Getica, pp. 62–63; Barry Baldwin, “Sources for the Getica of Jordanes,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 59 (1981), 141–46. 53  Jordanes, Get. 117, ed. Grillone, p. 103. 54  Get. 28, ed. Grillone, p. 23; 82, p. 73. 55  Get. 28, ed. Grillone, p. 23. 56  Mommsen (1882), p.  xxxvii; Korkkanen, Peoples of Hermanaric, pp.  15–17; Heather, Goths and ­R omans, pp. 61–67; Liebeschuetz, “Making a Gothic History,” p. 190. 57  Cassiodorus, Var. 10.22.2, ed.  Mommsen, p.  312. See also Felix Jacoby, Die  Fragmente der grie­ chischen Historiker. Dritter Teil: Geschichte von Städten und Völkern (Horographie und Ethnographie), C: Autoren über einzelne Länder, Nr. 608a–856 (Erster Band: Aegypten–Geten Nr. 608a–708) (Leiden, 1958), pp. 582–83 (Nr. 708). 58  Jordanes, Get. 29, ed. Grillone, pp. 23–25. 52 

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name of Scythians, traced its origins from this land (that is, Scythia).59 Jordanes must be referring to Josephus’s explication of the Table of Nations at the beginning of the Jewish Antiquities, but there Josephus does not mention Goths or Getae; rather, he indicates that Magog, the son of Japheth, was the progenitor of the “Magogai”, whom the Greeks call Scythians.60 What Josephus says only has a bearing on Jordanes’s discussion of Gothic origins because of his own identification of the Goths with the Scythians. We see Jordanes prepared to offer his citations – and ones associated with the term maiores, no less – in a specious manner that suggests they support notions that really belong to Jordanes himself.61 As Barry Baldwin has said, “Jordanes was, by modern standards, as deceitful as many another ancient writer.”62 I would suggest that Jordanes is foisting an idea of his own onto respected authorities when he ascribes the comparison of Hermanaric with Alexander to nonnulli maiores. But he is not simply trying to distance his sober authorial judgment from a bold rhetorical gesture. The reference to Josephus as an example of the maiores, like the reference to Orosius as an exponent of the maiores at the opening of the Getica’s geographical excursus,63 attempts to set Jordanes’s history of the Goths in the wider context of world history, and especially in that of a record of the past informed by the Bible.64 The comparison of Hermanaric to Alexander and its ascription to the maiores seems intended to do much the same thing. It has already been suggested that the mention of Alexander is supposed to be derived from a biblical view of history. Irma Korkkanen proposed that the list of people conquered by Hermanaric not only included biblical elements (after some reconstruction), such as the inclusion of Gog and his descent from Noah, but was also meant to reflect the savage peoples who will descend from the North in the last days according to biblical prophecy.65 She considered the comparison of Hermanaric and Alexander to be derived from the same source as the biblical names in the list.66 She connected the mention of Alexander in the Getica with the tradition that the eschatological peoples of the North were shut out behind a barrier established by Alexander at the Caspian Gates until the End Times, but did not indicate how this tradition might explain the comparison of Alexander and Hermanaric.67 The associations proposed by Korkannen, however, face an insurmountable chronological difficulty. No text before the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius in the late seventh century connects the defensive Jordanes, Get. 29, ed. Grillone, pp. 23–25; see Christensen, Cassiodorus, pp. 47, 307–309. Josephus, AJ 1.6.1 (122). 61  Gillett, “The Goths and the Bees,” pp. 159 and n. 45; 162. 62  Baldwin, “Sources,” p. 142. 63  Get. 4, ed. Grillone, p. 5. 64  Get. 4, ed. Grillone, p. 5. 65  Korkkanen, Peoples of Hermanaric, pp. 74–76; Jer. 1.14–15, Ezek. 38. 66  Korkkanen, Peoples of Hermanaric, p. 76. 67  Korkkanen, Peoples of Hermanaric, pp. 76–78. 59 

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work built by Alexander at the Caspian Gates with the northern peoples of biblical prophecy.68 When Jordanes himself mentions Alexander the Great setting up the Caspian Gates in the Caucasus, he does not say that this bulwark was meant to keep out Gog and Magog, or the Goths, or any other people, but only that it is presently guarded by the Lazi for the defence of the Roman Empire.69 Even if the mention of Alexander is not meant to signal the eschatological peoples of biblical prophecy, the Bible is, nevertheless, a good place to look for the intention behind the comparison of Hermanaric and Alexander attributed to nonnulli maiores. The Bible was, in Jordanes’s day, undoubtedly the most widely and diligently read text that mentioned Alexander the Great. But the Bible did not discuss Alexander in connection with Gog and Magog. Rather, the picture of Alexander familiar to readers of the Bible was derived from the prophecies of Daniel and the opening of the First Book of Maccabees. The recurring themes in these passages are the impressive victories and conquests of Alexander, to be sure, but also the brevity of his life and the instability of his empire, and its dissolution at his death and division amongst his successors. In one vision Daniel sees a succession of weird but significant beasts; one of them is “like a leopard” and has four wings and four heads.70 Most ancient commentators understood this beast to represent the Macedonian kingdom of Alexander, the four wings denoting the swiftness of his triumphant progress to the ends of the earth, and the four heads the four kings who took his place.71 In another vision Daniel sees a goat with a single prominent horn between his eyes rushing in anger upon a ram, and after the ram is overcome Ps.-Methodius, Apoc. 8.3–10, ed. Garstad (as in n. 6), pp. 96, 98, 100; 13.19–21, pp. 130, 132; see Christian Thrue Djurslev, “Revisiting Alexander’s Gates against ‘Gog and Magog’: Observations on the Testimonies before the Alexander Romance Tradition,” in The ‘Alexander Romance’: History and Literature, ed. Richard Stoneman, Krzysztof Nawotka, and Agnieszka Wojciechowska, Ancient Narrative Supplements 25 (Groningen, 2018), pp. 201–14. 69  Get. 50, ed. Grillone, pp. 41–43. 70  Dan. 7.6. 71  Hippolytus, Comm. in Dan. 4.3, ed. Georg Nathanael Bonwetsch, Hippolyt Werke, 1.1: Kommen­ tar zu Daniel, rev. Marcel Richard, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller, NF 7 (Berlin, 2000), pp. 200–202), compare De Christ. et Antichr. 24, ed. Hans Achelis (and Georg Nathanael Bonwetsch), Hippolytus Werke, Erster Band: Exegetische und homiletische Schriften. Zweite Hälfte: Hippolyt’s ­kleinere ­exegetische und homiletische Schriften (Leipzig, 1897), p.  17; 28, p.  19; Aphrahat, Demonstrations 5.18, ed.  and trans. Marie-Joseph Pierre, Aphraate le sage persan, Les exposés, Sources Chrétiennes 349, 359 (Paris, 1988–1989), 1:343; Jerome, Comm. in Dan. 2.7.6, ed.  Frans Glorie, S.  Hieronymi Presbyteri Commenta­riorum in Danielem Libri III (IV), CCSL 75A (Turnhout, 1964), pp. 841–42; compare Comm. in Hieremiam 1.95.3 (ad Ier. 5.6), ed. Siegfried Reiter, Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi in Hieremiam Prophetam Libri Sex, CSEL 59 (Vienna, 1913), pp. 67–68; Theodoret, Comm. in Dan. 7.6, ed. Robert C. Hill, The­ odoret of Cyrus: Commentary on Daniel (Atlanta, 2006), p.  180; note also Augustine, Civ.  Dei 20.23, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, Sancti Aurelii Augustini De civitate dei Libri XXIII, 4th ed., vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1929), pp. 463–66. 68 

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the horn is broken and replaced by four horns “toward the four winds of heaven.”72 The text itself explains the goat as the kingdom of Greece, the great horn as its first king (that is, Alexander), and the four horns as the four kings who will rise in his stead, though not equalling his power.73 Daniel also prophesies that after a wealthy Persian king shall have antagonized Greece, a mighty king will arise and “shall rule with great dominion and do according to his will,” but “his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven; and not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled: for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others beside these.”74 The account of Alexander in I Maccabees is fairly evenly divided between relating his stupendous successes and formidable empire on the one hand, and his illness and death and the division of his realm amongst his servants on the other.75 In each appearance of Alexander in the Bible there is an emphasis on the fleeting nature of his achievements and the dissolution of his extensive empire into several petty kingdoms. The same themes appear in prominent late antique texts and works almost exactly contemporary with Jordanes. Augustine, in the City of God, sums up the career of Alexander with an emphasis on precisely these themes of brevity and dissolution: his reign was altogether amazing, but hardly long-lasting (“mirificentissimam minimeque diuturnam potentiam”), and once he was dead his companions divided his stupendously extensive kingdom (“regnum illud amplissimum”) amongst themselves, devastating it with their wars.76 The Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes may not have the formative status of the City of God, but it can be dated on internal evidence to the decade before Jordanes’s Getica and so reveals some of the attitudes circulating in the contemporary Greek world, even if it comes from Alexandria rather than Constantinople.77 Cosmas also finds Alexander in the prophecies of Daniel by laying stress on Alexander’s destructive conquests, which broke kingdoms apart and subjugated them, and on his death and the division of his kingdom amongst his friends.78 It would seem that Bible reading had imposed a biblical impression of Alexander the Great and his history on the literate public, and this picture of Alexander stressed the mercurial transience of all that he accomplished, despite his magnificent career of conquest, and the division of his empire upon his death.

Dan. 8.5–8. Dan. 8.21–22. 74  Dan. 11.2–4. 75  I Macc. 1.1–9. 76  Augustine, Civ. Dei 18.42, ed. Dombart and Kalb, pp. 320–21. 77  Maja Kominko, The World of Kosmas: Illustrated Byzantine Codices of the Christian Topography (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 10–12. 78  Cosmas Indicopleustes, Top.  Christ. 2.67, 68, ed.  Wanda Wolska-Conus, Cosmas Indicopleustès, Topographie chrétienne, Tome I (Livres I–IV), Sources Chrétiennes 141 (Paris, 1968) pp. 383–85. 72  73 

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This conception of Alexander may seem to have very little to do with Hermanaric in the immediate context of the comparison of the two kings, but when we broaden our perspective and take the whole record of Hermanaric’s reign into account, the biblical picture of Alexander seems to be the very basis of the comparison. Hermanaric conquered numerous northern peoples and imposed his laws on them, as Jordanes is at some pains to relate, but he was ultimately unequal to the task of resisting the onslaught of the Huns under Balamber, and on his death the Gothic gens was divided into two separate groups, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths.79 Hermanaric’s reign therefore recalls the biblical account of Alexander inasmuch as it represents a short-lived zenith of Gothic fortunes, with an impressive career of conquest, followed by a precipitous decline marked by rupture and division into fractious powers. What Jordanes seems to mean by saying that the maiores compared Hermanaric to Alexander is that reputable authorities, not only Scripture writers, but also later authors who took their cue from the Bible, presented an image of Alexander that was mirrored by the life and career of Hermanaric. As a consequence the comparison to Alexander begins to seem less like a commendation of Hermanaric, emphasizing his role as the conqueror of a vast empire, and more like a veiled indictment, drawing attention to the evanescence of his power and the dissolution of his kingdom. Jordanes’s construction of the reign of Hermanaric as a reflection of the biblical image of Alexander is emphasized by the composition of the Getica. The account of Hermanaric is not one continuous narrative; rather, the king’s conquest of neighbouring tribes and the description of his empire stretching across Germany and Scythia form one part, while the invasion of the Huns, the treachery of Sunilda’s brothers and Hermanaric’s debilitating wound, the secession of the Visigoths, the king’s death, and the defeat of the Goths by the Huns constitute the other.80 The beginning and the end of Hermanaric’s reign, the rise and fall of Gothic fortunes, are separated by Jordanes’s protracted digression on the origin of the Huns, the agents of this change in fortune.81 On the one hand, the Huns are driven like a wedge into the account of Hermanaric – like the sword that pierced his side – on the other, the two parts of Hermanaric’s reign frame the account of Hunnish origins, since the eruption of the Huns is the most important, the pivotal, event in his reign. The result is an impression of Hermanaric’s career that recalls the two chief aspects of the biblical image of Alexander: the stupendous conquest of a vast empire and its swift dissolution on the conqueror’s death. The same themes are brought out by the overall composition of the Getica. Jordanes states not once, but twice that up to the time of Hermanaric the Goths had Get. 116–30, ed. Grillone, pp. 103–15; 246, p. 205. Get. 116–20, ed. Grillone, pp. 103–105; 129–30, pp. 113–15. 81  Get. 121–28, ed. Grillone, pp. 105–13. 79 

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been a united people, but were then divided at his death.82 But he does not simply make a note of the fact. Rather, he begins the Getica by giving a single narrative of the united Goths to the reign of Hermanaric, then traces the fortunes of the Visigoths under the Balthi before returning to the demise of Hermanaric to give an account of the Ostrogoths under the Amals.83 The division of the Gothic people, which occurs in the time of Hermanaric and which, like the division at Alexander’s death, is as much a beginning as an end, is not merely an historical fact, but an organizing principle of the Getica. Once we realize that the comparison with Alexander is meant to apply to the whole of Hermanaric’s reign, not just his brilliant career of conquest and legislation, we begin to see the significance of certain details and understand their inclusion in Jordanes’s account of the Gothic king. For instance, he relates that Hermanaric conquered the Veneti, who “although despicable as warriors were strong in numbers” (“quamvis armis despecti sed numerositate pollentes”), since “a great mass of those unfit for war is of no value” (“nihil valet multitudo imbellium”).84 The usual rhetorical practice is to play up the bravery and ability of the protagonist’s enemies so as to make the victor seem more impressive, as Jordanes himself does in the preceding example of the Heruli, a fleet-footed race recruited as skirmishers by every army of the day, but also defeated by Hermanaric.85 But Hermanaric against the numerous but unwarlike Veneti reflects Alexander, with his tiny army, facing off against the innumerable but ineffective myriads under his Persian foe. Orosius notes the small size of Alexander’s army opposed to the multitude of the Persian host, and likewise draws attention to the contrast with an aphorism borrowed from Justin: “With such a small force it is debatable whether it is more amazing that he should have conquered the whole world, or that he should have dared to set out at all.”86 He repeatedly recurs to the theme of the great masses of Persians brought into battle by Darius and defeated by Alexander, and says that in the end all the confidence of the Persians was so worn down that none dared rebel and after so many years of ruling an empire they accepted slavery.87 Fulgentius likewise marvels

Get. 130, ed. Grillone, pp. 113–15; 246, p. 205; see Heather, Goths and Romans, p. 18. United Goths: Get. 25–130, ed. Grillone, pp. 21–115; Visigoths: Get. 131–245, ed. Grillone, pp. 115– 203; Ostrogoths: Get. 246–314, ed. Grillone, pp. 205–63. 84  Get. 119, ed. Grillone, p. 105. 85  Get. 117–18, ed. Grillone, pp. 103–105. 86  Orosius, Hist. 3.16.3–4, ed.  Arnaud-Lindet, p.  164: “Hac tam parva manu universum terrarum orbem utrum admirabilius sit quia vicerit an quia adgredi ausus fuerit incertum est”; compare Justin, Epit. 11.6.3, ed. Otto Seel, M. Iuniani Iustini Epitoma Historiarum Philippicarum Pompei Trogi (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 95–96. 87  Orosius, Hist. 3.16.6, ed. Arnaud-Lindet, p. 165; 3.16.9, ibid.; 3.17.1, pp. 166–67; 3.17.4, p. 167; 3.17.8, pp. 167–68. 82  83 

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that one hundred and eighty thousand casualties were inflicted on the easterners in three battles by a mere twenty thousand men.88 Jordanes also notes that Hermanaric conquered the Aesti, a people that dwell on the furthest shore of the German Ocean, and extended his rule over all the nations of Scythia and Germany.89 This may be more or less historical, but in pushing the boundaries of his far-flung empire as far as the limits of the Ocean Hermanaric was also presented as imitating Alexander, in an acknowledged fashion.90 According to Orosius, Alexander set off for India intending to make the Ocean and the furthest East the border of his empire.91 Like Alexander, Hermanaric is not content until his realm stretches to the edge of the world, as marked by the Ocean. Each king pursues his goal in one cardinal direction, East for Alexander and North for Hermanaric. Fulgentius’s exaggerated account of Alexander brings Hermanaric into even closer alignment with him; there was no island so remote in the Atlantic Ocean that it did not stand in dread of Alexander and he took in the ends of the earth, in all four cardinal directions, no less, including the frozen wastes of Scythia!92 Such reflections of Alexander in the account of Hermanaric not only reinforce the simple comparison of the two kings, but also add substance to the picture of Hermanaric, a figure about whom only a few tantalizing facts might have been known.93 Hermanaric, like Alexander, is supposed to have fallen victim to treachery, though a treachery rather more naked than the one that is said to have overtaken Alexander. Jordanes clearly subscribes to the theory that held that Alexander died by poison administered by one of his closest associates, since he says as much (“Alexander, apud Babyloniam ministri insidiis potans interitum”); it is just as clear from close verbal affinities that Jordanes derived this version of events from Orosius.94 He does not present Hermanaric as the victim of a secret plot, rather he says that two of the Rosomoni, a treacherous people (“gens infida”) owing allegiance to Hermanaric, took the king’s distraction by the Hunnish invasion as an opportunity to ensnare him and avenge Fulgentius, De aetatibus 10, ed. Helm, p. 165. Get. 120, ed. Grillone, p. 105. 90  Lorenzo Braccesi, Alessandro e la Germania: Riflessioni sulla geografia romana di conquista (Rome, 1991), pp. 27–64. 91  Orosius, Hist. 3.19.1, ed. Arnaud-Lindet, p. 170 (compare 3.19.6, p. 171; 3.19.11, p. 172; 3.20.1, p. 172; 3.20.8, p. 173). 92  Fulgentius, De aetatibus 10, ed. Helm, pp. 166–67. 93  The contention of Heather, “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals,” that the Getica’s passage on Hermanaric is essentially the work of Cassiodorus may be questioned, but his point that the author, whoever he was, will have had little more to go on for information about Hermanaric than what is found in Ammianus Marcellinus (31.3.1–2, ed. Seyfarth, pp. 166–67) is basically sound. 94  Get. 66, ed. Grillone, p. 59; compare Orosius, Hist. 3.20.4, ed. Arnaud-Lindet, p. 172: “Alexander vero apud Babylonam, cum adhuc sanguinem sitiens male castigata aviditate ministri insidiis venenum potasset, interiit.” 88 

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the brutal execution of their sister Sunilda, who had been punished for the treasonous defection of her husband (the theme of treachery is multiplied), and the brothers managed to stab Hermanaric in the side with a sword.95 The death of Sunilda and the vengeance of her brothers is a prevalent theme in the later legends of Hermanaric, but there is not a word of it in the only source on Hermanaric to precede Jordanes’s Getica, Ammianus Marcellinus’s brief account of “Ermenrichus.”96 The whole episode, therefore, appears to be a construction of Jordanes, or at the very least his elaboration on scanty material now lost to us.97 A number of Jordanes’s purposes undoubtedly have a bearing on his composition of this passage, not least among them to introduce the idea – familiar to classical historiography – that only treachery could render such a worthy people as the Goths susceptible to the attack of the Huns.98 But another seems to have been the intention to present Hermanaric on the model of Alexander, a brilliant conqueror whose light could not be dimmed by his enemies, but only snuffed out by his own faithless subjects. The treacherous sword stroke was not immediately fatal, according to Jordanes, but contributed to the death of Hermanaric, although he can hardly be said to have been cut down before his time, as he died at the age of a hundred and ten!99 This account appears, once again, to be a deliberate construction of Jordanes, since Ammianus Marcellinus says nothing of how old Hermanaric was and attributes his death to suicide, rather than a combination of traumatic injury, stress, and extreme old age.100 Korkkanen points to biblical models for a hero’s death at one hundred and ten years, Joseph and Joshua, neither of which is necessarily inconsistent with the presentation of Hermanaric in the mould of Alexander.101 Joseph procured favour and prosperity for the Jews in Egypt, but after he was dead and forgotten they endured four hundred years of slavery – a reversal of fortune that hinges on the hero’s death.102 Likewise Joshua led the Jews in the conquest of the Promised Land, but after his death the Judges could Get. 129, ed. Grillone, p. 113. Amm. Marc. 31.3.1–2, ed. Seyfarth, pp. 166–67. See Brady, Legends of Ermanaric; Heinrich Beck, “Ermanarich: Sagengeschichtliches,” Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde  7 (Berlin, 1989), pp. 512–15. 97  Although Andersson, “Cassiodorus and the Gothic Legend,” attributes the composition to Cassiodorus, he does consider the whole treatment of Hermanaric to be a creation of the sixth century and the Sunilda episode to be one of its most important parts. 98  Andersson, “Cassiodorus and the Gothic Legend,” pp. 33–36. 99  Get. 130, ed. Grillone, pp. 113–15. 100  Ammianus Marcellinus 31.3.2, ed. Seyfarth, p. 167: “Magnorum discriminum metum voluntaria morte sedavit.” Heinrich von Sybel, Entstehung des Deutschen Königthums (Frankfurt am Main, 1881), p. 201 considered Hermanaric’s great age remarkable, but accepts it as more or less historical. 101  Korkkanen, Peoples of Hermanaric, pp. 79–80; compare Heather, “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals,” p. 115; see Gen. 50.22, Jos. 24.29. 102  Ex. 1.7–14. 95 

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only manage a recurring cycle of victory and defeat against the Gentiles.103 Both trajectories seem to reflect the fate of “the kingdom of Greece”: an uninterrupted record of success up to the death of Alexander, but then internecine warfare and a gradual wasting away before barbarian invaders. Hermanaric’s great age does, nevertheless, seem to undermine the comparison with Alexander, who famously died in his prime.104 But the contradiction may only be apparent, although the message conveyed by the comparison and the king’s age together is rendered rather enigmatic. It could be meant as a meaningful contrast; Hermanaric outlived the good fortune that brought him conquests on every side, while Alexander was accompanied by favourable luck right up to his early grave.105 Even so, Jordanes does count Hermanaric especially lucky.106 Hermanaric could also be shown to have been unable, even with all of the time that was denied to Alexander, to shore up his conquests so as to prevent the dissolution that also overtook Alexander’s empire. The latter alternative not only depicts Hermanaric as something of a failure, but also echoes Jordanes’s overall message about worldly kingdoms.107 All the realms of this world, history teaches, fade and waste away, and only the kingdom of God abides.108 Even the Roman Empire has outlived its glory days of conquest and expansion and now perseveres in a hollow pretence.109 The fate of Hermanaric’s vast empire, like Alexander’s, is the fate of all earthly kingdoms. If the comparison of Hermanaric and Alexander can introduce problems of interpretation to our reading of Jordanes, it might also explain inconsistencies in the text. There seems to be a disagreement between two different passages in the Getica about the timing of the Visigothic secession and its relation to the Hunnish invasion and the death of Hermanaric. In his account of Hermanaric Jordanes says that when the Huns invaded the land of the Ostrogoths – so before the death of the king – the Visigoths Jud. 2.8–23. Justin, Epit. 13.1.1, ed. Seel, p. 121, says that Alexander died in the very flower of his age and victories (“extincto in ipso aetatis ac victoriarum flore”), but no such note is taken over by Orosius. Nevertheless, Diana Spencer, The Roman Alexander: Reading a Cultural Myth (Exeter, 2002), indicates (see the entries in her index under “Alexander – III of Macedon – the Great, exemplar for youthful death”) how pervasive, if subtle, the idea of Alexander’s youthful death was in the Roman tradition. 105  The extent to which Alexander owed his success to luck or virtue was a matter of debate in antiquity, and it is the principal theme of Plutarch’s treatise De Alexandri Magni fortuna aut virtute. Justin, Epit. 12.1.10, ed. Seel, p. 106, says that the Spartan king Agis was determined that he should be seen to be outdone by Alexander in luck, not courage (“ut Alexandro felicitate, non virtute inferior videretur”). Orosius, in his discussion of “Hagis” (Hist. 3.18.1–2), does not bring up the matter. 106  Get. 247, ed. Grillone, p. 205: “Quamuis Hermanarici felicitate inferior.” 107  O’Donnell, “Aims of Jordanes,” pp. 225, 232, 240; Croke, “Cassiodorus and the Getica,” p. 129; Liebeschuetz, “Making a Gothic History,” pp. 206–10. 108  Rom. 4–5, ed. Mommsen, pp. 1–2. 109  Rom. 2, ed. Mommsen, p. 1. 103 

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had already (iam) separated from them due to some dispute.110 When he returns to the reign of Hermanaric to begin his account of the Ostrogoths, however, he seems to indicate that the departure of the Visigoths, which made a distinct people of the Ostrogoths, occurred at the time of Hermanaric’s death.111 Rather than attempting to reconcile the two versions, I would suggest that they reflect the inconsistency in the Bible’s accounts of Alexander. In Daniel, the division of his empire takes place after Alexander’s death, once “the great horn” is broken, while in Maccabees Alexander divides his empire up among his servants on his deathbed.112 Once the biblical image of Alexander the Great is introduced into Jordanes’s history in the depiction of Hermanaric it resonates elsewhere. This is particularly true of Jordanes’s presentation of Attila the Hun, which echoes the history of Alexander. Like Alexander, after a swift career of stupendous conquest Attila dies in drunkenness and his empire is divided up amongst his fractious successors.113 But it is not only the overall course of Attila’s career, but also its sanguinary beginning that recalls that of Alexander; in the same way that Alexander, as he was about to set off for the war against Persia, slew all his brothers and close male relatives, Attila fortified his position in preparation for the campaign he was mounting by the murder of his brother and co-ruler, Bleda.114 The parallelism in the deaths of Alexander and Attila is practically unavoidable, since one of the few things that Jordanes says about Alexander is that he drank down his death (potans interitum) at Babylon, and he gives a full and vivid account, probably borrowed from Priscus, of Attila’s death from a nosebleed after a night of drunken carousel, ending on an aphoristic note: “thus did drunkenness put a shameful end to a king glorious in war.”115 Even the funeral of Attila has echoes of Alexander. The Hunnish king’s coffins were reinforced with different metals, gold, silver, and iron, and these metals are said to be symbolic, iron of Attila’s conquest of peoples and gold and silver of the tribute he received from both parts of the Roman Empire.116 Such symbolic use of metals might well recall one of the visions in the Book of Daniel, Get. 130, ed. Grillone, p. 113: “Balamber rex Hunnorum in Ostrogotharum partem movit procinctum, a quorum societate iam Vesegothae, quadam inter se contentione, seiuncti habebantur.” 111  Get. 246, ed. Grillone, p. 205: “Quos constat morte Hermanarici regis sui, decessione a Vesegothis divisos.” 112  Dan. 8.8, 22; 11.4; I Macc. 1.5–6. 113  Johann Kaspar Friedrich Manso, Geschichte des Ost-Gothischen Reiches in Italien (Breslau, 1824), p. 10, long ago noted that Attila’s empire, like that of Alexander the Great, died with him, but he did not adduce Jordanes for this parallelism nor did he consider the possibility that his observation might have stemmed from an impression created by Jordanes. 114  Get. 180–81, ed. Grillone, pp. 153–55; Orosius, Hist. 3.16.3, ed. Arnaud-Lindet, p. 164. 115  Get. 66, ed.  Grillone, p.  49; 254, p.  211: “Ita glorioso per bella regi temulentia pudendos exitus dedit.” 116  Get. 258, ed. Grillone, p. 215. 110 

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that of a great image composed of different metals, gold, silver, and iron among them, which stand for the kingdoms of the earth, one of them Alexander’s.117 The consequences of Attila’s death are rather more unmistakably similar to the events that followed Alexander’s end. Once the funeral rites of Attila were over, his heirs began squabbling over possession of his empire, each demanding an equal share, and so opened themselves up to the rebellion of their subjects and the destruction of that very empire.118 Jordanes points out that what happened to Attila’s empire had happened before, without specifying the case of Alexander: “Thus kingdoms have often been burdened more by an abundance than by a lack of successors.”119 The metaphor that Jordanes uses of the subject peoples of the Hunnish Empire deprived of the leadership of Attila, that of a body with its head cut off whose different members rage against each other, is also reminiscent of a simile used of Alexander’s army without him, although it is impossible to know whether or not Jordanes was aware of this.120 The lineaments of Alexander’s history seem to be used to depict Attila, like Hermanaric, as a famous and widely conquering ruler who ultimately fell short of even a worldly standard of success. It is also possible that in regard to the overall trend of his reign Attila was meant to reflect Hermanaric himself, and not just Hermanaric’s comparandum and model, Alexander. Unlike Alexander, after all, both Hermanaric and Attila suffered defeat before they died and saw the course of their brilliantly successful military careers reversed before the end. Some comparison with Hermanaric seems to be pointedly indicated by the words of his followers’ funeral dirge for Attila. Jordanes says their songs related that as sole ruler he held the kingdoms of Scythia and Germany, just as Hermanaric ruled all the nations of Scythia and Germany.121 But they also recalled that when the end came he died “not by wound of foes or deceit of friends,” but rejoicing in the midst of his safe and sound supporters – a pointed contrast with Hermanaric, who died undone by a treacherous sword stroke and fretting over the dangers facing his people.122 Nevertheless, even if Attila enjoyed a somewhat happier end than Hermanaric, the parallels in their broader histories, widespread conquest in the North culminating in defeat, followed by the division and dissolution of their kingdoms after they died – elements that bring the biblical image of Alexander to mind – must have offered some Dan. 2.31–45. The  commentators usually found Alexander’s kingdom in the belly and thighs of bronze: Hippolytus, Comm. in Dan. 2.12, ed. Bonwetsch, p. 88; Jerome, Comm. in Dan. 1.2.31–5, ed. ­Glorie, pp. 793–95; Theodoret, Comm in Dan. 2.31–35, ed. Hill, pp. 46–48; 43, pp. 56–58. 118  Get. 259–64, ed.  Grillone, pp.  215–21. Compare Orosius, Hist. 3.23.1–6, ed.  Arnaud-Lindet, pp. 178–79; 3.23.65, p. 188. 119  Get. 259, ed. Grillone, p. 215: “Sic frequenter regna gravat plus copia quam inopia successorum.” 120  Get. 261, ed. Grillone, p. 217; compare Curtius 6.9.28; Plutarch, De Alex. fort. 2.4 (336F–337A); see Cammarota, Plutarco (as in n. 9), pp. 216–22. 121  Get. 120, ed. Grillone, p. 105; 257, pp. 213–15. 122  Get. 257, ed. Grillone, pp. 213–15. 117 

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measure of poetic justice to Gothic sensibilities. The Huns, who had brought about the fall of Hermanaric’s Gothic empire, were themselves ruined in much the same way. The presentation of Hermanaric – as well, perhaps, as Attila, the quondam ruler of at least part of the Goths – on the model of Alexander the Great, especially as he is seen in the Bible, contributes to the apparent overall intention of Jordanes in the Getica, that is, to reconcile the Goths to their new situation under Roman domination.123 Jordanes concludes his history with the capitulation of Vitiges in 542. “And thus,” he tells us, “a renowned kingdom and a most mighty nation, which had ruled for a long time, at length in almost its two thousand and thirtieth year did that victor over diverse nations, the emperor Justinian, conquer through his most trusty consul Belisarius.”124 At this point the defeat of the Goths by the Romans may have seemed inevitable, if not already accomplished. Nor did it seem to Jordanes any cause for regret. After all, it was in keeping with a prevalent historical model, to which Jordanes announces his adherence not in the Getica, but in the Romana. Jordanes opens the Romana by tracing the succession of paramount kingdoms from the Assyrians under Ninus, to the Medes and Persians, the Parthians, and to Alexander the Great of Macedon, “who defeated the Parthians and turned the commonwealth to the rule of the Greeks” (“qui devictis Parthis in Grecorum dicione rem publicam demutavit”), and finally to the Romans under Augustus.125 This idea of the transfer of dominance in world affairs, a progress of world kingdoms, was known as the translatio imperii and had its origins and exponents among the writers of both secular and sacred history.126 In the brief summary of non-Roman history before the real substance of the Romana, Jordanes shows that he subscribes to the scheme of translatio imperii and also makes two further things clear. First, he sees Alexander, who brought the Persian kingdom into his power and established Alexandria, as the founder of the line of Greek kings who ruled from this city for nearly three hundred years.127 Second, by defeating Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium Augustus brought this line of kings to an end and transferred the kingdom Goffart, Narrators, pp. 47–58; compare Heather, Goths and Romans, p. 51. Get. 313, ed. Grillone, p. 261: “Et sic famosum regnum fortissimamque gentem diuque regnantem, tandem pene duomillesimo et tricesimo anno, victor gentium diversarum, Iustinianus imperator, per fidelissimum consulem vicit Belisarium.” 125  Rom. 3–4, ed. Mommsen, p. 1. 126  For bibliography, see Benjamin Garstad, “Alexander the Great’s Liberation of Rome and an Idio­ syncratic Model of History in the Chronicle of John Malalas, the Excerpta Latina Barbari, and Fulgentius’ De aetatibus,” Wiener Studien 131 (2018), 179–205 at p. 192 and n. 48; Lia Raffaella Cresci and Francesca Gazzano, ‘De  imperiis’: L’idea di impero universale e la successione degli imperi nell’antichità (Rome, 2018). 127  Rom. 71, ed. Mommsen, p. 8: “Darius, filius Asarmi, ann. vi. hunc Alexander Magnus Macedo occidit regnumque eius in suo redegit dominio, qui Alexandriam in suo nomine condidit; ubi regnatum est a regibus Grecorum per ann. ccxcvi sic.” Compare Jerome, Comm. in Dan. 3.9.24, ed. Glorie, pp. 865–89, esp. 872, 882; Augustine, Civ. Dei 18.42, ed. Dombart and Kalb, pp. 320–21. 123 

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to the Roman Empire, and according to the prophecy of Daniel dominion will reside with the Romans until the end of the world.128 Alexander’s kingdom had a definite term and was destined to be absorbed into the empire of Rome. Just so, the inevitable and prophetically ordained fate of the power of the Goths is to be subsumed under the Roman Empire. No matter how glorious the past instantiations of the Gothic people, their ultimate end is to find a place in the Roman commonwealth under the sovereign authority of the emperor. But Jordanes hardly considers this an unhappy fate. He ends the Getica saying, “This praiseworthy lineage surrendered to a worthier prince, and yielded to a stronger commander” (“Haec laudanda progenies laudabiliori principi cessit, et fortiori duci manus dedit”).129 The Goths should feel no shame at being conquered by the likes of Justinian and Belisarius, but they should feel even less ashamed at succumbing to a providential plan for the history of the world. The empire of Hermanaric as described by Jordanes is not merely a token of the faded glory of the Gothic nation to be recalled with nostalgic fondness. Nor in its fall to the Huns is it simply a foreshadowing of the demise of the Ostrogothic kingdom before the armies of Rome. The comparison of Hermanaric to Alexander indicates that the Gothic dominion as a whole had its place in the great patterns of world history. In the scheme of the translatio imperii the Greek kingdom founded by Alexander eventually yielded to Rome, the final world kingdom. Likewise, the Gothic people, of whose might and fame Hermanaric was such a sterling example, was destined to submit itself to those same Roman rulers.

Rom. 84, ed. Mommsen, p. 9: “Quem Augustus Octavianus in certamine superans Actiatico in litore, egit, ut utrique iugales se ipsos peremerent, regnumque eorum in Romanorum imperio devenit, ubi et usque actenus, et usque in finem mundi secundum Danielis prophetia regni debetur successio.” Rome is not, of course, explicitly mentioned in the Book of Daniel, but the ancient commentators usually interpreted the “fourth kingdom” of the visions as that of Rome: Hippolytus, Comm. in Dan. 2.12, ed. Bonwetsch, pp. 86–88; 4.7–9, pp. 208–14; compare 4.57, pp. 328–30; 59, pp. 332–34; Jerome, Comm. in Dan. 1.2.31–35, ed. Glorie, p. 794; 2.7.7, pp. 842, 8, p. 844; 4.12.7, p. 940; Theodoret, Comm. in Dan. 2.31–33, ed. Hill, pp. 46–50; 40, 43–45, pp. 54–62; 7.2–3, pp. 174–76; 19, pp. 192–94. Theodoret, Comm. in Dan. 2.44–45, is clearest in stating that the Roman Empire will last until all earthly kingdoms are undone at the Second Coming of Christ. 129  Get. 315, ed. Grillone, p. 263. 128 

Pseudo-Martin of Braga and the Slavs: A Re-examination of the Poem In Basilica Florin Curta University of Florida A common misconception regarding the history of Central Europe in Late Antiquity has it that the Slavs lived in the area long before the arrival of the Avars in 568. The idea is primarily based on a passage in Procopius of Caesarea’s Wars, which deals with the migration of the Herules to Thule, and on a poem attributed to Martin of Braga. While the passage in Procopius has already been the subject of critical studies, the poem has not yet received the same degree of scrutiny.1 In the mid-1970s, the Slovenian archaeologist Jaroslav Šašel (1924–1988) put forward the idea that Martin of Braga was born in southern Pannonia, which he must have left after 536, the year in which Sirmium – the largest city in the region – fell to the Gepids. In his Pannonian homeland, Martin had learned not only Latin and Greek, but also Gothic and Celtic (sic). He  had also become familiar with numerous barbarian tribes, which he later listed in his poem. Among them were the Slavs, who must therefore have been living in southern Pannonia for some time before Martin’s departure.2 Šašel’s was no philological analysis of the poem. Under the double assumption that the poem was based on Martin’s childhood memories and that it described the ethnic configuration in Pannonia, the Slovenian archaeologist simply took the poem at face value and treated it as a trustworthy source for the early history of the Slavs. His interpretation was embraced primarily by archaeologists, but also by a few historians. One  of them, the Czech historian Dušan Třeštík (1933–2007), adopted Šašel’s initial interpretation with a few modifications. According to Třeštík, Procopius of Caesarea, De bellis 6.15.2, ed. Jakob Haury, Procopii Caesariensis Opera Omnia, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1905), p. 215. For this passage, see Roland Steinacher, “The Herules: Fragments of a History,” in Neglected Barbarians, ed. Florin Curta (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 319–60, at 353–56. Alexander Sarantis, Justinian’s Balkan Wars. Campaigning, Diplomacy and Development in Illyricum, Thrace, and the Northern World A.D. 527–65 (Prenton, 2016), pp. 43–45 believes that to be a true story. 2  Jaroslav Šašel, “Omemba Slovanov v pesmi Martina iz Brage na Portugalskem,” Kronika 24 (1975), 151–58, at p. 156; and “Divinis nutibus actus. Due postille per San Martino di Bracara,” Historia 27 (1978), 249–54, at pp. 251–54. According to Šašel, the order in which the barbarian tribes are listed in Martin’s poem is based on his memory of the time he had spent (in the 520s) as a young man in southern Pannonia. Martin presumably left Pannonia for the Holy Land, but Šašel believed that his knowledge of Gothic and Celtic would eventually have prompted him to go to Hispania. The first to have claimed the poem In basilica for early Slavic history was the Polish historian Henryk Łowmiański, Początki Polski. Z dziejów Słowian w I tysiącleciu n. e. (Warsaw, 1964), pp. 313–14. 1 

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Martin wrote his poem on the basis not of his childhood memories, but of a Byzantine source with which he must have become familiar in Constantinople, after his departure from Pannonia, and before his arrival in the Holy Land. Because the Avars are not on the list of barbarian tribes mentioned in the poem, Martin must have written it before 568.3 Others have embraced Šašel’s interpretation without hesitation, and, like him, taken Martin’s poem as a trustworthy source for the history of the Slavs.4 The Slovenian archaeologist Daša Pavlović even believes that the poem confirms her dating of archaeological assemblages attributed to the Slavs to the first half of the sixth century.5 Only recently have doubts been raised about the trustworthiness of the poem as a historical source. However, such doubts were based on the historical analysis of the context, not on a thorough examination of the poem from a philological point of

Zdeněk Klanica and Dušan Třeštík, “Pervye slaviane v srednem Podunav’e i v Polab’e,” in Rannefeodal’nye gosudarstva i narodnosti: iuzhnye i zapadnye slaviane VI–XII vv., ed. Gennadii G. Litavrin (Moscow, 1991), pp. 7–26, at 19. A somewhat more ambiguous position appears in Dušan Třeštík, Počátky Přemyslovců. Vstup Čechů do dějin (530–935) (Prague, 1997), p. 30, where the information from Martin’s poem supposedly corroborates that from Jordanes’s Getica. 4  Sergei A. Ivanov, “Martin z Bragi i slaviane,” in Slaviane i ikh sosedi. Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia v epokhu feodalizma, ed. Gennadii G. Litavrin (Moscow, 1989), pp. 3–15; Tatiana Štefanovičová, Osudy starých Slovanov (Martin, 1989), pp. 26–27; Gabriel Fusek, “Pôvodné alebo prisťahované obyvateľstvo? Príspevok k vypovedacím možnostiam archeologických prameňov o počiatkoch slovanského osídlenia Slovenska,” in Historická Olomouc XII. Sborník příspěvku ze sympozia Historická Olomouc XII., zamerenhého k problematice zakladatelských mytu “počátků” ve svetle kritiky pramenů, Muzeum umení Olomouc – sál Beseda, 6.–7 ríjina 1998 (Olomouc, 2001), pp. 71–98, at 84; Gabriel Fusek, “‘Slawen’ oder Slawen? Eine polemische Auseinandersetzung über eine wertvolle Monographie,” Slovenská Archeológia 52 (2004), 161–86, at pp. 163–64; Gabriel Fusek and Jozef Zábojník, “Ausklang der Spätantike und Anfang des Frühmittelalters in der nördlichen Peripherie des Karpatenbeckens,” in Archeologia o początkach Słowian. Materiały z konferencji, Kraków, 19–21 listopada 2001, ed. Piotr Kaczanowski and Michał Parczewski (Cracow, 2005), pp.  562–66, at 551; Kazimierz Godłowski, Frühe Slawen in Mitteleuropa (Neumünster, 2005), pp.  115, 141; Rajko Bratož, “Martin Tourski in njegovi stiki s Panoniju,” Zgodovinski časopis 60 (2006), 259–81, at pp.  278–79; Peter Bystrický, Sťahovanie národov (454–568). Ostrogóti, Gepidi, Longobardi a Slovania (Bratislava, 2008), pp. 147–48; Hrvoje Gračanin, “Slaveni u ranosrednjovjekovni južnoj Panoniji,” Scrinia slavonica 8 (2008), 13–54, at pp. 22–23; Felix Biermann, “Kommentar zum Aufsatz von Florin Curta: Utváření Slovanů (se zvlaštním zřetelem k Čecham a Moravě) – The Making of the Slavs (with a special emphasis on Bohemia and Moravia), Archeologické rozhledy 60,” Archeologické rozhledy 61 (2009), 337– 49, at p. 338; Naďa Profantová, “Kultura s keramikou pražského typu a problém šíření slavinity do střední Evropy. K článku Florina Curty,” Archeologické rozhledy 61 (2009), 302–30, at p. 311 with n. 11; G ­ abriel Fusek, “Drevnee slavianskoe naselenie na territorii Slovakii,” Stratum+ 5 (2015), 151–62. A ­ ccording to Petr Charvát, The Emergence of the Bohemian State (Leiden, 2010), p. 47, “prior to leaving Pannonia (in the 530s or 540s), Martin must have met some Slavs who had already accepted the Christian creed.” 5  Daša Pavlović, “Začetki zgodnjeslovanske poselitve Prekmurja,” Arheološki vestnik 68 (2017), 349– 86, at p. 365. 3 

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view.6 This paper is meant to fill that gap and to take a fresh look at both the poem and the historiographic assumptions (many unwarranted) on which its interpretation is based. In doing so, I will first examine the literary qualities of the text, particularly in relation to the two other poems attributed to Martin of Braga. I will then turn to the literary models employed for the poem and discuss the list of barbarian tribes as a literary tradition in Late Antiquity. Because many have assumed that Martin knew about those tribes from his homeland, I will then re-examine the evidence for his Pannonian origin and early life, before his arrival in Gallaecia. Finally, I will turn to the specific form of the word for “Slavs” employed in the poem. In the concluding section I reassess the interpretation of the poem advanced by Jaroslav Šašel and supported to this day by the advocates of an early presence of the Slavs in (East) Central Europe. In rejecting that interpretation, I will raise a number of questions about authorship and chronology that lead us to understand the poem in a very different way.

The Poem Šašel’s reading and translation of the poem was based on the critical edition of Martin’s works published by the American classicist Claude  W. Barlow (1908–1976).7 The poem, entitled In basilica, appears in three anthologies of verse dated to the ninth century.8 The title suggests a titulus, namely a poem written for display in a church apparently dedicated to Martin of Tours, the saint twice addressed in the text:9 Post evangelicum bisseni dogma senatus, Quod regnum Christi toto iam personat orbe, Florin Curta, “Utváření Slovanů (se zvláštním zřetelem k Čechám a Moravě),” Archeologické rozhledy 60 (2008), 643–94, at pp. 663–65; Hrvoje Gračanin, “Etnički identiteti u južnoj Panoniji i Dalmaciji u Justinijanovo doba,” Povijesni prilozi 50 (2016), 9–48, at pp. 19, 22–23. 7  Claude W. Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera omnia (New Haven, 1950). 8  These are A = Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 8093, saec. IX 1/4, fols 32rb–32va; P = Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 2832, saec. IXmed., fols 117v–118r (copied by Manno of Saint-Oyen, d. 870); and E = Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 10029, saec. IXex., fols 61r–61v. For  fuller descriptions see Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera, pp.  277–80; Paulo Farmhouse ­A lberto, ed. Eugenii Toletani Opera Omnia, CCSL 114 (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 54–61 (A = his F); 61–65 (P); 95–96 (E = his Mb). All three manuscripts are written in Visigothic script, two of them (P and A) in southern France, probably Lyon. All three also contain four poems on basilicas by Eugenius of Toledo (Carm. 9–12, ed. Farmhouse Alberto, pp. 220–25). 9  Paulo Farmhouse Alberto, “Para uma revalorização dos poemas de Martinho de Braga,” Euphrosyne 22 (1994), 215–23, at p. 220. For tituli in Visigothic Spain, see Isabel Velazquez Soriano, “Tituli metrici de epoca visigoda y altomedievales: aproximacion a sus topicos y conexiones literarias,” in Actas I Congres Nacional de Latín Medieval. León, 1–4 de diciembre de 1993, ed. Maurilio Pérez González (León, 1995), pp. 387– 94. The poem In basilica is unlike all metrical inscriptions for church dedications that are known from Spain, and bears no resemblance to the inscription commemorating the restoration of the cathedral in ­Valencia. See José Vives, Inscripciones cristianas de la España romana y visigoda (Barcelona, 1969), pp. 121–23. 6 

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Postque sacrum Pauli stilum, quo curia mundi Victa suos tandem stupuit siluisse sophistas, Arctous, Martine, tibi in extrema recessus Panditur inque via fidei patet invia tellus. Virtutum signis meritorum et laude tuorum †Excitat†10 affectum Christi Germania frigens; Flagrat, et accenso Divini Spiritus igne Solvit ab infenso obstrictas Aquilone pruinas. Immanes variasque pio sub foedere Christi Adsciscis gentes. Alamannus, Saxo, Toringus, Pannonius, Rugus, Sclavus, Nara, Sarmata, Datus, Ostrogothus, Francus, Burgundio, Dacus, Alanus, Te duce, nosse Deum gaudent. Tua signa Suevus Admirans didicit fidei quo tramite pergat, Devotusque tuis meritis haec atria claro Culmine sustollens, Christi venerabile templum Constituit, quo clara vigens, Martine, tuorum Gratia signorum votis te adesse fatetur Electum, propriumque tenet te Gallia gaudens Pastorem, teneat Gallicia tota patronum.11

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After the college of the Twelve’s Gospel teaching, which the kingdom of Christ now proclaims throughout the world, and after Paul’s sacred pen, by which the world’s court was defeated and stunned that its wise men were hushed at last, (5) O Martin, a pathway into the farther parts of the north lies open to you and an impassable land is accessible on the road of faith. Through your miracles and admiration of your merits frigid Germania love for Christ; it blazes, and with the fire of the Holy Spirit having been lit (10) it melts the frosts built up by the hostile north wind. You reconcile various brutish peoples under Christ’s holy alliance. The Alaman, the Saxon, the Thuringian, the Pannonian, the Rugian, the Slav, the Nara, the Sarmatian, the Datus, the Ostrogoth, the Frank, the Burgundian, the Dacian, the Alan – (15) these all rejoice at knowing God. The Sueve, in awe of your miracles, has learned on which path of faith to tread, and being devoted to your merits, and erecting these halls underneath a shiny roof, he established a venerable temple of Christ. O Martin, (20) the outstanding grace of your miracles flourishes there and bears witness that you, as the chosen one, answer prayers. Gaul joyfully holds you as her own shepherd; may all of Galicia hold you as her patron.

The three witnesses diverge here: A has excitat in, E erigens in (both unmetrical). Barlow prints excitat, the reading of P, but excitare should properly mean to produce an effect in someone or something other than the subject. A  corrector in  P, perhaps motivated by similar discomfort, offers exit in, but this seems weak. Pending a better solution it seems best to obelize. Gregory Hays per litteras suggests concipit, which would fit well with the metaphorical imagery: cf. OLD s.v. concipio 1b: “ignem (ignes), flammam, etc. ipere, to catch fire, be set alight; (in fig. phrs.) to be smitten with love.” For concipit affectum in this metrical position see Prosper, Carmen de ingratis 673, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, PL 51:129. 11  Ed. Barlow, p. 282; Vives, Inscripciones, pp. 119–20. 10 

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These twenty-two lines of dactylic hexameter have stirred contradictory reactions. An older generation of scholars was not impressed. Martin’s poem was regarded as “uninspired and stiffly correct in technique.”12 More recent commentators, however, have praised the prosody and pointed out that the diversity of caesurae and sequences of dactyls and spondees in the first part of the hexameter shows a firm poetical technique.13 It is precisely on these grounds that, according to Paulo Farmhouse Alberto, the third line of the poem must be regarded as corrupt. With Barlow’s text the third foot must be spondaic, but the vowel i in stilus is short. In fact, as Barlow had already pointed out, one of the three manuscripts gives a different word order here: “Postque stilum Pauli sacrum.”14 According to Farmhouse Alberto, that reading should be preferred; not only does it restore metre but the double -st- in Postque stilum has parallels in Venantius Fortunatus.15 To be sure, the poem is very different from the tituli written for the basilica of St Martin in Tours by Sidonius Apollinaris and Venantius Fortunatus.16 For example, Fortunatus’s two sets of tituli included short tags, which functioned as captions to the pictorial cycle (now lost) that decorated the church’s walls either as frescoes or as mosaics. The tituli employ exclamatory language that reproduces something of the orality of an imaginary commentator’s “preferred reading” of the scenes depicted on the walls of the church.17 By contrast, the “orality” of In basilica is linked to an imaginary dialogue with Martin of Tours, as indicated by the vocative form Martine. There is no “viewer” in the poem In basilica, only the addressee (Martin of Tours) and “we,” i.e. the community of the faithful. Yet images and phrasing (e.g., venerabile templum at line-end in line 18), recall Fortunatus.18 An even closer parallel may be established John William Rettig, “The Latinity of Martin of Braga” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1963), p. 382. Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera, p. 277, damns with faint praise, calling the poem “excellent by sixth-century standards.” Other stylistic features suggest clumsiness. For example, the number of elisions is relatively small – only four cases (in lines 5, 7, 10, 20). Two of them – “tibi in” in line 5 and “te adesse” in line 20 – create metrical difficulties. There are two examples of shortening of final o (12 Saxo; 14 Burgundio), in both cases to accommodate proper names. 13  J. Veloso, São Martinho de Dume o Apostolo dos Suevos. Versos de São Martinho de Dume, s. VI (Lisbon, 1977); Farmhouse Alberto, “Para uma revalorização.” 14  Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera, p. 277. The manuscript in question is P. 15  e.g. Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 3.7.8, ed. Michael Roberts, Venantius Fortunatus. Poems (Cambridge, Mass., 2017), p. 146, “quos docet iste stilo” (cited by Farmhouse Alberto, “Para uma revalorização,” p. 216). 16  Sidonius, Ep.  4.18.5, ed.  and trans. William Blair Anderson, Sidonius. Poems and Letters, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1936–1965; repr. 1996) 2:132–135; Venantius Fortunatus Carm. 10.6.1–78 and 79–132, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 654–67. 17  Brian Brennan, “Text and Image: ‘Reading’ the Walls of the Sixth-century Cathedral of Tours,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 6 (1996), 65–83, at p. 72. 18  Carm. 1.8.15, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 28–9; 10.6.1, pp. 654–55. (Note also 4.16.17, pp. 244–45 “vene­rabilibus templis.”) Fortunatus is by no means the only poet one recalls when reading In basilica. 12 

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to ­Fortunatus’s own gratiarum actio for Martin of Braga.19 The beginning of In basilica locates Martin of Tours in a line of apostles, which ends with St Paul. Fortunatus’s gratiarum actio places Paul at the beginning of the line, followed by St Matthew, St Thomas, St Bartholomew, and St Andrew. Martin of Braga himself follows Martin of Tours.20 Especially striking is the image in lines 5–10 of Martin of Tours penetrating the northern frost with his teaching, just as St Paul does in Fortunatus’s poem.21 Similar too is the dichotomy in lines 21–22 between Gaul and Galicia (matching the equally alliterative contrast between pastor and patronus), a coupling also found in Fortunatus.22

There are clear marks of the author’s reading of Prudentius. With “bisseni senatus” (1) compare Psychomachia 839, ed. Maurice Cunningham, Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Carmina, CCSL 126 (Turnhout, 1966), p.  179; with “sacrum Pauli stilum”  (3) compare C.  Symmachum  1 praef.  1–2, ed.  Cunningham, p.  182 (“Paulus  … sacro perdomuit stilo”). The  influence of Sidonius Apollinaris also appears. With line 2 (“regnum Christi toto iam personat orbe)” compare Sidonius’s panegyric on Majorian, Carm. 5.7, ed. and trans. Anderson, 1:60–61 (“personat ergo tuum caelo, rure, urbibus, undis / exultans Europa ‘sophos’”). With “virtutum signis” (7) compare the poem embedded in Sidonius’s letter to Volusianus, Ep. 7.17.2 line 9, ed. Anderson, 2:390–91 (“virtutum signa sequuntur”). For an in-depth analysis of intertextuality in the poem, see Farmhouse Alberto, “Para uma revalorização,” pp. 219–20. 19  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.2, ed. Roberts, pp. 288–93. This poem is a gratiarum actio written on behalf of Radegund and the nuns of the Holy Cross, at the same time as Fortunatus drafted On Virginity (Carm. 8.3) on the occasion of Agnes’s election as abbess, i.e. shortly before 576. The gratiarum actio must therefore be regarded as a thank-you note, most likely for the advice Radegund and Agnes had received from Martin of Braga on the adoption of the rule of Caesarius of Arles for their own community. Radegund obtained a copy of the rule from Caesaria the Younger at some point between 552 and 557. She also went to Arles in 570, and it may have been at that time that she acquired some documents from Caesarius’s monastery. See Judith W. George, Venantius Fortunatus. A Latin Poet in Merovingian Gaul (Oxford, 1992), p. 67; William Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles. The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1994), p. 265; Marc Reydellet, in Venance Fortunat, Poèmes, vol. 2 (Paris, 1998), pp. 14 with n. 21 and 129 with n. 10. 20  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.2.9–14, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 288–89. See also Alberto Ferreiro, “Martinian Veneration in Gaul and Iberia. Martin of Tours and Martin of Braga,” Studia Monastica 51 (2009), 7–32, at pp. 19 and 25. 21  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.2.7–8, ed.  and trans. Roberts, pp.  288–89: “Paulus ad Illyricos Scythicas penetrando pruinas / dogmate ferventi frigora solvit humi” (“Paul traveling as far as Illyria and braving Scythian frosts with the warmth of his teaching melted the cold on the ground”). 22  Compare Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.2.15–18, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 288–89: “Ne morer adcelerans, Martini Gallia prisci / excellente fida luminis arma capit. / Martino servata novo, Gallicia, plaude; / sortis apostolicae vir tuus iste fuit” (“Not to slow the pace of my catalog, from the surpassing faith of the elder Martin Gaul received the weapons of light. Reserved for a new Martin, Galicia, rejoice; that man of yours was of apostolic rank”). See also Farmhouse Alberto, “Para uma revalorização,” p. 221. Roberts’s version differs slightly from that in Venantius Fortunatus. Personal and Political Poems, trans. Judith George (Liverpool, 1995), p. 18.

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Martin of Braga and Venantius Fortunatus There is more to this parallel between Venantius Fortunatus and the poem In basilica than meets the eye. In the heading of another composition addressed to Bishop Martin of Braga, Fortunatus describes him as a centurion in the army of the King under the command of St Paul.23 Because of his faith in Christ “in perpetual obedience of the law,” the West, where Martin of Braga resides, is now a “second Elysium,” which God has planted for a “braver Adam,” much as he had planted Eden in the East for the first Adam.24 The scent of paradise is what Venantius Fortunatus is now breathing, as he receives news from Martin of Braga, which is “propelled by a favorable wind” (felici propulsa flatu).25 The image of the favorable wind is matched by that of the shifting waves (undas mobiles), over which the letter of the bishop of Braga traveled. Those were not just metaphors. According to Fortunatus, the ship bringing Martin’s letter for him may have transported alum.26 In other words, the correspondence of Fortunatus with the bishop of Braga was made possible by more or less regular trade relations between Gallaecia and Gaul.27 But what was the reason for that exchange of letters? The same composition explains: “And because with your letters I have received a guarantee to trust in you, I devoutly commend to your holiness along with myself your daughter and servants, Agnes and Radegund.”28 Fortunatus may have assumed the role of lay patron of the commuVenantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.1 tit., ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 278–79. In the gratiarum actio, Martin is described as sowing in the barren furrows “the first shoots of life, from which a ripe harvest with its fertility wins favor” (Carm. 5.2.23–24, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 288– 89: “In sulcum sterilem vitae plantaria sevit, / quo matura seges fertilitate placet”). Bishop Martin of Braga is praised here for bringing orthodoxy to his people. For the portrait of the good bishop in Venantius Fortunatus’s work, see Simon Coates, “Venantius Fortunatus and the Image of Episcopal Authority in Late Antique and Early Merovingian Gaul,” English Historical Review 15 (2000), 1109–37, at p. 1126. 25  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.1, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 279–81: “quem [sc. Martinum] non tam ad auram Dominus revisendum post meridiem pergeret, quam ipse vir factus paradisus inter perspicui cordis zmaragdinas plateas et vernantis operis inumbrantes corymbos (non quod ficus tegeret, sed fructus ornaret) inambulantis in se beati redemptoris adhaesura vestigia coherceret fide figente” (“It was not so much that the Lord should come to visit him [Martin] in the breeze after midday, but that he himself should become paradise and among the emerald-paved pathways of his transparent heart and the shade-giving tendrils of his prolific works (not those that fig leaves cover, but those that fruit bedecks), holding them fast by faith he should bring to a halt the steps of the blessed redeemer who was walking in him, there to remain”). 26  Venantius Fortunatus Carm. 5.1, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 282–83: “Detulit puppis illa reliquis forsan alumen, mihi vestri conloquii certe lumen” (“That ship has perhaps brought others alum, but to me without doubt it has brought your luminous speech”). 27  For frequent contacts “both at the political and ecclesial level” between Gaul and Gallaecia, see Ferreiro, “Martinian Veneration,” p. 13. 28  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.1, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 286–87: “Et quia vestris litteris fiduciae pignus accepi, pietati vestrae filias et famulas Agnem et Radegundem una mecum devote earum desiderio mandato commendo.” 23 

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nity of the Holy Cross in Poitiers.29 In another poem, he defines himself as Agnes’s “agent” in order to make a pun on her name.30 Moreover, in the gratiarum actio, Agnes and Radegund appear as Martin of Braga’s “own protégés” (proprias  … alumnas).31 Whether or not the bishop ever met Fortunatus in person, their relation was certainly linked to Martin’s support of and advice for the nuns at the Holy Cross. But bishop and poet were also linked by shared culture, patting one another on the back for their mutual familiarity with key authors: Cur tamen, bone pater, in me reflectis quod tuum est ac de me publice profers quod tibi privatum est, cum prima sint vobis nota et secunda domestica? Nam Plato, Aristoteles, Chrysippus, vel Pittacus cum mihi vix opinione noti sint nec legenti, Hilarius, Gregorius, Ambrosius, Augustinusque vel si visione noti fierent, dormitanti.32 But why, good father, do you attribute to me what belongs to you and pronounce publicly of me what is private to you, since the first group is well-known to you and the second your intimates? For while Plato, Aristotle, Chrysippus, and Pittacus are scarcely known to me by reputation, without my having read them, as for Hilary, Gregory, Ambrose, and Augustine, even if they became known to me by observation, it was when I was drowsy.

The same piece also suggests that Martin of Braga was acquainted with the Stoic and Peripatetic schools of philosophy and that he emulated the literary style of Virgil and Cicero.33

Martin of Tours and Martin of Braga One should not read too much into such impressive lists of names, for their rhetorical effect is obvious. Similarly, one cannot take at face value two other lines from the gratiarum actio: “He  came, as we’re told, from Roman Pannonia, but has become, rather, the salvation of Galician Sueves” (“Pannoniae, ut perhibent, veniens e parte Quiritis / est magis effectus Gallisueba salus”).34 There are several markers of rhetoriMarc Reydellet, “Tours et Poitiers: les relations entre Grégoire et Fortunat,” in Grégoire de Tours et l’espace gaulois. Actes du congrès international, Tours, 3–5 novembre 1994, ed. Nancy Gauthier and Henri Galinié (Tours, 1997), pp. 159–67, at 160. 30  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 11.4.3, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 726–27: “Fortunatus agens, Agnes quoque versibus orant” (“By Fortunatus’s agency, Agnes too begs in verse”). 31  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.2.71, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 292–93. See also Arnaldo do Espírito Santo, “Origem e formação de Martinho de Braga,” in Munus quaesitum meritis. Homenaje a Carmen Codoñer, ed. Gregorio Hinojo Andrés and José Carlos Fernández Corte (Salamanca, 2007), p. 268. 32  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.1, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 284–85. It is not clear which Gregory was on Fortunatus’s mind – Gregory of Nyssa or Gregory Nazianzen. There is no real likelihood that Martin of Braga read Plato or Aristotle. His work suggests rather that he was a product of the Latin culture of Italy or southern Gaul. See Arnaldo Monteiro de Espírito Santo, “A recepção de Cassiano e das Vitae patrum. Um studio literário de Braga no séc. VI,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Lisbon, 1993), pp. 174, 176, 230, and 247. 33  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.1, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 282–85. 34  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.2.21–2, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 288–89. 29 

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cal effect here. Gallisueba is perhaps the most interesting, because the “Gauls-Sueves” are the mirror-image of both the earlier dichotomy between Gaul and Gallaecia and the comparison between Martin of Tours and Martin of Braga. The latter Martin is viewed as the salvation of the Sueves, who by means of their conversion become equal to the Gauls supposedly converted by Martin of Tours. A similar comparison must be at work in the first part of the sentence as well. The phrase ut perhibent (“as they say”) strongly suggests that the idea of Martin of Braga coming from Pannonia is a poetic license, namely an indirect reference to the Pannonian origins of Martin of Braga’s namesake, Martin of Tours.35 Indeed, Pannonia appears in Venantius Fortunatus’s entire work only in relation to Martin of Tours.36 The latter’s birthplace is mentioned as Savaria. However, for Martin of Braga, Fortunatus has a more complex explanation: “Pannoniae, ut perhibent, veniens e parte Quiritis.” Pannoniae is a genitive, commonly interpreted as one of location.37 However, e parte Quiritis makes no sense in apposition, for by the time Fortunatus wrote the gratiarum actio, there was no “Roman” Pannonia anymore.38 Pannoniae is an attributive adjective of Quiritis, and as such the genitive cannot be one of location. In other words, Martin of Braga is said to have come not from Pannonia, but from the Quirites in (or of) Pannonia.39 Moreover, veniens may refer here to descent, not point of departure. Although descending from Pannonian Quirites, Bishop Martin has become the salvation of the Gauls-Sueves. If Gallisueba is meant to signal the parallel between Gaul and Gallaecia, then the Pannonian Quirites from whom Bishop Martin descends are not the old Roman inhabitants of the province, but people who influenced him spiritually, and inspired his work in Gallaecia – in short, Martin of Tours. Pannonia therefore is mentioned here as much with reference to Martin of Tours as to Martin of Braga. The central theme of the gratiarum actio is the comparison between the two Martins – the elder one from whom “Gaul received the weapons of light,” 40 and the new Espírito Santo, “Origem,” p. 268, even believes that, given clear indications that Martin of Braga was acquainted with theological disputes most typical for the ascetic milieu of southern Gaul, he was perceived as “of Pannonia” in reference to Martin of Tours’s orthodoxy. 36  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 10.6.93, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 662–63; Vita S. Martini 1.45–6, ed. Friedrich Leo, Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati Presbyteri Italici Opera Poetica, MGH AA 4.1 (Berlin, 1881), p. 296. 37  Roberts translates “from Roman Pannonia,” as does George, Personal and Political Poems, pp. 18– 19. Reydellet, Venance Fortunat, Poèmes, p. 14 renders: “de la Pannonie, terre des Quirites.” 38  Luís Ribeiro Soares, O linhagem cultural de São Martinho de Dume (Lisbon, 1963), p. 97 with n. 26: by 570, Pannonia was in its entirety under Avar rule. 39  Raimundo García Domínguez, “Os duos San Martino: o primer patron e o primer apostól de Galicia,” Cuadernos de estudios gallegos 46 (1999), 9–29, at p. 28 with n. 8, wrongly sees that as evidence that, while his family may have been from Pannonia, Martin was born in Italy. 40  Venantius Fortunatus Carm. 5.2.16, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 288–89: “Gallia … luminis arma capit.” 35 

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Martin of  “apostolic rank,” who brings Gallaecia “by his virtue a Peter and by his teaching a Paul,” and who grants to that land “the assistance of both a James and a John.”41 Why does Fortunatus compare Martin of Braga to Martin of Tours? He wrote two sets of tituli for the Church of St Martin in Tours, both commissioned by Gregory on the occasion of the re-dedication of the reconstructed church in 590, after the devastating fire of 560. One of the two sets of tituli was longer than the other, and Fortunatus evidently presented both to Gregory so that he could choose between them.42 Similarly, much of Book 5 of Fortunatus’s collection of poems, which includes the two pieces for Martin of Braga, is about or directly linked to Gregory of Tours. For example, the third poem is addressed to the citizens of Tours on the occasion of Gregory’s appointment as bishop, while the fourth is for Gregory himself. The dedication of the fifth poem indicates that Fortunatus wrote it at Gregory’s specific request.43 We do not know when exactly Fortunatus and Gregory met, but Fortunatus was in Tours in 566 at the invitation of Euphronius, the bishop of the city, who was Gregory’s cousin. It was Gregory who prompted Fortunatus to publish his collection of poems in 576 or 577.44 It was therefore with Gregory in mind that Fortunatus compared Martin of Braga and Martin of Tours.

Martin of Braga in Other Sources It was from Fortunatus that Gregory took the idea of connecting Martin of Braga with Pannonia. In the first book about the miracles of St Martin of Tours, which he probably wrote at the same time as or shortly before the publication of Fortunatus’s poems, Gregory associated Martin of Braga with Martin of Tours. He even linked the arrival of the former in Gallaecia to the arrival at Braga of the relics of St Martin of Tours: Tunc commonitus a Deo quidam, nomine Martinus, de regione longinqua, qui ibidem nunc sacerdos habetur, advenit. Sed nec hoc credo sine divina fuisse providentia, quod eo die se commoveret de patria, qua beatae reliquiae de loco levatae sunt, et sic simul cum ipsis pignoribus Galliciae portum ingressus sit. Quae pignora cum summa veneratione ­suscipientes, fidem miraculis firmant. Nam filius regis, amissa omni aegritudine, sanus ­properat ad occursum. Beatus autem Martinus sacerdotalis gratiae accepit principatum, rex unitatem Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti confessus, cum omni domo sua chrismatus est.45 Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.2.18–20, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 288–89: “sortis apostolicae vir tuus iste fuit. / Qui virtute Petrum praebet tibi, dogmate Paulum, / hinc Iacobus tribuens, inde Iohannis opem.” 42  Brennan, “Text and Image,” pp. 65, 75. 43  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 5.3 and 4, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 293–97. The fifth poem contains a long account of the conversion of the Jews of Clermont by Avitus, who was Gregory’s mentor. See Reydellet, “Tours et Poitiers,” p. 161. 44  Reydellet, “Tours et Poitiers,” pp. 160–61: Fortunatus’s name appears seven times in Gregory’s work. 45  Gregory of Tours, De virtutibus sancti Martini 1.11, in Lives and Miracles, ed. and trans. Giselle de Nie (Cambridge, Mass., 2015), pp. 466–67. The Latin text is slightly different from that in Miracula et 41 

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Then, instructed by God, someone named Martin came from a distant region and is now a bishop there. But I believe that it did not happen without divine providence that he left his country on the same day that the blessed relics were taken from their place, and he thus entered the harbor in Galicia at the same time as they did. These relics were received with the greatest veneration and strengthened everyone’s faith through their miracles. For the king’s son, whose illness had disappeared completely, hastened as a healthy man to meet them. The blessed Martin accepted the dignity of episcopal grace, and the king, having confessed to the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, was anointed together with his whole household.

It is important to note regio longinqua as the place of origin (patria) for Martin of Braga: there is here no mention of Pannonia, although that province is specifically mentioned as Martin of Tours’s homeland.46 The vagueness of the phrase strongly suggests that Gregory had no idea where Martin of Braga had been born. If he did, it was of no concern to him. Much more significant was the fact that he (Martin of Braga) arrived in Gallaecia at the same time as the relics of St Martin of Tours. Since the latter were moved from Tours on the same day on which Martin of Braga started his trip to Gallaecia, one would have to conclude that the regio longinqua must have been somewhere in Gaul.47 However, one does not need to take ad litteram the testimony of the first book about the miracles of St Martin. Some time contraction could easily be imagined in the working of the miracle of the healing of King Chararic’s son, followed by the conversion of the Sueves from Arianism to the Catholic faith.48 Where did Gregory find the information about Martin of Braga? Danuta Shanzer has suggested that the material in De virtutibus sancti Martini is based on the archives of previous bishops of Tours, as well as on Gregory’s own notes of miracles taking place during his tenure.49 The first chapters of Book 1 contain posthumous miracles opera minora, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH 1.2 (Hanover, 1885), p. 146. The translation in Raymond Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, 1993), p. 213, follows Krusch’s edition. The date of Book 1 of the De virtutibus sancti Martini may be established on the basis of two firm chronological markers – the beginning of Gregory’s term as bishop of Tours (573) and the date of Martin of Braga’s death (579). When writing about Martin in the present (nunc), Gregory knew him as bishop (sacerdos). 46  Gregory of Tours, De virtutibus sancti Martini 1.3, ed. and trans. de Nie, p. 438. 47  Espírito Santo, “Origem,” p. 269. Alberto Ferreiro, “The Westward Journey of St Martin of Braga,” Studia Monastica 22 (1980), 243–51, at p. 251; and “The Missionary Labors of St Martin of Braga in 6th Century Galicia,” Studia Monastica 23 (1981), 11–26, at p. 13, believes that Martin of Braga also came from Tours. 48  Time travel (and boundary crossing) are also involved in the preceding and following miracles of Book 1. De virtutibus sancti Martini 1.10 is about a man who requested and received relics of St Martin to take with him to Cambrai (the relics helped him cross the river Loire). 1.12 tells of three blind men receiving sight in the Church of St Martin in Tours, in the presence of Queen Ultrogotho, King Childebert’s wife. 49  Danuta Shanzer, “So Many Saints – So Little Time … the Libri miraculorum of Gregory of Tours,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 13 (2003), 19–60, at p. 27.

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of St Martin of Tours, which are not recorded either by Sulpicius Severus or by Paulinus of Périgueux. The healing of King Chararic’s son is nowhere to be found in any of those two authors. On the other hand, the prologue to De virtutibus sancti Martini “bows programmatically” (as Shanzer aptly put it) to Venantius Fortunatus.50 Could the information have come from Fortunatus? There is no evidence in the latter’s work of King Chararic or his son. Perhaps the same channel of communication through which Fortunatus and Martin of Braga exchanged letters in the 560s or 570s was also the source of information for the eleventh chapter of Book 1 in Gregory’s De virtutibus sancti Martini. However, in his Histories, written under King Childebert II (at some point after 585, perhaps as late as 594), Gregory has a different story: Hoc tempore et beatus Martinus Galliciensis episcopus obit, magnum populo illi faciens planctum. Nam hic Pannoniae ortus fuit, et exinde ad visitanda loca sancta in Oriente properans, in tantum se litteris inbuit, ut nulli secundus suis temporibus haberetur. Exinde Gallitiam venit, ubi, cum beati Martini reliquiae portarentur, episcopus ordinatur. In quo sacerdotio impletis plus minus triginta annis, plenus virtutibus migravit ad Dominum. Versiculos, qui super ostium sunt a parte meridiana in basilica sancti Martini, ipse composuit. At this time died the blessed Martin, bishop of Galicia, greatly lamented by his people. He was a native of Pannonia, whence he set forth for the East to visit holy places, and became so well versed in letters that he was held second to none among the men of his day. He then went into Galicia, and at that time when relics of the blessed Martin were brought thither, was consecrated bishop, in which dignity he passed some thirty years, and departed to the Lord full of good works. It is he who composed the verses over the southern door in the church of the holy Martin.51

This information comes after the conflict between Nantinus, count of Angoulême and Heraclius, the bishop of that city. In other words, the passage concerning Martin of Braga has no relation to the preceding paragraphs of Book 5. On the contrary, following this passage is chapter 38, in which Gregory deals with the conflict between Arians and Catholics in Spain, particularly that between Leuvigild and his son Hermenegild.52 After Book  2, most mentions of Arians appear in relation to affairs in Spain, Shanzer, “So Many Saints,” p. 28. Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum 5.37, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH SRM 1 (Hanover, 1884; repr. 1951), p. 243. The English translation is from Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks, trans. O. M. Dalton, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1927), pp. 208–209. For the date at which Gregory finished his Histories, see Alexander Callander Murray, “Chronology and Composition of the Histories of Gregory of Tours,” Journal of Late Antiquity 1 (2008), 157–96, at p. 194. 52  Gregory of Tours, Histories 5.38, ed.  Krusch and Levison, pp.  243–45. The  recurring theme of ­A rianism in the Histories raises some interesting questions regarding Gregory’s narrative strategies. By the time he revised his Histories, Arianism was not a problem in Gaul and had ceased to be a problem in Visigothic Spain as well. Gregory mentions Arianism only to defend his own orthodox beliefs. See 50  51 

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which suggests that the passage concerning Martin of Braga was meant to introduce a section of Book 5 dedicated to such matters.53 The passage opens with the news of Martin’s death.54 The words chosen to describe how people mourned that loss remind one of the mourning for Stephen the Protomartyr (Acts 8.2).55 This sets the stage for the biographical vignette that follows. Gregory now claims that Martin of Braga hailed from Pannonia (“Pannoniae ortus fuit”).56 This is, however, a direct parallel to De virtutibus sancti Martini, in which Pannonia is indicated as Martin of Tours’s place of origin (“apud Sabariam Pannoniae ortus”).57 In the Histories, however, Pannonia is mentioned as the place of origin for Huns invading Gaul, as well as for Franks.58 Unlike them, however, Martin of Braga moved from Pannonia to go to the East, not to the West. He went to the Holy Land and became versed in letters. Pannonia, the East, and letters: all those elements remind one of Fortunatus’s poems for Martin of Braga. The biblical East, however, has now turned into loca sancta, and the references to specific ancient writers have now become a general proficiency in “letters.” Similarly, the poetic license by which Fortunatus has made Martin of Braga a descendant of the Quirites of Pannonia has now turned into “historical” fact.59 The impression one gets is that the passage in the Histories is a deformed version of what Fortunatus knew about Martin of Braga.60 Was that because of Gregory’s misunderstanding of Fortunatus’s poetry, which he certainly knew by the time he revised the Histories? Or was it a deliberate spin on the version of events provided by Fortunatus either through his poems or in some abbreviated, oral form? In my opinion, the second possibility is substantiated by other observations regarding the passage concerning Martin of Braga in the Histories. Even the story of how the arrival of St Martin’s relics coincided in time with that of Martin of Braga to Gallaecia has changed. The former is now said to have happened at the same time as the ordination of Martin as bishop (and not his arrival in Gallaecia, as in De virtutibus sancti Martini). This implies that he had already been living in Gallaecia for some time. Gregory knew the duration of Edward James, “Gregory of Tours and ‘Arianism,’” in The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, ed. Andrew Cain and Noel Lenski (Farnham, 2009), pp. 327–38, at 338. 53  James, “Gregory of Tours,” p. 332. 54  It is interesting to note that, unlike in De virtutibus sancti Martini, beatus is applied here to both Martins. 55  Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera, pp. 5–6. 56  As Soares, O linhagem, p. 97 with n. 26 points out, Pannoniae operates here as a genitive of location. 57  Gregory of Tours, De virtutibus sancti Martini 1.3, ed. and trans. de Nie, p. 438. Pannonia is also mentioned in the Histories in relation to St Martin of Tours’s place of origin (Histories 1.36, ed. Krusch and Levison, p. 26: “apud Sabariam Pannoniae civitatem”). 58  Gregory of Tours, Histories 2.6, ed. Krusch and Levison, p. 47 (“Chuni a Pannoniis egressi”); 2.9, p. 57 (“eosdem de Pannonia fuisse degressus”). 59  Espírito Santo, “Origem,” p. 269. 60  Ferreiro, “Martinian Veneration,” p. 13.

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Martin’s term as bishop – some 30 years –, which would place the beginning of that term in c. 550.61 The passage suggests therefore that Martin became bishop of Braga at the moment of – and probably as a result of – the arrival of St Martin’s relics. While in De virtutibus sancti Martini, the relics are instrumental in the conversion of King Chararic and the Sueves from Arianism to Catholicism, there is no mention of that in the Histories.62 This is surprising, given that Arianism is the dominant theme of the following chapter of Book  5. But  unlike De virtutibus sancti Martini, the focus in the Histories is not on a miracle of conversion, but on the devotion of the bishop of Braga to St Martin of Tours. In other words, Gregory wrote this passage as a bishop of Tours, aware of the central position of the shrine of St  Martin in the Church. That explains the curious note at the end of the passage, which has caused much controversy among commentators. According to Gregory, Martin of Braga wrote a short poem (versiculi), most likely a titulus for a church dedicated to St Martin.63 Under the assumption that that was the church dedicated to St Martin in Braga (in which those relics of St Martin of Tours had been placed, which had arrived there at the same time as the future bishop), Barlow and, following him, other commentators, have identified the versiculi mentioned by Gregory of Tours with the poem In basilica attributed to Bishop Martin.64 However, there are several problems with that interpretation. First and foremost, it remains unclear how Gregory could have known the lines’ exact location (“super ostium … a parte meridiana”) inside a church he had never visited. On the other hand, if the church in question was not the one in Braga, but another – for example, the basilica in Tours65 –what could the circumstances have been under which Bishop Martin wrote the versiculi? Did Martin of Braga ever visit Tours? Did he meet Gregory (and, through him, Venantius Fortunatus) in person? There are no satisfactory answers to these and other questions raised by Barlow’s interpretation.

Carl Paul Caspari, Martin von Bracara’s Schrift De correctione rusticorum (Christiania, 1883), p. ii. On  the basis of a fourteenth-century breviary in use at Braga, Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis ­opera, p. 3, advanced the idea that Martin was consecrated bishop in 556. The same breviary indicates that ­Martin died on March 20, 579. 62  James, “Gregory of Tours,” p. 332. 63  In the Histories, the word versiculi is employed to describe scornfully Chilperic’s pathetic attempts to write poetry (6.46, p. 320). However, the same word is used for Gregory’s own production of verses (5.14, p. 209). 64  Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera, p. 280; Ferreiro, “The missionary labors,” p. 14; Alberto Ferreiro, “Braga and Tours: some observations on Gregory’s De virtutibus sancti Martini (1.11),” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995), 195–210, at p. 208. 65  As suggested by George, Venantius Fortunatus, p. 68. Caspari, Martin von Bracara’s Schrift, p. li, is undecided: Gregory may refer either to the church in Tours or to that in Braga. 61 

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A few preliminary conclusions may nevertheless still be drawn on the basis of the information about Martin of Braga to be found in Gregory’s writings. First, the interest that Gregory took in Martin of Braga is primarily based on the translation of some of St  Martin’s relics from Tours to Gallaecia.66 Everything else that Gregory knew about Martin of Braga is connected to that – his arrival in Gallaecia, his ordination as bishop, the conversion of King Chararic and the Sueves, and the versiculi on display in an unnamed church of St Martin. Second, it is quite clear that Gregory concocted the idea of Martin of Braga hailing from Pannonia, primarily on the basis of a more or less innocent misunderstanding of a poetic license in Fortunatus’s gratiarum actio. That piece is part of Book 5 of Fortunatus’s collection of poems, dedicated to Gregory of Tours. Before reading Fortunatus, Gregory only knew that Martin of Braga had come to Gallaecia from a “distant region.”67 Most scholars favouring the idea that Martin of Braga was from Pannonia point to another poem attributed to him.68 That poem represents itself as the epitaph that Martin of Braga wrote for himself.69 It states explicitly that Martin was a native of Pannonia (Panoniis genitus).70 However, if one assumes that In basilica and In refectorio were indeed written by Martin of Braga, one has to acknowledge that they are both stylistically different from the epitaph.71 In fact, this epitaph does not look like any of those known for the sixth or seventh centuries (such as those of Venantius Fortunatus and Eugenius of Toledo), and it is not so much about Martin of Braga as about Martin of Tours. Since, as we have seen, the association between the two Martins is largely the work of Gregory of Tours, the epitaph was most likely written in Frankish Gaul long after Martin of Braga’s death. It is definitely not his work, and cannot therefore be regarded as his own statement of origin.72 Geographically and chronologically closer to Martin, Isidore of Seville knew nothing about the supposedly Pannonian origin of the bishop of Braga. In  his De viris The relics of St Martin of Tours in Gallaecia are not the only ones known from the Iberian Peninsula. Relics of St Martin of Tours are mentioned in inscriptions from Medina-Sidonia, Loja, and San Román de Hornija (Vives, Inscripciones, pp. 101, 108, and 111). 67  In that respect, Antonio Fontán, “San Martín de Braga, una luz en la penumbra,” Cuadernos de filología clásica 20 (1986–1987), 185–99, at p. 194, was wrong: the Pannonian origin of Martin of Braga is not one of “tres datos precisos.” 68  Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera, p. 283. 69  Ferreiro, “Braga and Tours,” p. 209. 70  As Soares, O linhagem, p. 97 has pointed out, the ablative with genitus is meant to say that Martin was a descendant of Pannonians, and not from Pannonia. 71  Farmhouse Alberto, “Para uma revalorização,” pp.  218 and 222; Maria Adelaida Andrés Sanz, “Martín de Braga,” in La Hispania visigótica y mozárabe. Dos épocas en su literatura, ed. Carmen Codoñer (Salamanca, 2010), pp. 71–81, at 76. 72  Pace Ferreiro, “The westward journey,” p. 247, there was no “similarity of race and origin” between Martin of Braga and the Sueves of Pannonia. 66 

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illustribus written under King Sisebut between 615 and 618, Martin’s profile has different traits: Martinus, Dumiensis monasterii sanctissimus pontifex, ex Orientis partibus navigans in Galliciam venit, ibique conversis ab Arriana impietate ad fidem catholicam Suevorum populis regulam fidei et sanctae religionis constituit, ecclesias informavit, monasteria condidit, copiosaque praecepta piae institutionis composuit. Cuius quidem ego ipse legi librum de Differentiis quattuor virtutum, et aliud volumen Epistolarum in quibus hortatur vitae emendationem et conversationem fidei, orationis instantiam, eleemosynarum distributionem, et super omnia cultum virtutum omnium et pietatem. Floruit regnante Theodemiro rege Suevorum, temporibus illis, quibus Iustinianus in republica et Athanagildus in Hispaniis imperium tenuerunt.73 Martin, priest of the holiest monastery of Dume, having sailed from eastern parts, came to Galicia. There he converted the Suevian people from the Arian heresy to the Catholic faith. He instituted a rule of faith and holy religion, gave guidance to the churches, established monasteries, and wrote down numerous precepts of pious instruction. I have myself read his book On Differences between the Four Virtues, as well as a volume of letters, in which he exhorted people to the amendment of their lives and practice of the faith, perseverance in prayer, the distribution of charity, and above all the cultivation of all virtues and piety. He flourished under the reign of Theudemir, king of the Sueves, at the time when Justinian was the head of the Roman state, and Athanagild of Hispania.

Martin does not even appear here as bishop of Braga, but as a priest of the monastery of Dume (located near Braga). The partes Orientis from which he sailed to Gallaecia may well be the Holy Land mentioned by Gregory of Tours, but can hardly include Martin of Braga’s supposed homeland of Pannonia (as land-locked Pannonia was never part of Oriens). While the king under whom Martin was active is Theudemir (561 or 566–570), and not Chararic (after c. 550–558/59), Isidore knew, like Gregory, that Martin had been instrumental in the conversion of the Sueves from Arianism to the Catholic faith. The most surprising parallel, however, is with Gregory’s vague concept of Martin being versed in “letters.” Isidore himself had access to, and read Martin’s works, including his treatise on the differences between the four virtues, now known as the Formula vitae honestae.74 Even more interesting is the mention of a volume of letters, an indication that, like Venantius Fortunatus, Martin of Braga (or one of his successors) edited his correspondence to be published as a collection. Unfortunately, nothing

Isidore of Seville, De viris illustribus 22, ed.  Nathalie Desgrugillers-Billard (Clermont-Ferrand, 2009), p. 58 (for the date see p. 19). The Latin text is slightly different from that of Carmen Codoñer Merino, El ‘De viris illustribus’ de Isidoro de Sevilla. Estudio y edicion critica (Salamanca, 1964), pp. 145–46. Martin of Braga is also mentioned briefly in the History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi 91, ed. Cristóbal Rodríguez Alonso (León, 1975), pp. 318–19. 74  Andrés Sanz, “Martín de Braga,” p. 75. 73 

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survives; it would have been a valuable source for gauging Martin’s connections to Gaul, particularly his correspondence with Venantius Fortunatus, reflections of which appear in one of the latter’s poems for the bishop of Braga. Missing from Isidore’s list of works, however, is any mention of poetry. Unlike Gregory, Isidore made no reference to the association of the two Martins, and knew nothing about Martin of Braga’s titulus for a church dedicated to St Martin of Tours.75

Slavs in the “Catalogue of Barbarians” Isidore knew of Slavs occupying Greece at some point during the reign of the emperor Heraclius.76 He used the word Sclavi, the plural of the noun Sclavus that appears in the list of ethnic names in the poem In basilica attributed to Martin of Braga. Isidore’s use of that word, instead of Sclavini, has been interpreted as an indication of his use of a Constantinopolitan source for the events taking place in the early seventh century in the Balkans.77 By contrast, ever since Šašel, the mention of Sclavus in the poem In basilica is explained as a reminiscence from Martin of Braga’s childhood years in Pannonia.78 But on a closer examination, the catalogue of peoples that caught Šašel’s attention cannot be linked either with Martin of Braga or with Pannonia. The ethnic groups mentioned in the poem In basilica are those that Martin of Tours, and not Martin of Braga, is said to have converted to Christianity.79 While the list includes Pannonius, the Alamans, the Saxons, the Thuringians, the Franks, and the Burgundians have nothing to do with that province. In other words, if the list was based on Martin of Braga’s childhood memories from Pannonia, those memories could not have possibly included any of those ethnic groups, which never lived on the territory of that formerly Roman province. Contra: Ferreiro, “Braga and Tours,” p. 208, who believes that the biographical note that Gregory devoted to Martin in his Histories resembles that of Isidore in De viris illustribus. 76  Isidore of Seville, Chronica, ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH AA 11 (Berlin, 1894), p. 479. Isidore ended his Chronica maiora in 624 or 626; see Olga V. Ivanova, “Isidor Sevil’skii,” in Svod drevneishikh pis’mennykh izvestii o slavianakh, ed.  Sergei  A. Ivanov, Gennadii  G. Litavrin and Vladimir  K. Ronin, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1995), pp. 356–57. 77  Florin Curta, The Making of the Slavs. History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500– 700 (Cambridge, 2001), p. 55 with n. 42. John of Biclar, who finished his chronicle in 589 or 590, knew only of Sclavini (Chronicle, ed. Mommsen, MGH AA 11, pp. 214 and 216; Eduard Mühle, Die Slaven im Mittelalter (Berlin/Boston, 2016), p. 24). 78  Šašel, “Omemba Slovanov,” p. 156. Šašel, “Divinis nutibus actus,” p. 253 with note 23: “Le popo­ lazioni che lì sono enumerate in un modo spontaneo (non seguendo un modello, esp. per esempio gli Sclavi, Datus, Nara, etc.) lui sono rimaste nella memoria della gioventù in Pannonia, cioè dai anni venti del 6. secolo.” 79  There is of course no indication that Martin of Tours ever preached among barbarians, much less that he converted any of the barbarian groups mentioned in the poem. 75 

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Catalogues of barbarians appear in Venantius Fortunatus’s works as well.80 Claude Barlow long ago noted that a list comparable to that of In basilica is found in Dracontius.81 As he also observed, most names mentioned in the poem (including Pannonius) appear in two poems of Sidonius Apollinaris. In  his panegyric for Majorian, delivered in 458, Sidonius praises his subject for his military deeds, specifically for having recruited a “frozen army of the seven-mouthed Danube” whose members make up a motley crew indeed: “Bastarna, Suebus, / Pannonius, Neurus, Chunus, Geta, Dacus, Halanus, / Bellonotus, Rugus, Burgundio, Vesus, Alites, / Bisalta, Ostrogothus, Procrustes, Sarmata, Moschus.”82 In his panegyric for Avitus, delivered in 456, Sidonius puts in Jupiter’s mouth a description of the invasion of Gaul by Attila’s army in 451: “After the warlike Rugian comes the fierce Gepid, with the Gelonian close by; the Burgundian urges the Scirian; forward rush the Hun, the Bellonotian, the Neurian, the Bastarnian, the Thuringian, the Bructeran, and the Frank.”83 Those lists are obviously not up-to-date gazetteers of the political make-up of the barbarian world known to Sidonius. Their role is to create the rhetorical effect of multitude, as the enumeration is meant to impress upon the audience the sheer number of troops that either Majorian or Attila was able to bring to the field.84 Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 9.1.73, ed. and trans. Roberts, pp. 560–61: “quem Geta, Vasco tremunt, Danus, Euthio, Saxo, Britannus.” See also Vita Germani 72, in Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH SRM 7 (Hannover, 1920), p. 415: “Hispanus, Scottus, Britto, Wasco, Saxo, Burgundio.” 81  Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera, p. 276. See Dracontius, Romulea 5.34–37, ed. Friedrich Vollmer, MGH AA 14 (Berlin, 1905), p. 141: “Rapiant simul arma Suevus / Sarmata Persa Gothus Alamannus Francus Alanus / vel quaecumque latent gentes aquilone remotae / in nos tela parent” (“Let Sueves, Sarmatians, Persians, Goths, Alamanians, Franks, Alans, take up arms, or let whatever races lurk in the distant north prepare their weapons for us”). 82  Sidonius, Carm. 5.474–76, ed. and trans. Anderson, 1:102–3. As Walter Goffart, Barbarian Tides. The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire (Philadelphia, 2006), p. 110 has pointed out, while the list includes many “authentic” names of barbarian groups, Neurus, Bellonotus, Vesus, Alites, or Procrustes are “likely to be padding.” See also Ralph Mathisen, “Catalogues of Barbarians in Late Antiquity,” in Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World, ed. Ralph Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer (Farnham, 2011), pp. 17–32, at 31. Besides catalogues of barbarian peoples, Sidonius also has lists of gods, seers and oracles, imperial provinces, Greek philosophers, and Latin writers. 83  Sidonius, Carm. 7.321–25, ed. and trans. Anderson, 1:146–7: “Pugnacem Rugum comitante Gelono / Gepida trux sequitur; Scirum Burgundio cogit; / Chunus, Bellonotus, Neurus, Bastarna, Toringus, / Bructerus… Francus.” For Sidonius’s panegyric for Avitus, see Lynette Watson, “Representing the Past, Redefining the Future: Sidonius Apollinaris’s Panegyrics of Avitus and Anthemius,” in The Propaganda of Power. The Role of Panegyric in Late Antiquity, ed. Mary Whitby (Leiden/Boston, 1998), pp. 177–98. Sidonius applied the same formula (names of barbarian peoples in the singular) in his letter to Lampridius, in order to draw a list of suppliants to the Visigothic king Euric (Ep. 8.9.5, ed. and trans. Anderson, 2:446–449). 84  Peter Heather, “Disappearing and Reappearing Tribes,” in Strategies of Distinction. The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, ed. Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz (Leiden, 1998), pp. 95–111, at 80 

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Enumerating alien names, “a parade of foreigners,” had long been a rhetorical strategy in Latin literature. Half a century before Sidonius wrote his panegyrics, in a letter from Bethlehem, Jerome had employed a catalogue of barbarian peoples that crossed the Rhine in 406 to attack Gaul: “Quadus, Vandalus, Sarmata, Halani, Gepides, Heruli, Saxones, Burgundiones, Alemanni et, o lugenda respublica! hostes Pannonii.”85 A few years earlier, in a poem dedicated to Nicetas of Remesiana, Paulinus of Nola described him in terms similar to those in which Martin of Tours is described in the poem In basilica: “The whole region of the North calls you father. The Scythians become gentle at your words; […] the Getae run to you, as do also the Dacians, both those who dwell in the hinterland and the cap-wearers living on the bank of the Danube, rich in numbers of cattle.”86 An early fourth-century list of fifty-three peoples, appended to an official list of Roman provinces, includes Rugi, Saxones, and Suebi.87 Tertullian, writing in the early third century about the miracle at Pentecost, expands the list of names in Acts 2.9 (Parthians, Medes, Elamites, etc.) with Gaetuli, various nations of Gaul, Britons, Sarmatians, and Dacians, as well as Germani and Scythians.88 That lists of barbarian peoples were so popular for so long, and across many different genres, 96, notes that “a mention in poetic lists is insufficient documentation for a positive (re)appearance of a group.” For the cumulative effect of the names in Sidonius’s lists, see Mathisen, “Catalogues,” p. 23. 85  Jerome, Ep. 123.15.2, ed. Jérôme Labourt, vol. 7 (Paris, 1962), p. 92. Pannonians-turned-enemies play in Jerome’s letter the same role as Pannonius in the poem In basilica. A late echo of that trope may be found in Paul the Deacon’s description of the Lombard migration to Italy in 568: “Certum est autem, tunc Alboin multos secum ex diversis, quas vel alii reges vel ipse ceperat, gentibus ad Italiam adduxisse. Unde usque hodie eorum in quibus habitant vicos Gepidos, Vulgares, Sarmatas, Pannonios, Suavos, Noricos sive aliis huiuscemodi nominibus appellamus” (Historia Langobardorum 2.26, ed. Georg Waitz, Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec.  VI–IX [Hanover, 1878], p.  87). Many historians have taken that to be an accurate description of the immigrants entering Italy under the leadership of King Alboin. See, for example, Peter Bystrický, Sťahovanie národov (454–568). Ostrogóti, Gepidi, Longobardi a Slovania (Bratislava, 2008), p. 163; Michael Borgolte, “Eine langobardische ‘Wanderlawine’ vom Jahr 568? Zur Kritik historiographischer Zeugnisse der Migrationsperiode,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 61 (2013), 293–310, at p. 300. Seemingly unaware of that synecdoche and its literary tradition, Rajko Bratož, “Die Auswanderung der Bevölkerung aus den pannonischen Provinzen während des 5. und 6.  Jahrhunderts,” in Römische Legionslager in den Rhein- und Donauprovinzen  – Nuclei spätantikfrühmittelalterlichen Lebens?, ed. Michaela Konrad and Christian Witschel (Munich, 2011), pp. 589–614, at 602, and Med Italijo in Ilirikom. Slovenski prostor in njegovo sosedstvo v pozni antiki (Ljubljana, 2014), pp. 398–99 and 424, takes the poem In basilica at face value and wrongly reads Pannonius as a reference to (Germanic) pagans in Pannonia. 86  Paulinus of Nola, Ad Nicetam 245–52, ed. Franz Dolveck, CCSL 21A (Turnhout, 2015), p. 640; English translation from The Poems of St Paulinus of Nola, trans. Peter Gerard Walsh (New York, 1975), p. 111. 87  Nomina provinciarum omnium 13, ed.  Alexander Riese, Geographi latini minores (Hildesheim, 1995), p. 128. See also Mathisen, “Catalogues,” p. 22. 88  Tertullian, Adversos Iudaeos 7.4, ed. Hermann Tränkle (Wiesbaden, 1964), p. 14. See also Mathisen, “Catalogues,” pp. 29–30.

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suggests that in fact they were not just a “metrical tour de force,” as Barlow would have it.89 Instead, they seem to play a key role in a political ideology that viewed barbarian peoples collectively, but also classified and labeled them.90 One conspicuous feature of that classificatory tradition is that the names of barbarians, which were meant to instill fear, are typically set in the singular.91 This is especially true for Sidonius Apollinaris, who has some of the longest lists.92 Names such as Toringus, Ostrogothus, and Dacus appear only in the panegyrics of Sidonius. The author of the poem In basilica had access to the work of Sidonius, and the same is true for the author of the other poem attributed to Martin of Braga, In refectorio. Seven out of the first eight lines in that poem are lifted directly or with only minor changes from Sidonius’s Poem 17.93 A similar argument could be made about the poem In basilica. There are thirteen names of barbarian peoples in that poem, nine of which may be found in one of the two similar lists in Sidonius’s Poems 5 and 7.94 Each of the remaining four names (Datus, Nara, Saxo, Sclavus) has been treated as a hapax legomenon.95 However, in at least one case that is not entirely correct.

The Slavs and Pseudo-Martin of Braga The ethnic name of the Slavs appears in Latin sources both in a long form (Sclaveni/ Sclavini) and in a shorter one (Sclavi). The first writer known to have used the former is Jordanes in the mid-sixth century.96 Sclavi appears later, first in two letters of Pope Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera, p. 276. Mathisen, “Catalogues,” pp. 31–32. 91  The sense of horror conveyed by a list of barbarian names is evident in the case of the early fourthcentury Latin panegyrist Nazarius, as well as in that of Isidore of Seville (Mathisen, “Catalogues,” p. 24). 92  There are eighteen names in Poem 5, and twelve in Poem 7. By contrast, Venantius Fortunatus has between two and three times fewer names, while Dracontius lists only seven. 93  Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera, p.  283. For  In refectorio as an example of what one might call ‘extreme intertextuality,’ see Jesús Hernández Lobato, “El poema In  refectorio de Martín de Braga: ¿un ‘ready-made’ literario?” Voces 23–24 (2012–2013), 75–92. For the access that the author of In basilica and In refectorio must have had to Sidonius’s work, see Farmhouse Alberto, “Para uma revalorização,” p. 220. Sidonius was popular in sixth-century Gaul. On his early readership see Ralph W. Mathisen, “Sidonius’ Earliest Reception and Distribution,” in The Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris, ed. Gavin Kelly and Joop van Waarden (Edinburgh, 2020), pp. 631–42; Jesús Hernández Lobato, “Sidonius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” in The Edinburgh Companion, pp. 665–85 at 665–66. To take a relevant example, a passage from Fortunatus Carm. 5.1 (“est enim ratio consequens ut per vos illinc nobis redeat spes patrocinii quia ad hos hinc prodiit pars patroni”  – ed.  and trans. Roberts, pp. 286–87) is lifted almost word for word from Sidonius (Ep. 7.1.7, ed. and trans. Anderson, 2:292–93). 94  (H)Alanus, Burgundio, Dacus, Francus, Ostrogothus, Pannonius, Rugus, Sarmata, and Toringus. 95  Charvát, The Emergence, p. 47. 96  Jordanes, Romana 388; Getica 5.34 and 35, 23.119, ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH AA 5.1 (Berlin, 1882), pp. 52, 63, 63, and 88. See Jutta Reisinger and Günter Sowa, Das Ethnikon Sclavi in den lateinischen 89 

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Gregory the Great written in May 599 and July 600, respectively.97 If we exclude the poem In basilica, the singular form of the noun (Sclavus) is first found in the ninth century.98 It  is employed generically, in reference to all Slavs, by Sedulius Scottus in a poem written in the late 840s on behalf of his patron, Bishop Hartgar of Liège. The bishop had made a gift to Eberhard, the margrave of Friuli, in the form of a book on warfare. Sedulius Scottus took the opportunity to praise Eberhard for his valor: “Great warrior, the Slav and Saracen fear you, / as you vanquish the savage plagues of the Church.”99 The ninth-century monk Waldram of St Gall wrote two poems for Emperor Charles the Fat (881–888), who visited his abbey in 883. One of them, written in classical elegiacs, contains a catalogue of barbarian peoples comparable to that in the poem In basilica: “Francia te Suevis, o rex, direxit alendis: / Iam pecuare tuum pasce diu viduum. / Noricus et Sclavus, Bemanus, Saxo, Toringus / Corde manent alacri, te dominante sui.”100 Saxo, Sclavus, Suevus, and Toringus are mentioned in the poem In basilica as well. If its author was indeed Martin of Braga, his would be the earliest attestation of Sclavus/Sclavi, since the poem is regarded as having been written in 556 or 558 for the consecration of the monastery church in Dume (Dumium), which was dedicated to St Martin of Tours.101 As we have seen, scholars believe that Sclavus appears in the poem In basilica because Martin of Braga remembered seeing Slavs in his Pannonian homeland. Nara and Datus, the other two names in the In basilica that do not appear in Sidonius, are regarded as poetical deformations of the names Norici and Dacians, peoples that lived in provinces neighboring Pannonia.102 Quellen bis zum Jahr 900 (Stuttgart, 1990), p. 9; A. N. Anfert’ev, “Iordan,” in Svod drevneishikh pis’mennykh izvestii o slavianakh, ed. Leonid A. Gindin, Sergei A. Ivanov and Gennadii G. Litavrin, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1991), pp. 98–169; Curta, The Making of the Slavs, pp. 39–43; Mühle, Die Slaven, p. 4. 97  Gregory the Great, Ep. 9.154 and 10.15, in Gregorii I papae registrum epistolarum, ed. Ludwig Hartmann, vol. 2, MGH Epp. 2 (Berlin, 1899), pp. 154 and 249. See Vladimir K. Ronin, “Pis’ma papy Grigoriia I,” in Svod drevneishikh pis’mennykh izvestii o slavianakh, ed. Sergei A. Ivanov, Gennadii G. Litavrin and Vladimir K. Ronin, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1995), pp. 350–52. 98  The earliest attestation of the noun in the singular to refer to an individual is in the Conversion of the Bavarians and the Carantanians, a polemical tract written by an unknown author on behalf of the archbishop of Salzburg in c. 870. See Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum 4, ed. Fritz Lošek (Hanover, 1997), p. 102. Only slightly later is Pope John VIII’s letter to Boris of Bulgaria dated to 878 (Ep. 66, ed. Erich Caspar and Gerhard Laehr, Epistolae Karolini Aevi, MGH Epp. 7.5 (Berlin, 1928), p. 60. 99  Sedulius Scottus, Carm. 53.23–24, ed. Jean Meyers, CCCM 117 (Turnhout, 1991), p. 91: “Te tremit armipotens Sclavus, Saracenus et hostis: / Ecclesiae pestes sternis, amande, truces.” The English translation is from Sedulius Scottus, On Christian Rulers and the Poems, trans. Edward Gerard Doyle (Binghamton, 1983), p. 150. 100  Waldram, Carm. 17.7–10, ed. Paul von Winterfeld, MGH PLAC, vol. 4.1 (Berlin, 1899), p. 328. 101  For 556, see Ferreiro, “Braga and Tours,” p. 209. For 558, see Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera, p. 3. At Curta, The Making of the Slavs, p. 46, I placed the poem in the late 570s. 102  Třeštík, Počátky Přemyslovců, p. 30. Třeštík apparently ignored the fact that the list of barbarian peoples in the poem In basilica already has Dacus.

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Even if Nara and Datus are the result of poetic licence (either deformed versions of “real” names, or made-up names used to pad out the line), Sclavus requires a different explanation. The short name of the Slavs (Sclavi, instead of Sclaveni/Sclavini) originated in Greek.103 Its use by such authors writing in Latin as Gregory the Great and Isidore of Seville signals their contacts with Constantinople. Some have proposed a similar explanation for the poem In basilica. According to that explanation, Martin of Braga learned Greek in Pannonia, if he was not in fact a Greek-speaker from birth. His  command of Greek served him well later, when Justinian entrusted him with a mission related to the conquest of southern Spain. Martin’s mission supposedly was to turn the Sueves away from Arianism, and thus from the Visigothic alliance.104 However, others have doubted this supposed knowledge of Greek.105 The vast majority of Hellenisms in Martin’s Latin vocabulary are in fact words of Greek origin that had already been adopted and adapted by Christian authors writing in Latin.106 If not from Constantinople, then where could Martin of Braga have learned about the Sclavi? As we have seen, In basilica and the poems of Venantius Fortunatus for Martin of Braga suggest strong ties with the ecclesiastical elites and literati of Gaul. But neither Fortunatus nor Gregory of Tours knew anything about the Slavs. One has to wait until the 640s for the first mention of the Sclavi in the Latin literature produced in Gaul.107 While no evidence exists to support the idea that Martin of Braga learned about the Sclavi either from Constantinople or from Gaul, the generic use of the singular form of the noun (Sclavus) is otherwise a phenomenon of the ninth century and later. Whether or not In basilica is also a ninth-century text, initially meant to be an astute pastiche of Sidonius, there are serious reasons to doubt its manuscript attribution to Martin of Braga. The poem is believed to have been written in Gallaecia, because it mentions a church there that was dedicated to St Martin and erected by the “Sueve.” But the text of the poem is replete with echoes of Sidonius and Fortunatus. No evidence exists that First attested in John Malalas, Chronographia 18.129, ed. Hans Thurn (Berlin, 2000), p. 421. See Gennadii G. Litavrin, “Ioann Malala,” in Svod drevneishikh pis’mennykh izvestii o slavianakh, ed. Leonid  A. Gindin, Sergei  A. Ivanov and Gennadii  G. Litavrin, vol.  1 (Moscow, 1991), pp.  265–75; Curta, The Making of the Slavs, pp. 45–46. 104  Šašel, “Divinis nutibus actus,” p. 253; Antonio Fontán, Humanismo romano (clásicos–medievales– modernos) (Barcelona, 1974), p. 193; Ferreiro, “The Westward Journey,” pp. 248–49. 105  Espírito Santo, “Origem,” p. 265. 106  José Luis Moralejo Alvarez, “Los helenismos en el lexico de San Martin Dumiense,” Compostellanum 12 (1967), 157–99; Antonio Fontán, “Martín de Braga, un testigo de la tradición clásica y Cristiana,” Anuario de estudios medievales 9 (1974–1979), 33–41, at p. 334; Serafín Bodelón, “Martin of Braga and John of Biclaro in Recent Scholarship,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 31 (1996), 199–204, at p. 200. 107  Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani 1.27, in Quellen zur Geschichte des 7. und 8. Jahrhunderts, ed. Herbert Haupt (Darmstadt, 1982), p.  488: “Venetiorum qui et Sclavi dicuntur.” Jonas wrote the Vita of St Columbanus at some point between 639 and 643. 103 

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either of them was sufficiently known in Visigothic Spain or Gallaecia either in the sixth or in the early seventh century to be mentioned or imitated.108 By contrast, the mid-ninth century manuscript P contains not only In basilica, but also the epitaph of Fortunatus and works of Dracontius.109 That manuscript originated in southern Gaul. Pseudo-Martin of Braga probably wrote there as well. The same is true for the other poem, In refectorio, which contains another hapax legomenon (“gauessas”) the meaning of which (“c(onc)avity”) cannot be explained without reference to the phonetism of the Provençal dialect.110 In refectorio and In basilica share many stylistic features, first and foremost the influence of Sidonius. It is therefore possible that one and the same pseudo-Martin of Braga wrote both poems.111 If so, he was clearly an author familiar with Fortunatus’s poems, especially with his gratiarum actio. The parallels between that poem and In basilica may well be explained in terms of the correspondence between Martin of Braga and Fortunatus.112 The other poem for Martin of Braga clearly shows that the two men exchanged letters. However, if one accepts Martin’s authorship, one has to explain how in addition to Fortunatus’s poems, the bishop of Braga had access to Sidonius’s works. The use made of the latter in In basilica suggests knowledge of several different poems and letters, in other words of a collection of works. There is no evidence that such a collection was available in Visigothic Spain, much less in Gallaecia, during Martin of Braga’s lifetime.113 However, the collection(s) of Sidonius’s

Paolo Farmhouse Alberto, “Venancio Fortunato en la España visigótica,” in Sub luce florentis calami. Homenaje a Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz, ed. Manuela Domínguez Garía (Santiago de Compostela, 2002), pp. 251–69, at 254–58 points out that the only Visigothic author influenced by Venantius Fortunatus was Eugenius of Toledo. 109  Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis opera, p. 277. 110  Hernández Lobato, “El poema,” pp. 80–83. Convinced that the author of the poem must be Martin of Braga, Hernández Lobato believes that the bishop could have learned the word during his sojourn in southern Gaul. 111  The third poem, long believed to be the epitaph that Martin of Braga wrote for himself, is clearly by another author. See above, p. 129. 112  Judging by his other poem for Martin of Braga, Fortunatus wrote the gratiarum actio as a letter to be sent to Gallaecia. It is unlikely that Martin learned about the two poems from the collection that Fortunatus published in 576 or 577, as that pre-dates the bishop’s death by two or three years. 113  Sidonius put his twenty-four poems together in a collection published in 469 (André Loyen, “Introduction,” in Sidoine Apollinaire, Poèmes [Paris, 1960], p. xxx). Unlike the collection of letters, which is mentioned in the early sixth century by Ruricius of Limoges and Avitus of Vienne, the collection of poems did not receive any mention during Martin of Braga’s lifetime. At any rate, both collections (of letters and of poems, respectively) seem to have been available only in Gaul. Sidonius was practically unknown in Visigothic Spain. See Farmhouse Alberto, “Venancio Fortunato,” p. 253 with n. 11; Patrizia Mascoli, “Per una ricostruzione del Fortleben di Sidonio Apollinare,” Invigilata Lucernis 26 (2004), 165–83, at pp. 181–82. 108 

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poems and letters were known in Francia, as indicated by the manuscript tradition.114 Although of an eleventh-century date, the two witnesses of that tradition are believed to be based on an archetype tentatively dated to the seventh or early eighth century.115 It was most likely in Francia that Sidonius’s collection of poems became available to the author of the poem In basilica. One of the manuscripts containing the poem (P) was written in the mid-ninth century by Manno of Saint-­Oyen for his own abbey. The poem is part of an anthology of verse, primarily epitaphs and other poems known from anthologies of the Carolingian era.116 The cultural milieu of Carolingian Francia is also where the miracles of St Martin of Tours were associated with the conversion of people, particularly of heathens.117 Ninth-century authors employed lists of ethnic names in much the same way as Sidonius and Fortunatus, albeit for different purposes.

Conclusion “Literary historians,” Danuta Shanzer once wrote, “examine authors in context: location, date, and the company (both books and people) they keep. It is from these comparisons that one judges ‘fit,’ ‘usualness,’ and ‘unusualness.’”118 Both archaeologists and historians should take that scholarly advice to heart. The traditional interpretation of the poem In basilica is fraught with multiple problems resulting from the neglect of context. In  basilica is not one and the same thing as the versiculi that, according to Gregory of Tours, Martin of Braga wrote for an inscription above the southern entrance of a church dedicated to St Martin of Tours. The exact place of birth of Martin of Braga is unknown; that he was from Pannonia is simply an idea resulting from Gregory of Tours’s (mis)interpretation of a passage in Venantius Fortunatus. The list One of the most important manuscripts containing all of Sidonius Apollinaris’s works is C = Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 9448 (olim F 150, later Ee 102), saec. XI 2 from Cluny (but written elsewhere in southwest France). Most editions of the poems, however, are based primarily on Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS San Marco 554, saec. XI 2 (M), of French or Italian origin. On Sidonius’s manuscript tradition see Franz Dolveck, “The Manuscript tradition of Sidonius,” in The Edinburgh Companion, pp. 479–542, which includes a census of manuscripts at 508–42. 115  Dolveck, “The Manuscript tradition,” pp. 483–84. 116  Farmhouse Alberto, “Venancio Fortunato,” pp. 268–29. 117  Alcuin’s Vita Sancti Martini is the best illustration of that change in Martinian hagiography. See Juliet Mullins, “Tracing the Tracks of Alcuin’s Vita Sancti Martini,” in Anglo-Saxon Traces. Papers Presented at the Thirteenth ISAS Conference, Held in the University of London from 30 July through 4 August 2007, ed. Jane Roberts and Leslie Webster (Tempe, 2011), pp. 165–79, at 175–76, who believes that the backdrop of Alcuin’s Vita of St Martin are Charlemagne’s campaigns against the heathen Saxons. See also Andre Mertens, The Old English Lives of St Martin of Tours (Göttingen, 2017), p. 51, who points out that Alcuin compiled the first “dossier” of texts concerned with St Martin of Tours (the so-called Martinellus). 118  Danuta Shanzer, “Bede’s Style: A Neglected Historiographical Model for the Style of the Historia Ecclesiastica?” in Source of Wisdom. Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honor of Thomas D. Hill, ed. Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs, and Thomas N. Hall (Toronto, 2007), pp. 329–52, at 330. 114 

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of peoples in the poem In basilica is not based on Martin of Braga’s childhood memories. The mention of Sclavus in that list strongly suggests that the author of the poem was not Martin of Braga, but someone else, writing not in the sixth century but in the ninth. As a consequence, Pseudo-Martin of Braga cannot be used as a source for the history of the early Slavs. Martin of Tours did not convert the Slavs (or any other barbarians, for that matter) to Christianity. The reason is quite simple: there were no Slavs in Pannonia or Central Europe either in the fourth or in the early sixth century. Because of its literary context, the poem In basilica does not “fit” the profile of a reliable source for the early history of the Slavs. In that respect, it may be unusual, but it certainly is not useful.

Patristics

Textkritisches zu Prophetenzitaten bei Ambrosius von Mailand und ein problematisches Stemma (De fide)* Victoria Zimmerl-Panagl CSEL, Universität Salzburg Ausgangspunkt für die folgenden Überlegungen sind zwei Stellen aus dem Werk des Ambrosius von Mailand, an denen er aus den Prophetenbüchern des Alten Testaments zitiert: einerseits das Zitat Daniel 12.2 in Ambrosius’ zweiter Rede für seinen Bruder Satyrus, andererseits das Zitat Ezechiel 39.10–12 im zweiten Buch De fide.1 An beiden Stellen treten textkritische Probleme zu Tage. Die Diskussion des zweiten Textproblems wirft außerdem Fragen zur Entstehungs- bzw. ‘Veröffentlichungsgeschichte’ von De fide auf: Wie viele ‘Ausgaben’ davon erstellte und veröffentlichte Ambrosius – und welcher Text lässt sich eigentlich edieren?

Das Fragmentum Sangallense, eine Vetus Latina-Handschrift zu den Prophetenbüchern Vor knapp 100 Jahren hat der Benediktiner Pater Alban Dold Konstanzer altlateinische Propheten- und Evangelien-Bruchstücke ediert. Unter diesen Texten findet sich auch das sogenannte Fragmentum Sangallense (St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 1398b, saec. IX).2 Bei dem Text dieses Fragments handelt es sich, so Dold, um einen Zeugen *  Danuta Shanzer, die Widmungsträgerin dieses Beitrags, ist an textkritischen Fragestellungen nicht nur interessiert, sondern hat in ihrer Funktion als Mitglied des Editorial Board des CSEL, aber auch in persönlichen Gesprächen Ratschläge erteilt, von denen auch meine Arbeit Impulse erhalten durfte. Es ist mir daher Freude und Ehre, zur Festschrift der Geehrten beitragen und auf diese Weise Dank zum Ausdruck bringen zu dürfen. – Dorothea Weber und Lukas Dorfbauer (beide CSEL), die den vorliegenden Beitrag in unterschiedlichen Stadien seines Entstehens gelesen haben, aber auch den Her­ ausgebern der Festschrift sowie dem Herausgeber der Reihe, Michael W. Herren, danke ich für wert­ volle Anregungen. 1  Ambrosius, Exc.  Sat. 2.66, hg.  Otto Faller, Sancti Ambrosii opera. Pars septima, CSEL  73 (Wien, 1955), S. 285.4–6; Fid. 2.16.138, hg. Otto Faller, Sancti Ambrosii opera. Pars octava, CSEL 78 (Wien, 1962), S. 105.20. Für das CSEL bin ich mit einer neuen Edition der Totenreden (De excessu fratris Satyri, libri duo) befasst. 2  Alban Dold (hg.), Konstanzer altlateinische Propheten- und Evangelienbruchstücke mit Glossen nebst zugehörigen Prophetentexten aus Zürich und St Gallen (Leipzig, 1923), S. 78–278, hier 227; Meinrad Stenzel, “Die Konstanzer und St Galler Fragmente zum altlateinischen Dodekapropheton,” Sacris Erudiri 5 (1953), 27–85; Roger Gryson, Altlateinische Handschriften/Manuscrits vieux Latins, Répertoire descriptif, d’apres un manuscrit inachevé de Hermann Josef Frede †, 2 Bde., Vetus Latina. Die Reste der altlateinischen D O I 10 .14 8 4/ M . P J M L . 5 .1 2 8 711: 14 3 –16 8 ©

143

FHG

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für die Urübersetzung der Prophetentexte, wie sie Anfang des 3. Jh. in Afrika in Gebrauch war. Wie bereits die Appendix zur Edition der Propheten-Texte zeigt, hat Ambrosius mehrmals auf einen Bibeltext zurückgegriffen, der jenem des Fragments ähnlich ist.3 Bei Otto Fallers Edition der Ambrosius-Texte wurden die Zusammenhänge mit dem Fragmentum Sangallense allerdings nicht beachtet; auch an den textkritisch schwierigen Stellen wurde nicht auf das Fragment hingewiesen.4 Für die zwei eingangs genannten Zitate bei Ambrosius muss der Wortlaut des Fragmentum allerdings berücksichtigt werden.

Ambrosius, De excessu fratris Satyri 2.66 und Dan. 12.2 In seiner zweiten Rede für seinen verstorbenen Bruder Satyrus spricht Ambrosius ausführlich über die Auferstehung und argumentiert dabei u. a. gegen ‘heidnische Irrmeinungen’ (etwa die Wiedergeburt). In Kapitel 66 heißt es (zitiert nach CSEL 73, ed. Faller): Sed illi dubitent, qui non didicerunt, nos vero, qui legimus legem, prophetas, apostolos, evangelium, dubitare fas non est. Quis enim dubitet, cum legit: Et in tempore illo salvabitur omnis plebs tua, quae scripta est in libro, et multi dormientium in terrae fossu in adapertionem exurgent, hi in vitam aeternam et hi in obprobrium et confusionem perpetuam. Et intellegentes splendebunt ut splendor firmamenti et ex iustis multi sicut stellae in saecula (Dan. 12.1–3)?

Bibel 1/2A+B, (Freiburg, 1999–2004), 1:270–271 (Nr. 176); Bernhard Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts (mit Ausnahme der wisigotischen), Teil  III: Padua  – Zwickau, hg. Birgit Ebersperger (Wiesbaden, 2014), S. 340 (Nr. 5918). 3  Abgesehen von den bereits genannten Passagen aus De excessu fratris bzw. De  fide s.  auch noch Fid.  2.16.137, S.  104.8–105.14 (Ez.  38.14–16), Inst. virg.  8.51, PL  16:319C (Ez.  39.25; 27) und Epist.  18.19, hg.  Otto Faller, Sancti Ambrosii Opera: Epistulae et Acta, CSEL  82.1 (Wien, 1968), S.  137.181–184 bzw. S. 138.186–189 (Mich. 6.8 bzw. 7.1–2; siehe auch Ambrosius, Paen. 2.8.78, hg. Otto Faller, CSEL 73 [Wien, 1955], S. 195.97–104) bzw. Epist. 18.20–21, S. 138.201–139.219 (Mich. 7.8–10). Siehe Dold, Konstanzer Evangelienbruchstücke, S. 279; der Verweis zu Mich. 7.18 auf “AM ps. 113 serm. 1, 4” ist ein Irrtum, gemeint ist nicht Ambrosius, sondern Augustinus. Ob sich weitere Zitate bei Ambrosius nachweisen lassen, habe ich nicht untersucht. – Die Texte des Fragmentum Sangallense sind verwandt mit der Vetus LatinaHandschrift des sog. Würzburger Propheten-Textes, und auch dieser Text hat nachweislich Spuren bei Ambrosius hinterlassen; siehe Meinrad Stenzel, “Das Zwölfprophetenbuch im Würzburger Palimpsestcodex (cod. membr. No. 64) und seine Textgestalt in Väterzitaten,” Sacris Erudiri 7 (1955), 5–34, S. 27–31. 4  S. o. Anm. 1. Zu De fide vgl. auch Christoph Markschies, Ambrosius von Mailand, De fide [ad Gratianum]. Über den Glauben [an Gratian], Fontes Christiani 47/2 (Turnhout, 2005); Markschies erstellte den Text in seiner verdienstvollen Publikation nicht neu und thematisierte das Textproblem daher nicht. Zu Exc. Sat. 2.66 und Dan. 12.2 siehe die Analyse von Michele Pellegrino, [Rez. Faller, CSEL 73], Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica 85 (1957), 311–16 (S. 313–15), der allerdings das Fragmentum Sangallense nicht erwähnte.

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Unser Interesse gilt Dan. 12.2; die folgende Tabelle bietet einen Vergleich mit der griechischen Bibel-Übersetzung der Septuaginta bzw. des “Theodotion”5 (sie war wirkungsstärker als die Septuaginta-Übersetzung),6 dem Fragmentum Sangallense als Vertreter der Vetus Latina, und der Vulgata: Ambr. Exc. Sat. 2.66 Septuaginta “Theodotion” Frg. Sangall. (VL) Vulgata

et multi dormientium in terrae fossu in adapertionem exurgent καὶ πολλοὶ τῶν καθευδόντων ἐν τῷ πλάτει τῆς γῆς ἀναστήσονται7 καὶ πολλοὶ τῶν καθευδόντων ἐν γῆς χώματι ἐξεγερθήσονται8 et multi dormientium in terra et fossura in opertione exurgent9 et multi de his, qui dormiunt in terrae pulvere, evigilabunt

Beachtenswert an Ambrosius’ Zitat sind fossu und in adapertionem. Fossu ist eine sonst nicht bezeugte Form, ein sog. hapax legomenon; ein Umstand, den Faller in seiner Edition nicht problematisierte. Der in den Text gesetzte Ablativ fossu müsste sich von einem Wort eines u-Stammes ableiten und der Wortfamilie von fodio angehören.10 Ambrosius zitiert den Bibelvers Dan. 12.2 noch zwei weitere Male: in seinem LukasKommentar 5.61 ohne ein Äquivalent zu ἐν γῆς χώματι und in der Kommentierung von Psalm 1.51.5, indem er in tumulo terrae schreibt, was zumindest zeigt, dass er ἐν χώματι inhaltlich als in tumulo verstanden hat.11 Die Forschung sieht keinen eigentlichen Theodotion-Text; vgl.  Joseph Ziegler (hg.), Susanna. Daniel. Bel et Draco (Septuaginta, Vetus Testamentum Graecum, Auctoritate Societatis Litterarum Gottingensis editum, 16/2) (Göttingen 1954), S. 28 mit Anm. 1 und 61–2 sowie einige Literaturhinweise in der Einleitung zum Buch Daniel (Heinz-Dieter Neef) in Martin Karrer und Wolfgang Kraus (hg.), Septuaginta Deutsch. Erläuterungen und Kommentare zum griechischen Alten Testament, Bd. 2 (Stuttgart 2011), S. 3016–17. 6  Siehe etwa die Einleitung zu Ziegler, Susanna (wie o. Anm. 2). Vgl.  etwa auch das Zeugnis des Hieronymus, in Dan. prol., hg. Frans Glorie, S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera, Pars 1, Opera Exegetica 5. Commentariorum in Danielem Libri III , CCSL 75A (Turnhout, 1964), S. 774.67–8: “… lectorem admoneo Danielem non iuxta LXX interpretes, sed iuxta Theodotionem ecclesias legere …” 7  “… und viele derer, die im Weiten der Erde schlafen, werden aufstehen.” 8  “… und viele derer, die in einer Aufschüttung der Erde schlafen, werden aufgeweckt werden.” 9  Spuren dieser Übersetzung auch noch bei Cassiodorus, in Psalm. 95.13, hg. Marc Adriaen, ­Magni Aurelii Cassiodori Expositio Psalmorum  LXXI–CL, CCSL  98 (Turnhout, 1958), S.  868.298: “et  multi dormientium in terra per fissuras exsurgent”; vgl. auch Fulgentius Ruspensis, Dicta regis Trasamundi et contra ea responsionum liber unus, hg. Jan Fraipont, Sancti Fulgentii Episcopi Ruspensis opera, CCSL 91 (Turnhout, 1968), S.  89.730–31: “et  multi dormientium in terrae fossura in opertione (vl.: apertione) exsurgent.” 10  Ein solches Wort der u-Deklination ist allerdings im Lateinischen nicht belegt, vgl. TLL; auf die Form fossu wird nicht verwiesen. Es gibt freilich das Substantiv der o-Deklination fossum, -i, wenn auch nicht sonderlich reich belegt, und selbstverständlich auch das Substantiv fossa, -ae, nicht aber ein Sub­ stantiv der u-Deklination. 11  Ambrosius, in Luc. 5.61, hg. Karl Schenkl, Sancti Ambrosii opera. Pars quarta. Expositio evangelii secundum Lucan, CSEL 32.4 (Wien, 1902), S. 206; in Psalm. 1.51.5, hg. Michael Petschenig, Sancti Ambrosii 5 

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Das bisher zu dieser Stelle nicht beachtete Fragmentum Sangallense überliefert fossura. Dieses Wort, das auch die Bedeutung “Grab” tragen kann,12 findet sich in der Vetus Latina auch an anderer Stelle offenbar für griechisches ἐν χώματι verwendet, vgl. Thren. 3.29.13 Die sonst in der lateinischen Literatur nirgendwo belegte Form fossu könnte somit auf fossura verweisen und für den Ambrosius-Text eine Konjektur notwendig machen; man würde dann annehmen, dass der Fehler fossu im Archetypus passierte, und ausschließen, dass Ambrosius oder seine Bibelhandschrift irrtümlich fossu geschrieben haben könnten.14 Weitere Überlieferungsvarianten verdienen allerdings ebenfalls Beachtung:15 Ambr. Exc. Sat. 2.66

ed. Faller Familie Γ Familie Σ

Frg. Sangall.

multi dormientium in terrae fossu in adapertionem exurgent multi dormientium in terrae fossu (v.l.: fossa/fossum) in (v.l.: ima) apertione exurgent multi dormientium in terra defossi in adapertionem exurgent multi dormientium in terra et fossura in opertione exurgent

Die Lesart defossi der Familie Σ ist offenbar eine syntaktische Glättung. Im Vergleich mit dem Bibeltext scheint eher in den Varianten der Familie  Γ der Text der Vorlage opera. Pars sexta. Explanatio Psalmorum XII, CSEL 64 (Wien, 1919), S. 44.12. Ein Vergleich mit der lateinischen Tradition abseits von Ambrosius zeigt, dass bei anderen lateinischen Autoren meist ein Äquivalent für ἐν γῆς χώματι fehlt; dort, wo diese Worte allerdings ins Lateinische übertragen sind, wird jedoch fast immer mit in bzw. de terrae pulvere übersetzt, so auch in der Vulgata, vgl. etwa Augustinus, Civ. Dei. 20.23, hg. Bernhard Dombart und Alfons Kalb, Sancti Aurelii Augustini Episcopi De civitate dei Libri XXII, 4. Aufl., Bd. 2 (Leipzig, 1929), S. 466.9 (dort aber auch: “in terrae aggere”). Es gibt sehr wenige Autoren, die wie Ambrosius nicht “in terrae pulvere” schreiben, nämlich einmal Aug. (wie zitiert Civ. Dei. 20.23, hg. Dombart und Kalb, S. 466.1; 8: “in terrae aggere”) bzw. Wendungen mit “limo terrae” bei Hieronymus, Eph. 3.4 (PL 26 [1845]:515A bzw. PL 26 [1866]:547B) bzw. Tract. Pelag. 4.8.3, hg. Carl P. Caspari, Briefe, Abhandlungen und Predigten aus den zwei letzen Jahrhunderten des kirchlichen Alterthums und dem Anfang des Mittelalters (Christiana, 1890), p. 79 (= PLS 1:1429). – Pulvis scheint in der Bibelsprache des Lateinischen durchaus als Äquivalent für das griechische Wort χῶμα verstehbar zu sein, denn beispielsweise Iob 20.11 heißt es in den lateinischen Fassungen des griechischen Zitates ἐπὶ χώματος κοιμηθήσεται (“auf dem Erdhügel schlafen”) ebenfalls “in pulverem dormient.” 12  TLL 6.1.1215.61–3. 13  Zwar fehlt dieser Vers in der LXX, in jüngeren griechischen Versionen findet man allerdings abermals χώμα, das in der Vetus Latina mit “in fossura” oder “in pulvere,” in der Vulgata mit “in pulvere” wiedergegeben wurde. 14  Dass Ambrosius die sonst nicht belegte Form fossu kannte und verwendete, lässt sich schwer ­beweisen, jedoch auch nicht mit letzter Sicherheit ausschließen. 15  Die Siglen in der Tabelle entsprechen jenen der Edition von Faller, CSEL 73; für nähere Angaben zu den Varianten siehe den textkritischen Apparat in CSEL 73 ad locum.

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abgebildet, und dabei fällt auf, dass fossu in Familie  Γ nicht einhellig überliefert ist: Während die Variante fossum wohl ein Stufenfehler von fossu ist,16 ist die Beurteilung der anderen Variante, nämlich fossa, schwieriger: Fossa könnte eine paläographische Verwechslung von “cc-a” und “u” in Minuskel-Handschriften sein und innerhalb von Γ möglicherweise ‘gleichberechtigt’ als Variante neben fossu treten; dann ist unklar, ob in der Vorlage von Γ fossa oder fossu stand (die Vokal-Verwechslung ist in beide Richtungen denkbar). Anders als fossu ist fossa belegbar und kann wie fossura ebenfalls die Bedeutung von tumulus, sepulcrum tragen:17 Tob. 8.13 findet sich in der Vetus Latina fossura, in der Vulgata fossa, und zu der bereits genannten Stelle in Thren. 3.29 gibt es zu fossura ebenfalls die Variante fossa.18 Ambrosius selbst verwendet fossa in Epist. 12.2 beim Zitat von 2 Reg. 18.17 (Vulgata: fovea).19 Es ist somit zumindest möglich, dass Ambrosius auch beim Zitat von Dan. 12.2 in Exc. Sat. 2.66 fossa geschrieben hat; denkbar wäre aber auch, dass fossa der Versuch eines Schreibers ist, das ungewöhnliche fossu zu korrigieren. Ob also fossu bei der Texterstellung gegenüber fossa den Vorzug verdient bzw. ob die Konjektur fossura notwendig ist, muss die weitere Auswertung des Überlieferungsbefundes zu klären versuchen. Selbst dann, wenn die Konjektur fossura nicht zwingend notwendig erscheint, muss jedoch auf jeden Fall im textkritischen Apparat auf die Schwierigkeit der Variantenwahl und auf fossura als Lesart der Vetus Latina (Fragmentum Sangallense) hingewiesen werden, die auch Ambrosius bekannt gewesen sein könnte. Zwischen Ambrosius’ Zitat und dem Fragmentum Sangallense gibt es, bei aller Ähnlichkeit, weitere kleine Divergenzen: zum einen terrae gegenüber terra et, zum anderen in adapertionem (mit Varianten) gegenüber in opertione. Wie ist der Befund deutbar? Da Ambrosius’ Genitiv terrae dem Genitiv γῆς im griechischen Bibeltext entspricht, liegt offenbar im Fragmentum Sangallense ein Irrtum vor (Verlesung von terrae zu terra et), während in Ambrosius’ Bibeltext der Genitiv noch erhalten war.20 Die zweite Abweichung betrifft abermals eine für Ambrosius nicht einhellig überlieferte Form: in  adapertionem (edierter Text) ist in Familie  Σ überliefert, während Familie  Γ in apertione (mit weiteren kleinen Abweichungen) tradiert. Bereits Michele Pellegrino Fossum findet sich z. B. in Bruxelles, Bibl. royale de Belgique 1893–99 (952), saec. XIex. (Sigle: Y; Faller, CSEL 73, notierte die Variante nicht). Ein Stufenfehler basierend auf fossu ist wahrscheinlich, auch wenn das Minuskel-“m” eine Verwechslung mit “ra” anzeigen könnte. 17  TLL 6.1.1210.25–29. 18  Vgl. Vetus Latina-Database: ps. Augustinus, Spec. 39, hg. Franz Weihrich, S. Aureli Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Liber qui appellatur Speculum et Liber de divinis scripturis sive Speculum quod fertur S. Augustini, CSEL 12 (Wien, 1887), S. 474.10. 19  Ambrosius, Epist. 12.2, hg. Faller (wie o. Anm. 3), S. 93.29. Der tote Abschalom wird in eine Grube geworfen: “… in fossam proiectus est.” 20  Wenn der Genitiv analog zum Bibeltext erst in der Ambrosius-Überlieferung wiederhergestellt worden wäre, wäre verwunderlich, warum umgekehrt fossu nicht durch fossura oder pulvere ersetzt worden wäre. 16 

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meinte in seiner Rezension zur Edition des Ambrosius-Textes in CSEL 73, dass diese Stelle auffällig und von Faller21 nicht zufriedenstellend gedeutet worden wäre.22 Welche Lesart entspricht hier Ambrosius’ Text: Ablativ oder Akkusativ bzw. apertio oder adapertio?23 Ein Vergleich mit anderen patristischen Autoren bringt nur wenige Anhaltspunkte. Wenn Dan. 12.2 zitiert wird, dann meist ohne ein Äquivalent zu diesen Worten. Ausnahmen sind:24 Fulg. Rusp. C. Arian. lin. 730–31 ps. Aug. Spec. 27

et multi dormientium in terrae fossura in opertione (v.l.: apertione) exsurgent et multi de dormientibus exurgent in opertionem terrae

Offenbar ist somit unsere Ambrosius-Stelle die einzige, an der nicht opertio, sondern (ad)apertio steht, und offenbar wurde das Wort auch bei Fulgentius in der Überlieferung verlesen. Ist es somit angeraten, für Ambrosius opertio zu konjizieren? Zwar ist möglich, dass apertio ein Überlieferungsirrtum ist, jedoch gibt es eine inhaltliche Stütze: Wenig später zitiert Ambrosius in Kapitel 75 seiner Rede, die besonders in ihrem zweiten Teil ein umfassender Traktat über die Auferstehung ist, aus dem Buch Ezechiel (37.9–14),25 unter anderem folgende Worte des Propheten (37.12–13): “Ecce ego aperio vobis monumenta vestra et educam vos de monumentis vestris in terram Israhel et scietis, quod ego sum dominus, cum aperiam sepulcra vestra et educam de sepulcris populum meum …”26 Diese Vorstellung der Öffnung der Gräber könnte bereits beim Zitat von Dan. 12.2 in Kapitel 66 der Rede eine Rolle gespielt haben.27 Damit könnte sich der Ablativ in (ad)apertione statt in opertione erklären. Untersucht man, ob adapertio oder apertio für Ambrosius’ Sprachgebrauch wahrscheinlicher ist, lässt sich Siehe unten Anm. 27. Pellegrino, [Rez. Faller, CSEL 73] (wie o. Anm. 4), S. 313–15. Pellegrino führt im Rahmen seiner Diskussion der Stelle ins Treffen, dass es kontaminierte Formen des Daniel-Textes gegeben habe (“Cipriano abbia usato una copia dell’antica versione dei LXX corretta in parte sulla nuova versione latina di Teodozione”), verweist aber nicht ausdrücklich auf die Variante im Fragmentum Sangallense. 23  Die Variante ima in Γ (“ima apertione”) könnte darauf hinweisen, dass auch in der Vorlage von Γ “adapertione” stand: “inadapertione” könnte aufgrund falscher Worttrennung bzw. durch den Ausfall des “d” zu “ima apertione” geworden sein. Genausogut kann es sich um eine irrtümliche Reduplikation handeln; eine Entscheidung, welche Variante korrekt ist, kann nur im Vergleich mit Ambrosius’ Sprachgebrauch getroffen werden, siehe oben im Folgenden. 24  Vgl. die Ergebnisse der Vetus Latina-Database, weitere Stellen ohne Äquivalent siehe oben Anm. 9. 25  Auch bei den Zitaten aus dem Buch Ezechiel ist die Beachtung des Wortlauts im Fragmentum Sangallense für Ambrosius von Bedeutung. Zu einer besonders auffälligen Stelle vgl. im Folgenden das Zitat aus Ez. 39.11 in De fide. 26  Exc. Sat. 2.75, hg. Faller, S. 290.12–15. 27  Inhaltlich ähnlich, wenn auch ohne Bezug auf Ezechiel, argumentierte auch Faller (CSEL  73, S. 285 ad locum) bei der Erklärung seiner Variantenwahl (“in adapertionem”): i.e. “ut adaperiatur, utri in vitam aeternam, utri in opprobrium exsurgant.” 21 

22 

Textkritisches zu Prophetenzitaten bei Ambrosius von Mailand

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zumindest festhalten, dass apertio gut bezeugt ist,28 während die fragliche Stelle aus der Rede für seinen Bruder der einzige Beleg dafür wäre, dass er adapertio geschrieben hätte.29

Ambr. Fid. 2.16.138 und Ez. 39.11 In Kapitel 138 des zweiten Buches von De fide zitiert Ambrosius aus Ezechiel 39.30 Herausgegriffen sei die lateinische Übertragung von Ez. 39.11 καὶ περιοικοδομήσουσιν τὸ περιστόμιον τῆς φάραγγος (“und sie werden die Öffnung des Tales umbauen”).31 Das Zitat ist für De fide in folgendem Wortlaut ediert: et per circuitum saepit os vallis (“und er schließt den Eingang des Tals durch einen Ringwall”).32 Per circuitum saepit entspricht dem griechischen περιοικοδομήσουσιν; os vallis dem griechischen περιστόμιον τῆς φάραγγος. Überliefert ist für Ambrosius an dieser Stelle allerdings nicht os, sondern eos, nämlich: saepit bzw. (in)struet/stravit eos vallis.33 Die humanistischen bzw. neuzeitlichen Editoren haben mit dem Blick auf den griechischen Bibeltext allerdings auch für den Ambrosius-Text ein Pendant zu περιστόμιον Hex. 5.4.11, hg. Karl Schenkl, S. Ambrosii opera (Pars I), CSEL 32.1 (Wien, 1896), S. 148.17 (keine Variante); Apol. Dav. I 17.79, hg. Karl Schenkl, S. Ambrosii opera (Pars II), CSEL 32.2 (Wien, 1897), S. 351.10 (keine Variante); in Luc. 5.48, hg. Schenkl (wie Anm. 11), S. 200.18 (Variante: “adapertionem”) und 9.10, S. 441.9 (keine Variante; an beiden Stellen handelt es sich um das Zitat Eph. 6.19); Myst. 1.3, hg. Otto Faller, Sancti Ambrosii opera. Pars Septima, CSEL 73 (Wien, 1955), S. 90.14 (keine Variante); Sacr. 1.1.2, hg. Faller, CSEL 73, S. 15.9 und 10 (Variante: “operatio”). 29  Das Verbum adaperire hingegen verwendet Ambrosius gelegentlich. 30  Unter einem anderen Gesichtspunkt vgl. Stefan Freund, “Πολυάνδριον (Ez 39.11–16): Eine Septuaginta-Übersetzung und ihre Fortwirkung im Lateinischen,” in Die Septuaginta – Text, Wirkung, Rezeption. 4. Internationale Fachtagung veranstaltet von Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D), Wuppertal 19.–22. Juli 2012, hg. Wolfgang Kraus und Siegfried Kreuzer, in Verbindung mit Martin Meiser und Marcus Sigismund (Tübingen, 2014), S. 713–27. Zu der Stelle im weiteren Kontext vgl. etwa auch Mark Humphries, “‘Gog is the Goth’: Biblical Barbarians in Ambrose of Milan’s De fide,” in Unclassical Traditions, vol. I: Alternatives to the Classical Past in Late Antiquity, hg. Christopher Kelly, Richard Flower und Michael Stuart Williams (Cambridge, 2010), S. 44–57; Domenico Lassandro, “Barbarici motus e bellorum procellae in Ambrogio,” in Ambrogio e i barbari. Atti del sesto dies academicus, 26–27 aprile 2010, hg. Isabella Gualandri und Raffaele Passarella (Milano und Roma, 2011), S. 65–76; Marco Sannazaro, “‘Gog iste Gothus est.’ Presenze barbariche a Milano e in Lombardia tra fine IV e inizi V secolo alla luce delle testimonianze archeologiche ed epigrafiche,” in Ambrogio e i barbari, S. 95–119; Giuseppe Visonà, “‘Gog iste Gothus est.’ L’ombra di Adrianopoli su Ambrogio di Milano,” in Ambrogio e i barbari, S. 133–67. 31  Übersetzung: Septuaginta Deutsch (wie Anm. 5), Band 1, S. 1405. 32  Fid. 2.16.138, hg. Faller, S. 105.20. Übersetzung: Markschies, Über den Glauben (wie o. Anm. 4), S. 349. 33  Zwar findet sich in einer der ältesten Handschriften, S (saec. V), “hos,” was auch als irrtümlich behauchtes “os” verstanden werden könnte; die Lesart in S lautet aber “struite hos” und deutet somit eher auf falsche Worttrennung von “struiteos” hin, so dass man für die Vorlage auch “struit eos” annehmen kann. 28 

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wieder hergestellt (siehe PL 16:588C): offenbar wurde seit Erasmus die Stelle mit dem Wortlaut struet peristomium gelesen, was wiederum die Mauriner zu struet os vallis und zuletzt Faller zu saepit os vallis ‘korrigierten.’ Es ist allerdings bemerkenswert, dass das Fragmentum Sangallense, dessen Lesarten auch bei der Beurteilung dieser Stelle bisher außer Acht gelassen wurden, nicht saepit os, sondern struet eos liest. Blickt man außerdem auf die überlieferten Lesarten des Ambrosius-Textes, finden sich noch weitere kleinere Varianten, die dem Text des Fragmentum Sangallense ähneln (fett gedruckt sind Stellen, an denen zum AmbrosiusText überlieferte Varianten mit Lesarten des Fragments übereinstimmen):34 Ez. 39.10–12 (LXX)

Ez. 39.10–12

καὶ προνομεύσουσιν τοὺς προνομεύσαντας αὐτοὺς καὶ σκυλεύσουσιν τοὺς σκυλεύσαντας αὐτούς, λέγει κύριος. καὶ ἔσται ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ δώσω τῷ Γωγ τόπον ὀνομαστόν, μνημεῖον ἐν Ισραηλ, τὸ πολυανδρεῖον τῶν ἐπελθόντων πρὸς τῇ θαλάσσῃ, καὶ περιοικοδομήσουσιν τὸ περιστόμιον τῆς φάραγγος· καὶ κατορύξουσιν ἐκεῖ τὸν Γωγ καὶ πᾶν τὸ πλῆθος αὐτοῦ, καὶ κληθήσεται Τὸ γαι τὸ πολυανδρεῖον τοῦ Γωγ. καὶ κατορύξουσιν αὐτοὺς οἶκος Ισραηλ, ἵνα καθαρισθῇ ἡ γῆ, ἐν ἑπταμήνῳ. Ambr. Fid. 2.16.138 (ed. Faller) Fragmentum Sangallense Et praedabunt eos, qui depraedati eos fuerant, et despoliabunt eos, qui sibi spolia detraxerant, dicit dominus. Eritque in die illa, dabo Gog … locum nominatum, monumentum in Istrahel, multorum virorum congestum, qui supervenerunt ad mare; et per circuitum saepit os vallis et obruit illic Gog et totam multitudinem eius, et vocabitur Ge poliandrium Gog, et obruit eos domus Istrahel, ut purgetur terra in septem mensibus.

Et depraedabuntur eos qui deprae­ dati eos fuerant, et despoliabunt eos, qui sibi spolia detraxerunt, dicit dominus. Eritque in die illa dabo Gog locum nominatum, monumentum in Israel multorum virorum congestium, qui supervenerunt ad mare; et per circuitum struet eos vallis et obruit illic Gog et totam multitudinem eius, et vocabitur Ge pholiaandrium Gog, et obruent eos domus Israel, ut purgetur terram in septem mensibus.

Zum Vergleich sei auch auf Hieronymus, in Ez. 11 (ad 39.1/16), hg. Frans Glorie, S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera, Pars 1, Opera Exegetica 4, Commentariorum in Hiezechielem Libri XIV, CCSL 75 (Turnhout, 1964), S. 536.1795–1805 verwiesen: “et depraedabuntur eos quibus praedae fuerant, et diripient vastatores suos, ait Dominus Deus. Et erit in die illa, dabo Gog locum nominatum sepulcrum in Israel, vallem viatorum ad orientem maris, quae obstupescere facit praetereuntes (sive: πολυάνδριον eorum qui venerint ad mare, et aedificabunt per circuitum os vallis); et sepelient ibi Gog et omnem multitudinem eius, et vocabitur vallis (sive: ‘ge‘) multitudinis Gog. Et sepelient eos domus Israel ut mundent terram (sive: ut mundetur terra) septem mensibus.” An späterer Stelle, S. 540.1924 (mit Hinweis auf LXX): “… et aedificabunt in circuitu [in] introitum vallis.” 34 

Textkritisches zu Prophetenzitaten bei Ambrosius von Mailand Varianten in Ambr. Fid.35

praedabunt PD

Ez. 39.10–12 (Vulgata)

depraedabunt AKMEO depraedabuntur cett. (vgl. auch Vulgata)

detraxerant PDMCE

detraxerunt UAKLVZSWO

congestum PA D LVZCWO

congestium KMEA ac congestivum SU congestior Dac

saepit P

struet A pcDMEO struite S instruet C sternet K stravit LVZW istum et UA ac

os m (= editio Maurinorum)

hos S (cf. supra: struite) eos cett.

obruit PL

obruet36 cett.

pc

151

pc

Et depraedabuntur eos quibus praedae fuerant et diripient vastatores suos ait dominus deus. Et erit in die illa dabo Gog locum nominatum sepulchrum in Israhel vallem viatorum ad orientem maris quae obstupescere facit praeter­euntes et sepelient ibi Gog et omnem multitudinem eius et vocabitur vallis multitudinis Gog et sepelient eos domus Israhel ut mundent terram septem mensibus.

Die Übereinstimmungen (auch wenn es wie bei obruit und obruet e/i-Vertauschungen sein können) verdienen Beachtung: Ambrosius könnte auch hier einen Wortlaut wie im Fragmentum Sangallense zitiert haben. Faller folgte bei der Edition von De fide allerdings vielfach Lesarten, die nur im ältesten Textzeugen, der Handschrift P (Paris, BnF lat. 8907, saec. V), zu finden sind,37 vgl.  in diesem Zitat etwa saepit. Faller gab dieser Handschrift wohl aufgrund ihres Alters großes Gewicht, und da saepit außerdem den Eindruck erweckt, dem griechischen Original (περιοικοδομήσουσιν) zu entsprechen – wenn auch nicht im Tempus –, schien auch hier eine gute Lesart überliefert. Zweierlei sollte jedoch bedacht werden: • auch P liest nicht (saepit) os, sondern (saepit) eos. Wollte man die Lesart von P mit allen Mitteln verteidigen, könnte man zwar vorbringen, dass os unabhängig Die Varianten sind wiedergegeben aus der von Otto Faller erstellten Edition (CSEL 78, S. 105). An  manchen Stellen scheinen die Kollationen, auf die Faller sich stützen konnte, nicht zuverlässig (vgl. auch unten zu Anm. 66 und 78), beispielsweise findet sich die Variante congestium (wie hier vermerkt) auch noch in Handschrift  K (eine systematische Überprüfung aller Handschriften zu dieser Stelle konnte ich nicht unternehmen). Zu den Siglen siehe weiter unten. 36  Die Übereinstimmung mit dem Fragment besteht freilich nur im Tempus, nicht im Numerus. 37  Siehe unten Anm. 43. 35 

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von allen anderen zu eos verdorben sein könnte; mir erscheint es jedoch eher als Indiz dafür, dass auch  P eos und somit eine Lesart wie im Fragmentum Sangallense vorfand und lediglich struet durch ein anderes Prädikat ersetzte (wie u.  a. K: sternet oder LVZW: stravit). Saepit wäre dann textgeschichtlich ein Stufenfehler: περιοικοδομήσουσιν τὸ περιστόμιον τῆς φάραγγος (Ez. 39.11 LXX) → struet eos vallis (Fragmentum Sangallense und vielleicht Ambr. Fid. 2.16.138) → saepit eos vallis (P). • Betrachtet man Fallers Stemma zu De fide (siehe im Folgenden), ergeben sich hinsichtlich der Entscheidung Bedenken, jene Lesarten zu bevorzugen, die  P –  an vielen Stellen gegen den Konsens der restlichen Überlieferung  – tradiert. Zwar könnte im Fall von De fide 2.16.138 der Vetus Latina-Text (im Wortlaut des Fragmentum Sangallense) alle jüngeren Handschriften beeinflusst haben, jedoch ließe sich diese Annahme eher bei einem ‘linearen’ Überlieferungsverlauf stützen.38 Dies entspricht jedoch nicht der gängigen Meinung zur Entstehungs-, Editionsund Überlieferungsgeschichte von De  fide: Legt man Fallers Stemma zugrunde, müsste diese Beeinflussung in mehreren Überlieferungszweigen (und auch in einer Handschrift, die Faller als Abschrift von  P ansah, nämlich in  D) passiert sein.39 Zudem nimmt Faller mehrere Archetypoi an, die er “editiones” nannte: A1 sind die ersten zwei Bücher De fide, A2 die Bücher 3–5, A3 das fünf-bändige Werk (zu den ‘Redaktionsstufen’ näher im Folgenden).40 Die Annahme von A2 (bezeugt durch Handschrift S und R) ist allerdings problematisch bzw. widersprüchlich, weil auch S die ersten zwei Bücher enthält und R unvollständig erhalten ist; sie wurde aber auch aus anderen Gründen kritisiert.41 Fallers Stemma sieht – vereinfacht – folgendermaßen aus:

Die älteste Handschrift  P hätte den korrekten Text bewahrt, während alle jüngeren auf eine ­spätere fehlerhafte Entwicklungsstufe zurückgehen. 39  Auch jene Handschriften, die nicht “struet” lesen, bieten Lesarten, die als Stufenfehler von “struet,” nicht aber von “saepit,” erscheinen, abgesehen von “instruet”: “stravit,” “sternet,” oder “istum et.” 40  Vgl. CSEL 78, S. 40*–41*. Die Zusammenhänge zwischen den “editiones” sind durch Linien dargestellt, jedoch ist ihre exakte Bedeutung unklar: folgt textgeschichtlich A2 aus A1 bzw. A3 aus A2, obwohl Faller in A2 nicht denselben Textumfang gegeben sah wie in A3, oder sollen diese Linien nur einen ‘zeitlichen Entwicklungsschritt’ anzeigen? 41  Vgl. unten Anm. 44. 38 

Textkritisches zu Prophetenzitaten bei Ambrosius von Mailand A1

A2

153

A3

a1 P R °

a3

S

°

°

a4

Lm1

°

°

°

φ

K

U

A

T

C V

D

M W E

Z, Lm2 N O (I+II)

O (III–V)

Siglen:42 P D K U A T O

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 8907, saec. V (CLA 5.572) Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 1745, saec. IX/X (Bischoff, Kat. nr. 4052) Köln, Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, MS 33, saec. X Vaticano, Bibl. Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 266, saec. IX 2/4 (Bischoff, Kat. nr. 6824) Saint-Claude, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 1, saec. IX (Bischoff, Kat. nr. 5390) Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 813, s. IX3/4 (Bischoff, Kat. nr. 6265) Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, MS Membr. I 60, saec. XIII/XIV

Einige Datierungen weichen von den in CSEL 78 gegebenen ab, siehe dazu die Angaben in den Katalogen von Bischoff (wie o. Anm. 2). Zur Datierung von Codex C, der in wisigotischer Schrift geschrieben und somit im Katalog von Bischoff nicht erfasst ist, siehe die Angaben in CSEL 78, S. 34* Anm. 41. 42 

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Ravenna, Museo Arcivescovile, s.n., saec. V/VI (CLA 4.410a; vgl. C. Pasini, “Giovanni Mercati e il Codice Ravennate di S. Ambrogio,” in Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae XXIV [Studi e testi 529] [Città del Vaticano, 2018], S. 497–552) St Paul, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 1, 1, saec. V2 (Datierung: CLA 10.1450) Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS 13, saec. IX 2/4 (Bischoff, Kat. nr. 2517) Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 267, saec. IX med. (Bischoff, Kat. nr. 6825) Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 264, saec. XI/XII Montecassino, Biblioteca dell’Abbazia, MS 4, saec. IX Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 5760, saec. IX/X (Bischoff, Kat. nr. 6917) Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 1746, saec. IX3/4 (Bischoff, Kat. nr. 4054) München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 8113, saec. IX (Bischoff, Kat. nr. 3102) Salisbury, Cathedral Library, MS 140, saec. XII

S L V Z C W E M N

Das Stemma legt nahe, dass Sonderlesarten von P eher Sonderfehler sind. Dennoch folgte Faller auch an anderen, mitunter für die Qualität von P nicht aussagekräftigen Stellen jener Lesart, wie sie nur in P (manchmal im Konsens mit dem nahen Verwandten D) gegen den Konsens aller anderen Handschriften überliefert ist,43 sicherte diese Entscheidung methodisch jedoch nicht näher ab. Sucht man in der Einleitung zu CSEL 78 außerdem nach Belegen für die von Faller konstatierten “editiones” A1, A2, A3 bzw. Hyparchetypoi (a1, a3, a4), finden sich ebenfalls keine näheren Begründungen aus dem textgeschichtlichen Befund (Bindefehler oder Ähnliches). Wie erwähnt, wurde an Fallers Stemma zwar die Annahme von A2 kritisiert, jedoch wäre “die Gültigkeit der Grundarchitektur des Fallerschen Stemmas” als nach wie vor gegeben.44 Wie das Folgende zeigen möchte, erscheint jeZ. B.: Fid. 1.2.14, S. 9.20 inperfectus deus potest P (potest inperfectus deus tr. cett.); 1.3.25, S. 13.40: aequalitatem P (unitatem cett.); 1.3.28, S. 14.59 deus est P (tr. vel est om. cett.) [aber vgl. wenige Zeilen später und 2.9.80, S. 86.59!]; 1.3.29, S. 14.65 alius non possit PD (tr. cett.); 1.4.33, S. 16.18 iudaei PD (om. cett.); 1.12.77, S. 34.41: mater ante feta P (matris ante fetus cett.); 1.13.83, S. 36.34 est1 P (om. cett.); 1.13.83, S. 36.35 et (P) … et (PVW) (om. cett.); 1.14.93, S. 40.61 est ex Maria PV (ex Maria est cett.); 1.14.94, S. 41.67 adsumpto corpori P (adsumptioni corporis cett.); 1.15.99, S. 43.37 videre P (videri cett.); 2.2.24, S. 65.23 speculo PZ (in praem. cett.); 2.11.96, S. 92.58 et2 P (om. cett.); 2.12.103, S. 95.38 scamellum P (aliter alii); 2.13.122, S. 100.71 ut2 P (om. cett.). Beim Zitat von 1 Tim. 4.1 (Fid. 2.15.134, S. 103.40–41: “discedent quidam a fide intendentes spiritibus seductoribus doctrinis daemoniorum”) folgt Faller der nur in PK überlieferten Lesart “seductoribus,” wo alle anderen Handschriften “erroris” bieten (Lesart der Vulgata und des sog. Vulgata-Textes der Vetus Latina, dort aber auch “seductoribus”; in K ist die Ausweisung des Bibelzitates auffällig: rot geschrieben ist “discedent … spiritibus,” in einer neuen Zeile steht in schwarzer Tinte “seductoribus,” wieder in einer neuen Zeile der Rest des Bibelzitates, “doctrinis daemoniorum,” vgl. fol. 65v). 44  Das Zitat (und zur Gültigkeit des Stemma): Markschies, Über den Glauben (wie o. Anm.  4), S. 97. Auch Paul Mattei, “La coordination de l’édition des œuvres dogmatiques d’Ambroise (De fide, 43 

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doch eine nähere Untersuchung angebracht, die von zwei Fragen geleitet wird: Was weiß man über die Genese/ Veröffentlichung von De fide und wie stellt sich der textgeschichtliche Befund dar?

Wie viele ‘Ausgaben’ von De fide erstellte Ambrosius? Die fünf Bücher sind bekanntlich in zumindest zwei Etappen geschrieben worden bzw. an die Öffentlichkeit gelangt.45 Aus dem Beginn von Buch 3 weiß man, dass Ambrosius zuerst die ersten zwei und später die restlichen drei Bücher verfasst hat.46 Aus der unmittelbaren Reaktion von arianischer Seite auf die ersten zwei Bücher De fide, die er Kaiser Gratian sandte, wird geschlossen, dass eine Abschrift davon (nämlich der an Gratian gesandten Bücher) in arianischen Kreisen existierte.47 Es könnte sein, dass Ambrosius die arianische Reaktion auf seine ersten zwei Bücher kannte und in den Büchern 3–5 darauf reagierte.48 De Spiritu sancto, De dominicae incarnationis sacramento),” in Lire et éditer aujourd’hui Ambroise de Milan. Actes du colloque de l’Université de Metz (20–21 mai 2015), ed. Gérard Nauroy (Bern u. a., 2007), S. 185–95, dort 187, spricht gegen die Notwendigkeit einer Neuedition. Fallers Einschätzung: CSEL 78, S. 40*–41*. Zur Frage nach A2 siehe bereits Jean-Paul Bouhot, “Origine et composition des «Scolies Ariennes» du manuscrit Paris, B. N., LAT. 8907,” Revue d’histoire des textes 9 (1981), 303–23, S. 309 bzw. knapp Bernard Botte, [Rez. Faller, CSEL 78], Bulletin de théologie ancienne et médiévale 9 (1963), S. 219–20, no. 678, S. 220: “La base (sc. für die Hypothese, dass es A2 gab) me paraît un peu étroite”; gegen die Annahme, dass es A2 gab, zuletzt Markschies, Über den Glauben (wie o. Anm. 4), S. 91–97 (97–98 außerdem der Einwand, dass die Kapitelüberschriften nicht auf Ambrosius zurückgehen). 45  Die Problemlage ist vergleichbar mit Augustinus, De doctrina christiana, vgl. dazu die Einleitungen in William M. Green, hg., Sancti Aureli Augustini Opera, CSEL 80 (Wien, 1963), S. VII–XIII sowie Klaus-Detlef Daur und Joseph Martin, hg. Sancti Aurelii Augustini De doctrina Christiana. De vera religione, CCSL 32 (Turnhout, 1962), S. VII–XIX, aber auch Guglielmo Cavallo, “I fondamenti materiali della trasmissione dei testi patristici nella tarda antichità: libri, scritture, contesti,” in La trasmissione dei testi patristici latini: problemi e prospettive. Atti del Colloquio internazionale Roma, 26–28 Ottobre 2009, hg. Emmanuela Colombi, Instrumenta patristica et mediaevalia 60 (Turnhout, 2012), S. 51–73, dort 56– 7; vgl. auch Augustinus, De civitate dei, siehe dazu Emmanuela Colombi, “Assetto librario ed elementi paratestuali nei manoscritti tardoantichi e carolingi del De civitate dei di Agostino: alcune riflessioni,” Segno e testo 11 (2013), 183–272 (mit weiteren Literaturhinweisen). 46  Faller, De fide (CSEL 78), S. 40*–41*; wann die ersten zwei Bücher geschrieben wurden, war Gegenstand von Diskussionen, vgl. u. a. (jeweils mit Hinweis auf ältere Literatur) Markschies Über den Glauben (wie o. Anm. 4), S. 47–49 bzw. 91–97; ders., Ambrosius von Mailand und die Trinitätstheologie. Kirchen- und theologiegeschichtliche Studien zu Antiarianismus und Neunizänismus bei Ambrosius und im lateinischen Westen (364–381 n.Chr.) (Tübingen, 1995), S. 166–76; Daniel H. Williams, Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Arian-Nicene Conflicts (Oxford, 1995), S. 128–53; Timothy David Barnes, “Ambrose and Gratian,” Antiquité tardive 7 (1999), 165–74, S. 170–73; Giuseppe Visonà (hg.), Cronologia Ambrosiana. Bibliografia Ambrosiana (1900–2000) (Milano-Roma, 2004), S. 101–106. 47  Vgl. zuletzt etwa Markschies, Ambrosius (wie o. Anm. 46), S. 175, Anm. 505; Williams, Ambrose (wie o. Anm. 46), S. 143 und 148–49. 48  Siehe Markschies, Über den Glauben (wie o. Anm. 4), S. 54, Anm. 219.

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Man weiß außerdem, dass Kaiser Gratian in seinem Brief Cupio valde später um abermalige Zusendung der ersten zwei Bücher, erweitert um einen Traktat über den Heiligen Geist, gebeten und dass Ambrosius dem Kaiser die ersten zwei Bücher offenbar noch einmal gesandt hat.49 Er verfasste zuerst die restlichen drei Bücher De fide und erst danach das vom Kaiser erbetene Werk De spiritu sancto.50 Ambrosius hat somit aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach dem Kaiser De fide 1+2 zweimal, De fide 3–5 einmal gesandt. Da Buch 3 einen Prolog hat (vgl. auch Buch 5), in dem sich Ambrosius direkt an den Kaiser wendet und meint, dass er nun der Bitte nachkommt und weitere Bücher folgen lässt, ist denkbar, dass die Bücher 3–5 für sich genommen dem Kaiser übergeben wurden. Fid. 3.1.2 (“... ea quae perstricta paucis superius sunt, placuit paulo latius exsequi”) wird zwar inhaltlich auf die ersten zwei Bücher Bezug genommen; bedeutet dies jedoch zwingend, dass diese noch einmal unmittelbar vorangestellt worden sein müssen? Was wir wissen, beschränkt sich auf den Kontakt zwischen Ambrosius und Kaiser Gratian. Welche Schlüsse aber darf man in der Frage ziehen, wie die Bücher ‘abseits des Kaisers’ in Umlauf kamen? Da sich die erhaltenen Textzeugen hinsichtlich des Überlieferungsumfangs in zwei Gruppen teilen und entweder nur die ersten zwei oder alle fünf Bücher (in manchen Handschriften unvollständig) enthalten, gelten in der Forschung alle zwei-Buch-Handschriften als Zeugen der ersten Fassung in zwei Büchern (A1 in Fallers Stemma), die Handschriften der fünf-Buch-Fassung als Zeugen der von Ambrosius erstellten ‘Edition’ aller fünf Bücher (A3).51 Hinsichtlich der zweiBuch-Fassung hat Jean-Paul Bouhot außerdem folgende mit der arianischen Reaktion in Zusammenhang stehende These aufgestellt,52 die bereits von Roger Gryson kritisch beleuchtet wurde:53 Die singuläre Werkzusammenstellung wie in Codex P – De fide gefolgt von den Gesta concilii Aquileiensis – sei am Kaiserhof für die Arianer vorgenommen worden und stehe mit Palladius von Rathiaria in Verbindung. Anders als Bouhot Gratian, Cupio valde, hg. Otto Faller, Sancti Ambrosii opera, CSEL 79 (Wien, 1964), S. 3–4; vgl. Ambrosius, Epist. extra coll. 12, hg. Michaela Zelzer, Sancti Ambrosi opera. Pars X. Epistulae et Acta, CSEL 82.3 (Wien, 1982), S. 219–21 (besonders S. 221). Gerätselt wurde über den Grund, weshalb der Kaiser noch einmal um die zwei Bücher bat (Faller, CSEL 79, S. 4, vermerkt: “fortasse, quia prius exemplar … Gratianus dederat Theodosio,” was Markschies, Ambrosius (wie o. Anm. 46), S. 173, Anm. 497 als unbeweisbar kennzeichnet; er vermerkt: “genausogut könnte man behaupten, der Kaiser habe sie verloren”). 50  Zur Chronologie vgl.  die oben Anm.  46 genannte Literatur bzw. die Einleitungen in Faller, CSEL 78 und 79. 51  Zu bisher geäußerter Kritik an A2 in Fallers Stemma siehe oben Anm.  44. H.  Emonds, Zweite Auflage im Altertum: kulturgeschichtliche Studien zur Überlieferung der antiken Literatur (Leipzig 1941), berücksichtigt De fide nicht. 52  Vgl. oben mit Anm. 47. 53  Bouhot, “Origine” (wie o. Anm.  44), S.  306–309 bzw. 321; Roger Gryson, “Origine et composition des « Scolies Ariennes » du manuscrit Paris, B.  N., Lat.  8907,” Revue d’histoire des textes 14/15 (1984/1985), 369–75, besonders S. 372. 49 

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(jedoch ohne Bezugnahme auf Bouhot oder Gryson) meinte Michaela Zelzer, dass die Zusammenstellung von De fide und den Gesta von Ambrosius selbst vorgenommen wurde.54 Bereits die Antwort auf diese Frage, ob Ambrosius selbst De fide und die Gesta verbunden hat oder ob P eine am Kaiserhof sekundär geschaffene Zusammenstellung bezeugt, spielt eine wichtige Rolle in der Beurteilung der Überlieferungslage (siehe im Folgenden). Wie die Scholien in P zu De fide und den Gesta, nämlich die Dissertatio Maximini bzw. Fragmenta Palladii,55 belegen, gab es seitens der Arianer Reaktionen auf die ersten zwei (dem Kaiser übersandten) Bücher; somit erschloss Bouhot folgenden historischen Ablauf: Ambrosius übersandte dem Kaiser sein Exemplar von De fide 1+2, Palladius annotierte es, woraufhin es Ambrosius zurückgegeben wurde (weswegen der Kaiser später um erneute Zusendung gebeten habe) und dem Mailänder Bischof als Grundlage für seine Reaktion in De fide 3–5 diente.56 Ambrosius habe erst die fünfBuch-Fassung als vollständig angesehen und ‘herausgegeben’;57 der im 5. Jh. geschriebene Codex P sei eine Abschrift einer Zusammenstellung, die in arianischen Kreisen am Kaiserhof angefertigt wurde, und diese erschlossene Abschrift (auch Faller sah mit a1 irgendeine Abschrift von Ambrosius’ Original als Zwischenstufe an) sei auch Vorlage für alle weiteren erhaltenen Handschriften der zwei-Buch-Fassung geworden.58 Die  Annahme ist eine nicht restlos klare Hypothese59 und kann nicht ohne nähere Untersuchung als Faktum für die stemmatische Auswertung zugrundegelegt werden (vgl.  auch die –  ebenfalls nicht durch sichere Beweise gestützte  – gegenteilige Michaela Zelzer, “Zur frühen Verbreitung der Werke des Ambrosius und zu ihren authentischen Titeln,” Studia Patristica 40 (2006), 315–22, S. 318. Das von Zelzer vorgebrachte Argument, der erhaltene Teil der Gesta stelle eine sinnvolle Ergänzung der beiden ersten Bücher De fide dar, könnte allerdings auch für die Annahme geltend gemacht werden, die Dokumente wären aus inhaltlichen Gründen sekundär zusammengefügt worden. – Zu den Gesta meinte Zelzer (CSEL 82/3), dass alle Handschriften auf P fußen, und nannte einen Stufenfehler (eine Ergänzung auf fol. 340r in P, die in allen Handschriften, die optisch auf einem Befund wie in P aufbauen müssen, an falscher Stelle eingefügt wurde). Bouhot, “Origine” (wie o. Anm. 44), S. 309–10 meinte zwar, dass der Schreiber in P seinerseits hier eine Vorlage optisch “reproduzieren” könnte, weshalb P nicht Vorlage, sondern Verwandter der weiteren erhaltenen Handschriften wäre, jedoch wurde die Ergänzung in P (“firmande sunt”) nicht beim ersten Abschreiben, sondern im Zuge eines (frühen) Korrekturdurchgangs vorgenommen, weshalb Bouhots Argument nicht hält. Vgl. Gryson, “Origine” (wie o. Anm. 53), S. 371 (zum edierten Text der Gesta und Korrekturen s. ders., “Le texte des Actes du Concile d’Aquilée (381),” Scriptorium 38 [1984], 132–39). 55  Zur Frage, wieweit sich Fid. ausdrücklich gegen Palladius richtet, siehe Gryson, “Origine” (wie o. Anm. 53). Zusammenfassend zur literarischen Reaktion auf De fide vgl. Markschies, Über den Glauben (wie o. Anm. 4), S. 52–54. Die arianischen Scholien sind ediert von Roger Gryson, Scripta Arriana Latina I, CCSL 87 (Turnhout, 1982). 56  Bouhot, “Origine” (wie o. Anm. 44), S. 306–307 und 321 mit Anm. 1. 57  Bouhot, “Origine” (wie o. Anm. 44), S. 306–307. 58  Bouhot, “Origine” (wie o. Anm. 44), S. 308 (Stemma) und 309 bzw. 321. 59  Vgl. auch die Kritik von Gryson, “Origine” (wie o. Anm. 53). 54 

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Annahme von Zelzer, Ambrosius selbst habe Fid. und die Gesta zusammengestellt).60 Hinzu kommt: Auch wenn Bouhot richtig vermutet, dass P eine am Kaiserhof erstellte Abschrift bezeugt, müsste diese erschlossene Abschrift tatsächlich auch Ausgangspunkt für alle erhaltenen Handschriften der zwei-Buch-Fassung sein? Hat Ambrosius tatsächlich sein Original aus der Hand gegeben, ohne eine Kopie anzufertigen? Wenn es in A ­ mbrosius’ Besitz weitere Exemplare der ersten Fassung gab, könnten auch diese – wann und durch wen auch immer – in die Öffentlichkeit gelangt sein (vielleicht auch erst posthum aus seinem Archiv). Bevor versucht wird, das historisch Erschlossene mit textgeschichtlichen Ergebnissen zu vereinen, soll überlegt werden, welche Unsicherheiten mit der ‘Veröffentlichung’ von De fide verbunden sind (A1 bezeichnet im Folgenden die Fassung in zwei Büchern, A261 die Bücher 1–5): Wenn Ambrosius eine fünf-Buch-Fassung veröffentlicht hat, könnte er die Bücher 3–5 an seinen ‘Urtext’ der ersten zwei Bücher (A1) angefügt haben:

Wenn aber die These zutrifft, dass die (oder einige?) Handschriften der zwei-BuchFassung auf die in homöischen Kreisen erstellte Abschrift zurückgehen,62 würden die Handschriften der zwei-Buch-Fassung – anders als jene der fünf-Buch-Fassung – nicht unbedingt A1, sondern die Abschrift a1 bezeugen und könnten gegenüber dem Am­ brosius-Text Fehler enthalten.63 Hinzu kommt: Welches Exemplar hat Ambrosius dem Kaiser übersandt? Sein Original A1 oder eine Abschrift von A1 (A1*), in der ebenfalls Abweichungen von A1 passiert sein können, von der dann wiederum a1 abgeschrieben wurde? Wenn Ambrosius jedoch die Bücher 3–5 nicht an sein Urexemplar der zwei-BuchFassung (A1) angefügt hat, sondern für die Veröffentlichung der fünf-Buch-Fassung die ersten zwei Bücher noch einmal hat abschreiben lassen und als neue komplette Eine Abschrift, auf die Palladius reagierte, muss es freilich in irgendeiner Form gegeben haben (Gryson, “Origine” [wie o. Anm. 53], S. 373: “Palladius a donc pu … réfuter en 379 les deux premiers livres du De fide sur la base d’une copie qu’il en avait obtenue à la cour”). Ist aber mit Sicherheit anzunehmen, dass genau diese in die Überlieferung gelangte? 61  Diese Bezeichnung ist nicht gleichbedeutend mit “A2” in Fallers Edition CSEL 78. 62  Siehe oben mit Anm. 53 bzw. Anm. 60. 63  War allerdings die ‘homöische Abschrift’ Ausgangspunkt für alle Handschriften der zwei-BuchFassung? Vgl. dazu weiter unten. 60 

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Abschrift (= A2) aus der Hand gab, ergibt sich auch für die fünf-Buch-Sammlung eine Zwischenstufe zwischen  A1 und den erhaltenen Handschriften. Diese vollständige Abschrift aller Bücher könnte somit ihrerseits Abweichungen gegenüber dem aufweisen, was Ambrosius in A1 ursprünglich geschrieben hat bzw. was in a1 steht. Das könnte bedeuten, dass man den Text von A1 zwar vielleicht erschließen kann, dass manche ursprünglichen Lesarten aber nie in einem Exemplar der fünf-Buch-Fassung standen. Stemmatisch könnte das folgendermaßen aussehen:

Bis hierher gehen die Überlegungen davon aus, dass Ambrosius selbst eine fünfBuch-Fassung ediert hat. Was aber, wenn Ambrosius keine fünf-Buch-Fassung (A2) veröffentlicht hat, sondern wenn die Bücher  1+2 bzw.  3–5 –  aus welchen Gründen immer  – als zwei Teile an die Öffentlichkeit gelangten und A2 sekundär entstanden ist? Ambrosius könnte die Bücher  3–5 zwar als Fortsetzung der ersten beiden Bücher verfasst haben, jedoch könnte sein, dass diese Fortsetzung – für deren Abfassung die ersten beiden Bücher nicht mit abgeschrieben sein müssen  – in Form dreier separater Bücher (aus seinem Privatbestand) an die Öffentlichkeit und somit in die Überlieferung gelangte. Die  Überlieferung könnte diese drei Bücher an unterschiedliche Abschriften der ersten zwei Bücher angefügt haben. Da  es keinen erhaltenen Textzeugen gibt, der nur die Bücher  3–5 tradiert, muss man allerdings annehmen, dass eine Zusammenführung aller fünf Bücher bereits früh (also zur Zeit der Abfassung der ältesten Handschriften zur 5-Buch-Fassung  S bzw.  R, ca. saec. V2/V–VI) erfolgt ist. Denkbar wäre, dass sogar unterschiedliche Fassungen von Zusammenstellungen in fünf Büchern vorliegen, weil unterschiedliche Abschriften aus unterschiedlichen Überlieferungszweigen von A1 mit solchen aus dem (den) Überlieferungszweig(en) von Buch 3–5 kombiniert worden sein können. Das ergäbe

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zahlreiche Variationsmöglichkeiten (die Knotenpunkte stehen für mögliche Zwischenstufen wie a1), z. B.:64

Dies ist sehr spekulativ und nicht beweisbar, jedoch soll gezeigt werden, dass die Annahme, alle Handschriften mit zwei Büchern bezeugen  A1, alle Handschriften mit fünf Büchern bezeugen dasselbe A1, jedoch erweitert um drei Bücher, nicht unproblematisch ist. Eine kritische Text-Edition müsste diskutieren, welche Veröffentlichungs-Hypothese wahrscheinlich ist und was somit ediert werden kann, und dies mit Ergebnissen aus dem textgeschichtlichen Befund absichern.

Überlegungen zum Textbefund Wie erwähnt, vermisst man in Fallers Einleitung Beispiele, die seine stemmatischen Schlüsse auch aus textgeschichtlicher Sicht stützen und die Existenz der erschlossenen ‘Editionen’ (A1 oder A3) bzw. der Knotenpunkte, besonders a3, plausibel machen.65 Der textkritische Apparat in CSEL  78 ist in seinen Grundzügen wohl verlässlich; stichprobenartige Überprüfungen von Einzelstellen haben aber gezeigt, dass es Fehler Kann ausgeschlossen werden, dass sogar beides zutrifft, nämlich dass es eine von Ambrosius erstellte fünf-Buch-Sammlung gibt, neben die ein (alter) Hyparchetypus tritt, der Buch 1+2 mit einem anderen Strang der Bücher 3–5 kombinierte? 65  Zu den Untergruppen der fünf-Buch-Fassung listet Faller allerdings durchaus Bindefehler auf. 64 

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gibt,66 was die Beurteilung im Folgenden nur mit Vorbehalt ermöglicht. Ein auch für die Frage nach dem korrekten Text schwerwiegendes Beispiel soll dies verdeutlichen: Fid. 2.4.36, S. 69.16–18 wird Zach. 2.9 zitiert: “quia ecce ego inicio manum meam super eos, qui depraedaverunt vos, et eruam vos, et erunt in praedam, qui praedaverunt vos.” Die Worte et eruam vos stehen nach Fallers Angaben in den Handschriften K und V, was sich beim Blick in die Codices jedoch als Irrtum erweist (in K fehlt et eruam vos; V weist sogar dieselbe Auslassung wie P auf, Homoioteleuton-Fehler). Ob die Worte, die im Bibeltext kein Pendant haben, in irgendeiner Handschrift stehen, woher sie kommen (vorhanden sind sie in PL 16:566C), und ob sie tatsächlich in den Text gehören, ist somit ohne weitere Aufarbeitung der Überlieferung unklar.

Einige Beobachtungen zur Textgeschichte 1. Fragt man, ob ein möglicher (Hyp)Archetypus (A1 in Fallers Stemma) aller Handschriften der zwei-Buch-Fassung (PDUATOK) und ein möglicher (Hyp)Archetypus aller Handschriften der fünf-Buch-Fassung (A3 bzw.  a3 in Fallers Stemma) textgeschichtlich festgemacht werden können, fällt die Antwort negativ aus: Es gibt – unter Zugrundelegung des textkritischen Apparates in CSEL 78 – kaum signifikante Trennfehler, die A1 und A3 voneinander abgrenzen.67 Kontamination kann Zusammenhänge bzw. Trennendes freilich verwischt haben (siehe im Folgenden Punkt  3), jedoch ist bemerkenswert, wenn das in einem Ausmaß passiert ist, dass die zwei (Hyp)Archetypoi textgeschichtlich nicht mehr fassbar sind. Einer der wenigen signifikanten gemeinsamen Fehler von P und UAO (allerdings nicht KD), ist 1.3.22, S. 11.14: alibi] in patre filius est qui (quia UAO) add. PUAO.68

Eine andere interessante Stelle ist das Zitat von Prov. 9.2 in Fid. 1.15.98, S. 43.28: interfecit suas hostias W] inter duas hostias PDUATS, mactavit suas hostias K, intermolavit (inmolavit pc.) suas hostias M, immolavit suas hostias/suam hostiam cett.

Auffällig ist hier, dass auch S (fünf-Buch-Fassung) mit den Handschriften der zweiBuch-Fassung einen Fehler teilt (der Wortlaut ist aus dem Bibeltext einfach korrigierbar); handelt es sich um einen Archetypus-Fehler, der in einem Teil der Überlieferung zu immolavit korrigiert wurde, oder ist das Zusammentreffen der Lesart von S und der zwei-Buch-Fassung anders erklärbar (vgl. zu S auch unten 5)? Siehe auch oben Anm. 35 und unten 78. Faller musste sich zeitbedingt teilweise auf ältere Kolla­ tionen stützen, vgl. CSEL 78, S. 1*. 67  Diese Beobachtung machte auch Botte, [Rez. Faller, CSEL 78] (wie o. Anm. 44), S. 220. – Einer der wenigen Bindefehler, der sich laut textkritischem Apparat nur in den Handschriften der fünf-BuchFassung findet, ist 2.13.120, S. 100.53 mitto … nomina] omitto … nomina qui dicunt. 68  Vgl. im Folgenden unter Punkt 3: könnten UAT zwar nicht von der selben Vorlage wie P abstammen, von dieser aber beeinflusst sein? 66 

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2. Wenn sich textgeschichtlich nicht durch Bindefehler erweisen lässt, dass die Handschriften der zwei-Buch-Fassung  P und  D69 bzw.  UAT (K  ist kontaminiert,70 und nimmt damit eine Sonderstellung ein) auf dieselbe Vorlage zurückgehen, könnten P (und D) bzw. UAT unterschiedliche ‘Versionen’ von A1 bezeugen – oder gibt es andere Möglichkeiten? Wie die Handschriften der fünf-Buch-Sammlung überliefern auch UAT nach De fide die drei Bücher De spiritu sancto. Aus dem Brief Cupio valde, den Kaiser Gratian an Ambrosius schrieb,71 und aus dem Beginn von De fide 3 geht, wie erwähnt, hervor, dass Gratian um die zwei Bücher De fide bat, die Ambrosius um einen Traktat De spiritu sancto erweitern solle. Die Handschriften der fünf-Buch-Fassung enthalten fast alle De fide, Gratians Brief und De spiritu sancto (sowie Incarn.). Ebenso überliefern die Handschriften UAT De fide – allerdings nur Buch 1+2 – gefolgt von De spiritu sancto. Während Gratians Brief in den Handschriften der fünf-BuchSammlung zwischen De fide und De spiritu sancto zu finden ist, ist er in U (zwei-BuchFassung) prominent zu Beginn des Codex vor De  fide platziert (sogar zweimal).72 Es scheint, als versammle U bzw. die Familie von U offenbar angeregt durch den Brief das, worum der Kaiser gebeten hat: die zwei Bücher De fide, gefolgt von De spiritu sancto. Wann und von wem wurde diese Zusammenstellung vorgenommen? Verbindet die Familie von U einen Abkömmling von A1 (zwei-Buch-Fassung) mit De spiritu sancto, oder hat die Familie von U die beiden ersten Bücher aus einer fünf-Buch-Handschrift genommen und wäre dann eine kompositorische Weiterentwicklung von A2? Dies ist schwer eindeutig beantwortbar, würde aber unter Umständen die Sicht auf die Stemmatik ändern (und erklären, weshalb es keine klaren, belastbaren Bindefehler dieser Handschriften mit P gibt): P (mit seinem engen Verwandten D) wäre Zeuge von A1, während alle anderen Handschriften (beachtenswert bleibt die Sonderstellung von K) textgeschichtlich  A2 bezeugen könnten. Dies soll und möchte aber an dieser Stelle ohne weitere Absicherung nicht behauptet werden. Hinzu kommt, dass die Vorlage von UAT wahrscheinlich Textvergleich angestellt hat (und somit vielleicht Lesarten der zwei- und der fünf-Buch-Fassung kombinierte?). 3. Es gibt in vielen Handschriften Hinweise auf Kontamination ihrer jeweiligen Vorlage,73 darüber hinaus aber auch Spuren für Kontamination der Vorlagen einzelner Laut Fallers Einschätzung ist D für De fide (die Gesta sind in D nicht enthalten) eine Abschrift von P, wohingegen Bouhot, “Origine” (wie o. Anm. 44), 306 (Anm. 6) und 309 Einwände vorbringt und D als Verwandten von P sieht, was stemmatisch und somit für die Beurteilung der Varianten von Bedeutung ist. Auch dies gälte es näher zu untersuchen. 70  Vgl. Faller, CSEL 78, S. 20*. 71  S. oben Anm. 49. 72  Laut Angaben in CSEL 78 enthält A den Brief nicht (ist zu Beginn von Spir. unvollständig); in T fehlt der Beginn von Fid., so dass unklar ist, ob davor der Brief enthalten gewesen sein könnte. 73  Zu K vgl. bereits Faller, CSEL 78, S. 20*, darüber hinaus gibt es auch Doppellesarten in den meisten fünf-Buch-Handschriften: M (etwa 1.15.98, S. 43.28 “intermollavit”), W (etwa 1.8.57, S. 25.35 “vero 69 

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Gruppen, besonders UATO. Als Beispiel sei 1.3.29, S. 14.64–65 genannt, wo UAO eine Doppellesart bieten: de quo sanctus dicit propheta de quo tantus dicit propheta de quo sanctus spiritus dicit de quo tantus dicit propheta sanctus spiritus dicit

edierter Text = ~ fünf-Buch-Sammlung, jedoch nicht M KM PD UAO (T deest)

Könnte somit Kontamination Spuren für die textgeschichtliche Zugehörigkeit von UATO verwischt haben? Eine auch inhaltlich auffällige ‘Durchmischung’ der Varianten bzw. Zweige ist in 2.10.85, S. 88.7–11 anzutreffen: Didicimus itaque unam esse potentiam trinitatis, quam nos in ipsa quoque docuit passione. Filius enim patitur per corporis sacramentum, apostolis spiritus sanctus infunditur, in manus patris commendatur spiritus, deus quoque pater maxima voce signatur.

Ambrosius macht Angaben zur Trinität, wie sie sich in ipsa quoque passione gezeigt habe: Die Apostel empfingen den Heiligen Geist (Io.  20.22) und Christus empfahl am Kreuz seinen Geist in die Hände des Vaters (Lc. 23.46); zwei biblische Ereignisse, von denen eigentlich nur das zweite in ipsa passione passierte. Dass die Apostel den Heiligen Geist empfingen, stammt aus den Osterberichten (Beauftragung der Jünger). Dies findet in einer inhaltlichen Variante zum ersten Satz Niederschlag (im Folgenden trennt ein Strich | die Varianten der zwei- und der fünf-Buch-Fassung; in D ist die Passage umformuliert, weshalb D nicht berücksichtigt ist):74 in ipsa quoque docuit passione P | L (passionem) VZ (in om. VZ) in ipsa atque post ipsam docuit passionem KUA | SMCWE (ipsa] ipsam KUA | Sac).

Die Ergänzung der Worte atque post ipsam … passionem könnte, inhaltlich beeinflusst, sekundär entstanden sein (unabhängig voneinander, möglicherweise aber auch durch Kontamination) und wäre als error facilior leicht erklärbar.75 Der darauf folgende Satz wird in der Form, wie er in CSEL 78 ediert ist, offenbar nur in einem Teil der Handschriften der zwei-Buch-Fassung tradiert (UA). Überliefert

verbum”; 1.20.137, S. 57.47 “colamus te canamus”), L (etwa 2.5.42, S. 70.17 “fragilitatem naturam”) oder V (2.8.64, S. 79.39 “corporis hominis”). 74  O verbindet eindeutig zwei Fassungen, vgl. den textkritischen Apparat der Edition, und wird im Folgenden nicht genannt. T fehlt. 75  Andernfalls wäre (1) “atque” zu “quoque” verlesen worden und es würde (2) eine Art Homoioteleuton-Fehler vorliegen, der “post ipsam” nach “in ipsa” auslässt, was wahrscheinlich nicht einerseits in P und andererseits in LVZ unabhängig voneinander passiert wäre.

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ist sonst entweder nur der Hinweis auf die Apostel (Io. 20.22) oder auf Christi Aushauchen des Geistes (Lc. 23.46): Filius enim patitur per corporis sacramentum, apostolis spiri- alle Handschriften außer PUA tus sanctus infunditur, pater quoque maxima voce signatur (C: pater quoque] deus quoque pater) Filius enim patitur, in manus patris commendatur spiritus, P deus quoque pater maxima voce signatur Filius enim patitur per corporis sacramentum, apostolis spi- UA (~ edierter Text CSEL 78) ritus sanctus infunditur, in manus patris commendatur spiritus, deus quoque pater maxime (sic!) voce signatur

Die Trinität ist in der Reihenfolge filius – spiritus (sanctus) – pater genannt. Hinsichtlich des mittleren Abschnitts (spiritus) unterscheidet sich die Überlieferungslage: P erwähnt die Sendung des Heiligen Geistes nicht, vermerkt aber stattdessen, dass Christus am Kreuz seinen Geist aushauchte, womit – wie zuvor erwähnt – tatsächlich alleine Vorgänge “in ipsa passione” (siehe den Satz zuvor in PLVZ) berücksichtigt sind; nur die Personen filius und pater sind genannt (mir ist nicht bekannt, dass der Geist, den Christus aushauchte, auf den Heiligen Geist bezogen wurde, weshalb spiritus in diesem Kontext wohl nicht “auch” den Heiligen Geist implizierte). In allen anderen Handschriften ist die Nennung des Heiligen Geistes mit der Erwähnung der Apostel und somit einem Ereignis post passionem (siehe den Satz zuvor in KUASMCWE) verbunden; stattdessen fehlt die Bezugnahme auf Christi Aushauchen des Geistes. Nur UA bieten beides. Weder die Auslassung von “in manus patris commendatur” (alle Handschriften außer PUA) noch jene von “per … infunditur” (P) wäre durch Homoioteleuton o.Ä. begründbar. Die Stelle ist inhaltlich und in ihrer Überlieferung interessant und verdient näher untersucht zu werden, als es hier knapp möglich ist. Zum einen: Liegt auch hier in der Lesart in UA eine Doppellesart vor und spräche auch dies für eine Mischung von Textklassen (P und einer anderen?) in der Vorlage von UA (oder könnte es eine Autorenvariante sein?)? Zum anderen: Stammen die Worte “in manus patris commendatur spiritus” (= P) von Am­ brosius, könnten sie eine sekundäre Erklärung des letzten Gliedes “pater quoque ­maxima voce signatur” sein, die jedoch in P als Variante zu “per corporis passionem apostolis spiritus sanctus infunditur” angesehen und irrtümlich stattdessen in den Text übernommen wurde? Oder wäre “apostolis spiritus sanctus infunditur” eine sekundäre Hinzufügung, die mit der Ergänzung “atque post ipsam passionem” im Satz zuvor einhergeht; dass hier allerdings auch zu “filius enim patitur” die Worte “per corporis sacramentum” ergänzt wurden, wäre ein vom Hinweis auf die Apostel unabhängiger Gedankengang und somit eine umfassendere Bearbeitung der Stelle. Diese und weitere Fragen76 sowie Wie kam es zu “atque post ipsam passionem” bzw. wäre “in ipsa passione” inhaltlich mit dem Hinweis auf die Beauftragung der Apostel vereinbar, und wie ist zu bewerten, dass in allen Textzeugen außer PUAC der Zusatz “deus” im dritten Glied (“pater … signatur”) fehlt? 76 

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den textgeschichtlichen Aussagewert (Gruppenbildung/Kontamination?) dieser Passage gälte es im Rahmen einer textkritischen Aufarbeitung näher zu ergründen. 4. Die älteste (leider unvollständig erhaltene) Handschrift zur fünf-Buch-Fassung, nämlich S,77 und die älteste Handschrift der zwei-Buch-Fassung, P, sind an einigen Stellen in ihren Lesarten verbunden, jedoch sind die Varianten vielfach insignifikant. Mitunter sieht Faller (tatsächlich stets zu Recht?) nur in ihnen den korrekten Text erhalten, z.  B.: 1.1.9, S.  7.21 ut 2 (~  quod cett.); 1.3.24, S.  12.30 oleum (oleo cett.) + CW; 1.4.31, S. 15.6 tus] et add. codd. exc. PKS;78 1.13.79 S. 34.1 aliqui (aliquis cett.); 2.9.80, S. 86.60 enim (om. cett.); 2.12.103, S. 95.33 und 34 susum (sursum cett.). An zumindest einer Stelle gibt es einen auffälligen Bindefehler von P und S (2.4.37, S. 69.23–26):79 PDS qui locutus est in profeta ipse in evangelio       dicit: Ipse qui loquebar adsum    

Alle anderen Handschriften und edierter Text qui locutus est in profeta et in evangelio, ipse tamquam in praedestinatione evangelii per Eseiam dicit: Ipse qui loquebar, adsum, hoc est: adsum in evangelio, qui loquebar in lege

Varianten et add. DSUATKE in profetis KWUAT om. CZ om. UATKMW ipse tamquam in evangelio Z om. Z     hoc … lege om. Z  

Das Zusammentreffen der beiden Auslassungen in PDS kann kein Zufall sein; sie sind weder durch Homoioteleuton oder Ähnliches noch inhaltlich erklärbar, weil nicht ein Evangelien-Zitat, sondern Jesaja folgt. Geht S (fünf-Buch-Fassung) somit auf eine ähnliche Vorlage wie P zurück, oder wurde bereits die Vorlage von S nach einer Handschrift wie P korrigiert? In diesem Zusammenhang verdient auch die stemmatische Position von S in den Büchern 3 und 4 (5 fehlt in S nahezu gänzlich) nähere Untersuchung: es lassen sich dort nämlich einige Gemeinsamkeiten R setzt erst in Buch 4 ein. 1.10.63, S. 28.20 deficitur (definitur/deficit) erweckt ebenfalls den Eindruck, als wäre alleine in PSC der korrekte Text zu finden, jedoch lässt sich die Lesart “deficitur” anders als im textkritischen Apparat angegeben zumindest auch in VK nachweisen. 79  Im textkritischen Apparat ist vermerkt, dass P die Lesart lediglich ac. bietet, jedoch handelt es sich um eine sehr junge Korrektorenhand. 77  78 

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zwischen S und MN finden:80 Gehen MNS somit zumindest in den Büchern 3 und 4 auf eine gemeinsame Vorlage zurück?81 In  den ersten zwei Büchern jedoch finden sich keine signifikanten Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen MNS, was wiederum zur Frage führt, ob MN bzw. S auf unterschiedliche Zusammenstellungen der Bücher 1+2 und 3–5 zurückgehen könnten82 (die Frage, wie weit M kontaminiert ist,83 spielt ebenfalls eine Rolle). 5. Es gibt Stellen, an denen Faller (zu Recht bzw. tatsächlich korrekt?) konjizierte, nämlich z. B. 2.9.79, S. 86.56 sedpote84 ut (pote ut vel utpote PUATVSCWE, potius ut MKO, potenter ut ZLpc, ut  D); 2.12.101, S.  94.11 nostrum (non codd.); siehe auch Fid. 2.11.89, S. 89.6 (ex Hierusalem). Wenn hier tatsächlich Bindefehler vorliegen, müssen alle Handschriften auf denselben fehlerhaften Archetypus zurückgehen. Auch die Tituli, deren Authentizität in der Forschung angezweifelt wird,85 die aber in nahezu allen Handschriften anzutreffen sind, könnten Bindefehler sein (oder wären auch sie Hinweise auf Kontamination?). Auffällig ist außerdem, dass sich bei einem seltenen Wort klassenübergreifend derselbe Fehler findet (1.11.73, S. 32.48): averruncassit haverrucas sed averrucassit averucasset aberruncasset avertat

coniecit Faller P W M (in rasura) V cett.

Etwa längere Textauslassungen wie: 3.8.55, S. 128.16–20 quod2 … natum est om. SMNO; 3.14.116, S. 149.47–117, S. 149.52 montes … substantiae om. SMacN; 4.2.18, S. 163.24–25 et ecclesia … exemplum om. SMacNW; 4.8.77, S. 183.4 illud ridiculum est imperator auguste quod om. ZSMNCW. 81  S weist sehr viele Sonderfehler auf und war kaum Vorlage der jüngeren Handschriften (auch nicht über Zwischenstufen). – Ein Zusammenhang zwischen MNS lässt sich aus Fallers Stemma nicht erkennen; in der Zeugenzeile nennt Faller S allerdings in Zusammenhang mit M. 82  Aus der Tatsache, dass genau zwischen dem Ende von Buch 2 und dem folgenden dritten Buch in S eine Schmuckseite zu finden ist (fol. 72v: Christus zwischen Petrus und Paulus), lässt sich wohl schwer ein eindeutiger Hinweis gewinnen, dass zwei ursprünglich separate Teile verbunden wurden; es ist allerdings auffällig, dass die Seite ausgerechnet an der ‘Nahtstelle’ steht. – Für eine ‘Mischung’ der Textklasse von UAT (Bücher 1+2) und der Textklasse von MN in den Büchern 3–5 nennt Faller (CSEL 78, S. 44*) einige jüngere Handschriften; da sie nicht in den textkritischen Apparat aufgenommen wurden, lässt sich allerdings nicht überprüfen, ob es Berührungspunkte mit S gibt. 83  Vgl. oben Anm. 73. 84  Faller, CSEL 78, S. 86 ad locum: “pote cum particula sed iungendum: sedpote = ‘sondern gerade’ (-pte intensivum Walde-Hofmann s. v. -pte).” 85  Vgl. etwa Markschies, Über den Glauben (wie o. Anm. 4), S. 97–98. 80 

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Das Verbum averruncare ist selten belegt (vgl. TLL 2.1316.37–78), doch ist eine Stelle bei Pacuvius (Trag. 112 “di monerint meliora atque amentiam averruncassint tuam”) offenbar sprichwörtlich gebraucht worden und hat auch hier auf Fid. 1.11.73, S. 32.47– 48 (“deus hanc averruncassit amentiam”) gewirkt. Varro zitiert die Stelle bei Pacuvius und erläutert: “ab avertendo averruncare”; andere Autoren bzw. Glossarien finden mitunter andere Erläuterungen bzw. Synonyma (vgl. TLL 2.1316.37–52). Waren die Pacuvius-Stelle und ihre Erläuterung bei Varro derart prominent, dass die Handschriften sowohl der zwei-, als auch der fünf-Buch-Sammlung unabhängig voneinander dasselbe Synonym (avertat) wählten, oder gab es in der Vorlage, von der sowohl die Handschriften der zwei- als auch der fünf-Buch-Fassung ihren Ausgang nahmen, eine Doppellesart/Glosse? Auch diese Stelle und ihre Auswertung sind in stemmatischer Hinsicht wichtig.

Schlussfolgerungen Die Edition von De fide stellt den Editor somit vor komplexe Probleme. Eine kritische Textausgabe müsste klären oder zumindest diskutieren, wie der Veröffentlichungsprozess zu denken wäre und was somit ediert werden kann. Nur wenn P als einzige Handschrift auf das Original der zwei-Buch-Fassung – und nicht auf eine sekundär erstellte Abschrift – zurückgeht, das zugleich auch wortgetreu der fünf-Buch-Fassung zugrundelag, wäre denkbar, dass in Sonderlesarten von P der korrekte Text bewahrt geblieben wäre (was jedoch durch die Qualität der meisten Sonderlesarten von  P nicht unbedingt gestützt oder zwingend nahegelegt wird). Es bedarf der Klärung/ Diskussion, ob P tatsächlich eine frühe, in homöischen Kreisen erstellte Abschrift bezeugt,86 welche stemmatische Position D zukommt, ob die übrigen Handschriften der zwei-Buch-Fassung (UAT bzw.  K) tatsächlich auf denselben (Hyp)Archetypus zurückgehen wie P (und D), welche stemmatische Position S bei der Überlieferung besonders der ersten zwei Bücher einnimmt, ob Ambrosius eine Fassung in fünf Büchern ‘veröffentlichte’ bzw. ob (zusätzlich zu dieser?) eine (oder mehrere) sekundäre Kombination(en) von Buch 1+2 und Buch 3–5 erstellt wurde(n).87 Nicht nur die diskutierte Textentscheidung in Fid. 2.16.138 beim Zitat von Ezechiel, sondern auch einige Stellen, an denen Faller alleine P folgte,88 besonders aber auch Stellen, an denen offenbar die Kollationen falsch waren,89 sollten neu erwogen werden.

Vgl. oben mit Anm. 58 die Hinweise auf die Arbeit von Bouhot. Ebenso muss für die Bücher 4 und 5 untersucht werden, ob Faller sich zu Recht für Lesarten entschieden hat, die alleine in R gegen den Konsens aller anderen Handschriften (und somit auch gegen Handschrift S, die Faller mit R eng verbunden sah) überliefert sind. 88  Vgl. oben Anm. 43. 89  Siehe besonders oben zu Fid. 2.4.36, S. 69.18 mit oben Anm. 66. 86  87 

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Die vorgestellten Beobachtungen möchten somit anregen, Stemmatik und Textkonstitution von De fide neu zu untersuchen, wie dies wohl nur im Rahmen einer kritischen Edition möglich ist,90 die auch die Handschriften neu kollationiert. Es bedarf klarer methodischer Kriterien für die Textentscheidungen. Für den Benutzer der Edition wäre hilfreich zu wissen, welche Kriterien zur Scheidung von Textfassungen anwendbar sind und welche Textstufe ediert werden kann – oder welche Unsicherheiten und Aporien es gibt. Sogar der Hinweis auf Letzteres kann unter Umständen einen Gewinn für die weitere Beschäftigung mit diesem in vieler Hinsicht interessanten Text bedeuten. Addendum: Die Studie von Paul Mattei, “Ambroise, De fide libri V ad Gratianum. État de quelques questions”, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 94 (2020), 215–32, war mir bei der Abfassung des vorliegenden Beitrags noch nicht bekannt. Darin äußert Mattei u.a. Bedenken hinsichtlich des Stemmas in CSEL 78, besonders bezüglich der Codices R und S (siehe oben mit Anm. 44), und hebt von Faller für die Edition nicht berücksichtigte Textzeugen hervor.

Auch wenn eine Neuedition bisher nicht für nötig erachtet wurde, vgl.  oben Anm.  44.  – Die Ergebnisse zum Wert der indirekten Bezeugung von De fide (s. Markschies, Über den Glauben [wie o. Anm. 4], S. 98–129) müssen ebenfalls berücksichtigt werden. 90 

Rufinus of Aquileia’s Historia monachorum in Aegypto: Authorship, Hagiographic Aemulatio, and the Antony Legend Andrew Cain University of Colorado As a literary figure, Rufinus was a late bloomer: it was evidently not until he was in his early fifties that he made his formal début.1 But for the next decade and a half or so, until his death in c. 411, he steadily compiled a large and diverse literary portfolio consisting of a few, mostly smaller original compositions,2 plus a much larger set of translations of Greek patristic works3 by such figures as Origen,4 Eusebius of Caesarea,5 Gregory of Nazianzus,6 Basil,7 and Evagrius of Pontus.8 In this translation work, all completed after his return to the West in 397, Rufinus was driven by a desire to familiarize his fellow Latin-speakers with the intellectual and spiritual riches of the Greek Christian East, where he had spent much of his adult life. He viewed himself as an ambassador, a mediator between East and West,9 For an overview of his earliest literary productions, see Manlio Simonetti, “L’attività letteraria di Rufino negli anni della controversia origeniana,” Antichità altoadriatiche 39 (1992), 89–107. 2  These include his Apologia contra Hieronymum (401), Expositio Symboli (400), and De Benedictioni­ bus Patriarcharum (408), along with the prefaces to his various translations of Greek Christian writings, on which see Henri Crouzel, “I prologhi di Rufino alle sue traduzioni di Origene,” Antichità altoadri­ atiche 39 (1992), 109–20. The dates for Rufinus’s works as given in this note and those that follow are reproduced from the chronological table in Caroline P. Hammond, “The Last Ten Years of Rufinus’ Life and the Date of his Move South from Aquileia,” Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 28 (1977), 372–429, at pp. 428–29; as Hammond herself cautions, some of these dates are merely conjectural. 3  See Gennadius, Vir. ill. 17, ed. Ernest Cushing Richardson, Hieronymus Liber de viris inlustribus. Gennadius Liber de viris inlustribus, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Liter­ atur 14.1 (Leipzig, 1896), p. 67, where, before listing several of Rufinus’s translations, he remarks: “Maxi­ mam partem Graecorum bibliothecae Latinis exhibuit.” 4  De principiis (397), commentary on Romans (405–406), commentary on the Song of Songs (411), and homilies on Genesis (403–405), Exodus (403–405), Leviticus (403–405), Joshua (400), Judges (400), Psalms 36–38 (401), and selections of homilies on 1 Samuel and Numbers (408–410). 5  Historia ecclesiastica (401/2). 6  Nine homilies (398/99). 7  Eight homilies (398–99) and the shorter version of his monastic Rule (397). 8  Several ascetic treatises, according to Jerome, Ep. 133.3. 9  See Tomáš Špidlík, “Rufino e l’Oriente,” Antichità altoadriatiche 31 (1987), 115–24; Maurizio Giro­ lami, “Rufino e la mediazione culturale tra Oriente e Occidente,” in L’Oriente in Occidente. L’opera di Rufino di Concordia. Atti del XIII Convegno internazionale di studi promosso dalla Facoltà Teologi­ ca del Triveneto e dal Gruppo Italiano di Ricerca su Origene e la Tradizione Alessandrina (Portogruaro, 1 

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and he represented himself as such for his western readers in the prefaces to his vari­ ous translations.10 For instance, in the preface to his version of the pseudo-Clemen­ tine Recognitions, a work dedicated to Bishop Gaudentius of Brescia, he employs a mercantilistic metaphor to configure himself as an industrious importer of foreign goods: I bring booty – no small amount, in my opinion – seized from the libraries of the Greeks for the use and benefit of my countrymen, so that I may nourish them with foreign food since I am unable to do so with my own. Foreign goods tend to seem more appealing, and sometimes in fact they are also more profitable. Thus almost everything which brings heal­ ing to our bodies, defends against diseases, and reverses the effects of poison, comes from abroad. Judea sends the balsam’s sap, Crete the dittany’s leaf, Arabia aromatic flowers, and India produces spikenard. Even if these goods come to us in a little less perfect condition than what our own fields have produced, they nevertheless preserve intact their pleasant scent and healing power. Therefore, my friend, welcome Clement as he returns to you as one of our own; welcome him as one who is now Roman … I import foreign wares into our homeland at a considerable expense of effort.11

The Greek works Rufinus translated run the topical gamut, from biblical exegesis and homiletics, to ecclesiastical historiography and monastic hagiography. Represent­ ing this last generic category, which appeared formally in the Christian world in the 6–7 dicembre 2013), ed. Maurizio Girolami (Brescia, 2014), pp. 11–25. In this transcultural mediation Ru­ finus had much in common with Jerome. See Andrew Cain, “Jerome’s Pauline Commentaries between East and West: Tradition and Innovation in the Commentary on Galatians,” in Interpreting the Bible in Late Antiquity: The Alexandrian Commentary Tradition from Rome to Baghdad, ed. Josef Lössl and John Watt (Aldershot, 2011), pp. 91–110; Andrew Cain, “Origen, Jerome’s Pauline Prefaces, and the Architec­ ture of Exegetical Authority,” in Origeniana Duodecima. Origen’s Legacy in the Holy Land – A Tale of Three Cities: Jerusalem, Caesarea and Bethlehem. Proceedings of the 12th International Origen Congress, Jerusalem, 25–29 June, 2017, ed. Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Oded Irshai, Aryeh Kofsky, Hillel Newman, and Lor­ enzo Perrone (Leuven, 2019), pp. 413–30. 10  For the use of Latin prefaces as vehicles for rhetorical self-fashioning, see Andrew Cain, “Apology and Polemic in Jerome’s Prefaces to his Biblical Scholarship,” in Hieronymus als Exeget und Theologe: Der Koheletkommentar, ed. Elisabeth Birnbaum and Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger (Leuven, 2014), pp. 107–28; Scott McGill, Plagiarism in Latin Literature (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 33–73. 11  Clement. praef., ed.  Bernhard Rehm, in Tyrannii Rufini Opera, ed.  Manlio Simonetti, CCSL  20 (Turnhout, 1961), p. 281: “… praedam, ut opinor, non parvam Graecorum bibliothecis direptam nostro­ rum usibus et utilitatibus convectamus, ut quos propriis non possumus, peregrinis nutriamus alimoniis. Nam et solent suaviora videri peregrina, interdum vero et utiliora. Denique peregrinum est paene omne quod medelam corporibus confert, quod morbis occurrit, quod venena depellit. Iudaea balsami lacri­ mam, Creta comam dictamni mittit, Arabia flores aromatum, et spicarum nardi India segetem metit, quae ad nos etiamsi aliquantulo quam proprius ager adtulit fractiora perveniunt, odoris tamen gratiam vimque medendi integram servant. Suscipe igitur, mi anime, redeuntem ad te Clementem nostrum, suscipe iam Romanum … Peregrinas ergo merces multo in patriam sudore transvehimus” (the transla­ tion is mine).

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mid- to late fourth century,12 is the Historia monachorum in Aegypto (HMA),13 com­ pleted c. 403/4.14 It is based on a Greek work known as Ἡ κατ’ Αἴγυπτον τῶν μοναχῶν ἱστορία (“Inquiry about the Monks of Egypt”).15 This is the anonymous account of a journey that seven monks from Rufinus’s monastery on the Mount of Olives made from September 394 to early January 395 to Egypt in order to visit monastic personalities and communities from the Thebaid in the south to the delta town of Diolcos in the north.16 Rufinus’s reasons for undertaking this project are manifold. In  a recent study I  ­demonstrated that certain modifications he made to the Greek original have the cumulative effect of depicting leading Egyptian monks as mouthpieces of the ascet­ ic mysticism of Evagrius of Pontus – not coincidentally, Rufinus’s longtime spiritual mentor. I argued also that one of the driving forces behind the HMA was Rufinus’s de­ sire to promulgate to a western readership the core principles of Evagrius’s teaching.17 Elsewhere I have explored the HMA through the lens of Rufinus’s work as a church historian, proposing that he envisaged it to serve in part as a companion piece to his recent continuation of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History and that he intended both writ­ ings to articulate cooperatively his vision of the monks of Egypt as prime movers in the Christianization of the fourth-century Empire.18 In the present study I revisit Rufinus’s authorial intentions, but from a different angle. I first of all suggest that he released the HMA under his own name – and thus For a sketch of its development, see Pierre Leclerc et al., Jérôme, Trois vies de Moines (Paul, Malchus, Hilarion) (Paris, 2007), pp. 33–72. 13  There is only one modern critical edition: Eva Schulz-Flügel, Tyrannius Rufinus, Historia monacho­ rum sive De vita Sanctorum Patrum (Berlin, 1990). For a translation, see Andrew Cain, Rufinus, Inquiry about the Monks in Egypt, Fathers of the Church 139 (Washington, 2019). 14  So Hammond, “The Last Ten Years,” pp. 394–95; Adalbert de Vogüé, Histoire littéraire du mouvement monastique dans l’antiquité, 3: Jérôme, Augustin et Rufin au tournant du siècle (391–405) (Paris, 1996), pp. 317–20. 15  Ed. André-Jean Festugière, Historia monachorum in Aegypto. Édition critique du texte grec (Brus­ sels, 1961). The  title has occasionally been translated as “History of the Monks of Egypt.” However, ἱστορία here does not have historiographic connotations. As is evident from the form and content of his narrative, the author did not venture to write anything resembling a linear “history” of contem­ porary Egyptian monasticism. Rather, he uses the word in the Herodotean sense of the gathering of knowledge through autopsy and the subsequent writing down of the results of these investigations. See Bruno Snell, Die Ausdrücke für den Begriff des Wissens in der vorplatonischen Philosophie (Berlin, 1924), pp. 59–71; Ladislav Zgusta, “History and its Multiple Meaning,” in Ladislav Zgusta, History, Languages, and Lexicographers (Tübingen, 1992), pp.  1–18; Rosalind Thomas, Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science, and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 161–67. 16  See Andrew Cain, The Greek Historia monachorum in Aegypto: Monastic Hagiography in the Late Fourth Century (Oxford, 2016). 17  Andrew Cain, “Rufinus’ Historia monachorum in Aegypto and the Promulgation of Evagrian As­ cetic Teaching,” Vigiliae Christianae 71 (2017), 285–314. 18  Andrew Cain, “Rufinus of Aquileia’s Historia ecclesiastica and Historia Monachorum in Aegypto: A Dual Program of Monastic Historiography,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 25 (2021), 233–49. 12 

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ostensibly as his own composition – in order to bolster his credentials as an eyewit­ ness hagiographer and thereby to offer his readers a more direct encounter with the Egyptian monks. Building on this hypothesis, I  then propose that Rufinus penned the HMA, if not also to challenge contemporary Latin hagiographers such as Jerome and Sulpicius Severus, then certainly to rival Athanasius, by setting forth a collective model of holiness intended to surpass the single figure who occupies the spotlight in this bishop’s Greek Life of Antony.

Sub nomine Rufini: The Eyewitness Effect Unlike the vast majority of the translations Rufinus produced, the HMA lacks an origi­ nal preface in which he names his dedicatee(s) and announces the occasion of the trans­ lation. Modern scholars have failed to notice how peculiar this absence is, much less to explore its potential implications. Now, the HMA does indeed have a preface, but it is es­ sentially a duplication of the Greek preface, in which the [Greek] author tells us that he composed the work at the request of his fellow monks at his monastery on the Mount of Olives. In rendering it into Latin, Rufinus does not update or retouch the Greek original with his own uniquely personal dedication, nor does he give any indication, as he does in his other prefaces, that the HMA is a translation at all. The relevant portions reads: Even though I am rather ill-equipped to write about such weighty matters, and even though it does not seem appropriate for those who are lowly and insignificant to become authors and to write about sublime virtues in a pedestrian style, nevertheless, because the charity of the brothers who live on the holy Mount of Olives frequently urges me to describe the Egyptian monks’ way of life, spiritual virtues, cultivation of piety, and the firmness of the ascetic discipline I personally witnessed in them, I shall proceed, entrusting myself (as one who needs assistance) to the prayers of those who commission this and not seeking praise for the composition but hoping that readers will be edified by the narration of stories, as each person, inspired by the examples of the feats, is called upon to shun the world’s entice­ ments and to cultivate stillness and the practice of monastic holiness.19

The author of the Greek version opted to release his writing anonymously, a phenom­ enon which is not in itself startling. Other authors in Late Antiquity also kept their HMA praef., ed. Schulz-Flügel, pp. 243–44: “Quamvis ad tantarum rerum narrationem minus ido­ nei simus nec dignum videatur ingentium rerum exiguos ac parvos fieri auctores praecelsasque virtutes humili narrare sermone, tamen quoniam fratrum caritas eorum, qui in monte sancto Oliveti commanent, hoc a nobis frequenter exposcit, ut Aegyptiorum monachorum vitam virtutesque animi et cultum pieta­ tis atque abstinentiae robur, quod in eis coram vidimus, explicemus, precibus ipsorum qui hoc imperant iuvandum me credens adgrediar, non tam ex stilo laudem requirens quam ex narratione rerum aedifica­ tionem futuram legentibus sperans, dum gestorum unusquisque inflammatus exemplis horrescere qui­ dem saeculi inlecebras, sectari vero quietem et pietatis invitatur exercitia.” Although Rufinus claims to use a humilis sermo, or a prose style lacking pretentious rhetorical refinement, the self-depreciation here is not a little ironic: the entire passage consists of one long, continuous sentence full of syntactical com­ plexity and rhetorical conceits (I have preserved the elaborate periodicity in the translation given above). 19 

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identities a secret for any number of reasons.20 Rufinus obviously knew who the author was because several years earlier, in the mid-390s, this man had been a monk in the Ol­ ivet monastery he oversaw at the time. Nevertheless, neither in the preface nor in the body of the work does he divulge the monk’s name by way of crediting him as author, nor, again, does he indicate in a separate preface, or by retouching of the pre-existing preface, that the HMA is a translation. The reader, then, is left by default with the impression that the HMA – preface and all – is Rufinus’s own product, an impression to which even some modern scholars have fallen victim.21 I would propose that this was precisely Rufinus’s intention and that he capitalized on the Greek author’s deliberate anonymity in order to release the HMA un­ der his own name – in other words, ostensibly as his own writing. That Rufinus would not have balked at taking such a liberty is suggested by his comment, in the epilogue to his translation of Origen’s commentary on Romans, that when he releases his transla­ tion of Pseudo-Clement’s Recognitions, he will place his own name in the title along­ side the putative author’s so that the work will be known as Rufini Clemens, “Rufinus’s Clement.”22 What I am proposing in the case of the HMA is merely a natural next step. An interesting piece of primary-source evidence sheds light on the problem at hand. In a letter written in c. 414,23 Jerome speaks of Rufinus’s translations of Evagrius’s writings and then refers disparagingly to the HMA: A great many people eagerly reader his [i.e., Evagrius's] books in Greek throughout the East as well as in Latin in the West, thanks to translations made by his disciple Rufinus. The latter also wrote (­scripsit) a book that professes to be about monks and he includes in For an overview of these reasons and for discussion of our author’s possible motivation in releas­ ing his writing anonymously, see Cain, The Greek Historia monachorum, pp. 49–57. 21  For instance, Erwin Preuschen, the first modern editor of the Greek text, believed that Rufinus’s Latin version was the original and the Greek its translation: see his Palladius und Rufinus. Ein Beitrag zur Quellenkunde des ältesten Mönchtums (Giessen, 1897), pp. 1–131. Preuschen’s theory found favour among many continental scholars at the time. For example, Richard Reitzenstein, the eminent scholar of Hel­ lenistic religion and early Christian gnosticism, accepted it as a point of departure for his monograph Historia monachorum und Historia Lausiaca. Eine Studie zur Geschichte des Mönchtums und der frühchrist­ lichen Begriffe Gnostiker und Pneumatiker (Göttingen, 1916). However, the Benedictine scholar Cuthbert Butler laid the theory to rest by definitively demonstrating the anteriority of the Greek text; see his The Lausiac History of Palladius: A Critical Discussion together with Notes on Early Egyptian Monachism (Cambridge, 1898), pp. 257–66. Over half a century later, André-Jean Festugière, the second and most recent modern editor of the Greek text (he published his edition in 1961), confirmed Butler’s conclusions from his own text-critical work; see his “Le problème littéraire de l’Historia monachorum,” Hermes 83 (1955), 257–84. As a result of the efforts by Butler and Festugière, there is now no doubt whatsoever that Rufinus’s HMA is based on a Greek original. 22  Orig. in Rom. epil., ed. Manlio Simonetti, Tyranii Rufini Opera, CCSL 20 (Turnhout, 1961), p. 277. 23  For this dating, see John Norman Davidson Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York, 1975), p. 314 n. 24. 20 

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it many who never existed as well as ones whom he portrays as having been Origenists and who certainly have been condemned by the bishops. I mean Ammonius, Eusebius, Euthy­ mius, Evagrius himself, [Abba] Or, Isidore, and many others whom it would be tedious to list … He placed at the front of the book itself one John, who is undoubtedly Catholic and a saint, so that by appropriating John in this way he might introduce to the Church the rest of the heretics he had put in there.24

Jerome says that Rufinus “wrote” the HMA; taken in its natural sense, scribere here would denote an original composition.25 By contrast, in the previous sentence Jerome employs the verb interpretari to characterize Rufinus’s activities as a translator of Eva­ grius’s works.26 The distinction suggests that he regarded Rufinus as the actual author of the HMA, not merely its translator. This is why he goes on to accuse Rufinus of abus­ ing his authorial licence to manipulate the internal order of the chapters by positioning the one on John of Lycopolis, an eminent fourth-century Egyptian monk famed for his prophetic power,27 at the very beginning of the HMA, in a bid to use this work as a literary Trojan Horse for sneaking Origenist monks into the Church’s fold undetected. Jerome’s testimonium – the part of it, that is, ascribing authorship to Rufinus – has a certain prima facie credibility on two counts. For one thing, it dates to about a decade after the HMA had been composed, and it is in fact the earliest independent witness to the contemporary transmission and reception of the HMA. Additionally, Jerome was a discriminating reader, especially when it came to the literary production of his rivals, and he kept close tabs on Rufinus’s output in the wake of their falling-out during the Origen­ ist controversy of the 390s.28 How, then, could Jerome have been under the impression that the HMA is an original Rufinian opus? The answer, according to my hypothesis, is straightforward: the HMA was circulating under the name of Rufinus, who for that rea­ son was assumed to be its author. And, as I suggested earlier, this was by Rufinus’s design. Jerome, Ep. 133.3.6, ed. Isidor Hilberg, Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae. Pars III: Epistulae CXXI– CLIV, CSEL 56 (Vienna, 1918), p. 246: “Huius libros per orientem Graecos et interpretante discipulo eius Rufino Latinos plerique in occidente lectitant. Qui librum quoque scripsit quasi de monachis mul­ tosque in eo enumerat, qui numquam fuerunt et quos fuisse describit Origenistas et ab episcopis dam­ natos esse non dubium est, Ammonium videlicet et Eusebium et Euthymium et ipsum Evagrium, Or quoque et Isidorum et multos alios, quos enumerare taedium est … Ille unum Iohannem in ipsius libri posuit principio, quem et catholicum et sanctum fuisse non dubium est, ut per illius occasionem ceteros, quos posuerat hereticos, ecclesiae introduceret.” 25  For this nuance of the verb, see OLD s.v. scribo 12a. 26  See OLD s.v. interpretor 6. 27  See Rufinus, HE 11.32, ed.  Theodor Mommsen, in Eusebius Werke. Zweiter Teil. Die  Kirchen­ geschichte, ed. Eduard Schwartz, vol. 2, Die Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 9.2 (Leipzig, 1908), p. 1036; Augustine, Civ. dei 5.26, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, Sancti Aurelii Augustini Episcopi De Civitate Dei Libri XXII, 4th ed., 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1928), 1:238–39; Palladius, Hist. Laus. 35.2, ed. Gerard J. M. Bartelink, Palladio. La Storia Lausiaca, Vite dei Santi 2 (Milan, 1974), p. 168. 28  Kelly, Jerome, pp. 243–58. 24 

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In the light of the foregoing discussion, the inevitable question of motive looms: why might Rufinus have engaged in the sort of attributional sleight-of-hand that I have proposed? Putting to the side (but without completely discounting) his possible desire for greater literary renown, I would prefer to see here a sophisticated narrative strat­ egy. In leaving his readers with the impression that he authored the HMA, Rufinus elides his own voice (as translator) with the voice of the anonymous monk behind the Greek original (as author). He thus appropriates this author’s eyewitness experience as his own.29 As far as the reader knows, he is narrating his own journey through Egypt and, more to the point, his own personal interactions with its fourth-century monastic royalty. Had he overtly presented the HMA as what it really is, a Latin rendering of the Greek-language account of another person’s firsthand experience, he would have been putting his readers at two removes from the Egyptian monks. But as the purported eyewitness himself, he becomes the sole intermediary between his readership and the legendary ascetics of the desert. This move had two important effects. First, Rufinus’s authority as a monastic hagi­ ographer is significantly enhanced and the HMA acquires a more palpable sense of authenticity. Second, and consequently, the reader’s vicarious experience of monastic Egypt, filtered through the lens of “Rufinus’s” narrative, is rendered more vivid and direct. After all, the avowed purpose of the HMA is spiritual edification. Rufinus’s repackaging of it as his own firsthand account facilitates this function by fostering the illusion that his readers are interacting with the monks and receiving their ipsissima verba (in the various spiritual discourses recorded in the HMA) directly from their source, through his exclusive mediation.

Hagiographic Aemulatio and the Antony Legend The HMA was by no means the only specimen of monastic hagiography consumed by western readers at the dawn of the fifth century. In the decades leading up to its com­ position, other Latin works had already been circulating. One thinks, for example, of Sulpicius Severus’s dossier of Martinian writings, especially his Vita Martini (396),30 as well as Jerome’s robust body of hagiographic work, which ranged from his Vita Hilari­ onis (376), Vita Malchi (391/92), and Vita Pauli (c. 392) to his numerous prose tributes There is nothing surprising or even all that disingenuous about this. Rufinus was no stranger to monastic Egypt, and no casual tourist, either. In his late twenties and mid-thirties, he had lived in Egypt for roughly seven years (c. 373–c. 380), dividing his time between Alexandria, where he studied Scripture under Didymus the Blind, and the monastic establishment at Nitria sixty miles to the south, where he stayed for prolonged periods, forging long-term associations with many of its celebrated monks. On his travels throughout monastic Egypt, see Francis Xavier Murphy, Rufinus of Aquileia (345–410): His Life and Works (Washington, 1945), pp. 28–58. 30  For a recent critical edition with commentary, see Philip Burton, Sulpicius Severus’ Vita Martini (Oxford, 2017). 29 

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to pious women in his circle, all of whom he systematically portrays as epitomizing his own ascetic ideology.31 As is well known, Jerome and Sulpicius Severus vied with each other over which of the two was the panegyrist of the superior saint(s).32 Whether Rufinus set out explicitly to rival either Jerome, whose output he monitored intensively, or Sulpicius Severus, of whose literary activities he was certainly aware,33 is a matter for speculation. Given the notoriously contentious relationship between Rufinus and Jerome during the 390s and early 400s,34 the possibility that Rufinus saw the HMA as an opportunity to open a hagi­ ographic front in their long struggle should not be lightly dismissed. But even if it was not Rufinus’s intention to challenge overtly the literary legacies of Jerome and Sulpicius, by releasing the HMA he was proposing to western readers a model of ascetic holiness, exemplified by a colorful cast of Egyptian monastic heavyweights, that could hardly help competing with those offered by his two contemporaries. Indeed, on a purely superficial level the HMA runs circles around its competitors: rather than focusing on just one holy man, it presents an entire portrait-gallery of some three dozen miracle-working saints.35 But there is another, still earlier hagiographer who must be factored into the equa­ tion: Athanasius, the storied fourth-century bishop of Alexandria and author of the Greek Life of Antony. Following its release in the late 350s, the Life became a sensation in monastic circles in the Greek-speaking East.36 In the remainder of the fourth cen­ Andrew Cain, “Rethinking Jerome’s Portraits of Holy Women,” in Jerome of Stridon: Life, Writings and Legacy, ed. Andrew Cain and Josef Lössl (Aldershot, 2009), pp. 47–57; Andrew Cain, Jerome’s Epi­ taph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, with an Introduction, Text, and Transla­ tion (Oxford, 2013). See also Andrew Cain, “Jerome’s Epistula 117 on the subintroductae: Satire, Apology, and Ascetic Propaganda in Gaul,” Augustinianum 49 (2009), 119–43. For Jerome’s prescriptions about male ascetic piety, see Andrew Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy: A Commentary on Letter 52 to Nepo­ tian, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Leiden, 2013). On his use of Pauline exegesis to further these ascetic special interests, see Andrew Cain, Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority (Oxford, 2021), chapter 4. 32  On their rivalry, see Andrew Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Con­ struction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009), pp. 155–58. 33  Clare Stancliffe, St Martin and His Hagiographer (Oxford, 1983), p. 72. 34  On their intertwined fates, see Yves-Marie Duval, “Rufin d’Aquilée émule de Jérôme de Stridon,” in Dieu(x) et hommes: Histoire et iconographie des sociétés païennes et chrétiennes de l’antiquité à nos jours. Mélanges en l'honneur de Françoise Thelamon, ed. Sylvie Crogiez-Pétrequin (Rouen, 2005), pp. 163–85; Mark Vessey, “Jerome and Rufinus,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Francis Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 318–27. 35  In closing, Rufinus affirms that he could have included even more monks in his compilation. See HMA epil. 1, ed. Schulz-Flügel, p. 385: “In his aliis quoque quam plurimis locis Aegypti sparsim vidimus sanctos dei virtutes multas et mirabilia facientes et totius gratiae dei plenos, sed paucos ex multis memo­ ravimus. De omnibus enim explicare supra vires nostras est.” 36  William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Ox­ ford, 2004), pp.  97–100; Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and 31 

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tury it enjoyed popularity in the West through two Latin translations: the first, issued anonymously, appeared probably in the early 360s, while the second, more elegant one was put out by Evagrius of Antioch later in the same decade.37 Codified by Athanasius and transmitted to a western audience through these Latin translations, the Antony legend set a formidable precedent, one with which any aspir­ ing monastic hagiographer was forced to contend. Antony emerges from the pages of the Life as the model par excellence of the monastic life, and the Life in turn emerges as a hagiographic monument that overshadows all of its successors.38 Greek hagiographers writing in the second half of the fourth century could hardly escape its pull.39 But those writing in Latin also felt the anxiety of Athanasian influence and responded to it in different ways. Sulpicius Severus, it has been argued, levels his own allusive critique of Athanasius’s Antony, constructing Martin as a monk-bishop with even more explic­ itly apostolic miracle-working power than Antony.40 In his Vita Pauli Jerome takes the route of outright subversion, displacing Antony from his twin role as desert anchorit­ ism’s august founder and paragon. Jerome transfers this privileged status to Paul of Thebes, to whom his Antony plays second fiddle as an almost sycophantic suppliant.41 In the Vita Hilarionis, Jerome at least acknowledges Antony as the face of contemporary Cassian (Oxford, 1978), pp. 92–95. For the evidence that the Life did not circulate nearly as widely in the Coptic monastic circles of late antique Egypt as scholars previously thought, see Malcolm Choat, “The Life of Antony in Egypt,” in Ascetic Culture: Essays in Honor of Philip Rousseau, ed. Blake Leyerle and Robin Darling Young (Notre Dame, 2013), pp. 50–74. 37  For critical editions of both Latin versions, see now Pascal H. E. Bertrand and Lois Gandt, Vitae Antonii Versiones Latinae, CCSL 170 (Turnhout, 2018). 38  Laurence Brottier, “Antoine l’ermite à travers les sources anciennes: des regards divers sur un modèle unique,” Revue d’études augustiniennes et patristiques 43 (1997), 15–39. On Athanasius’s skill as a hagiographic portrait-artist, see Andrew Cain, “Antony’s Onocentaur: The Symbolism of a Mythologi­ cal Curiosity (Athanasius, Vita Antonii 53.1–3),” Wiener Studien 133 (2020), 107–18. 39  For example, the anonymous author of the First Greek Life of Pachomius. See Armand Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, I: The Life of Saint Pachomius and his Disciples (Kalamazoo, 1980), p. 407 n. 1; David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), pp. 85–86. 40  Stancliffe, St Martin, pp. 93–96; Claire Fanger, “The Dynamics of Holy Power as Reflected in Nar­ rative Structure in the Lives of St Martin and St Anthony,” Florilegium 9 (1987), 35–51. See also ErnestCharles Babut, St Martin de Tours (Paris, 1912), pp. 75–83, 89–90; Christian Tornau, “Intertextuality in Early Latin Hagiography: Sulpicius Severus and the Vita Antonii,” Studia Patristica 35 (2001), 158–66. 41  See e.g. Pierre Leclerc, “Antoine et Paul: métamorphose d’un héros,” in Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient: XVIe centenaire du départ de saint Jérôme de Rome et de son installation à Bethléem. Actes du colloque de Chantilly, septembre 1986, ed. Yves-Marie Duval (Paris, 1988), pp. 257–65; Stefan Rebenich, “Inventing an Ascetic Hero: Jerome’s Life of Paul the First Hermit,” in Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writ­ ings, and Legacy, ed. Andrew Cain and Josef Lössl (Aldershot, 2009), pp. 13–27; Adele Monaci Castagno, “Vitae in dialogo: la Vita di Paolo di Tebe di Gerolamo e la Vita di Antonio di Atanasio,” in Tanti affetti in tal momento. Studi in onore di Giovanna Garbarino, ed. Andrea Balbo (Alessandria, 2011), pp. 647–58.

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Egyptian monasticism. But astute readers quickly perceive that these accolades are purely instrumental: Jerome concedes Antony’s importance only insofar as he is the forerunner and teacher of Hilarion, whom he portrays as the founder of monasticism in Syria42 and as the beati Antonii successor more broadly speaking.43 What of Rufinus? In the last two books of his Historia ecclesiastica (HE), the Lat­ in continuation of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History which he had completed a year or two before undertaking the HMA,44 Rufinus writes respectfully and even glowingly about Antony.45 For example, he singles him out as the “primus heremi habitator,” to whom the emperor Constantine wrote letters “velut ad unum ex profetis.” 46 In  the same chapter he goes on to summarize some of Antony’s accomplishments, though he declines to elaborate on them individually, instead referring the reader to one of the two existing Latin translations of Athanasius’s Life.47 In another chapter Rufinus dubs the hermit beatus Antonius and tells how Antony came to Alexandria in person to lend support to Athanasius against the Arians;48 while there, he also encouraged Didymus Jerome, V. Hil. 8.10–11, ed. Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen and Jan Smit, Vita di Martino, Vita di Ilarione, In memoria di Paola, Vite dei Santi 4 (Milan, 1975), p. 90: “Necdum enim tunc monasteria erant in Pa­ laestina nec quisquam monachum ante sanctum Hilarionem in Syria noverat. Ille fundator et eruditor huius conversationis et studii in hac provincia primum fuit. Habebat dominus Iesus in Aegypto senem Antonium, habebat in Palaestina Hilarionem iuniorem.” 43  Jerome, V. Hil. 22.3, ed. Bastiaensen and Smit, p. 122. 44  In Latinizing Eusebius, Rufinus made substantial alterations to the content and structure, most notably by compressing the ten books of the original work into nine and then adding his own two books which pick up where Eusebius had left off (324) and continue down to the death of Theodosius I (395). See Mark Humphries, “Rufinus’s Eusebius: Translation, Continuation, and Edition in the Latin Ecclesi­ astical History,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 16 (2008), 143–64. 45  On the considerable attention Rufinus pays in the HE to the development of monasticism, see ­L orenzo Dattrino, “Rufino di Concordia agiografo,” Antichità altoadriatiche 31 (1987), 125–67, and on his superimposition of ascetic ethical ideals onto his translation of Eusebius, see Thomas Ferguson, The Past is Prologue: The Revolution of Nicene Historiography (Leiden, 2005), pp. 112–21; Sabrina Robbe, “Non solum pro pietate, verum etiam pro castitate: martirio e castità nella Storia ecclesiastica di Rufino di Concordia,” Adamantius 22 (2016), 231–48. 46  Rufinus, HE 10.8, ed. Mommsen, p. 971. 47  Ibid: “Sane quoniam tanti viri Antonii fecimus mentionem, de virtutibus eius atque institutis et sobrietate mentis, ut in solitudine vitam degens usus solummodo consortio fuerit bestiarum et de daemonibus crebros agens triumphos placuerit deo supra cunctos mortales utque institutionis suae praeclara usque in hodiernum monachis exempla reliquerit, volentem me aliqua exponere ille libellus exclusit, qui ab Athanasio scriptus etiam Latino sermone editus est.” 48  Cf. Athanasius, V. Ant. 69.1–6, ed. Gerard J. M. Bartelink, Athanase d’Alexandrie. Vie d’Antoine, Sources chrétiennes 400 (Paris, 2004), pp. 314–16 for another account of Antony’s opposition to Arians in Alexandria. Antony’s pre-eminence in Athanasius’s view lies just as much, if not more, in his being a champion of Nicene orthodoxy. Indeed, it is by now widely acknowledged that the “Antony” of Atha­ nasius’s Life is by and large a literary construct of Athanasius’s devising meant as propaganda to further 42 

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to keep up the good fight.49 Elsewhere he lists several of the leading monks at Nitria and identifies them as Antony’s discipuli.50 Yet, while Rufinus repeatedly highlights Antony’s exceptional status, especially as the founder of desert monasticism, he also makes clear that Antony is but one of a populous group of distinguished anchorites.51 In the HMA, as in the HE, Rufinus refers readers by name to the Life of Antony as a reliable source of Antonian lore.52 He is likewise generally deferential to Antony himself. On most of the occasions he mentions him, he does so in the context of call­ ing such-and-such a monk his discipulus, thereby acknowledging Antony’s status as a veteran ascetic.53 Otherwise, Antony features in only one of the stories told in the HMA (ch.  28). Even here the real protagonist is Paul the Simple; Antony is merely a supporting character, ultimately eclipsed by Paul. In this story, Paul discovers his wife’s infidelity, flees to the desert in the hope of becoming Antony’s disciple, and is put through several tests by Antony to prove his worthiness to be a monk. Paul passes with flying colours and as a result is granted a more prolific gift of healing (prolixior sanitatum gratia) than Antony himself. Thereafter Antony sends Paul’s way anyone whom he himself is unable to heal.54 It is Paul, not his teacher, whom Rufinus praises as a model for all Christians: “Paul is an example for us: by virtue of his obedience and simplicity he rose to such a lofty height of spiritual gifts that God performed many more powerful miracles through him than he did through holy Antony.”55 For Athanasius, the sun of Egyptian monasticism rose and set with Antony.56 In the HMA, however, Antony does not dominate the stage as he does in Athanasius’s Life. the bishop’s theological agenda; see e.g. David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford, 1995), pp. 201–65. 49  HE 11.7, ed. Mommsen, pp. 1012–13. 50  HE 11.4, ed. Mommsen, pp. 1004–5: “Per idem tempus patres monachorum vitae et antiquitatis merito Macarius et Isidorus aliusque Macarius atque Heraclides et Pambo Antonii discipuli per Aegyp­ tum et maxime in Nitriae deserti partibus habebantur viri, qui consortium vitae et actuum non cum ceteris mortalibus, sed cum supernis angelis habere credebantur.” 51  See HE 11.8, ed. Mommsen, pp. 1013–14, for Rufinus’s roll-call of noted Egyptian monks, a list from which Antony is excluded. 52  HMA 30.1.1, ed.  Schulz-Flügel, p.  375: “Initium sane habitationis monasteriorum, quae sunt in Nitria, sumptum tradebant ab Ammone quodam, cuius animam cum exisset e corpore vidit ferri ad caelum sanctus Antonius, sicut refert scriptura illa, quae vitam describit Antonii.” 53  HMA 13.2, ed. Schulz-Flügel, p. 333 (Pityrion); 25.2, p. 362 (Cronius); 26.1, p. 363 (Origen); 28.1.1, p. 365 (Macarius of Egypt). 54  HMA 31.18, ed. Schulz-Flügel, p. 382. 55  HMA 31.16, ed. Schulz-Flügel, p. 382: “Paulus exemplo nobis est, qui oboedientiae et simplicitatis merito in tantum spiritalium gratiarum culmen ascendit, ut multo plures et potentiores virtutes per ipsum Deus quam per sanctum Antonium fecerit.” 56  Although he does not expressly mention Athanasius’s contribution to the explosive growth of the Antony legend, the church historian Sozomen nonetheless upholds, as universally accepted fact, Antony’s seminal place in the early Christian monastic tradition. See HE 1.13.1, ed. Joseph Bidez and

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Rather, he shares the spotlight with – and often cedes it to – numerous other monks who eclipse him in the thaumaturgical hierarchy; he is even bested by his own pro­ tégé. The Antony of the HMA is a venerable monastic father, to be sure, but he is only one among many. Unlike Athanasius, Rufinus nowhere explicitly credits Antony with founding the monastic life in Egypt. Instead, he confers the honor of monastic inno­ vation on numerous other monks, including Abba Or,57 Abba Apollo of Bawit,58 and Abba Patermuthius, who was “the first monk in this area and the first in this whole desert to show the way of salvation to us all.”59 As I noted above, in many cases the Antony of the HMA achieves importance by virtue of his association with others.60 Rufinus does not denigrate him, but he does implicitly demote the Athanasian Antony by removing him from centre stage and by even forcing him to play a supporting role to one of his own disciples. In thaumatologi­ cal terms, Antony is outperformed not only by his own discipulus but also by numerous other monks profiled in the HMA who perform miracles such as walking on water,61 teleporting themselves,62 multiplying loaves of bread,63 and causing the sun to stand still.64 Meanwhile, the fragmented way in which Antony is woven into the narrative – appearing here and there but never commanding the reader’s gaze for too long at any given time – has much the same effect as it does in the HE. In Rufinus’s presentation, Antony does indeed hold a prominent place in the monastic movement in Egypt, but Günther Christian Hansen, Sozomenus. Kirchengeschichte, Die Griechischen christlichen Schriftstel­ ler 50 (Berlin, 1960), p. 27: “Whether the Egyptians or others founded this philosophy [i.e., monasti­ cism], it is universally admitted that the great monk Antony cultivated this way of life, through good habits and fitting exercises, to the summit of precision and perfection” (Ἀλλ’ εἴτε Αἰγύπτιοι εἴτε ἄλλοι τινὲς ταύτης προὔστησαν ἐξ ἀρχῆς τῆς φιλοσοφίας, ἐκεῖνο γοῦν παρὰ πᾶσι συνωμολόγηται, ὡς εἰς ἄκρον ἀκριβείας καὶ τελειότητος ἤθεσι καὶ γυμνασίοις τοῖς πρέπουσιν ἐξήσκησε ταυτηνὶ τοῦ βίου τὴν διαγωγὴν Ἀντώνιος ὁ μέγας μοναχός). Antony’s stature as a venerable authority is confirmed by other primary sources. For instance, in the Alphabetical Collection of the Greek Apophthegmata patrum, Antony is the second most represented Father (after Poemen). On Antony’s prominent place in this monastic Sayings literature, see Harmless, Desert Christians, pp. 167–69. 57  HMA 2.2–6, ed. Schulz-Flügel, pp. 275–77. 58  HMA 7.1.2–6, ed. Schulz-Flügel, pp. 286–88. 59  HMA 9.2.1, ed. Schulz-Flügel, p. 311: “Erat enim quidam ante nos vir nobilissimus, nomine Pater­ mutius. Hic fuit primus in hoc loco monachus et in omni hac eremo viam salutis omnibus nobis primus ostendit.” 60  For Athanasius’s portrayal of Antony as an active master of disciples rather than simply as an ­exemplar of piety to be imitated by others, see Philip Rousseau, “Antony as Teacher in the Greek Life,” in Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, ed. Tomas Hägg and Philip Rousseau (Berkeley, 2000), pp. 88–109. 61  HMA 9.6.1, ed. Schulz-Flügel, p. 317; 16.2.11, p. 344. 62  HMA 9.6.2, ed. Schulz-Flügel, p. 318. 63  HMA 7.12.3, ed. Schulz-Flügel, p. 300. 64  HMA 9.4.3–4, ed. Schulz-Flügel, p. 300.

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not to the exclusion of other legendary figures whose accomplishments the HMA sets out to describe. Rufinus’s representation of Antony is a function of his own hagio-historiographic vision. He aims to present a more holistic, even-handed assessment of Antony’s impor­ tance in the grand scheme of fourth-century Egyptian monasticism than the blatantly one-sided perspective provided by the Athanasian Life. In other words, Rufinus offers in the form of his HMA essentially a retractatio to the Antony legend as it had been popularized in the West by the Latin translations of the Life.

Setting up a Straw Man: Helvidius and Jerome on Matt. 1.25* Philip Polcar University of Vienna Jerome composed his Adversus Helvidium in 383 during his second attested stay in Rome (382–385).1 Helvidius, a Roman priest and allegedly a disciple of the Arian bishop of Milan Auxentius (d. 374),2 tried to prove that Mary had normal marital relations with Joseph after she gave birth to Jesus and even proceeded to bear him other children. Helvidius asserted that virginity and marriage are to be esteemed equally by Christians. He thus implicitly (and perhaps explicitly) took a position against the formation of an elite ascetic class within the church. His views seem to have found some support.3 Jerome, a figurehead of the ascetic movement, promulgated the view that virgins are spiritually superior to married women,4 and he accordingly composed a refutation of Helvidius’s views in his Adversus Helvidium. The local dimensions of this literary conflict were probably limited to Rome and possibly other parts of Italy.5 Helvidius’s treatise which had prompted Jerome’s rejoinder is lost, and he is not mentioned *  This volume honoring Danuta Shanzer seems an appropriate place to express the honor I myself feel at having been her assistant and student in Vienna from 2013 to 2017. During those years I had the pleasure of experiencing her passion for languages (not only ancient ones) and astute scholarship (not just late antique), and in all things her acumen and her profound knowledge, paired always with curiosity and the drive to question. It is these two last qualities that have particularly inspired the present paper, which I hope she will enjoy. 1  See John Norman Davidson Kelly, Jerome: Life, Writings, Controversies (New York, 1975), pp. 104– 105. For a more recent discussion of the treatise’s dating, see Giancarlo Rocca, L’Adversus Helvidium di san Girolamo nel contexto della letteratura ascetico-mariana del secolo IV (Bern, 1998), pp. 21–23. 2  The oxymoron laicus et sacerdos (Jerome, Adv. Helv. 1, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, PL 23:183) is often misunderstood: for a long list of scholars who call Helvidius a layman see Rocca, L’Adversus Helvidium, p. 56. In reality the term is meant as an insult to Helvidius’s alleged inadequacy in his clerical office; see Stefan Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis: prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Stuttgart, 1992), p. 176. Yet even some subsequent treatments continue to refer to Helvidius as a layman. 3  See, for example, David G. Hunter, “Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in Late FourthCentury Rome,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 1 (1993), 47–71, esp. p. 50. 4  In his tractate on virginity, composed soon after the Adversus Helvidium, he says to Eustochium: “Ad hominis coniugem dei sponsa quid properas? Disce in hac parte superbiam sanctam, scito te ­illis esse meliorem” (Jerome, Ep.  22.16.1, ed.  Isidor Hilberg, Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae. Pars  I, CSEL 54 (Vienna, 1996), p. 163). There are many other instances that indicate his view; see also Barbara Feichtinger, Apostolae apostolorum. Frauenaskese als Befreiung und Zwang bei Hieronymus (Frankfurt, 1995), pp. 90–99. 5  Rebenich, Hieronymus, p. 176. D O I 10 .14 8 4/ M . P J M L . 5 .1 2 8 71 3 : 18 3 –19 8 ©

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by subsequent Christian authors.6 Though there have been attempts to reconstruct his argument through Jerome’s text,7 any statement about the true content of his work must remain to some degree conjectural. Nonetheless, scholars have all too readily accepted Jerome’s rendition of Helvidius’s lost argument. This paper focuses on issues surrounding the meaning of Matt. 1.25. It argues that Jerome distorted Helvidius’s arguments in order to refute him more easily, and presents some biblical passages that Helvidius may have used to prove his point.

Mary’s Perpetual Virginity in Patristic Teaching The topic of debate concerns Mary’s virginity post partum, which would only later become part of a dogma constitutional to the Catholic faith, namely, the perpetual virginity of Mary. This is the notion that Mary was a virgin before, during and after the birth of Jesus Christ: she supposedly conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit without the involvement of a man and bore him without violating her virginal integrity.8 The term “ever-virgin” (ἀειπάρθενος), though hardly a new title, was officially used for the first time to describe Mary at the Second Council of Constantinople (553).9 By this time, the doctrine of her perpetual virginity had become firmly a part of orthodox belief. But this had not always been so. The idea that Mary conceived Jesus while a virgin has its origin in biblical scripture and was never really in doubt,10 but the doctrine of her virginal integrity in partu and post partum arose from an extra-scriptural tradition.11 Its existence is hard (if not impossible) to pinpoint before the Protoevangelium Iacobi, a Marian apocryphon written probably in Syria at the end of the second century.12 Jerome Augustine mentions a group called the Helvidiani briefly. See Augustine, De haeresibus 84, ed. Roland Vander Plaetse and Clemens Beukers, Aurelii Augustini opera pars XIII, 2, CCSL 46 (Turnhout, 1969), p. 338: “Helvidiani, exorti ab Helvidio, ita virginitati Mariae contradicunt, ut eam post Christum alios etiam filios de viro suo Ioseph peperisse contendant.” 7  As attempted by Georges Joussard, “La personnalité d’Helvidius,” Mélanges J.  Saunier (Lyon, 1944), pp. 139–56. 8  See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed.  (Vatican City, 2016), pp.  122–28 (§§  484–511, esp. §§ 496–99). 9  Concilium Constantinopolitanum 2, can. 6 (427), ed. Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Kompendium der Glaubensbekenntnisse und kirchlichen Lehrentscheidungen (Freiburg im Breisgau, 2009), p. 553. 10  Matt. 1.18–23, Lk. 1.26–37; this is generally seen as the fulfilment of the prophecy in Is. 7.14 (“Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel”), though the translation of the Hebrew word alma as “virgin” may be wrong; the word may simply mean “young woman.” 11  On the development of Mariology in antiquity, see Stephen Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion (New Haven, 2016). For an overview of the doctrine concerning Mary’s virginity in the Latin West, see Hunter, “Helvidius,” pp. 61–69. 12  The text marks the beginning of Marian piety (see Shoemaker, Mary, pp.  47–61). Its narration depicts Mary as a three-year-old girl sent to serve the Lord at the temple, an old Jewish tradition: she 6 

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would later distance himself from this text and call it a delusion (deliramenta).13 In the third century Mary’s virginity was still a marginal topic among the Church fathers.14 Origen (185–c. 254) was influenced by the idea of a chaste Mary, and his works were particularly influential for Christian thinkers of the fourth century.15 The doctrine of Mary’s virginity in partu and post partum became a matter of theological debate in the Latin West only during the fourth century. Theological debate during the fourth century largely centered on the relationship between the Son and the Father. It is no wonder that the mother of Jesus too was a topic of interest for Christian thinkers of this age. With the rise of the ascetic movement, Mary was elevated as an example of chaste virginity. Athanasius of Alexandria, following his predecessor Alexander, believed in Mary’s perpetual virginity; he wrote an exhortation to virgins to imitate Mary.16 His description of Mary as dedicated and meek was later adapted by Ambrose (c. 340–397) in his treatise De virginibus (377).17 For ascetics such as Jerome, Mary became a model of life-long chastity and an embodiment of the superiority of virginity. was not permitted to live an ordinary life as a wife and mother, but remained a virgin of God. At the age of puberty (twelve), she was required to have a male guardian appointed for her, someone who would respect her vow of virginity. For this task Joseph was chosen. He is portrayed as an elderly widower with children, a narrative that represents one solution to the problem of Jesus’s “brothers” in the Bible. 13  Jerome, Adv. Helv. 8, ed. Migne, PL 23:192. 14  Tertullian (c. 160–c. 225) was convinced that Mary was only a virgin until the birth of Jesus, but argued that she married Joseph after Jesus’s birth and bore him other children: see De carne Christi 22–23, ed. Emil Kroymann, Tertulliani Opera II, CCSL 2 (Turnhout, 1954), pp. 912–15. He does not seem to be aware that the doctrine of the virginity post partum even exists. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215) believed in the virginity in partu and seems to refer to the Protoevangelium in his argument: see Stromata 7.16.93, edd. Fenton John Anthony Hort and Joseph Bickersteth Mayor, Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies Book VII (London, 1902), p. 165: καὶ γὰρ μετὰ τὸ τεκεῖν ἀυτὴν μαιωθεῖσάν φασί τινες παρθένον εὑρεθῆναι. 15  It is not clear whether Origen believed in a virginity in partu. In his homilies on Luke he denies it; in his homilies to Leviticus he affirms it. Shoemaker, Mary, p. 67, points out that something might have been lost in translation, as only Latin translations are extant. However, he certainly thought Mary remained chaste throughout her life. He may have been the first to introduce the term Θεοτόκος (Godbearer). His  views were certainly hugely influential on the ascetic writers of the following century (Shoemaker, Mary, pp. 67–68). 16  See Yves-Marie Duval, “La problématique de la ‘Lettre aux vierges’ d’Athanase,” Le  Muséon 88 (1975), 405–33. 17  See Yves-Marie Duval, “L’originalité du ‘De virginibus’ dans le mouvement ascétique occidental: Ambroise, Cyprien, Athanase,” in Ambroise de Milan. XVIe centenaire de son élection épiscopale, ed. YvesMarie Duval (Paris, 1974), pp. 9–66; Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988), pp. 354–56. Ambrose developed his teachings on Mary’s virginity in partu gradually in later works. Jerome does not seem to have adopted this doctrine at the time of the Helvidian (or Jovinianist) controversy (Hunter “Helvidius,” pp. 58–61).

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Yet, the ascetic view was not the only one and had to be defended against a a widespread opposition.18 Already around 350, in his commentary on Matthew, Bishop Fortunatianus of Aquileia had upheld Mary’s virginity post partum. In response to those who believed that Mary had normal marital relations with Joseph, he wrote: Sed quicumque sanae mentis sunt et spiritales, sic sentire non debent, ut potuisset Ioseph vir iustus, qui et visiones angelorum videbat et, quid ageret, angelo monente discebat, Mariam contingere … Quin fieri poterat, ut homo iustus Ioseph, qui custos positus Mariae invenitur, qui signum, quod per prophetas fuerat dictum in populo futurum, tenebat, ut hic Mariam libidinis causa temptaret?19 But whoever is of a sound mind, and spiritual, ought not to suppose that Joseph, a righteous man who both saw visions of angels and learnt what he should do from the information of an angel, would have been able to defile Mary … How could it have been the case that the righteous man Joseph, who is found to be appointed as Mary’s custodian, who held onto the sign which the prophets said would come to pass among the people, that such a man should put Mary to the test for the sake of desire?20

Fortunatianus’s negative evaluation of human sexuality reveals the influence of Origen’s thought on the matter.21 Fortunatianus also picks up the tradition laid out in the Protoevangelium Iacobi that Joseph served as Mary’s guardian (custos). But most importantly for the matter at hand, his vehement tone suggests that Mary’s virginity post partum was already a matter of conflict in his time, maybe even in his own community, as his commentary was barely read outside of his native Aquileia.22 Only a few years later, Hilary of Poitiers would comment on Mary’s virginity, too. He tellingly speaks of many (plures) who believe that Jesus had biological brothers, and he calls them “irreligious” (irreligiosi), “strangers to spiritual teaching” (a spiritali doctrina alieni), and “most perverse” (pravissimi).23 He offers the Protoevangelium’s solution to the problem of Jesus’s brothers in the gospels, saying that Joseph had

Hunter, “Helvidius,” p. 48; Feichtinger, Apostolae apostolorum, p. 39. Fortunat. In Matt. 335–41, ed. Lukas J. Dorfbauer, Fortunatianus episcopus Aquileiensis. Commentarii in evangelia, CSEL 103 (Vienna, 2017), p. 125. Fortunatianus’s work has not yet been evaluated in the context of Marian doctrine. 20  Translation from Hugh A. G. Houghton, Fortunatianus Aquileiensis. Commentary on the Gospels, English Translation and Introduction (Turnhout, 2017), p. 26. 21  On sexuality and impurity in Origen, see Henri Crouzel, “Virginité et mariage selon Origène,” Museum Lessianum 58 (1963), 49–66; it appears that Fortunatianus did not know Origen’s work firsthand, but rather used him via Victorinus of Pettau: see Lukas J. Dorfbauer, “Fortunatian von Aquileia, Origenes und die Datierung des Physiologus,” Revue d’études augustiniennes et patristiques 59 (2013), 219–45, especially p. 243. 22  See Dorfbauer, Fortunatianus, pp. 50–52. 23  Hilarius, in Matthaeum 1.3–4, ed.  Jean Doignon, Hilaire de Poitiers, Commentaire sur Matthieu (­Paris, 1978), pp. 94–96. 18 

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children from a first marriage.24 The disproportionate survival of texts by orthodox writers, who adopted the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity, blurs the picture of how (un)popular this notion may have been among Christians. The views of Helvidius have only come down to us because Jerome chose to refute them. Something similar can be said for Jovinian, who, in the late 380s, questioned Mary’s virginity in partu.25 The fact that Helvidius was not officially condemned indicates that there was no agreement among church officials on Mary’s virginity post partum at that time.26 Jerome’s Adversus Helvidium has been described as the founding document of European Mariology.27 But this is misleading, as Jerome does not offer any teaching on Marian cult or devotion. The text is a refutation of arguments that supposedly have been brought up by Helvidius. If Jerome’s text can be considered successful, it is so only in proving that the Bible does not contradict the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity. In this respect it has been used as a fundamental defence of Roman Catholic belief.28

Helvidius’s Argument and Jerome’s Response Orthodox Christian tradition has not been merciful to heterodox texts, and so Helvidius’s argument has not survived in his own words. His view can only be rudimentarily reconstructed from Jerome’s text. It is clear, however, that Helvidius’s tractate was a reply to a text by someone called Carterius, who used the perpetual virginity of Mary as proof for the superiority of virginity to marriage.29 It is important to note that Helvidius did not oppose asceticism in general; he merely asserted that virginity

The similarities between Hilary and Fortunatianus may well go back to their independent use of Victorinus of Pettau: see Dorfbauer “Fortunatian von Aquileia,” p. 243 n. 52. 25  See Hunter, “Helvidius,” pp. 51–61. 26  Hunter, “Helvidius,” p. 51; Joussard, “La personnalité,” p. 154. 27  Alfons Fürst, Hieronymus. Askese und Wissenschaft in der Spätantike (Freiburg, 2016), p. 146: “die Gründungsurkunde der westlichen Mariologie.” 28  Jerome is often seen as the main authority in countering the arguments of those who question the perpetual virginity on a biblical basis. Thus Bishop Richard Challoner (1691–1781) offers the following explanation on Matt. 1.25 in the notes to his revision of the Douay-Rheims translation, The Holy Bible Translated from the Latin Vulgate Diligently Compared with the Hebrew, Greek and Other Editions in Divers Languages (Dublin, 1837), p. 946: “From these words Helvidius and other heretics most impiously inferred that the blessed Virgin Mary had other children besides Christ; but St Jerome shews, by divers examples, that this expression of the Evangelist was a manner of speaking usual among the Hebrews, to denote by the word until, only what is done, without any regard to the future.” Jerome is also cited by name by the contemporary Catholic theologian Scott Hahn, Joy of the World, How Christ’s Coming Changed Everything (and Still Does) (New York, 2014), p. 53. 29  Hunter, “Helvidius,” pp. 48–49. 24 

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and marriage were of equal merit.30 His  concerns were less superficial than Jerome wants to believe. If one rejects Mary’s marital life, one ultimately denies the goodness of creation itself.31 In  order to demonstrate that fruitful marriage was equivalent in virtue to virginity, he tried to show that Mary appears as a wife and mother of children in the Bible, referring to biblical passages mentioning Jesus’s brethren (fratres).32 He also argued that Matt. 1.25 implies that Joseph had normal marital relations with Mary after Jesus’s birth. Helvidius presented evidence from the Bible and strengthened his position by using Tertullian and the commentator Victorinus of Pettau (d. 303/4).33 It is not my intention to argue a dogmatic position regarding the semantics of the biblical passage in question. Nonetheless, the source of disagreement must be analysed. Matt. 1.25 reads: “He did not take her as his wife or have relations with her until she bore her son” (“Et accepit uxorem suam, et non cognovit eam, donec peperit filium suum”).34 The semantics of this sentence are often considered somewhat ambiguous. Either Joseph abstained from having intercourse with Mary until she gave birth to her son, but had normal marital relations with her later, or he continued to abstain from sex with Mary after Jesus’s birth. Though the phrasing makes the former understanding more likely, it cannot be seen as exclusively correct. The meaning of the sentence should be weighed carefully. In semantic linguistics it is common practice to transfer the problem to a more neutral sentence with similar structural and grammatical features. For instance: “The cat did not eat the food until its owner returned home.” For most readers this statement certainly implies that the cat ate after the arrival of its owner. (If we substitute “before” for “until” it becomes more ambiguous.) Nonetheless, adherents of the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity would argue that the sentence does not necessarily imply that the cat ate after the return of the owner. According to them, the sentence is only a statement about what happened before, and one should only understand it as follows: “While its owner was absent, the cat did not eat its food.” This is semantically not impossible, but the need to rephrase alone, in order Jerome, Adversus Helvidium 22, ed. Migne, PL 23:206. The notion that Helvidius argued for the superiority of marriage to virginity rests on inadequate foundations; see Ilona Opelt, Hieronymus’ ­Streitschriften (Heidelberg, 1973), p. 28. 31  For a more detailed analysis of Helvidius’s view, see Hunter, “Helvidius,” p. 50. 32  Lk. 2.7; Matt. 12.46, Jn. 2.12, 7.3–5; Acts 1.14, 13.55, etc. 33  Helvidius probably used Victorinus on the matter of Jesus’s brothers, though Jerome argues that Helvidius misinterpreted him, which may well be true: see Jerome, Adv. Helv. 17, ed. Migne, PL 23:201. On Jerome’s opinion of Victorinus, see Martine Dulaey, Victorin de Poetovio, premier exégète latin (Paris, 1993), pp. 16–18, and for a reconstruction of Victorinus’s theological position pp. 63–64. 34  It must be noted that the whole discussion took place on the basis of Latin translations, not the original languages. This may come as a surprise, as Jerome usually did not miss a chance to boast about his skills in Greek and Hebrew. But looking at the arguments presented, one can see that a change of language would not have added anything for either side. The problem transfers well to other languages, be it Latin, Greek, or English. 30 

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to point out the neutral understanding, shows that using a negative statement followed by “until”-phrasing suggests the heterodox reading of Matthew. If the divinely inspired evangelist assumed that Mary stayed a virgin after the birth of Jesus, he certainly produced a rhetorical disaster here, and it is clear why many Christians in the fourth century doubted Mary’s virginity post partum. Taking into account the passages in the Bible referring to Jesus’s brethren,35 Helvidius must have had a point, and it appears that his tractate was somewhat popular, even among ascetically inclined clergymen.36 Had his work not gained some degree of attention and agreement, it could have been easily discarded and ignored by ascetics.

Jerome’s Strategy From Jerome’s text it is clear that Helvidius adduced a great many examples (exempla quamplurima) from the Bible which supported his reading of Matt. 1.25.37 It does not come as a surprise that Jerome does not specify these passages, but we can conjecture what some of them must have been. Jerome rhetorically insulted Helvidius in an attempt to present him as unlearned and his argument as incoherent. Such taunts from an opposing rhetorician were to be expected. How learned Helvidius truly was is hard to determine. It appears that he suggested that Lk. 2.33 is an interpolation in the Greek manuscripts.38 This would be, if he truly asserted such a thing, an obvious lapse, but it would also show that Helvidius was conscious of the problem different textual traditions could pose. This speaks to his erudition.39 In any case, he evidently managed to compose an argument convincing to some readers. It appears that Jerome had a difficult task ahead of him, and he chose to solve this problem by means of his rhetorical toolbox rather than with sound methodology.40 Jerome refers to Helvidius’s argument with these words: Deinde vult docere, quod “donec,” sive “usque,” adverbium, certum tempus significet, quo completo fiat id, quod usque ad illud temporis, quod praescriptum est, non fiebat, velut in praesenti: “Et non cognoscebat eam, donec peperit filium.” Apparet, inquit, cognitam esse post partum, cuius cognitionem filii tantum differebat generatio.41 Matt. 12.46–50, 13.55–56; Mk. 3.31, 6.3; Lk. 8.19; Jn. 2.12, 7.3; Acts 1.14; 1 Cor. 9.5; Gal. 1.19. Hunter, “Helvidius,” p. 50. 37  Jerome, Adv. Helv. 5, ed. Migne, PL 23:188. 38  Jerome, Adv. Helv. 16, ed. Migne, PL 23:200–201. 39  At least in theological matters Helvidius was highly learned, see Feichtinger, Apostolae apostolorum, p. 42. 40  For a study describing Jerome as a rhetor in this conflict, see Przemyslaw Nehring, “In  morem declamatorum paululum lusimus – das rhetorische Spiel des Hieronymus mit Helvidius,” in Collectanea Classica Thorunensia XIV Studia Graeco-Latina, Universitatis Nicolai Copernici (Torún, 2003), pp. 75–85. 41  Jerome, Adv. Helv. 5, ed. Migne, PL 23:188. 35 

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So [Helvidius] wishes to teach us that the adverb donec or usque implies a definite time, and once that has been fulfilled, that the event occurs which previously did not occur, as in the case before us: “and knew her not until she had brought forth a son.” It appears, he says, that she was known after she gave birth, and that that knowledge was only delayed by bringing forth a son.

At this point the reader should ask if this is truly what Helvidius said or some distorted version of it. The word inquit suggests a direct quotation in the second part, and as Helvidius’s text was known, Jerome could not have made up these quotations completely. Yet, Jerome only quotes Helvidius’s conclusion; his argument in the first part of the passage is rendered loosely and probably inaccurately. Helvidius certainly argued that the donec phrase in Matt. 1.25 implies that the sexual act took place at a later time, but Jerome makes it seem that his opponent made a general statement about the syntactical function of donec in biblical scripture. This is the thesis Jerome chooses to refute. He uses the following examples from the Bible to do so. First, he quotes from Isaiah: “Ego sum, ego sum, et donec senescatis ego sum,” and asks subsequently: “Will he cease to be God when they have grown old?” 42 He continues by citing “Oportet enim illum regnare, donec ponat omnes inimicos sub pedibus eius,” which he follows with another rhetorical question and answer: “Is the Lord to reign only until his enemies begin to be under his feet, and once they are under his feet will he cease to reign? Of course, his reign will then commence in its fullness when his enemies begin to be under his feet.” 43 Jerome then adduces an example from the Psalms: “Sicut oculi ancillae in manibus dominae suae, ita oculi nostri ad Dominum Deum nostrum donec misereatur nostri.” 44 Jerome explains that it is unlikely to mean that after one has received mercy from God, one would turn away one’s gaze.45 Jerome offers two more examples, which focus on the word “usque.” First: “Et abscondit ea Jacob subter terebinthum, quae est in Sichimis, et perdidit ea usque in hodiernum diem,” 46 then: “Et defunctus est Moyses servus Domini in terra Moab per verbum Domini et sepelierunt eum in Geth, prope domum Phegor, et nemo scit sepulcrum eius usque in diem istum.” 47 Jerome then mockingly exhorts Helvidius to prove that those graves have already been found, as he alleges that, according to Helvidius, that which had This “quotation” is in fact a conglomerate of Is. 43.11, 43.25, 46.4, and Jer. 7.11. Jerome then adduces an answer from the Bible, the final words of the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. 28.20) (Adv. Helv. 6, ed. Migne, PL 23:189). 43  1 Cor. 15.25; Jerome, Adv. Helv. 6, ed. Migne, PL 23:189. 44  Ps. 122.3. 45  Jerome, Adv. Helv. 6, ed. Migne, PL 23:189. 46  The first part is from Gen. 35.8 and refers to a certain Deborah (ea). The  second part is from Gen. 35.20 and refers to Rachel (Adv. Helv. 7, ed. Migne, p. 190). Jerome probably quoted from memory and combined these two verses, but this mistake does not detract from his argument. 47  Deut. 34.5–6; Jerome, Adv. Helv. 7, ed. Migne, PL 23:190. 42 

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been delayed occurred after the usque.48 It  is needless to show that this last line of argument is beside the point, but the fact that Jerome includes a prepositional phrase (“It was not found until today”) in his rebuttal clearly confirms that he is making an argument solely about the word “until.” 49 It would have been short-sighted of Helvidius to deduce semantic content based on only one word. It seems more probable that Helvidius, who allegedly convinced other monks of his view, suggested that constructions like Matt. 1.25 imply that some event took place which previously did not, and that he bolstered this point with biblical examples. The preliminary discussion of Matt. 1.25 above has already shown that even this version of Helvidius’s hypothesis is ultimately contestable, but it will be made clear how much less so, and why Jerome chose to refute a simplified version of Helvidius’s argument.

Jerome’s Argument: The Use of “until” in the Bible All of the examples Jerome provides from the Bible prove indeed that “until” does not determine a point in time at which an event that previously did not happen begins to do so, and thus far Jerome’s argument appears sound. He can even claim to be able to provide “countless other examples” to strengthen his point.50 But the examples chosen are not suitable comparisons to Matt. 1.25 in terms of their syntactical construction. In three of the four examples, the initial statement is in a primary tense, unlike the passage from Matt. 1.25, which uses past tense. Also, none of his examples provides a negated statement or action, unlike the construction from Matthew.51 Applying these criteria to the corpus of examples seems necessary for a methodologically sound comparison, and doing so changes both the validity and quality of Jerome’s and Helvidius’s respective arguments. The Latin Bible – including deuterocanonical books52 – contains 323 uses of donec, and almost all of them are used in the temporal sense of “until.”53 The largest share, Jerome, Adv. Helv. 7, ed. Migne, PL 23:190. Hahn, Joy, pp.  53–54 adds two more examples: the particularly pointless 2  Kgs.  6.23 (“Igitur Michol filiae Saul non est natus filius usque in diem mortis suae”) and 1 Tim. 4.13, which is in line with Jerome’s other examples. 50  Jerome, Adv. Helv. 6, ed. Migne, PL 23:189: “Poteram super hoc innumerabilia exempla congerere, et omnem lacessentis procacitatem testimoniorum nube celare; verum adhuc pauca subiciam, ut his similia ipse sibi lector inveniat.” 51  In classical Latin prose, a negative donec clause in the indicative, usually in the perfect tense, denotes a subordinate clause that interrupts the action of the main clause, e.g. Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 23.31.9: “ita de comitiis, donec rediit Marcellus, silentium fuit.” 52  The text used here is Biblia Sacra Vulgata, ed. Robert Weber and Roger Gryson (Stuttgart, 2007). 53  Few uses of donec imply a local extension, such as 2 Esdr. 3.21 or 1 Kgs. 15.7; usually the word usque is used in such a way in the Vulgate as part of a prepositional phrase, such as in Ex. 23.31: “Ponam autem terminos tuos a mari Rubro usque ad mare Palestinorum.” These cases must be excluded from a comparison with Matt. 1.25. 48 

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some 243 (75.2%), occur within the context of a primary tense, and Jerome would have indeed found many examples among them to further strengthen his position. But only eighty (24.8%) appear in the context of a verb in the past tense,54 and of these only ten (3.1%) contain a negated phrase which is determined by a donec construction. This small number represents the examples eligible for a semantic comparison to Matt. 1.25. Therefore, these examples will be examined now. The first instance relevant for Jerome’s argument is particularly similar to Matt. 1.25, and is found in the same Gospel: Sicut enim erant in diebus ante diluvium comedentes et bibentes nubentes et nuptum tradentes usque ad eum diem quo introivit in arcam Noe, et non cognoverunt donec venit diluvium et tulit omnes, ita erit et adventus Filii hominis.55 For as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.56

The semantics of this case are very clear: The godless people did not bother to change their earthly habits, but kept going until the flood came. After the flood had come, they realized God’s anger just before they drowned. This passage is the only other comparable example from the same book of the Bible (Matthew); it is thus a strong philological argument against Jerome’s interpretation of Matt. 1.25. Since Jerome asserts that Helvidius presented many examples from the Bible to support his argument, it appears quite possible that this one was among them. Jerome, however, ignores it. There are only two other relevant examples in the New Testament, both in the book of Revelation. This prophetic book of the Bible is perhaps the most obscure in meaning. Even Jerome’s praise of the book admits that he was puzzled by it.57 Therefore, Revelation was not a good quarry for either Helvidius or Jerome since its cryptic meaning made interpretation difficult and theologically dangerous. The two passages will be discussed here quickly nonetheless. The first reads: Non-negated uses of donec constructions in the past tense: Gen. 8.6–7, 26.13, 33.3, 34.5, 43.25, 49.26; Ex. 33.8, 34.34; Lev. 24.12; Num; 10.21, 32.13; Deut. 1.31, 2.14; Josh. 2.22, 4.10, 4.23–24, 5.1, 5.6, 5.8, 10.13, 20.9; Ruth 2.23; 1 Kgs. 3.1, 5.5, 11.16, 15.29, 18.46, 30.4; 2 Kgs. 15.24, 17.22, 21.10, 23.10; 4 Kgs. 6.25, 10.11, 16.11, 21.16, 24.20; 1 Chron. 6.32; 2 Chron. 29.28, 29.34, 31.1, 36.16, 36.20; 1 Esdr. 3.21; Jud. 3.24–25, 4.23–24, 5.7; Est. 15.11; Job 32.11–12; Ps. 104.18–19; Jer. 36.23; Eze. 21.27, 33.22; Dan. 2.34, 4.3, 5.21, 7.4, 7.9, 7.21; Hos. 7.4; Jon. 4.5; 1 Macc. 3.33, 4.41, 5.53–54, 10.50, 16.9; Matt. 18.30; Lk. 13.21, Acts 8.40, 21.26, 25.21; omitted are those examples which appear in indirect speech and would exhibit a primary tense in direct speech (e.g. 2 Esdr. 7.65). 55  Matt. 24.38–39. 56  Translation from the Douay-Rheims version. 57  Jerome, Ep. 53.9.6, ed. Hilberg, p. 463: “Apocalypsis Iohannis tot habet sacramenta, quot v­ erba. Parum dixi et pro merito voluminis laus omnis inferior est; in verbis singulis multiplices latent intellegentiae.” 54 

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Et impletum est templum fumo a maiestate Dei et de virtute eius et nemo poterat introire in templum donec consummarentur septem plagae septem angelorum.58 And the temple was filled with smoke from the majesty of God, and from his power; and no man was able to enter into the temple, till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled.

The temple of witness is filled with smoke, i.e. the presence of God, which elsewhere in the Bible makes it impossible even for his righteous servants to enter.59 God’s wrath is then executed by means of seven plagues, and this execution defines the time during which the temple cannot be accessed. The second passage comes from chapter  20, in which the first resurrection, the binding and liberation of Satan, and the final judgement take place. The details of this chapter are particularly difficult to understand. Et vixerunt et regnaverunt cum Christo mille annis. Ceteri mortuorum non vixerunt donec consummentur mille anni.60 And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest of the dead lived not, till the thousand years were finished.

The exact meaning of this passage and what surrounds it are a matter of much debate. A big issue is the question of “the rest of the dead” – who are they?61 One view is that after the thousand-year reign, Satan is let loose; he, along with Gog and Magog, who represent all of the other (sinful) dead, wage war against the saints, and are to be judged later on.62 This interpretation supports the Helvidian position. But definite answers are yet to be found, and without them it is not possible to interpret the donec construction here correctly. The passage must therefore be excluded from the discussion of the meaning of donec. Other passages containing a negated past tense followed by a donec construction may be found in the Old Testament. The following example takes place during the Israelites’ long journey in the desert after the events at Mount Sinai. Miriam is punished by God for speaking out against Moses and is struck with leprosy: Cui respondit Dominus: si pater eius spuisset in faciem illius, nonne debuerat saltem septem dierum rubore suffundi? Separetur septem diebus extra castra et postea revocabitur. Exclusa est itaque Maria extra castra septem diebus et populus non est motus de loco illo donec revocata est Maria.63 Rev. 15.8. “Witness” or “testimony” is a key theological concept in Revelation. See Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Grand Rapids, 2002), p. 73; on smoke filling the temple see pp. 571–72. 60  Rev. 20.4–5. 61  Osborne, Revelation, pp. 707–708. 62  Osborne, Revelation, pp. 711–12. 63  Num.12.14–15. 58 

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And the Lord answered him: If her father had spitten upon her face, ought she not to have been ashamed for seven days at least? Let her be separated seven days without the camp, and afterwards she shall be called again. Mary therefore was put out of the camp seven days: and the people moved not from that place until Mary was called again.

The people had to wait for Miriam for seven days; she then came back into the camp, and the people departed.64 The book of Daniel provides two examples: Et per me propositum est decretum ut introducerentur in conspectu meo cuncti sapientes Babylonis et ut solutionem somnii indicarent mihi. Tunc ingrediebantur arioli magi Chaldei et aruspices et somnium narravi in conspectu eorum et solutionem eius non indicaverunt mihi donec collega ingressus est in conspectu meo Danihel cuius nomen Balthasar secundum nomen dei mei qui habet spiritum deorum sanctorum in semet ipso: et somnium coram ipso locutus sum.65 Therefore I made a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me, that they might make known unto me the interpretation of the dream. Then came in the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers: and I told the dream before them; but they did not make known unto me the interpretation thereof until Daniel came in before me, whose name was Belteshazzar, according to the name of my god, and in whom is the spirit of the holy gods: and I told the dream before him.

Of course, the interpreters were not able to understand the dream of the king even after Daniel came in, as Daniel’s entry alone could have hardly enlightened their understanding. Thus, on first glance this example seems to support Jerome’s point. Yet, the economy of narration must be taken into account. The negated phrase expresses the inability of the gathered to solve the puzzle posed by the dream before Daniel’s interference. After his entry, Daniel listens and interprets, and then the meaning of the dream is made clear.66 Jerome’s polemical discussion concerning when the implied sexual act of Joseph and Mary would have taken place is clearly rebutted by this and other examples. Jerome tastelessly describes how Joseph must have forced himself on the exhausted and bloodied Mary immediately, before the midwives, holding the crying child.67 A donec See Num. 13.1. The LXX (Num. 12.16) makes the sequence of events even clearer: Καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἐξῆρεν ὁ λαὸς ἐξ Ασηρωθ καὶ παρενέβαλον ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ τοῦ Φαραν. See Septuaginta, ed. Alfred Rahlfs and Robert Hanhart, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 2006), p. 234. 65  Dan. 4.3–5. 66  Dan. 4.6–24. 67  The passage is ironic in part, and Jerome means to show that indeed Helvidius is the tasteless one. However, the underlying problem is that of “pollution,” as the woman would have been considered unclean, and the sexual act would have been strictly against Jewish law, Jerome, Adv. Helv. 8, ed. Migne, PL 23:191: “Alioqui quomodo stare poterit, non cognovit eam, donec peperit filium: si post purgationis tempus exspectat: si quadraginta rursum diebus tanto tempore dilata libido differtur? Polluatur cruore puerpera: obstetrices suscipiant parvulum vagientem: maritus lassam teneat uxorem. Sic incipiant nuptiae, ne evangelista mentitus sit.” 64 

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construction following a negated action does in fact not require the implied event to take place right away. The second passage from Daniel is about fasting: Panem desiderabilem non comedi et caro et vinum non introierunt in os meum sed neque unguento unctus sum donec conplerentur trium ebdomadarum dies.68 I ate no desirable bread, and neither flesh nor wine entered into my mouth, neither was I anointed with ointment, till the days of three weeks were accomplished.

In this example, the emphasis is on what Daniel did not do during the three weeks. It implies beyond doubt that he would eat meat, drink wine, and use ointments after his period of mourning had been completed. Another example is from the book of Joshua: Iosue vero non contraxit manum quam in sublime porrexerat tenens clypeum donec interficerentur omnes habitatores Ahi.69 But Josue drew not back his hand, which he had stretched out on high, holding the shield, till all the inhabitants of Hai were slain.

Joshua holds his hand in the air until the Israelites have slaughtered all of the people of Hai. Of course, he does not keep his hand up indefinitely afterwards. The book of Lamentations offers one instance: Oculus meus adflictus est nec tacuit eo quod non esset requies donec respiceret et videret Dominus de caelis.70 My eye wept and ceased not to, because there was no respite, until the Lord looked down and beheld from heaven.

In this case, the narrator describes his tears, which only cease by the mercy of God, as inferred by the donec sentence. The first (third) book of Kings provides an example in a speech by the Queen of Sheba: Dixitque ad regem: “Verus est sermo quem audivi in terra mea super sermonibus tuis, et super sapientia tua: et non credebam narrantibus mihi, donec ipsa veni, et vidi oculis meis, et probavi quod media pars mihi nuntiata non fuerit: maior est sapientia et opera tua, quam rumor quem audivi.”71 And she said to the king: “The report is true, which I heard in my own country, concerning thy words, and concerning thy wisdom. And I did not believe them that told me, till I came myself, and saw with my own eyes, and have found that the half hath not been told me: thy wisdom and thy works, exceed the fame which I heard.” Dan. 10.3. Josh. 8.26. 70  Lam. 3.49–50. 71  3 Kgs. 10.6–7. 68 

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The passage implies that after the Queen of Sheba had seen the wealth and wisdom of Solomon with her own eyes, she finally believed it. The last example comes from a non- or deutero-canonical book, the book of Wisdom. Jerome himself did not consider the text canonical,72 and as he was trying to refute Helvidius by the use of strictly biblical scripture, it was probably not even useful for his purposes: Et in vinculis non dereliquit illum donec adferret illi sceptrum regni et potentiam adversus eos qui eum deprimebant et mendaces ostendit qui maculaverunt ipsum et dedit illi claritatem aeternam.73 And in bands she [i.e. Wisdom] left him not, till she brought him the sceptre of the kingdom, and power against those that oppressed him: and shewed them to be liars that had accused him, and gave him everlasting glory.

Here, the donec just emphasizes what happened before the acquisition of power, and it is unclear what happens next. It is possible that Wisdom leaves the narrator afterwards, but it cannot be deduced from the phrasing. Thus, this one example highlights that the orthodox understanding of Matt. 1.25 is possible, as pointed out initially. Jerome, however, did not use this example in his argument. One reason might be the non-canonical nature of the text, but of course, Jerome, as his examples suggest, quoted from memory, and perhaps the example simply did not come to mind. The results of this discussion are quite striking. Eight biblical passages of comparable structure show that a donec construction with a negated action or statement indeed implies that the action or statement becomes true at a later point of the narration. One example has been excluded because of its obscurity (Rev. 20.4–5), and one non-canonical example (Wis. 10.14) exhibits a more neutral reading, supporting the orthodox reading of Matt. 1.25. Therefore, Jerome’s problem is quite obvious: he could not find any counter-examples in the canonical Bible against Helvidius, who in turn may have produced some or all of the eight passages discussed above. Jerome therefore chose to misrepresent Helvidius’s hypothesis through a reductio ad absurdum, so that he could produce an argument in which he could appear superior in learning and deduction.

Afterthoughts It is of course possible that Helvidius made a legitimately poor argument and fell easy prey to Jerome, a skilled wielder of rhetoric. Nevertheless, trusting any author – let alone Jerome – to depict his opponent objectively is obviously unrealistic. If Helvidius Jerome, prol. in Reg., ed. Weber and Gryson, p. 365: “Igitur sapientia, quae vulgo Salomonis inscribitur, et Iesu filii Sirach liber et Iudith et Tobias et pastor non sunt in canone.” 73  Wis. 10.14. 72 

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won some degree of consent even from his fellow clergymen upon publishing his tractate,74 it is hardly believable that his argument about donec constructions in the Bible was as short-sighted as Jerome represents it. What is more, since Jerome tells us that Helvidius produced a list of biblical passages supporting his unorthodox view of Matt. 1.25, one must ask which passages would have been most suitable for Helvidius to present. In this paper I have tried to propose some likely candidates. Given the number of methodologically sound parallels, it is apparent that Jerome would have had a hard time using “only the words of scripture”75 to destroy Helvidius. He went for a different, less fair, but rhetorically effective approach. Considering this, one must be wary about judging Jerome’s rebuke as “masterfully crafted, structured, and polished.”76 One may rather agree with Norden, who stated that Jerome’s arguments aim at sophistic persuasion rather than at logical cogency.77 Of course, this paper has discussed only one – albeit a central – part of the argument. Further work might uncover more cases of this “straw-man strategy.” Certainly there are other passages in the text that can be described as sophismata.78 No matter the valid points Helvidius may have made, Jerome, though well aware of the problems surrounding Matt. 1.25, was certainly convinced that Mary remained chaste after giving birth to Jesus. In  his ascetic understanding, which was deeply rooted in the teachings of the Pauline letters, virginity was the ultimate condition on earth, the purest form of holiness a human could possibly achieve in life; and given this understanding it was unthinkable for Jerome that the mother of the Savior could have been anything “less” than a virgin. This weighed more strongly than any arguments concerning biblical scripture Helvidius had made. It did not matter to Jerome whether Helvidius was defeated on fair grounds, only that his heretical view lost its credibility. To examine the matter from another perspective, one may ask what part this text played in Jerome’s own career. He  had become Pope Damasus’s secretary in Rome in 382. He was popular among aristocratic women of the aristocracy, and by means of his letters he had started to lay out a foundation for his public persona as a desert monk Hunter, “Helvidius,” p. 50. Jerome, Adv. Helv. 2, ed. Migne, PL 23:185: “Ipsa scripturarum verba ponenda sunt: ipsis quibus adversum nos usus est testimoniis, revincatur, ut intelligat se et legere potuisse quae scripta sunt et non potuisse quae pietate roborata sunt cognoscere.” 76  Opelt, Streitschriften, p.  35; similar praise from Ferdinand Cavallera, Saint Jérôme: sa  vie et son œuvre, 2 vols. (Louvain and Paris, 1922), 1:98–99. 77  Eduard Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1923), 2:650; Jerome’s argument in Adversus Helvidium is considered poor by Harald Hagendahl, Latin Fathers and the Classics (Göteborg, 1958), p. 111, and Georg Grützmacher, Hieronymus: eine biographische Studie zur alten Kirchengeschichte, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1908), 1:269–74. 78  Nehring, “In morem,” pp. 82–83. 74  75 

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and scholar.79 Pope Damasus had enough trust in Jerome’s intellectual and scholarly skills to give him the task of revising and standardizing the Old Latin Gospels, a task which would ultimately earn him undying fame. In the years 383 and 384 the letters Ad  Damasum (Ep.  18–21 and 35–36) were circulated, highlighting Jerome’s mastery of New and Old Testament philology (with the promotion of Hebraica veritas), and giving his scholarship a “papal seal of approval.”80 In this context, the appearance of Helvidius’s tractate may have seemed to Jerome an opportunity to position himself further as an expert on scriptural matters and as a fervent defender of asceticism. Considering this, we need not believe that he was actually asked to write a rebuke against Helvidius, as he suggests in the introduction, nor that he did so hesitantly, as he has persuaded some modern scholars to believe.81 The traditional topos of adhortatio aliena can be found in numerous introductory passages of Jerome’s works, where it advances his self-presentation as a master of scripture who generously takes time from his busy schedule to resolve a matter lesser teachers cannot.82 Something similar can be said about his self-depiction of picking up the matter hesitantly: Jerome was certainly infuriated by the ripples Helvidius’s anti-ascetic work had caused, and he could not let matters stand.

See Andrew Cain, The Letters of Jerome. Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009), pp. 13–33. 80  Cain, Letters of Jerome, pp. 53–67, esp. p. 64. 81  Jerome, Adv. Helv. 1, ed. Migne, PL 23:183: “Nuper rogatus a fratribus, ut adversus libellum cuiusdam Helvidii responderem, facere distuli … verum quia hae omnes tam iustae silentii mei causae, ob scandalum fratrum, qui ad eius rabiem movebantur, iustiori fine cessarunt, iam ad radices infructuosae arboris evangelii securis est admovenda.” Some scholars who take Jerome’s assertion at face value include: Kelly, Jerome, p. 106; Shoemaker, Devotion, p. 170; Opelt, Streitschriften, p. 28; Rocca, L’Adversus Helvidium, p. 58. 82  For the topos of writing in response to a request see Tore Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces (Stockholm, 1964), pp. 116–20. 79 

Zu Struktur und Datierung des Corpus der Felix-Gedichte des Paulinus von Nola Dorothea Weber Universität Salzburg Dass Paulinus von Nola seine dreizehn Carmina natalicia auf den Hl. Felix als Corpus selbst edierte, markiert seit der neuesten Edition, in der Franz Dolveck die Texte mit eigener Zählung und separat von den übrigen Carmina publizierte, den aktuellen Forschungsstand.1 Die  Zusammengehörigkeit der Gedichte lässt sich an der handschriftlichen Überlieferung gut ablesen: Abgesehen von den Codices London, British Library, Harley 4831 (J) und Bruxelles, Bibliothèque Royale 10615–10729 (B), die als Hauptvertreter der Familie θ das Corpus, soweit sie es überhaupt enthalten, zwar geschlossen – lediglich zwischen Nat. 8 und 9 ist carm. 31 eingefügt – , aber gemeinsam mit Briefen und anderen Carmina Paulins überliefern,2 tradieren die Handschriften die Natalicia unabhängig von seinem restlichen Oeuvre. Auch die weitestgehend einheitliche Anordnung in den Codices3 weist auf das Alter der Sammlung; schließlich machen interne Bezugnahmen auf sprachlicher und inhaltlicher Ebene sowie explizite Querverweise zwischen einzelnen Gedichten deutlich,4 dass die Sammlung auf den Dichter selbst zurückgeht. Siehe Franz Dolveck, hg., Paulini Nolani carmina, CCSL 21 (Turnhout 2015), S. 74–115. Nat. werden im Folgenden nach Dolvecks Nummerierung zitiert. Für die ältere Ausgabe von Wilhelm von Hartel, Sancti Pontii Meropii Paulini Nolani carmina, editio altera supplementis aucta, 2. Aufl. cur. Margit Kamptner, CSEL 30 (Wien, 1999) vgl. die Konkordanztabelle in der Appendix. – Nat. 14 (= Carm. 29 bei von Hartel), das aus einer Reihe unzusammenhängender Gedichtfragmente besteht, ist nur in den Auszügen aus Paulins Gedichten, die Dungal von Bobbio in sein Werk Contra Claudium integrierte, überliefert. Als Textzeugen für Nat. 14 verwendet Dolveck zwei frühe, zeitgleiche Abschriften vermutlich aus dem Jahr 827: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Reg. Lat 200 (D1) und Mailand, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS B 102 sup. (D2); Nat. 14 kann daher im Archetypus des Corpus der Nat. nicht enthalten gewesen sein und wird damit wohl auch nie zum Corpus gehört haben; es bleibt daher im Folgenden unberücksichtigt. 2  Dazu Dolveck, Paulini carmina, S. 89. 3  Ausnahmen sind Vatikan, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Urb. lat. 533 (T) sowie die beiden Vertreter der Familie λ, Cambridge, St John’s College, MS D. 26 (L) und Vatikan, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. Lat. 235 (R), in denen Nat. 10 vor Nat. 9 steht. Zur Diskussion der originalen Abfolge dieser beiden Gedichte s. Dolveck, Paulini carmina, S. 103–104. 4  So bereits Patrick Gerard Walsh, The Poems of Paulinus of Nola, Ancient Christian Writers  40 (New York 1975), S. 7–8 für Nat. 1–8. Weiteres bei Sigrid Mratschek, “Einblicke in einen Postsack. Zur Struktur und Edition der ‘Natalicia’ des Paulinus von Nola,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 114 (1996), 165–72 (Beispiele für Querverweise, etwa in der Formulierung praeteriti libelli: S. 167 1 

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Im Folgenden soll plausibel gemacht werden, dass der Aufbau des Corpus der Carmina natalicia eine geplante Strukturierung aufweist (1.), und überlegt werden, welche Folgen sich daraus für die Datierung der Gedichte ergeben (2.); eine Analyse von Nat. 1 als praefatio des Corpus (3.) wird den Abschluss dieses Beitrags bilden.

1. Der Aufbau der Sammlung Innerhalb des Corpus ließ sich eine intendierte und durchdachte Abfolge der Gedichte wahrscheinlich machen: So schließt Nat. 2, in dem der Dichter dem Heiligen für das Gelingen der Reise nach Nola dankt, unübersehbar und mit wörtlichen Anklängen an Nat. 1, die Bitte um glückliche Reise, an.5 Ferner stellen sich Nat. 4–6 als hagiographisches Triptychon dar: Nat. 4 und 5 umfassen eine durch ein eigenes Inspirationsproömium herausgehobene6 zweigeteilte hagiographische Biographie,7 die in Nat. 6, dem Bericht von der Aufnahme des Felix in den Himmel und seinem ersten Wunder, der Auffindung gestohlener Rinder, um den Nachweis von Felix’ Heiligenstatus erweitert wird.8 Die Verklammerung innerhalb dieser Gruppe ist durch einen Verweis aus Nat. 5 auf Nat. 49 sowie einen weiteren aus Nat. 6 auf Nat. 4 und 510 explizit formuliert. Augenscheinlich ist ferner die Zusammengehörigkeit von Nat. 9, das die Anwesenheit vornehmer Gäste zum Anlass einer Beschreibung der Bauten in Nola zu Ehren des Hl.  Felix nimmt, mit Nat.  10, der Fortsetzung dieser Beschreibung. An  sie schließt Nat. 11 eng an, die Erzählung über ein in der Kirche aufbewahrtes liturgisches Kreuz, Anm. 25), und Margit Kamptner, Paulinus von Nola, Carmen 18: Text, Einleitung und Kommentar, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Klasse 723 (Wien 2005), S. 12–13. 5  Vgl. z. B. Nat. 2.1–2, hg. Dolveck, S. 296: “Felix, hoc merito quod nomine, nomine et idem / qui merito” (cf. 1.1, S. 293: “meritis et nomine Felix”); 5: “o pater, o domine, indignis licet optime servis” (cf. 1.10: “o pater, o domine, indignis licet annue servis”); 6–7: “tandem exoratum est inter tua limina nobis / natalem celebrare tuum” (cf. 1.13–15: “ut tandem … hunc liceat celebrare diem”); 10–11: “… labores / distulerint a sede tua, procul orbe remoto” (cf. 1.17: “sede tua procul, heu! quamvis non mente remoti”); 34: “in statione tua placido consistere portu” (cf. 1.31: “inque tuo placidus nobis sit limine portus”). 6  Antonio Vincenzo Nazzaro, “Paolino di Nola: teologo sapienziale?,” in Poesia e teologia nella produzione latina dei secoli IV–V, Atti della X Giornata Ghisleriana di Filologia classica, Pavia, 16 maggio 2013, hg. Fabio Gasti und Michele Cutino (Pavia 2015), S. 13–28 (S. 19–20). 7  So Willy Evenepoel, “The Vita Felicis of Paulinus Nolanus and the Beginnings of Latin Hagiography,” in Fructus Centesimus. Mélanges offerts à Gerard J. M. Bartelink, hg. Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen u. a., Instrumenta Patristica  19 (Dordrecht 1989), S.  167–76; weitere Literatur bei Kamptner, Paulinus von Nola, S. 11, Anm. 15. 8  Zur Einheit von Nat. 4–6 Kamptner, Paulinus von Nola, S. 11, Anm. 16 mit weiterer Literatur sowie zuletzt Antonia Jenik, “Martyrium oder Askese? Felix und Maximus im 4. Natalicium (= carm. 15) des Paulinus von Nola,” Philologus 160 (2016), 84–132. 9  Nat. 5.17, hg. Dolveck, S. 320: “prior … liber”; 5.17–31 fasst den Inhalt von Nat. 4 zusammen. 10  Nat. 6.70, hg. Dolveck, S. 335: “praeteritis … libellis.”

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das gestohlen, doch mit Felix’ Hilfe wiedergefunden wurde.11 Somit lassen sich in Nat. 4–6 und 9–11 zwei Dreiergruppen identifizieren, deren jeweils letztes Gedicht die Thematik der beiden vorangehenden um eine Wundererzählung in Zusammenhang mit einem Diebstahl erweiternd fortführt. Dass Nat. 6 nicht nur auf die vorangehenden, sondern auch auf die folgenden Gedichte verweist, hat Kamptner12 überzeugend dargelegt: Wenn nämlich der Dichter in Nat. 6.82–85 versichert, Felix’ Wundertätig­ keit gewähre genug Stoff für weitere Gedichte, liegt darin eine Ankündigung von Nat. 7–13, worin Wunder des jeweils vergangenen Jahres berichtet werden. Auf die erste Dreiergruppe folgt mit Nat. 7 ein Gedicht, das den Unfall des Theridius beschreibt und Felix’ rettendes Eingreifen feiert. Nat. 8, in dem die unsichere Lage des römischen Reichs mit alttestamentarischen Erzählungen parallelisiert wird13 und in das zwei Wundererzählungen integriert sind (307–323: Heilung eines an Allotriophagie Leidenden; 395–412: Verlöschen eines Feuers nahe dem Felix-Heiligtum14), mündet in ein Gebet um Felix’ Hilfe. Auf die zweite Dreiergruppe folgt in Nat. 12 eine umfangreiche dreigeteilte Erzählung über Wunder, die Felix an zur Speisung der Nolaner Armen bestimmten Tieren gewirkt haben soll. Schließlich verweist Nat. 13 auf Nat. 1–2, indem es die dort erbetenen (Nat. 1) bzw. gepriesenen (Nat. 2) Wohltaten des Heiligen an der Ich-Person übersteigernd aufnimmt,15 die autobiographischen Angaben zu einer umfangreichen äußeren ebenso wie spirituellen Autobiographie Siehe Dolveck, Paulini carmina, S.  106. Zur Bedeutung des Kreuzes in Nat.  9 in künstlerischer, liturgischer, theologischer und exegetischer Hinsicht siehe Teresa Piscitelli, “La croce nel carme 19 di Paolino di Nola,” Bolletino di studi latini 42 (2012), 578–95. 12  Paulinus von Nola, S. 12–13. 13  Dazu Willy Evenepoel, “Paulinus Nolanus, Carmen 26: The Threat of War, St Felix, and Old Testament Examples of the Power of God and of His Saints,” in The Impact of Scripture in Early Christianity, hg. Jan den Boeft und Maria Letitia van Poll-van de Lisdonk, Vigiliae Christianae Supplements 44 (Leiden, 1999), S. 133–60 (bes. 137–39). 14  Vgl.  Nat.  10.60–166; das Wunder besteht darin, dass zwar eine das Gesamtensemble der FelixBauten in Cimitile störende Hütte abbrennt, das Feuer aber nicht auf die Kirche übergreift. 15  Hatte Felix’ Wirken in Nat. 1 und 2 die glückliche Reise nach Nola und damit das “Zusammenleben” zwischen ihm und Paulinus ermöglicht, schildert Nat. 13, wie sehr Felix den Dichter zunehmend ihm selbst ähnlich machte, indem er ihn zum Ideal der Armut führte (vgl. bes. 428–59; dazu Dennis Trout, Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 27 [Berkeley 1999], S. 168–69), ihm seine “Wohnstätte” überließ und erlaubte, dort Freunde unterzubringen (460–84), und ihn schließlich “in sich aufnahm” (471–73, hg. Dolveck, S. 478: “quanto plus est mihi, quod mihi Felix, / ipse dei dono domus est, in quo mea vivam / vita domum nullis lapsuram possidet annis!”; 557–58, S. 481: “… cum tu, pater, et tua nobis / viscera praebueris”) – der Gedanke erinnert entfernt an das von Augustinus systematisierte christologische Konzept des totus Christus, demgemäß die in der Kirche versammelten Gläubigen Christi Leib sind (vgl. 1 Cor 12.27; Eph. 1.22–3; zur Anwendung bei Augustinus s. Michael Fiedrowicz, Psalmus vox totius Christi. Studien zu Augustins “Enarrationes in psalmos” [Freiburg i. Br., 1997]). Auf seine spirituelle Vereinigung mit Felix lässt der Dichter in Nat. 13 den Bericht von seiner größtmöglichen körperlichen Annäherung an den Heiligen folgen, indem er 11 

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(344–642) ausweitet, die das Leben des dichterischen Ich als von Felix gelenkt darstellt, und durch eben diese Bezugnahme auf den Beginn der Sammlung zurückverweist (s.o.). Damit ist das Gedichtbuch der Natalicia auch kompositorisch zu einem Ende gebracht. Indem ferner Nat.  13 ausführlich auf die Anwesenheit angesehener Freunde, die gemeinsam mit Paulinus an der Feier zu Felix’ Festtag teilnehmen, eingeht (198–271), greift es einerseits auf Nat. 9 zurück, indem es andererseits von den wundertätigen Reliquien des Heiligen erzählt, setzt es die Wunderberichte der anderen Gedichte fort und rundet so das Corpus in mehrfacher Hinsicht ab. Dazu kommt, dass es mit seinem Umfang im Ausmaß eines epischen Buchs und der vom Dichter selbst hervorgehobenen16 Einlage nicht-hexametrischer Partien –  in  jambischen Trimetern wird über die Gäste berichtet, in elegischen Distichen das gemeinsame Preislied auf Felix wiedergegeben – die Form der hexametrischen Carmina natalicia sprengt. Das Corpus lässt somit eine planvolle Anordnung der Gedichte erkennen.

2. Die Datierung der Carmina natalicia Der oben dargelegte Befund steht in einem nicht einfach zu bestimmenden und jedenfalls nicht unproblematischen Spannungsverhältnis zu der beinahe einhellig angenommenen Datierung der Natalicia:17 Die Gedichte seien jeweils für den vom Dichter alljährlich besungenen dies natalis des heiligen Felix (14. Januar)18 in eben der Reihenfolge, wie sie das Gros der Handschriften überliefert, entstanden, und zwar in den dreizehn unmittelbar aufeinander folgenden Jahren von 395 bis 407; dies würde bedeuten, dass der Dichter bereits zum Zeitpunkt von Nat.  1 einen zumindest groben Bauplan für eine Sammlung entworfen haben müsste, die erst im Lauf der darauf folgenden mehr als zehn Jahre entstehen sollte. Diese Hypothese müsste freilich nur dann in Betracht gezogen werden, wenn die Datierung der Natalicia einigermaßen gesichert wäre. Das scheint aber nicht der Fall zu sein. erzählt, dass er an den Sicherungsarbeiten für Felix’ Reliquienkästchen beteiligt war und sich von der Unversehrtheit der Gebeine überzeugen konnte (551–642). 16  Nat. 13.56–59, hg. Dolveck, S. 465 und 103–104, S. 466. Dazu Franca Ela Consolino, “Polymetry in Late Latin Poems: Some Observations on its Meaning and its Function,” in The Poetics of Late Latin Literature, hg. Jaś Elsner und Jesús Hernández Lobato (Oxford, 2017), S. 100–24 (dort 109–11). 17  Die Argumente wurden von Joseph Lienhard, Paulinus of Nola and Early Western Monasticism. With a Study of the Chronology of his Works (Köln, 1977), S.  154–91 (bes.  159–61) zusammengestellt. ­Janine  Desmulliez, “Paulin de Nole. Études chronologiques (393–397),” Recherches augustiniennes  20 (1985), 35–64 spricht sich für die Datierung von Nat. 1 auf 394 aus, wessentwegen Nat. 2 bis 5 (oder 6) jeweils um ein Jahr vordatiert werden müssten; vor oder nach Nat. 6 sei ein Gedicht ausgefallen, die Datierung von Nat. 7 bis 13 decke sich wieder mit jener von Lienhard, Paulinus of Nola, dargelegten. Gegen Desmulliez’ Hypothese siehe Dennis Trout, “The Dates of the Ordination of Paulinus of Bordeaux and of his Departure for Nola,” Revue des études augustiniennes 37 (1991), 237–60. 18  Vgl. z. B. Nat. 2.21–23; 3.116–19; 4.1–2; 5.13; 6.1–2, etc.

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Innerhalb des Corpus gelten zwei Gedichte durch ihre Verbindung mit Ereignissen, die Paulinus auch außerhalb der Sammlung thematisiert, als datierbar: Nat. 1 und Nat. 9. Da das dramatische Datum von Nat. 1 noch vor der Abreise nach Nola liegt und dieser die Priesterweihe, die ihrerseits wahrscheinlich 394 erfolgte, knapp vorausging, wird dieses Gedicht gemeinhin als frühestes auf 395 datiert; Nat. 9, das den Besuch des Nicetas in Nola anlässlich des Felix-Festes feiert, lässt sich mit Hilfe von Epist. 29 auf 403 festlegen.19 Diese beiden Daten erlauben zwar die Annahme, Paulinus habe ein Gedicht pro Jahr verfasst und das Corpus chronologisch angelegt, erzwingen sie aber nicht: Dass der Abstand zwischen Nat. 1 und 9 just acht Jahre beträgt, kann Zufall sein. Zudem hat Dolveck 20 mit Hinweis auf die Überlieferungslage und unter Anwendung des Arguments der lectio difficilior die Hypothese vertreten, Nat. 1 habe ursprünglich den Titel praefatio getragen (weiterreichende Überlegungen dazu werden im letzten Teil dieses Beitrags angestellt) und sei daher aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach erst zum Abschluss des Gedichtsbuchs geschrieben worden: Zwar scheint der Titel nur in einer einzigen Handschrift, München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6412 (F), vermutlich in Konstanz in der zweiten Hälfte des 9. Jhs. kopiert, auf, und zwar am Ende von Nat. 1 (explicit praefatio); aber auch in der gesamten Handschriftenfamilie ε, der F angehört, nimmt Nat. 1 insofern eine Sonderstellung ein, als in ihr die durchlaufende Nummerierung der Gedichte erst mit Nat. 2 einsetzt (dementsprechend ist Nat. 13 als liber duodecimus bezeichnet); ob dies auf die antike Edition zurückgeht, kann nicht allein mit Blick auf das Stemma21 beantwortet werden, denn Nat. 1 ist nur in den Familien ε und θ überliefert, die jede für sich und unabhängig von der anderen auf den Archetypus zurückgehen dürfte. Doch gibt es ein weiteres textkritisches Argument, das für das hohe Alter der Angaben im Codex F bzw. der Familie ε spricht: Die Tatsache nämlich, dass in θ die Natalicia nicht als selbständige Sammlung, sondern unter anderen Werken Paulins enthalten sind (s.o. S. 199) und daher das Gedichtbuch als solches nicht mehr erkennbar war, kann dafür verantwortlich gewesen sein, dass die unverständlich gewordene Bezeichnung praefatio für Nat. 1 weggelassen wurde. Auf der anderen Seite dürfte auch θ eine vermutlich alte Information bewahrt haben: Nur in ihren Vertretern J und B ist im Incipit von Nat. 1 das Datum des Felix-Festes (14. Januar) vermerkt, und zwar mit der Datierung nach dem alten Kalendensystem (… die XVIII [irrtümlich statt XVIIII] kal febr); dieses ist im Mittelalter zwar belegt,22 doch einem Schreiber des 9. Jhs. wohl nicht ohne Weiteres zuzutrauen. Lienhard, Paulinus of Nola, S. 162–65. Dolveck, Paulini carmina, S. 108–109. 21  Dolveck, Paulini carmina, S. 98. 22  Zu diesem Datierungsschema bei Walahfrid Strabo z. B. Richard Corradini, “Das Zeitbuch des Walahfrid Strabo. Langzeitperspektiven und Nachhaltigkeitskonzepte,” in ZeitenWelten. Zur Verschränkung von Weltdeutung und Zeitwahrnehmung, 750–1350, hg.  Miriam Czock und Anja Rathmann-Lutz (Köln, 2016), S. 39–62 (dort 55). 19 

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Wenn nun Nat.  1 keinen Hinweis auf sein Entstehungsjahr liefert, könnten zur Klärung der Datierung der Natalicia die zeithistorischen Anspielungen in Nat.  8 und Nat. 13 beitragen: Nur wenn diese Gedichte mit einiger Wahrscheinlichkeit 402 bzw. 407 geschrieben wurden, kann die traditionelle Hypothese der relativen Chronologie gehalten werden; doch eben dies ist fraglich. In Nat. 8.29–30 und 246–254 bittet Paulinus Felix um Hilfe angesichts eines drohenden Krieges; zu Beginn des Jahrs 402 könnte der Dichter damit auf die Situation nach der Invasion Alarichs in Italien – das Heer der Westgoten wurde am Ostersonntag desselben Jahrs von Stilicho in der Schlacht bei Pollentia geschlagen – angespielt haben. Dies ist aber alles andere denn zwingend:23 Paulinus könnte ebenso gut jede andere militärische Bedrohung jener Jahre gemeint haben. Nat. 13 feiert den Sieg über einen heidnischen König: “… mactatis pariter cum rege profano / hostibus Augusti pueri victoria pacem / reddidit atque annis tener idem fortis in armis / praevaluit virtute die …” (20–23). Wenn tatsächlich, wie allgemein angenommen, der Sieg Stilichos über Radagais bei Faesulae im Jahr 406 gemeint sein sollte, würde annis tener ebenso schlecht zu dem damals bereits über vierzigjährigen Stilicho passen wie Augusti pueri zu dem damals immerhin etwa zweiundzwanzigjährigen Kaiser Honorius. Die traditionelle Datierung von Nat. 8 und Nat. 13 auf die Jahre 402 bzw. 407 ist somit überaus schwach abgesichert; dass sie überhaupt in Erwägung gezogen wurde, liegt daran, dass sie nicht Ausgangspunkt der Datierung der Natalicia insgesamt war, sondern ihrerseits auf der Hypothese beruht, dass die Natalicia beginnend mit  395 (Nat. 1) bzw. 396 (Nat. 2) in Jahresabstand verfasst und im Corpus chronologisch aneinandergereiht wurden. Dafür lassen sich aber keine belastbaren Beweise beibringen: Abgesehen von den bereits besprochenen vereinzelten Hinweisen auf die zeitliche Abfolge von Nat. 1 und 2 sowie von Nat. 4–6 lässt sich kein Indiz für eine relative Chronologie ausmachen. Es ist demnach durchaus möglich, dass Paulinus beispielsweise aus einer größeren Zahl von Felix-Gedichten die vorliegenden 13 zur Publikation im Corpus auswählte. Unabhängig davon, ob dies der Fall war, müsste ihre Anordnung nicht nach dem Gesichtspunkt der Chronologie erfolgt sein, ja wenn man das Corpus der Natalicia als antikes Gedichtbuch fassen will – wofür die Funktion von Nat. 1 als praefatio einen mehr als deutlichen Hinweis gibt  – , ist eine Reihung der Gedichte nach ihrer Entstehungszeit alles andere als naheliegend;24 ebenso wenig scheint dieses Anordnungsprinzip in der Spätantike üblich gewesen zu sein: Die reichlich verworrene Überlieferungsgeschichte des Ausonius lässt keine belastbaren Rückschlüsse auf Zweifel daran bereits bei Pierre Fabre, Essai sur la chronologie de l’œuvre de saint Paulin de Nole, Publication de la faculté des lettres de l’université de Strasbourg 109 (Paris, 1948), S. 115. 24  Hingegen Dolveck, Paulini carmina, S. 109: “Cette mention (gemeint ist die handschriftliche Bezeugung von Nat. 1 als praefatio) rend incertain que le Nat. 1 date de 395 et ait été composé en Espagne, mais elle ne change rien, à part pour ce seul poème, à la datation de l’ensemble de la série.” 23 

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eine vom Dichter intendierte Werkreihe im Urexemplar zu.25 Das Corpus der Panegyrici Latini weist in seiner Reihung eine Kombination aus Kriterien der Anciennität und der (zunächst ab-, dann aufsteigenden) Chronologie auf.26 Ambrosius hat seine Briefsammlung nach inhaltlichen Gesichtspunkten angelegt.27 Prudentius’ Praefatio, in der die (Teil-)Edition der Werke beschrieben ist, lässt erkennen, dass es sich dabei um eine Einheit unter einer geschlossenen künstlerischen Struktur handelt.28 Claudians Festgedichte schließlich, die ursprünglich allem Anschein nach chronologisch geordnet in Umlauf kamen,29 sind insofern nicht vergleichbar, als ihre Zugehörigkeit zu jeweils einem bestimmten Jahr ja auf den Anlass ihrer Abfassung verweist. Bei Paulinus aber, dessen Natalicia alle demselben, jährlich wiederkehrenden Festtag gelten, spielt gerade deswegen deren Chronologie weder produktions- noch rezeptionsästhetisch eine Rolle. Den die Reihung der Natalicia bestimmenden Gesamtplan wird man daher am ehesten auf den Gestaltungswillen des Dichters bei der Zusammenstellung seines Gedichtbuchs zurückführen. Mit der Frage der Chronologie der Natalicia ist jene nach ihrem “Sitz im Leben” verbunden: Manche Gedichte sprechen die Adressaten mit fratres an30 und weisen darin Ähnlichkeiten zu Predigten auf, die ja auch anlässlich von Heiligenfesten gehalten wurden (sermones de sanctis). Zum Predigtcharakter passen ferner die exegetische Ausrichtung einzelner Passagen,31 moralisierende Abschnitte32 sowie allgemein

Dazu Günther Jachmann, “Das Problem der Urvarianten in der Antike und die Grundlagen der Ausoniuskritik,” am leichtesten zugänglich in ders., Ausgewählte Schriften, hg. Christian Gnilka, Bei­ träge zur klassischen Philologie 128 (Königstein, 1981), S. 470–527. 26  Forschungsstand und Literaturhinweise bei Sven Greinke, Landschaft und Stadt als literarisierte Räume in den ‘Panegyrici Latini’ der Tetrarchie (Berlin, 2017), S. 13 mit Anm. 2 und 3. 27  Klaus und Michaela Zelzer, “‘Retractationes’ zu Brief und Briefgenos bei Plinius, Ambrosius und Sidonius Apollinaris,” in Alvarium. Festschrift für Christian Gnilka, hg. Wilhelm Blümer et al. (Münster, 2002), S. 393–403. 28  Dazu die im Detail kritisierte, nach wie vor aber wegweisende Studie von Walther Ludwig, “Die christliche Dichtung des Prudentius und die Transformation der klassischen Gattungen,” in Christianisme et formes littéraires de l’antiquité tardive en occident, Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique 23 (Genf, 1977), S.  303–72. Zweifel an der Einbeziehung der Psychomachie bei Danuta Shanzer, “Allegory and Reality: Spes, Victoria and the Date of Prudentius’s ‘Psychomachia,’” Illinois Classical Studies 14 (1989), 347–63 (bes.  S.  348–49). Siehe auch Maria Lühken, Christianorum Maro et Flaccus. Zur Vergil- und ­Horazrezeption des Prudentius, Hypomnemata 141 (Göttingen, 2002), S. 255–59. 29  Dazu Peter Lebrecht Schmidt, “Die Überlieferungsgeschichte von Claudians Carmina maiora,” Illinois Classical Studies 14 (1989), 391–415. 30  Z. B. Nat. 6.8, hg. Dolveck, S. 332 und 62–64, S. 335, u.ö.; s. Trout, Paulinus of Nola, S. 163, Anm. 19. 31  Besonders deutlich in Nat. 8, wo Personen und Situationen des Alten Testaments als Folie für jene Gefahren dienen, in denen sich das römische Reich befindet. 32  Z. B. Nat. 8.5–21, hg. Dolveck, S. 365 über die für das Felixfest passende positive Stimmung bzw. Nat. 9.107–34, S. 385–86. 25 

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der epideiktische Charakter;33 auch bezeichnet der Dichter selbst Nat. 5 als sermo;34 freilich wäre es übertrieben, die Natalicia insgesamt als Verspredigten anzusprechen,35 doch zeigen gerade auch die predigttypischen Elemente, dass sich die Gedichte als zum Vortrag bestimmt darstellen. Ging die frühere Forschung noch von einer realen Performanz aus,36 ist spätestens seit der Untersuchung von Anika Lisa Kleinschmidt klar, dass die Gedichte eine konzeptuelle Mündlichkeit aufweisen, d. h. eine Sprechund Feiersituation evozieren und sich in einem Aufführungskontext situieren, ohne dass daraus auf dessen reale Präsenz geschlossen werden muss oder darf.37 Vergleichbares hat auch für das – imaginierte – Publikum zu gelten: Die Pilger, die sich, wie der Dichter sagt,38 in großer Menge beim Felix-Heiligtum versammeln, werden entsprechend dem geographischen Setting der Gedichte im Gräberbezirk (Cimitile), somit in einem nicht-städtischen Kontext, mit Wundererzählungen unterhalten, wie sie einem

Dazu Michael Roberts, “Rhetoric and the ‘Natalicia’ of Paulinus of Nola,” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, n.s. 95.2 (2010), 53–69. 34  Nat. 6.213, hg. Dolveck, S. 341: primo sermone. Über weitere predigttypische Elemente in Nat. 6 siehe Kamptner, Paulinus von Nola, S. 14–16. Ebenda sehr informativ zu Paulins Selbststilisierung sowohl als Priester als auch, in Fortführung einer auf die römische Klassik zurückreichenden Tradition, als Dichterpriester (vates). Zur Konstruktion des dichterischen Ich als Instanz religiöser Interpretation und Belehrung überaus instruktiv auch Anika Lisa Kleinschmidt, Ich-Entwürfe in spätantiker Dichtung: Ausonius, Paulinus von Nola und Paulinus von Pella (Heidelberg, 2013), S. 161–69. 35  Am Weitesten ist m.W. in dieser Hinsicht Wolfgang Kirsch, “Die Natalicia des Paulinus von Nola als Mittel ideologischer Beeinflussung,” Klio 65 (1983), 331–36, gegangen, der Nat. 4–13 als Predigten bezeichnete. 36  Vgl. z. B. Walsh, The Poems, S. 12; Roberts, “Rhetoric and the ‘Natalicia,’” p. 63: “The Natalicia are … intended for public performance at Felix’s festival”; Catherine Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola (Oxford 2000), S. 109 bezeichnet Nat. als “performance ­pieces” (vgl. auch S. 12). Noch Dolveck, Paulini carmina, S. 109 geht davon aus, dass die Natalicia, abgesehen von den ersten zwei oder drei, zur Rezitation vor einem kleinen intellektuellen Kreis bestimmt waren. – Für Christian Gnilka, “Züge der Mündlichkeit in spätlateinischer Dichtung,” in: ders., Prudentiana II: Exegetica (München, 2001), S. 201–21 (bes. 216–21) gehen “die Anreden an die Zuhörer – St Paulinus spricht immer nur vom ‘Hören’ und von den ‘Ohren’ seines Publikums –  … deutlich über das hinaus, was noch im Sinne bloßer Fiktion erklärlich wäre. Zumindest ist der Befund derartig, daß die Beweislast auf der anderen Seite läge.” (S. 216) Gegen diesen Einwand ließe sich vorbringen, dass gerade die exzessive Betonung der Mündlichkeit eher auf die Evozierung als die Realität einer Sprechsituation weist und dass der Begriff liber bzw. libellus (Nat. 13.104, hg. Dolveck, S. 466; 649, S. 484; s.o. Anm. 9 und 10; vgl. auch 13.792, S. 489 “scribaris”) als Verweis auf den gegenwärtigen oder einen früheren mündlichen Vortrag mehr als befremdlich wäre. 37  Kleinschmidt, Ich-Entwürfe, bes.  S.  172–79. Vgl.  jüngst Ian Fielding, “Performing Miracles. The Natalicia of Paulinus of Nola as Popular Entertainment,” Ramus 47 (2018), 108–22: Die Natalicia evozierten Formen populärer Unterhaltung, im Besonderen szenischer Aufführung, die auf die vorgestellte Zuhörerschaft abgestellt ist. 38  S. z. B. Nat. 2.25, hg. Dolveck, S. 297; 3.49–81, S. 300–301; 4.4, S. 304; 9.25–27, S. 382; 135–38, S. 386. 33 

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ländlichen Publikum entgegenkommen mussten.39 Mit dem Gesagten verliert freilich auch die behauptete alljährliche Abfassung eines Felix-Gedichts an historischer Plausibilität, sie hat vielmehr als Bestandteil des Repertoriums zu gelten, mit dem der Dichter die Festlichkeit anlässlich von Felix’ dies natalis evoziert. Das zeigt sich deutlich an der Zweiteilung der hagiographischen Lebensbeschreibung, ist es doch kaum vorstellbar, dass die Festversammlung mit Nat. 4 nur den ersten Teil der Biographie bis zur “Weihe” des Felix durch Maximus zu hören bekam und für die Fortsetzung in Nat. 5 ein ganzes Jahr warten musste.

3. Nat. 1 als praefatio des Corpus der Natalicia Wenn die Natalicia trotz ihres möglicherweise unvollständigen Erhaltungszustands (s.o.) tatsächlich als planvoll angelegtes Gedichtbuch gelten dürfen, kommt darin dem Eröffnungsgedicht aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach eine über sich selbst hinausweisende Funktion zu. Dieser soll im Folgenden nachgegangen werden. Zunächst aber Text 40 und Übersetzung: Inclyte confessor, meritis et nomine Felix, mens pietate potens, summi mens accola caeli nec minus in totis experta potentia terris, qui, Dominum Christum non vincta voce professus, contemnendo truces meruisti evadere poenas, devotamque animam tormenta per omnia Christo sponte tua iussus laxatis reddere membris, liquisti vacuos rabidis lictoribus artus: Vectus in aetherium, sine sanguine martyr, honorem, o pater, o domine, indignis licet annue servis ut tandem, hanc fragili trahimus dum corpore vitam, sedibus optatis et qua requiescis in aula hunc liceat celebrare diem, pia reddere coram vota et gaudentes inter gaudere tumultus. Sit iam, quaeso, satis meritam impietate tulisse hanc poenam tot iam quod te sine viximus annis, sede tua procul, heu! quamvis non mente remoti; iam desideriis immenso tempore fessis consule, iam vel sero memor miserere tuorum, perque orbem magni qui nos procul aequore ponti disparat, obtritis quae nos inimica retardant pande vias faciles; et si properantibus ad te invidus hostis obest, obiecta repagula pelle,

5

10

15

20

Zur Konstruktion der Gegensätze arm / reich und bäuerlich / städtisch in den Nat. zuletzt Philip Hardie, “Cowherds and Saints. Paulinus of Nola Carmen 18,” in Complex Inferiorities. The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature, ed. Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison (Oxford, 2019), S. 245–62. 40  Nat. 1, hg. Dolveck, S. 293–95. 39 

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fortior adversis, et amicos provehe cursus. Seu placeat telluris iter, comes aggere tuto esto tuis; seu magna tui fiducia longo suadeat ire mari, da currere mollibus undis et famulis famulos a puppi suggere ventos, ut Campana simul Christo duce litora vecti ad tua mox alacri rapiamur culmina cursu, inque tuo placidus nobis sit limine portus. Illic dulce iugum, leve onus blandumque feremus servitium sub te domino; etsi iustus iniquis non egeas servis, tamen et patiere et amabis qualescumque tibi Christo donante dicatos et foribus servire tuis, tua limina mane munditiis curare sines et nocte vicissim excubiis servare piis, et munere in isto claudere promeritam defesso corpore vitam.

25

30

35

Ruhmreicher Bekenner Felix, ‘beglückt’ in Leistung und Namen, du glaubensmächtige Sinnesart, Sinnesart, die hoch im Himmel wohnt, und Macht, die man ebenso in allen Landen erfahren hat, der du Christus als den Herrn mit von Fesseln freier Stimme bekanntest, (5) den grausamen Strafen die Stirn botest und ihnen deswegen entgehen durftest, der du auf den Befehl hin, deine hingebungsvolle Seele bei Martern aller Art freiwillig aus dem Leib zu entlassen und Christus zurückzugeben, deine bereits leeren Glieder den wilden Schergen überließest. Ein Märtyrer ohne Blutvergießen fuhrst du zu himmlischen Ehren auf. (10) O Vater, o Herr, gewähre uns, sind wir auch unwürdige Diener, dass wir endlich, noch während wir dieses Leben in einem hinfälligen Körper führen, am ersehnten Ort in der Halle, in der du ruhst, diesen Tag feiern, vor dir fromme Gebete sprechen und in frohem Getümmel froh sind. (15) Mögen wir nun, ich bitte dich, diese Pein, die wir wegen unserer Unfrommheit verdienten, lange genug ertragen haben, die Pein, dass wir schon so viele Jahre ohne dich gelebt haben, fern – ach – von deinem Ort, wenn auch nicht im Geist fern. Nimm dich nun unserer Sehnsucht an, die in der unermesslich langen Zeit ermattet ist, denke, wenn auch spät, so doch jetzt an die Deinen und erbarme dich ihrer: (20) Über den ganzen Erdkreis hinweg, der uns durch die Fläche des großen Meeres weit voneinander trennt, z­ ermalme das Widrige, das sich uns entgegen stellt und nur langsam vorankommen lässt! Öffne leicht gangbare Wege! Und wenn uns, die wir zu dir eilen, der neidvolle Feind hindert, beseitige die Hindernisse, die uns in den Weg gelegt wurden, da du stärker als die Widrigkeiten bist, und bringe unsere Fahrt angenehm voran. (25) Wenn wir zu Land reisen wollen, sei den Deinen Begleiter auf sicherer Straße; wenn aber unser großes Vertrauen auf dich zum Weg über das weite Meer rät, gib uns eine Fahrt auf sanften Wogen und schick deinen Dienern dienende Rückenwinde, damit wir gemeinsam unter Christi Führung die Ufer Kampaniens erreichen, (30) uns dann in schnellem Lauf zu deiner Wohnstätte eilig bringen lassen und uns an deiner Schwelle ein friedvoller Hafen zuteilwird. Dort ist süß das Joch und leicht die Last, und wir werden einen angenehmen Dienst ertragen unter dir als Herrn. Auch wenn du, ein Gerechter, ungerechter Diener nicht

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bedarfst, wirst du sie doch wohlwollend hinnehmen, (35) wie immer die auch sein mögen, die dir Christi Gabe weiht: du wirst sie deinem Haus dienen lassen, sie morgens deine Schwelle rein halten lassen, sie nachts diese in frommer Wache wechselweise hüten und, wenn ihr Leib ermattet ist, sie bei dieser Aufgabe ihr verdienstvolles Leben beschließen lassen.

Nat. 1 gibt sich als ein Gedicht, das Paulinus in Aquitanien knapp vor seiner Abreise nach Nola schrieb. Es ist dreigeteilt: Zunächst stellt der Dichter den Heiligen in einer extrem verknappten Biographie (1–9) vor, die über Felix kaum mehr berichtet, als dass er Bekenner war (1 “confessor”; 9 “sine sanguine martyr”) und nach einem standhaften Leben (8) in den Himmel aufgenommen wurde (9 “vectus in aetherium … honorem”). Im zweiten Teil bittet der Dichter den Heiligen, seinen Festtag künftig bei ihm feiern zu dürfen und in der Folge um glückliche Reise (11–31), im dritten (32–39) malt er aus, wie er nach seiner Ankunft das weitere Leben bis zum Tod (39) in den Dienst des Heiligen stellen wird. Dabei bleibt im Mittelteil die Angabe des Ziels der Reise merkwürdig unklar: Aus dem Gedicht selbst geht nämlich nicht hervor, dass es sich um Nola handelt – erst in Nat. 2.26 fällt der Name der Stadt – , und auch der Name der Gegend wird erst in 29 (“Campana … litora”), d. h. zum Ende des Abschnitts, der sich mit der bevorstehenden Fahrt beschäftigt, genannt. Ungeachtet der Frage, ob der durchschnittliche Leser wusste, dass Felix in Nola bestattet war, führt diese Erzählökonomie dazu, dass sich als Ziel der Reise zunächst der Himmel, in den Felix bereits vorausgegangen ist, nahelegt, denn die sedes optatae41 und die aula des Felix (11–13) sind bei einer ersten Lektüre kaum auf etwas anderes als auf den unmittelbar zuvor genannten Aufenthaltsort des Felix (9 “vectus in aetherium ... honorem”)42 zu beziehen. Damit gewinnt die anvisierte Reise nach Nola Elemente einer Lebensreise;43 der Text lässt sich bis zu 31 in diesem Sinn verstehen: “gaudentes … inter tumultus” (14)

“Sedibus optatis” nach Vergil, Aen. 6.203 (vom Baum, auf dem die Tauben landen und an dem Aeneas den goldenen Zweig entdeckt, der ihm den Zugang zur Unterwelt ermöglicht). 42  Aula als Metonymie für Himmel ist seit der römischen Klassik verbreitet, s.  TLL 2.1426.82– 1457.14. Vgl. besonders Nat. 2.2–3, hg. Dolveck, S. 296: “redit alma dies qua te (scil. Felicem) sibi summus / ascivit patriam confessum Christus in aulam.” 43  Zum Motiv des Lebens als peregrinatio s. Notker Baumann, “Peregrinatio, Peregrinus,” Augustinus-Lexikon 4 (2016), Sp. 668–74; Grundlegendes zum Topos des Lebens als Seefahrt bei Leo Eizenhöfer, “Die  Siegelbildvorschläge des Clemens von Alexandrien und die älteste christliche Literatur,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 3  (1960), 51–69 (bes. S.  65–6); Hugo Rahner, “Antenna crucis,” in ders., Symbole der Kirche. Die Ekklesiologie der Väter (Salzburg, 1964), S. 239–564; ferner beispielsweise Christoph Hönig, Die Lebensfahrt auf dem Meer der Welt: Der Topos. Texte und Interpretationen (Würzburg, 2000). – In Nat. 2 wird übrigens genau dieser Aspekt der Reise nach Nola betont: “(liceat) post pelagi fluctus, mundi quoque fluctibus actis, / in statione tua placido consistere portu. / Hoc bene subductam religavi litore classem: / in te compositae mihi fixa sit anchora vitae” (33–36, hg. Dolveck, S. 297). 41 

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kann als die jubelnde Schar der Erlösten im Jenseits,44 die Bitte um glückliche Reise als Bitte um ein gelingendes, von Dämonen nicht gefährdetes Leben (21; 22–24), und das Gebet um sichere Landung im Hafen als Gebet um einen guten Tod verstanden werden (31). Neben dem allegorischen Textverständnis hält der Dichter aber durch den gesamten zweiten Abschnitt hindurch die Reise im eigentlichen Wortsinn präsent, wie er mit “hanc fragili trahimus dum corpore vitam” (11) und “Campana … litora” (30) deutlich macht. Will man nicht annehmen, dass der Text zwei Deutungsebenen ohne wechselseitigen Bezug aufeinander herstellt, könnte ihre gemeinsame Aussageintention darin gesehen werden, dass für das dichterische Ich das Ziel der Reise in Nola als Vorwegnahme des jenseitigen Paradieses liegt.45 Und tatsächlich deutet Paulinus anderenorts sein Wirken in Cimitile als Dienst in Felix’ Garten,46 der ihm als eigentlicher Paradiesesgarten gilt: “Ebromagum enim non hortuli causa, ut scribis, reliquimus, sed paradisi illum hortum praetulimus et patrimonio et patriae.” 47 Dementsprechend deutet 14 an, dass die erhoffte Feier des Felix-Festes in Nola (“gaudentes inter gaudere tumultus”) eine Vorwegnahme der himmlischen Liturgie sein wird.48 Der letzte Abschnitt des Gedichts (32–39) leitet von Nola als realem wie idealem Ort zu einer Imagination der (idealen) Lebensweise über, die das dichterische Ich nach geglückter Reise verfolgen wird; dort nämlich werde es gelingen, ein wahrhaft gottgefälliges Leben zu führen:49 Der Dienst im Heiligtum mit dem Ziel von ReinNach Apoc. 19.6–7: “et audivi quasi vocem turbae magnae et sicut vocem aquarum multarum et sicut vocem tonitruum magnorum dicentium alleluia quoniam regnavit dominus deus noster omnipotens, gaudeamus et exultemus et demus gloriam ei …” 45  Eine ähnliche Metapher einer Lebens-Seereise, deren Ziel in einem diesseitigen paradiesischen Zustand besteht, liegt dem zeitlich knapp früheren Proömium von Augustins De beata vita zugrunde, das seinerseits auf Cicero, Tusc. 5.5 zurückweist. Ziel der Seefahrt ist bei Augustinus das Einlaufen im Hafen der Stabilität gewährenden christlichen Philosophie, die Zutritt zum glückseligen Leben ermöglicht. Dazu und allgemein zur Geschichte der Metapher s. Georg Pfligersdorffer, “Bemerkungen zu den Proömien von Augustins Contra Academicos I und De beata vita,” in Augustino Praeceptori. Gesammelte Aufsätze zu Augustinus, hg. Karl Forstner und Maximilian Fussl (Salzburg, 1987), 33–58 (S. 37–58); Iglika Milusheva, “Augustins Schrift De  beata vita, Einführung und Kommentar” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Salzburg, 2018), S. 35–6. 46  Vgl. Epist. 5.15, hg. Wilhelm von Hartel, Sancti Pontii Meropii Paulini Nolani Epistulae, CSEL 34.2 (Wien, 1894), S. 35, wo Paulinus seinen Freund Severus einlädt, sich bei ihm in Nola niederzulassen: “Tum ego te non in monasterio tantum vicini martyris inquilinum, sed etiam in horto eiusdem colonum locabo.” 47  Epist. 11.14, hg. von Hartel, S. 72–73 (an Severus). Dazu Trout, Paulinus of Nola, S. 169. 48  Vgl.  z.  B.  Hieronymus Engberding, “Alleluja,” in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, Bd.  1 (Stuttgart, 1950), Sp. 293–99; Martin Klöckener, “Alleluia,” in Augustinus-Lexikon, Bd. 1 (Basel, 1986– 94), Sp. 239–41; Joseph Andreas Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia. Eine genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe, 5. Aufl., Bd. 1 (Wien, 1962), S. 539–65. 49  Nat. 1.32–33 nach Mt. 11.29–30. 44 

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heit und Sicherheit vor nächtlichen Übergriffen (34–38) fällt mit den christlichen Idealen seelischer Reinheit und geistigen Wachens zusammen. Zur Koppelung von physischem Schlaf und spiritueller Gefährdung reicht es, auf die Mahnung Jesu in der nächtlichen Szene auf dem Ölberg (Mt. 26.41: “Vigilate et orate, ut non intretis in temptationem. Spiritus quidem promptus est, caro autem infirma”; vgl. Mc. 14.38) sowie auf paulinische Schlüsseltexte50 zu verweisen, ebenso lässt sich die Metapher des Tempels für das menschliche Herz, das von Sünde gereinigt werden muss, bis zu Paulus zurückverfolgen51 und hat bei Paulinus selbst eine Parallele.52 – Die Nat. 1 abschließende Bitte um einen guten Tod darf auf Erfüllung hoffen, da der Sprecher den Tempeldienst im eigentlichen wie im übertragenen Sinn verrichtet hat. Wenn der Dichter in Nat. 1 durch die in Aussicht genommene Reise nach Nola gewissermaßen die Voraussetzung für alle weiteren Natalicia schafft, die ja Nola als Szenario der Felix-Feiern entwerfen, weist dieses Gedicht Charakteristika einer praefatio auf; die traditionelle Bitte um Inspiration ist hier durch die Bitte an Felix um Gelingen der Reise ersetzt. Des Weiteren wird Nola im Einleitungsgedicht zum glückseligen Jenseits in Beziehung gesetzt, was in den Carmina natalicia, die über Felix’ Wundertaten berichten, insofern aufgenommen wird, als dort der Ort als letztlich jeder Gefährdung enthoben erscheint, und was den Pilgern, die nach Nola strömen, den Bauten zu Ehren des Heiligen und vor allem dem Gesang des Dichters eine eschatologische Dimension verleiht. Es spricht daher viel dafür, dass die in der Überlieferung vereinzelt belegte Bezeichnung von Nat. 1 als praefatio (s.o.) auf Paulinus selbst zurückgeht. Die Felix-Gedichte sind, so hat es den Anschein, nach kompositorischen Kriterien gereiht, die Sammlung ist nicht chronologisch strukturiert. Welche Konsequenzen sich aus dem Wegfall dieses traditionellen chronologischen Gerüsts für die Datierung von Paulins Biographie und seiner anderen Werke ergeben, kann in diesem Rahmen nicht untersucht werden. Rom. 13.11–12: “et hoc scientes tempus, quia hora est iam nos de somno surgere, nunc enim propior est nostra salus quam cum credidimus; nox praecessit, dies autem appropriavit. Abiciamus ergo opera tenebrarum et induamur arma lucis …”; Eph. 5.8: “Eratis enim aliquando tenebrae, nunc autem lux in domino; ut filii lucis ambulate …” 51  1 Cor. 3.16 f.: “Nescitis quia templum dei estis et spiritus habitat in vobis. Si quis autem templum dei violaverit, disperdet illum deus. Templum enim dei sanctum est quod estis vos.” Vgl. ferner Cyprian, Hab. virg. 2, hg. Laetitia Ciccolini, in Cyprianus: De habitu virginum; Pseudo-Cyprianea 1, hg. Laetitia Ciccolini und Paul Mattei, CCSL 3F (Turnhout, 2016), S. 285.33–286.37 (“Portemus deum puro et mundo corpore et observatione meliore et qui per sanguinem Christi redempti sumus, per omnia servitutis obsequia redemptoris imperio pareamus demusque operam, ne quid inmundum et profanum templo dei inferatur, ne offensus sedem quam inhabitat derelinquat”). 52  Epist. 32.25, hg. von Hartel, S. 299–300: “Expedit autem nobis, ut etiam aedificatum cordis nostri templum saepe dominus Iesus revisat veniens in flagello timoris sui, ut eiciat de nobis mensas nummulariorum et venditores bovum vel columbarum, ne quod avaritiae conmercium animus noster exerceat neque in nostris sensibus tarditas bovum stabulet, quia ubi non sunt boves, praesepia munda sunt.” 50 

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Appendix Konkordanz der Carmina natalicia CCSL 21 (Dolveck) Nat. 1 / praefatio Nat. 2 / liber I

CSEL 30 (von Hartel) Carm. 12 Carm. 13

Nat. 3 / liber II

Carm. 14

Nat. 4 / liber III Nat. 5 / liber IV Nat. 6 / liber V

Carm. 15 Carm. 16 Carm. 18

Nat. 7 / liber VI Nat. 8 / liber VII Nat. 9 / liber VIII

Carm. 23 Carm. 26 Carm. 27

Nat. 10 / liber IX Nat. 11 / liber X

Carm. 28 Carm. 19

Nat. 12 / liber XI

Carm. 20

Nat. 13 / liber XII

Carm. 21

(Nat. 14 / liber XIII) (Carm. 24)

1 

Nach Kamptner, Paulinus von Nola, S. 12.

Inhalt1 (traditionelle Datierung) Bitte um sichere Reise nach Nola (395) Freude über und Dank für Ankunft und Aufenthalt in Nola (396) Beschreibung der Feier des dies natalis, Pilgerkatalog (397) Vita Felicis I (398) Vita Felicis II (399) Übergang vom irdischen zum jenseitigen Leben; Wunder (400) Wunder: Augenheilung (401) Wunder: Hilfe gegen Barbaren (402) Besuch des Niketas; Beschreibung der Bauten von Nola I (403) Beschreibung der Bauten von Nola II (404) Wunder: Auffindung eines gestohlenen Kreuzes (405) Wunder: Tiere drängen nach Nola zur Schlachtung (406) Paulinus’ asketische Gemeinschaft in Nola, Autobiographie, Wunder: Wasserversorgung (407) Fragmente (409?)

Seeing is Believing: Iconic Prose in the Confessions of Saint Augustine Stephen M. Beall Marquette University As initiates into the mysteries of classical philology we are occasionally required to justify our profession. In my experience, the most challenging question is not “Why read the Classics?,” but rather, “Why read the Classics in the original Greek and Latin?” When so many good translations are available, it is far from obvious that utriusque linguae peritia is a sound investment of curricular time and money. To  answer this question, it is often helpful to set a text and a translation side by side. Only then can we truly appreciate how language shapes thought and thought shapes language in unique and sometimes “untranslatable” ways. A good example of this relationship is Augustine’s Confessions. Reading this book for the first time, we not only have the feeling that we are eaves-dropping on a one-sided conversation.1 We also seem to be looking into the mind of someone who is thinking in Latin, and the shape of his thought is richer and stranger than we might have imagined. This experience begins as we read the prologue of the work. Here we might have expected a dedication or a formal exordium, but Augustine draws us – perhaps reluctantly – into a fervent conversation with God. The theme of the conversation, moreover, is not (initially) self-exposition, but rather praise (confessio, laudatio), which is couched in the exotic language and rhythms of the Psalms: Magnus es, domine et laudabilis valde: magna virtus tua et sapientiae tuae non est numerus.

Great are you, Lord, and greatly to be praised. Great is your power, and your wisdom is infinite.

Our initial disorientation may cause us to miss the “iconic” qualities of the prologue – the ways in which the author manipulates language to create a word-picture of his major themes. It all begins with the ubiquitous figure of chiasmus (“magna virtus… sapientiae… numerus”), and continues with a memorable picture of the human condition: Et laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio creaturae tuae, et homo circumferens mortalitatem suam

1 

[A] man, a part of your creation, desires to praise you; [a] man, carrying about his own mortality,

James Joseph O’Donnell, ed. Augustine, Confessions, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1992), 2:9. D O I 10 .14 8 4/ M . P J M L . 5 .1 2 8 71 5 : 21 3 –2 2 3 ©

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214 circumferens testimonium peccati sui et testimonium, quia superbis resistis: et tamen laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio creaturae tuae.

Stephen M. Beall carrying about the testimony of his own sin, testimony that you resist the proud. Yet this man, this part of what you have created, desires to praise you.

The futile striving that characterizes human life is indicated first of all by repetition (“laudare te vult homo… et tamen laudare te vult homo”). This striving is represented as a kind of circular motion (“circumferens… circumferens”), which acquires a vertical dimension through the figure of “the ladder” (climax, also called gradatio: “circumferens… circumferens… testimonium… testimonium”).2 On a “ladder,” one can go up or down; but in this case, the motion is all downward, as it penetrates to the deeper causes of human frustration. A man cannot praise God because he is mortal; he is mortal because he sins; he sins because he is proud. This descent is not merely the logical and gradual consequence of human pride; for pride causes God to “push back” (resistis; cf. Prov. 3.34, 1 Pet. 5.5, and James 4.6). Thus, the descent becomes a fall. Thereafter, human beings who would lift their hearts to God are condemned, as it were, to a perpetual depression, bearing the burden of their lives in circles. The remedy for this situation is indicated in the next line, which resumes the ­second-person narrative of praise: Tu excitas, ut laudare te delectet, quia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.

You rouse him, so that he delights in praising you. For you have made us unto yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Corresponding to the descent of the previous sentence, we find here a reverse motion, by which the human heart moves toward God (ad te) until it rests in God (in te). Nevertheless, one does not make this journey by one’s own power. God is the author and catalyst of this upward motion (tu excitas…) as well as its destination.3 Thus, the plan of the Confessions is presented in figural terms.4 Human beings fall away from God to expend their energy in fruitless, horizontal pursuits; at length, however, God raises them back to himself. The essentially chiastic shape of the divine economy gives Augustine’s theology, as well as his prose, the dramatic quality that so impressed Samuel Beckett,5 and which continues to attract young readers today. See Aimé Solignac, Eugène Tréhorel and Guillhem Boissou, ed. and trans. Œuvres de saint Augustin XIII–XIV: Les Confessions (Paris, 1962), 13:648. 3  Solignac et al., Confessions, 13:648. 4  See Jacob Hovind, “Figural Interpretation as Modernist Hermeneutics: The  Rhetoric of Erich ­Auerbach’s Mimesis,” Comparative Literature 64 (2012), 257–69 at p. 259. 5  See Dirk Van Hulle, “Beckett’s Principle of Reversability: Chiasmus and the ‘Shape of Ideas,’” Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui 21 (2009), 179–92, at p. 179. 2 

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Augustine’s personal narrative often follows this pattern. We shall see it again in the pivotal moment of his spiritual journey, which occurs, not surprisingly, in the seventh book – the exact midpoint – of the Confessions. In the prologue, Augustine’s key points – that God should be praised and that he resists the proud – are made through allusions to Scripture. The surrounding exegesis, however, reflects the “Great Circle of Being” of the Platonists.6 We  learn in Book  7 that it was this philosophy that brought Augustine to an understanding of who God is: Et primo volens ostendere mihi, quam resistas superbis, humilibus autem des gratiam, et quanta misericordia tua demonstrata sit hominibus via humilitatis, quod verbum caro factum est et habitavit inter homines: procurasti mihi per quendam hominem, inmanissimo typho turgidum, quosdam Platonicorum libros ex graeca lingua in latinum versos.

Since you wished to show me how you resist the proud and favor the humble, and how, by your mercy the way of humility has been shown to men, in that the word was made flesh and dwelt among men, you obtained for me through a man who was swollen with an immense pride certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin.

The significance of this moment is indicated by a reprise of the quotation from Scripture, “Deus superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam” (James 4.6), which Augustine has improved here with a chiastic arrangement. Ironically, he acquired the key to humility from an individual who was “swollen with pride” – the characteristic vice of the sect.7 But  God writes straight with crooked lines, and Augustine’s typically intensive reading of the Platonic books led to a period of meditation, which he describes in the Confessions (7.10.16) as a visionary experience: Intravi et vidi qualicumque oculo animae meae supra mentem meam, lucem incommutabilem, non hanc vulgarem et conspicuam omni carni, nec quasi ex eodem genere grandior erat, tamquam si ista

I entered and saw, with a sort of eye in my soul, above my mind an unchangeable light – not this common light which is visible to all flesh, nor was it merely a greater light of the same type; it was as if this light

William Norris Clarke, S. J., The One and the Many. A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, 2001), pp. 303–13. 7  Conf. 7.9.13, ed.  O’Donnell, 1:80–81; see Pier Franco Beatrice, “Quosdam Platonicorum Libros: The Platonic Readings of Augustine in Milan,” Vigiliae Christianae 43 (1989), 248–81, at p. 252 6 

216 multo multoque clarius claresceret totumque occuparet magnitudine.

Stephen M. Beall much more gloriously glowed and filled everything with its greatness.

The speed and confidence of Augustine’s progress is indicated through repetition and word-play (“multo multoque clarius claresceret”) – although it should be noted that it is the light, rather than Augustine, which seems to change. The fact that this experience occurs on a vertical, as well as horizontal, plane is first hinted at by the phrase supra mentem meam. The “superiority” of the light is further emphasized by repetition in the following sentence: nec ita erat supra mentem meam, sicut oleum super aquam, nec sicut caelum super terram, sed superior, quia ipsa fecit me, et ego inferior, quia factus ab ea.

Nor was it higher than my mind as oil is higher than water, nor as the sky is higher than the earth, but higher still, because it made me, and I was lower, because I was made by it.

The light, it seems, draws Augustine’s spiritual vision upward at a gradually increasing distance, from the surface of metaphorical water, the lowest element, to the heavens, and finally still higher (superior). Augustine equates this with the metaphysical distance between God as creator and himself as creature, using the figure of chiasmus for emphasis (“ipsa… me… ego… ab ea”). His mental ascent culminates in a double climax: qui novit veritatem, novit eam, et qui novit eam, novit aeternitatem.

He who knows the truth, knows it, and he who knows it, knows eternity.

caritas novit eam.

Love knows it.

o aeterna veritas et vera caritas et cara aeternitas!

O eternal truth, O true love, O lovely eternity!

These words clarify, as it were, the significance of the unchanging light: it is to vision what truth and eternity are to the intellect, which “knows.” Knowledge, however, implies more than vision; it includes a kind of possession or enjoyment, which is associated with “love” (caritas). Love of one kind or another is, of course, the thread that runs through the earlier books of the Confessions, which narrate the author’s vain pursuit of erotic satisfaction, lasting friendship, and professional fulfillment.8 Augustine David Vincent Meconi, “Traveling without Moving: Love as Ecstatic Union in Plotinus, Augustine, and Dante,” Mediterranean Studies 18 (2009), 1–23, esp. pp. 8–13. 8 

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had been looking for love in all the wrong places, but in Platonic eros he believed he had found the real thing (vera caritas), which is “dear” or “lovely” (cara) precisely because it cannot disappoint. The circularity of his spiritual quest – the discovery within himself of that which he was vainly seeking without – is reflected by the circular structure of the second climax (aeterna  … aeternitas). A  circle is also, appropriately, the shape of eternity itself.9 We might say, then, that Augustine portrays his visionary ascent not as a straight climb, but as a spiraling motion, like the flight of a bird that catches an updraft. The emotional language of the passage, which dispenses with subject and predicate, conveys Augustine’s excitement. One  is reminded of Goethe’s Faust as he contemplates the Macrocosm: Bin ich ein Gott? mir wird so licht! Ich schau in diesen reinen Zügen. Die würkende Natur vor meiner Seele liegen. Jetzt erst erkenn ich, was der Weise spricht…10 Am I a god? All seems so clear to me! It seems the deepest works of Nature Lie open to my soul, with purest feature. Now I understand what wise men see…11

Like Faust’s apparition, however, this turns out to be “merely a picture,” leading to profound disappointment. Having reached the apparent summit, Augustine perceived that the real object of his longing is not so easily comprehended: tu es deus meus, tibi suspiro die ac nocte. et cum te primum cognovi, tu assumpsisti me, ut viderem esse, quod viderem, et nondum me esse, qui viderem.

You are my God, For you I sigh day and night, and when I first knew you, you raised me up, that I might see that there IS that which I might see, and that, as yet, I WASN’T one who could see.

These words recall the general sketch of individual salvation given in the prologue (tu excitas…), for it was God, not Augustine himself, who raised (assumpsit) him so Peter White sees an allusion here to the way that the persons of the Trinity (represented by the attributes, veritas, aeternitas, and caritas) “do not act independently, but only in unison”: see Augustine, Confessions, Books V–IX (Cambridge, 2019), p. 201. Augustine’s circular figure is appropriate to the trinitarian perichoresis. 10  Nacht, lines 439–42, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Der Tragödie erster und zweiter Teil (Zürich, 1982), p. 19. 11  Trans. Anthony S. Kline, Faust: Parts I & II (n.p., 2003), p. 21. 9 

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that he could see.12 Augustine resembles Moses, to whom God granted a vision of the Promised Land (Deut. 32.48–52), after he had disclosed his peculiar mode of being (“ego sum qui sum,” Exod. 3.14).13 The latter allusion is important here because it points to the problem of metaphysical evil, which had perplexed Augustine before he read the Platonists.14 Platonism taught him to understand God as the non-material, noncontingent ground of all that is. He could now see that evil, which cannot participate in the being of God, has no ontological standing – it is the absence of good. Unfortunately, the thrilling vision of God as the one, necessary being also made Augustine aware of the metaphysical distance between God and himself: et reverberasti infirmitatem aspectus mei, radians in me vehementer, et contremui amore et horrore: et inveni longe me esse a te in regione dissimilitudinis …

And you shook the infirmity of my gaze, powerfully shining into me, and I shook with love and shuddering, and I found that I was a long way from you in a place of unlikeness …

What stood between Augustine and God was literally esse itself (“me esse a te”). Being is a kind of power, comparable not only to the light which overcomes the power of sight (aspectus), but also to a physical force that “shakes” (reverberasti) a lesser object. The awareness of his existential unlikeness (dissimilitudo) to God caused Augustine to tremble with both love and dread (amore et horrore) – alike in sound, as they were inseparable in his experience. His ascent was evidently at an end; the emphasis now is on the distance (longe) that separates the place (regione) occupied by a mere creature from the heights of divinity. Like Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9.3–4), Augustine relates that his violent reversal and loss of spiritual sight were accompanied by a divine voice: … tamquam audirem vocem tuam de excelso: “cibus sum grandium: cresce et manducabis me. nec tu me in te mutabis sicut cibum carnis tuae, sed tu mutaberis in me.”

as though I were hearing your voice from on high: “I am the food of grownups; grow and you will eat me. And you will not change me into you, as you do with the food of your flesh, But you will be changed into me.”

See Robert J. O’Connell, “The Enneads and St Augustine’s Image of Happiness,” Vigiliae Christianae 17 (1963), 129–64, at pp. 134–35. 13  See Danuta Shanzer, “Latent Narrative Patterns, Allegorical Choices, and Literary Unity in ­Augustine’s Confessions,” Vigiliae Christianae 46 (1992), 40–56, at p. 42. 14  Conf. 7.5.7–7.8.12, ed. O’Donnell, 1:76–80; see Colin Starnes, Augustine’s Conversion: A Guide to the Argument of ‘Confessions’ I–IX (Waterloo, Ontario, 1990), pp. 183–89. 12 

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Augustine may be alluding here to his previous reflection on Stultitia’s Feast, where the immature seeker was seduced by the insubstantial fare of the Manichees.15 He now understood, with the help of the libri Platonici, that the “food of grownups” is God himself.16 This, however, is not nourishment of the usual kind, by which food is literally surrounded by the consuming organism (“tu… me… te”) and changed into the latter’s material form. Rather, the one who eats is transformed into the food (“tu mutaberis in me”). In the context of Augustine’s Platonic meditation, the metaphor of eating may be shocking in its carnality; but it points to his realization of a new problem (7.17.23). Et mirabar, quod iam te amabam, non pro te phantasma: et non stabam frui deo meo, sed rapiebar ad te decore tuo, moxque diripiebar abs te pondere meo, et ruebam in ista cum gemitu; et pondus hoc consuetudo carnalis.

And I was amazed; for now I loved you, and not a phantasm in your place; and I could not stand to enjoy my God, but I was ravished to you by your beauty and then torn from you by my weight, and I rushed headlong into these things with groaning. And this weight is the habit of the flesh.

Augustine appreciated the irony of his situation: as soon as he had come to know the “real” God, who is not material, he was “weighed down” by his own material nature. The latter worked like gravity, an equal and opposite pressure that was tearing (di-ripiebat) Augustine from God as forcefully as God’s beauty was snatching (rapiebat) him to himself. This momentary suspension is reflected with an equal number of syllables (“decore … pondere”) in a parallel construction. Ultimately, Augustine could not “stay” (stare) in the enjoyment of God; indeed, like Lucifer and the fallen angels, he “went crashing” (ruebam) into his old habits.17 Augustine will have more to say about his personal struggles with “the habit of the flesh” in the remaining books of the Confessions. At the moment, however, Augustine’s problem is metaphysical, not moral. God, in short, is metaphysically weightless; Augustine is not. How can he rise from his “place of unlikeness” to the stable enjoyment of God? Conf. 3.5.9, ed. O’Donnell, 1:26; see Shanzer, “Latent Narrative Patterns,” p. 47. O’Connell, “The Enneads,” p. 140. 17  On Satan’s precipitous fall due to God’s “resistance,” see Civ. Dei 11.33, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, Sancti Aurelii Augustini Episcopi De Civitate Dei Libri XXII, 4th ed., 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1928), 1:508–10; Marjorie Suchocki, “The Symbolic Structure of Augustine’s Confessions,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 50 (1982), 365–78, at p. 371. 15 

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It was at this point, evidently, that Augustine finally discovered the key to the Christian religion: “The Word made flesh” (7.18.24). Et quaerebam viam conparandi roboris, quod esset idoneum ad fruendum te, nec inveniebam, donec amplecterer mediatorem dei et hominum, hominem Christum Iesum, qui est super omnia deus benedictus in saecula, vocantem et dicentem: “ego sum via, veritas et vita,” et cibum, cui capiendo invalidus eram, miscentem carni: quoniam verbum caro factum est, ut infantiae nostrae lactesceret sapientia tua, per quam creasti omnia.

And I sought a way of gaining strength sufficient for enjoying you, and I did not find it, until I embraced a mediator of God and men, a man, Christ Jesus, who is God over all, blessed forever, calling and saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and mixing the food that I wasn’t strong enough to take with flesh, for the word was made flesh; that he might nurse our infancy with your wisdom, through which you created all things.

Augustine, as we have seen, was not content to glimpse the divine splendor from a distance and for only a moment; he wanted to enjoy God continuously. For this he required more strength (robur) than he possessed, and so he needed the help of a “mediator.” The Platonists had sought such a middle-man in the teachers of their sect – or, worse yet, in idols18  – but these attempts were doomed to fail because of the metaphysical distance that exists between the being of God and that of creatures. A true mediator would bring the human and divine natures together. This union is indicated graphically in the chiastic repetition of deus and homo: … donec amplecterer mediatorem dei et hominum, hominem Christum Iesum, qui est super omnia deus benedictus in saecula …

until I embraced a mediator of God and men, a man, Christ Jesus, who is God over all, blessed forever …

In the second half of the chiasmus, “God” and “man” are separated, but “Jesus Christ” stands in the middle, in the same grammatical case as “man.” In the following lines, we see further wordplay through alliteration of the consonants v and c:

18 

Conf. 7.9.15, ed. O’Donnell, 1:81.

Seeing is Believing … vocantem et dicentem: “ego sum via, veritas et vita,” et cibum, cui capiendo invalidus eram, miscentem carni: quoniam verbum caro factum est …

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calling and saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and mixing the food that I wasn’t strong enough to take with flesh; for the word was made flesh …

These words help to explain Augustine’s disappointing experience with Platonism. There, the emphasis was on seeing (vidi) the way (via) to truth (veritas), until God’s mighty radiance (“radians… vehementer”) showed Augustine that he was incapable of sustaining the vision of God (“nondum me esse, qui viderem”). Blinded and separated from God, he heard a voice (vox) which described itself as the “food (cibus) of grown-ups.” That food makes a second appearance here; but this time it is mixed with “flesh” (caro), setting up a quotation of the Johannine prologue (“verbum caro factum est”). Thus, the two significant consonants, v and c, and what they represent, are brought together in Christ. He is not only the truth (veritas) itself, but also the way (via) to the truth, because he is the “food” (cibus) or “meat” (caro) which Augustine must take (capere) if he is to be changed into God. Augustine’s Christian audience would have recognized the sacramental implications of this passage, as divinization through the Eucharist was the theme of several of his sermons.19 But Augustine also uses the motif of flesh (caro) to introduce the moral aspect of his problem. A true mediator between God and man must not only bridge the metaphysical gap between necessary and contingent existence; he must also be capable of reversing the moral polarization caused by human pride, for, as we have seen, “God resists the proud.” In other words, the mediator must introduce humility into the essential make-up of the human creation (homo): Non enim tenebam deum meum Iesum humilis humilem nec cuius rei magistra esset eius infirmitas noveram.

For I did not grasp my God, Jesus, humble – as I should have been humble – nor did I know what his infirmity was supposed to teach me.

The juxtaposition of humilis and humilem is the first indication that assimilation to Christ is required for the salvation that Augustine seeks. Writing in Latin, moreover, he was able to take advantage of the traditional derivation of homo and humilis from humus, soil,20 to construct a figura etymologica: See, e.g., Serm. 57.7, ed. PL 38:389; Aaron Stalnaker, “Spiritual Exercises and the Grace of God: Paradoxes of Personal Formation in Augustine,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, 24 (2004), 137–70, at pp. 153–54. 20  See Niculae I. Herescu, “Homo – Humus – Humanitas, Préface à un humanisme contemporain,” Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé (1948), no. 5, 64–76, at pp. 66–69. 19 

222 Verbum enim tuum, aeterna veritas, superioribus creaturae tuae partibus supereminens, subditos erigit ad se ipsam, in inferioribus autem aedificavit sibi humilem domum de limo nostro …

Stephen M. Beall For your word, eternal truth, higher than the higher parts of your creatures, raises the subject people to himself, but in the lower parts he built himself a humble house of our mud …

Limus (mud) stands in as a synonym for humus, to produce the alliterative pattern, “humilem domum de limo nostro.” In the previous clause, the “v”-words verbum and veritas and the adjectives superioribus and supereminens reprise the god-ward language of Augustine’s philosophical vision, while the adjectives subditos and inferioribus emphasize the lowliness of creatures. By coming to earth, God has reversed the direction of the Platonic ascent;21 by becoming earth, he has also reversed the fatal polarity of his relationship with mankind. It was not enough, however, for God to cover himself with our “humble house.” Augustine has already hinted that human nature was not only alienated from God, but fundamentally weakened in the process. The image of hopeless disorientation that we found in the prologue is elaborated here as a kind of disease or illness that only Christ can heal: … humilem domum de limo nostro, per quam subdendos deprimeret a se ipsis et ad se traiceret, sanans tumorem et nutriens amorem, ne fiducia sui progrederentur longius, sed potius infirmarentur, videntes ante pedes suos infirmam divinitatem ex participatione tunicae pelliciae nostrae, et lassi prosternerentur in eam, illa autem surgens levaret eos.

… a humble house of our mud, through which he might push down those, who needed it, from themselves, and draw them over to him, healing their swelling and nourishing their love, lest by trusting in themselves they should wander too far; but rather that they be made infirm, seeing before their feet divinity infirm from sharing our coat of skin, and that in their exhaustion they might cast themselves on it, and it might rise and lift them up.

See Jared Ortiz, “You Made Us for Yourself ”: Creation in St Augustine’s ‘Confessions’ (Minneapolis, 2016), p. 108. 21 

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Augustine’s Christology can be summarized as follows. By sharing our “coat of skin,” Christ is able to separate human beings from a falsely inflated self-image; we might say that he “cuts us down to size.” Mixing metaphors, Augustine characterizes this imaginary swelling as a cancer (tumor), which is the verbal likeness and the practical counterfeit of love (amor). Only love is able to cure (sanare) that which ails us. Pride causes people, like the Prodigal Son (Lk. 15.11–32), to “wander far” (“[ut] … progrederentur”); thus they become the aimless homo who “carries about his mortality” in the prologue. Even this wandering, however, has a providential aspect, since it leaves sinners exhausted (lassi) and brings them to the point of recognizing their own infirmity (“[ut] … infirmarentur”) in the infirmity (infirmitas) of the divine Christ. This is more than simple conformity to the infirmity of the God-man. It causes them to “cast themselves” upon him in a more intimate – and presumably sacramental – union. He, in turn, lifts them up (levaret) as he himself rises (surgens) in his Paschal glory. The reciprocal action of repentance and salvation is indicated by another chiasmus (“lassi… eam, illa… eos”), in which only “infirm divinity” (i.e., Christ) performs a grammatically transitive function. Our nature is such that we can cast ourselves down, but only God can raise us up. Augustine, then, believed that he had found the answer to the metaphysical and moral doubts that had troubled him to this point in his philosophical journey. To use contemporary Scholastic terminology, God is the “horizon” of truth, goodness, and beauty to which human souls naturally tend.22 Yet this horizon remains far beyond our reach without the intervention of a mediator, who assumed human infirmity in order to impart his divine strength. Here is a truth that has to be “seen,” and the visual metaphors of the libri Platonicorum evidently helped to clarify Augustine’s perception, which had been clouded by the materialism of his youth. Nevertheless, the Platonic model of the Great Circle of Being, in which the One is the stable source and fixed destination, is replaced in Augustine’s meditations by a dynamic person, who follows his creatures to the bottom and raises them to the top. This revision required a new set of word-pictures, and Augustine, the erstwhile auditor of St Ambrose, was up to the task. Reading the Confessions in this way provides a partial answer to the question with which we began: Why read the Classics in the original languages? (Or to put it another way, why is philological scholarship such as that exemplified by Danuta Shanzer still indispensable to students of the Humanities?) To the extent that we all think in images, the iconic features of language – etymology, word order, metaphor, and figure – are indispensable vehicles of thought. Moreover, they are vehicles of individual thought – of the unique world-view and personality of an author.23 These are never completely conveyed in a paraphrase or translation. If we would look into Augustine’s mind, we must see the shape of his thinking. 22  23 

Clarke, The One and the Many, pp. 290–301. See J. Mitchell Morse, “The Chiasmus Cure,” CEA Critic 31, no. 7 (1969), 12–14.

True or False? Augustine on Text and Translation Gillian Clark University of Bristol BELLINDA: You know we must return good for evil. LADY BRUTE: That may be a mistake in the translation.1

Where did I first meet Danuta? Intellectually, with the amazed discovery that someone had made sense of Martianus Capella.2 In  person, probably at a Late Roman seminar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, or at a Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity conference on some pleasant American campus.3 Many meetings later we were both in Torún, Poland, at a conference inspired by a new database of Augustine’s letters.4 Most visitors had tried to learn some words of Polish; Danuta spoke the language. That sample of encounters shows some characteristics of Danuta: an exceptionally perceptive Latinist with an international heritage; ready to engage with little-known works, complex textual tradition, and oblique and difficult Latin;5 but also ready to show that there is something new to say about one of the most-studied authors of late antiquity,6 and even about some of the most-studied episodes in his writings.7 Augustine, that most-studied author, is the focus of this tribute because he too was always concerned to ensure that text, translation and interpretation were as good as they could be. In the case of Judaeo-Christian scripture, this was very important, but also very challenging. Belief and practice required correct interpretation of a text which was held to be divinely inspired, and the text Augustine interpreted for his hearers was Sir John Vanbrugh, The Provok’d Wife, Act 1, scene 1. Danuta Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella’s ‘De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ Book 1, University of California Publications in Classical Studies 32 (Berkeley, 1986). 3  Perhaps a decade before the conference at Boulder, Colorado, which led to the publication of ­Danuta Shanzer, “Haec quibus uteris verba: the Bible and Boethius’ Christianity,” in The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, ed. Andrew Cain and Noel Lenski (Aldershot, 2009), pp. 57–78. 4  www.scrinium.umk.pl. 5  Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood, Avitus of Vienne: Letters and Selected Prose, Translated Texts for Historians 38 (Liverpool, 2002). 6  Danuta Shanzer, “Arcanum Varronis iter: Licentius’ Verse Epistle to Augustine,” Revue des études augustiniennes 37 (1991), 110–43. 7  Danuta Shanzer, “Avulsa a latere meo: Augustine’s Spare Rib, Confessions 6.15.25,” Journal of Roman Studies 92 (2002), 157–76; “Pears Before Swine: Augustine, Confessions 2.4.9,” Revue des études augustiniennes 42 (1996), 44–55. 1 

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a translation. The epigraph of this paper shows, in extreme form, how doubts about translation could undermine belief. New Testament Latin translated from Greek was all too often oblique and difficult, and “Old Testament” Latin translated from Greek which was itself translated from Hebrew was even more so. Transmission was also a problem. The  people whose task it was to copy these texts, perhaps from dictation, might mishear them, misunderstand them, make or perpetuate scribal errors, or adapt the text in accordance with their own ideas. Then they might read their erroneous version to others who did not have time or ability or motive to check it against the available resources. Danuta’s paper from the Torún conference offers an exemplary copyist and reader.8 Augustine’s letter collection includes an exchange with his friend Evodius, bishop of Uzalis, who lamented the death of this young man and asked for Augustine’s views on the condition of the soul after death.9 The unnamed notarius, son of a priest in a nearby town, had begun a career in the civil service as an exceptor (shorthand writer) in the office of the proconsul of Africa.10 This experience would be useful for him as a notarius ecclesiae who dealt with the bishop’s official correspondence and records.11 Evodius found him to be “diligent in transcribing in shorthand and very painstaking in writing fair copy.”12 He was also eager to read to Evodius, at night when all was quiet; he would not skip over passages before he had understood them, but would ask three or four times for an explanation until his questions were answered. Augustine’s notarii were likewise expected to read texts aloud, to take dictation of letters and books which they transcribed and read back for correction, and sometimes to take shorthand notes of sermons. According to Possidius, Augustine was constantly dictating or correcting.13 Perhaps some of these notarii were members, lay or ordained, of Augustine’s community at Hippo, but this is not to say that they were organised as a scriptorium for the production of corrected texts. More than a century after Augustine, Cassiodorus Danuta Shanzer, “Evodius’ Strange Encounters with the Dead,” in Scrinium Augustini: The World of Augustine’s Letters, ed. Przemysław Nehring, Mateusz Stróžyński and Rafał Toczko (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 273–304. 9  Augustine Ep.  158–59, ed.  Alois Goldbacher, S.  Aureli Augustini Hipponiensis Episcopi Epistulae, CSEL 44 (Vienna, 1904), pp. 488–502. Abbreviations for the titles of works by Augustine follow Augustine through the Ages: an Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald O. S. A. (Grand Rapids, 1999), pp. xxxv–xliii. 10  On this status, and the careers it opened up, see Hans Carel Teitler, Notarii and Exceptores: An Enquiry into the Role and Significance of Shorthand Writers in the Imperial and Ecclesiastical Bureaucracy of the Roman Empire (from the Early Principate to c. 450 A.D.) (Amsterdam, 1985). 11  For example, Augustine Ep. 213.2, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 57, p. 375: the notarii ecclesiae record in shorthand what was said when Eraclius was declared Augustine’s successor-designate. 12  Danuta Shanzer’s translation (“Evodius’ strange encounters,” p. 278) of “erat autem strenuus in notis et in scribendo bene laboriosus” (Augustine, Ep. 158.1, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 44, p. 489). 13  Possidius, Vita Aug. 24.11, ed. Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, Vita di Cipriano. Vita di Ambrogio, Vita di Agostino (Milan, 1975), p. 192. 8 

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took particular pleasure in the work of his antiquarii, who, he said, instructed their own minds by reading over and emending the text of scripture, and disseminated the teachings of scripture by copying. But Augustine did not in his Rule for his community, or in his short treatise on the work of monks, suggest copying as a suitable task.14 Ensuring that a text was correctly written, and would be correctly read, was a first task for teachers, students and readers, both of classical Latin literature and of Christian scripture. “Emendation” of a text, that is, removing mendae, “faults,” ranged from basic correction of errors to scholarly analysis.15 This praelectio was necessary because manuscripts vary, and in particular because late ancient texts were commonly written in scriptio continua, without word division or punctuation.16 The letter from Evodius to Augustine, for example, would begin DEBITUMFLAGITOEPISTULAEQUAMMISIETVOLUIPRIMOILLUDDISCEREQUODINTERROGAVIETPOSTEAHOCREQUIREREAUDI… with a new line when the copyist ran out of space.17 Why? For the people who did the writing, there were practical advantages. If  they were not as committed as the notarius who worked for Evodius, they did not need to ask questions about word division, line breaks, or sense breaks, and it was easier to estimate how much paper or parchment was required and to calculate payment by line.18 But why did readers accept this practice, which seems obviously inconvenient for people reading to themselves, and even more so for people reading to an audience? When Memorius, bishop of Capua, asked for a copy of Augustine’s early work De musica, Augustine warned him that the first five books would be very difficult to understand unless there was a reader who could distinguish the characters of the discussants in this philosophical dialogue, and could sound the syllables so that rhythms would be heard; moreover, in some rhythms “there are measured intervals of silence which cannot be perceived at all unless the speaker informs the hearer.”19 Augustine Cassiodorus, Inst. 1.15.1, ed. Roger A. B. Mynors, Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones (Oxford, 1937), pp. 41–2; 1.30, ed. Mynors, pp. 75–8. On the difficulty of identifying a scriptorium see Harry Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven and London, 1997) pp. 121–23. 15  Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford, 2010), pp. 421–97. 16  Malcolm Beckwith Parkes, Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Aldershot, 1992), pp. 9–19. 17  Augustine, Ep.158.1, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 44, p. 488: debitum flagito epistulae quam misi, et volui primo illud discere quod interrogavi, et postea hoc requirere. Audi … For further discussion of scriptio continua see Jocelyn Penny Small, Wax Tablets of the Mind (London, 1997). 18  On a hexameter line (of Virgil) as the unit of length of a Latin text, see Hugh Houghton, The Latin New Testament: A Guide to its Early History, Texts, and Manuscripts (Oxford, 2016), p. 21. 19  Augustine, Ep. 101.3, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.2, p. 542; on De musica see Carol Harrison, On Music, Sense, Affect and Voice (London, 2019). Augustine knew that classical metre posed problems for speakers of ordinary Latin: see further Gillian Clark, “In Praise of the Wax Candle: Augustine the Poet and Late Latin Literature,” in The Poetics of Late Latin Literature, ed. Jaś Elsner and Jesús Hernández ­L obato (Oxford and New York, 2017), pp. 424–46, referring to Shanzer, “Arcanum Varronis iter,” at 438–43. 14 

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did not suggest that the presentation of the text could help, for example by signalling change of speaker with a name rather than a paragraphos (a stroke in the margin), or by separating metrical examples from the surrounding text. Why, then, did late ancient readers accept scriptio continua? Historians of reading have suggested that it offered them a neutral text on which they could make their own decisions: texts were understood as potential speech acts, and interpretation came at the time of performance.20 In practice, these historians argue, most people were not seriously inconvenienced, because they preferred to delegate the tasks of reading and writing, to appreciate the rhetorical effect of texts, and to rely on memory and on notarii rather than on rapid consultation of books. (Or perhaps elite readers knew how a page of Virgil’s poetry or Cicero’s prose ought to look, and saw no need for wordbreaks, just as some present-day readers dislike bullet points, highlighting, and text boxes?) These explanations are plausible for students of classical literature, especially if they were used to working with a teacher who had the only text in the class, so that the mode of education was literally a lecture: a reading, lectio, of the text, with comments by the teacher. But the explanations are less plausible for Christian lectores and deacons who gave the scripture readings in church, or for lay people who were encouraged to follow up the readings at home even if they did not have formal education. Augustine, for example, urged his hearers to consider the “ant of God” who, like the ant in the book of Proverbs (6.6–7), gathers and stores her grain of wisdom: “Everyone sees them go to church and come back from church, hear the sermon, hear the reading, find the book, open and read it.”21 Christian texts of scripture may therefore have offered more help. The fourth-century Codex Bobiensis, which is the oldest surviving Latin gospel book, has no word breaks, but there are spaces at sense breaks, and new sections begin on new lines with the first letter moved towards the margin.22 Augustine offers memories both of reading classical literature and of his own early attempts to read scripture. The first work listed in the Retractationes, his annotated list of all his writings since his commitment to a Christian life, is the philosophical dialogue contra Academicos. It was composed at the time (386/7) when Augustine decided to resign his post as professor of rhetoric at Milan and to give in his name for baptism. With a small group of family, friends and students, he withdrew to a borrowed farm at Parkes, Pause and Effect, p.  11; Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: the Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, 1997), p. 11. On late antiquity as an “aural culture” see Carol Harrison, The Art of Listening in the Early Church (2013). 21  Augustine, En. Ps. 66.3, ed. Eligius Dekkers and Jan Fraipont, Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos, CCSL 39 (Turnhout, 1956), p. 860, a sermo ad plebem. Augustine, Serm. 114b.14 (= Mainz 12), ed. François Dolbeau, Augustin d’Hippone:Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique (Paris, 1996), p. 85 says that “the Lord’s books are on sale every day, and readers read them: buy one for yourself and read it when you have time – no, make time.” 22  Houghton, Latin New Testament, pp. 22–23, with illustration; p. 22 notes two scribal errors in this text. 20 

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Cassiciacum. On one occasion Augustine postponed a philosophical debate because almost all the day had been occupied by business “and in recensio of Virgil Book 1”; on another occasion, seven days had passed without debate, but “we were reading (recenseremus) three books of Virgil after the first, and I was lecturing (tractaremus) when it seemed appropriate.”23 Augustine did not say what exactly was done in recensio, or whether the notarius who recorded philosophical discussion would also read Virgil aloud.24 If  recensere means “to ensure a correct text in preparation for reading” by checking for scribal error and omissions, that task could require expert discussion of language and metre and of the names and places mentioned in the text; there was no standard edition of Virgil.25 “Reading” a classical text in class still means something similar, though a present-day critical text offers word breaks, line breaks, punctuation, and an apparatus criticus of variants. Preparing and reading Virgil took time, even though Augustine’s students had some classical background from their schooldays, and the names in Virgil’s poems were of a kind familiar to them. Preparing and reading a text of scripture, especially a text from the Old Testament with unfamiliar names of people and places, was much more challenging; even for someone who, like Augustine, had attended church as a child and as a student, so had at least heard readings from scripture.26 According to his own account in Confessions, he started to read scripture for himself in his student days at Carthage, but found it inferior to Cicero and stopped.27 As a professor of rhetoric at Milan, where he could hear Ambrose explain difficult passages, he read especially the letters of Paul, which he quotes in Latin translation from Greek, and was deeply moved by the Psalms, which he quotes in Latin translation from Greek translation from Hebrew.28 Neither text is easy. Latin commentary on scripture, especially on Paul, began in the later fourth century, and this suggests that scripture was being read by people who, like Augustine, expected to use a commentary when working through a text.29 Augustine, C.  Acad. 1.5.15, ed.  Pius Knöll, Sancti Aureli Augustini Opera  1.3, CSEL  63 (Vienna, 1922), p. 15; 2.4.10, ed. Knöll, CSEL 63, p. 30; discussed further in Gillian Clark, “Augustine’s Virgil,” in The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Fiachra Mac Góráin and Charles Martindale, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2019), pp.  77–87, with a reference to Danuta Shanzer, “Augustine and the Latin Classics,” in A Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey (Malden, Mass., 2012), pp. 161–74. 24  Augustine, C. Acad. 1.1.4, ed. Knöll, p. 6. 25  Cameron, Last Pagans, p. 452. 26  Augustine, Conf. 1.11.17, ed. Martin Skutella, Sancti Aureli Augustini Confessionum Libri XIII (Leipzig, 1934), p. 13; 3.3.5, ed. Skutella, pp. 39–40. 27  Augustine, Conf. 3.5.9, ed. Skutella, p. 42. He does not say what exactly he read: see further Gillian Clark, “The Ant of God: Augustine, Scripture, and Cultural Frontiers,” in Shifting Cultural Frontiers in Late Antiquity, ed. David Brakke, Deborah Deliyannis and Edward Watts (Farnham, 2012), pp. 151–63. 28  Augustine, Conf. 7.21.27, ed. Skutella, p. 150; 9.4.8, ed. Skutella, p. 185. 29  Eric Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians (Oxford, 2003), pp. 5–59 discusses the history of Latin commentary on Paul. 23 

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In his early work De utilitate credendi Augustine confronted critics who relied on their own judgement and said there are absurdities in scripture: ‘When I read it, I understood by myself.’ Really? If you had no training in poetry, would you venture on Terentianus Maurus [author of a treatise on metre] without a teacher? Asper, Cornutus, Donatus, any number of others are needed to understand any poet whose songs win applause in the theatre. But  you, without a leader, charge into those books which, whatever they are like, are holy and full of divine matters, and widely known by the acknowledgement of almost all the human race; without an adviser, you venture to declare your judgement on them.30

The difficulties became evident when Augustine asked Ambrose which part of scripture he should especially read in preparation for baptism. The answer was Isaiah, and Augustine suggested a reason: “I think because he foretells, more openly than the rest, the gospel and the calling of the gentiles.”31 Did Ambrose realise how hard it would be to read Isaiah? Most of the book is poetry, full of idioms and imagery and words which are found nowhere else. In Latin translation from Greek translation from Hebrew it can sound very strange to a classically trained reader, especially without wordbreaks or sense-breaks. Jerome later claimed credit for innovation in setting out his new translation of Isaiah in sense-units, per cola et commata, as he had seen done for Demosthenes and Cicero: “a new way of writing for a new translation, for the benefit of readers.”32 No wonder Augustine “not understanding the first reading, and thinking it was all like that, put it off until I had more practice in the Lord’s style.”33 Augustine did acquire more practice in the Lord’s style, and later in life he wrote about the idioms (locutiones) of scripture.34 He  also became more familiar with the problems of interpreting scripture, with the kind of mistake which might result from a faulty text or translation, and with claims that the text or translation was not just faulty, but had been consciously falsified in order to suppress or support an interpretation. His Retractationes include comments on points which he wished to correct, because he had made a mistake, or because what he had said might mislead in relation to a later debate. Some of the mistakes arose from texts and translations. An early example comes from Augustine’s comparison of Catholic and Manichaean teachings and lifestyles, written at Rome after his baptism at Milan. Manichaeans claimed that the Augustine, Vtil. cred. 7.17, ed. Joseph Zycha, Sancti Aureli Augustini De utilitate credendi. De duabus animabus. Contra Fortunatum. Contra Adimantum. Contra Epistulam Fundamenti. Contra Faustum, CSEL 25.1 (Vienna, 1891), pp. 21–22. 31  Augustine, Conf. 9.5.13, ed. Skutella, p. 190. 32  Jerome, Praef. in Is. ed. Robert Weber, Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1975), p. 1096. 33  Augustine, Conf. 9.5.13, ed. Skutella, p. 190. “Style” translates eloquium. 34  Joseph Thomas Lienhard, S. J., St Augustine: Writings on the Old Testament, Works of Saint Augustine 1/14. Augustine for the 21st Century (New York, 2016). 30 

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Old and New Testaments were not compatible, so Augustine undertook to cite from the New Testament some teachings which the Manichaeans could not reject as interpolated, and to show that all had counterparts in the Old.35 For example, the Apostle Paul himself cites an Old Testament text when he says that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, neither affliction nor hardship, persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger, or sword, and adds “as it is written, we are afflicted for your sake all day long, we have been reckoned as sheep for slaughter.”36 The Manichaeans, having no other argument, say that the psalm-verse was interpolated by corruptors of the scriptures; Augustine replies that the content is obviously the same. But Augustine had himself cited the psalm-verse in an incorrect form, and had not recognised the error: The faultiness (mendositas) of my codex escaped me: I remembered the scriptures less well, because I was not yet accustomed to them. Other codices of the same translation do not have propter te afficimur (“for your sake we are afflicted”) but propter te morte afficimur (“for your sake we are afflicted by death”), which others said in a single word mortificamur (“we are put to death”). Greek books (libri) show this to be more true (verius); from that language was made the translation into Latin of the old divine scriptures, according to the Seventy translators. Yet I argued at length in accordance with the words propter te afficimur, and I do not reject what I said as false in relation to the facts.37

When Augustine said that the reading morte afficimur, or in one word mortificamur, is “more true” than simple afficimur, he did not mean that the faulty text was deliberately less true; only that the word morte had been omitted in the copy of Paul’s letters which Augustine had at the time of writing. This was soon after his baptism, so presumably it was the very same codex which has a starring role in the events which led him to baptism, as they are narrated in Confessions.38 Augustine found in De moribus ecclesiae catholicae two similar examples of texts he had used without realising they were faulty. In the first case, from the book of Wisdom, he was working with the “more true” codices of the Latin translation, but found long afterwards that Greek codices differed.39 In the second, he found in several Latin codices of Ecclesiastes the text he expounded, but, again, later encountered in the Greek Augustine, Ep. 82.2.6, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.2, p. 356 (quoted below) on Manichaean claims that the text of scripture was corrupt; see further Nicholas Baker-Brian, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire: a Study of Augustine’s ‘Contra Adimantum’ (Lewiston, NY, 2009). 36  Rom. 8.35–37; Ps. 43.22. Augustine had himself thought, in earlier years, that Paul contradicted himself and was in conflict with the Old Testament, Conf. 7.21.27, ed. Skutella, p. 150. 37  Augustine, Retr. 1.7.2, ed. Pius Knöll, Sancti Aureli Augustini Retractationum Libri Duo, CSEL 36 (Vienna, 1902), p. 29. 38  Augustine, Conf. 8.6.14–15, ed. Skutella, pp. 164–67; 8.12.29, ed. Skutella, pp. 177–78. 39  Augustine, Mor. 1.16.27, ed. Johannes Baptist Bauer, Augustinus, De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum, CSEL 90 (Vienna, 1992), p. 32. 35 

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text another reading which was also in some Latin codices: Augustine saw that these were “more true” (veriores), but the faultiness (mendositas) of the texts he had used earlier did not undermine the truth of what he said about their content.40 But another of his corrections shows how opponents might seize on such differences. Donatus, in controversies about rebaptism, quoted Ecclesiasticus 34.30 as “He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing avail him?” Augustine’s text had “He who is baptized by a dead man, and touches him again, what does his washing avail him?” But he learned that even before Donatus, many African texts had the sentence without “and touches him again”; he commented: “If I had known this, I would not have said so much against him, as if against a thief or violator of divine speech.” 41 Faulty translators also caused problems. In Genesis against the Manichaeans, written soon after his return from Italy to Africa, Augustine argued for a figurative interpretation of Genesis 2.5: “Fecit Deus coelum et terram, et omne viride agri, antequam essent super terram, et omne pabulum agri” (“God made heaven and earth, and all the green of the field before they were on the earth, and all the fodder of the field”). “The green of the field,” he suggested, means the invisible creation, such as the soul, because of its vitality; and “fodder” sustains life. But in Retractationes he noted that codices of a better translation have faenum, “hay,” not pabulum. The word “hay,” he observed, is not as appropriate as the word “fodder” for signifying life.42 When Augustine was ordained priest, in 391, he asked for a period of leave for intensive study of scripture.43 But he had little time, then or later, to compare Latin codices and to check them against Greek texts, unless someone or something alerted him to a problem. For example, his bishop Valerius (a native Greek speaker) was puzzled by Genesis 6.3 in the form “non permanebit spiritus meus in istis hominibus in saeculo,” which means “my spirit shall not remain in these people in this age.” Augustine explained that the Greek phrase eis aiôna could mean “for this age” or “for eternity”; the translator had made the wrong choice for the context, so Valerius should correct the codex or codices he had.44 Years later, when Augustine was working on De Genesi ad litteram, a translator’s mistake caused a misinterpretation of the apostle Paul, which Augustine noted in Retractationes: “in Book 5, and wherever else in those books I set down ‘of the seed to which was made the promise which was disposed through angels by the hand of the mediator,’ the Apostle does not have this, according to the more truthful codices, especially the Greek, which I examined later. What many Latin codices have as if said Augustine, Mor. 1.21.39, ed. Bauer, CSEL 90, p. 44. Augustine, Retr. 1.21.3, ed. Knöll, CSEL 36, pp. 99–100; Ep. 108.6, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.2, p. 617. 42  Augustine, Retr. 1.10.3, ed. Knöll, CSEL 36, pp. 49–51. 43  Augustine, Ep. 21.3–4, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.1, pp. 51–52. 44  Augustine, Ep. 5*3, ed. Johannes Divjak, Sancti Aureli Augustini Opera. Epistolae ex duobus codicibus nuper in lucem prolatae, CSEL 88 (Vienna, 1981), p. 30; according to Possidius (Vita Aug. 5.3, ed. Bastiaensen, p. 142), Valerius was Greek by birth and less good at Latin. 40  41 

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about the seed, through the mistake of the translator, was said about the law.” 45 Presumably, when dictating De Genesi ad litteram, Augustine was not aware of a difficulty in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and did not see a need to check the text. So there were faulty texts and faulty translations; there were manuscripts which were “more true” in the sense that they were more accurate and reliable; and there were accusations of falsifying the text by omission or interpolation. Augustine used his experience of texts and translators, scribes and readers, when in the mid-390s he began De doctrina Christiana, his book of guidance on what needs explaining and how to teach it.46 Here he offers another possibility: interpretation which is not correct, but is not a lie. The preface explains that there are precepts for tractatio of scripture which make it possible to progress in understanding the hidden places; some people object that nobody needs precepts, because all opening of obscurities can come by divine gift, but Augustine replies that everyone learns from teaching, and that these objectors too pass on what they have learned.47 The discussion which follows is designed to show that love of God and love of neighbour are the twin fulfilment of the law and the scriptures. In Confessions, Augustine accepted that many interpretations of scripture are possible: “When one person says ‘It means what I think’ and another ‘no, it means what I think,’ I judge that I show greater reverence in saying ‘why not both, if each is true, and a third and fourth and any other truth that anyone sees in these words?” 48 “True” interpretations are in accord with fundamental Christian principles. So in De doctrina Augustine says that if someone thinks he has understood all or part of the scriptures, but cannot thereby build up this double love of God and neighbour, he has not yet understood them. If he draws from the scriptures an idea (sententia) which does build up this love, but is not what the author can be shown to have meant in that passage, he is misled (fallitur), but not fatally, and he certainly does not lie (mentitur).49 A person who lies has a wish (voluntas) to say what is false; hence we find many people who wish to lie, but no one who wishes to be misled. So if someone’s view of a scripture passage differs from what the author meant, they are misled, but this is not because the scriptures are lying.50 Augustine, Retr. 2.24.2, ed.  Knöll, CSEL  36, p.  160 on Gn. litt. 5.19.38, ed.  Joseph Zycha, Sancti ­ ureli Augustini De Genesi ad litteram Libri duodecim, CSEL 28.1 (Vienna, 1894), p. 162; 9.16.30, ed. Zycha, A CSEL 28.1, p. 290. Augustine does not make clear what Paul said (Gal. 3.19): “What then is the law? It was added for the sake of transgressions, until the coming of the seed to which the promise was made; it [the law] was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.” 46  Augustine, Doc.  Chr. 1.1.1, ed. Roger Green, Augustine. ‘De  Doctrina Christiana’ (Oxford, 1995), p. 12. 47  Augustine, Doc. Chr. pr. 1.1, ed. Green, p. 2. 48  Augustine, Conf. 12.31.42, ed. Skutella, pp. 326–27. 49  Augustine, Doc. Chr. 1.84–86 (1.35.39–1.36.40), ed. Green, pp. 48–50. 50  Augustine, Doc. Chr. 1.86–88 (1.36.40–41), ed. Green, pp. 48–50. 45 

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In the second book of De doctrina Augustine moves to signs, especially to the written signs of spoken words; thence to the scriptures which began in one language, then spread in the languages of translators. Readers want to find out what the writers meant, and thereby to find out the will of God which the writers followed. But there are obscurities and ambiguities; Augustine suggests, characteristically, that they stop us becoming complacent or bored.51 His experience is apparent in his guidance on how to resolve them. It is useful, he says, to be familiar with the complete canon of scripture (as acknowledged by the majority of churches, or by the more authoritative churches), and with the language of the scriptures. Then more obvious passages can illuminate obscure or ambiguous passages, provided, of course, that we remember the relevant passages.52 When written texts are not understood, that is because of literal or metaphorical signs which are unknown or ambiguous, and that may be because translations vary. Latin speakers, Augustine advised, need two more languages, Hebrew and Greek, so that the originals (exemplaria praecedentia) of the translation may be consulted if the infinite variety of Latin translators has caused some uncertainty. […] Those who translated the scriptures from Hebrew to Greek can be counted, but Latin translators certainly can not. For in the first times of the faith, whenever a Greek codex came into the hands of someone who thought he had some ability in the two languages [i.e. Latin and Greek], he ventured to make a translation.53

The “infinite variety” of translators can be helpful, because it is often possible, by comparing codices, to clarify the meaning of obscure passages or unfamiliar words.54 But some translators go astray because a word in the source language has two meanings, and they make the wrong choice for the context; and some translations are not obscure, they are just wrong (falsa), so that the codices need emendation not understanding. Augustine gave an example of a mistake “which has taken over so many codices that it can scarcely be found written otherwise”; interestingly, it cannot now be found in any extant witness.55 In general, he concluded, it is not clear what a translator is Augustine, Doc. Chr. 2.9–10 (2.5.6–6.7), ed. Green, p. 60. Augustine, Doc.  Chr. 2.24–25 (2.8.12), ed.  Green, pp.  66–68 on the canon; 2.30–31 (2.9.14), ed. Green, p. 70, on memory. 53  Augustine, Doc. Chr. 2.34–36 (2.11.16), ed. Green, p. 72. Hugh Houghton, Augustine’s Text of John (Oxford, 2008), p. 6 points out that Augustine here refers to Latin translators of the Old Testament: even if they were confident in Greek, they struggled with Greek translated from Hebrew. On the techniques and priorities of early Latin translators, see Philip Burton, The Old Latin Gospels (Oxford, 2000). 54  Augustine, Doc. Chr.2.37 (2.12.17), ed. Green, p. 72. 55  Augustine, Doc. Chr. 2.41–42 (2.12.18), ed. Green, p. 74 with his n. 33. In Wisdom 4.3, despite the context, someone translated Greek moscheumata as “calves” not as “plants,” presumably because moschos means “calf.” 51 

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trying to express unless you look at the source; and translators, unless they are very learned, often diverge from what the author meant. So we should either seek to learn the languages from which the Latin translation was made, or use literal translations to control the licence or the errors of those who choose meaning over words. There are words and idioms (locutiones) which cannot be translated into classical Latin, and sometimes a translation which can be understood offends those who prefer correct language.56 It is, then, very helpful to compare codices of different translations: but let there be no falsitas. The advice which follows shows that falsitas here means error, not falsification. People who want to know the scriptures, Augustine says, “must first devote their ingenuity (sollertia) to the emendation of codices, so that those which are not corrected give way to those which are, provided of course that they come from the same kind (genus) of translation.”57 In context, the “kind” of translation presumably means either a literal translation or a translation which aims to convey the sense. Learning the languages, and consulting the originals of translations, was good advice, but difficult to follow even if “the original” of a translation could be identified. There were many more translations from Hebrew to Greek than Augustine realised, or than the better-informed Jerome acknowledged when he declared a translation policy of “resorting to the original books” when the Apostles quote the Old Testament.58 Augustine knew some Greek, because, like most educated Latin speakers, he had studied it at school.59 He disliked it, and in later years he could not easily read Greek philosophy or theology: “I  am not so familiar with Greek as to be at all fitted to read and understand books on these subjects, though from the few which have been translated for us I do not doubt that this kind of literature includes everything we can usefully investigate.”60 But he could check a Latin translation of scripture against a Greek text, and could understand variant readings in the Greek. Hebrew was another matter, for like almost all speakers of Latin or Greek, Augustine knew no Hebrew.61 The contrast Augustine, Doc. Chr. 2.43–44 (2.13.19), ed. Green, p. 76. Augustine, Doc. Chr. 2.52 (2.14.21), ed. Green, p. 80. 58  Jerome In Gal. 2.10 (PL 26:383A): recurram ad originales libros. See on this choice Giacomo Raspanti, “Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians in his Exegetical Production,” in Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings and Legacy, ed. Andrew Cain and Josef Lössl (Farnham, 2009), pp. 163–71. On the Septuagint in relation to other Greek translations from Hebrew, see Tessa Rajak, Translation and Survival: the Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora (Oxford, 2009). 59  Augustine, Conf. 1.14.23, ed. Skutella, pp. 17–18. 60  Augustine, Trin. 3.1, ed. William John Mountain and Frans Glorie, Augustinus de Trinitate libri XVI (I–XII), CCSL 50 (Turnhout, 1968) p. 127.9–16; he read “books of the Platonists” in Latin translation, Conf. 7.9.13, ed. Skutella, p. 137. Scholarly opinion varies on his later knowledge of Greek; see Josef Lössl, “Augustine in Byzantium,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 51 (2000), 267–95, at pp. 268–72. 61  Augustine, Ep. 101.4, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.2, p. 543. For Jerome – better than most but not impeccable – see Hillel Newman, “How Should we Measure Jerome’s Hebrew Competence?,” in Jerome of Stridon, ed. Cain and Lössl, pp. 131–40. 56  57 

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is evident at the end of his final enarratio (the thirty-second) on the very long psalm 118 (119); in a preliminary note, he said that this was the last of the psalms to receive comment. His observation on the last verse (176) depends on Greek. Some codices have quaere servum tuum (“seek your servant”), others have vivifica (“give life to”) instead of quaere: this is because Greek codices vary between ζήτησον (“seek”) and ζῆσον (“give life”). Whichever reading is correct, it remains true that the lost sheep is sought and is given life. Augustine concluded that he had done his best, in response to the requests of his brothers. Then he added a note: Do not be surprised that I have said nothing about the Hebrew alphabet, when each group of eight verses comes under a single letter, and so the whole psalm is constructed. I have not found anything which applies specifically to this psalm; it is not the only one which has these letters.62 But for the information of those who cannot find this in Greek and Latin scripture, because it is not preserved there: in Hebrew codices, all eight verses in a group begin with the letter which comes before them, as I have been told by people who know those letters. This is much more carefully done than our people do when they construct in Latin or Punic the psalms they call alphabetic (abecedarii). For they begin only the first verse with the letter they put before it, not all the verses until the section ends.63

In Augustine’s Latin text, the transliterated names of the Hebrew letters preceded the sections of the psalm; but it was not possible in Latin or Greek translation to begin all the verses with the relevant letter. Even if a Hebrew text was available, it would not necessarily be set out in such a way that readers could recognise a sequence of lines beginning with the same letter, for in Syriac and Armenian texts from late antiquity, poetry is written continuously.64 Perhaps the information “from people who knew the Hebrew letters” came from work by Jerome, rather than by conversation? Learning the languages gave reassurance about the translation, but did not resolve all the ambiguities, because the reader of an unmarked text chose where to make sense-breaks. Augustine instanced the “heretical punctuation” (distinctio) of the first verse of John’s Gospel. This could be read (with modern punctuation) as “in principio erat verbum, et verbum erat apud deum, et deus erat; verbum hoc erat in principio apud deum.” This means “in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and God was; this word was in the beginning with God,” and as Augustine said, it does not acknowledge that the word was God. That requires a break after “et deus erat So Augustine had not seen the Explanatio psalmi 118 (119) by Ambrose, ed. Michael Petschenig, Sancti Ambrosii Opera. Pars Quinta: Expositio Psalmi CXVIII, CSEL 62 (Vienna, 1913), who gave a spiritual interpretation of each letter, or Jerome Ep. 30, ed. Isidor Hilberg, Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae, CSEL 54 (Vienna, 1910), pp. 243–49, on alphabetical psalms. 63  Augustine, En. Ps. 118.32.8, ed. Dekkers and Fraipont, CCSL 40, pp. 1775–76. 64  Thanks to the late Fergus Millar, who raised this question, and to Sebastian Brock (for Syriac) and the late Robert Thomson (for Armenian), who answered it, after I gave the Third Ptarmigan Lecture on Patristics, Oxford, 2014. 62 

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verbum,” “and the word was God,” followed by “hoc erat in principio apud Deum,” “this was in the beginning with God.”65 Augustine’s next example of ambiguous punctuation could be resolved by the context, provided the translator had left one small word in place. Paul said that he did not know which to choose: “Compellor autem ex duobus concupiscentiam habens dissolvi et esse cum Christo multo enim magis optimum manere in carne necessarium propter vos.”66 Did he mean “having a desire in two directions,” ex duobus concupiscentiam habens, or that he was torn in two directions, compellor ex duobus? Augustine thought that enim, “for,” is decisive for the latter. Paul has a desire for that which is best, so he is torn in two directions, having a desire to be with Christ but also an obligation to remain. Translators who remove enim conclude that Paul was not only torn in two directions, but also had a desire for two things. Why would translators remove enim? In Confessions, Augustine denounced people who “when they have observed two wishes (voluntates) in deliberation, assert that there are two natures, one good and the other bad, in two minds.”67 These are the Manichaeans, who would be delighted to have the Apostle Paul as an example; and Manichaeans were given to claiming (as in the case of the psalm-verse Augustine cited in De moribus) that texts of scripture were not just erroneous, they had been falsified. Augustine, as we have seen, used verus and falsus, “true” and “false,” and their cognates, to mean that a text was correct or incorrect; he used verior, “more true,” of codices which were more accurate than others; and he complained of mendositas (faultiness) and of falsitas (error) in codices. This is not the same as an accusation of mendacium, “lying,” which he defined as deliberate deceit: having one thing in mind but saying or conveying another.68 A charge of falsitas could apply either to error or to falsification. Augustine told Jerome that when Manichaeans encountered passages of scripture which proved them wrong, and which could not be twisted to another interpretation, they maintained that these passages were false, ascribing the falsity (falsitatem) not to the apostles who wrote the passages, but to “corruptors of the codices, whoever they might be. But they could not at any time prove this from a majority of copies, or Augustine, Doc. Chr. 3.3.5 (= 3.2.2), ed. Green, p. 134. Another possible example (Cath. 40, ed. Michael Petschenig, Sancti Aureli Augustini Scripta contra Donatistas Pars  II, CSEL  52 (Vienna, 1909), pp. 283–85) is the Donatist punctuation of Cant. 1.6 to claim that the true church is “in the south,” that is, in Africa. The bride, symbolising the church, asks Ubi pascis, ubi cubas? (“where do you pasture [your flock], where do you rest?”) and the bridegroom, symbolising Christ, replies in meridie, “in the south.” Augustine thinks it is obvious that the bride asks “where do you pasture your flock, where do you rest at midday?” See further Jesse Hoover, The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age (Oxford, 2018), pp. 155–59. 66  Phil. 1.22–24. 67  Augustine, Conf. 8.10.22, ed. Skutella, pp. 171–72. 68  Augustine, De mend. 3, ed. Joseph Zycha, Sancti Aureli Augustini De fide et Symbolo. De fide et operibus (etc.), CSEL 41 (Vienna, 1900), pp. 414–16. For Augustine’s views on lying I am indebted to a paper by Margaret Atkins, given to the Oxford Late Roman Seminar on 25 October 2018. 65 

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from more ancient copies, or on the authority of the language from which the Latin books were translated, so they were defeated by the truth well known to everyone and withdrew in confusion.”69 Augustine added that Jerome would surely realise “what an opportunity lies open for their malice if we say, not that the apostolic writings were falsified by others, but that the Apostles themselves wrote false things”; he meant, but did not say, “as when you made the misguided suggestion that Peter and Paul did not really disagree about accepting Gentiles, but staged a disagreement.”70 In an earlier letter Augustine used stronger language about this suggestion. It would mean that the authors of scripture lied, and once that was admitted, anyone who found some passage of scripture unacceptable could say that its author lied.71 In the scale of falsitas, “the author lied” is clearly worse than “someone falsified the text,” a charge which was all too often made by people who did not like what the text said. Augustine’s trusted letter-carrier Justus, for example, was accused of falsifying a copy of De gestis Pelagii, in which Augustine said that not all sinners were punished by eternal fire. Justus knew that he had not himself engaged in any falsitas, so, fearing that he had a faulty (mendosum) copy, he sailed back to check it against Augustine’s copy, and found, as Augustine himself confirmed, that it was correct.72 Augustine’s contemporary Rufinus, friend and later enemy of Jerome, argued that the books of Origen, especially Peri Archôn, had been corrupted in many places by heretics and ill-wishers. He ended the preface to his translation of that work with a comprehensive list of possible problems, adjuring “everyone who copies or reads these books … not to add anything to this writing, not to take anything away, not to insert anything, not to change anything, but to compare [the copy] with the copies from which he wrote, correct it to the letter, and punctuate it; not to have an uncorrected or unpunctuated codex, lest the difficulty of the meaning, if the codex is not punctuated, cause greater obscurity for readers.”73 Faulty translation, incorrect punctuation, mistakes by copyists, deliberate tampering by addition and omission: all these accusations recurred in disagreements among Christians and between Christians and Jews, and Jewish conspiracy to mislead was easy to allege when so few Greek or Latin speakers knew any Hebrew.74 There were systems for marking passages which were found in Greek translations but not in Augustine, Ep. 82.2.6, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.2, p. 356. Plumer, Galatians, pp. 48–53. 71  Augustine, Ep. 28.3.3, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.1, pp. 107–108. 72  Augustine, Ep. 4*3, ed. Divjak, CSEL 88, p. 27; Gest. Pel. 3.9, ed. Karl Urba and Joseph Zycha, Sancti Aureli Augustini De perfectione iustitiae hominis, De gestis Pelagii (etc.), CSEL 42 (Vienna, 1902), p. 60. 73  Rufinus, praef. in Orig. Princ. 4: for the text, see John Behr, Origen: On First Principles (Oxford, 2017), vol. I, pp. 7–8, with discussion pp. xxi–xxiv. 74  On Christian appropriation of the LXX, and associated charges against Jews, see Rajak, Trans­ lation and Survival, pp. 279–313. 69  70 

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Hebrew texts, or vice versa, but how did that difference happen? Jerome insisted on the authority of Hebraica veritas, “Hebrew truth,” by which he meant the Hebrew text with a range of oral and written interpretation.75 If the Hebrew is true, does it follow that the Greek is false, or, worse, that it was consciously falsified? Jerome wrote that Jews laughed at passages which were not in their texts.76 But he suggested that Jewish scholars were to blame: when Ptolemy  II Philadelphus commissioned a translation of Hebrew scripture into Greek, the seventy Jewish scholars entrusted with this task knew that he admired Jewish monotheism and feared that prophecies of Christ would confuse him; so they passed over some doubtful passages in silence.77 In his comments on Psalm 9, Jerome spoke more strongly: To the end, for the hidden things of the son: although Aquila put “the youth of the son” instead of “the hidden things of the son,” it should be known that the Hebrew has “for the death of the son”; Symmachus translated “for victory in the death of the son.” So the whole psalm pertains, by tropology, to the sacrament of Christ. Hence the Seventy Translators chose to conceal (celare) with the word “hiddenness” the passion and resurrection of Christ, which was previously unknown to the world, lest it should easily be known by the peoples at that time.78

Augustine politely challenged theories of tampering by the Seventy or by Jews more widely. He wrote to Jerome: About your translation, you have already convinced me why you thought it useful to translate the scriptures from the Hebrew: that is, to make public what was omitted or corrupted by the Jews. But please deign to convey: which Jews? The very same who translated before the coming of the Lord, and if so, which ones, or which one, of them? Or those who came later, who can be thought to have removed some things from Greek codices, or corrupted some things in them, so as not to be proved wrong about the Christian faith by these testimonies? I cannot think why the earlier ones would wish to do this.79

It was, indeed, more plausible that Jews in Christian times might alter their texts, which could be used as evidence that Christians had not invented prophecies of Christ. Everywhere in the world, Augustine said, there were Jews who could be called Megan Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship (Chicago, 2006), pp. 89–94. 76  Jerome, Ep. 57.11, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 54, pp. 522–24; Origen, Letter to Africanus 9, ed. Nicholas de Lange, SC 302 (Paris, 1983), p. 354, was also concerned about Jews who said that Christians had inferior texts. 77  Jerome, Quaest. Hebr. in Gen. pref., ed.  Paul de Lagarde, Sancti Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera, CCSL 72 (Turnhout, 1959), p. 2, though he acknowledged that according to Josephus (AJ 12.2) the Seventy translated only the five books of Moses, and he commented that these five books are closer to the Hebrew than the rest of the Septuagint. 78  Jerome, Comm. in psalm. 9.1, ed. Germain Morin, CCSL 72, p. 191. 79  Augustine, Ep. 82.34, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.2, pp. 385–86. 75 

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on to testify; he famously compared them with scriniarii, the file clerks who carried the book-boxes (scrinia) used by Roman officials.80 But Augustine was not impressed by conspiracy theories, and made this clear in relation to a problem of exegesis he discussed in City of God. Scripture said that Cain, son of Adam, built a city, but how could there have been enough people so early in human history? Augustine argued that there were many more people on earth than are actually named in scripture, and that the lifetimes recorded in scripture were long enough for the human race to have increased and multiplied, in one such lifetime, so as to people many cities.81 But how long was a patriarchal lifetime? Hebrew codices of scripture, Augustine noted, differed from “ours,” that is, from Latin codices translated from the Greek of the Septuagint. Methuselah, in particular, posed a well-known difficulty. When the numbers in the Latin texts are added up, he appears to be alive fourteen years after the Flood, but he is not recorded as one of the eight people who survived in the Ark. Some people insisted that the Latin versions must be right, even if that meant Methuselah spent the time of the Flood with his father Enoch, who had been translated to heaven. They further alleged, to safeguard the authority of the Septuagint, that the Hebrew codices did not simply have an incorrect text, but had been changed since the Seventy did their work of translation: They do not want to undermine trust in the codices which the church has adopted with widespread authority, and believe it is the codices of the Jews, rather than those, which do not have what is true. For they do not allow that there could have been here a mistake of the translators, rather than a falsehood (falsum) in the language [i.e. Hebrew] from which that scripture was translated through Greek into ours. They say it is not credible that the seventy translators, who translated at one and the same time and found one and the same meaning, could have made a mistake or have chosen to lie where no interest of theirs was at stake; but the Jews, begrudging the transmission to us, through translation, of the law and the prophets, changed some things in their codices to diminish authority for ours.82

Augustine preferred a possible falsum, an error in translation or transmission, to a mendacium, a deliberate lie: Suppose I asked which is more credible: that the Jewish people, dispersed so far and wide, were able to conspire with one mind to write this lie (mendacium) and deprive themselves of the truth, because they begrudged authority to others; or that seventy men who were themselves Jews, who were in one place because Ptolemy king of Egypt had summoned Augustine, Civ. Dei 18.46, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, Sancti Aurelii Augustini Episcopi De civitate Dei Libri XXII, 4th ed., 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1928), 2:328–29. On scriniarii, and on Augustine’s other words for “custodians of books,” see Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: a Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York, 2008), pp. 319–24. 81  Augustine, Civ. Dei 15.8, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 2:71–74. 82  Augustine, Civ. Dei 15.11, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 2:78. 80 

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them to this task, begrudged the truth to foreign peoples and did this by agreement; who would not see which is more easily and readily believed? But heaven forbid that any sensible person should believe either that Jews of whatever perversity and malice could have achieved so much in so many codices dispersed so far and wide, or that those seventy renowned men could have shared that one plan to begrudge the truth to the peoples. So it would be more credible to say that when those things began to be transcribed from Ptolemy’s library, something of the kind could then have happened in one codex, transcribed at the outset, from which it spread more widely: there could have been a scribal error (scriptoris error).83

Scribal error, Augustine observed, could happen especially in the transcription of numbers, such as the age of Methuselah, “for even now, when numbers do not call attention to something which can be easily understood or seems useful to learn, they are carelessly transcribed and even more carelessly corrected.” (He assumed, correctly, that in Hebrew, as in Greek and Latin, letters are used for numbers.) Scribal error is a solution which might have appealed to Jerome. He noted that copyists made mistakes in Hebrew names,84 and he was all too familiar with the problem of inattentive scribes. His friend Licinius of Baetica sent notarii to make copies of Jerome’s works, but Jerome was too busy to supervise, and they wrote what they understood, ignoring his repeated exhortations to go back to what he wrote;85 their copies of Jerome’s translations from Hebrew must have caused problems for Licinius and others. Later in City of God, Augustine offered a further explanation for differences between the Septuagint and the Hebrew: that the Spirit, who inspired both the authors of scripture and the Seventy, chose to say one thing through the prophets and another through the translators. Discrepancies, he argued, make us think, and bring out different interpretations; but where it is not possible for both versions to be factually correct, the source language is to be preferred.86 For  instance, did Jonah tell the people of Nineveh that their city would be destroyed in three days (Septuagint) or in forty (Hebrew)? If  the question is what Jonah actually said, the answer must be forty; but the difference prompts us to think about Christ, who rose from the dead after three days and ascended to heaven after forty days.87 So discrepancies between the Hebrew and the Septuagint may sometimes result from scribal error, but sometimes they show the guidance of the Spirit; and Augustine, who had to rely on translations of the Hebrew text, continued to affirm the authority Augustine, Civ. Dei 15.13, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 2:82. Jerome, Praef. in Chron., ed. Robert Weber, Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1975), p. 547: “Silvam nominum, quae scriptorum confusa sunt vitio.” 85  Augustine, Ep. 71.5, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.2, p. 253. 86  Augustine, Civ. Dei 18.43–44, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 2:321–25. 87  Augustine, Civ. Dei 18.44, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 2:323–25. 83 

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of the Septuagint. In De doctrina christiana, he did not fully endorse the story that the Seventy worked in isolation but miraculously produced identical versions. But, he said, if they conferred to produce an agreed translation, it would be wrong for anyone, however expert, to think of correcting the work of so many senior scholars; and if Hebrew copies sometimes differ from them, perhaps the Spirit was guiding them to translate appropriately for gentiles, so that both versions offer truth.88 The over-confident expert is presumably Jerome, whom Augustine had recently asked, by letter, to translate Greek commentators on scripture rather than attempting yet another translation from Hebrew: for what, after all, could have escaped so many expert translators? If something still remained obscure, Jerome too could be mistaken.89 Augustine nevertheless used Jerome’s translation of Amos when he completed De doctrina some thirty years later. He was discussing prophetic style, which, he said, is often made obscure by figurative speech and use of metaphor. “[The words] are not according to the Seventy translators, who seem, working with the Holy Spirit, to have said some things differently, so that the reader’s attention should be directed to investigating the spiritual meaning; hence some of what they say is more obscure because more figurative. The translation is that made from Hebrew to Latin by the priest Jerome, an expert in both languages.”90 Jerome’s translation was appropriate for a discussion of Hebrew style, but a brief and undatable reply to Audax (not otherwise known) shows that Augustine did not always resort to it: “I don’t have the psalter translated from Hebrew by the holy Jerome. I  did not make a translation, but corrected from Greek copies several faults (mendositates) in Latin codices. I have perhaps made it easier to use than it was, but not what it should be: even now I am collating codices and emending points which happened to escape me then, if readers became concerned. So, like you, I am still in search of the finished version.”91 A letter to Paulinus of Nola shows the same way of working, with reference to Greek manuscripts but not to Jerome: “As I wrote to you, I could not then look at Greek codices for some points in Psalm 16, so I looked later at those I found. One had the same [reading] as our Latin codices, the Augustine, Doc. Chr. 2.53–55 (2.15.22), ed. Green, p. 80. Augustine, Ep. 28.2, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL34.1, pp. 105–107, a first approach to Jerome written in 394/5. 90  Augustine, Doc.  Chr. 4.48 (4.15.48), ed.  Green, pp.  214–16. Augustine noted in Retr.  2.4 (2.31), ed. Knöll, CSEL 36, pp. 135–36 that he completed this work, adding Book 4, after realising in the course of retractatio that it was unfinished. For his developing knowledge and use of Jerome’s translations, see Houghton, Augustine’s Text, pp. 10–15, with the caution (p. 15) that when Augustine in an early book of De doctrina cites the Septuagint and then, apparently, Jerome’s translation of Isaiah 58.7 (Doc. Chr. 2.37 = 2.12.17, ed. Green, p. 72), the second translation may rather be a literal version (so Green ad loc.). Augustine soon afterwards (Doc. Chr. 2.39, ed. Green, p. 74) cites Isaiah 7.9 according to the Septuagint and then according to Symmachus. 91  Augustine, Ep. 261.5, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 57, p. 620. 88 

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other what you yourself set down.”92 There follows a discussion of another phrase as it appears in other codices, which are thought to be “more true” (verius), because the copies are more careful (diligentiora). In Book 2 of De doctrina, Augustine concluded that for the Old Testament, Latin codices should be emended, if necessary, by the authority of Greek versions, especially that of the Seventy; for the New Testament, if the variety of Latin translations causes uncertainty, they should give way to the Greek, especially to the Greek texts found in the more learned and diligent churches (he did not specify which these were).93 How many Latin or Greek codices were available, in the library at Hippo or elsewhere, when a question about scripture prompted Augustine to check the text?94 In City of God, the authority of the Septuagint is still more strongly affirmed. It  was essential for Augustine’s argument that the earthly city, the community of all who love themselves even to disregard of God, has only the confusing and contradictory voices of human reason; whereas the city of God, the community of all who love God even to disregard of themselves, has one consistent divinely given scripture.95 This scripture, Augustine claimed as he began the second part of City of God, surpasses “all writings of all peoples” and all manifestations of human intelligence.96 He did not know that the Septuagint is a collection of translations made in different times and places, and that the texts had been frequently revised.97 He  noted that there were other translations from Hebrew to Greek, but claimed that “the church has received the Septuagint as if it were the only one, and it is used by Greek Christian peoples, many of whom do not even know whether there is any other”; moreover, the Latin translations retained by the churches were made from the Septuagint although our own times have not lacked the priest Jerome, a most learned man expert in all three languages, who has turned those scriptures not from Greek but from Hebrew into Latin. But though the Jews acknowledge his so scholarly work (tam litteratum laborem) to be truthful (veracem), and maintain that the Seventy translators made mistakes in many things, nevertheless the churches of Christ judge that no one is to be preferred to the authority of so many men, chosen by Eleazar the then high priest for so great a task; because, even if one undoubtedly divine spirit had not been evident in them, but these seventy learned men had compared the words of their translation amongst themselves as people do, so that what all approved should remain, no one translator should be preferred to them. Augustine, Ep. 149.3, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 44, p. 350. Augustine, Doc. Chr. 2.56 (2.15.22), ed. Green, p. 82. 94  The library: according to Augustine, Reg. 5.10, ed. George Lawless OSA, Augustine of Hippo and his Monastic Rule (Oxford, 1987), p. 97, “codices are to be requested at a stated time each day; if someone asks outside that time, he is not to get one.” 95  Augustine, Civ. Dei 18.41, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 2:317–20. 96  Augustine, Civ. Dei 11.1, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 1:461. 97  Rajak, Translation and Survival. 92  93 

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But since so great a sign of divinity did appear in them, clearly any other truthful (verax) translator of those scriptures from Hebrew into any other language either conformed to those seventy translators, or if he seems not to conform, we must believe there is deep prophetic significance.98

How could Augustine tell whether a translator was “truthful,” which in this context may imply “free from deceit” as well as “accurate”? Jerome claimed that Augustine could “ask the Hebrews” if he had doubts about Jerome’s version, and reacted with scorn to Augustine’s account of what happened when the bishop of Oea (now Tripoli) did just that. This bishop had used Jerome’s new translation of the book of Jonah, and his congregation was shocked to find Jonah sitting under hedera, ivy, rather than the traditional gourd, cucurbita. They made the bishop consult the Jews, who said that their Hebrew texts agreed with the traditional version. Jerome retaliated that “your Jews” did not know Hebrew, or acted from malice.99 We know very little about Jewish communities in Roman Africa: it is possible that the community in Oea read scripture in Greek and had few if any Hebrew experts.100 It is also possible that the plant-name in the Hebrew text was that of a climbing plant which could bear fruit, like zucchini. There is no need to suppose malice. City of God provides an example of one more possibility: well-intentioned tampering with the text. In  his discussion of emotions, Augustine considered whether scripture accords with the Stoic claim that only the wise man can velle (“choose”) and everyone else merely desires (cupit). The Gospel saying “whatever you want (vultis) people to do to you, do it to them” sounds as if no one can velle anything badly, they can only “desire” it badly. Because of the way people usually speak, some translators have added “good,” translating “whatever good you want people to do to you,” to guard against anyone thinking he could fulfil the instruction by giving lavish parties, or worse. But the Greek gospel, from which the Latin was translated, does not have “good.” Augustine thinks this is because the gospel meant “good” to be understood, and that is why vultis is used, not cupitis; but he does not discuss the Greek equivalents of these verbs, or consider what the translators should have done instead.101 Well-intentioned translators and under-qualified translators, scribes with an agenda and scribes who unthinkingly copied what they saw or heard, deliberate falsification and everyday scribal error: all added to the challenges of text, translation and interpretation in a context of impassioned debate. Augustine knew that texts varied, Augustine, Civ. Dei 18.43, ed. Dombart and Kalb: 2:321–22. Augustine, Ep. 75.22, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34.2, pp. 322–24 = Jerome, Ep. 112.22, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55, pp. 392–93. 100  Brent Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 260–64. 101  “Credo propterea, quia in eo quod dixit vultis, iam voluit intellegi bona; non enim ait cupitis” (Mt 7.12; Augustine, Civ. Dei 14.8). 98 

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and that the authoritative text of scripture is mediated through human imperfection. In preaching, he used local texts, and when he quoted from memory, his “mental text” added to the variations.102 He opted for a range of interpretations, provided that all were in accord with Christian principles, rather than for certainty which excluded some faithful Christians. He remained confident that scripture was a divinely inspired and consistent text: there was no danger that the principle “we must return good for evil” would be dismissed as a mistake in the translation or as scribal confusion. Equally, there was no danger that Augustine would stop trying to achieve the correct reading, the right interpretation, and the fullest possible understanding, of the text which was central to his life.

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Late Antique and Early Medieval Gaul

Von den Phäaken nach Amiens. Martin von Tours und der Bettler im literarischen Kontext Kurt Smolak Universität Wien

1. Einleitung “Ich war hungrig, und ihr habt mir zu essen gegeben, ich war durstig und ihr habt mir zu trinken gegeben; ich war fremd, und ihr habt mich aufgenommen; ich war nackt und ihr habt mir Kleidung gegeben.” – “Ich war hungrig, und ihr habt mir nicht zu essen gegeben; ich war durstig, und ihr habt mir nicht zu trinken gegeben; ich war fremd, und ihr habt mich nicht aufgenommen; ich war nackt, und ihr habt mir keine Kleidung gegeben.”1 Mit diesen Worten wird ‘der Menschensohn’ gemäß der apokalyptischen Rede Jesu in Mt. 25.35–6; 42–3 sein Urteil über das Schicksal der ‘Guten’ und der ‘Bösen’ bei dem allgemeinen Gericht am Ende der Zeit begründen. Er bewertet also das Bekleiden eines Bedürftigen als gleichrangig mit dem Bewahren vor Hungertod und Verdursten. Das Bekleiden eines Nächsten als opus caritatis wird somit für jeden Menschen im Diesseits zur Existenzfrage. Die hohe Wertschätzung solider Kleidung in Antike und Mittelalter wird in einer Zeit und einem Kulturraum der ‘shopping-malls’ und ständigen ‘sales’ leichter nachvollziehbar, wenn man den Typ des verbrecherischen Manteldiebes, λωποδύτης, der antiken Alten Komödie2 oder die Klage des mittelalterlichen Vaganten gegenüber Fortuna in Carmina Burana 17 bedenkt, der seine Kleidung beim Würfelspiel durch eine Laune der Welt-Göttin verspielt hat und jetzt mit “nacktem Rücken,” “dorsum nudum,” abziehen muss,3 oder wie der ‘Primas’ Hugo von Orléans im 12. Jahrhundert sich über einen zerschlissenen Mantel, anscheinend seinen einzigen, beklagt, den ihm ein geiziger Bischof überlassen hat.4 Es kommt also angesichts der sozialen und ökonomischen Die Übersetzungen der Bibelstellen sind der Einheitsübersetzung des Katholischen Bibelwerks entnommen: Die Bibel. Einheitsübersetzung der Heiligen Schrift, Gesamtausgabe (Stuttgart 2016). 2  S. z.  B.  Olaf Meynersen, “Der Manteldiebstahl des Sokrates (Ar.  Nub. 175–79),” Mnemosyne ser. 4, 46 (1993), 18–32. 3  Alfons Hilka u. Otto Schumann, hg., Carmina Burana 1.  Band: Text.  1. Die moralisch-satirischen Dichtungen (Heidelberg, 1978), S.  35. Das  Klagelied, “planctus,” zu dem der Dichter sein Publikum am Ende auffordert (Str. 3.10–12), hat einen für die Zeitgenossen unmittelbar verständlichen sozialen Hintergrund. 4  S. Wilhelm Meyer, hg. “Die Oxforder Gedichte des Primas (des Magisters Hugo von Orleans),” Nachrichten von der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Philologisch-Historische Klasse (1907), Heft 1: 75–111; Heft 2: 113–75; 231–34. 1 

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Bedingungen jener Epochen nicht von ungefähr, dass das Narrativ ‘Bekleiden eines Nackten’ seinen Platz auch in der griechischen und in der lateinischen literarischen Tradition von Mythen, im ursprünglichen Wortsinn von ‘Erzählung’ verstanden, finden und behaupten konnte.

1.1 Frühgriechisches Epos Chronologisch betrachtet, ist es bereits die Odyssee, in welcher der in Not geratene Held aus Menschenfreundlichkeit bekleidet wird. Die Szene im sechsten Gesang der Odyssee ist allgemein bekannt: Nach dem Schiffbruch, verursacht durch den Zorn des Poseidon, wird Odysseus als einziger Überlebender an den Strand der Phäakeninsel Scheria getrieben – er hatte sich mit Hilfe eines Holzbrettes des Schiffswracks über Wasser gehalten. Den Unbekleideten treffen die Königstocher Nausikaa, ausgeschickt von Athene, und ihre Gefährtinnen beim Ballspiel am Ufer, wo sie eben Wäsche gewaschen haben. Um  Peinlichkeiten zu vermeiden, überlässt ihm Nausikaa einige Kleidungsstücke, die sie eben gewaschen hatte, und weist ihm den Weg in den Königspalast.5 Dort wird er reichlich bewirtet und berichtet von seinen Abenteuern, bis er sich schließlich von dem Königspaar und Nausikaa, die sich in ihn verliebt hatte, verabschiedet, um heimwärts nach Ithaka zu fahren. Das Kleider-Narrativ ist in der Odyssee mittels folgender Struktur-Parameter aufgebaut: (a)  Schiffbruch (Odysseus), (b)  Wohltäter (Nausikaa und ihre Eltern), (c)  hohes soziales Niveau (Könige), (d)  hoffnungslose Ausgangssituation führt zu positivem Fortschreiten der Handlung (Kleider, Gastfreundschaft, neues Schiff). Es besteht kein expliziter Bezug zur religiösen Sphäre, die Assoziation zu der Hintergrundpräsenz von Zeus Xenios ist aber bei den ursprünglichen Rezipienten vorauszusetzen.

1.2 Zweite Sophistik Jahrhunderte nach der Phaiakis der Odyssee, die damals bereits weniger als Historie, denn als Mythos gelesen wurde, findet sich in der griechischen Literatur der zweiten Sophistik im 2. Jahrhundert n.Chr. ein Bekleidungsnarrativ in einem λόγος im Sinn von ‘Rede,’ ‘Vortrag,’ und zwar im Εὐβοϊκὸς λόγος ἢ κυνηγόϛ, der Euböischen Rede des Dion Chrysostomos von Prusa (Orat. 7). In dieser wahrscheinlich in Rom gehaltenen Prunkrede zeichnet der gefeierte ‘Konzertredner,’ um eine Wortschöpfung Ludwig Radermachers zu gebrauchen, ein für die Erforschung antiker Realien Od. 6.214; 255–61. – Nausikaa handelt gewissermaßen heteronom im Auftrag einer Traumerscheinung Athenes (Od. 6.25–41); da aber dieser Auftrag nur die äußeren Bedingungen der Bekleidungsszene, den Gang ans Ufer zum Wäschewaschen, betraf, also von seinem eigentlichen Zweck sogar ablenkte, erfolgte das Handeln der Königstochter, das sie mit einem Hinweis auf die religionsethisch begründete Forderung nach Philoxenie begründet (Od. 6.207–208), kraft eigener Entscheidung. 5 

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und sozial-ökonomischer Bedingungen wertvolles Bild der beengten Verhältnisse im nicht-urbanen Osten des Römischen Reiches, eben auf Euböa.6 Wie auf der Phäakeninsel ist auch auf der Insel Euböa ein Schiffbruch das Ereignis, aus dem das Narrativ entfaltet wird. Ohne auf Details der komplexen Erzählung einzugehen, sei hier zu den für die vorliegende Untersuchung zentralen Paragraphen 57–8 Folgendes festgehalten: Der  nicht begüterte Wohltäter, von Beruf Jäger, nimmt einen Schiffbrüchigen und dessen Gefährten in seiner Hütte auf, bewirtet ihn zusammen mit seiner Frau reichlich und kleidet ihn zum Abschied ein, unter anderem mit der Tunika seiner eigenen Tochter, welcher der Gerettete sie vor seiner Weiterfahrt aber zurückgibt. Zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt wird der in Not geratene Wohltäter von seinem ehemaligen Schützling belohnt, indem ihm dieser gegen Anschuldigungen seiner städtischen Mitbürger, er nutze öffentliches Land für Weide- und Getreidewirtschaft, ohne Steuern zu zahlen, in einer Volksversammlung in Gegenwart eines Vertreters der öffentlichen Verwaltung, verteidigt und mit Hinweis auf seine menschlichen Qualitäten rechtfertigt.7 Die gesamte Erzähleinheit steht sowohl in Einklang mit als auch in Kontrast zu der Phäaken-Episode. Zwar sind die StrukturParameter (a) (Schiffbruch), (b) (Wohltäter – am Rande spielt auch dessen Tochter eine Rolle als Kleiderspenderin wie Nausikaa), und (d) positive Entwicklung identisch, Parameter (c) (soziales Niveau) ist aber ins Gegenteil gekehrt: Der Wohltäter und auch der nicht königliche Empfänger – dieser aufgrund seiner misslichen Situation und anders als der stets königliche Held Odysseus – repräsentieren eine niedrige soziale Schicht: Nur der Gast erhält Wein, die Gastgeber müssen Wasser trinken. Dadurch wird aber die Moralität des Wohltäters gegenüber dem selbstverständlich als begütert gedachten Phäakenkönig gesteigert. Man ist an das nicht begüterte alte Ehepaar Philemon und Baucis erinnert. Im  letzten Satz seiner Rede an die feindselige Volksmenge betont der Gerettete, dass er und sein Kamerad ihr Leben dem armen Jäger verdanken. Eben dort erwähnt der Gerettete zwar die Götter, ohne aber auf diese Aussage näher einzugehen. Sie erscheint durch ihre unspezifische, phrasenhafte Formulierung, μετὰ τοὺς θεούς, mag diese auch chronologisch gemeint sein, zweitrangig: Das vergleichende Adverb μάλιστα, “in erster Linie,” das sich auf die Rettung durch den materiell armen Beschuldigten bezieht, gibt in diesem Satz den Ausschlag.8 Neu gegenüber der Odyssee ist das Element (e): Wohltun und Gastfreundschaft lohnen sich. Zu diesem Aspekt der Rede s. Armut, Arbeit, Menschenwürde. Die Euböische Rede des Dion von Prusa, hg. Gustav Adolf Lehmann, Scripta Antiquitatis Posterioris ad Ethicam Religionemque pertinentia 19 (Tübingen, 2012). 7  Die Rede des Geretteten in der Volksversammlung (53–58) bildet Abschluss und Höhepunkt einer in typisch sophistischer Art gestalteten Reihe von Für- und Wider-Argumenten (43–53). 8  Der entscheidende Satz lautet: ἡμεῖς γε ὑπὸ τούτου μάλιστα ἐσώθημεν μετὰ τοὺς θεούς (58). 6 

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1.3 Spätantiker Roman In kürzerem zeitlichen Abstand zur Euböischen Rede als zwischen der Odyssee und Dion scheint ein weiteres Bekleidungsnarrativ in der antiken Literatur auf, ebenfalls in Prosa und auf zweifelsfrei griechischer Grundlage, aber in lateinischer Sprache: Ein schiffbrüchiger junger Mann, der sich wie Odysseus mittels eines Bretts als Einziger retten konnte, wird in der Pentapolis auf der Kyrenaika an Land gespült. Als er wegen seines Missgeschicks mit Neptun hadert – dieser war auch Urheber der Irrfahrten des Odysseus  –, erblickt er einen alten Fischer in einem abgetragenen Gewand, “sordidum sagum”; ihm gibt er sich als begüterter Mann zu erkennen. Der Fischer nimmt ihn zu sich, bewirtet ihn und teilt seinen groben Arbeitsmantel, “tribunarium,” in die Hälfte, um mit dem einen Teil den Schiffbrüchigen zu bekleiden. Außerdem eröffnet er ihm die Möglichkeit, sich seinen Lebensunterhalt durch gemeinsames Fischen zu verdienen, doch zuvor weist er ihm den Weg in die Stadt zum Palast des Königs Archestrates. Dieser nimmt den jungen Mann auf, lädt ihn zu einem Gastmahl, bei dem sich der Gast als Universalkünstler erweist, so dass sich die Königstochter in ihn verliebt wie Dido in Aeneas oder Nausikaa in Odysseus. Anders als in den bisher angeführten Texten kommt es zur Eheschließung. Nach langen, teils tragischen, teils erlösenden Abenteuern erhält der Fischer, der seinen Mantel geteilt hatte, großzügige Belohnung. Bei dem eben kurz vorgestellten Werk handelt es sich um die so genannte Historia Apollonii regis Tyri (HA). Für diesen in lateinischer Sprache überlieferten Roman ist zweifellos eine griechische Grundlage anzunehmen, nach überwiegender Meinung aus dem dritten nachchristlichen Jahrhundert – die Handlung spielt durchgehend im östlichen Mittelmeerraum, sämtliche Namen sind griechisch. Noch aus der Spätantike sind zwei lateinische Bearbeitungen überliefert, die typisch römische Elemente in das Ambiente und in die stilistische Ausgestaltung der Erzählung einbringen – so ist das Didobuch der Aeneis einer der Referenztexte. Die eine Bearbeitung (A) orientiert sich stärker an der klassischen Sprache als die andere (B)9 – im späteren Mittelalter wurde die Historia übrigens auf der Grundlage volkssprachiger Überarbeitungen, unter anderen von Heinrich von (Wiener) Neustadt, zu einem ‘internationalen Bestseller’.10 Doch zurück in die Antike: Die griechische Gattung des Die antiken Fassungen des Romans liegen jetzt in vorbildlicher Aufarbeitung und Kommentierung in drei Monographien vor: George A. A. Kortekaas, hg., Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri. Prolegomena, Text Edition of the Two Principal Latin Recensions, Bibliography, Indices and Appendices, Mediaevalia Groningana 3 (Groningen, 1984); ders., The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre. A Study of its Greek Origin and an Edition of the Two Oldest Latin Recensions, Mnemosyne Suppl. 253 (Leiden, 2004); ders., Commentary on the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri, Mnemosyne Suppl. 284 (Leiden, 2007). – Zum Überblick über die Handlung des Romans s. Kortekaas, Story of Apollonius, S. 4–10. 10  Darüber s. Alfred Ebenbauer, “Der ‘Apollonius von Tyrlant’ des Heinrich von Neustadt und die bürgerliche Literatur im spätmittelalterlichen Wien,” in Die österreichische Literatur. Ihr Profil von den Anfängen im Mittelalter bis ins 18. Jahrhundert (1050–1750), hg. Herbert Zemann u. Fritz Peter Knapp, 9 

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Romans ist, wie in gewisser Hinsicht auch die Neue Komödie, bekanntlich ein Abkömmling des Epos, im Besonderen der an Narrativem reicheren Odyssee.11 Dies ist auch in dem Erzählkomplex der Bekleidung des Bedürftigen in der Historia Apollonii deutlich erkennbar. Es finden sich nämlich parallele Struktur-Parameter zu den bisher erwähnten Texten, teilweise in ihr Gegenteil gewendet: (a)  (Schiffbruch: Apollonius, der König von Tyros, rettet sich wie Odysseus, der βασιλεύς von Ithaka), (b) (Wohltäter-Element ist stärker gedoppelt als im Epos: Fischer König handeln an dem Schiffbrüchigen als Wohltäter), (c) (soziales Niveau: Standesunterschiede sind überwunden: Dem königlichen, reichen Schiffbrüchigen wie Odysseus steht zunächst ein armer Wohltäter niedrigen Standes wie bei Dion gegenüber: Das erzeugt zusätzliche Spannung), (d) (positiver Verlauf der Handlung durch Gastfreundschaft, eine Königstochter, Tharsia, Tochter des Wohltäters Archestrates, spielt eine wichtige Rolle, wenn auch in anderer Funktion als Nausikaa). Zu diesen homerischen StrukturParametern kommt (e) (gute Tat lohnt sich, und zwar wie bei Dion erst nach längerer Zeit).12 Neu ist dagegen im Vergleich mit den vorangehenden Stellen (f) die Teilung des Mantels in Kapitel 12: Dieses Detail ist im Narrativ der Historia Apollonii nicht funktional verankert, es steigert zwar die bereits hinlänglich dargelegte moralische Qualität des armen Fischers, der so handelt, “um seiner Barmherzigkeit noch mehr Genüge zu tun,” “ut plenius misericordiae suae satisfaceret” (Redaktion A 12), es ist aber weder näher begründet, noch treibt es die Geschehnisse voran. Es besteht keine äußere Ursache, das Kleidungsstück zu teilen  – man erfährt nicht, ob es das einzige, letzte Gewand im Besitz des Wohltäters war, wenngleich der Satz: “Nimm das, was ich habe,” “tolle hoc, quod habeo” (Redaktion A 12) – gemeint ist der halbe Mantel – dies nahelegen könnte.13 Trotzdem hat der Umstand der Teilung keine autonome Folgewirkung. Der Fischer wird nämlich am Ende des Romans zunächst allgemein wegen seiner Bereitschaft, den Schiffbrüchigen gastlich aufzunehmen, belohnt, neben der, gewissermaßen als Erinnerungshilfe für den Leser, die Mantelteilung zusätzlich Jahrbuch für Österreichische Kulturgeschichte 14/15, (Graz, 1986), 1:311–347. Eine Zusammenstellung von volkssprachlichen Rezeptionstexten aus Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit findet sich bei Elizabeth Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre: Medieval and Renaissance Themes and Variations (Cambridge, 1991). 11  Diese literarhistorische Herleitung ist im Grunde seit dem monumentalen Werk von Erwin Rohde akzeptiert: Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer, 3. Aufl. (Leipzig, 1914). 12  Erst am Ende des Romans, Kapitel 51, trifft Apollonius in einer vergleichbaren äußeren Situation, nämlich am Meeresufer, aber nun nicht als Schiffbrüchiger, sondern als aus vielen Gefahren geretteter König, zufällig (!) den Fischer, der ihm einst den halben Mantel überlassen hatte und den er nun reich mit Geld, Sklaven und Gewändern (!) belohnt. Die zwei Szenen sind durch den äußeren Rahmen auf einander als Gegensatzpaar bezogen. 13  Einen Überblick über die wissenschaftliche Diskussion bezüglich des Verhältnisses der Mantelteilung in der HA zu den paganen (z. B. bei Apul. Met. 1.7.2 und Lukian Toxaris 30, wo ein Mantel ebenfalls geteilt wird) und den christlichen Paralleltexten s. Kortekaas, Commentary, S. 168–69.

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erwähnt wird: “Vidit (sc. Apollonius) piscatorem illum, a quo naufragus susceptus fuerat, qui ei medium suum dedit tribunarium.” Erst in seiner Ansprache an den Alten führt Apollonius zur Identifizierung des zu Belohnenden allein die Mantelteilung an, ebenfalls mit kommemorativem Unterton (A 51). Nichtsdestoweniger wäre sie als Doublette zu der Lebensrettung des Gestrandeten und dessen Aufnahme im Haus des Retters mitsamt dem Angebot einer gemeinsamen Berufsausübung (des Fischens) in erzähltechnischer Hinsicht bei werkimmanenter Analyse auch hier überflüssig. Ihre Funktion liegt vielmehr in dem Verweis auf einen Hypotext.

2. Hagiographie: Martin von Tours 2.1 Sulpicius Severus Anders als in der Historia Apollonii verhält es sich in dem bekanntesten BekleidungsNarrativ der westlich-lateinischen Tradition, der so genannten Caritas Sancti Mar­ tini im Prosabericht der Vita S. Martini des Sulpicius Severus, Kapitel 3.1–6, verfasst vor 397, dem Todesjahr Martins von Tours.14 Die Erzählung hat bei Sulpicius Severus die wichtige Funktion, die Bewährung des jugendlichen Soldaten Martin im Kampf vorzuführen, allerdings als miles Christi in Abwehr des Bösen in der Welt. Martin hatte seinen Besitz bereits für opera caritatis aufgebraucht, geblieben war ihm, abgesehen von seiner Bewaffnung, einem (Kurz-)Schwert, nur seine Dienstkleidung, ein in zwei Lagen gefalteter Soldatenmantel, chlamys.15 Dass er zu Pferd unterwegs war, wie ihn Die Martinsvita des Sulpicius Severus und die ergänzenden Briefe desselben Autors zählen heute zu den am weitesten verbreiteten antiken Texten der Hagiographie des westeuropäischen Kulturraums. Das Textkorpus liegt in etlichen modernen Editionen vor (jeweils mit Einleitung, Übersetzung, Anmerkungen oder Kommentar): Jacques Fontaine, hg., Sulpice Sévere. Vie de saint Martin, 3 Bde., Sources chrétiennes 133–35, Série des textes monastiques d’Occident 22–24, 1. Aufl. (Paris, 1967–9, Nachdruck Paris 2011); Christine Mohrmann, Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, u. Jan W. Smit, edd., Sulpicio Severo. Vita di Martino, übers. Luca Canali u. Claudio Moreschini, Vite dei santi 4, Scrittori greci e latini, 2. Aufl. (Milan, 1983); Kurt Smolak, hg., Sulpicius Severus. Leben des heiligen Martin – Vita Sancti Martini (Eisenstadt, 1997); Fabio Ruggiero, hg., Sulpicio Severo. Vita di Martino, introduzione, testo critico, traduzione e commento, Biblioteca patristica 40 (Bologna, 2003); Philip Burton, Sulpicius Severus’ Vita Martini (­Oxford, 2017). 15  Zum Gebrauch der griechischen chlamys als paludamentum beim römischen Militär der Spätantike s. Rolf Hurschmann,“Paludamentum,” Der Neue Pauly, Bd. 9 (Stuttgart, 2000), S. 210. Das Tragen des paludamentum war keiner bestimmten Waffengattung zugeordnet, und weil weder Sulpicius Severus noch andere Quellen Martin als Kavalleristen bezeichnen oder von einem Reittier berichten, ist die traditionelle Darstellung der Mantelteilung historisch nicht belegbar. – Das Attribut von militiae vestem (v. l. vestitum) in Vita Mart. 3.1, simplicem, hebt, obwohl die chlamys höheren Rängen vorbehalten war als das sagum der einfachen Soldaten, die Bescheidenheit Martins hervor und bezieht sich nicht auf die Machart der Mantels, s.  Ruggiero, Vita di Martino, S.  174 z.St. Nichtsdestoweniger ist der Ausdruck auffällig: Er könnte als Gegenstück zu dem “zweifachen Gewand,” vestem duplicem, des anonymen Leviten des Micha (Iud. 17.10) beziehungsweise den duplicia vestimenta des betrügerischen Gehasi (2 [4] 14 

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die bildende Kunst darzustellen pflegt, geht aus dem Text ebenso wenig hervor wie der Anlass seines Ganges in die civitas Ambianensium, nach Amiens: Die chlamys war allen Soldaten ‘in Uniform’ und ‘in Zivil’, um moderne Begriffe zu gebrauchen, gemeinsam. Ein ‘nackter’ Armer, pauper nudus, vor dem Stadttor von Amiens im strengen Winter bot Martin die Gelegenheit zu seinem ‘Husarenstück.’16 Martin teilt den Mantel mit seiner ‘Dienstwaffe’, einem gezückten Schwert – von Sulpicius Severus mit epischem Pathos formuliert: “arrepto ferro quo accinctus erat”17 – und gibt das vermutlich bessere Teil dem Armen als Kälteschutz. In Parenthese gesagt: Nach dem Passionsbericht des Johannesevangeliums  19.23–4 teilten die Soldaten die Tunica Jesu nicht, wie es anscheinend üblich war, weil sie “aus einem Stück gewebt,” “inconsutilis,” und nicht zusammengenäht war, sondern losten sie aus. Es besteht also kein Grund, das Heldenstück Martins in den Bereich des rein Topischen oder Hagiographisch-Mythischen zu verweisen, wenngleich das Narrativ in der lebendigen Tradition der Jahrhunderte den Charakter eines Mythos angenommen hat.18 In der Martinsvita kommt dem Narrativ, wie bereits festgestellt, jedenfalls zentrale Funktion zu. In der Historia Apollonii dagegen ist das nicht der Fall. Vielmehr ist anzunehmen, dass die lateinischen Bearbeiter des griechischen Grundtextes dieses Detail aus der Martinstradition übernahmen, und zwar in ihrem Bestreben, dem Text durchgehend christliches Kolorit zu verleihen.19 Dies zeigt sich auch in unmittelbarer Nachbarschaft innerhalb von Kapitel 12: Reg. 5.23) im Sinne des Gebotes Jesu, nicht zwei Tuniken, duas tunicas, zu besitzen (Mt. 10.10; Marc. 6.9; Lc. 9.3), formuliert sein. Im Fall Martins könnte ferner mit dem Attribut angedeutet sein, dass unter all dem, was er verschenkt hatte – “reliqua in opus simile consumpserat” (Vita Mart. 3.2) –, sich auch ein winterfester, über der chlamys zu tragender Mantel, caracallus, cucullus o.Ä., befand. 16  Zu nudus in der Bedeutung “ohne Obergewand” vgl.  Mt. 25.36; 38; 43; ebenso Marc.  14.52 und bereits Verg., Georg. 1.299. 17  Vgl. Verg., Aen. 6.260 “eripe ferrum”; Apul., Met. 8.13.2 “arrepto gladio”; Verg., Aen. 2.614 “ferro accincta”; Stat., Theb. 3.610 “ferro accinctae”; 5.281 “ferroque accincta”; als episches Element in historischer Prosa: Tac., Ann. 6.2.3; 11.22.1 “ferro accincti” (“-us”). – Infolge des hohen Bekanntheitsgrades der Martinsvita des Sulpicius Severus wurde die erstmals von ihm aus den genannten epischen Einzelwörtern gebildete Wortgruppe “arrepto ferro” im Mittelalter mehrfach verwendet, z. B. Petr. Dam., Ep. 44, hg. Kurt Reindel, Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, 4 Bde., MGH Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit 4 (München, 1983–93), 2:18 “arrepto ferro testiculos eius abscidit”; Excid. Acconis gest. 2.5, hg. Robert B. C. Huygens, Excidii Aconis gestorum collectio, CCCM 202 (Turnhout, 2004), S. 73: “arrepto quo accinctus erat ferro.” 18  Zu der weiten Verbreitung des Motivs s. Anm. 14. – Für die nicht erfolgte Mantelteilung bei Johannes, aber auch für die erfolgte bei Sulpicius Severus konnte u.A. eine alttestamentliche Stelle einen kontrastierenden beziehungsweise einen linear weiterführenden Bezugspunkt abgeben, 2 (4) Reg. 2.12: Elisaeus teilt nach der Entrückung des Elias seine Bekleidung in zwei Stücke/Teile. Es liegt allerdings kein karitativer oder ein mit den paganen Einkleidungsszenen in anderer Hinsicht vergleichbarer Kontext vor. 19  Zu der christlichen Schicht in den lateinischen Versionen und bereits in der vermuteten griechischen Zwischenversion zwischen jenen und dem hypothetischen vorchristlichen Grundtext der  HA

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Ein Satz des armen Wohltäters zu dem reichen Schiffbrüchigen lautet nämlich: “respicias tribulationem paupertatis meae,” “blicke auf die Bedrängnis meiner Armut.” Der Satz erweist sich als Kontamination von Lc. 1.48. “(Deus) respexit humilitatem ancillae suae,” “auf die Niedrigkeit seiner Magd hat er (Gott) geschaut,” einem Vers aus dem Dankeslied Marias an Gott, dem Magnificat, und Apoc. 2.9: “scio tribulationem tuam et paupertatem tuam,” “ich (der göttliche epiphane Menschensohn) kenne deine Bedrängnis und deine Armut.” Doch zurück zu dem in der Spätantike sich bildenden hagiographischen MartinsMythos. Die Darstellung der Bekleidungsszene in der Vita des Sulpicius Severus enthält alle zuvor analysierten Struktur-Parameter (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) und (f), wobei in (a) der nackte Schiffbrüchige durch den nackten, frierenden Bettler ersetzt ist; (b)  ist durch den Helden erfüllt; entsprechend ist (c) das soziale Niveau ebenfalls angesprochen (Geber und Empfänger sind arm, ersterer aber nur aufgrund seiner moralischen Qualität, der konsequent praktizierten caritas); die Parameter (d) (guter Fortschritt) und (e) (Lohn) sind zusammengelegt: In Martins Traum (3.3–5) lobt Christus dessen Heldentat vor den Engeln mit Hinweis auf die eingangs zitierte Stelle Mt. 25.35–6 aus der Rede Jesu beim allgemeinen Endgericht. Die ebenfalls in eschatologischem Kontext ausgesprochene Ankündigung Jesu nach Lc. 12, sich vor den Engeln zu jenen Menschen zu bekennen, die sich vor den Menschen zu ihm bekannt haben, erinnert in dem militärischen Kontext der Mantelteilung an das Lob, das mitunter römische Feldherrn einzelnen Soldaten für heldenhaftes Verhalten in Gegenwart des Heeres spendeten, z. B. bei Livius 10.44.3–4; (f) (die Mantelteilung) ist schließlich Thema des Narrativs. Dessen zentrale Funktion als Ouvertüre und ‘Einstimmung’ zu der gesamten Vita wird von Sulpicius Severus zusätzlich dadurch hervorgehoben, dass die unterschiedlichen, negativen und positiven, Reaktionen der Zeugen des Ereignisses analog zu dem Verhalten der Zeugen der Kreuzigung Jesu geschildert werden und somit ein biblizistischer Hintergrund entsteht (3.2).20 s.  Kortekaas, Story of Apollonius, S.  17–51.  – Ein Beispiel für die Interferenz von Christlichem und Heidnischem findet sich in Kapitel 48: Eine Gestalt “angelico habitu” (Redaktion A) bzw. “vultu” (Redaktion B) weist Apollonius “in somnis” an, nicht auf dem vorgesehenen Weg nach Tharsos zu segeln, sondern nach Ephesos, wo er, wie erst später erzählt wird, seine tot geglaubte Frau als Priesterin der Diana (!) wiederfindet. Dazu vgl. Mt. 2.12, wo den Magiern im Traum geraten wird (in der späteren Überlieferung von einem Engel), einen anderen Rückweg als den geplanten in ihre Heimat zu nehmen. 20  Zum biblizistischen ‘Hintergrundstil’ in der entwickelten Hagiographie der Spätantike s. Walter Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter, Bd. 1: Von der “Passio Perpetuae” zu den “Dialogi” Gregors des Großen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 8 (Stuttgart, 1986), S. 66–74; zu der entsprechenden Szene in der Vita Martini s. Kurt Smolak, “De circumstantibus ridere nonnulli. Aspekte des Lachens in der Kultur der Spätantike,” in Il riso. Capacità di ridere e pratica del riso nelle civiltà medievali, hg. Francesco Mosetti Casaretto, Ricerche intermedievali 1 (Alessandria, 2005), S. 31–74, dort 32.

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2.2 Hagiographische Epik 2.2.1 Paulinus Petricordiae Im spätantiken Literaturbetrieb konnte es kaum ausbleiben, dass dem erfolgreichen Werk des Sulpicius Severus noch im fünften Jahrhundert eine metrische Paraphrase in Hexametern folgte, was einer Hebung des in Prosa erzählten Mythos auf die Ebene des Epos gleichkam, seit Homer der Würde des Gegenstands, hier konkret dem Sieg im Kampf gegen das Böse, adäquaten Gattung. Paulinus von Petricordia/Périgueux, verfasste um 470 mit seiner Paraphrase das erste hagiographische Epos – in der Endredaktion mit sechs Büchern halb so lang wie das Epos des damals als höchste Autorität anerkannten Vergil, die Aeneis.21 Wie diese als Propaganda für Augustus gelesen Text nach Michael Petschenig, hg.  Paulini Petricordiae Carmina, in Poetae Christiani Minores, hg. Michael Petschenig et al., CSEL 16.1 (Wien, 1888), S. 17–159. Die früheste wissenschaftliche Untersuchung des Martinsepos des Paulinus bietet die Münchener Dissertation von Anton Huber, Die poetische Bearbeitung der Vita S. Martini des Sulpicius Severus durch Paulinus von Périgueux, Programm des Königlichen humanistischen Gymnasiums zu Kempten für das Schuljahr 1900/01 (Kempten, 1901). – Zu dem Komplex der spätantiken Martin-Schriften (mit Ausblick auf das Mittelalter) s. die profunde Monographie von Meinolf Vielberg, Der Mönchsbischof von Tours im ‘Martinellus.’ Zur Form des hagiographischen Dossiers und seines spätantiken Leitbilds, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 79 (Berlin, 2006), S. 64–70, mit ausführlicher Diskussion der Gattungsproblematik und -genese. Für die vorliegende Detailuntersuchung möge die formale Charakterisierung des Werkes als metrische Paraphrase ausreichen, die Paulinus selbst für sein Epos verwendet (Vita Mart. praef. 2: “prolata transcribere”; Vita Mart. 4.1: “translatio”), und die Vielberg, Mönchsbischof, S. 69 als euphemistische Verhüllungen bezeichnet. Dies wird freilich der Einschätzung des Werkes durch seinen Dichter auch bei Beachtung aller Bescheidenheitstopik insofern nicht gerecht, als dieser sich, wie zu zeigen sein wird, als emotional Betroffener versteht, der gewissermaßen als Exeget den vorliegenden Text entfaltet und erklärt, aber keinen der Sache nach neuen schafft: Auch der ad litteram erklärende und der allegorisierende Bibelexeget und -epiker versteht sich nicht als ‘Neuerer.’ Objektiv betrachtet, muss bei dem hagiographischen Epos en gros und en detail selbstverständlich von Innovation gesprochen werden. – Vielberg, Mönchsbischof, 64–66 will ferner unter der Quellenangabe “splendida historia” im Widmungsbrief (zu Buch 1) des Paulinus an Bischof Perpetuus von Tours nicht nur die Martinsvita des Sulpicius verstehen wie der Editor Petschenig, sondern dessen sämtliche einschlägige Schriften. Einen Überblick über die Deutungen dieser Quellenangabe bietet Antonio Vincenzo Nazzaro, “Il De vita sancti Martini di Paolino di Périgueux e le lettere di dedica a Perpetuo,” Auctores nostri. Studi e testi di letteratura cristiana antica 8 (2010), 251–94. – Eine allgemeine Einführung in die Martin-Literatur der Spätantike bietet bereits Antonio Vincenzo Nazzaro, “L’agiografia martiniana di Sulpicio Severo e le parafrasi epiche di Paolino di Périgueux e Venanzio Fortunato,” in Mutatio rerum. Letteratura Filosofia Scienza tra tardo antico e altomedioevo, atti del convegno di studi, Napoli, 25–26 novembre 1996, hg. Maria Luisa Silvestre und Marisa Squillante, Il pensiero e la storia 37 (Napoli, 1997), S. 301–46 (mit Textanalysen, allerdings nicht der Mantelszene); wenn S.  309 behauptet wird, Venantius nehme sich Paulinus nicht “esplicitamente come modello,” so ist dies dahingehend zu ergänzen, dass er sich mehr als bisher angenommen an seinem poetischen Bezugstext orientiert, und zwar auf seine Weise sowohl durch die Übernahme des stiltechnischen Mittels der lexikalischen Andeutung als auch durch seine für die Rezipienten als solche erkennbaren Änderungen. 21 

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wurde,22 so sollte auch das Epos des Paulinus einem politischen Zweck dienen, nämlich der Verbreitung des Martinskultes und damit der Stärkung des Ansehens des Bistums Tours.23 Als miles Christi durfte Martin wie schon bei Sulpicius Severus, der ihn innerhalb des Genus der historischen Biographie sogar zum Dienstverweigerer im Sinne christlicher Märtyrer stilisiert,24 anders als die Helden der pagan-mythologischen Epen zwar kein Gemetzel anrichten, musste aber in Beziehung zum Typus des epischen Kriegshelden gesetzt werden, um den Gattungsmerkmalen der heroischen Dichtung zu entsprechen. Da Paulinus eine solche Beziehung eben nicht durch äußere kämpferische Leistungen im Krieg herstellen konnte – Martin setzte seine ‘Dienstwaffe’ ja ohne Blutvergießen zur Mantelteilung ein –, griff der Dichter zu einem anderen literarischen Mittel des Epos, den jugendlichen künftigen Heiligen als einen erfahrenen Recken zu stilisieren. Das von Paulinus angewendete Darstellungsmittel bot ihm sogar die in der christlichen Literatur oft gesuchte Möglichkeit einer Überbietung des antiken literarischen Substrats durch Kontrastierung. Er wählte nämlich für seine Präsentation der caritas-Szene eine epentypische Situation, die so genannte Entscheidungs-Szene, in der der jeweilige Krieger erst über sein unmittelbar bevorstehendes Handeln nachdenkt oder gar zaudert.25 Ein solches Verhalten zeigen bereits die mythischen Helden, zum Beispiel Achill innerhalb der Eingangs-Szene der Vgl. Servius Aen. 1 praef., hg. Georg Thilo und Hermann Hagen, Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii, 3 Bde. (Leipzig, 1878–1902), 1:4: “intentio Vergilii haec est: Homerum imitari et Augustum laudare a parentibus.” 23  Zu den propagandistischen Aktivitäten des Touronenser Bischofs Perpetuus s. Antonio Vincenzo Nazzaro, “Il De vita sancti Martini di Paulino di Périgueux e le lettere di dedica a Perpetuo”, in Carminis incentor Christus, hg. Antonio Vincenzo Nazzaro und Rosario Scognamiglio, Analteca Nicolaiana 13 (Bari, 2010), S. 284–88 (mit Textanalysen); Vielberg, Mönchsbischof, S. 60–64. Die propagandistische Zielrichtung der Martin-Literatur bildet bereits bei Sulpicius Severus, dort verbunden mit einer polemisch-defensiven Grundhaltung und panegyrischen Elementen, den Grundtenor, und das nicht allein in der Vita, sondern v.a. in den ergänzenden Briefen, s. Kurt Smolak, “Martin, ein Heiliger? – Ein Heiliger!,” Wiener Humanistische Blätter 57 (2016), 73–91. 24  Vita Mart. 4.1–9. Martins Auseinandersetzung mit seinem Oberbefehlshaber Julian, dem späteren Apostaten, und seine Verweigerung des Kampfes, die mit dem frühen Abbruch seiner militärischen Karriere, aber einem kampflosen Rückzug der Feinde endet, rückt Martin in die Nähe von ‘Kriegsdienstverweigerern aus Gewissensgründen’ und damit von Märtyrern wie Maximilian –  das Martyrium war damals immer noch bis zu einem gewissen Grad eine Voraussetzung für ‘Heiligkeit’  – ein zentrales Thema der in Anm. 23 erwähnten Briefe. – Zur Sache s. La nonviolenza nel cristianesimo dei primi secoli. Antologia di prosatori latini, hg. Emilio Butturini, Civiltà letteraria di Grecia e di Roma 38 (Torino, 1977), S. 21–34, im Besonderen zu Maximilian s. Paolo Siniscalco, Massimiliano. Un obiettore di coscienza del Tardo Impero, studi sulla ‘Passio S. Maximiliani,’ Historica, Politica, Philosophica. Il pensiero antico – Studi e testi 8 (Torino 1974), 159–65 (Edition). 25  Zu homerischen Entscheidungs-Szenen s. Bernard C. Fenik, “Stylization and Variety. Four Monologues in the Iliad,” in Homer. Tradition and Invention, hg.  Bernard  C. Fenik, Cincinnati Classical Studies n.s. 2 (Leiden, 1978), S. 68–90. 22 

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Ilias, 1.188–21726 Es kommt Paulinus zugute, dass Vergil an jenen zwei Stellen in der ­Aeneis, wo er ein zögerndes Überlegen des Aeneas beschreibt, das Verb “teilen,” “dividere,” entsprechend dem griechischen διάνδιχα μερμηρίζειν (vgl. Il. 1.189) “zweigeteilt (das heißt, “in zwei entgegengesetzte Richtungen”) überlegen,” verwendet: Zunächst Aen. 4.283–87, wo Aeneas überlegt, wie er Dido seine Abreise mitteilen könnte: “heu quid agat … (285) atque animum nunc huc celerem nunc dividit illuc | in partisque rapit varias … (287) haec alternanti potior sententia visa est”; zweitens, Aen. 8.18–21, worin die Ratlosigkeit des Aeneas angesichts der Mobilmachung der Italiker ausführlich beschrieben wird. In diesem Abschnitt wird 4.285 wörtlich wiederholt. Dividere ist also auch in dieser Situation das zentrale Verbum für das überlegende Abwägen vor einer zu treffenden Entscheidung.27 In eigentlichem, nicht metaphorischem Teilen besteht aber auch die caritas Sancti Martini. Dem konkreten, realen Teilen des Soldatenmantels lässt Paulinus ein ‘episches’ Teilen vorangehen, das im Inneren, im Geist des Helden vor sich geht. Ausgangspunkt für die Entfaltung jener Szene, in der Martin die vor dem Handeln ihre Überlegungen ‘teilenden’ antiken Helden überbietet, sind die folgenden Worte des Sulpicius Severus: “Quid tamen ageret?” “was hätte er (Martin) aber tun sollen?,” nachdem er den frierenden Bettler erblickt und erkannt hatte, dass es an ihm lag, diesem zu helfen? Da er nichts mehr besaß als seinen Soldatenmantel, blieb ihm nichts anderes übrig als diesen zu teilen. Als auktorialer Erzähler richtet Sulpicius Severus den eben zitierten, syntaktisch selbstständigen Satz im dubitativen Konjunktiv an den Leser, um diesen die faktische Lage Martins erleben zu lassen – eine Aufforderung zu einer Lektüre mit Empathie. Paulinus greift diese Aufforderung auf, indem er die Vorgänge in Martins Psyche ausführlicher darstellt: Er  lässt seinen Helden oder eine diesen leitende Kraft dadurch sowohl nach außen als auch nach innen hin siegreich kämpfen – eine Entfaltung des Hypotextes in Prosa auf der Grundlage einer Situation aus dem Heldenepos. Martin war sich wie Achill und Aeneas zunächst nicht im Klaren, was er tun sollte: “incertus … quid faceret” (1.69–70): “unentschlossen, was er tun sollte” – der Bezugstext bleibt trotz des metrisch bedingten, zwecks Herstellung einer Positionslänge gesetzten synonymen Verbums deutlich erkennbar: (quid) faceret an Stelle von (quid) ageret – der Einsatz von Im Streit mit Agamemnon wegen dessen Raubes der Briseis überlegt Achill, ob er den Oberbefehlshaber mit seinem Schwert töten solle, und nur durch das Eingreifen der Athene und eine längere Diskussion mit der Göttin nimmt er von diesem seinem Plan Abstand. Es wird Il. 1.198 hervorgehoben, dass niemand der Anwesenden Athene und daher ihren Disput mit Achill sehen konnte: Es  handelt sich demnach um einen erzähltechnisch objektivierten Vorgang im Inneren des Helden. Cf. G. S. Kirk, The Iliad, A Commentary, Bd. 1 (Cambridge, 1985), S. 73: “In a way, Athene may be said to represent, or embody, [Achilles’s] ultimate decision to go no further.” 27  Aeneas entscheidet, anders als in dem Abschnitt aus dem Didobuch, schließlich nicht aus eigener Überlegung, sondern erst kraft der göttlichen Hilfe des ihm im Traum erscheinenden Flussgottes Tiberinus. 26 

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Synonyma entspricht überdies paraphrastischer Technik. Um den Zustand des Zweifelns von der referierenden Ebene in die empathische zu verlagern, setzt Paulinus in einer kurzen Erweiterung seines Referenztextes einfach eine gängige, bereits bei Terenz belegte Phrase ein, die in so gut wie allen Textsorten begegnet: “incertus, quid ageret” (“faceret” u. Ä.).28 Durch incertus wird das folgende Referat zu einem Einblick in die Psyche des Helden. Vor einer weiteren Analyse die entscheidende Szene 1.69–90 im Kontext: Substitit incertus confuso pectore sanctus, quid faceret: nam votum aderat, substantia derat. 70 si tegeret, nudandus erat. nec sic quoque clarum suspendit saltim cunctantis vel mora factum. sola superfuerat corpus tectura beatum, ut semper, duplicata clamis, quae frigus et imbrem ventorum et rabiem geminato arceret amictu. 75 nam sic truncatam conpensat pendula partem, si, quod defuerit capiti, crevisse calori sentiat adiecto tepefactum vellere corpus. verum haec districti felix sententia voti amovet et tamquam cordis dispendia damnat, 80 quod sic maluerit trepidae cautella fidei adiectam membris duplicato tegmine partem concessisse uni quam divisisse duobus. nec mora tardat opus, sed transit dextera votum: expediit factum, quidquid mens vidit agendum. 85 stringitur invictus sine crimine vulneris ensis et mediam resecat miseratio prodiga partem, peiorem sibi credo legens. Tum membra trementis obtegit, et tradens aliquem de veste teporem iam leviore habitu recipit de frigore partem.2990 Der Heilige hielt inne, unentschlossen in seinen nicht geordneten Gedanken, was er tun sollte. Denn der Wunsch war da, aber der Werkstoff fehlte: Würde er ihn bekleiden, müsste er selbst sich entblößen. Aber selbst in dieser Lage hielt auch nur kurzes Zögern seine Heldentat in Schwebe. Bloß ein in zwei Lagen gefalteter Soldatenmantel war noch vorhanden, um den Leib des Seligen zu bedecken und Kälte, Regen und tobende Windstöße als verdoppeltes Kleidungsstück abzuwehren. Denn auch so wiegt der übergeworfene Mantel den gekürzten Teil auf – wenn nämlich der Leib, gewärmt durch den anliegenden Wollstoff, fühlt, dass ihm das, was dem Haupt entzogen wurde, Wärmezuwachs gebracht hat. Aber diese Gedanken verjagt der glückliche Schiedsspruch des blank gezogenen Wunsches30 und Vgl. z. B. Ter., Andr. 264; Hec. 613; Cic., Fam. 9.6.2; Liv., 7.34.1; Ov., Met. 15.566; Suet., Tib. 11.2; Iustinus, Philipp. 24.2.6; Amm. Marc., 31.9.1. 29  Hg. Petschenig, S. 21–22. 30  Die Übersetzung versucht, die kühne Metapher des Originals wiederzugeben: Der Junktur “districti … voti” (1.79) beruht auf dem stets im eigentlichen Sinn verwendeten Ausdruck “districto (-is) 28 

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verurteilt es als Umweg des Bedenkens, dass die Vorsicht zaghaften Vertrauens den als doppelte Bedeckung an Martins Gliedern anliegenden Teil lieber einem Einzigen zuerkennen wollte als unter Zweien teilen – und kein Zaudern verzögert das Werk, sondern die Rechte kommt dem Wunsch noch zuvor: Die Tat hat bereits all das erledigt, was der Geist als noch zu Tuendes erst erkannte. Das unbesiegbare Schwert wird gezückt, ohne die Untat einer Verwundung, und freigebige Erbarmung trennt den halben Teil ab und behält sich, glaube ich, die schlechtere Hälfte. Dann bedeckt er den Leib des Zitternden, gibt etwas Wärme von dem Kleidungsstück ab und übernimmt, jetzt leichter bekleidet, einen Teil der Kälte.31

Das ‘innere,’ theoretische ‘Teilen’ der überlegenden Gedanken der bis zu dreizehn Verse zaudernden antiken Helden (Aen. 8.18–30) wird von der praktischen Teilung des in zwei Lagen gefalteten Mantels,32 die sich sogar noch vor Martins im vollem Bewusstsein gefassten Entschluss ereignet, zeitlich überholt (1.84–5). Auf diese gladio (-is)” zugrunde: Cic., Off. 2.7, Apul., Met. 4.5.4, Sulp. Sev., Chron. 1.19.6, etc. Martins “gezücktes” Schwert ist sein Wunsch, das reale Schwert ist nur in dem phraseologisch determinierten Perfektpartizip angedeutet: Auch hier wird ein abstrakter Begriff anstelle eines konkreten aktiv – ein weiterer Hinweis auf die Verlagerung der ‘eigentlichen’ Handlung in den transmateriellen Bereich. Der allgemein formulierte Hinweis von Vielberg, Mönchsbischof, S. 216, dass Personifikationen von Denk- und Willensakten der lateinischen Sprache gemäß sind – er führt Anm. 200; 202 mens und votum aus der obigen Textpassage an –, ist für die konkreten Fälle dahingehend zu ergänzen, dass Paulinus dem ‘heiligen’ Martin dadurch eine Sonderstellung in den Szenen der rationalistisch überlegenden Helden einräumt, eine spezifische Gegebenheit der Sprache also zu einem metasprachlichen Zweck einsetzt. Die das pagane Epos kontrastierend-überbietende Absicht der sich in der zu behandelnden Einheit verdichtenden Auslagerung des Handelns in den Bereich von Abstrakta bleibt auch in der für sich genommen differenziert abwägenden Zusammenfassung über die Funktion der ‘permanenten Personifikationen’ bei Paulinus von Vielberg, Mönchsbischof, S. 228–29 unerwähnt. 31  Übersetzung vom Autor – Die Einstufung der Szene als eine für Sekundärtexte und besonders für metrische Paraphrasen typische amplificatio durch Sylvie Labarre, Le manteau partagé. Deux métamorphoses poétiques de la Vie de saint Martin chez Paulin de Périgueux (Ve S.) et Venance Fortunat (VIe S.), Collection des études augustiniennes, Série Antiquité 158 (Paris, 1998), S. 152–53 greift infolge der rein quantifizierenden Beurteilung zu kurz. Es  liegt vielmehr eine tiefergreifende Episierung, also eine Übertragung im Sinne der Gesetzmäßigkeit einer anderen Gattung vor. Die Untersuchung von Labarre baut auf der Studie von Paul Devos, “Le manteau partagé. Un thème hagiographique en trois de ses variantes,” Analecta Bollandiana 93 (1975), 157–65 auf. – Einen ausführlichen Vergleich der Szene der Mantelteilung bei Sulpicius Severus, Paulinus und Venantius führte Labarre, Le manteau partagé, S. 147–59 vornehmlich auf der Grundlage lexikalischer Differenzen und rhetorischer Prozesse von Erweiterung und Verknappung durch, ihre Methode und Zielsetzung sind im Grunde mit der in vorliegendem Beitrag nur teilweise vergleichbar. Das aus der Applikation einer alten epentypischen Situation entwickelte empathische Vorgehen des Paulinus bei der Schilderung des ‘zögernden Kriegers’ steht außerhalb ihres interpretatorischen Horizonts. 32  Mit der Formulierung “duplicata clamis” (1.74) nimmt Paulinus auf die Art Bezug, in der dieses Kleidungsstück getragen wurde, nämlich einmal der Länge nach gefaltet, so dass sich zwei Lagen ergaben, s. Rolf Hurschmann, “Chlamys,” Der Neue Pauly. Bd. 2 (Stuttgart, 1997), S. 1133. Außerdem wird der literarische Effekt einer präzisierenden, nicht korrigierenden Spannung zu “simplicem militiae vestem (v. l. vestitum)” bei Sulpicius Severus erzeugt (vgl. Anm. 15).

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Weise überbietet Martins Handeln jenes seiner epischen Vorgänger: Er kennt keine Verzögerung durch Zaudern, “cunctantis mora” (1.72) sondern vollbringt geradewegs die Heldentat, “clarum factum” (1.71–2). Doch erst nach einer ‘Verzögerung’ von elf Versen erfährt der – in einer vom Autor wirkungsvoll imaginierten Situation bereits in Spannung versetzte – Leser, worin diese “herrliche Tat” bestand: in der Mantelteilung (1.84). In den dazwischengeschobenen elf Versen wird die Beschaffenheit des Mantels geschildert und noch einmal darauf hingewiesen, dass Martin eine Verzögerung durch seine Überlegungen, “dispendia cordis,” verwirft, die ihn in einem kurzen Anfall von Kleingläubigkeit, “cautella trepidae fidei,” zu dem Gedanken verleitet hatte, den Mantel ungeteilt für sich zu behalten. Martin überlegte also doch wie ein antiker epischer Held – allerdings so kurz, dass es eine quantité negligeable darstellt –, die Reflexionen des Dichter füllen d ie Lücke aus, die Martins verkürztes Zögern in der typischen Situation des überlegenden epischen Helden hinterlässt. Dieser formale Spannungsaufbau soll die Aufmerksamkeit des mit dem Inhalt ohnehin vertrauten Publikums steigern: Auffälligerweise ist nämlich die Heldentat im Passiv formuliert, so als würde Martins Hand gelenkt, offenbar von der Kraft des allegorisch personifizierten Almosen-Gebens, miseratio (1.87).33 Übrigens: Auch Achills Entscheidung zum Besseren erscheint ausgeführt, in gewissem Sinn fremdbestimmt, nämlich vom Eingreifen der Athene.34 Wenn aber Paulinus die abstrakte irrationale Macht von Empathie und Barmherzigkeit zur eigentlichen Handlungsträgerin erklärt, die jenem durch den noch nicht einem Entschluss zur Erfüllung des Wunsches nach einer ‘guten Tat’ erwachsenen Schwertstreich zwecks Teilung des Mantels zuvorkommt (1.84–5),35 konterkariert er das von den Stoikern Nur in einer Stellensammlung von Personifikationen menschlicher Körperteile bei Paulinus gibt Vielberg, Mönchsbischof, S. 213 Anm. 187, die Stelle im Rahmen des Kapitels ‘Personifikationen als Ausdrucksmittel im Martinellus’ an, auch hier ohne auf deren inhaltliche Funktion im jeweiligen Kontext einzugehen: Der personifizierten miseratio weist Paulinus an zwei weiteren Stellen eine aktive Funktion zu: 1.333; 1.375 (nach Vielberg, Mönchsbischof, S. 215 Anm. 195). – In der Übersetzung wurde der bewusst unauffällig formulierte Übergang von den eigentlich handelnden Subjekten, Hand und Erbarmen, auf die Person Martins beibehalten. – Eine auffällige, wenn auch inhaltlich konträre Parallele zur passiven Rolle der eine Bewegung, also eine Aktivität, durchführenden Hand bietet Hieronymus in der berühmten Traumvision, Epist. 22.30.2, hg. Isidor Hilberg, Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae. Pars 1: Epistulae I– LXX, CSEL 54, editio altera supplementis aucta curante Margit Kamptner (Wien, 1996), S. 189: Um seinen Griff nach einem Text der Plautuskomödien trotz asketischer Bußübungen in der Einsiedlerklause gewissermaßen zu entschuldigen, formuliert er im Passiv: “Plautus sumebatur in manibus” – die Hand wurde offensichtlich von dem an derselben Stelle genannten Teufel gelenkt. 34  S. oben Anm. 26. 35  Der ganze Abschnitt weist aufgrund des Anknüpfens an eine epische Darstellungsform bemerkenswerte Parallelen zu dem bekannten homerischen Problem der Einheit und des autonomen Handelns einer Person auf, das auch in der späteren römischen Epik nachwirkte, dazu vgl. jetzt Götter und menschliche Willensfreiheit. Von  Lucan bis Silius Italicus, hg.  Thomas Baier, Zetemata  142 (München, 33 

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entwickelte, auf der Wirkung eines rationalen Aktes beruhende, dreistufige Schema der Erklärung menschlichen Handelns (äußerer Anreiz – innerer Wunsch – rationale Zustimmung), das am klarsten Seneca formuliert.36 Denn in der Heldentat Martins siegt das Irrationale über das Rationale – eine weitere Überbietung eines antiken psychologischen Konzepts auf der Grundlage christlicher Ethik als Beitrag zur Entstehung eines ‘Martinsmythos.’ Die anschließende Erzähleinheit (91–121) umfasst  31, die vorangehende 32  Verse (1.63–90, ohne die vorbereitenden Verse 1.59–62), sie wird vom Dichter also für jener gleichrangig erachtet. Vorab die für die vorliegende Analyse maßgeblichen Verse 90– 94 und 100–121:37 O felix, virtute tua miracula vincens omnia et excedens domini praecepta iubentis. ille etenim modico contentos nos iubet esse nec servare duas vestes: tu dividis unam … nec mora quin tanto reddatur palma triumpho. nam vix defessos stratis reiecerat artus admittens tenuem, vigili sed corde, soporem (nec sopor illud erat, quia mens adtenta vigebat): cum subito ante oculos larga mercede benignus adstitit inque suo vestitus paupere Christus aptavit propriis felicia tegmina membris o vere pretiosa clamis! quid tale vel ostro vel ducto in filum pensis rutilantibus auro insignes meruere habitus? quid serica tactu levia vel docte expressis viventia signis? ille hominum terraeque deus pontique polique omnia qui tribuit, sine quo nihil, ipsaque cuius quae dedimus vel qui dedimus, donumque datorque, hac ope ditatur, numeret si lucra salutis. nec tamen hinc saltim stabilem iactantia mentem concutit, aut vanum persensit corde tumorem. o virtus vicina deo, nil ducere laudi, cum laudanda geras, nec nostro adscribere facto, quae facimus, cunctoque deum laudarier actu. iam certe securus erat de iudice tanto, sed non erigitur vel per consortia Christi.

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2012), darin besonders Christiane Reitz, “Vocem fata sequuntur. Entscheidungsfindung und epische Konvention in der flavischen Epik,” S. 29–40, und Ulrich Eigler, “Fama, fatum und fortuna. Innere und äußere Motivation in der epischen Erzählung,” S. 41–53. 36  Seneca, Epist. 113.18: “Omne rationale animal nihil agit, nisi primum specie alicuius rei inritatum est, deinde impetum cepit, deinde adsensio confirmavit hunc impetum.” 37  Hg. Petschenig, S. 22–24. – Übersetzung vom Autor.

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Oh, selig du (Martin), der du mit deiner Tatkraft alle Wunder übertriffst und über die strikte Anweisung des Herrn noch hinausgehst: Er weist uns nämlich an, uns mit Wenigem zu begnügen und nicht zwei Kleider aufzubewahren: Du dagegen teilst das einzige! … (100) Unverzüglich folgt die Belohnung eines großen Triumphs mit der Siegespalme. Denn kaum hatte er (Martin) seine müden Glieder auf das Lager gebettet und gestattete sich einen leichten Schlaf – allerdings wachen Sinnes, denn das war kein Schlaf, weil ja der Geist stark und aufmerksam blieb –, da trat plötzlich, reichen Lohn verheißend und in der Kleidung seines Armen, Christus vor ihn hin und passte die glückselige Bedeckung seinen Körperformen an. Oh, wahrhaft wertvoller Mantel! Haben sich Roben, prunkvoll in ihrem rötlichen, mit Fäden aus Purpur oder Gold durchwirktem Wollstoff, je so eine Auszeichnung verdient? Oder Seidenkleider, glatt anzufühlen und mit kunstvoll gestalteten, lebensnahen Bildern geziert? Er, der Gott der Menschen, der Erde, des Meeres und des Himmels, der alles gegeben, ohne den nichts ist, und dem selbst das, was wir geben und wir, die wir geben, Gabe und Geber, zu eigen sind, wird durch diese Hilfeleistung bereichert, wenn er den Gewinn für das Heil mitzählt. Aber nicht einmal aus diesem Grund erschütterte Prahlerei seinen (Martins) gefestigten Sinn, nicht eitlen Hochmut fühlte er in seinem Herzen. Oh, Kraft, Gott nahe, nichts dem eigenen Ruhm anzurechnen, obwohl du Rühmliches vollbringst, nicht unserer eigenen Tat zuzuschreiben, was wir tun, und in allem Handeln den Ruhm Gottes zu sehen! Er (Martin) war gewiss innerlich beruhigt nach dem Spruch eines solchen Richters, aber er wurde nicht überheblich, auch nicht durch die Gemeinschaft mit Christus.

Auf eine persönliche Reflexion des Dichters über Martins ‘Heldentat’ in Form eines Makarismos seiner – nicht kriegerischen, sondern moralischen – virtus, einer Reflexion, die in Gegensatz zu den nach dem Bericht des Sulpicius Severus (3.2) unterschiedlichen, teils spöttischen, teils reuigen Reaktionen der Augenzeugen des Geschehens steht und die nur kurz paraphrasiert wird (1.91–99),38 folgt eine sehr freie Paraphrase jener, bereits an anderer Stelle erwähnten Szene bei Sulpicius Severus (3.3–4), in welcher Christus sich in einer Traumerscheinung mit dem Mantelteil des Bettlers bekleidet zeigt und Martins Tat damit in Gegenwart der Engel lobend anerkennt (1.100–19). Die Erzähleinheit ist durch eine epische Formel für die Gliederung zeitlicher Abläufe, nec mora (quin),39 von dem Vorangehenden deutlich abgesetzt, ähnlich wie bei Sulpicius Severus durch die gliedernde Partikel igitur, die wie bereits z.B. bei Sallust, nicht folgernde, sondern die Erzählung gliedernde, durch die Angabe nocte insecuta zeitlich

Paulinus modifiziert den Bericht des Sulpicius Severus geringfügig, indem er die ‘Hässlichkeit’ von dem in die Hälfte der Chlamys gekleideten Martin auf die deformierte Kleidung überträgt (1.95–6) und den unspezifischen Ausdruck “altius gemere,” “gar tief seufzen,” durch die bei christlichen Autoren stereotype Wendung “conpuncto corde” (z. B. Ambros. Fid. 1.20.132 innerhalb eines Zitats von Is. 6.5, hg. Otto Faller, Ambrosius De fide ad Gratianum Augustum, CSEL 78 [Wien, 1962], S. 55; weitere Belege in TLL 3:2175.15–20) ersetzt. Grundlage für diese Wortwahl könnte die Reaktion der Zeugen der Kreuzigung nach dem Tod Jesu bei Lc. 23.48: “percutientes pectora” sein. S. auch Anm. 20. 39  Zu “nec mora” vgl. Verg., Aen. 5.368; 458; Ov., Met. 1.717; 3.46 etc., zu “nec mora quin” vgl. Sil., 14.580; Stat., Theb. 2.513; Paulinus gebraucht die Formel noch 3.187. 38 

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gliedernde Funktion hat.40 Paulinus unterdrückte die bei Sulpicius Severus elaborierte Darstellung der Traumvision: Dieser hatte ja, wie bereits angedeutet, in aktualisierender Modifikation von Mt. 25.34–36 Christus nicht zu der betroffenen Person, sondern zu der Engeleskorte lobende Worte, konkret über Martins Tat, sprechen lassen und die Rede als das Urteil des Weltrichters, geäußert zu seinen ‘Assessoren,’ in Ausgestaltung von Mt. 25.31 inszeniert. Durch diese Änderung gegenüber seinem Bezugstext hat Paulinus Platz für eine ‘Rede’ in eigener Person geschaffen. In dieser seiner eigenen ‘Rede’ reflektiert er einmal mehr den Tatsachenbericht der Mantelteilung: Die Reflexion ist wie schon jene in 1.91 als Makarismos stilisiert, in diesem Fall des Mantels, der allen Prunkgewändern überlegen sei und der nun zur Kleidung des Weltschöpfers geworden ist (1.107–114). Den Abschluss bildet ein weiterer Makarismos, und zwar noch einmal von Martins virtus, die sich auch darin äußerte, dass er seine Tat Gottes Kraft allein zuschrieb (1.115–19).41 Der Gedanke ist zwar aus Sulpicius Severus 3.5 übernommen, dort aber nicht als virtus bewertet. Die über die Mantelteilung räsonierende Erzähleinheit ist demnach im Epos des Paulinus mittels dreier Seligpreisungen gegliedert: Jene der Person bilden den Rahmen, jene der Sache steht im Zentrum. 2.2.2 Venantius Fortunatus Ein persönlicher Verehrer Martins war auch der Dichter eines späteren Martinsepos: Venantius Fortunatus in den Siebzigerjahren des sechsten Jahrhunderts.42 VenantiZu igitur in temporaler, zeitlich gliedernder Funktion s.  Johann Baptist Hofmann und Anton Szantyr, Lateinische Syntax und Stilistik, Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, Abteilung 2, 2.2 (München, 1965), S. 213. 41  Bereits in der Odyssee ist die Bekleidung des Bedürftigen mit einem Göttertraum verbunden (s. Anm. 5). Es ist für den großen Unterschied in den Konzepten menschlichen Handelns zwischen dem Anfang und dem Ende der Antike bezeichnend, dass die Gottheit im Fall Martins zunächst nicht als Veranlasser der ‘guten Tat’ erscheint, sondern erst nach deren Anerkennung letztlich als Werk Gottes durch den Handelnden selbst erkannt wird. Die Positionierung des Traumes vor beziehungsweise nach der ‘Tat’ ist in diesem Fall nicht eine Frage der literarischen Komposition, sondern des Konzepts menschlichen Handelns. Dass die göttliche Sphäre bereits bei Sulpicius Severus anders als in dem homerischen Epos auf die menschliche folgt, hat überdies in der narrativen Struktur der zugrundeliegenden Bibelstelle Mt. 25.31 eine Grundlage: In den Referenztexten der Dichtung in Prosa liegt nämlich kein reflektierender Bericht vor. 42  Als Textgrundlage wurde die Ausgabe von Solange Quesnel, Venance Fortunat. Œuvres, tom. IV: La Vie de saint Martin, Collection des universités de France. Série latine, Collection Budé 336 (Paris, 1996), verwendet. Die zwei spätantiken Martinsepen wurden hinsichtlich der Intertextualität mit dem paraphrasierten Hypotext und auch untereinander mehrfach untersucht, so von Nazzaro “L’agiografia martiniana” (wie Anm. 21) mit Verweis auf ältere Literatur. Diese Arbeiten leuchten zwar den technischen Hintergrund der im Folgenden zu behandelnden Szene unter literaturtheoretischem Aspekt aus, bieten aber keine Detailanalysen im Sinne vorliegender Untersuchung. Dies gilt im Grunde auch für die bereits genannte, die Mantelteilungsszenen traditionell philologisch kommentierende Monographie 40 

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us verfasste sein Epos im fränkischen Gallien auf Anregung der Königin Radegundis und widmete es einem Nachfolger des Heiligen auf dem Bischofsthron von Tours, dem vor allem als Historiker der Franken bekannten Gregor (573–584), dessen Episkopat und literarische Tätigkeit in die Zeit fielen, als Martin allmählich zum ‘mythischen Helden’ und Nationalheiligen des Frankenreichs aufstieg.43 Venantius musste sich, so entsprach es antiken Anforderungen an die literarische imitatio, in seinem derselben Gattung angehörenden Werk von seinem Vorgänger zwar absetzen, aber dessen Kenntnis ebenso wie jene des Sulpicius Severus bei seinem Publikum voraussetzen.44 Was also hätte er tun sollen? Hier zunächst der Text des zu analysierenden Abschnitts: Qui puer in teneris vix pubescentibus annis, frigore sub gelido terras crispante pruina, cum undas tristis hiems freno glaciale ligasset et vaga libertas fluviorum inclusa lateret, asperiore gelu de se sibi vincula nectens plus aqua frigidior tunica vestita rigoris – occurente igitur portae Ambianensis egeno, qui sibi restiterat clamidis partitur amictum et fervente fide membris algentibus offert. Frigoris iste capit partem, capit ille teporis. Inter utrosque inopes partitur fervor et algor et nova mercandi fit nundina frigus et aestus unaque paupertas satis est divisa duobus. Hac se veste tamen tectum obtulit ipse creator Martinique clamis texit velamine Christum. Nulla Augustorum meruit hunc vestis honorem: militis alba clamis plus est quam purpura regis. prima haec virtutum fuit arra et pignus amoris.45

50

55

60

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von Labarre, Le manteau partagé. Die Monographie enthält jedoch trotz ihres einschränkenden Titels reiche Information zu dem gesamten Komplex. 43  Dazu s.  Vielberg, Mönchsbischof, S.  115–39 über den gesamten Textkomplex des so genannten Martinellus. 44  Epist. 1.4 an Gregor führt Venantius auffälligerweise nur Sulpicius Severus als seinen Bezugstext an, obwohl er Paulinus, aber erst innerhalb des Epos, zweimal namentlich neben Sulpicius nennt (1– 20–21, 2.469–471), dazu s.  Nazzaro “L’agiografia martiniana,” S.  309–10, der zu Recht anmerkt, dass Venantius seinen epischen Vorgänger mit Paulinus von Nola gleichsetzte, wohl wegen der persönlichen Beziehung des Letzteren zu Sulpicius Severus. Möglicherweise hätte nach Meinung des Venantius die Angabe eines weiteren, späteren Bezugstextes den Eindruck erwecken können, die Paraphrase beruhe nicht auf der zuverlässigsten Quelle, oder Gregors Verdienst um den Martinskult werde durch den analogen Auftrag von Perpetuus, einem seiner Vorgänger, an Paulinus geschmälert. Dies gehört in den weiten Rahmen der ‘poetischen Selbstreflexion des Hagiographen’ (Venantius) mit Bezugnahme auf die eigene Biographie s. Vielberg, Mönchsbischof, S. 75–107. 45  Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Martini 1.50–67, hg.  Quesnel, S.  8–9. Übersetzung vom Autor. Zur Sprache von 1.50–67: Der mit dem Subjektswort “qui” (d.i. Martin) beginnende Satz erhält nach

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Er (Martin) war noch ein Knabe, eben erst in den frühen Jahren der Reife, als bei eisigem Frost Raureif das Land kräuselnd überzog, als ein strenger Winter die Wellen mit Zügeln aus Eis zuschnürte und die Freiheit nach Belieben dahinströmender Flüsse verschlossen und verborgen blieb. Das Wasser, noch frostiger als die mehr als raue Kälte, knüpfte sich selbst Fesseln, gehüllt in ein Hemd aus Starrheit. Da also steht plötzlich ein Bedürftiger am Stadttor von Amiens Martin gegenüber, dieser teilt den ihn umhüllenden Mantel, der ihm noch verblieben war, und bietet ihn in brennendem Glaubenseifer den frierenden Gliedern an. Er selbst übernimmt einen Teil der Kälte, der andere einen der Wärme. Zwischen den beiden Bedürftigen werden Hitze und Frost geteilt, und zu einer neuartigen Handelsware werden Hitze und Kälte. Ein- und dieselbe Armut ist, sobald aufgeteilt, genug für beide. Dennoch, mit dieser Bekleidung angetan, offenbarte sich der Schöpfer selbst: Martins deckender Mantel umhüllte Christus! Keine Kleidung der höchsten Kaiser hat sich diese Ehre verdient. Ein mattweißer Dienstmantel ist mehr wert als eine königliche Purpurrobe. Das war das erste Angeld der Großtaten (Martins) und Unterpfand seiner Nächstenliebe.

Venantius wählte die extreme Beschränkung auf die narratio des Faktischen – persönliche Reflexion und moralische Verallgemeinerung, wie sie in den zwei Vorgängerwerken immer wieder hinter dem Narrativen durchscheinen, fehlen völlig. Dagegen wird etwa die von Paulinus wohl der Verallgemeinerung und generellen Anwendbarkeit der caritas Martins zuliebe unterdrückte Ortsangabe von Amiens nach Sulpicius Severus, der im Sinne der an jede Untergattung der Historiographie gestellte Forderung von Glaubwürdigkeit eine exakte topographische Fixierung brauchte, säuberlich nachgetragen.46 Venantius übernimmt zwar von Paulinus die Technik der Vorbereitung des zentralen Ereignisses durch lexikalische Markierungen – so verwendet er für die Eisdecke des Wassers schon vor der Erwähnung der Mantelteilung die Kleidermetapher “tunica vestita (sc. aqua) rigoris” (1.55), was sich als paradoxe Metapher auch für die Beschreibung des Zustandes des frierenden Bettlers anwenden ließe, wie auch Paulinus vor der Teilungsszene Wortformen von dividere, pars und dimidiare setzte – jedoch Begriffe, die nicht von der äußeren Situation des Winters ausgehen, sondern Martins psychische Verfasstheit präludieren. Venantius präsentiert zum Unterschied von Paulinus das Faktische in einerseits stark verknappter, andererseits in einer auf semantische und klangliche, die Konzentration des Rezipienten durch sprachliche Mittel den die Handlung verzögernden Partizipialkonstruktionen (in 54 mit Präsenspartizip anstelle eines finiten Verbs) und Temporalsätzen erst in 57 und 58 verbale Prädikate: “partitur,” “offert” (sc. Martin). Der syntaktische Anschluss an  50 ist in  57 mit der rückverweisenden Partikel “igitur” markiert. Die Interpunktion wurde gegenüber der Edition entsprechend geändert. Über die lockere Syntax hinaus enthalten die Verse zum Unterschied von Paulinus weitere sprachliche Merkmale des Spätlateins: “glaciale” (abl.) statt “glaciali” (52; so noch Paulinus 1.63); “plus frigidior” statt “frigidior” (55); “sibi” für “ei” (57); “utrosque” statt “utrumque” (60); “partitur” als Passivum (60). 46  Auch das Adjektiv “asperiore” (1.54) enthält einen lexikalischen Hinweis auf Sulpicius Severus: “hieme, quae solito asperior inhorruerat” (3.1).

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anregende Effekte abzielenden elaborierten Weise.47 Durch dieses Vorgehen ersetzt er in der zu analysierenden Szene der Mantelteilung die Dynamik des Paulinus weitgehend durch eine ikonenähnliche Statik – es herrscht die Tendenz vor, den bereits etablierten ‘Martinsmythos’ im Epos zu Einzelbildern zu formen. So wird die Mantelteilung in bloß zwei Versen 1.57–8, ohne Eingehen auf Martins innere Verfasstheit und ohne Erwähnung des Schwertes erzählt.48 Martin handelt beinahe wie ein Automat – ein konsequentes zu Ende-Führen der autonom tätigen Hand Martins bei Paulinus. Demgegenüber wird einerseits der extrem kalte Winter unmittelbar davor in fünf Versen (1.51–54) breit ausgemalt49 und andererseits die Aufteilung von Wärme und Kälte zwischen Martin und dem Bettler als Folge der Mantelteilung unter Anwendung merkantiler Metaphern aus dem Tauschhandel in drei Versen vorgeführt (1.59–61).50 Diese Metaphern lassen das epentypische ‘militärische’ Szenario der Situation vergessen. Martin wird folgerichtig nicht als junger Soldat und daher auch nicht als miles Christi vorgestellt, sondern, rhetorisch übertrieben, als pubertierender Halbwüchsiger: “qui puer in teneris vix pubescentibus annis,” formuliert nach Statius, Thebais 1.21,51 und Mit unterschiedlicher Deutlichkeit zeigen auch die von Antonio Vincenzo Nazzaro, “Intertestualità biblico-patristica e classica in testi poetici di Venanzio Fortunato,” in Venanzio Fortunato tra Italia e Francia. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Valdobbiadene 17 maggio 1990 – Treviso 18–19 maggio 1990, hg. Tiziana Ragusa (Treviso, 1993), S. 99–135 analysierten Vergleichsstellen (ohne die Szene der Mantelteilung) in den Paraphrasen des Paulinus und Venantius denselben Befund. – Labarre, Le manteau partagé, S.  159 charakterisiert den Stil des Venantius zutreffend als “Goldschmiedekunst,” style d’orfèvre. 48  Man kann dieses Vorgehen in gewissem Sinn als manieristisch bezeichnen, und zwar sowohl wegen der irritierenden Umverteilung der Gewichte der äußeren und der inneren Umstände (Winterwetter beziehungsweise Mantelteilung) innerhalb der Erzähleinheit als auch wegen der auf diese Weise erzielten indirekten, aber gerade dadurch deutlichen Bezugnahme auf das Vorgängerwerk. 49  Allgemeines über die Verkürzung des Narrativen zu Gunsten des Ekphrastischen in der spätantiken Epik bietet Michael Roberts, “The Last Epic of Antiquity. Generic Continuity and Innovation in the Vita Sancti Martini of Venantius Fortunatus,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 131 (2001), 257–85, dort S. 277–82, in seiner Untersuchung über die Stellung der Martinsepik zur lateinischen und speziell zur christlichen Epik; zu diesem Punkt vgl. auch Karla Pollmann, “The Transformation of the Epic Genre in Christian Late Antiquity,” Studia Patristica 36 (2001), 61–75 (S. 72–74: Gebrauch von Metaphern und Vergleichen am Beispiel einer Gegenüberstellung eines Heilungswunders bei Paulinus 5.609–15 und Venantius 4.251–71), und im Besonderen dies., “Establishing Authority in Christian Poetry of Latin Late Antiquity,” Hermes 141 (2013), 309–30, dort S. 325, zur metrischen Praefatio der Martinsvita des Venantius. 50  Grundlage ist das zu einer metaphorischen Handels-Szene ausgearbeitete Paar der korrelativen Verben “tradens” und “recipit” bei Paulinus 1.89–90. 51  Der Vers lautet: “aut defensa prius vix pubescentibus annis.” Der zweite Halbvers bezieht sich panegyrisch übertreibend auf den Widmungsträger Domitian als jugendlichen Kriegshelden; die anderen von Labarre, Le manteau partagé, S. 151 Anm. 126, angeführten Parallelen unterscheiden sich durch das einleitende Adverb und inhaltlich von dem Text des Paulinus, sie kommen daher als Bezugstext nicht in Frage. Trotzdem setzt Venantius keinerlei Signal, dass er bei seinem Publikum einen Vergleich der 47 

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wenn an einer einzigen Stelle, und zwar lange nach der Erwähnung der Mantelteilung, das Wort miles erscheint (1.66), dessen Bedeutung überdies in der Terminologie der diokletianischen Administration der Spätantike zu “Staatsdiener,” “öffentlich Bedien­ steter” erweitert wurde,52 dann dient es dazu, die große soziale Distanz zwischen einem niedrigen Diener der Staatsgewalt, konkret Martin, und einem Oberkaiser, Augustus, zu markieren und indirekt darauf hinzuweisen, dass Gott gemäß Act. 10.34 kein “personarum acceptor” ist, sondern “consilia cordium” gemäß 1 Cor. 4.5 kennt. Mit objektiver Distanz bewertet demgemäß Venantius zunächst unter einem ethischen Gesichtspunkt zwei von ihrem materiellen Wert her gegensätzliche Kleidungsstücke, den Mantel des unreifen Jünglings und die den Kaisern vorbehaltene Purpur-Robe. Diese erklärt er als dem simplen mattweißen Mantel unterlegen (1.65–67),53 in den sich aber der Weltschöpfer selbst kleidete.54 Dieses scheinbare Paradoxon wird bereits in der Partikel “tamen” (1.63) angedeutet, die den gekürzten Bericht der Mantelteilung mit der folgenden Szene der Anerkennung durch Christus enger inhaltlich verbindet als die temporale Formel nec mora bei Paulinus (1.100). Als Resümee der Mantelteilungs-Szene folgt in 1.67 eine modifizierende, nüchtern konstatierende Weiterführung einer der bereits besprochenen, pathetisch reflektierenden Apostrophierungen Martins bei Paulinus 1.91–2: “o  felix, virtute tua miracula vincens | omnia.” Venantius 1.67 ersetzt unter Beibehaltung des Schlüsselbegriffs “virtus” das hyperbolische “omnia” des Paulinus durch “prima (virtutum)”: beiden jugendlichen ‘Helden’ Martin und Domitian – dieser ist in christlichem Kontext negativ besetzt – provozieren möchte. 52  Vgl. Ulrich Meyer, Soziales Handeln im Zeichen des ‘Hauses.’ Zur Ökonomik in der Spätantike und im früheren Mittelalter, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 140 (Göttingen, 1998), S.  167; Karl-Leo Noethlichs, Beamtentum und Dienstvergehen. Zur  Staatsverwaltung in der Spätantike (Wiesbaden, 1981), S. 220–23. – Zum Motiv von Gewaltlosigkeit vs. Kriegsdienst s. Anm. 24. 53  Grundlage für diese moralische Bewertung von Qualität und Verarbeitung des Materials der verglichenen Mäntel als Spiegel der moralischen Überlegenheit Martins als des Vertreters der Kirche über die weltliche Macht hat ihren Ansatz bei Sulp. Sev., Vita Mart. 20, der Szene des Gastmahls bei dem Usurpator Magnus Maximus, im Zuge dessen Martin den Trinkbecher nicht an den Kaiser, sondern an einen einfachen Priester weiterreicht. Auf diese zentrale Episode und deren sozial-moralisierende Aussage nehmen Venantius, Vita Mart. 2.104–5, und bereits Paulinus, Vita Mart. 3.121–23, explizit Bezug. Auch war es mit Sicherheit die Seligpreisung des mit einem nicht konkret bezeichneten goldbestickten Purpurgewand verglichenen Mantels bei Paulinus 1.107–9, die Venantius dazu anregte, den Vergleich von Martins Chlamys mit Prunkroben mittels eines Vorgriffs auf die oben genannte Gastmahl-Szene konkret auf die Purpurgewänder der höchstrangigen Kaiser der Epoche des Dominats, Augusti beziehungsweise reges (ein in der Spätantike gebräuchliches Synonym für imperatores), anzuwenden. Zu der Gastmahlszene bei Venantius s. Michael Roberts, “Martin meets Maximus. The Meaning of a Late Roman Banquet,” Revue des études augustiniennes 41 (1995), 91–111. 54  Venantius reduziert die Verse, in denen Paulinus den in Martins Mantel gehüllten Christus der Traumepiphanie als Schöpfer und Pantokrator hymnisch preist (1.111–14), auf ein einziges Wort: “creator” (1.63).

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Die Mantelteilung sei die erste von Martins virtutes – die Pluralform virtutes ist im christlichen Latein ein Synonym von miracula, “Wunder,” einem der lateinischen Bibel unbekannten Wort, beziehungsweise signa, “Zeichen.” In eben dieser Bedeutung ist virtutes als Kriterium der Heiligkeit besonders Verstorbener terminologisch55 und daher im Sinn einer Propaganda für die weitere Intensivierung des Martinskultes und damit des Bistums Tours von zentraler Funktion. In dieser die Mantelteilung betreffenden Feststellung erreicht Venantius am Ende der Erzähleinheit den Höhepunkt der Überhöhung der Version der Schilderung von Martins ‘Heldentat’ im unmittelbaren hagiographisch-epischen Prätext. Denn durch seine Formulierung nähert er den bereits über die weltlichen Herrscher hinausgehobenen und in seiner Bescheidenheit de facto göttliche moralische Kraft (1.117 “virtus vicina Deo”) zeigenden Martin des Paulinus ohne Umschweife an Christus selbst  an: Während nämlich Paulinus 1.192 in diesem Zusammenhang seinen Helden ‘nur’ als übereifrigen (!) Vollzieher des Gebotes seines Herrn, sich mit Wenigem zu begnügen, vorführt, ersetzt Venantius dieses praeceptum (Mt.  10.9–10), seinen Bezugstext überbietend, durch das ‘größte Gebot,’ und zwar in dem das Verständnis des Vorangehenden fixierenden letzten Wort des Abschnitts: “amoris,” nachdem er die schon von Paulinus zurückhaltend angedeutete Annäherung an Christus unmittelbar vorausgeschickt und verdeutlicht hat: “Das war das erste Angeld der Großtaten” (“prima  … virtutum”) sc. Martins – diese Aussage gegen Abschluss einer Erzähleinheit ließ nämlich jeden zeitgenössischen Leser den Bibelvers Ioh. 2.11 assoziieren, der den Abschluss der Perikope über das Weinwunder Jesu bei der Hochzeit zu Kana bildet: “So tat Jesus sein erstes Zeichen.” Venantius schafft damit einen anderen biblizistischen Hintergrund als Sulpicius Severus und Paulinus, die auf die unterschiedliche Reaktion der Menschen auf Jesu Erniedrigung am Kreuz abhoben: Im  Sinn ausschließlich pan­egyrischer Präsentation verleiht Venantius seinem Helden das Profil Christi, des ‘kraftvollsten’ Wundertäters.

3. ‘Text und Bild’ – ein Vergleich In der Technik der extremen Verknappung des Narrativen bei Venantius vermutete erstmals Labarre eine Ähnlichkeit zur bildenden Kunst seiner Zeit.56 Diese naheliegende Annahme soll im Folgenden anhand eines Vergleichs aus der Buchmalerei unter einem anderen Gesichtspunkt dargestellt werden, auch wenn Vergleiche von Literatur und bildender Kunst grundsätzlich mit Einschränkungen anzuwenden Grundlage für diese Bedeutungsentwicklung ist neutestamentlicher Sprachgebrauch von virtutes als Wiedergabe von δυνάμεις bei Mt. 13.58; Lc. 10.13; Act. 8.13; 1 Cor. 12.10. 56  Labarre, Le manteau partagé, S. 159: “il (Fortunat) met en œuvre une esthétique qui rappelle les arts visuels de son époque. Paulin de Périgueux s’adresse à l’esprit du lecteur, tandis que Fortunat fait appel à son regard.” 55 

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sind.57 Die zwei epischen Paraphrasen lassen sich jedoch in der Tat auch hinsichtlich ihrer ‘malerischen’ Qualitäten in den Gestaltungsprinzipien der betreffenden Szenen, mit Werken der bildenden Kunst der Spätantike vergleichen: den Illuminationen in den zwei berühmten, wie die Martinsepen ungefähr im Abstand von hundert Jahren, wenn auch je ein Jahrhundert früher hergestellten Vergilhandschriften der Vatikanischen Bibliothek. Der  ältere Codex, genannt Vergilius Vaticanus, entstand um  400 oder nicht lange danach, wahrscheinlich in Rom,58 der jüngere, als Vergilius Romanus bezeichnete, gegen Ende des fünften oder Anfang des sechsten Jahrhunderts, wahrscheinlich außerhalb Italiens.59 Für die charakteristischen Stilunterschiede, die jenen der unter stilistischen Gesichtspunkten entsprechenden Martinsepen vergleichbar sind, zwei Beispiele: Der  Illuminator der älteren Prunkhandschrift malt die emotional geladene Szene des Selbstmordes Didos dynamisch-narrativ, hellenistisch und mit sichtlicher Empathie – man betrachte bloß die individuell gestalteten trauernden Dienerinnen –, der spätere dagegen stilisiert eine ebenso emotional geladene Szene, nämlich Didos Gastmahl, bei dem sich die Königin in Aeneas verliebte, symmetrischdekorativ als distanziertes höfisches Repräsentationsbild in einer durch hochgezogene Vorhänge, vela, zwischen Pilastern angedeuteten Palastarchitektur, ähnlich dem bekannten Missorium Theodosius I., vermutlich hergestellt anlässlich der Dezennalien des Kaisers im Jahr 388 in Thessalonike und heute im Besitz der Real Academia Zu Ansätzen zu einem Stilvergleich von spätantiker Dichtung und zeitgleicher bildender Kunst vgl. grundsätzlich die Analysen und die Dokumentation bei Michael Roberts, The Jeweled Style. Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, NY, 1989, S. 66–121 = ch. 3, “Poetry and Visual Arts”). 58  Zu Vergilius Vaticanus (Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS  Vat. lat.  3225): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Meister_des_Vergilius_Vaticanus_001.jpg (eingesehen am 02.07.­ 2018), Literatur: David H. Wright, The Vatican Vergil. A Masterpiece of Late Antique Art, (Berkeley, 1993); Kurt Weitzmann, Spätantike und Frühchristliche Buchmalerei (München, 1977), S. 36–7 (Tafel 3: Abb. fol. 40r [Didos Tod]); Faksimile: David H. Wright, Vergilius Vaticanus. Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe des Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3225 der Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana. Commentarium, Codices selecti 71 (Graz, 1984). 59  Zu Vergilius Romanus (Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS  Vat. lat.  3867): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergilius_Romanus (eingesehen am  02.07.2018), Literatur: David  H. Wright, The Roman Vergil and the Origins of Medieval Book Design (Toronto, 2001); deutschsprachige Ausgabe: Der Vergilius Romanus und die Ursprünge des mittelalterlichen Buches (Stuttgart 2001); Weitzmann, Buchmalerei, S.  56–7 (Tafel  13: Abb. fol.  100v [Didos Gastmahl]); Erwin Rosenthal, The  Illuminations of the Vergilius Romanus (Cod. Vat. Lat. 3867). A Stylistic and Iconographic Analysis (Zürich, 1972). – Die Illumination von fol. 100v wird in der englischen Fassung des wikipedia-Artikels dem zweiten Meister zugeschrieben (gegen Wright, S. 14: “Sämtliche Bilder der Handschrift stammen eindeutig von einer einzigen Hand”) – die deutsche Version bezieht zu dem Problem nicht Stellung. Dieser zweite Maler weise “a more radical break from the classical tradition” auf als der erste, für den Wright. S. 14 eine stilistische Entwicklung annimmt. Faksimile: Carlo Bertelli und Italo Lana, et al. edd., Vergilius Romanus. Codice vaticano latino 3867, conservato nella Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2 Bde. (Faksimile und Kommentar), Codices e Vaticanis selecti 66 (Milano – Zürich, 1985–6). 57 

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de la Historia in Madrid, auf dem dieser zwischen seinen Söhnen Arcadius und Honorius unter einer das palatium andeutenden Arkade thronend60 ohne einen Anflug emotionaler Narrativität dargestellt ist. Auch der Martins-Mythos konnte am Übergang von der Spätantike zum Mittelalter bildhaft-statisch vorgeführt werden, zwar mit markantem Bezug zur Religion, aber in derselben literarischen Gattung und mit demselben Narrativ wie die Ankunft des Odysseus bei den Phäaken: Einkleidung.61 Dieser Konstante zum Trotz steht, wie in obiger Analyse darzulegen versucht wurde, die Paraphrase des Paulinus der vom Hellenismus, konkret von Apollonios Rhodios an zunehmend psychologisierenden epischen Tradition näher als die zweidimensional deskriptive, auf linguistisch-stilistischer Ebene unmittelbar und unreflektiert verständliche des Venantius. So gesehen kann dem Urteil von Jacques Fontaine, dem sich Antonio Vincenzo Nazzaro in einer abschließenden literarischen Synkrisis der zwei hagiographischen Epen wider Erwarten fast wörtlich anschließt, dass nämlich Paulinus bereits mittelalterliche Züge trage, während Venantius sich noch als “Mann der Antike” präsentiere, nicht zugestimmt werden.62

Zu Missorium Theodosius’ I: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius-Missorium (eingesehen am 02.07.2018), Abb.  im Wikipedia-Artikel und bei Wolfgang Fritz Volbach und Max Hirmer, Frühchristliche Kunst. Die Kunst der Spätantike in West- und Ostrom (München, 1958), Abb. 53. – Die Parallelen zwischen den zwei Repräsentationsbildern bestehen in der dreigeteilten Bildarchitektur mit Palastcharakter und der frontalen, hieratischen Haltung der drei, teilweise mit Gloriole versehenen Hauptpersonen. Die an den Rändern symmetrisch angeordneten Mundschenke in Didos Gastmahl haben auf dem Missorium ihre Parallele in den ebenfalls an den Rändern symmetrisch postierten Soldaten der kaiserlichen Leibwache der scholae palatinae. Ohne Entsprechung in der Buchillumination ist die Allegorie der Fruchtbarkeit (Tellus) in dem deutlich abgesetzten unteren Drittel des Missorium. 61  Die in dem Vergleich mit der Buchmalerei angedeuteten Unterschiede zwischen den Darstellungen der Bekleidungsszene in den zwei Martinsepen hat in ähnlicher Weise, ohne auf die Illuminationen von Handschriften Bezug zu nehmen, Labarre, Le  manteau partagé, S.  238–39, als zwei verschiedene Annährungen an die Gestalt des hagiographischen ‘Helden’ gedeutet: Martin in seiner Menschennatur als mögliches Identifikationsmodell (Paulinus) beziehungsweise Martin als mehr der Faktenwelt entrückten, aus der Distanz zu verehrenden ‘Heiligen’ (Venantius). Notwendigerweise ist der ‘menschliche’ Martin körperlich und seelisch ‘beweglich,’ der ‘heilige’ statisch. 62  Jacques Fontaine, Naissance de la poésie dans l’Occident chrétien (Paris, 1981), S. 271: “Fortunat … s’avère encore un homme de l’Antiquité  … Paulin  … a déjà l’aspect le plus médiéval”; Nazzaro, “L’agiografia martiniana” (wie Anm. 21), S. 346: “Paolino abbia paradossalmente un carattere già medievale e Fortunato si presenti, invece, ancora come uomo dell’antichità.” Fontaine selbst spricht von “chassé-croise chronologique,” Nazzaro greift in freier Übersetzung zu dem Adverb paradossalmente. Eine eingehende Begründung dieser Urteile ist nicht erkennbar. 60 

“O quotiens urguente Deo ventura fatentur”: A Strange Case of Clerical Demoniac Manipulation in the Vita Sancti Martini of Paulinus of Périgueux Maurus Mount Saint Vincent Seminary One of the earliest and most impressive phenomena connected with the cult of the saints in Late Antiquity is the presence at the shrines of martyrs and confessors of demoniacs, whose speech and actions gave public testimony to the presence of the saint at the place of his or her relics. This testimony, along with healings and other manifestations of heavenly power, was one of the major indications of the authenticity and credibility of a shrine’s claim to holiness.1 Indeed, the hagiographical literature from the fourth century on is full of examples of demoniacs who at shrines, or merely upon contact with a saint’s relics, spontaneously reveal to those around them hidden information about the saint as well as useful knowledge about other matters.2 Robert Wiśniewski discusses cases from patristic literature where demons do not spontaneously provide hidden information, but are asked for it by others.3 He gives the examples of the confessor bishops Martin of Tours and Germanus of Auxerre using their exorcistic powers to force information out of the mouths of demoniacs. Wiśniewski, however, focuses on rare cases of lay Christians going to question demoniacs about the future. He tries to determine what these endeavors by the laity involved, but the scarcity of examples, as well as their lack of detail, leave him unable to say much with certainty. Nevertheless, he believes that consultation of demoniacs by lay Christians was likely a widespread phenomenon.4 Indeed, it does stand to reason that if demons were regularly demonstrating, publicly and unprompted, Peter Brown, “Relics and Social Status in the Age of Gregory of Tours,” in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1982), pp. 237–38; id., The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 2015), pp. 108–10. 2  Hippolyte Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs (Brussels, 1933), pp.  142–46; Robert Wiśniewski, The Beginning of the Cult of Relics (Oxford, 2019), pp. 35–41. For an overview of Gregory of Tours’s miracle collections along with a helpful appendix listing texts referring to demoniacs, see Danuta Shanzer, “So Many Saints – So Little Time … the Libri Miraculorum of Gregory of Tours,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 13 (2003), 19–60. 3  Robert Wiśniewski, “La consultation des possédés dans l’antiquité tardive: pythones, egastrimythoi et arrepticii,” Revue d’études augustiniennes et patristiques 51 (2005), 127–52. 4  Wiśniewski, “La consultation des possédés,” pp. 144–47; id., The Beginning, p. 74. 1 

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their ability to describe events hidden to those around them through the mouths of the possessed, then people would start to become curious about what else they might know. However, Wiśniewski is faced by a further problem: if such consultation of demoniacs by the laity was indeed common, then why is there no mention of it in ecclesiastical legislation?5 Surely this practice would fall under the Church’s condemnation of divination. Yet, the canons condemning specific divinatory practices are silent on the matter. Wiśniewski concludes that perhaps this practice was tolerated by the bishops as long as Christians kept in mind the theological position of the Church: that demons, while able to provide useful information, were not able to tell the future in the proper sense, a power which only God possesses, and that the presence of the saint’s relics acted as a check to the demon’s ever present desire to deceive.6 To Wiśniewski’s research I would like to add the important testimony of a fifthcentury text from Gaul which presents a very specific form of demoniac interrogation, and add my own suggestions about how the Church may have managed the widely recognized perception that under the right conditions demons could provide useful and reliable information about things unknown to men. The sixth book of the hexameter Vita Sancti Martini (VSM) by Paulinus of Périgueux is the earliest record of miracles at the shrine of Martin in Tours.7 The book is a versification of a lost prose liber miraculorum compiled by Perpetuus, bishop of Tours from 458/459–488/489,8 who himself commissioned Paulinus to put it into verse. It is notable for its colorful depiction of demonic possession and exorcism at the shrine. One passage in particular stands out for its remarkable portrayal of the manipulation of a demoniac by Perpetuus of Tours for the purpose of obtaining information about a distant battle.9 As I hope to demonstrate, the passage provides Wiśniewski, “La consultation des possédés,” pp. 149–50. Wiśniewski, “La consultation des possédés,” pp. 150–51. 7  Luce Pietri, La ville de Tours du IVe au VIe siècle: naissance d’une cité chrétienne (Rome, 1983), pp. 582– 88; J. M. Drevon, De Paulini Petrocorii vita et scriptis: Quid ad litteras praesertim christianas contulerit legenda Sancti Martini (Agen, 1889), pp. 200–203; Hippolyte Delehaye, “Les premiers libelli miraculorum,” Analecta Bollandiana 29 (1910), 427–34; Id., “Les recueils antiques de miracles de saints,” Analecta Bollandiana 43 (1925), 305–25, at pp. 311–12. 8  Luce Pietri, “La succession des premiers évêques tourangeaux: essai sur la chronologie de Gregoire de Tours,” Mélanges de l’école française de Rome, moyen âge – temps modernes 94 (1982), 551–619, at pp. 617–18; ead., La ville de Tours, pp. 3–5, 31; Pierre Courcelle, Histoire littéraire des grandes invasions germaniques (Paris, 1964), p. 173 at n. 172; Louis Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule, vol. 2 (Paris, 1910), p. 310. 9  VSM 6.106–51, ed. Michael Petschenig, Paulini Petricordiae Carmina in Poetae Christiani Minores, CSEL 16 (Vienna, 1888), pp. 143–44. In Book Six of the VSM Perpetuus is mentioned three times and alluded to once, thus establishing the beginning of his episcopate as the book’s terminus ante quem. See 6.28, ed. Petschenig, p. 139 (in a pun): “Perpetuo felix doctor victurus in aevo;” 6.301, ed. Petschenig, 5 

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an example of a theologically reasoned approach to the interrogation of demoniacs that made the practice acceptable to Paulinus’s audience. The passage reads as follows: O quotiens urguente Deo ventura fatentur et quorum oblectant semper mendacia fraudem, extortum a Domino coguntur dicere verum! Quae poena est manifesta loqui! Praeceptio vocem elicit et cedit mandato obpressa voluntas. Inlustrem virtute virum, sed moribus almis plus clarum magnumque fide, qua celsior extat, Aegidium hostilis vallaverat agmine multo obsidio, obiectis quae moenia sepserat armis. […] Interea trepido vicinia maesta pavore pallebat tanti proceris discrimine, et omnis anxia pendebat populorum cura paventum, dum se quisque putat similem perferre procellam inque uno nutat, quidquid consistit in uno. Ergo aliquis forte ex illis, quos tetrior ira traxerat ad votum sorbendi in caede cruoris, praecipiti ad nutum Domini quasi turbine raptus praecedensque citos trans flabra et nubila ventos gestorum seriem captivo e corpore prompsit, proclamans isdem momentis, tempore eodem obsidione urbem Martino orante solutam, atque ipsi donasse Deum populumque ducemque. Mox patuit manifesta fides seriemque probavit. Ipse dies, eadem hora fuit, nihil ordine verso, invitumque hostem non fallere poena coegit. Vt Balaam, Domini cupiens maledicere plebem, extorquente Deo coetum benedixit ovantem, haut alio penitusque ipso rerum ordine venit nuntius, illam urbem tanta obsidione solutam, praecipitem Rhodanum molli quae ponte subegit et iunxit geminas conexo tramite ripas, ut siccum praeberet iter, quod puppibus instat desuper et presso nutans via pendet in amne. Hanc quoque praesenti sociatus, sancte, patrono eripis, et cogis trepidum tua vota fateri, quae nollet donata tibi. Reus astat et Euro ocior amissa optatae specularia caedis

110

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p. 150: “Perpetuus, Domini non solum nomine cultor;” 6.506, ed. Petschenig, p. 159: “Perpetuo urbs Turonum Martino antistite gaudet;” 6.145–46, ed. Petschenig, p. 144: “Hanc quoque praesenti sociatus, sancte, patrono / eripis …”

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non tacet invisaeque sibi fit praeco salutis. Haec quoque discussis patefecit calculus horis ipso, ut res docuit, conpleta et prodita puncto.10

150

[106] O how often at God’s urging do demons confess things to come, and those whose deceitfulness is always delighted by lies, are compelled by the Lord to speak truth extracted under torture! What a manifest punishment it is to speak! Precept [110] elicits speech, and the will overpowered gives in to the command. Having hemmed in the walls with its hostile arms, an enemy siege with a great army had fenced in Aegidius, a man distinguished for his power, but even more famous for his kind character, great in his faith, in which he stands preeminent. […] [121] Meanwhile a dejected neighbor grew pale with restless dread at the critical danger of such a great chief, and every anxious care of the terrified people was hanging in suspense, while everyone thinks that he himself will suffer a similar storm, [125] and, inasmuch as the safety of all depends upon one man, in one man does it totter. Therefore, by chance one of those demons, whom foul wrath had enticed, out of a desire to drink in gore amidst the slaughter of battle, having been seized as if by headlong whirlwind, at the command of the Lord, and outrunning the swift winds across the breezes and the clouds, [130] utters forth from a captive body an account of the events, proclaiming that at that very moment, at the same time, the city had been saved from the siege through Martin’s prayer, and that God had granted to Martin both the people and their military leader. Soon, his manifest trustworthiness was clear and confirmed the series of events. [135] It was that same day, at the same hour, with the order of events as related unchanged in respect to every detail; and the punishment compelled the unwilling enemy not to lie. As Balaam when he wished to curse the Lord’s people, when God tortured him, blessed the triumphing crowd, hardly any differently, and entirely according to the very order of things, did the herald come, [140] announcing that that city had been freed from such a great siege; the city that had tamed the swift Rhone by means of a flexible bridge, and had joined its twin shores by means of a connecting path, in order that it might provide a dry passage that presses upon its pontoon boats from above, and the swaying pathway of which hangs over the river pressed down upon below. [145] This city too, O holy one, united together with my present patron, you rescue, and compel the restless demon to confess your promises fulfilled, which he does not want to have been granted to you. The accused stands by, and, swifter than the East wind, he does not keep quiet about the lost sights of slaughter he longed to behold, and becomes a herald of a rescue hateful to him. [150] These things too did the calculation by means of the hours passed reveal to have been completed and reported, as the matter showed, down to the very second.11

Paulinus’s love of abstraction and stylistic preciosity can make his poetry at times difficult to read, yet here the outline of the events recorded by Perpetuus is clear.12 For the transcription of the Latin texts I have changed any occurrences of consonantal ‘u’ to ‘v’, capitalized the beginning of sentences, and have inserted the diaeresis in the adjective aërius, -a, -um where it occurs. 11  All translations are my own. 12  Books 1–5 of the VSM are a versification the Vita Sancti Martini and Dialogi of Sulpicius Severus. Extensive work on Paulinus’s transformation of Sulpicius’s writings reveals a rhetorically expansive poet who nevertheless remains true to his source material. See Sylvie Labarre, Le  manteau partagé: 10 

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Verses  106–10 introduce the theme of the truth extracted from demons by torture. At God’s urging (“urguente Deo”), demons speak of things to come (“ventura fatentur”). Paulinus then presents two parallel events involving the fate of two cities. First (vv. 111–20), at Arles,13 an enemy siege with a great army had fenced in Aegidius, comes and magister utriusque militiae in Gaul from 456/7–?465,14 leaving him separated from his allies. But by divine intervention, the Visigoths, whom Aegidius was fighting,15 were routed. Verses 121–25 introduce the second scene. The inhabitants of Tours, gathered at the shrine of Martin,16 dread the outcome of the siege of Arles, for their fate depends upon Aegidius’s successful resistance. The bishop Perpetuus brings relief to their uncertainty by forcing a demon via a demoniac to report accurately on the battle.17 deux métamorphoses poétiques de la Vie de saint Martin chez Paulin de Périgueux (Ve s.) et Venance Fortunat (VIe s.) (Paris, 1998), pp. 112–13, 121, 124–27, 131; ead., “La postérité littéraire de Sulpice Sévère dans l’Antiquité tardive et au Moyen Âge,” Vita Latina 172 (2005), 83–94, at p.  89; Anton Huber, Die  poe­ tische Bearbeitung der Vita S. Martini des Sulpicius Severus durch Paulinus von Périgueux (Kempten, 1901), pp. 21–23; Drevon, De Paulini Petrocorii vita, pp. 212–15. 13  As shown by the description of its famous pons navalis beginning in line 141. See Courcelle, Histoire littéraire, p. 172 at n. 2; Pietri, La ville de Tours, p. 124; François Corpet, ed., Œuvres de Paulin de Périgueux (Panckoucke, 1849), p. 221 at n. 9. 14  Aegidius was appointed by either Avitus or Majorian and is said to have been appointed king by the Franks during the banishment of Childerich: see Gregory of Tours, Hist. 2.12, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH SRM 1.1 (Hannover, 1951), 61–62. He died in the autumn of 465 by poison or ambush (Gregory of Tours, Hist. 2.18 ed. Krusch and Levison, p. 65). 15  Pietri, La ville de Tours, pp. 527, 742–43. 16  This passage concludes the section of Book Six on exorcisms at the shrine begun in line 39. The setting of the basilica of Martin is made explicit in Gregory of Tours’s prose paraphrase in De virt. Mart. 1.2, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2 (Hannover, 1885), p. 137: “Egidius quoque cum obsederetur ab hostibus et, exclusa solatia, turbatus inpugnaretur, per invocationem beati viri, fugatis hostibus, liberatus est. Idque daemoniacus in medio basilicae ipsa hora qua gestum fuerat est professus sancti Martini obtentu fuisse concessum.” (“Also, Aegidius, when he was being besieged by enemies, and was being attacked, having been thrown into confusion after relief had been cut off from him, was freed, the enemy having been put to flight by the invocation of the blessed man. And a demoniac professed openly in the middle of the basilica, at the same hour on which it had occurred, that this had been granted at Saint Martin’s obtaining.”) 17  The narrator interjects himself by mentioning his “present patron” to whom Martin is joined in the miraculous events (see lines 145–47). This certainly refers to Perpetuus, bishop of Tours and the patron of Paulinus’s work as well as the author of the prose original on which Paulinus’s versification is based. See VSM, prol. 1, ed. Petschenig, p. 17 (“Domino sancto ac beatissimo, speciali apud Deum patrono”) and p. 18 (“Domine sancte ac beatissime vereque perpetue religionis et gratiae patrone”) See Francis J. Gilardi, The Sylloge Epigraphica Turonensis de S. Martino (Washington, D.C., 1983), p. 110 at n. 139. Sidonius Apollinaris also could not resist making appropriate use of Perpetuus’s pun-worthy name. See his epigram for Perpetuus’s new basilica of Martin: “Dumque venit Christus, populos qui suscitet omnes, / perpetuo durent culmina Perpetui” (Ep. 4.18.4, ed. Christian Luetjohann, MGH AA 8 [Berlin, 1887],

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Lines 126–36 depict the activity of the demon in relation to both scenes. As the demon waits at Arles for the highly anticipated slaughter, its fun is spoiled when God intervenes in answer to Martin’s prayers and rescues Aegidius and the city from the enemy. The demon is forced to report this to the people at Tours. Line 136 repeats the theme of torture introduced in the opening lines  106–10. The  language of possession and judicial torture here and in the passage as a whole clearly refers to the ritual of exorcism, as can be seen from descriptions elsewhere in the poem.18 Here a passage from Book 2 provides a helpful parallel: Interea subito turbantur cuncta tumultu moenia. Barbaricos adfert fama inproba motus, spargens innumeros per credula corda pavores. Nec tamen extabat rumoris nuntius huius, ut prolata fides manifesto auctore pateret. Ergo ubi tam dubiis motari incendia rebus vidit et incerto populos terrore teneri, imperat ut clausus captivo in corpore daemon proderet, unde novam sparsisset fabula famam. Protinus inpulsus verbo tortore fateri se causam clamat crimenque caputque malorum: semet cum sociis istaec mendacia larvis sevisse, ut trepidam premerent formidine plebem. Ergo haec fallacis confessio vera latronis absolvit maestas cruciato daemone mentes.19

605

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p. 69); see Courcelle, Histoire littéraire, p. 173 at n. 172. Étienne Griffe, La Gaule chrétienne à l’époque romaine, III: La cité chrétienne (Paris, 1965), pp. 248–49; Labarre, Le manteau partagé, p. 21. However, Griffe mistakenly took sancte in line 145 as referring to Perpetuus, and “praesenti … patrono” as referring to Martin. Pietri, La ville de Tours, p. 141, also appears to take it in this way. From “praesenti … patrono” Petschenig, Carmina, pp. 183–84, unnecessarily posited the existence of yet another character in the account. Excluding the two dedicatory prose letters to Perpetuus, in Paulinus’s poetry all occur­rences of sanctus in the vocative are found in addresses by the author to Martin (VSM 3.359, ed. Petschenig, p. 77; 3.411–12, p. 79; 4.292, p. 92; 5.373–74, p. 120). Note also lines 76–77 in Paulinus’s votive poem De visitatione nepotuli sui, ed. Petschenig, p. 164. 18  “Extortum a Domino coguntur dicere verum!” (line  108); “Quae poena est manifesta loqui! Praeceptio vocem / elicit et cedit mandato obpressa voluntas” (109–10); “Gestorum seriem captivo e corpore prompsit” (130); “Invitum hostem non fallere poena coegit” (136); “Et cogis trepidum tua vota fateri” (146); “Reus astat” (147). Compare VSM 2.611, ed. Petschenig, p. 57; 616, p. 58; 5.401–32, pp. 121– 22; 6.39–70, pp. 140–41. See Brown, The Cult of the Saints, pp. 108–10; Jacques Fontaine, “Démons et sibylles: la peinture des possédés dans la poésie de Prudence,” in Hommages à Jean Bayet (Brussels, 1964), pp. 196–213, at 197–99. 19  VSM 2.602–16, ed.  Petschenig, p.  58. The  passage reworks Sulpicius Severus, V.  Mart.  18.1–2, ed. Jacques Fontaine, Sulpice Sévère: Vie de saint Martin, vol. 1, Sources chrétiennes 133 (Paris, 1967), p. 292: “Interea cum de motu atque impetu barbarorum subita civitatem fama turbasset daemoniacum ad se exhiberi iubet: imperat ut an verus esset hic nuntius fateretur. Tum confessus est decem daemonas

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Meanwhile, the entire walled city is thrown into confusion by a sudden tumult. A persistent rumor reports barbarian movement, spreading innumerable fears through credulous hearts. And yet the messenger of this rumor does not show himself, so that a confirmation, offered by [the rumor’s] originator brought to light, may be accessible. Therefore, as soon as he sees the flames [of panic] being set in motion by such dubious matters, and sees the people being held by an uncertain terror, [Martin] orders that the demon enclosed in a captive body come forth; from which the tale had spread the new rumor. Forthwith, having been compelled by the word of his torturer to confess, he cries out that he was the cause; the crime was his and he was the source of the evils: he cries that he himself with his fellow spirits had sown these very lies, in order that he might oppress the alarmed people with dread. Therefore this true confession of the deceitful thief [extracted] by means of a tortured demon, freed their sorrowful minds.

What the living Martin did in Book 2 to dispel a false rumor, he continues to do at his shrine in Book 6, only now as a heavenly intercessor, working together with Perpetuus as exorcist.20 However, whereas the passage in Book 2 is concerned chiefly with expossecum fuisse qui rumorem hunc per populum dispersissent ut hoc saltim metu ex illo Martinus oppido fugaretur: barbaros nihil minus quam de irruptione cogitare. Ita cum haec inmundus spiritus in media ecclesia fateretur metu et turbatione praesenti civitas liberata est.” (“Meanwhile, as a sudden rumor of barbarian movement and attack had thrown the city into confusion, he orders that a demoniac be brought into his presence: he commands him to say whether this message was true or not. Then he confessed that ten demons with himself had been the ones who had spread this rumor throughout the people, in order that at least by means of this fear, Martin might be put to flight from that city: not at all were the barbarians thinking of an invasion. Thus, when the unclean spirit spoke these things in the middle of the church, was the city freed from its present fear and disturbance.”) Paulinus’s version is careful to highlight that it is the exorcistic torture that guarantees the demon’s truth-telling. 20  This last point is based on Paulinus’s mention of his “present patron” in his address to Martin in line 145 (“praesenti sociatus, sancte, patrono”). While Paulinus does not explicitly say that Perpetuus was involved in the judicial torture and interrogation (exorcism) of the demon described in the passage, it is far more likely that he interrogated the demon than that he received unprompted testimony in mute silence. Paulinus describes the bishop in VSM 6.29–30, ed. Petschenig, pp. 134–40, as someone who was not likely to accept everything he heard without asking questions: “Non famae incertum narrat nec credulus auras / rumorum attentas properat vulgare per aures. / Coram visa probat, testis fidissimus adstat, / inspecta adsertor fidei miracula prodit, luminibus oblata suis et tradita votis.” Furthermore, aside from the strong language of judicial torture in the passage, lines 109–10 suggest a scene with audible verbal commands on the part of the one exorcising: “Quae poena est manifesta loqui! Praeceptio vocem / elicit et cedit mandato obpressa voluntas.” Compare these with verses 6.39–45, ed. Petschenig, p. 140, introducing accounts of those cured from possession at the shrine. Note the similar language with the observation that the “judge” of the procedings is visible, while the “impious enemy” is not seen: “Iam vero obsessos furioso a daemone sensus / huc vocat auxilium, rapit huc curatio velox. / Sistuntur trepidantque rei. Confessio clamat / extorta imperio. Sub iudice poena salubris / cernitur, et proprias alieno in corpore voces / edere pervasor captivo ex ore iubetur. / Sentitur iudex nec cernitur impius hostis.” The following scholars have also read Paulinus to mean that Perpetuus was participating as exorcist: Courcelle, Histoire littéraire, p. 173 at n. 172; Griffe, La Gaule chrétienne, pp. 248–49; Labarre, Le manteau partagé, p. 21.

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ing mendacious demonic rumors,21 the account of the siege of Arles is concerned with the use of demons to gather accurate information about a distant event. As for the flight of the demon from Arles to Tours in lines 126–35, two important texts from the late fourth and early fifth centuries help contextualize Paulinus’s rhetorical depiction of demonic travel. In Athanasius’s Life of Antony 31–34, Antony warns his monks not to be impressed by demons that claim to foretell the future. That they sometimes appear to do so is owed to their subtle aerial bodies, which give them great speed. They can outrun monks travelling homeward and thus appear to foretell their arrival to their confrères.22 A demon in Ethiopia observes the waters of the Blue Nile rising due to heavy rains, and runs ahead to tell those downstream in Egypt that the Nile will flood, all to gain men’s trust and admiration.23 In his De divinatione daemonum, written sometime between 406 and 411,24 Augustine elaborates on this and other causes of demonic prophecy: Daemonum eam esse naturam, ut aërii corporis sensu terrenorum corporum sensum facile praecedant, celeritate etiam propter eiusdem aërii corporis superiorem mobilitatem non solum cursus quorumlibet hominum vel ferarum, verum etiam volatus avium incomparabiliter vincant. Quibus duabus rebus, quantum ad aerium corpus attinet, praediti, hoc est acrimonia sensus et celeritate motus, multo ante cognita praenuntiant vel nuntiant, quae homines pro sensus terreni tarditate mirentur.25 Such is the nature of demons, that they are able easily to surpass the perceptive ability of earthbound bodies by means of the perceptive ability of an aerial body. Also on account of the superior mobility of the same aerial body, they are incomparably superior in speed to the courses not only of any man or animal, but even the flights of birds. Endowed with these two features in respect to that which concerns the aerial body, that is, with sharpness of sense and speed of movement, they foretell or announce many things already perceived by them, which men marvel at on account of the slowness of their earthbound sense.

Like Athanasius, then, Augustine holds that demons’ supposed ability to tell the future is to be attributed to their superior speed, a concomitant of the aerial nature of their bodies.26 Paulinus compares the truly supernatural prophetic gifts of Martin with the torture-induced confessions of demons, who can only report what they can find out by means of their natural gifts. See VSM 2.204–207, ed. Petschenig, p. 42; 3.135–51, pp. 68–69; 173–76, pp. 69–70; 200–203, p. 71; Jacques Fontaine, Sulpice Sévère: Vie de saint Martin, vol. 2, Sources chrétiennes 134 (Paris, 1968), pp. 856–62. 22  Athanasius, Life of Antony 31, ed.  Gerard J.  M. Bartelink, Athanase d’Alexandrie. Vie d’Antoine, Sources chrétiennes 400 (Paris, 2004), pp. 220–22. 23  Athanasius, Life of Antony 32, ed. Bartelink, pp. 222–24. 24  Ruth Wentworth Brown, Saint Augustine: Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects (Washington, 1955), p. 418. 25  De divinatione daemonum 3.7, ed. Joseph Zycha, CSEL 41 (Vienna, 1900), p. 603. 26  In addition to their speed, demons become skilled in prognostication through observation of nature, and have knowledge of the prophecies revealed by God in the Holy Scriptures. Augustine later 21 

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Paulinus’s rhetorical expansion on the flight of the demon illustrates this demonic trait of speed found in Athanasius and Augustine and develops it. In Paulinus, the demon is not only faster than the wind; he is so fast that no loss of time can be perceived by men, thereby making the demoniac serve as a kind of two-way radio for the exorcist, who has an on-site witness to the siege of Arles. A random (“aliquis forte”) demon at Arles is drawn by the power of God to Tours (lines 126–28). The demon surpasses the swift winds in its flight across the breezes and the clouds (line 129). Although travelling from 462 miles away, or a journey of over ten days by foot, the demon reports to the anxious populace of Tours through the mouth of a demoniac “at that very moment, at the same time, that the city has been saved from the siege through Martin’s prayer, and that God had granted to Martin both the safety of the people and that of their military leader” (lines 130–33). The simultaneity of the demon’s report at Tours with the events at Arles is later confirmed by a messenger: “It was that same day, at the same hour, with the order of events as related unchanged in respect to every detail; and the punishment compelled the unwilling enemy not to lie” (lines 134–135).” And “hardly any differently, and entirely according to the very order of things, did the herald come, announcing that that city had been freed from such a great siege … These things too did the calculation by means of the hours passed reveal to have been completed and reported, as the matter showed, down to the very second” (lines 139–51).27 Paulinus stresses the supernatural character of the events not only in his description of their timing, but also in the reliability of the demon’s message. Certainly demons are not to be trusted, liars that they are, but with the application of exorcistic torture, the truth can be obtained. The theme of God’s forcing an unwilling instrument of His purpose is further illustrated by Paulinus’s Balaam simile in lines 137–49 (nestled around a brief ekphrasis of the pons navalis at Arles). Just as God prevented Balaam from fulfilling the wishes of Balak to curse Israel, making Balaam bless Israel instead,28 so does God’s power made manifest in the rite of exorcism at the shrine prevent the demon from telling lies, forcing him rather to tell the truth about the victory of Aegidius’s forces obtained through Martin’s prayers.29 adds a fourth method: demons foretell events which they themselves intend to bring about (De  div. daem. 5.9, ed. Zycha, pp. 607–608). 27  For the calculation motif see Athanasius, Life of Antony, 60.10, ed. Bartelink, pp. 296–98, and 61.3, pp. 298–300. 28  Num. 22–25. 29  The figure of Balaam was somewhat of an embarassment to some of the Fathers, who had to reconcile his bad reputation as the seducer of Israel with his valid prophecy regarding the Star of Bethlehem. Solutions ran the gamut from an inwardly contrite cooperative Balaam to an instrumentalized Balaam temporarily possessed by the Spirit of God. See Judith R. Baskin, “Origen on Balaam: The Dilemma of the Unworthy Prophet,” Vigiliae Christianae 37 (1983), 22–35; Robert M. Berchman, “Arcana Mundi

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The episode is a strange one, certainly. Yet it is of great significance for the question of how the Church dealt with demonic revelations made at shrines. We should recall that this episode, like all the miracles in Book 6 of the VSM, is a versification of Perpetuus’s collection of miracles at Martin’s shrine. Perpetuus was no obscure or marginal figure in the Gallic Church. A wealthy and cultured aristocrat, he was a correspondent of Sidonius Apollinaris, whom he had commissioned to compose an epigram for the new basilica of Martin.30 For thirty years he was the metropolitan of Ludgunum III, and presided over the councils of Tours (I)31 and Vannes, the latter of which is of particular relevance to the present discussion. At this council, Perpetuus and the suffragan bishops had occasion to condemn harshly certain divinatory practices among the clergy of the time: Ac ne id fortasse videatur omissum, quod maxime fidem catholicae religionis infestat, quod aliquanti clerici student auguriis et sub nomine confictae religionis, quas sanctorum sortes vocant, divinationis scientiam profitentur, aut quarumcumque scripturarum inspectione futura promittunt, hoc quicumque clericus detectus fuerit vel consulere vel docere, ab ecclesia habeatur extraneus.32 And lest perchance it should appear that we have omitted a matter which does great injury to the Catholic religion, to wit, the fact that some clerics study auguries and under the name of a confected ritual they call “the lot of the Saints” profess a knowledge of divination, or predict future things by the inspection of whatever writings: If any cleric be found either to seek consultations or to give answers this way, let him be considered outside the Church.

The canon is specific in condemning augury as well as the consultation of texts with the purpose of foretelling the future by clerics professing “knowledge of divination.” However, as witnessed by our passage from Paulinus, reliance upon the confirmed testimony of demoniacs did not seem to have bothered Perpetuus. Why? The answer, I would suggest, is that by the time of Perpetuus, the Church in Gaul at least had already adapted the practice of seeking information from the possessed to make it fit within a Christian worldview. Before presenting the sources that plausibly suggest such a “domestication” between Balaam and Hecate: Prophecy, Divination, and Magic in Later Platonism,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1989 Seminar Papers, ed. David J. Lull (Atlanta, 1989), pp. 122–34. The relevance of the story in the present context lies in God’s repeated threats and the intimidation of Balaam (via verbal warnings and the angel with the drawn sword), rather than the possession of the recalcitrant by God’s Spirit. It is the demon who is speaking under duress. 30  Gregory of Tours, Hist. 10.31 (vi), ed. Krusch and Levison, pp. 529–31; Sidonius, Ep. 4.18, ed. Luetjohann, pp. 68–70 (to Lucontius); 7.9, pp. 112–17 (to Perpetuus). 31  Charles Munier, ed. Concilia Galliae A. 314 – A. 506, CCSL 148 (Turnhout, 1963), p. 147. 32  Canon 16, ed. Munier, p. 156. The Bible need not be included in the phrase “quarumcumque scripturarum.” See Robert Wiśniewski, “Pagans, Jews, Christians, and a Type of Book Divination in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 24 (2016), 553–68; Naoki Kamimura, “The Consultation of Books and the Mediator: The Sortes in Augustine,” Studia Patristica 70 (2013), 305–15.

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of a wild and unregulated practice of the early cult of the saints, it would be helpful to examine some texts that could have provided its theoretical framework. So, how might one have brought the obtaining of occult information from demons into the purview of respectable fifth-century Christianity? Returning to Augustine’s De divinatione daemonum, with the help of his similar yet more developed treatment of demons in the De civitate Dei, a possible line of argument could have been developed from Augustine’s attacks on the Neoplatonic assertion that demons are worthy of men’s worship.33 In his De divinatione daemonum, Augustine lists, in addition to greater speed, a greater acuteness of sense and greater experiential knowledge as traits possessed by demons due to their aerial bodies – traits which permit them to make predictions and perform acts which make men marvel, and trick them into worshiping demons as gods.34 Augustine proceeds to dismantle each of these causes of human wonder by commonsense appeals to man’s rational rule over the animal world, and his moral relations with other men. Augustine centers his attack on the first two traits of acuteness of sense and speed by drawing examples from the world of animals, who impress us with their excellence in body or instinct by which they often surpass us in keenness of sense perception and speed. As for the demons’ keen sense perception, although we may be amazed at the dog’s sense of smell, the sharp eyesight of the eagle and vulture, and the astonishing instinct by which grazing animals avoid poisonous plants, we do not, for all that, consider them superior to us.35 Closely related to this argument, and most relevant to the passage from Paulinus, is Augustine’s attack on the second demonic trait of speed. Having dismissed the superior sense perception of demons as making them worthy of human worship, he states the following: Hoc et de corporum celeritate dixerim. Et hac enim praestantia non solum a volucribus homines, verum etiam a multis quadrupedibus ita superantur, ut in eorum comparatione plumbei deputati sint; nec tamen ideo sibi haec animantium genera existimant

Vincent Hunink, “Apuleius, Qui Nobis Afris Afer Est Notior: Augustine’s Polemic Against Apuleius in De Civitate Dei,” Scholia: Studies in Classical Antiquity 12 (2003), 82–95; Wolfgang Bernard, “Zur ­Dämonologie des Apuleius von Madaura,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 137 (1994), 358–73. 34  De div. daem. 3.8, ed. Zycha, p. 604: “Per has efficacias, quas aërii corporis natura sortita est, non solum multa futura praedicunt daemones, verum etiam multa mira faciunt. Quae quoniam homines dicere et ac facere non possunt, eos dignos quidam, quibus serviant et quibus divinos honores deferant, arbitrantur instigante maxime vitio curiositatis propter amorem felicitatis falsae atque terrenae excellentiae temporalis.” (“On account of these abilities which the nature of an aerial body has been allotted, demons not only foretell many future things, but also perform many wonders. And because men are not able to say or do such things, some think them worthy to be worshipped and offered divine honors. They do this principally at the instigation of the vice of curiosity, on account of a love of a false happiness and of a temporal earthly excellence.”) 35  De divin. daem. 3.7, ed. Zycha, p. 605. 33 

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praeponenda, quibus capiendis, mansuefaciendis atque in suae voluntatis usum commodumque redigendis non vi corporis, sed rationis imperant.36 I would say this also regarding the swiftness of their bodies. For indeed men also by this excellence are so far surpassed not only by birds, but even by many four–footed animals, that when compared with them, human beings are thought to be made of lead; yet not on this account do men think that the races of animals are to be held in higher esteem to themselves; by capturing them, domesticating them, and subordinating them for the use and convenience of their own will, men command authority over them not by force of the body, but by the power of reason.

In this passage Augustine points out that not only do men not consider some animals superior to themselves because of their greater speed, but they rule over them by the power of reason manifested in capturing, domesticating, and subjecting such animals to human use and convenience. Augustine’s comparison of demonic activity to the animal world also features in his discussion of the nature of demons found in Book 8 of the De civitate Dei. Augustine’s treatment of the nature of demons in the De civitate Dei receives its main impetus from his polemic against the Neoplatonic doctrine of Apuleius of Madaura, principally as expounded in the De deo Socratis. As noted by others,37 in the De civitate Dei Augustine quotes Apuleius more than any other pagan author. Apuleius’s synthesis of the Neoplatonic teaching on demons, especially as objects of human worship, was something Augustine took great pains to address and oppose in Books 8 and 9. In De civ. Dei 8.14 Augustine introduces the Neoplatonic teaching that all living beings possessing rational souls are divided into three groups: the gods, demons, and men. According to this scheme, as related by Augustine, all three are divided according to a moral and local hierarchy. The gods inhabit the upper heavens, the demons the air, and men the earth, and enjoy a greater or lesser dignity in relation to each other according to that order. The two traits which the gods, demons, and men share are the possession of rational intelligence and membership in the genus “animal.” As regards the relationship of men to demons, in addition to rational intelligence and membership in the genus animal, both are subject to the passions. This is what makes both demons and men inferior to the gods. Men are inferior to demons in that they possess mortal and earthbound bodies, while demons have aerial ones, and dwell in the air in closer proximity to the gods. Augustine attacks this system by focusing on the perversity of the demons’ will, a fact he introduces on the external authority of Scripture, but makes more persuasive by an illustration of certain internal flaws in Apuleius’s animal hierarchy.38 De divin. daem. 3.7, ed.  Zycha, p.  605. Compare De divers. quaest. 13, ed.  Almut Mutzenbecher, CCSL 44A (Turnhout, 1975), p. 20. 37  Bernard, “Zur Dämonologie,” p. 358 at n. 352. 38  De civ. Dei 8.15–21, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, 4th ed., 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1928–1929), 1:343–53. Augustine challenges the suitability of the demons as intercessors between the gods and men. 36 

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Augustine is willing to concede to Apuleius that demons share intelligence with men, and are, as such, like men, rational, passionate, animals. However, Augustine, committed as he is to Christian teaching on the evil nature of the fallen angels, which he equates with the demons, and their enmity to God and to all that is holy or good, refuses to see demons as equal to men, since their intelligence is directed by a will bent only on wickedness.39 Their evil and perverse will allows Augustine, as it were, to “de-humanize” the demons. By discounting their possession of intelligence, he effectively leaves man as the only rational animal worth consideration. Augustine’s partial dismantling of Apuleius’s cosmology allows him to wed Neoplatonic demonology to a theological framework wherein Christ and his followers have taken Satan and his minions captive.40 This narrative of demons as imprisoned criminals fits well enough with the idea of demons as rational, though depraved, animals, beings not worthy of equal standing with good men. Yet, Augustine rhetorically moves the demons below even this level of servitude when countering the admitted advantages and superiority of their aerial bodies by comparing them to simple animals.41 Augustine’s arguments against manifestations of demonic power in the De divinatione daemonum and De civitate Dei draw upon an established Christian tradition of the banalization of demonic activity,42 a sort of proto-Entmythologisierung meant to tell his readers “nothing to see here, folks.” At first sight so-called demonic prophecy is impressive, yes, but it can be reduced to two perfectly explainable data of late antique man’s knowledge of the world around him, viz. the aerial body which men do not have in common with demons, and malicious pride and a desire to deceive, which many evil men do have in common with demons. Demonic attempts to tell the future come from their desire to beguile men into worshiping them, but all they can do is report on past or present events unknown to their audience, and prognosticate or guess about the

Vincent Hunink, “Apuleius,” p. 92 at n. 36, appears to miss the point of Augustine’s criticism of demonic love of the theater and the poets. The fact that Apuleius does not mention this in the De deo Socratis is irrelevant because Plato, the father of Apuleius’s philosophical system, does. The criticism is a fair one. 39  Augustine briefly dismisses the fact that demons possess intelligence, since men possess it as well. That this could arguably make them at least our equals in estimation is not even considered. His focus is on their malign character (De civ. Dei 8.15, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 1:232, and 8.16, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 1:233–34; compare De divin. daem. 4.8, ed. Zycha, pp. 606–607). 40  Tertullian, Apol. 23.12–18, ed. Eligius Dekkers, CCSL 1 (Turnhout, 1954), pp. 132–33; Augustine, De divin. daem. 7.11, ed. Zycha, p. 611: “Fugantur enim isti vel etiam iussis superioribus conligati abstrahantur et alienantur a locis suis, ut de rebus, quibus dominabantur quibusque colebantur, fiat voluntas Dei, qui hoc tanto ante per omnes gentes futurum esse praedixit et, ut per suos fideles fieret, imperavit.” 41  Occasionally he refers to them as animals tout court. See De ord. 2.9.27, ed. Pius Knöll, CSEL 63 (Vienna, 1922), p.  166; C.  Acad. 1.7.20, ed.  Knöll, pp.  18–19; De  Gen. ad litt. 3.9.13, ed.  Joseph Zycha, CSEL 28.1 (Vienna, 1894), pp. 71–2. 42  Athanasius, Life of Antony 31–33, ed. Bartelink, pp. 220–28.

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future. Even in doing this they can be wrong, since God often decrees that events will turn out differently than what even the most clever of His creatures would expect.43 Returning to our passage in Book 6 of the VSM, it is clear that Paulinus’s extended depiction of the demon’s travel and speaking through the mouth of the possessed wretch is not a gratuitous exercise in rhetorical amplificatio. Rather, it represents a careful illustration of the fact that the demon had no true knowledge of the future at all, but merely related information gained by his own observation, information he could relay as a swift informant who can fly faster than the wind. Other details from the episode reflect the theological point that demons do not possess the divine power to see things that have not yet occurred. Paulinus’s depiction of the demon’s expectations being foiled by God through Martin’s prayers cleverly underscores that the ghoul couldn’t see what was coming (lines 126–28, 147–49). Paulinus’s repeated mentions of the simultaneity of the events at Arles with the words from the demoniac not only adds color to his depiction of demonic speed, but serve to limit the scope of its knowledge to the immediate past and present (134–35, 139–51). Paulinus’s depiction of the demon’s despicable bloodlust (126–27, 147–48) and deceitful nature (107–108, 136) fits well with Augustine’s and Antony’s take on the character of demons. The extensive use of the language of judicial torture (106–10, 136–38, 146–49) makes clear to the reader that demonic utterances are not to be trusted except under the interrogation of exorcists. Even then, one should seek outside confirmation (139–40, 150–51). Our passage thus represents a theologically justified account of the exorcistic interrogation of a demoniac about distant events. Its very inclusion in such an important episcopal record of miracles supports the argument that the Church in Gaul had found in patristic lore on the nature of demons a coherent framework for dealing with demoniac revelations at the shrines where they gathered in number. The theologically correct depiction of the scope of the demon’s knowledge excludes the vision of things which will come to pass, thus removing all infringements upon the prerogatives of divine providence – the sin at the heart of divination.44 Relevant to Robert Wiśniewski’s research is the fact that a demoniac’s confirmed revelation was considered so significant that Perpetuus chose to include it in his miracle collection. What was special about the episode was not that a demon revealed hidden information, for the opening lines of the pericope (106–108) indicate that this was a regular phenomenon, but that the revelation involved facts that could be, and were, De divin. daem. 4.10, ed.  Zycha, p.  609: “In ceteris autem suis praedicationibus daemones plerumque falluntur et fallunt. Falluntur quidem, quia, cum suas dispositiones praenuntiant, ex improviso desuper aliquid iubetur, quod eorum consilia cuncta perturbet.” 44  De divin. daem. 6.10–11, ed. Zycha, pp. 608–11; Athanasius, Life of Antony 31, ed. Bartelink, pp. 220– 22; 33–34, pp. 224–28. 43 

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confirmed by investigation, a quality highlighted in examples of acceptable forms of Christian prophecy such as Athanasius’s depictions of heavenly revelations made to Antony.45 Paulinus’s depiction of demoniac revelation in VSM 6.106–51 reveals not only a “theologically correct” assessment of the phenomenon, but indicates a practice that was thoroughly under episcopal control. While the miracle does not directly involve the phenomenon of lay people going to consult the possessed at a shrine (the main object of Wiśniewski’s research), it does provide a learned and sophisticated depiction of ecclesiastical authorities controlling the narrative of demonic revelation. Paulinus’s retelling, for all its wild imagery, does a good job of adapting demonic revelation to the theological commitments of Catholicism at the time, providing the proper theoretical boundaries whereby the interrogation of a demoniac regarding far-away events did not need to be seen as divinatio.46 One is led to ask, however, whether Paulinus’s orthodox depiction of demonic revelation, as well as Perpetuus’s use of exorcism for quality control, represents a one-off literary clean-up of an overly curious bishop being naughty, or if the Church in Gaul really had control over the phenomenon of demoniac prediction. Wiśniewski rightly noted the lack of ecclesiastical legislation regarding the consultation of the possessed. But the Gallic Councils from the fourth to the early sixth centuries had plenty to say about the possessed in the life of the Christian community. The First Council of Arausicanum (a. 441), about twenty five years before the composition of Book 6 of the VSM, mandates that baptized energumens who gave themselves to the care of the clergy were to receive holy communion as a remedy for their condition.47 The following canon states that energumens in the catechumenate were to be counseled concerning baptism.48 The Statuta ecclesiae antiqua (a. 442–506), encompassing the years of Perpetuus’s episcopate, contain legislation requiring exorcists daily to lay hands upon the demoniacs, and to feed them.49 Finally, the clergy were required to put the demoniacs to work sweeping the floors of the churches.50 This legislation indicates that demoniacs at the shrines in Gaul, at least, were not free-lance operators, but were under the care and supervision of the clergy.51 They were cared for bodily and spiritually every day by exorcists who had charge over them. Athanasius, Life of Antony 60–61, ed. Bartelink, pp. 294–300. See Matt. 8.5–13; Jn. 4.46–54. A dirty word according to Jerome, especially when money is involved: see Comm. Mich.  1.3, ed. Marc Adriaen, CCSL 76 (Turnhout, 1969), p. 463. 47  Canon 13, ed. Munier, p. 82. 48  Canon 14, ed. Munier, ibid. 49  Canons 62, 64, ed. Munier, p. 176. 50  Canon 63, ed. Munier, ibid. 51  Wiśniewski, “La consultation des possédés,” pp. 145–46, cites all the above legislation as proof of the permanent presence of the possessed at shrines, but he does not address the implications of their being under the care of Church staff. 45 

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In this scenario, it is unlikely that any one energumen at a shrine could have set himself up as an oracle-like diviner. Outbursts of a revelatory character, whether spontaneous or otherwise, were undoubtedly addressed by the demoniacs’ exorcist caregivers, who would determine their importance or significance. The text of our passage is the fruit of a patristic synthesis of Neoplatonic demonology and Christian revelation. Considered within the context of a contemporary canonical legislation that aimed at the domestication of the demonically possessed, the passage makes most sense as an illustration of a well known method of managing demonic revelations.

Timing in Avitus’s De spiritalis historiae gestis Amy Oh Skidmore College Avitus of Vienne narrates salvation history from the creation of the world through the crossing of the Red Sea in the five books of his biblical epic De spiritalis historiae gestis (hereafter SHG).1 His narrative is not strictly chronological and so allows him to focus on thematically linked stories with a view to emphasizing Christ’s coeternal presence with God and reminding readers of man’s fallibility and consequent need for salvation.2 Literary critics and historians alike3 have noted that Avitus’s theology informs the themes underlying the SHG, but none has yet focused on Avitus’s emphasis on time.4 The opening of the SHG establishes a cyclical prelapsarian sense of time that becomes linear after original sin. Subsequently, man must choose whether he will live for the present or live in accordance with his faith and in fear of future consequences.5 Avitus develops these two options in Book 2 by juxtaposing Eve and Lot’s wife with Adam and Lot. In doing so, Avitus instructs his readers on how to think about the past as it affects our present and to imagine our futures after death. This paper concludes by considering the source of Avitus’s lesson plan, Augustine.

Time and Structure In order to alert readers to his agenda and, in part, his method of delivery, Avitus ­begins in his present: Quidquid agit varios humana in gente labores, unde brevem carpunt mortalia tempora vitam, I cite the text from Nicole Hecquet-Noti, Avit de Vienne, Histoire spirituelle, 2 vols., Sources Chrétiennes 444, 492 (Paris, 1999–2005). Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 2  For background on Avitus and his participation in contemporary theological debates over orthodox Christology, see Daniel Nodes, Doctrine and Exegesis in Biblical Latin Poetry (Leeds, 1993), especially pp. 57–73. Avitus’s attention to the fall of man and man’s need for salvation is Augustinian at its core: see Daniel Nodes, “Avitus of Vienne’s Spiritual History and the Semipelagian Controversy. The Doctrinal Implications of Books I–III,” Vigiliae Christianae 38 (1984), 185–95; Ian Wood, “Avitus of Vienne, the Augustinian Poet,” in Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul: Revisiting the Sources, ed. Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 263–77. 3  And sometimes together: see Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood, Avitus of Vienne: Letters and Selected Prose (Liverpool, 2002), especially pp. 10–13. 4  See Hecquet-Noti, Avit de Vienne, 1:51–73, for a breakdown of Avitus’s other narrative techniques. 5  For an introduction to Book 1, see Hecquet-Noti, Avit de Vienne, 1:111–25. Further commentary on Book 1 can be found in Luca Morisi, Alcimi Aviti De mundi initio. Introduzione, testo, traduzione e commento (Bologna, 1996). 1 

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vel quod polluti vitiantur origine mores, quos aliena premunt priscorum facta parentum, addatur quamquam nostra de parte reatus, quod tamen amisso dudum peccatur honore, adscribam tibi, prime pater, qui semine mortis tollis succiduae vitalia germina proli.6 Whatever brings forth the various types of human suffering, the reason why mortal time snatches life too soon, or the fact that our polluted nature continues rotting from its origin, shaped by the deeds of our ancestors long ago, although we do our part to add to the guilt because we still sin after our honor was lost – I shall ascribe these things to you, our first father, you, who, from the seed of death, raise the living offshoots of a doomed race.

Opening with the consequences of original sin is innovative and programmatic:7 the effect of the past upon the present will be a through-line in the SHG. In the second line, Avitus qualifies tempora with the adjective mortalia. Time became finite, this ­phrasing suggests, as the direct result of original sin. Augustine, whom Avitus read closely, ­provides our author with the inspiration for this epic’s initial premise.8 In the rest of the opening, Avitus argues that humans now continue to be affected by what happened then; the chronological distance does not matter. Note Avitus’s use of the present tense: agit, carpunt, vitiantur, premunt, additur, peccatur.9 The juxtaposition of these verbs to the participles in lines 3 and 6 is particularly effective; both participial constructions, Avitus, SHG 1.1–8, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:126, with her dashes removed from line 5. It is worth comparing Avitus’s version with those of the other poets who treat Genesis. See Dracontius, De laud. 1.1–2, ed. Friedrich Vollmer, Poetae Latini Minores V (Stuttgart, 1914), p. 1: “Qui cupit iratum placidumve scire tonantem, / hoc carmen, sed mente legat, dum voce recenset” (“Whoever desires to know the angry or calm thunderer may read this poem, but let him read it with his mind while he goes over it with his voice”); Claudius Marius Victor, Alethia praef. 2, ed. Pieter F. Hovingh, CCSL 128 (Turnhout, 1960), p. 125: “Omnipotens, quem nec subtili indagine rerum / mentibus humanis sensu comprendere fas est” (“The Almighty, whom it is not right for human minds to comprehend with their understanding by subtle investigation”); the Heptateuch poet, Gen. 1, ed. Rudolf Peiper, Cypriani Galli poetae Heptateuchos, CSEL 23 (Vienna, 1881), p. 1: “Principio dominus caelum terramque locavit” (“In the beginning, the Lord established heaven and earth”). See Nodes, “Avitus of Vienne’s Spiritual History,” p. 186. 8  For example, all of De civ. Dei 13 discusses how death was the punishment for man’s first sin; see also De corr. et gratia 12.33, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, PL 44 (Paris, 1865), col. 936. 9  Avitus expresses the importance of tense usage in his exegesis elsewhere. See, for example, C. Arr. 13, ed. Rudolf Peiper, MGH AA 6 (Berlin, 1883), p. 6: “Ipse certe per se dominus ‘spiritum,’ inquit, ‘veritatis, qui a patre procedit.’ Enimvero non dicendo ‘processit,’ sed ‘procedit,’ non tempus procedentis docuit, sed praeterito futuroque submoto sub interminabilis aeternitate praesentiae virtutem processionis ostendit; ut sicut est proprium spiritui sancto a patre filioque procedere, istud catholica fides, etiamsi renuentibus non persuaserit, in suae tamen disciplinae regula non excedat” (“The Lord himself with his own lips certainly mentioned ‘the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father.’ By saying ‘proceedeth’ rather than ‘proceeded’ he did not teach of a time when he proceeded, but by removing the past and the future demonstrated the power of his procession, which occurs in an eternity of never-ending present time, so that, just as it is the nature of the Holy Ghost to proceed from the Father and the Son, even if the 6  7 

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polluti…mores and amisso…honore, envelop the present, finite verbs, suggesting that the circumstantial actions of the past are incomplete without the present consequence. To add a third temporal layer to his opening, Avitus chooses to discuss Christ before he starts his salvation history:10 Et licet hoc totum Christus persolverit in se, contraxit quantum percussa in stirpe propago: attamen auctoris vitio, qui debita leti instituit morbosque suis ac funera misit, vivit peccati moribunda in carne cicatrix.11 Of course Christ paid off our debt in full, however much our race owed, damaged as it was at the root: but nevertheless, because of the sin of our ancestor, who set up our payments of death and cast disease and destruction upon his descendants, the deadly scar of sin lives on in our flesh.

This first appearance of Christ, before the main narrative begins, acts as a salve for the harsh reality of the world that Avitus describes in the opening. Looking more closely at the passage above, we notice the careful shifts in tense once again: persolverit, contraxit, instituit, misit to conclude with the present vivit. As much as we may toil now, Christ has paid for our sins with his life so that we may eventually be redeemed. This proleptic interruption establishes Christ as a figurative and literal middle step between our lives and the certainty of future salvation. In what follows, God creates Adam, with his senses, sinews, and, finally, his soul. Next, Adam is put to sleep so that God can create Eve. Avitus interrupts the narrative again with Christ: Istius indicium somni mors illa secuta est, sponte sua subiit sumpto quam corpore Christus. Qui cum passurus ligno sublimis in alto penderet nexus, culpas dum penderet orbis, in latus extensi defixit missile lictor. Protinus exiliens manavit vulnere lympha, qua vivum populis iam tum spondente lavacrum fluxit martyrium signans et sanguinis unda.12 That death, which Christ willingly underwent after he had taken on a human body, followed the example of Adam’s sleep. When he who was to suffer was hanging, nailed aloft Catholic Church does not persuade unbelievers [of the truth of] this, it (sc. the Church) not go beyond [this truth] in its own teaching,” trans. Shanzer and Wood, Avitus, p. 172; supplements theirs). 10  Nodes, Doctrine and Exegesis, p. 62, makes a similar observation, although he does not specifically isolate Avitus’s attention to timing, stating that “such references to Christ’s saving work amid professions of the initial goodness of the Father’s creation abound in the poem.” 11  Avitus, SHG 1.9–13, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:128. 12  Avitus, SHG 1.160–167, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:150.

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on the cross as he was paying for the sins of the world, a soldier drove a spear into the side of his outstretched body. Right away a stream, gushing forth, poured from his wound, promising to the people even then a life-giving bath, and a wave of blood flowed, signifying martyrdom.

Avitus establishes Christ’s presence in the past with a switch to the perfect tense. Salvation was already accomplished once Christ had taken on corporeal form.13 Signaling Christ’s sacrifice at this point alerts readers immediately to the completeness and foregone nature of their future redemption. The digression of Adam’s sleep qua Christ’s death is preceded and followed by the historical narrative in the present tense (pensat in 159 and nectit in 171). Having established a unique approach to the active role that Christ plays within that early history, Avitus continues his biblical retelling and privileges events that relate to each other thematically, creating a new narrative order. Of the five books in the SHG, Books 2–4 each include prominent, calculated digressions, sections of the text where Avitus interrupts the narrative to look ahead to a relevant episode later in the Bible.14 Avitus collapses linear chronology in order to stress the continuity of sin outside of time: humans did/do/will sin which, in turn, stresses the need for Christ then, now, and tomorrow.

Since the Dawn of Time… In addition to manipulating the chronology of events, Avitus pays special attention to how characters progress in their narratives, adapting the rhetoric of delay often found in classical poetry.15 Heroes stride confidently alongside the plot, praised for moving sine mora in the direction of glory; others are prone to impious or inconstant behavior that traps them in a finite narrative.16 By applying the same distinction and See Hecquet-Noti, Avit de Vienne, 1:41, on the Christology of “sumpto … corpore” in line 161. In Book 2, the Adam and Eve narrative is interrupted by the example of Lot and his wife; in Book 3, Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Paradise is juxtaposed with the story of Lazarus and the rich man; ­fi nally, in Book 4, Noah is still at sea during the flood when Avitus introduces a comparison with Jonah. Book 5 treats the crossing of the Red Sea and remains more straightforward than the previous books. For a discussion of the overall unity of the epic, see Hecquet-Noti, Avit de Vienne, vol. 1, pp. 45–51. 15  Morae feature to some degree in all Classical epic poetry, but in Statius’s Thebaid in particular. A very short sample of the scholarship: David Vessey, Statius and the Thebaid (Cambridge 1973), pp. 165– 67; Dennis Feeney, The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1991), pp. 339– 40; Randall Ganiban, Statius and Virgil: The Thebaid and the Reinterpretation of the Aeneid (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 152–75; Rhiannon Ash, “‘War Came in Disarray…’ (Theb. 7.616): Statius and the Depiction of Battle,” in Brill’s Companion to Statius, ed. William Dominik and Kyle Gervais (Leiden, 2015), pp. 207–20. 16  For a discussion of how female characters are often given more recursive roles versus their male counterparts, see Genevieve Lively, “Paraquel Lines: Time and Narrative in Ovid’s Heroides,” in Latin Elegy and Narratology: Fragments of Story, ed. Genevieve Lively and Patricia Salzman-Mitchell (Columbus, 2008), pp. 86–102. 13 

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focusing on timing, Avitus teaches his readers a clear lesson: someone whose faith is constant looks forward to a life beyond the present, a life that has been guaranteed by Christ’s redemption. The faithful and faithless are exemplified by the juxtaposition of Adam and Eve with Lot and Lot’s wife, to whom Avitus devotes much of Book 2. After their creation in Book 1, we find Adam and Eve enjoying the perfect world that God has made.17 Paradise is a perpetual spring.18 Day sinks into night, and plants produce fruit over time, but Paradise does not operate within a linear timeframe. Life alone happens here, with no beginning or end. Adam and Eve do not grow old, and, in their day-to-day existence, never need to wait for their provisions or worry about when anything occurs. Nothing is ever early or late. Vtitur interea venturi nescia casus libertas secura bonis fruiturque beata ubertate loci. Largos hinc porrigit illis tellus prompta cibos: fruticis quin alter opimi sumitur adsiduus tenui de caespite fructus. At si curvati fecundo pondere rami mitia submittunt sublimi ex arbore poma, protinus in florem vacuus turgescere palmes incipit inque novis fetum promittere gemmis.19 Meanwhile their freedom, carefree and ignorant of the disaster to come, makes use of their goods and happily enjoys the richness of Paradise. Here the earth, at the ready, offers them abundant food: moreover, the fruit of the fertile tree is gathered again and again from the soft field. But if the branches, bending from the weight of the crop, let their ripened apples fall from the top of the tree, then straightaway the bare shoot begins to come into bloom and to promise a birth from its new buds.

Paradise does the work for them: the earth is prompta and the fruit of the shrub is adsiduus. If a branch is ready to let go of its fruit, the cycle of growth begins protinus; note especially the inchoative turgescere. Everything in Paradise begins, is in progress, and is ready at the same time. The couple do not need to do anything except enjoy what is on offer – a life similar to those of the angels and a life that we too will experience someday: “[gloriam vitae] qualemque redemptis / spondet reddendam mortis post tempora Christus” (2.27–28). Again, Christ matters in the context of Adam and Eve, for he makes this promise to Avitus and his readers and will make good on that promise in the future so that we all can return to this place where past, present, and future have no meaning. The full description of Paradise is in Avitus, SHG 1.191–298, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:154–66. For the sake of space, I focus on the shorter description of their environment at the start of Book 2 where time works comparably. 18  All of this is conventional and this Golden Age version of Paradise can be found in several of the biblical poets. Comparanda can be found in Hecquet-Noti, Avit de Vienne, 1:186. 19  Avitus, SHG 2.1–9, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:186. 17 

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Two Tickets From Paradise Satan emerges as an intrusive figure, spying on Adam and Eve as they thrive in a Paradise that he will never know. When we meet him, time and timing start to matter. He laments his life until he realizes that he has been wasting his time, delaying, as it were: “Nec differre iuvat; iam nunc certamine blando / congrediar” (2.98–99). He  then hatches a plan to end their access to immortality by convincing them to seek death. He transforms himself into a serpent and slithers, sidling up next to Eve. In the Bible, the entire scene from his approach to her eating of the fruit takes place in six verses (Gen. 3.1–6). Avitus devotes 120 lines to this episode in Book 2 (140–260) and undertakes this expansion to draw out the importance of the scene and to help us understand and sympathize with Eve.20 First we learn that Satan chose Eve for her more susceptible mind.21 Once she gives him her ear, this initial, harmless conversation quickly opens the door to further doubt and wavering, until her sin becomes inevitable. The inevitability is what Avitus draws for his readers as he expands the biblical narrative. Avitus’s approach is unique: Eve could have succumbed easily to Satan here, as she does in the works of other epicists. The Heptateuch poet is the most straightforward: Illa negat vetitosque timet contingere ramos: sed tamen infirmo vincuntur pectora sensu. ilicet ut niveo iam mitia dente momordit …22 She refuses and is afraid to touch the forbidden branches: nevertheless, her heart is conquered by her weak sense. As soon as she bit the fruit with her snow-white teeth …

Claudius Marius Victor makes short work of Eve’s seduction: … Nam credula postquam rupit sacrilegis praescriptum morsibus Eva, experti iam docta mali, solacia culpae quaerit.23 For gullible Eve, after she broke the law with her impious bites, now well-versed in evil, seeks to assuage her guilt. For a broader introduction to and analysis of the seduction of Eve in Avitus, see Siegmar Döpp, Eva und die Schlange: Die Sündenfallschilderung des Epikers Avitus im Rahmen der bibelexegetischen Tradition (Speyer, 2009). See also Paul-Augustin Deproost, “La mise en scène d’un drame intérieur dans le poème Sur le péché originel d’Avit de Vienne,” Traditio 51 (1996), pp. 43–72. 21  The skill with which Avitus explores characters and their psychology does not go without notice. See Karl Forstner, “Zur Bibeldichtung des Avitus von Vienne,” in Symmicta philologica Salisburgensia Georgio Pfligersdorffer sexagenario oblata, ed. Joachim Dalfen and Karl Forstner (Rome, 1980), pp. 43–60. 22  Gen. 81–83, ed. Peiper, p. 4. 23  Alethia 1.411–414, ed. Hovingh, p. 143. 20 

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Dracontius is equally brisk: Insidiosus adit heu mollia corda puellae: ingerit ore cibos crudeli funere plenos. His semel assumptis reserantur lumina cordis ac permixta bonis patuit doctrina malorum.24 The cunning one, alas, approaches the girl’s pliant heart: she eats the food filled with cruel death with her mouth. As soon as the food was eaten, the eyes of her heart are opened and the knowledge of evil mixed with good was revealed.

While these three poets share an interest in Eve’s gender as the reason for her susceptibility, Avitus shows singular interest in how her susceptibility played out in time, time in her actions as well as time on the page. While Eve immediately eats the fruit in the other versions, here she hesitates: Et iam iamque magis cunctari ac flectere sensum incipit et dubiam leto plus addere mentem.25 And now she begins to hesitate and to waver more and more, and she begins to apply her doubting mind increasingly to death.

Avitus combines a reference to both Aeneas and Dido. Line 206 is taken from the pivotal moment at the end of the Aeneid, when Aeneas is almost convinced to have mercy on Turnus: “Et iam iamque magis cunctantem flectere sermo / coeperat” (“And now [Turnus’s] words began to sway him more and more as he hesitates”).26 Line 207 is less obvious, but recalls Book 4 when Dido is being persuaded by her sister Anna to pursue Aeneas in spite of what that will mean for her future: “His dictis impenso animum flammavit amore / spemque dedit dubiae menti solvitque pudorem” (“With these words, she set Dido’s heart aflame with an excessive love, gave hope to her doubting mind, and freed her from her shame”).27 The combination of Aeneas and Dido in Eve’s hesitation is deliberate, and the implication is bleak. Aeneas, whatever his own desires might have been, ultimately performs what the narrative demands: the slaying of Turnus. His moment of doubt yields so that he can fulfill his duty and cement his role as pius Aeneas.28 Dido’s De laudibus Dei 1.471–74, ed. Vollmer, p. 48. Avitus, SHG 2.206–207, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:212. 26  Verg. Aen. 12.490–91. 27  Verg. Aen. 4.54–55. 28  Aeneas’s wavering could have made him seem less than heroic; instead, the delay works towards fulfilling his positive characterization. Hesitating allows him to see Pallas’s baldric in those final extra moments – exactly what he needs to slay Turnus. See further Michael Putnam, “The Hesitation of Aeneas,” Atti del Convegno Mondiale Scientifico di Studi su Virgilio 2 (Milan, 1984), pp. 233–52. On Dido, see Charles Segal, “Dido’s Hesitation in Aeneid 4,” Classical World 84 (1990), pp. 1–12; Julia Hejduk, “The Bough and the Lock: Fighting Fate in the Aeneid,” Illinois Classical Studies 38 (2013), pp. 149–57. Avitus’s use of Vergil is regularly registered by commentators: see Alexander Arweiler, Die Imitation antiker und spätantiker 24  25 

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hesitation leads her to give in, which ultimately leads to her downfall, a choice that will affect her descendants for generations to come. To conclude the reference with Dido underscores what the reader already knows: that Eve, much like Dido, chooses to pursue her desire, no matter the cost.29 Eve’s sin is inevitable the moment she engages Satan. Although it is certain that Eve will follow Dido’s path and give in, Avitus delays the scene further. In Gen. 3.6, Eve takes the fruit of her own accord: “Tulit de fructu illius.” In Avitus, Satan uses all his powers of persuasion,30 starting first with rhetoric and more subliminal messaging, and closing with the superliminal tactic of plucking the fruit himself and placing it before her:31 Conciliat speciem nutantique insuper offert, nec spernit miserum mulier male credula munus, sed capiens manibus pomum letale retractat. Naribus interdum labiisque patentibus ultro iungit et ignorans ludit de morte futura.32 He commends the apple’s appearance and hands it to her as she leans towards it, and the woman, too gullible, doesn’t turn the wretched gift away, but, taking the deadly apple in her hands, she turns it over again and again. She willingly lifts the apple now to her nose, now to her parted lips, and in her ignorance toys with her death to come.33

Note line 214 in particular. She takes the apple and considers what to do with it time and again, an action emphasized by the frequentative retractat. Surely she will eat the apple soon! But not yet. Avitus postpones the moment one more time with an exclamation, bringing readers outside of the narrative to reflect upon the severity of her inevitable decision, the fact that she is playing with her death. Literatur in der Dichtung De spiritalis historiae gestis des Alcimus Avitus. Mit einem Kommentar zu Avitus carm. 4, 429–540 und 5, 526–703 (Berlin, 1999), pp. 89–91 and passim; Manfred Hoffmann, Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, De spiritalis historiae gestis, Buch 3. Einleitung, Übersetzung, Kommentar (Munich, 2005), pp. 199–200 and passim; also Michael Roberts, “Rhetoric and Poetic Imitation in Avitus’s account of the Crossing of the Red Sea (‘De Spiritalis Historiae Gestis’ 5.371–702),” Traditio 39 (1983), 29–80. 29  Cf. Deproost, “La mise en scène,” p. 65, for a similar observation. 30  For a close reading of Satan’s initial speech to Eve, see Helge Hanns Homey, “Evas Schuld (Alcimus Avitus, De spiritalis historiae gestis 2, 145–82),” Hermes 137 (2009), pp. 474–97. 31  Nodes, “Avitus of Vienne’s Spiritual History,” p. 187. 32  Avitus, SHG 2.212–16, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:214. 33  Avitus’s Satan appeals to all of Eve’s senses. For  the importance of all five senses, see Nicole Hecquet-Noti, “Ève et le serpent, une réécriture chrétienne de la rencontre entre Médée et Jason: Approche intertextuelle du récit de la tentation dans l’Histoire spirituelle d’Avit de Vienne (2, 204–31),” Dictynna 4 (2007), pp. 2–17. See also Catherine Conybeare, “Noli me tangere: The Theology of Touch,” in Touch and the Ancient Senses: The Senses in Antiquity, ed. Alex C. Purves (London, 2017), pp. 167–79; Danuta Shanzer, “Food and the Senses, and One Very Special Taste of Paradise,” in The Cosmography of ­Paradise: The Other World from Ancient Mesopotamia to Medieval Europe, ed. Alessandro Scafi (London, 2016), pp. 163–82.

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O quotiens ori admotum compuncta retraxit34 audacique mali titubans sub pondere dextra cessit et effectum sceleris tremefacta refugit!35 O how often, stung by conscience, she withdrew it from her mouth and how often her right hand, faltering under the weight of this daring wickedness, yielded and, trembling, fled from committing the crime!

Avitus too dangles the weight of (and the wait for) her decision before our eyes and we, as readers, feel the combination of desire and dread that Eve feels – “Hinc amor, inde metus” (“on one hand desire, on the other fear”) – and are asked, perhaps, to want her to eat of the fruit, too.36 Satan even complains about her delay: “Ostentatque cibum dubiae queriturque morari” (“And he repeatedly extends the food to her as she doubts and he complains that she delays”).37 Note again the use of the frequentative with ostentat. At last, she eats the apple, “pomumque vorata momordit” (“and she bit and devoured the fruit”).38 Avitus changes the tense here and makes it perfect; her narrative up to this point, minus his exclamation, has all been in the present. Once she commits the act, her present, ongoing existence ends. Now, Eve wants to share her newfound knowledge with Adam, who has been offstage during the entire previous scene. Ignarus facti diversa parte revertens Adam diffusi laetus per gramina campi coniugis amplexus atque oscula casta petebat. Occurrit mulier, cui tunc audacia primum flabat femineos animosa in corda furores.39 Adam was unaware of her deed, and, happily returning back from another area through the fields of the broad plain, sought his wife’s embrace and her chaste kisses. The woman runs up to him, whose daring then, for the first time, breathed a womanly madness upon her furious heart.

Eve, described like a Bacchant, attempts to persuade her husband to share in her sin. Seducing Adam requires very little time. Now that she has been properly instructed, Eve adopts Satan’s urgency and rhetoric. In fact, she tells her husband that it is unmanly not merely to hesitate, but also to hesitate longer than she had: Crede libens, mentem scelus est dubitasse virilem, quod mulier potui. Praecedere forte timebas, Retraxit here recalls retractat in 2.214. Avitus, SHG 2.217–219, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:214. 36  Avitus, SHG 2.222, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:216. 37  Avitus, SHG 2.225, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:216. 38  Avitus, SHG 2.231, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:216. 39  Avitus, SHG 2.235–39, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:216–18. 34  35 

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saltim consequere atque animos attolle iacentes. Lumina cur flectis? Cur prospera vota moraris venturoque diu tempus furaris honori?40 Trust me freely; it’s wrong for a man’s mind to hesitate over something I, a woman, was able to do. Maybe you were afraid to go before me. Follow me, at least, and rouse your limp courage. Why do you turn your eyes away? Why do you put off fulfilling your desires? Why are you robbing yourself of future honor for such a long time?

She questions his manhood and offers him little choice but to consent. Sequence and order also figure. If he cannot lead, then he can follow (praecedere, consequere). Her rapid imperatives followed by direct questions do an excellent job of revealing Eve’s newfound urgency and impatience and proving that, after her sin, sinning again could happen easily. To teach this lesson further, Avitus turns to Lot and his wife.41 Although their story appears later in Genesis and hundreds of years after Adam and Eve, Avitus sets them in the middle of the Adam and Eve narrative. Nec iam sola fuit scrutatrix Eva malorum dicam nunc aliam, tali quae peste laborans et coniuncta viro proprium non vicerit Adam.42 Eve was not the only woman seeking evils. I shall now speak of another who, married and struggling with a like sickness, did not conquer her own Adam.

To connect the two couples further, Avitus invents and adds new details to Lot’s wife’s story.43 In the biblical narrative, God tells Lot, via angels, to take his family away from Sodom because it will be destroyed. As Lot and his family leave, Avitus introduces a new character: Avitus, SHG 2.247–51, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:218. Nor was Avitus the only biblical poet seeking to juxtapose Eve and Lot’s wife. In his Hamartigenia 738–42, ed. Maurice Cunningham, CCSL 126 (1966), pp. 140–41, Prudentius writes: “Loth monitis sapiens obtemperat, at levis uxor  / mobilitate animi torsit muliebre retrorsus  / ingenium Sodomisque suis revocabilis haesit. / traxerat Eva virum dirae ad consortia culpae: / haec peccans sibi sola perit.” (“Lot, being wise, heeds the warnings, but his inconstant wife, due to the fickle nature of a woman’s mind, turned her attention backwards and, summoned in that direction held fast to her Sodom. Eve had dragged her husband into participating in her terrible guilt: this other woman perished alone in her sin.”) Prudentius’s reading of Lot’s wife and his Ovidian description of her transformation into a pillar of salt (742–56, ed. Cunningham, p. 141) have certainly inspired Avitus’s choices but a fuller discussion lies outside the scope of this paper. 42  Avitus, SHG 2.326–28, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:230. 43  Homey, “Evas Schuld,” pp. 490–91, lists similar words or phrases within the passages describing Eve and Lot’s wife as well. For example, the narrator expresses his astonishment at both (2.162–65 and 378–84), subvertere in line 141 reappears as subverterat in 373, formidans in 375 recalls veritus in 140, and animum … virilem in 375 echoes virili in 140. 40  41 

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Callidus alta petens sed qui subverterat Evam serpens femineam consuetus tangere mentem, hic quoque formidans animum temptare virilem coniugis inspirat votis, ut nosse ruinas vellet et evasas visu deprendere clades.44 But the clever serpent, seeking greater heights, used to affecting a woman’s mind since he had destroyed Eve, here also afraid to tempt a man’s mind, stirs up the desires of Lot’s wife so that she might desire to know ruin and to understand by seeing the destruction she had escaped.

The serpent forms a link between the two women. Even though their stories do not occur side-by-side in the Bible, the example of Lot’s wife is deliberately introduced after Eve’s sin and before her punishment. As  much as Avitus labors over that moment before Eve takes her first bite, once she does, he jumps ahead to the example of Lot’s wife to show that Eve’s actions take an immediate toll. Avitus thus establishes the consistent nature of humanity’s failing. Like Eve, Lot’s wife is also convinced by Satan and similarly infected (“tali…peste”). The sin is theirs, but committed more from helplessness than any true wickedness. Satan is the external and relentless agent, ready to persuade the weaker of us to disobey the Lord’s commands. Lot’s wife looks back with no embellishment. There is no extended scene and she is in no way tortured by the weight of her decision. The second she looks back, she becomes a pillar of salt; her punishment is to be trapped, no longer able to be redeemed, where her husband, constant and steadfast, will be saved. Avitus also reimagines Adam and Lot as more parallel than they are in the traditional narrative. While Eve was struggling with the apple, Adam was conveniently gone and miraculously reappears just after she has taken a bite. Once he does, however, he does not hesitate: “Non illum trepidi concussit cura pavoris / Nec quantum gustu cunctata est femina primo:  / sed sequitur velox” (“Fearful apprehension did not shake him, not even as much as when his wife hesitated with her first taste: but he quickly follows her lead”).45 Lot, too, acts with a more heroic swiftness than is evidenced in Genesis 19.16. He leads his family forward without delay: “Ast illi properant abscedere terra/ inciduntque moras crudeliaque arva relinquunt.” (“But they hasten to depart from the land and cut through delays and leave the dread fields behind.”)46 Avitus, SHG 2.373–77, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:234. Avitus, SHG 2.256–58, ed.  Hecquet-Noti, 1:220. Avitus uses the adjectives only twice more in the SHG: 4.10, ed. Hecquet-Noti 2:34, and 5.197, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 2:170. Both later examples refer to the speed of God’s wrath, indicating that what is velox is swift indeed. 46  Avitus, SHG 2.363–64, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:234. The De Sodoma poet also casts Lot in a more heroic light than can be gleaned from the Bible. For a discussion of Lot’s heroism and his wife’s transformation, see Amy Oh, “Ovid in the De Sodoma,” in Ovid in Late Antiquity, ed. Franca E. Consolino (Turnhout, 2018), pp. 221–34. 44  45 

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Even though his wife sinned and was transformed, “nec sequitur sociam fortis nec vincitur Adam” (“This other Adam, being strong, neither follows his companion nor is conquered”).47 Lot is a second Adam, only fortis and more successful.48 Although neither of the men is quite so blameless in Genesis, Avitus chooses to portray them as acting sine mora, establishing a connection between Adam and Lot as true believers who tried to do the right thing. When Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise, they learn that they will die and, what is worse, that repentance will not be their way back.49 At this point in the narrative, Avitus again looks elsewhere in the Bible for a relevant, thematically linked story to complete his lesson. In 3.220–310, Avitus reaches far ahead to the New Testament to relate the story of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke 16.19–31. Much like the rich man, our couple learns that repentance can come too late: Namque obitum quemdam casu tum pertulit ipso, perdita ne precibus lacrimisve reduceret ullis.50 For by virtue of his fall he then endured a kind of death, so that he could not bring back what he had lost with any prayers or tears.

With Adam and Eve’s loss fully realized, Avitus closes Book 3 with a reminder that hope remains. Just as Avitus reminded readers of Christ’s sacrifice in Book 1 before God created the world and after he created Adam and Eve, so, too, he reintroduces Christ after their exile. This final characterization of Christ takes up the remainder of Book 3 where he is called figulus (363), pastor (368), creator (384), and pater (395), and addressed as sancte (399), and pater inclite (420). Central to Avitus’s message, and centrally placed in his epic overall, remains the necessity of Christ and his singular and multiple nature. In Book 4, Avitus jumps ahead in time, over generations and generations of men to the universal flood in Genesis 6–9. God has been watching the world, waiting for man to be worthy of him. Instead, he finds only wickedness and is stricken with grief and anger: O nullis adtracta bonis nullisque repressa legibus, antiquo tantum submissa draconi effera gens hominum, ducto corruptior aevo, Avitus, SHG 2.401, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:238. Lot is called fortis Adam while Christ is called novissimus Adam (3.21, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:260). For a full discussion of the structure of Book 3 and Adam and Eve’s fall, see Manfred Hoffmann, “Principles of Structure and Unity in Latin Biblical Epic,” in Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin: The Encounter between Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpretation, ed. Willemien Otten and Karla Pollmann (Leiden, 2007), pp. 139–45. 49  God tells them: “Occidat omne vigens finisque redarguat orta” (3.192, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:260). 50  Avitus, SHG 3.313–14, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 1:298–300. 47 

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non Evam cecidisse sat est, transcenditur omni inventor leti lapsu; nec sufficit illud, vicit inexpertum quod serpens pristinus Adam. Non contenta suo foedari vita parente adfectat mortem propria virtute mereri.51 O wild race of men, drawn towards nothing good and held back by no laws, submitting only to the ancient snake, more corrupt than the previous generation! It isn’t enough that Eve fell; the founder of death is outdone with every fall; nor is it sufficient that the old serpent conquered inexperienced Adam. Life, not content to be polluted by its parent, tries to merit death by its own efforts.

The human race is more corrupt than ever and strives to deserve death. Note again the present frequentative adfectat. God speaks of man in general, not a specific age or generation. This is what humans do and continue to do. Thus, God saves Noah from destruction, much as he saved Lot, as a reward for his faith. An angel tells Noah as much: “saevum depellere letum / vita tibi poterit” (“your life will be able to fend off destruction”).52 And Noah, like Adam and Lot before, responds to his directives without delay: “His breviter dictis vitae spem corde reponit / adgrediturque celer sacri praecepta laboris” (“With these brief remarks, he restores the hope of life in his heart and quickly follows the rules of his sacred task”).53 Note the adverbial celer, which recalls the description of Adam as velox in Book 2.54 And finally, just as we saw at the end of Book 3, a symbol of hope closes Book 4, with Christ as the rainbow appearing to Noah after the flood.55

Conclusion While Avitus’s overall message overlaps with other biblical epicists, how did he arrive at this unique focus on time? By way of conclusion, I suggest that when thinking about how best to teach his readers Avitus looked for inspiration to Augustine's De catechizandis rudibus.56 Some of Augustine’s advice is practical: tailor the lesson according Avitus, SHG 4.145–52, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 2:50–52. Avitus, SHG 4.234–235, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 2:62. 53  Avitus, SHG 4.293–294, ed.  Hecquet-Noti, 2:68. Note again how Anna’s speech affected Dido in Verg. Aen. 4.54–55: “His dictis impenso animum flammavit amore / spemque dedit dubiae menti” (“With these words, she set Dido’s heart aflame with an excessive love, gave hope to her doubting mind”). 54  Noah is called a mediator much like Christ. See 1 Tim. 2.5–6: “Unus enim Deus unus et mediator Dei et hominum homo Christus Iesus qui dedit redemptionem semet ipsum pro omnibus” (“For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus: Who gave himself as a redemption for all,” Douay-Rheims trans., slightly modified). 55  For a close reading of the rainbow passage in Book 4, see Luciana Furbetta, “L’arcobaleno in Alcimo Ecdicio Avito De spiritalis historiae gestis, carm. 4, 621–635,” Koinonia 41 (2017), pp. 545–77. 56  I am indebted to Catherine Chin, “Telling Boring Stories: Time, Narrative, and Pedagogy in De Catechizandis Rudibus,” Augustinian Studies 37 (2006), pp. 43–62, for the temporally-charged reading of De cat. rud. 51 

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to the listener’s background;57 think of ways to make the lecture more entertaining if the listener seems to be losing interest.58 While Avitus does both, such general pedagogy does not need to have come from Augustine. More specifically, however, early in De catechizandis rudibus, Augustine states that teaching the creation of the world down to the present day is important, but a chapter-by-chapter rendering is not: thematic groupings might be more effective.59 For example, Augustine places the Jonah narrative within the Noah narrative. Avitus also does this, and for the same purpose: to  teach that repentance, if not done too late, can save you from destruction.60 Augustine then advises that the ultimate learning objective for one’s listener (or reader) should be the centrality of Christ and his coeternal existence.61 In addition, Augustine also stresses the importance of helping students understand their own lives by asking them to connect with the past, present, and future.62 Perhaps with Augustine in mind, we see from the start of the SHG that both time and timing matter for our poet. Avitus establishes a timeline where, as he approaches mortalia tempora brought on by original sin, he slows down and delays that moment to show us precisely how defenseless Eve was in the face of Satan’s powers; or, rather, how defenseless humans are in the face of his powers. Once Eve gives in, humans only continue to make the same mistakes with increasing speed and frequency, and in increasing degree. At every turn, Avitus reminds readers of how necessary Christ’s salvation is because, as God put it, our lives continue to merit death. That said, it is possible to live a life that is able to “fend off destruction”63 if we learn from the past and, for the sake of our future selves, follow the example of those whose devotion and obedience disregarded mortal pleasures and preferred the promise of Paradise.

De cat. rud. 8.12, ed. Iohannes Baptista Bauer, Sancti Aurelii Augustini Opera Pars XIII, 2, CCSL 46 (Turnhout, 1969), pp. 133–34. 58  Or even falling asleep mid-lecture! See De cat. rud. 13.19, ed. Bauer, p. 142. 59  De cat. rud. 3.5, ed. Bauer, p. 124. 60  De cat. rud. 19.32, ed.  Bauer, p.  156. Hecquet-Noti, Avit de Vienne, 2:17, also notices that Avitus seems to follow De cat. rud. 19.32 for Book 3. Augustine also mentions Noah and Nineveh together in Ep. 164.2, ed. Alois Goldbacher, S. Aureli Augustini Hipponiensis Episcopi Epistulae Pars III, CSEL 44 (Vienna, 1904), pp. 522–23. 61  De cat. rud. 19.33, ed. Bauer, p. 158. Augustine also mentions Christ after a brief discussion of Adam and Eve’s fall, much as Avitus does. De cat. rud. 26.52, ed. Bauer, p. 175. 62  De cat. rud. 24.45, ed. Bauer, pp. 168–69. 63  Avitus, SHG 4.234, ed. Hecquet-Noti, 2:62: “depellere letum.” 57 

Surprised by Sorrow: Avitus, Carm. 3.209–12* Gregory Hays University of Virginia Expelled from paradise, Avitus’s Adam and Eve discover grief, an emotion they had no call to experience in Eden. I quote Peiper’s text of the passage along with the English rendering of George Shea:1 Tunc inter curas permixti felle doloris Adfectus sensere nouos et pectora pulsans Nondum conpertas prorumpit fletus in undas Attentisque genis iniussus defluit umor. Then, surrounded by anxiety and confused by the bitterness of their grief, they experienced a new emotion. Weeping shook their breasts and stirred a flood of tears, something unknown to them until then. Unbidden, the droplets flowed down their sensitive cheeks.

What does attentis mean here? The most natural rendering of the word would seem to be “attentive” or “heedful,”2 and I take some such understanding to underlie Shea’s “sensitive.” But this makes no real sense in this context or as applied to cheeks. How can cheeks be attentive?3 To whom or what are the cheeks attentive or sensitive? (To the tears?) And what has their attentiveness or sensitivity to do with anything? Nicole Hecquet-Noti offers a different approach, evidently taking attentis as a participle (“extended”) rather than the adjective: “des larmes coulent, sans qu’ils le veuillent, le long de leurs joues levées vers le ciel.”4 This is not easy to extract from the *  Danuta Shanzer has always had an eye for the small detail as well as the big picture. In the spirit of Luke 12.6, I offer her this modest suggestion on an author to whom she has rendered far greater services. 1  Carm. 3.209–12, ed. Rudolf Peiper, Alcimi Ecdicii Aviti opera quae supersunt (Berlin, 1883), p. 230; George W. Shea, The Poems of Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus (Tempe, 1997), pp. 94–95. 2  See OLD s.v.  attentus 1–2: “(of listeners, observers, etc.) Attentive, heedful”; “(of the mind, thought, etc.) Intent, concentrated.” 3  See Manfred Hoffmann, Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus. De spiritalis historiae gestis Buch  3. Einleitung, Übersetzung, Kommentar (Munich, 2005), p.  160 (on lines  210–12): “Eine solche Auffassung wäre… leichter zu rechtfertigen, wenn attentis hier als Epitheton eines Sinnesorgans aufträte, wie V. 155 adtentis … auribus.” 4  Nicole Hecquet-Noti, Avit de Vienne. Histoire spirituelle, 2  vols., Sources Chrétiennes 444, 492 (Paris, 1999–2005), 1:287. Compare OLD s.v. adtendo 10: “To spread out, stretch, extend.” I think Hoffmann (as in n. 3) is mistaken in saying that Hecquet-Noti “attentis als ‘aufmerksam’ … fasst,” though his objection to that interpretation (quoted above, n. 3) remains valid whether or not he is correct in attributing it to her. He is certainly right in calling her rendering “sehr frei.” D O I 10 .14 8 4/ M . P J M L . 5 .1 2 8 7 2 0 : 3 0 3 – 3 0 5 ©

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original; it will be noted that the key phrase “vers le ciel” has no counterpart in the Latin.5 The posture described seems in any case poorly suited to weeping: one would rather expect Adam and Eve to have their heads bowed in grief and shame.6 Manfred Hoffmann, finally, renders “attentis … genis” as “an ihren angespannten Wangen.”7 But the sense “strained” or “tense” seems no more satisfactory than the alternatives. It  was stressful, surely, to be expelled from paradise, but one would not expect the resulting strain to be felt in the cheeks more than anywhere else. Here we should perhaps pause briefly. All three translators take it for granted that “genae” in this line has its basic meaning, “cheeks.” In poetry, however, the word can also metonymically designate the eye-sockets, or the eyes themselves.8 That usage would in fact make more sense here, as giving the ablative with “defluit” a clearer construction. This does not, however, solve the problem of “attentis.” “Moisture flowed unbidden from their attentive (sensitive, extended, strained) eyes” is no more meaningful in this context than the equivalent expressions with “cheeks.” This diversity of interpretations, and the fact that none of those proposed seems really satisfactory, might suggest that the problem lies rather with the text. The passage lays stress on the novelty of the emotion (“adfectus … nouos”) and of its expression, tears (“nondum conpertas … undas”). In the highly rhetoricized environment of Avitus’s verse it would not be surprising if the cheeks – or eyes – themselves were said to be “startled” or “taken aback” by this unexpected moisture, never previously experienced by them. That sense would be well supplied by “attonitisque.” TLL 2:1156.57–76 cites numerous examples of “attonitus” applied to body parts. Among them is a line that might well have provided a model for our passage, Ovid, Pont. 2.3.90: “gutta per attonitas ibat oborta genas.” Avitus’s familiarity with Ovid is well At Apul. Met. 11.13.6 “caelo manus adtendentes,” the inclusion of caelo makes all the difference. And hands are easy to stretch out; but how does one stretch out cheeks? Hecquet-Noti’s note suggests that the phrase is “inspiré de” Verg. Aen. 5.173 “nec lacrimis caruere genae” and 6.686 “effusae … genis lacrimae.” But neither of these explains attentis. Hoffmann (as in n. 3) may be right to suppose that Hecquet-Noti is supplying “vers le ciel” in 212 out of 206–208, where the sky is said to be obscured (“vix cernitur axis”) in sympathy with the catastrophe. I would agree with him in seeing this as implausible. 6  In later visual renderings the pair typically hold their faces in their hands, look at one another, or cast longing looks back at the Garden. Perhaps the closest approach to the scene as envisioned by Hecquet-Noti is Masaccio’s Eve, who has her head raised slightly above eye level while Adam buries his in his hands. 7  Hoffmann, Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, p. 15. 8  See OLD s.v. genae 2: “the region of the eyes, the eyes”; TLL 6.2.1767.63–1768.9 (“i.q. oculi … apud poetas”), esp. 1767.84–1768.6 (“de lacrimando”). See further Eduard Norden, P. Vergilius Maro. Aeneis Buch VI, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1927), pp. 302–303 (on Aen. 6.686, “effusae … genis lacrimae”); Richard Oliver Allen Marcus Lyne, Ciris. A Poem Attributed to Vergil (Cambridge, 1978), p. 206 (on line 253). 5 

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established.9 When he imagined Adam and Eve lamenting their expulsion from Eden, it would be only natural if a phrase from this other notorious exile had suggested itself.10

Most treatments have focused on the Metamorphoses: see e.g. Luciana Furbetta, “Presence of, References to and Echoes of Ovid in the Works of Rutilius Namatianus, Sidonius Apollinaris and Avitus of Vienne,” in Ovid in Late Antiquity, ed. Franca Ela Consolino (Turnhout, 2018), pp. 293–323, at 312–18. The  indices in Peiper, pp.  302–308, and Hecquet-Noti, 1:328, 2:247, include much material that hardly qualifies as a borrowing or echo; on Peiper’s material see Henri Goelzer, “Ovide et Saint Avit,” in Mélanges offerts à M. Émile Chatelain (Paris, 1910), pp. 275–80. But Avitus’s familiarity with the exile poetry seems guaranteed by the clear borrowing from Trist. 1.8.11 (“Tantane te, fallax, cepere obliuia nostri?”) at Carm. 6.324, ed.  Peiper, p.  284 (“Tantane te nostri tenuere obliuia segnem?”). 10  This piece has its origins in a revise-and-resubmit for Classical Quarterly that, what with one thing and another, never quite got resubmitted. I am grateful to Bruce Gibson and to an anonymous reader for helpful comments on that note; I hope they will not be offended by its diversion to this volume. 9 

Gundobad’s Return to his Homeland Ian Wood University of Leeds The return of the Burgundian magister militum Gundobad to Gaul in c. 474 marks the end of his association with Roman emperors resident in Italy. Although the Gibichung leadership of the Rhône and Saône valleys continued to protest its attachment to emperors in Byzantium,1 it no longer saw itself as subordinate to a ruler based in the Italian peninsula. The journey was, therefore, one part of the break-up of the Roman West. It was also a significant moment of late Roman political history. In that history the Burgundians tend to attract less attention than do the Visigoths, the Vandals, or the leading Romans. Gundobad was, however, a major player in the events of the 470s, and his actions deserve consideration within the general history of the period, despite the problems of reconstructing an exact order of events. We know that the young Gibichung was in Italy in 472.2 According to Malalas, after Ricimer had fallen out with Anthemius he sent to Gaul for the magister militum, Gundobad, who was his sister’s son. The Burgundian travelled to Rome, where he killed Anthemius in St Peter’s, before returning home.3 That he was involved in the murder of Anthemius is also attested in the Gallic Chronicle of 511,4 by John of Antioch (who claims that it took place in San Crisogono),5 and by Paul the Deacon in the Romana.6 Avitus of Vienne, Ep.  78, 93, 94, ed.  Rufolf Peiper, MGH AA 6.2 (Berlin, 1883), pp.  93, 100–102. For translations of these letters, see Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood, Avitus of Vienne, Letters and Selected Prose (Liverpool, 2002), pp. 143–53. 2  Penny McGeorge, Late Roman Warlords (Oxford, 2002), pp.  178–79. Almost all the evidence is gathered in Katalin Escher, Genèse et évolution du deuxième royaume burgonde (443–534). Les  témoins archéologiques, vol. 2, BAR International Series 1402 (II) (Oxford, 2005), pp. 731–33. See also Justin Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde (443–534) (Lausanne, 1997), pp. 261–65. 3  John Malalas, Chronographia 14.45, ed. Johannes Thurn, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae  35 (Berlin, 2000), pp.  296–99: see McGeorge, Late Roman Warlords, pp.  242, (with p. 266, n. 150), 256–57 (including Elizabeth Jeffrey’s translation of Malalas), 260, 269, 273. See also Umberto Roberto, “Politica, tradizione e strategie familiari. Antemio e la ultima difesa dell’unità del impero (467–72),” in Governare e riformare l’impero al momento della sua divisione: Oriente, Occidente, Illirico, ed. Umberto Roberto and Laura Mecella (Rome 2015), pp. 2–26. 4  Chronica Gallica ad annum DXI, s.a. 471/72, ed.  Richard Burgess, “The  Gallic Chronicle of  511. A New Critical Edition with a Brief Introduction,” in Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul: Revisiting the Sources, ed. Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 85–100, at 98–99. 5  John of Antioch, fr. 209 (1) = Priscus, frag. 64 (1), ed. R. C. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus, II, Text, Translation and Historiographical Notes (Liverpool, 1983), p. 373. 6  Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana 15.4, ed. Hans Droysen, MGH AA 2 (Berlin, 1879), pp. 208–209. 1 

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The statement that Gundobad already held the office of magister militum, and that he travelled from Gaul shortly before the killing of Anthemius, and returned immediately afterwards is, however, problematic. The texts known as the Consularia Italica date the murder of Anthemius to 11 July 472 and the death of Ricimer to 19 August 472. Cassiodorus notes that Ricimer died a mere forty days after the crime committed against his emperor.7 This scarcely allows Gundobad time to have returned from Rome to Lyon and then to have come back to Italy, where he was appointed patricius by the new emperor Olybrius, who himself died on either October 23 or November 2.8 I am inclined, therefore, to doubt Malalas’s statement that Gundobad travelled to Gaul and back after the murder of Anthemius. I also wonder whether we should accept that the young Burgundian was called from Gaul, where he was supposedly already magister militum, by Ricimer prior to the murder. If Gundobad were indeed magister militum per Gallias in  472, this would raise a question about the identity of his predecessor in the office. Normally this is thought to have been his uncle Chilperic, who is mentioned in the Getica, in the context of a campaign against the Sueves, in which he took part alongside his brother Gundioc,9 and who is alluded to as a lawgiver in a clause of the Liber Constitutionum.10 He has also been identified with the Chilperic who appears in the Vita Patrum Iurensium in an episode which is usually placed in 467, but for which in fact we have no chronology,11 as well as with the magister militum of the same name who is mentioned in two letters of Sidonius, which can be dated with some certainty to 474.12 A third letter that has reference to an unnamed Burgundian rex is thought to refer to the same man, and it usually is dated to c. 472.13 If Malalas’s statement is correct, however, it undermines these last three identifications. If Gundobad was already magister militum per Gallias by 472, the Chilperic who was magister militum in 474 is unlikely to have been his uncle. The official who appears in the Vita Patrum Iurensium could possibly have been, but as we have no good chronology for the passage in the Life, we could just as easily argue that the event occurred at some point after 473, and that these references concern the Chilperic whom Gregory of Tours states to have Fasti Vindobonenses Priores/Paschale Campanum 606, 607, ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH AA 9 (Berlin 1892), p. 306. See also Cassiodorus, Chronicle, 1293, ed. Mommsen, MGH AA 11 (Berlin 1894), p. 158. 8  Fasti Vindobonenses Priores/Paschale Campanum, 608–609, ed. Mommsen, p. 306. 9  Jordanes, Getica 231, ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH AA 5.1 (Berlin, 1882), pp. 116–17. 10  Liber Constitutionum 3, ed. Ludwig Rudolf von Salis, MGH Leges Nationum Germanicarum 2.1 (Hanover, 1892), p. 43. 11  Vita Patrum Iurensium 92–95, ed. François Martine, Sources Chrétiennes 142 (Paris, 1968), p. 337 at n. 3. 12  Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. 5.6 and 5.7, ed. André Loyen, Sidoine Apollinaire, 3 vols (Paris, 1960–70), 2:182–85. 13  Sidonius, Ep. 6.12.3, ed. Loyen, 3:26–29. 7 

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been Gundobad’s brother.14 This identification, however, is questionable, since all the evidence that we have for Gundobad having a brother named Chilperic derives from Gregory of Tours.15 Moreover, Sidonius refers to Chilperic as victoriosissimus vir, which seems to indicate that he was an experienced commander and thus suggests that we are dealing with Gundobad’s uncle rather than his younger brother.16 It is at least possible that the only information that we have on the older Chilperic is that to be found in Jordanes and the Liber Constitutionum, but it is more likely that all the references to Chilperic, outside Gregory of Tours, relate to Gundioc’s brother and not to his son. We cannot be certain which of the Gibichungs was magister militum per Gallias in 472, but that members of the family held the post through the 460s and 470s is clear enough. Gundioc, Gundobad’s father, is attested in the office in c. 463,17 and it would seem that his brother Chilperic followed him in office. Essentially, the Gibichungs were Roman officials, and not kings of a barbarian kingdom, even as late as the 520s.18 The notion of a royaume burgonde beginning in 443 and lasting until 534 finds no support in late fifth- or early sixth-century sources from the Rhône valley. Rather than a process of Burgundian expansion, we seem to be faced with an increasingly outmoded attempt by the Gibichungs to maintain an imperial province. Although Christine Delaplace has made a strong case for seeing the Visigoths as allies of the Empire down to the 470s,19 unlike the Gibichungs their leaders do not appear to have regarded themselves as imperial officials. And Euric, at least, was openly fighting against imperial forces already in the late 460s. For Euric’s aggression we need to turn back to the relations between Anthemius and the Visigoths. In 469 Riotamus, a Briton who had crossed to the continent (or possibly just moved from Brittany to the Loire valley) with a body of troops, intervened on the emperor’s side to halt the expansion of the Visigothic king in northwestern Gaul.20 Riotamus, however, was defeated. He and his surviving followers were then settled in Gregory of Tours, Hist. 2.28, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH SRM 1.1 (Hanover, 1951), pp. 73–74. 15  The question was considered in detail by Danuta Shanzer in an unpublished paper delivered in San Marino in 2003. 16  Sidonius, Ep. 5.6 and 5.7, ed Loyen, 2:182–85. 17  Epistolae Arelatenses Genuinae 19, ed. Wilhelm Gundlach, MGH Epp. 3 (Berlin, 1892), pp. 28–29. 18  Ian Wood, “The Political Structure of the Burgundian Kingdom,” in Chlodwigs Welt. Organisation von Herrschaft um 500, ed. Mischa Meier and Steffen Patzold (Stuttgart, 2014), pp. 383–96; id., “Roman Barbarians in the Burgundian Province,” in Transformations of Romanness, ed. Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, Cinzia Grifoni, and Marianne Pollheimer-Mohaupt (Berlin, 2018), pp. 275–88. 19  Christine Delaplace, La fin de l’Empire romain d’Occident. Rome et les Wisigoths de 382 à 531 (Rennes, 2015). 20  Jordanes, Getica 45, 237–38, ed. Mommsen, pp. 118–19; Gregory of Tours, Hist. 2.18, ed. Krusch and Levison, p. 65; Sidonius, Ep. 3.9, ed. Loyen, 2:98; Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde, pp. 255–56. 14 

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territory that was apparently under Gibichung control, in other words in territory held for the emperor.21 At about this time Sidonius, who had only recently returned from Rome, where he had held the distinguished office of City Prefect, was elected bishop of Clermont under obscure circumstances, which may perhaps be associated with his sympathies for Arvandus, who had apparently been involved in some negotiation with Euric that was deemed treasonable.22 Shortly afterwards, Seronatus, the vicarius of the Septem Provinciae – that is, historically, the three provinces of Aquitania (the two provinces of Narbonnensis, the Viennensis, and the Alpes Maritimae) – offered to hand the Auvergne over to Euric, a proposal which horrified Sidonius.23 This offer, however, came to nothing, and Seronatus was seized and sent to Anthemius, who had him executed.24 Subsequently, the Visigoths launched an attack on Clermont, which was saved by the military intervention of Ecdicius, Sidonius’s brother-in-law.25 Although the bishop presents the liberation of Clermont as an independent act of a Roman aristocrat, Ecdicius was surely acting in the name of the magister militum per Gallias, who would have been Gundobad (if we believe Malalas) or (more likely) Chilperic. Ecdicius was acting within imperial territory that was being administered by Gibichungs, and when Sidonius comments on his familiaritas with reges we should understand this as a reference to his connections with Gundioc, Chilperic and Gundobad.26 It is worth pausing on the oblique nature of Sidonius’s comments on the Burgundians. Of course, the original versions of his letters may have been just as allusive as are the surviving texts – but it is equally possible that they were edited by the author before publication. Christine Delaplace has argued that Book 1 of the letters was issued, along with the Carmina, to justify the stance that Sidonius had taken up to the moment of the arrest of Arvandus, and she has pointed to a shift in the position taken in the later books.27 Ralph Mathisen, by contrast, has argued that the first seven books of letters were all compiled in 477–78, when Sidonius was in exile.28 It is, therefore, worth noting the near-absence of any named Burgundian official in the letter collection: Sidonius, Ep. 3.9, ed. Loyen, 2:98. Jill Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome (Oxford, 1994), pp. 159–73; Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde, p. 256; Delaplace, La fin de l’Empire romain, p. 244. 23  Sidonius, Ep. 2.1, ed. Loyen, 2:43. 24  Sidonius, Ep. 2.1, ed. Loyen, 2:43; 7.7, ed. Loyen, 3:47–49; Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde, p. 256; Delaplace, La fin de l’Empire romain, pp. 247–48. 25  Sidonius, Ep.  3.3, ed.  Loyen, 2:86–89; Gregory of Tours, Hist. 2.24, ed.  Krusch and Levison, pp. 69–70. 26  Sidonius, Ep. 3.3.9, ed. Loyen, 2:89. 27  Delaplace, La fin de l’Empire romain, pp. 245–46, 247. 28  Ralph Mathisen, “Dating the letters of Sidonius,” in New Approaches to Sidonius, ed.  Joop van Waarden and Gavin Kelly (Leuven, 2013), pp. 221–48. 21 

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the one exception is Chilperic.29 Yet, Sidonius had been closely associated with Burgundians ever since their first occupation of Lyon in 457, which he had to excuse in his panegyric for Majorian.30 His panegyric for Anthemius, with its lengthy digression on Ricimer, surely also reflects his Gibichung connections, given the marital ties between the Burgundian leadership and the generalissimo.31 The bishop of Clermont’s epitaph states that he helped barbarian rulers legislate32 – and the rulers in question were almost certainly Burgundians, who also made use of the legal expertise of Sidonius’s friend Syagrius.33 Yet he effectively writes the Gibichungs out of his life. Perhaps the silence reflects not only the author’s status as a bishop, but also the fact that by the time he collected the later books of letters he was a subject of the Visigoths and not of the Gibichungs. At approximately the same time as the Visigothic assault on Clermont of 471/72, which was blocked by Ecdicius (and one has to note that the chronology of events cannot be established with any certainty), a number of other cities were also under threat from the Goths. In a letter that Loyen dated to this period, Sidonius congratulated bishop Patiens of Lyon for the aid he had supplied to the cities of Arles, Riez, Avignon, Orange, Alba, Valence, St-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, as well as Clermont.34 It is likely that this Visigothic aggression is alluded to in the Life of Eutropius of Orange,35 and in Homilies 25 and 64 of the Eusebius Gallicanus collection, both of which were probably written by Faustus of Riez,36 but it is just possible that the references to barbarian threats relate to events two years later. Justin Favrod has also placed the exile of Marcellus of Die at the hands of Euric in this context.37 We may be able to go a little further than Favrod in considering the exile of Marcellus – whether we place it, as he does, in c. 471/72, or slightly later. This is a Sidonius, Ep. 5.6 and 5.7, ed Loyen, 2:182–85. Sidonius, Carm. 4–5, ed. Loyen, 1:26–51. Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, pp. 85– 90; Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde, pp. 232–40. 31  Sidonius, Carm. 1–2, ed. Loyen, 1:2–24; Ian Wood, “Sidonius and the Burgundians,” in Academica Libertas: essais en l’honneur du professeur Javier Arce, ed. Dominic Moreau and Rául González Salinero (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 365–71. 32  Françoise Prévot, “Deux fragments de l’épitaphe de Sidoine Apollinaire,” Antiquité Tardive, 1  (1993), 223–29; Luciana Furbetta, “L’epitaffio di Sidonio Apollinare in uno nuovo testimone manoscritto,” Euphrosyne 43 (2015), 243–54. 33  Sidonius, Ep. 5.5.3, ed. Loyen, 2:180–181. 34  Sidonius, Ep. 6.12.8, ed. Loyen, 3:28–29. 35  Pierre Varin, Vie de saint Eutrope, évèque d’Orange, par Verus, son successeur (Paris, 1849). A new ­edition of this text is being prepared by Graham Barrett. See Escher, Genèse et évolution, p. 731. 36  Eusebius Gallicanus, Hom. 25; ed. Frans Glorie, 2 vols., CCSL 101–101A (Turnhout, 1970–1971), pp. 295–98; 64, ed. Glorie, pp. 727–35; Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde, p. 257, at n. 259. 37  Vita Marcelli 4; ed. François Dolbeau, “La Vie en prose de saint Marcel, évêque de Die,” Francia 11 (1983), 97–130, at pp. 117–19; Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde, pp. 257–58. 29  30 

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particularly strange episode, because the city does not seem to have been in Visigothic hands for any length of time. But Marcellus was just as close to the Gibichungs as was Sidonius. Gundioc, Gundobad’s father, had been involved in his appointment, and he was later close to Gundobad’s wife, Caretena.38 I would suggest that his exile was the result of a brief intervention by Euric in a city whose bishop was closely associated with the Gibichungs, and that it was intended as a challenge to the Burgundian magister militum. In response to Euric’s acts of aggression Anthemius sent an Italian force, led by his son, Anthemiolus, who was defeated and killed.39 Shortly afterwards, however, better relations were established between Anthemius and the Visigoths following a diplomatic mission led by a cousin of Sidonius.40 It is possible that Euric handed control of the cities of Arles and Marseille back to the emperor at this moment, though the chronology of the original take-over is questionable.41 A rapprochement between the emperor and Euric would scarcely have been welcome news for the Gibichung magister militum. It seems also to have raised difficulties for Ecdicius, who was transferred to Italy.42 Anthemius’s rapprochement with Euric was probably a factor in the breakdown of relations with Ricimer, who at this moment was supported by his nephew, Gundobad, who joined him in besieging the emperor in Rome. If Malalas was right, he was summoned from Gaul, where he was already magister militum, although it is more likely that Chilperic was magister militum, and that Gundobad was already in the retinue of Ricimer, who was his uncle. During the course of the siege Olybrius, who was backed by the emperor Leo, was raised to the purple. At the same time Bilimer, who is described as rector Galliarum, and who would seem to have been a Goth, came to the defence of Anthemius, but was defeated and killed.43 If Bilimer’s office was indeed that of magister militum per Gallias, as assumed by John Martindale,44 one has to conclude that he was appointed to the office by Anthemius when Ricimer called on the help of

Epistolae Arelatenses Genuinae 19, ed. Gundlach, pp. 28–29; Vita Marcelli 9, ed. Dolbeau, pp. 124– 26; Gerd Kampers, “Caretena – Königin und Asketin,” Francia 27 (2000), 1–32. 39  Chronica Gallica ad annum DXI, s.a. 470/1, ed. Burgess, pp. 98–99. 40  Sidonius, Ep. 3.1.5, ed. Loyen, 2:82–3; Delaplace, La fin de l’Empire romain, pp. 250–51. 41  Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde, p. 270, at n. 316, prefers to place Euric’s expansion in 476. 42  Delaplace, La fin de l’Empire romain, p. 253. 43  Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana 15.3–4, ed. Droysen, pp. 208–209. The reign of Anthemius is covered by Roberto, “Politica, tradizione e strategie familiari.” See also the articles in Procopio Antonio imperatore di Roma, ed. Fabrizio Oppedisano (Bari, 2020). 44  John R. Martindale, Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, II, AD. 395–527 (Cambridge, 1970), p. 230. 38 

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Gundobad. Bilimer’s intervention failed to save Anthemius, who was killed in St Peter’s (or San Crisogono) by Gundobad himself. If Gundobad returned to Gaul at this moment, as stated by Malalas, it was for no more than a few weeks. He is likely to have been around at the time of his mentor’s death: there were other henchmen of the dead generalissimo who might equally well have taken his place, including Orestes and Odoacer. He  was certainly in Italy before the death of Olybrius, who raised him to the patriciate, presumably in Ricimer’s place.45 We can probably conclude that he assumed the position of magister militum ­praesentalis that his uncle had previously occupied. Gundobad appointed Glycerius as emperor early in 473.46 Ennodius, in his Vita Epiphanii, reveals that the Gibichung spent some time in Liguria,47 and it is difficult to see when that could have been, other than during the reigns of Olybrius and Glycerius. After having elevated Glycerius to the imperial throne, Gundobad seems to have remained in the peninsula for about a year until the arrival of Julius Nepos, the east Roman appointee. It was at about that time that the Gibichung abandoned Italy – apparently not wishing either to accept Nepos or to challenge him.48 Katalin Escher provides a succinct statement of the evidence: “Les sources n’indiquent pas la date de la retour de Gondebaud dans le royaume, mais il est généralement admis que c’était à l’époque de l’arrivée de Nepos, en 474.”49 Penny McGeorge, who provides one of the few accounts of Gundobad’s early career, simply notes that thereafter he consolidated his power in Gaul.50 In all probability, when Gundobad returned to Gaul he took with him a proportion of Ricimer’s old Italian army.51 Once established in Italy, Nepos apparently set about intervening in Gaul. Soon after his return to the Rhône valley Gundobad seems to have been faced with an attempt by the new emperor to undermine Gibichung authority, which was still being exercised in the name of the Empire, but not of the new emperor. Indeed, the threat posed by Nepos to Gibichung interests in the Rhône valley may well have been the chief reason for Gundobad’s abandonment of Italy. According to Sidonius, his relatives Apollinaris and Thaumastus were suspected by Chilperic, magister militum and victoriosissimus vir, of being involved in a move to

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Fasti Vindobonenses Priores, 608, ed. Mommsen, p. 306. John of Antioch, fr. 209 (2), ed. Blockley, p. 373; Cassiodorus, Chronicle 1295, s.a 473, ed. Mommsen,

Ennodius Vita Epiphani, 140, ed. Friedrich Vogel, MGH AA 7 (Berlin, 1885), p. 101; 151, p. 103; 157– 62, pp. 103–104; McGeorge, Late Roman Warlords, pp. 270–71. 48  John of Antioch, fr. 209, ed. Blockley, p. 373; Anonymus Valesianus 36, ed. John C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus, vol. 3 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), pp. 530–31. 49  Escher, Genèse et évolution, p. 733. 50  McGeorge, Late Roman Warlords, p. 274. 51  Wood, “The Political Structure,” pp. 390–91. 47 

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transfer the city of Vaison to a novus princeps.52 Anderson and Loyen both identify the princeps with Nepos,53 but McGeorge identifies him as Gundobad.54 This presumably reflects the interpretation of Gregory of Tours that Gundobad and Chilperic (who is said to be Gundobad’s brother not his uncle) were at odds:55 but there is no reason for this reading, which involves an unusual interpretation of the word princeps, and the logic is surely that the Burgundian magister militum was reacting against a move to transfer Vaison to the control of Nepos. This letter is followed by one that seems to continue the story, but which is rather more obscure. Here we again hear that Thaumastus and his brother have been accused of close ties to the new princeps, but this time the angry official is not named as being the magister militum Chilperic, but simply as tetrarcha noster.56 There has been much debate about the phrase, and the use of the word tetrarcha has been thought to indicate that Sidonius was referring to one of the four sons of Gundioc. This is probably to put more weight on the term than it will bear.57 But it is worth paying some attention to the end of the letter, which is replete with mythological and historical allusions. In particular, we are told that a new Tanaquil is tempering the actions of Lucomon (the elder Tarquin), and a new Agrippina is moderating those of Germanicus.58 It is of course possible that both these classical pairs are intended to refer to a single couple. But we might see them as referring to Gundobad and Chilperic. We know from Sidonius that Chilperic’s wife was a pious catholic, who had close contacts with Patiens of Lyon,59 while Gundobad’s wife, Caretena, revered Marcellus of Die,60 and also intervened to secure the return of objects seized from the shrine of Julian of Brioude by a party of Burgundian soldiers.61 In other words, Sidonius may be referring to two Gibichung officials at the end of the letter. In considering the situation in which Apollinaris and Thaumastus found themselves, one may add that Nepos seems to have been making a broader appeal to the family of Sidonius, since at this moment he raised Ecdicius, the general who had relieved Clermont from a Visigothic attack two years earlier, to the office of patricius.62 Sidonius, Ep. 5.6 and 5.7, ed Loyen, 2:182–85. Loyen, Sidoine Apollinaire, 2:235, n. 13. 54  McGeorge, Late Roman Warlords, p. 274. 55  Gregory of Tours, Hist. 2.28, ed. Krusch and Levison, pp. 73–74. 56  Sidonius, Ep. 5.7.1, ed Loyen, 2:183. 57  Escher, Genèse et évolution, p. 734. 58  The importance of this passage has been pointed out to me by George Woudhouysen. See also Escher, Genèse et évolution, p. 734. 59  Sidonius, Ep. 6.12.3, ed. Loyen, 3:26–27. 60  Vita Marcelli 9, ed. Dolbeau, pp. 124–26; Kampers, “Caretena – Königin und Asketin.” 61  Gregory of Tours, Liber de virtutibus sancti Juliani, 7–8, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2 (Hanover, 1885), pp. 117–81. 62  Jordanes, Getica, 240–41, ed. Mommsen, pp. 119–20; Sidonius, Ep. 5.16, ed. Loyen, 2:199–200. 52  53 

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Initially, therefore, Nepos seems to have challenged both the Gibichungs and the Visigoths. He then changed tack, recalling Ecdicius, and making overtures to Euric.63 Also, perhaps at the same time, or perhaps slightly later,64 he proposed to cede land to the Visigoths, which caused an outcry on the part of Sidonius.65 This was not just an alarming suggestion for members of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy, it was also a flagrant challenge to the Gibichung ruler, who was supposedly an agent of the Empire, albeit not of Nepos. Significantly, perhaps, the emperor’s coinage is not to be found in the area of Burgundian control.66 Four bishops – Basilius of Aix, Graecus of Marseille, Leontius of Arles, and Faustus of Riez – negotiated the cession of Clermont to Euric.67 The Burgundian reaction to the loss of the Auvergne is best evidenced in Gregory of Tours’s account of an attack by Gundobad’s forces on the shrine of Julian at Brioude, which was surely more than an unofficial act of plunder.68 This was not any old shrine, but one in which Euric came to show personal interest, as recorded by Fredegar.69 The site was clearly of importance to the Visigothic and Burgundian rulers. In the aftermath of the transfer of Clermont Sidonius was sent into exile near Carcassonne.70 As in the case of other episcopal exiles in Euric’s reign, this appears to have been a matter of politics rather than religious conflict: bishops who were potentially hostile to Visigothic expansion were sent into exile while the king established his authority, but only for that period of time.71 One bishop who was exiled in this period may however tell us more about Gibichung politics. Unlike Clermont, which was definitely taken over by Euric, and Die, which can only have been in the hands of the Visigoths for a short period of time, perhaps a very short period, we have no idea whether Riez was in Visigothic or Gibichung territory, despite its absence from the description of Burgundia in the Ravenna Cosmographer.72 In his praise for Patiens’s support from cities that suffered from Visigothic attacks, Sidonius seems to imply that Riez was under the control of the Gibichung magister militum.73 Among the Ennodius, Vita Epiphanii 85–94, ed. Vogel, pp. 94–96. Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris, p. 237. 65  Sidonius, Ep. 7.6 and 7.7, ed. Loyen, 3:43–49. 66  I am indebted to Svante Fischer for advice about the late imperial solidi. 67  Sidonius, Ep. 7.6 and 7.7, ed. Loyen, 3:43–49. 68  Gregory of Tours, Liber de virtutibus sancti Juliani 7–8, ed. Krusch, pp. 117–18. 69  Fredegar, Chronicle, 3.13, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SRM 2 (Hanover, 1897), p. 98. Unlike Raymond Van Dam, Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, 1993), p. 42, at n. 156, I see no reason to downplay the involvement of the king. 70  Sidonius, Ep. 7.2 and 7.3, ed. Loyen, 3:34–38. 71  Gregory of Tours, Hist. 2.25, ed. Krusch and Levison, pp. 70–71. 72  Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde, pp. 273–80. 73  Sidonius, Ep. 6.12.8, ed. Loyen, 3:28–29. 63 

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other cities in the list we know that Orange was in Gibichung hands in c. 475,74 as were Carpentras, Sisteron and Bevons in 517.75 The bishop of Digne, however, was present at the Visigothic Council of Agde in 506.76 One sermon (probably by Faustus of Riez) included in the Eusebius Gallicanus collection seems to imply that the major threat to the homilist’s city came from the Goths.77 That the city was in Burgundian hands seems also to be implied by a letter written by Sidonius while he was in exile, in 476: at that time a messenger to Faustus had to negotiate custodias aggerum publicorum.78 This makes it difficult to understand who exiled Faustus and why. All we know is that he was in exile in Visigothic territory at some point after 477, and that his exile lasted into the period of the episcopate of Ruricius of Limoges.79 The notion that he was exiled by Euric for his anti-Arianism is no more than speculation.80 His anti-Arian tracts seem to have been directed as much against Romans as Goths – they are not just attacks on Arians, but also on Macedonians and other heretical groups.81 Moreover, he may have been well regarded by Euric, since he was one of those involved in negotiating the cession of Provence. It is surely as likely that he fell afoul of the Gibichungs, because he had represented Nepos, as that he fell afoul of the Goths. This could well explain why (unlike Sidonius) he seems to have had some freedom of movement when he was in exile in Aquitaine. Clearly Gundobad knew of his existence, for in a letter to him Avitus talks of Faustus “quem etiam gloria vestra noverat, ortu Britannum habitaculo Regiensem.”82 Another bishop who went into exile as a result of Gibichung suspicions was Aprunculus of Langres, who ended up as Sidonius’s successor at Clermont in 479.83 This is implied by the association of Eutropius of Orange with Patiens to be found in the closing chapter of Verus, Vita Eutropii. 75  Council of Epaon, subscriptiones, ed. Jean Gaudemet and Brigitte Basdevant, Les canons des conciles mérovingiens (VIe-VIIe siècles), vol. 1, Sources Chrétiennes 353 (Paris, 1989), pp. 121–25. 76  Council of Agde, subscriptiones, ed. Charles Munier, Concilia Galliae, A.  314–A.  506, CCSL 140 (Turnhout, 1963), pp. 213–29. 77  Eusebius Gallicanus, Serm. 25, ed. Glorie, pp. 295–98. 78  Sidonius, Ep. 9.3.2, ed. Loyen, 3:134–35. 79  Faustus, Ep. 2–5, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH AA 8 (Berlin, 1887), pp. 266–71; trans. Ralph Mathisen, Ruricius of Limoges and Friends. A Collection of Letters from Visigothic Gaul (Liverpool, 1999), pp. 96, 101, 103, 104. 80  Françoise Prévot and Valérie Gauge, “Évêques gaulois à l’épreuve de l’exil aux Ve et VIe siècles,” in Exile et relégation: les tribulations du sage et du saint durant l’antiquité romaine et chrétienne (Ier-VIe s. après J.-C.), ed. Philippe Blandeau (Paris, 2008), pp. 309–49, at 312; A. Becker, “Les évêques et la diplomatie barbare en Gaule au Ve siècle,” in L’empreinte chrétienne en Gaule du IVe au IXe siècle, ed. Michèle Gaillard (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 45–59, at 57. 81  See Faustus, De spiritu sancto 1.1, ed. August Engelbrecht, CSEL 21 (Vienna, 1891), pp. 101–102; 2.4, pp. 138–44; also Ep. 14 ed. Krusch, pp. 275–76 (trans. Mathisen, Ruricius, p. 173); 17, pp. 284–88 (trans. Mathisen, p. 182); 20, pp. 292–98 (trans. Mathisen, p. 204). 82  Avitus, Ep. 4, ed. Peiper, pp. 29–32. 83  Gregory, Hist. 2.23, ed.  Krusch and Levison, pp.  68–69. For  Sidonius’s deathdate see Furbetta, “L’epitaffio di Sidonio Apollinare,” pp. 248–51. 74 

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Although Penny McGeorge is surely right to state that Gundobad consolidated his power in Gaul after his return from Italy in 474, we need to remember that he was fighting to maintain his authority, which he understood to be that of an imperial agent, in the face of Euric’s expansion, despite the fact that he rejected the legitimacy of the rule of Nepos. It is possible that this entailed the removal of Chilperic as magister militum, but that might well be no more than a slur put about by Gregory of Tours, and perhaps before him Chrotechildis. We unfortunately have next to no evidence for how Gundobad defended Gibichung authority between 476 and  490, with the single exception of the intended attack on Aprunculus of Langres in 479. By 490, however, he was safely enough established in the Rhône valley to launch an attack on Liguria, at precisely the same time as a Visigothic army went to Italy to support Theodoric the Amal.84 Rivalry between Burgundians and Visigoths seems to have continued right down to Clovis’s Vouillé campaign.85 Equally important, the Burgundian rulers saw themselves as agents of the Empire throughout this period, even down to the 520s. To see their territory as a kingdom, rather than as a province of the Empire, is to misunderstand their position. The Gibichungs were important actors in late fifth-century Gaul. They deserve more recognition than they usually are given.

Anonymus Valesianus 53, ed. Rolfe, pp. 540–43. Gregory, Hist. 2.37, ed. Krusch and Levison, pp. 85–88; Ian Wood, “Arians, Catholics, and Vouillé,” in The Battle of Vouillé, 507 CE. Where France Began, ed. Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer (Boston, 2012), pp. 139–49. 84  85 

Materiality and the Holy in Gregory of Tours Edward James University College Dublin I have long been interested in the ways in which miracles, above all miracles of healing, occurred in early medieval texts.1 I last worked on this a very long time ago, for a paper that I called “A Sense of Wonder: Gregory of Tours, Medicine and Science,” that I first gave as a Denis Bethell Memorial Lecture at University College Dublin in 1989. In this I looked at the way in which Gregory approached sickness and health care; looked at how he dealt with rivals among the professional physicians; looked in particular at the way in which he experimented with different techniques of miracle-working; and concluded, rashly perhaps, that “Gregory’s view of the world was not that of a credulous believer in tradition, but of a careful observer of the natural world who tried to put his observations together into a rational and consistent view of the universe. In short, his attitude was a scientific or, at the very least, a proto-scientific one.”2 In what follows I am not concerned with the truth of these miracle stories, or how modern medical science, psychology, sociology or anthropology might explain them: I am interested in Gregory alone.3 It is after all never really clear at any particular point whether Gregory is telling us anything about anything other than himself. I should emphasise here that I am assuming the importance of holy people themselves, and the

I was encouraged to work on the theme of this paper by the choice of “Materialities” as the theme of the International Medieval Congress at Leeds in 2019. I should like to thank those who commented on my paper, which was the first iteration of what follows. 2  Published in The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Medieval History in Memory of Denis L. T. Bethell, ed. Marc Meyer (London, 1993), pp. 45–60, at 60. 3  I am mostly using the Monumenta Germaniae Historica editions of Gregory’s works, in the revised version: MGH Rer.  Mer.  1.1, ed.  Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison (Hanover 1951) and 1.2, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover 1885, revised reprint 1969), though for the Liber de Miraculis Beati Andreae Apostoli I have used Jean-Marc Prieur, ed., Acta Andreae, Corpus Christianorum, Series Apocryphorum 6 (­Turnhout, 1989), pp. 553–651. I have benefitted greatly from the various translations of Gregory’s works: Lewis Thorpe, The History of the Franks (Harmondsworth, 1974); Raymond Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs and Glory of the Confessors, Translated Texts for Historians, Latin Series 3 and 4 (Liverpool, 1988), and the Miracles of St Martin in his Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, 1993); Giselle de Nie, Lives and Miracles, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 39 (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2015). I shall use the following abbreviations: LH – Libri Historiarum; GC – De Gloria Confessorum; GM – De Gloria Martyrum; MBAA – De Miraculis Beati Andreae Apostoli; VP – Vita Patrum; VSJ – De Virtutibus Sancti Juliani; VSM – De Virtutibus Sancti Martini. 1 

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holiness and power offered by their bodies and their tombs. I am looking at the peripheral and secondary containers of holiness. The epigraph for this paper is in the words of Gregory himself: “Pudet insipienti, reprobo inperitoque atque inerti illud adgredi, quod non potest adimplere,” which Van Dam renders as “It is shameful for a man who is foolish, fraudulent, ignorant, and lazy to undertake what he cannot accomplish.”4 What I have failed to accomplish for this paper (probably because I  was too foolish, fraudulent, ignorant, and lazy to undertake it) was a complete detailed database of the miracles described or mentioned by Gregory so that I could get an idea how significant material objects were in his idea of the holy. I do have a preliminary database, however, which needs checking and expanding in a number of ways, which does offer some figures, which I shall present here, and which do offer some results of interest.5 And I may draw inspiration from Danuta Shanzer herself, who, in her wonderful introduction to Gregory’s miracle stories, notes that analysing content and structure with databases and spreadsheets may be time-consuming, but, and I hope she is prophetic in this particular case, “the results are not boring.”6 I have found 982 descriptions or mentions of miracles in the complete works of Gregory of Tours. 910 of them are miracles worked through the medium of saints, or their tombs and relics: 311 of them are linked to St Martin of Tours, fifty to St Julian of Brioude, and forty-seven to St Andrew the Apostle (these three saints were the subject of whole books by Gregory). Of the other saints, the one mentioned the most, with thirty-four instances of miracles, is Nicetius, bishop of Lyons (Gregory’s great-uncle). In all, Gregory mentions miracles for around 165 saints (counting pairs of saints as two and the Theban Legion as one). I am going to skip entirely over the vexed question of what constitutes a miracle in the eyes of Gregory. He sometimes specifies that events are in the category of virtutes or miracula, but far more often he does not. That is not the only reason that 982 is a very notional number. The most significant distinction is between Gregory’s mentions of specific events that took place at a particular time to a particular (sometimes named) person, and those vague mentions of saints at whose tombs cures were obtained. I give an example of the latter. In Glory of the Confessors 92, Gregory says of Nicetius of Trier: “Now the chains of men in bonds are broken at his tomb, people suffering from the possession of an attack by demons are freed after the demons have The opening words of the Prologue to Glory of the Confessors: MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 297, Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, p. 16. 5  When this has been checked and expanded in a number of ways it will be published on www.gregoryoftours.com. 6  Danuta Shanzer, “So Many Saints – So Little Time … the Libri Miraculorum of Gregory of Tours,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 13 (2003), 19–60, at p. 22. 4 

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been expelled, and the eyes of the blind are often flooded with light after the darkness has been removed.”7 There are 241 passages of this type, many of which specify different types of miracles (freeing of prisoners, freeing from demonic possession, healing the blind) but do not mention an actual event, let alone give the names of those involved. But this means that there are 741 places where Gregory describes a single instance of a miracle, which happened to an individual or to a group of people. Gregory will occasionally date that event by reference to another event, and he will normally say where the event took place. In at least 165 instances he names the person who was the main protagonist in the miraculous event, usually the person who was healed; sometimes he identifies them by the name of a relation, or, in the case of slaves, the name of the owner. On twenty occasions the person named as the beneficiary of a miracle is himself. He would have given us more names, he says, if it wasn’t for the annoying fact that some people, as soon as they are cured “leave immediately, and sometimes go home so secretively that, if one may say so, they are seen by no one.” When that happens, Gregory calls the custodians of the shrine to him, “but we do not always learn the names from them.”8 By far the largest category of these miraculous events consists of healing from various ailments or disabilities: 579 out of the 982, in fact, or 59 per cent, of which 577 relate to cures of human beings and two to cures of animals.9 The second largest category is what I have called miracles of punishment, of which there are 108 (11 per cent of the total); 34 of those also involve healing. The most typical example of punishment combined with healing is the case of someone who is paralysed in some way because they have done manual work on a Sunday (and in one case manual work on a Saturday evening, forgetting that Sunday observance starts on Saturday evening).10 The paralysis is followed by a visit to a saint’s tomb and a period of prayer and repentance; eventually healing results. Miracles of punishment can be much more brutal. A priest who celebrated Mass on Christmas Eve while drunk contracted epilepsy, and did not receive a cure.11 A subdeacon who related the story of how his bishop met the spirit of St Martin of Tours, despite the fact that his bishop told him to tell no one, dropped dead on the spot.12 The 579 miracles of healing cover a wide range of illnesses and disabilities. Some diseases do not appear as often as one might expect: thus, leprosy is only mentioned MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 357; trans. Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, p. 96. VSM 3.45; MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 193; trans. De Nie, Lives and Miracles, p. 739. 9  Percentages are rounded up or down to the nearest whole or half number. 10  VSM 3.31, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 190. 11  GM 86, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 96. 12  GC 58, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 331–32. 7  8 

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on five occasions, and three of those relate to cures that took place in the Holy Land.13 Gregory mentions that he has met many who had been cured at the hot springs at Levida, near Jericho, where Joshua used to bathe, and in the river Jordan: given Gregory’s own very limited travels within Gaul, this strongly suggests that travellers from Gaul went to the Holy Land for such cures, and related their story to Gregory when they returned.14 Only one of those is discussed in any detail, however, and that was because after his safe trip to the Holy Land, he was set upon by brigands in the mountains near Rome, only to discover that the relics he brought with him were miraculously preserved.15 In most of the ten cases of saints working the Christ-like feat of raising people from the dead, the cause of death is not specified. In four cases, the saint concerned is St Andrew (one incident involved the raising of thirty-eight people from the dead);16 but it is perhaps interesting that out of the other six, only three give any details and each time it is the story of a dead child.17 Of the miracles of healing by saints (alive or dead), the largest category is of healing the blind (103 examples) which makes up 18 per cent of the total number of cures, closely followed by healing from fevers (84 examples) and demonic possession (83 examples), each around 14 per cent of the total. In terms of the methods by which miracles were worked, the major distinction is obviously between those miracles performed while the saint was alive, and those worked after the saint’s death. Eighty of Gregory’s 592 miracle stories relate to miracles worked by a live saint. However the figures are skewed because thirty-six of the eighty relate to miracles performed by St Andrew the Apostle, in Gregory’s book on the miracles of St Andrew. All but one of the miracles attributed to Andrew in that text were worked while the apostle was alive (comparable to the miracles of St Martin in Sulpicius Severus’s Vita Sancti Martini, which of course Gregory knew, where there are no posthumous miracles at all).18 In other words, if we leave the book on St Andrew’s miracles out of consideration, only 44 of Gregory’s miracle stories involve the participation of a living saint: that is a mere 4.5 per cent of the total. The means by which Gregory’s saints worked their miracles while alive varies; touch is sometimes VP 1.4, MGH Rer.  Mer. 1.2, p.  216; GM 16–18, MGH Rer.  Mer. 1.2, pp.  48–50; GC  98, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 361. 14  GM 18, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 49–50. 15  GM 18, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 49–50. The idea that it was safer travelling to the Holy Land than travelling across Italy to Rome held true later in the early Middle Ages: see Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD 300–900 (Cambridge, 2001), p. 149. 16  MBAA 24, ed. Prieur, Acta Andreae, pp. 626–31. 17  GM 35, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 60–61; VSM 2.43, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 174–75; VSM 3.8, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 184. 18  See now Sulpicius Severus’ ‘Vita Martini,’ ed. Philip Burton (Oxford, 2017). 13 

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significant, or the sign of the cross, but prayer is also common. Dead saints mostly work miracles by means of their tombs: prayers or vigils at the tomb will often bring the desired response from the saint. In relation to St Illidius of Clermont, who was remembered for only one miracle worked while he was alive, Gregory comments that miracles worked by dead saints are more significant: “the virtue which comes from the tomb is much more worthy of praise than those things which a living person has worked in this world, because the latter could be blemished by the continual difficulties of worldly occupations, while the former were certainly free from all blemish.”19 A small subset – around 150 – of the 590 stories relating to healing involve something material and movable. The  most obvious useful substitute for the tomb itself are things that have been in contact with the tomb. The most common is dust from the tomb, mentioned thirty-one times. In most cases it is specified that this is dust dissolved in water; in two cases (both in relation to sick people from Gregory’s own household) it was dust dissolved in wine.20 One must emphasize that twenty-four out of the thirty-one events relate to dust from St Martin’s tomb, and it might also be significant that the only two people cured by dust from the tomb of Julian of Brioude, the particular saint of Gregory’s family, were Gregory’s brother and one of Gregory’s servants.21 The practice of taking dust from the tomb, in other words, may not have been widespread at all. Gregory only reports the practice as taking place at a handful of tombs: apart from Martin of Tours and Julian of Brioude, there are Theomastus of Mainz, Cassianus, Felix of Bourges, Nicetius of Lyons, and an anonymous woman.22 One therefore should qualify the otherwise excellent discussion of healing in Gregory’s Gaul offered by Raymond Van Dam in 1985.23 Although his discussion of the possible theological significance of healing dust is interesting, he generalises too much about Gregory’s feeling that “it was precisely holy dust, the most obvious reminder of man’s daily existence, that had the most potent celestial qualities.”24 This sentence is followed by a quotation from the passage quoted below, p. 325, which eulogises the holy dust as a wonder drug. But it is specifically the dust from St Martin’s tomb that Gregory eulogises here, and not “holy dust” in general, which Gregory shows to be efficacious only rarely. VP 2.2, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 219–20; trans. Edward James, Gregory of Tours: Life of the Fathers, 2  ed., Translated Texts for Historians 1 (Liverpool, 1991), p. 13. 20  VSM 3.12, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 185, and 4.9, pp. 201–202. 21  VSJ 24 and 45, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 124–25 and 131. 22  Theomastus (GC 52, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 329), Cassianus (GC 73, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 341), Felix (GC 100, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 362), and Nicetius (VP 8.10, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 250). The anonymous woman also lived in Lyons: GC 63, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 335. 23  Raymond Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley, 1985), esp. pp. 261–76. 24  Van Dam, Leadership and Community, p. 275. 19 

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There is an interesting difference in usage. In the cases of Julian of Brioude and Nicetius of Lyons – both cults connected with Gregory and his family – the dust seems to be collected and used just as in the case of Martin of Tours. In the cases of Theomastus, Cassianus, Felix, and the anonymous woman, however, the dust was produced by scratching it from the limestone or sandstone surface of the tomb itself. In the cases of two of them – Theomastus and Cassianus – Gregory says that so much had been scratched away that the tomb was perforated, or almost perforated. Detecting an element of disapproval in Gregory’s tone here may be the result of a modern rather than Merovingian sensibility. But one sentence gives us a clue that the dust gathered from the tomb of St Martin may have been collected in a similar way. In an account of an epidemic of dysentery that afflicted Tours and neighbouring civitates, Gregory mentions that dust was scraped from the tomb: “abraso a beato tumulo pulvere.”25 Otherwise the dust seems to have been a fully sustainable resource. It is, however, most unclear how it was gathered or what this pulvis actually consisted of. Was it random dust which slowly accumulated on the tomb, or was it dried soil deliberately scattered on the tomb? There are three miracles worked by water which had been used for washing Martin’s tomb. One is in the account of the dysentery epidemic mentioned above: dust was scraped off the tomb and cured some, and the water used for washing the tomb before Easter cured others. In another instance (when the wife of the Count of Tours is cured from an epidemic of some kind) it is again specified that the washing had taken place at Easter; her body was sprinkled with it, and she drank some of it.26 In the Histories Gregory mentions that a religious woman called Ingitrude (who lived near the tomb of St Martin and eventually founded a convent there) used to collect the water that had washed the tomb.27 But Gregory does not once connect the idea of washing the tomb with the idea of removing the dust: it would seem to be the water itself which provided the cure. In most cases the dust seems to be diluted in water after having been removed from the tomb. Thus, Gregory was able to carry some of this dust with him when he travelled, as when he visited his mother in Chalon-surSaône, and mixed it with water when he needed it (in this case when one of his ser­ vants fell ill).28 Examining where dust from tombs has been used will be our first realisation that some materials are very specific in the diseases that can be cured. Almost all of the thirty uses of dissolved dust operated to cure fevers or dysentery: indeed, the only exception I  have found was the occasion when Gregory of Tours himself partook VSM 2.51, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 176. “Scraped” is De Nie’s translation (Lives and Miracles, p. 639); Van Dam says “scratched” (Saints and their Miracles, p. 253). 26  VSM 3.34, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 190. 27  LH 5.21, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.1, p. 229. 28  VSM 3.60, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 197. 25 

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of the dusty drink in order to dispel his toothache and headache.29 The passage in which Gregory praises St Martin’s dust shows him to be perfectly aware of the herbal alternatives: O indescribable remedy! O ineffable balm! O praiseworthy antidote! O heavenly purgative, so to speak, that beats the skill of physicians, outdoes the fragrance of herbs, and surpasses the strength of all ointments! It cleanses the stomach like scammony (agridium), the lungs like hyssop (hyssopus), and purifies the head itself like pyrethrum (pyretrum)! Not only does it restore disabled limbs, but – what is greater than all these things – it wipes away and eases the very stains on one’s conscience.30

A long time ago Max Bonnet noted that Gregory showed himself aware of traditional medical terminology by using technical vocabulary drawn from Greek (as all three of these italicised words are).31 His campaign against traditional medicine in favour of such medicines as holy dust was backed by some knowledge of his opponents.32 The other material which could be easily gathered from the saint’s tomb was the oil which had been used for the lamps that were lit above or around the tomb. Oil can be ingested, like dust, but it can also be used to anoint, which is no doubt one reason why holy oil can reach diseases untouched by dust or dusty infusions. Oil can be rubbed into feet covered over with sores, or anointed on the eyes of a blind man.33 A mute man takes oil into his mouth, and is cured; oil can be poured on a possessed man in order to rid him of demons.34 Sometimes oil cures almost accidentally. On the feast-day of Eusebius of Vercelli possessed people dance around the church, and leap into the air, and sometimes their hands break the lamps, and they become soaked with the oil and immediately cleansed of their demons. I quote: “The congregation knows that the number of ill people who have been healed matches the number of lamps that it sees are broken.”35 Dust is not seen as bringing any result in cases of this sort. Dust and oil have the advantage that they can be taken away. So can candles and wax. There are a few passages where candles or wax from the tomb of St Martin are shown to have miraculous powers: there are no similar stories from other saints. And the stories are few in number compared to those told about the oil in lamps, which suggests that oil lamps are still the most significant source of lighting in the churches of Gregory’s day. One memorable story describes Gregory placing a candle on the tallest tree in a vineyard to stop the annual devastation by hailstorms.36 On another occasion VSM 3.60, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 197. VSM 3.60, trans. de Nie, Lives and Miracles, p. 769. 31  Max Bonnet, Le Latin de Grégoire de Tours (Paris, 1890), pp. 218–20. 32  For this “campaign” see James, “A Sense of Wonder.” 33  VP 19.4, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 290; GC 9, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 304. 34  VP 19.4, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 290; GC 9, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 304. 35  GC 3, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 300; trans. Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, p. 20. 36  VSM 1.34, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 154–55. 29  30 

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Gregory sent a candle-end from Martin’s tomb to his sick brother-in-law Justinus; the lighted candle by his bedside and the drink containing a piece of burned wick together caused his fever to recede.37 Lupus, a priest from Bordeaux, cured himself by taking home two candles from Martin’s tomb, made of wax and papyrus (“ex cera et papyro”), lighting the candles and making a drink with the burnt papyrus wick.38 The wax from a candle that had burned by Martin’s tomb, preserved as a relic, put out a fire that was threatening to destroy a house.39 Aredius, abbot of Limoges, cured a deaf and dumb woman (who may also have been possessed) by putting wax gathered from St Martin’s tomb in her ear.40 Aredius indeed seems almost as experimental in his approach to healing as Gregory himself, and – given that they were friends, and that Gregory greatly admired him – one wonders whether they had discussed this. Gregory tells us that Aredius once gathered grapes from a vine that St Martin had planted, and put them in a vial (ampullula). When a man came to him with a mouth and face swollen by an infected pustule, Aredius bathed the skin with water taken from this vial, and the man was cured. The grapes themselves, Aredius used to say, were still fresh in this water four years later.41 The other material commonly mentioned in association with tombs are the various cloths that covered the tomb, or the balustrade around the tomb, or were hung up by the tomb. There is the “palla quae super est posita” on the tomb of St Martin which cured a woman who was suffering from a flow of blood (it was so effective that the woman thought “she had touched the Redeemer’s fringe”).42 Presumably this is the same as the “palla, quae sanctum tegit tumulum” over St Martin’s tomb, which restored the sight of a blind girl who wiped her eyes with it,43 and the “palla, quae beatum operit sepulchrum,” which cured Gregory’s headache.44 But there is also a cloth hanging over the balustrade in front of the tomb – “velum quod sanctum tegebat cancellum”45 – and curtains hanging near the tomb. The cloth “quod ante beatum dependebat sepulchrum,” failed to cure Gregory’s headache, which is why he had recourse to the cloth actually

VSM 2.2, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 160. VSM 3.50, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 194. 39  VSM 1.2, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 139. This story comes from the poem about Martin and his miracles written by Paulinus of Périgueux in around 470. See Paulinus Petricordiae, Vita Martini, 6.467–99, ed. Michael Petschenig, CSEL 16.1 (Vienna, 1888), pp. 158–59. 40  GC 10, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 304. 41  GC 10, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 304. 42  VSM 2.10, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 162; trans. De Nie, Lives and Miracles, p. 553. The allusion is to Matt. 14.36. 43  VSM 2.54, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 177. 44  VSM 2.60, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 180. 45  VSM 4.30, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 207. 37 

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touching the tomb.46 (On one occasion Gregory goes straight to the balustrade itself, which was wooden, and licks it in order to cure his swollen tongue).47 There was another cloth “that hangs on the outside wall at the feet of the saint,” which is called a pallula rather than a velum.48 It is not only Martin who was provided with these multiple fabrics; we have references to them largely because Gregory describes Martin’s tomb more often than any other. There is a palla tumuli over the tomb of Monegund, for instance.49 Touching these to the eyes or the skin could cure blindness or sores; threads soaked in water gave similar results to dust. These cloths do not seem to be diseasespecific: a blind woman from Lisieux touches her eyes with a cloth, while Gregory gets rid of the fishbone that is choking him by touching his throat to the cloth; fevers, pustules, demonic possession, and paralysis can all be cured.50 The fabrics by the tomb cannot be taken away, of course; but cloths can be left on a tomb to become imbued with holiness. Gregory’s most famous description of proto-scientific curiosity comes in Glory of the Martyrs, where he describes people weighing a cloth, letting it rest on St  Peter’s tomb, and then weighing it again, when it will be “so soaked with divine power” that it will “weigh much more,” “multo amplius ponderetur.”51 But he does not describe this process as occurring in a Gallic context. Plants, alive or dead, may also attract holy power. Gregory notes that the blessed confessor Tranquillus (otherwise unknown) does not have his tomb under cover; it is above ground in a cemetery, and moss is growing on it. Gregory stroked the moss with his blistered and painful hand, and he was cured.52 A man with a toothache laid a sliver of wood on Criscentia’s tomb in Paris, and, using it as a toothpick, he cured his problem.53 A pile of old branches lying by the tomb of Médard of Soissons, once forming parts of the chapel, was good for making healing toothpicks out of.54 If you can’t get to the tomb, improvise: when Charimeris, referendary to King Childebert II, had a toothache he went to this tomb, but the door of the oratory was locked, so he could not get to the healing wood. He took out his knife, cut off a sliver of wood from the door, and used that successfully as a healing toothpick.55 Gregory’s own sister found a sage leaf on the floor of a church in Besançon, made an infusion with it, and cured VSM 2.60, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 180. VSM 4.2, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 200. 48  VSM 2.50, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 176. 49  VP 19.4, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 290. 50  The blind woman: VSM 2.54, MGH Rer.  Mer. 1.2, p.  177; Gregory’s fishbone: VSM 3.1, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 182. 51  GM 27, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 54. 52  GC 43, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 324–25. 53  GC 103, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 364. 54  GC 93, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 357–58. 55  GC 93, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 358. 46  47 

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her husband.56 Laurel leaves found in the tomb of Valerius of Saint-Lizier were used as medicine; and so were leaves and bark from the laurel that grew by the tomb of Baudilius of Nîmes.57 Finally, objects that had belonged to saints might be just as useful as items that had been in contact with the tomb, or the floor of his church. Gregory himself owned the staff that had once belonged to Médard of Soissons, and it cured people.58 Drinking water from a bowl owned by St Martin cured stomach problems.59 The bed that had belonged to Silvester of Chalon-sur-Saône, with its rope mattress, could cure you if you hid under it, but so could pieces cut from the rope, as Gregory’s mother proved on one occasion.60 I find the inventiveness and the imagination that went into this creation of an alternative system of medicine quite extraordinary. One would like to know much more about this process. To what extent, for instance, was Gregory himself responsible for spreading the notion of the effectiveness of dust from Martin’s tomb? Again, some saints already seem to have developed specialties in Gregory’s day. Gregory tells us that fevers are cured at the tombs of Genovefa, Noepotianus, and Senoch, in the case of the latter particularly if one touches or tears off the fringe of the pallium on his tomb;61 the waters of the Jordan are perfect for lepers;62 St Domitius, who suffered from hip pain while alive, cured people of hip pain at his tomb.63 The specialisation is not just medical in nature. Abbot Sequanus’s tomb was very good at freeing prisoners.64 The churches of Julian at Joué-lès-Tours, of Mary and John in Tours, of Genesius in Tarbes, and of Pancratius in Rome, were all very effective for detecting perjury.65 How did this new idea originate and develop?

GM 70, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 85. GC 83, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 352; GM 77, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 89. 58  GC 93, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 358. 59  VSM 4.10, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. p. 202. 60  GC 84, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 352. 61  GC 89, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 355; GC 36, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 321; GC 25, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 314. 62  GM 16–18, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 48–49. 63  GM 99, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 104. 64  GC 86, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 354. 65  VSJ 40, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 130; GM 19, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 50; GM 73, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, p. 87; GM 38, MGH Rer. Mer. 1.2, pp. 62–63. 56  57 

Bishops as Uncles in Merovingian Gaul Julia Barrow University of Leeds Are you sitting comfortably? I’m going to tell you some stories about uncles. First of all, the Babes in the Wood, whose loving parents died while they were still very small, leaving them to the protection of their uncle, who promptly abandoned them in a lonely forest to die of exposure so that he could inherit all their property.1 Then, Sheridan Lefanu’s Uncle Silas, who locked up his niece and tried to have her murdered.2 Next, young Arthur of Brittany, whose wicked uncle King John organised his blinding, castration and murder in April 1203.3 And then the Princes in the Tower, who disappeared from view in 1483 and who were presumably murdered on the orders of their uncle Richard III.4 Or perhaps we might look at the Carolingians: Louis the Pious ordered the blinding of his nephew Bernard of Italy (which caused Bernard’s death).5 Charles the Bald campaigned against his nephew Pippin the Younger in the 840s and tonsured him after his eventual capture in 852, while in the 860s he successfully managed to prevent another nephew, Lothar II, from obtaining a divorce (which meant that Lothar was unable to beget legitimate heirs).6 Or indeed we might look at the Merovingians: Childebert and Lothar forced their mother Clothild to agree to the murder of their nephews, the sons of Chlodomer.7 Uncles were significant figures in the Middle Ages and long afterwards, in myth, in literature, in history and in mythicized history. Curiously, the uncle has not been “The Children in the Wood,” in The Oxford Book of Ballads, ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch (Oxford, 1910), pp. 854–59 (no. 174). The ballad first appeared in 1595 as an anonymous broadside entitled “The Norfolk gent his will and Testament and howe he Commytted the keepinge of his Children to his own brother whoe delte most wickedly with them and howe God plagued him for it.” 2  Joseph Sheridan Lefanu, Uncle Silas, ed. William J. McCormack (Oxford, 1981; originally published 1864). 3  Stephen Church, King John. England, Magna Carta and the Making of a Tyrant (Basingstoke, 2015), pp.  108–10; James Clark Holt, “King John and Arthur of Brittany,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 44 (2000), 82–103. 4  Rosemary Horrox, “Edward  V (1470–1483),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, updated online version, 2013 http://0–www.oxforddnb.com.wam.leeds.ac.uk/view/10.1093/ ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb–9780198614128–e–8521?rskey = qKDk9I&result = 1 (viewed 13 March 2019). 5  Annales regni Francorum, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MHG SRG 6 (Hanover, 1895), p. 148 (s.a. 818). 6  Janet Nelson, Charles the Bald (Harlow, 1992), pp. 140–58, 162. 7  Gregory of Tours, Libri Historiarum 3.18, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH SRM 1.1 (Hanover, 1951), pp. 117–19. 1 

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a major subject of study, either as topos or from a prosopographical approach, though there have been some attempts by literary scholars and by historians to make preliminary explorations of the phenomenon.8 However, observing how uncles behaved and how they were expected to behave sheds light on how medieval families operated, and it is worth exploring why uncles mattered and what the range of their powers and responsibilities was. It  will already have occurred to you that all the uncles so far mentioned are laymen, and it may also have occurred to you that all the uncles so far mentioned are paternal uncles. The paternal uncle (where a layman) was a potentially sinister character, coming close behind the wicked stepmother as a figure of evil. The maternal uncle, by contrast, was protective of and generous to his nephews and nieces.9 The difference in affection displayed by paternal and maternal uncles was essentially the result of inheritance practices favouring male succession: maternal uncles did not normally stand to benefit from the deaths of nephews and nieces. Literary scholars of the early twentieth century were much struck by the way in which maternal uncles were presented in medieval epics and romances, and ascribed this to surviving memories of long-lost matrilineal succession practices,10 but study of historical figures from the earlier and central Middle Ages suggests that the audiences for medieval epics and romances would have been used to maternal uncles among them behaving in a kindly way to their nephews and nieces.11 The division in behaviour between paternal and maternal uncles, which is very marked in the case of laymen, is not noticeable in the case of clergy. Clerical uncles, and thus also episcopal uncles, tended to behave protectively to nephews and nieces irrespectively of whether they were paternal or maternal uncles. Thanks to the offices they held, they had powers to advance nephews in clerical careers; they might also Francis Gummere, “The Sister’s Son in the English and Scottish Popular Ballads,” in An English Miscellany, Presented to Dr Furnivall in Honour of his Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Oxford, 1901), pp. 133–49; William Nitze, “The  Sister’s Son and the Conte del Graal,” Modern Philology 9  (1912), 291–322; William Oliver Farnsworth, Uncle and Nephew in the Old French Chansons de Geste (New York, 1913); Clair Hayden Bell, The Sister’s Son in the Medieval German Epic: a Study in the Survival of Matriliny, University of California Publications in Modern Philology 10.2 (Berkeley, 1922). Discussion of terminology for family members by Régine Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe-Xe siècle) (Paris, 1995), pp. 171–77; Julia Barrow, The Clergy in the Medieval World: Secular Clerics, Their Families and Careers in North-Western Europe, c. 800–c. 1200 (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 117–35; ead., “The Bishop in the Latin West 600–1100,” in Celibate and Childless Men in Power: Ruling Eunuchs and Bishops in the Pre-Modern World, ed. Almut Höfert, Matthew Mesley and Serena Tolino (London, 2018), pp. 43–64; Rachel Stone, “Spiritual Heirs and Families: Episcopal Relatives in Early Medieval Francia,” in Celibate and Childless Men, ed. Höfert et al., pp. 129–48. 9  Bell, The Sister’s Son, pp. 105–64. 10  Bell, The Sister’s Son, pp. 164–73. 11  For example: Athelstan and Louis of Outremer; Otto  I and Lothar son of Louis of Outremer; ­David I of Scotland and the Empress Matilda. 8 

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encourage nieces to become nuns. Thus, although there are many overlaps between clerical and lay uncles, the clerical ones need to be treated as a special group. As I have argued elsewhere, the uncle-nephew relationship was a highly significant one for bishops and other clerics from the eighth century onwards, sometimes leading to direct succession in bishoprics and other church offices, and more generally to assistance in career-building. Parents might name boys destined for clerical careers after clerical uncles, and it may well have been the case that the latter acted as godparents in several of these instances and would later act as nutritores or foster-fathers to the nephews most closely associated with them. Uncles entered nephews at an early age into ecclesiastical communities, helped them with their education and training and introduced them to patrons who could advance them further. This pattern was particularly marked among clergy of higher birth in the Carolingian empire and in its successor states in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, but until the twelfth century was much less noticeable in fringe areas of Europe such as Brittany, Wales, Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England and so on, where father-son clerical succession was firmly entrenched.12 Bishops were better placed than ordinary members of the clergy to promote the careers of their nephews, and although direct succession of nephews to uncles in individual dioceses was not normal practice, succession of an episcopal nephew after an intervening pontificate or two was not infrequent, while it was even more common to see nephews of bishops becoming bishops themselves in other dioceses.13 Rachel Stone has helped to pinpoint the start of this process by looking in more detail at Carolingian bishops and their kin networks and patronage systems: she has noted a marked rejection of father-son episcopal succession after about the middle of the eighth century and has argued that families lost their monopolies over particular sees as rulers tightened their grasp over patronage. However, rulers were happy with succession from uncle to nephew because they believed that virtue was hereditary.14 The ninth century sees numerous episcopal uncle-nephew pairings or groupings (the list that follows aims to give a few examples rather than being comprehensive): Bishops Liudger of Münster (805–809) and Hildigrim of Châlons (802–827) with their nephews Bishops Gerfrid of Münster (809–839), Thiadgrim of Halberstadt (827–840), Altfrid of Münster (839–849) and Hildigrim of Halberstadt (853–886);15 Archbishop Barrow, The Clergy in the Medieval World, 117–35; for further discussion, specifically on priests serving local churches in Francia in the ninth century, see Steffen Patzold, Presbyter: Moral, Mobilität und die Kirchenorganisation im Karolingerreich (Stuttgart, 2020), 389–416. 13  Barrow, “The Bishop in the Latin West.” 14  Stone, “Spiritual Heirs and Families.” For discussion of the kinship networks in the Merovingian period see Conrad Walter and Steffen Patzold, “Der Episkopat im Frankreich der Merowingerzeit: Eine sich durch Verwandtschaft reproduzierende Elite?,” in Verwandtschaft, Name und soziale Ordnung (300–1000), ed. Steffen Patzold and Karl Ubl (Berlin, 2014), pp. 108–34. 15  Die Vitae Sancti Liudgeri, ed. Wilhelm Diekamp (Münster, 1881), pp. 38, 203. 12 

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Ebo of Rheims (816–835 and 840–841) and his kinsman (propinquus) Gauzbert, a missionary bishop in Sweden, who himself had a missionary nephew Erimbert;16 Bishop Angelelm of Auxerre (812–829) and his nephew and successor Heribald (d. c. 857);17 and the latter’s brother and successor Abbo (857–859); the three Salomos (great-uncle, uncle and nephew) who were bishops of Constance between the end of the 830s and 919/920, with their kinsmen Bishop Waldo of Freising (883–906) and his nephew Bishop Waldo of Chur (920–949);18 Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims (845–882) and his nephew Bishop Hincmar of Laon (858–871);19 Bishop Arnulf of Toul (847–872) and his nephew Arnald, also bishop of Toul (872–894);20 Archbishop Gunthar of Cologne (850–863) and his nepos Hilduin, whom Charles the Bald unsuccessfully tried to make archbishop of Cologne in  869;21 Bishop Walter of Orléans (868/69–c.  891) and his nephew Archbishop Walter of Sens (887–923);22 at Verdun, Bishop Bernard (870–879), his nephew Bishop Dado (880–893), and Dado’s maternal nephew Bishop Bernoin (925–949).23 The pattern of episcopal uncles assisting the careers of their nephews continues throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Information about episcopal uncle and nephew pairings is much thinner for the eighth century than for the ninth, though we know of Bishops Savaric (Suavaricus) and Eucher at Orléans in the earlier eighth century, and Bishops Chrodegang (d.  766) and Angilramn at Metz a Rimbert, Vita Anskarii 14, ed. Georg Waitz, Vitae Anskarii et Rimberti, MGH SRG 55 (Hanover, 1884), p. 36; 28, ed. Waitz, p. 59. 17  Gesta pontificum Autissiodorensium 36, ed.  Michel Sot, Guy Lobrichon and Monique Goullet, Les gestes des évêques d’Auxerre, 3 vols. (Paris, 2002–2009), 1:142–43 (avunculus and nepos); Heribald’s successor was his brother (germanus) Abbo (Gest. 37, ed. Sot et al., 1:148–49). 18  Helmut Maurer, Das Bistum Konstanz, 2: Die Konstanzer Bischöfe vom Ende des 6. Jahrhunderts bis 1206, Germania Sacra, neue Folge, 42.1 (Berlin, 2003), pp. 67–78, 84–119. 19  Flodoard, Hist. Rem. eccl. 3.18, ed.  Martina Stratmann, Flodoard von Reims. Die Geschichte der Reimser Kirche, MGH SS 36 (Hanover, 1998), p. 258; 3.22, pp. 286, 302 (“Qualis est ille avunculus, qui talia suo nepoti scribit,” in a letter of Hincmar of Rheims to Hincmar of Laon); 3.23, p. 309; 3.24, p. 326; 3.26, p. 343; Die Streitschriften Hinkmars von Reims und Hinkmars von Laon, 869–871, ed. Rudolf Schieffer, MGH Conc. 4, Suppl. 2 (Hanover, 2003), pp. 306 (nepos), 354 (avunculus); Jean Devisse, Hincmar, archevêque de Reims 845–882, 3 vols. (Geneva, 1975–1976), 2:1096–97. 20  Gesta episcoporum Tullensium 27–28, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS 8 (Hanover, 1848), pp. 632–48, at 638: Arnald is Arnulf ’s nepos, Arnulf is Arnald’s avunculus. 21  Annales Xantenses et Annales Vedastini, ed. Bernhard von Simson, MGH SRG 12 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1909), p. 29 (Annals of Xanten, s.a. 871: “Hilduvinum quendam nepotem eiusdem”). 22  Reginonis abbatis Prumiensis Chronicon, ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH SRG 50 (Hanover, 1890), p. 131 (s.a. 888). 23  Dado’s own brief account of his pontificate, and a short account of Barnoin’s pontificate, edited in the introduction to Gesta episcoporum Virdunensium, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 4 (Hanover, 1841), pp. 37–38; see also Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir (as in n. 8) pp. 292, 445, and Charles West, “Bishops between ‘reforms’ in the long tenth century – the case of Verdun,” Medieval Low Countries, 6 (2019), 75–94, at pp. 85–90. 16 

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little later.24 Rachel Stone is therefore surely right to argue that the middle decades of the eighth century marked a shift in hereditary practices away from father-to-son succession within a particular diocese and more firmly towards uncles assisting the careers of nephews. Even so, it is worth looking out for mentions of uncles among the episcopate in the sixth and seventh centuries to see whether the roles frequently undertaken by uncles in the ninth century began to emerge earlier, if only sporadically. Of importance here are not just the questions of succession within a particular see, or of the promotion of nephews to episcopal rank even if in different sees from their uncles, but also the question of upbringing: at  what point and under what circumstances did episcopal and clerical uncles begin to foster their nephews? What sort of a role did episcopal uncles play in the lives and careers of their nephews and nieces before the Carolingian period? Although information is sparse, it is possible to look for patterns, even if it is not possible to attempt any sort of statistical analysis. I will start by commenting on terminology before looking at episcopal wills to see what they tell us about the relationships between bishops and their nephews. I then will move on to look for references to episcopal uncles and their nephews in narrative sources. Finally, I will comment on the extent to which uncles were involved in the lives of their nephews and nieces, and how far this differed from the state of affairs that came later. The terminology employed to define uncles, nephews and nieces is not straightforward.25 Nepos in classical Latin originally meant grandson, and this was its usual meaning in classical Latin, though it could be used to signify a nephew.26 In medieval Latin, the most frequent meaning was nephew,27 but it could be used to mean grandson, and it could occasionally denote a cousin or a kinsman more widely.28 The word

Vita Eucherii episcopi Aurelianensis, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH SRM 7 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1920), p. 48, and see also pp. 334 and 341 below. According to Metz tradition Angilramn was the son of Chrodegang’s brother: M. A. Claussen, The Reform of the Frankish Church: Chrodegang of Metz and the Regula Canonicorum in the Eighth Century (Cambridge, 2004), p. 22. 25  For general discussion of the terminology for kin, see Le  Jan, Famille et pouvoir, pp.  159–77, esp. 171–73 for uncles, aunts and nephews and nieces (mostly on the post-800 period, but with earlier references as well). 26  Charlton Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879), pp. 1200–1. 27  Charles du Cange et al., Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, 10 vols (Niort, 1883–1887), 5:587b provides examples for nepos meaning nephew, first cousin and niece; Jan Frederik Niermeyer and Co van de Kieft, Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus (Leiden, 1976), p. 717; Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. Richard Ashdowne, David Howlett and Ronald Latham, 3 vols. (Oxford, 2018), 2:1906 (grandson, nephew, cousin and kinsman). 28  Ruotger terms Bishop Dietrich of Metz the nepos of Archbishop Brun of Cologne, but he was in fact Brun’s cousin (Ruotgeri Vita Brunonis archiepiscopi Coloniensis, ed. Irene Ott, MGH SRG 10 [Cologne, 1958], p. 49). Thietmar of Merseburg calls his uncle’s son Dietrich his nepos: see Chron. 6.38, 66–67, 24 

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neptis (grand-daughter, then niece) enjoyed a similar trajectory to nepos.29 In medieval Latin, abnepos (great-great-grandson in classical Latin) and pronepos (great-grandson in classical Latin) could mean either great-nephew or great-grandson, and already in the early Middle Ages great-nephew appears to be the more usual translation.30 All of this means that we should treat the word nepos with some caution when we encounter it: however, the precise meaning is sometimes clarified for us by the sources. For example, the Vita Eucherii says Savaric was Eucher’s patruus and that Eucher was Savaric’s nepos.31 Bishop Remigius in his will of c. 533 referred to his favorite nephew Bishop Lupus of Soissons as fili fratris mei, while using the term nepos for his kinsmen Agricola, Actius and Praetextatus, who were presumably also his nephews but children of a different sibling.32 Sources from the tenth and eleventh centuries sometimes provide specific terms for nephew, sororius and fratruelis, meaning respectively sister’s son and brother’s son, and very occasionally patruelis,33 but these terms appear to have been used in the Merovingian period very rarely, and in the pre-Carolingian period when patruelis was used it normally meant “paternal uncle.”34 ed. Robert Holtzmann, Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg, MGH SRG n.s. 9 (­Berlin, 1935), pp. 321, 356–57. 29  Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, p. 1201; Niermeyer, Mediae latinitatis lexicon, p. 717; Dictionary of M ­ edieval Latin, 2:1906. 30  Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum (hereafter VP) 2.4, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2 (Hanover, 1885), p. 221 (Bishop Gallus of Clermont’s baby abnepos); Das Testament des Bischofs Berthramn von Le Mans vom 27. März 616, ed. Margarete Weidemann (Mainz, 1986), pp. 16–17 (Bishop Bertram of Le Mans’s pronepos Leutramnus). 31  Vita Eucherii 4, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 7, p. 48. 32  Vita Remigii episcopi Remensis auctore Hincmaro, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SRM 3 (Hanover, 1896), pp. 336–40, at 336–39; Flodoard Hist. Rem. eccl. 1.18, ed. Stratmann, pp. 97, 101–102. 33  Bishop Adalbero II of Metz (984–1005) is referred to as fratruelis in relation to his uncle Bishop Adalbero I of Metz (929–962: Vita Adalberonis II Mettensis episcopi auctore Constantino abbate, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 4 [Hanover, 1841], p. 659); Bishop Imad of Paderborn (1051–1076) is referred to as sororius in relation to his uncle Bishop Meinwerk of Paderborn (1009–1036: Vita Meinwerci episcopi Patherbrunnensis, ed. Franz Tenckhoff, MGH SRG 59 (Hanover, 1983), p. 84). Patruelis occurs with the meaning of paternal nephew for Archbishop Adalbert II of Mainz (1138–1141) in Anselm’s verse Vita Adelberti, ed. Philipp Jaffé, Monumenta Moguntina, Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum, 3 (Berlin, 1866), pp. 565–603, at 571 (line 112). 34  Fratruelis occurs in Gesta Theoderici Regis, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SRM 2 (Hanover, 1888), p. 203; patruelis occurs more often, usually with the meaning of uncle: for example at Fredegar, Chron.  2.50 ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 2, p. 72 (uncle); Liber Historiae Francorum 28, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 2, p. 287 (uncle); 36, ed. Krusch, p. 304 (uncle); 37, ed. Krusch, p. 306 (uncle); Passio Praiecti 12, ed. Bruno ­K rusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH SRM 5 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1910), p. 232 (uncle). Note also the use of patruelis in the ninth-century or later Vita Iuniani confessoris Commodoliacensis  7, ed.  Krusch, MGH SRM 3, p. 379, to describe Bishop Ruricius of Limoges as the uncle of his successor Proculus (see also discussion in Ralph Mathisen, Ruricius and Friends: a Collection of Letters from Visigothic Gaul [Liverpool,

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Latin has two terms for uncle, avunculus and patruus, respectively mother’s brother and father’s brother, though the former of these can be ambiguous, since medieval authors often used it to mean an uncle on either side of the family.35 Gregory of Tours, however, employed these terms with care: he consistently used patruus when describing King Guntram as the uncle of Childebert,36 and also to describe his own uncle Gallus, bishop of Clermont,37 son of Georgius the senator and thus brother of Florentius,38 who was Gregory’s own father. His use of avunculus to describe Gallus’s uncle, the priest Inpetratus at Clermont, was presumably, therefore, carefully chosen to specify Gallus’s mother’s brother.39 The author of the Passio Praeiecti was more confused: though he was careful to term Praeiectus’s uncle, archpriest Peladius, the brother (germanus) of Praeiectus’s mother Eligia, he subsequently refers to Peladius as the saint’s patruus.40 Of all the sources surviving from the earlier Middle Ages, wills are the most helpful in providing information about how individuals wished their relationships with other people (including relatives) and institutions to be remembered. The few bishops’ wills that survive from the sixth and seventh century vary considerably in the quantity and range of information they provide about family members, but all of them shed some light on kinship bonds and two of them are important sources for the unclenephew relationship. The will of Remigius, bishop of Rheims from c. 459/60 to c. 533,41 preserved by Hincmar in his Life of Remigius and in a longer, interpolated version included by Flodoard in his History of the Church of Rheims,42 mentions four nephews, 1999], p. 256), while in the ninth-century Vita Betharii episcopi Carnotensis 8, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 3, p. 616, patruelis is used to mean nephew. 35  Regino does this routinely when describing Merovingian and Carolingian paternal uncles in his Chronicle: see e.g. Reginonis abbatis Prumensis Chronicon cum continuatione Treverensi, ed.  Friedrich Kurze, MGH SRG 50 (Hanover, 1890), pp. 26, 49, 76, 77, 102, and note Kurze’s comment about his usage on p. 76, n.; Bishop Angelelm of Auxerre, avunculus of Bishop Heribald of Auxerre according to the Gesta pontificum Autissiodorensium, seems to have been the latter’s paternal uncle since Heribald’s father was called Antelm; see the Gesta 35–37, ed. Sot et al., Les gestes des évêques d’Auxerre, 1:142–43, 148–49. 36  Hist. 7.33, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 322; 8.13, p. 379; 9.8, p. 421; 9.10, p. 424; 9.16, p. 431. 37  VP 2.2, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 220; for discussion see Martin Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century, trans. Christopher Carroll (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 12–13 and family tree on p. 10. 38  VP 14.3, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 270; Heinzelmann, Gregory, pp. 12–13. 39  VP 6.3, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 231; Heinzelmann, Gregory, pp. 12–13. 40  Passio Praeiecti 1, 3, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH SRM 5 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1910), pp. 212–48 at 226–27. 41  Flodoard, Hist. Rem. eccl. 1.10, ed. Stratmann, p. 80, n.; on Remigius’s career see Knut Schäferdiek, “Remigius von Reims: Kirchenmann einer Umbruchszeit,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 94 (1983), 256–78; Ulrich Nonn, “Remigius,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters, 10 vols. (Munich, 1980–1999), 7:707. 42  Vita Remigii episcopi Remensis auctore Hincmaro 32, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 3, pp. 336–40; Flodoard, Hist. Rem. eccl.  1.18, ed.  Stratmann, pp.  97–105. Krusch (MGH SRM  3, pp.  342–44, and id.,

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his brother’s son (“fili fratris mei”) Bishop Lupus of Soissons, whom Remigius says he had always loved with especial affection (“quem precipuo semper amore dilexi”), and three relatives he termed nepos, Agricola the priest, Aetius and Agathimerus;43 Remigius also made bequests to Praetextatus, described in the will first as his nephew (“nepos”) and subsequently as his great-niece (“pronepti mee”), presumably in error for great-nephew.44 None of the nephews termed nepotes received as much land as Lupus, and presumably they were not Lupus’s brothers; perhaps Agricola, Aetius and Agathimerus were sons of a sister or sisters of Remigius, while Praetextatus was presumably a great-nephew. Agricola, although less favoured than Lupus, nonetheless receives special attention: he had pleased Remigius with his obedience from boyhood and had spent his boyhood within his uncle’s domestic walls.45 Here we find an early example of a nephew being mentored by a clerical or episcopal uncle, evidently with the aim of receiving clerical training. About a decade later, Caesarius of Arles (who died in 542) addressed his will to his niece, Caesaria the younger, but called her “the holy and venerable abbess” without alluding to their family relationship. The kinship terms that occur in his will (“daughters,” for example) refer to spiritual rather than biological connections. But it is obvious from a variety of sources that he cared strongly for his niece, as he had for his deceased sister, Caesaria the Elder, and that the nunnery he established for them was a family undertaking.46 His nephew, Teridius the priest, is not mentioned in the will and “Reimser Remigius-Fälschungen,” Neues Archiv, 20 (1895), 509–68) argued that the version of the will in Hincmar’s Vita Remigii was a forgery, but its validity was established by Arnold Hugh Martin Jones, Philip Grierson, and John Anthony Crook, “The Authenticity of the ‘Testamentum S. Remigii,’” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 35 (1957), 356–73, backed up by Ulrich Nonn, “Merowingische Testamente: Studien zum Fortleben einer römischen Urkundenform im Frankenreich,” Archiv für Diplomatik 18 (1972), 1–129, esp. pp. 25–26. The case for Flodoard as the creator of the longer version of the will has recently been made by Edward Roberts, “Flodoard, the Will of St Remigius and the See of Reims in the Tenth Century,” Early Medieval Europe 22 (2014), 201–30; more widely on Flodoard’s handling of the materials about Remigius see Michel Sot, Un historien et son église au Xe siècle: Flodoard de Reims (Paris, 1993), pp. 378–407. 43  Hincmar, Vita Remigii 32, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 3, pp. 336–39; Flodoard, Hist. Rem. eccl. 1.18, ed. Stratmann, pp. 97, 101–103; Sot, Flodoard, pp. 406–407. Lupus was the son of Remigius’s brother Principius, also a bishop (Hincmar in his Life of Remigius identifies him as bishop of Soissons): for discussion, see Jones, Grierson and Crook, “The Authenticity,” 367. 44  Hincmar, Vita Remigii 32, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 3, pp. 338–39; Flodoard, Hist. Rem. eccl. 1.18, ed. Stratmann, pp. 101–102. 45  Flodoard, Hist. Rem. eccl. 1.18, ed. Stratmann, pp. 97 (“qui michi obsequio tuo a pueritia placuisti”); p. 101 (“qui intra domesticos parietes meos exegisti puericiam tuam”). 46  Césaire d’Arles, Œuvres monastiques, 1: Œuvres pour les moniales, ed.  Adalbert de Vogüé and Joël Courreau (Paris, 1988), pp. 360–97 (text on 380–97, with address on 380); William E. Klingshirn, ­Caesarius of Arles: Life, Testament, Letters (Liverpool, 1994), pp. 71–76 (address on 71); see also Nonn, “Merowingische Testamente,” 26–27.

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is known only from an incipit to a manuscript of Caesarius’s Rule for Monks (“Incipit regula a sancto Teridio presbytero nepote beatae memoriae sancti Caesari episcopi Arelatinsis abbate mea persona parva rogante transmissa”), together with a fragmentary epitaph and two papal letters. However, Teridius evidently felt a strong family connection to his uncle since he became, as Morin put it, a propagator of Caesarius’ monastic rules.47 If we follow Morin’s guess that Teridius could be identified as the anonymous author of the letter O profundum that forms part of the Caesarius dossier, then we should assume that the nephew’s clerical training and close association with his uncle began only in adulthood, since Teridius contrasts his own irregular behavior in his youth with the strict upbringing of the nun to whom he is writing, who was presumably his cousin Caesaria the Younger.48 The will of Bishop Bertram of Le Mans (586–623), drawn up 27 March 616, a long and complex text, sheds light on Bertram’s links with preceding generations as well as with his juniors. Bertram terms Bishop Avitus of Clermont a kinsman (parens), and Margarete Weidemann in her edition of the will guesses that he numbered several other contemporary bishops among his kinsmen, most significantly Bishop Bertram of Bordeaux (d. 585), who was probably, as Weidemann argues, his cousin.49 However, even though the bishop of Le  Mans may have been named after his cousin at Bordeaux, and was certainly requested by the latter to act as his executor,50 the churchman to whom his career owed most does not appear to have been a relative. This was Germanus, bishop of Paris (between 552 and 558–576): Bertram says that Germanus brought him up (“qui me dulcissime enutrivit”), using the verb enutrire that was often associated with foster-fathers; in thanks for this he made a generous bequest to the basilica of St Vincent in Paris (later Saint-Germain-des-Prés), where Germanus had been buried.51 From Gregory of Tours we know that Bertram was archdeacon of Paris when he was made bishop of Le Mans: Germanus had evidently trained him up as a cleric within the church of Paris.52 Bertram himself had three nepotes, probably all, as Weidemann argues, sons of Bertram’s brother Berthulf, who had died on campaign at some point before 616. Of these, Sigichelmus, described by Bertram as his sweetest nepos, received the largest bequests; Germain Morin, “Le prêtre arlésien Teridius, propagateur des règles de S.  Césaire d’Arles,” ­R echerches de science religieuse 28 (1938), 257–63 (see p. 257 for the incipit). 48  Morin, “Le prêtre,” 262–63; Césaire d’Arles, Œuvres monastiques, ed.  de Vogüé and Courreau, 1:20–21, 28–29, 403–407; see also William E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 138, 250, 252. 49  Das Testament, pp. 136–37 and see also 130, 132–33, 38, 140–46; see also Nonn, “Merowingische Testamente,” 28–29. 50  Hist. 8.22, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 388; for comment see Das Testament, p. 130. 51  Das Testament, pp. 18, 33, 130. 52  Das Testament, p. 130, citing Hist. 8.39, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 405–406. 47 

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another, probably the youngest of the family, Thoringus, had been a ward of his two godfathers, Bertram and Ghiso (the latter, Weidemann suggests, probably Thoringus’s mother’s brother).53 Here we find uncles acting as baptismal sponsors. The middle nephew, Leudochramnus, received the smallest bequest, consisting of property in the civitas territory of Le Mans that Bertram had previously granted to a deacon. The bequest was for Leudochramnus’s lifetime only, which, taken with the fact that the property had previously been held by a deacon, led Weidemann to argue that he was a cleric. Leudochramnus would presumably have been a cleric of the church of Le Mans, and it is possible that he had been brought up by his uncle.54 One of Bertram’s nephews had produced heirs: Bertram states that Sigichelmus was married to Bertichildis and that they had several children, including at least three sons, Leutramnus, Sichramnus and Leutfredus, while Bertram’s pronepos Thoringus may also have been Sigichelmus’s son.55 Bertram expected Sigichelmus with his whole family to attend his burial place twice or three times a year and to feed the poor.56 The last of the episcopal wills to survive from the period is less informative about family relationships: this is the will of Bertram’s successor Hadoindus of Le Mans, issued in 643, which mentions only one living relative, “filius et parens noster Bodilo,” who is to receive property for his life-time only. The grant of property for his lifetime suggests that Bodilo was a cleric; the use of the term filius (son) probably refers to the spiritual relationship between Hadoindus and his cleric, with the less definite parens (kinsman) describing, though not defining, the biological relationship.57 Bodilo might even have been a nephew of Hadoindus, but this cannot be assumed. Overall, wills show us that bishops took a strong interest in the careers and wellbeing of their nephews and some of their other junior kinsmen, and that in one or two instances they had undertaken their upbringing and had overseen the start of their clerical careers.

Das Testament, pp. 13, 16, 17, 19, 24, 42, 43, 126. Das Testament, pp. 48, 126. Another clerical relative who appears to have been mentored by Bertram was his consanguineus and frater Chaimoald, who before becoming bishop of Rennes (the nextdoor diocese to Le Mans) had been archdeacon of Le Mans, with a house within the city (Das Testament, 24). Weidemann sees Chaimoald as Bertram’s half-brother, probably younger, but Walter and Patzold, “Der Episkopat” (as in n. 14), pp. 114–15 see him as a spiritual brother and biological cousin. 55  Das Testament, pp. 16, 17, 19, 42, 126. 56  Das Testament, p. 43. 57  Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium, ed.  Gustave  Busson and Ambroise  Ledru (Le Mans, 1901), p. 161 (the will as a whole can be found on 157–65); see also Nonn, “Merowingische Testamente,” 31. A clerical will surviving from the seventh century, that of the Archdeacon AdalgiselGrimo from the diocese of Verdun in 634, mentions that he had sold property to his nephew Duke Bobo: Wilhelm Levison, “Das Testament des Diakons Adalgisel-Grimo vom Jahre 634,” in Wilhelm Levison, Aus Rheinischer und fränkischer Frühzeit. Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Düsseldorf, 1948), pp. 118–38, at 131; see also Nonn, “Mero­w ingische Testamente,” 30–31. 53 

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Narrative sources provide us with a wider range of information about bishops and their nephews and nieces, but such information is much less likely to be accurate. This is particularly true of saints’ Lives: those written close in time, even though written with some knowledge of the subject, often omit material or shape it to make the saint conform to a suitable model. Even so, they do at least present career patterns that contemporary audiences would have expected, which means that they can be used as evidence of an ideal type. Lives of Merovingian saints that were written a long time after the deaths of their subjects (many were written in the ninth century), are perhaps best read as sources for the ideas of the period in which they were written, since their authors were tempted to make the careers of their subjects follow patterns that would have been familiar to the audiences for whom they were writing. The author with most to say about episcopal uncle-nephew relationships is Gregory of Tours, partly because a large number of his works survive and partly because his own relatives – many of whom were bishops – figure prominently in his writings. However, although Gregory is informative about his relatives, he avoids boasting about them, and the information he provides about them is, as Martin Heinzelmann argues, chiefly supplied to explain events in his historical or hagiographical narratives.58 Although Gregory tells us little about his own upbringing, evidently a key figure in this was his uncle Gallus, bishop of Clermont (525–551).59 Gallus had refused to marry in his youth and had run away to become a monk;60 later however he had entered the household of Bishop Quintianus Afer of Clermont (Quintianus himself had, “as some say” (“ut  quidam ferunt”), been the nephew of a bishop Faustus in North Africa).61 Working for Quintianus led to service at the court of King Theuderic I, but moving to court did not lead Gallus to sever his links with the church of Clermont, within which his own uncle (avunculus) Inpetratus was a priest, and it was thanks to Inpetratus’s help that Gallus received backing from the clergy and citizens of Clermont to be Quintianus’s successor.62 Once bishop, Gallus appears to have taken the young Gregory into his household on the death of the latter’s father and to have brought him up as a cleric.63 He had visited the young Gregory as an adolescent when the latter was ill.64 Gallus also showed concern for his baby great-nephew (abnepos), using threads

Heinzelmann, Gregory, pp. 7–9; id., “Gregory of Tours: The Elements of a Biography,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden, 2016), pp. 7–34, at 8–9. 59  Heinzelmann, Gregory, p. 13; id., “Gregory … Elements,” 21–22, 31. 60  VP 6.1, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 230. 61  VP 6.2, ed.  Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2, p.  231 (Gallus and Quintianus); 4.1, p.  224 (Quintianus’s origins). 62  VP 6.3, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2, pp. 231–32. 63  Heinzelmann, Gregory, p. 13. 64  VP 2.2, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 220. 58 

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that had touched relics of St Illidius, bishop of Clermont, to cure him.65 Meanwhile Gregory’s older brother, Peter, built up his clerical career under his great-uncle, Bishop Tetricus of Langres.66 Another close episcopal uncle-nephew relationship in an earlier generation of Gregory’s family had been that between Gregory’s great-uncle Nicetius, bishop of Lyons 551/52–573, and the latter’s maternal uncle and predecessor as bishop, Bishop Sacerdos of Lyons (d. 551/52). In this case Gregory of Tours shows Nicetius’s mother planning his future as a bishop from before his birth, which suggests that she had already made arrangements for the child’s future with Sacerdos,67 while Sacerdos in his final illness urged King Childebert to make Nicetius his successor.68 In the Ten Books of the Histories Gregory of Tours supplies us with several examples of relationships between bishops and their lay nephews (Gregory’s own nephew-inlaw Nicetius accompanying a deacon who was on a mission for the church of Tours; Nantinus trying to avenge his murdered uncle Bishop Marachar of Angoulême but killing the wrong person; the nephew of the murdered Bishop Praetextatus of Rouen torturing and executing the hired killer of his uncle).69 Gregory also tells us about the family connections of Bishop Felix of Nantes: Felix, angry with his niece for wishing to marry a certain Pappolenus, tried to make her a nun.70 He also desperately wanted his nephew Burgundio to succeed him in office, although the latter had received no clerical training, and he sent the young man to Gregory to win the latter’s support for his eventual consecration. Gregory, objecting to the various breaches in canon law that this would entail, sent the young man back to be tonsured by his sponsor (presumably Felix), and told Burgundio that he should go through the necessary grades of ordination in due order. Burgundio’s hopes were crushed soon after this by Felix’s death,71 an event that also enabled the latter’s niece to elope with her suitor, Pappolenus.72 In Gregory’s own family, Eufronius received support from the people of Tours VP 2.4, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 221. See Heinzelmann, Gregory, pp. 7, 11. 67  VP 8.1, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2, p. 241. For the relationship between Nicetius and Gregory of Tours (avunculi matris meae), see Hist. 5.5, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 201. 68  VP 8.3, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2, pp. 242–44. 69  Hist. 5.14, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 208; 5.36, p. 242; 8.41, pp. 407–408. Bishop Gregory of Langres’s nepos Attalus in Hist. 3.15, p. 112, was a grandson, not a nephew; see Heinzelmann, “Gregory … Elements,” 11, 19. 70  Hist. 6.16, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 285–86. Other episcopal nieces in the religious life include the young Disciola, niece of Bishop Salvius of Albi, and nun at Holy Cross in Poitiers, and Gregory of Tours’s own niece Justina, praeposita at Holy Cross in Poitiers. For the former see Gregory, Hist. 6.29, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 295 (neptis); for the latter, Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 8.13.6 and 8, ed. Friedrich Leo, MGH AA 4 (Berlin, 1881), p. 197 (neptis); 9.7.84, p. 214 (neptis); Hist. 10.15, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 501; Heinzelmann, Gregory, p. 11. 71  Hist. 6.15, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 285. 72  Hist. 6.16, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 1.1, pp. 285–86. 65 

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to become their bishop because he was the nephew of the saintly Gregory, bishop of Langres.73 Bishops in Gregory’s writings cared about their nephews and nieces, might sometimes train up nephews as clerics, and might expect their nephews to be their successors, their heirs or their executors, but on the whole did not undertake their entire upbringing from early childhood, as their ninth and tenth-century successors would have tried to do.74 Lives of Merovingian saints living in the century or so after Gregory’s death only rarely mention clerical or episcopal uncles, and although these works often show bishops or clerics occurring as mentors to saints in their youth they do not normally identify these ecclesiastics as being related to the saints. Yet there are a few exceptions. Praeiectus, later bishop of Clermont (d. 676), had a maternal uncle called Peladius, an archpriest who foresaw his future martyrdom,75 though the cleric who oversaw Praeiectus’s early clerical training was Genesius, archdeacon and later bishop of Clermont.76 Bishop Leudegar of Autun (c. 662–676) was brought up by his uncle (avunculus) Dido, bishop of Poitiers (c. 628–667), who ensured that his nephew received a good education; Leudegar became archdeacon of Poitiers in due course.77 The  Life of Bishop Lupus of Sens (Lupus occupied the see in the early seventh century, dying before 626/27) says that his mother Austregildis was the sister of Bishops Austrenus of Orléans and Aunarius or Aunecharius of Auxerre,78 but Krusch viewed the Life as late and unreliable, with the kinship details mostly based on the ninth-century Deeds of the Bishops of Auxerre.79 This source may thus be a better guide to the social conventions Hist. 4.15, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 1.1, p. 147: “Eum nepotem esse beati Gregorii.” For ninth- and tenth-century examples, see Barrow, “The Bishop” (as in n. 8), pp. 51–54. 75  Passio Praeiecti 1 and 3, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 5, pp. 226–27; for a translation, see Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography 640–720, ed. Paul Fouracre and Richard Gerberding (Manchester, 1996), p. 273. The Passio Praeiecti was written fairly soon after Praeiectus’s death and probably by an author close to his family circle: Fouracre and Gerberding, Late Merovingian France, pp. 257–60. 76  Passio Praeiecti 4, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 5, p. 228; Fouracre and Gerberding, Late Merovingian France, pp. 274–75. 77  Gesta et passio sancti Leudegarii episcopi et martyris 1, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 5, p. 283: “Cumque a Didone avunculo suo Pectavi urbe episcopo, qui ultra adfines suos prudentia divitiarumque opibus insigne copia erat repletus, fuisset strinue aenutritus et ad diversis studiis, quae saeculi potentes studire solent, adplene in omnibus disciplinae esse lima politus, in eadem urbe ad onus archidiaconatus fuit electus”: for a translation, see Fouracre and Gerberding, Late Merovingian France, p. 217. Krusch, MGH SRM 5, p. 256, dated the earliest version of the work to the late seventh century (see also Fouracre and Gerberding, Late Merovingian France, pp. 194–96). 78  Vita Lupi episcopi Senonici  3, in Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici, vol.  2, ed.  Bruno ­K rusch, MGH SRM 4 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1902), p. 179. 79  Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici, MGH SRM 4 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1902), pp. 176– 77; the earliest manuscripts of the Vita are from the eleventh century (Krusch, Passiones, pp. 177–78). See also Les gestes des évêques d’Auxerre, 1:64–67; the section of the Gesta dealing with Aunarius is in 73 

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of the Carolingian age than to those of the opening decades of the seventh century. We are on somewhat safer ground with our last two examples. Bede in his Ecclesiastical History describes how Agilbert, bishop of Paris, who had formerly been bishop of Wessex (650–660), recommended his nephew (nepotem suum), the priest Leuthere, as bishop for the see of Winchester (Leuthere was bishop there 670–676).80 In the Life of Eucher, bishop of Orléans (d. 738), which was written soon after his death, Eucher, baptized by Bishop Ansebert of Autun, became a monk at Jumièges after he had received his schooling, but on the death of his paternal uncle (patruus), Savaric, bishop of Orléans, the people begged Charles Martel to allow Eucher to be their new bishop.81 Clerical and episcopal uncles could exercise some influence in the Merovingian period, but much less than in succeeding periods, and one reason seems to have been that entering the clergy or the monastic life could often happen in late adolescence or early adulthood down to about the seventh century, and not in childhood as was normal from about the eighth century onwards. One sign of this is that Lives of saints of the Merovingian age frequently show young people running away from parents towards a clerical or monastic life to avoid forced betrothals;82 equally, parents and other kin might be hostile to young people wanting to enter the monastic life.83 Where foster-fathers occur, they can be kings rather than bishops: this did not mean the part of the text written by canons of Auxerre in the time of Charles the Bald (Goullet, Les gestes des évêques, 1:xxi–xxiv). 80  Bede, Hist. Eccles. 3.7.5, ed.  Bertram Colgrave and Roger A.  B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), p.  236; ­A gilbert became bishop of Paris by 668 and died between 679 and 690: Paul Fouracre, “Agilbert,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online version, 2004 https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb–9780198614128–e–39117?rskey  = 3SJaNL&result  = 1 (viewed 23 July 2019). It is also worth noting the family relationships of Bishop Wilfrid in late seventh-century England: he committed a large area of land that had been granted to him on the Isle of Wight to his sister’s son (filius sororis eius) the cleric Beornwine (Bede, Hist. Eccl. 4.16, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 382), and made his kinsman (propinquus) the priest Tatberht praepositus at Ripon: see Eddius Stephanus, Vita Wilfredi 63, ed. and tr. Bertram Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge, 1927), p. 136; also 65, p. 140. 81  Vita Eucherii 3–4, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 7, p. 48 (for the date of writing see p. 43). 82  For examples, see Gregory, VP 1.1, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2, pp. 213–14 (Lupicinus); 6.1, p. 230 (Gallus); 9.1, p. 253 (Patroclus); 16.1, pp. 274–75 (Venantius); Vita Walarici 2, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 4, p. 161; Vita Sigiramni 3, ed. Krusch, MGH 4, p. 608; Vita Wandregiselli 4, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 5, p. 14; Vita Anstrudis 2, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, MGH SRM 6 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1913), p. 67. Marriage and betrothal also feature in Vita Menelei 1.3, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 5, p. 137; Vita Ansberti 2, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 5, p. 620; Vita Lupi 2, ed. ­K rusch and Levison, MGH SRM 7, p. 296. 83  For some discussion of this phenomenon in Liudger’s Vita Gregorii abbatis Traiectensis, Willibald’s Vita Bonifatii and the Fulda Vita Sturmi see Lutz von Padberg, “Heilige und Familie: Studien zur Bedeutung familiengebundener Aspekte in den Viten des Verwandten- und Schülerkreises um Willibrord, Bonifatius und Liudger” (Ph.D. diss., University of Essen, 1981), pp. 62–66.

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that they were necessarily hostile to their protégés becoming clerics, but nonetheless they would be more likely to view a secular career as appropriate. As late as the first half of the seventh century, future bishops might have a secular career in early adulthood before deciding to become clerics, as we can observe from the careers of Bishops Eligius of Noyon and Audoenus of Rouen:84 educational systems were evidently still flexible enough to allow some boys to obtain an education in letters without having to be tonsured, while training in scriptural study and canon law could be undertaken in adulthood. By the eighth century, this was no longer the case, and from now on parents had to decide clerical or lay futures for their sons in childhood. Even before this point, however, some boys had been given clerical educations from the outset. This pattern of education tended to restrict (and eventually more or less to prevent) the recruitment of married adult laymen into the clergy, even though technically this was still possible in canon law, provided that husbands and wives agreed to give up living together. Childless clerics were increasingly expected to undertake the task of bringing up nephews intended for clerical careers. What we see in the Merovingian period are a few straws in the wind: a more strongly defined role for clerical and episcopal uncles lay around the corner under the Carolingians.

Vita Eligii episcopi Noviomagensis, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 4, pp. 634–742, esp. 671–81; Vita Audoini episcopi Rotomagensis, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 5, pp. 536–67, esp. 554–56; note also Vita Boniti episcopi Arverni, ed. Krusch and Levison, MGH SRM 6, pp. 110–39. 84 

Insular and Carolingian Texts

Zu einem karolingischen Handschriftenfragment aus Mondsee Ein unbekannter mythographischer Text und seine Verbindung zu den Scholia Bernensia sowie zu irischen Orosius-Glossen Lukas J. Dorfbauer Universität Salzburg – CSEL Neben ihren vielen anderen Interessen hat sich Danuta Shanzer auch mit der spätantiken Rezeption eher abgelegener Details römischer Mythen beschäftigt.1 Daher hoffe ich, der Jubilarin eine Freude bereiten zu können, wenn ich im Folgenden die editio princeps eines bisher unbekannten mythographischen Texts vorlege, der aus dem frühen Mittelalter stammt und einige Merkwürdigkeiten zu bieten hat. Leider ist uns dieser Text nur in einer höchst fragmentarischen Form erhalten, weshalb der Edition eine ausführliche Darstellung sowohl der materiellen Überlieferung als auch der inhaltlich mit diesem Stück verbundenen Probleme vorausgehen muss.

1. Präsentation des Fragments Der zu diskutierende Text ist erhalten auf zwei Querstreifen Pergament, welche unter der Signatur ‘Buchdeckelfunde, Schachtel 6, Mappe III/5m’ im Oberösterreichischen Landesarchiv in Linz (= OÖLA) verwahrt werden. Übereinander gelegt bilden diese beiden Streifen die obere Hälfte eines Blatts (c. 115 × 183 mm): Dies ist alles, was wir heute noch von einem Buch besitzen, über dessen ehemaligen Umfang man nur Mutmaßungen anstellen kann. Die  Seiten jenes Buches waren zweispaltig beschrieben (Breite des Schriftraums c. 130 mm), je zehn Zeilen auf dem Recto und auf dem Verso sind erhalten. Die vorhandenen Ränder (oben, innen, außen) erscheinen zwar recht breit, doch kann man nicht davon ausgehen, dass das Erhaltene exakt der ehemaligen Blatthälfte entspricht. Von der Punktierung, welche einst die Blindliniierung der Seite geleitet hat, ist nichts zu erkennen. Ich lasse Reproduktionen der Recto- und der Verso-Seite sowie Transkriptionen des jeweils enthaltenen Texts folgen (mein Dank gilt dem OÖLA für die freundliche Zurverfügungstellung von Photos).

Vgl. Danuta Shanzer, “De Iovis exterminatione,” Hermes 114 (1986), S. 382–83 sowie dies., “De Tagetis exaratione,” Hermes 115 (1987), S. 127–28. 1 

D O I 10 .14 8 4/ M . P J M L . 5 .1 2 8 7 2 4 : 3 4 7– 3 6 3 ©

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Recto Transkription: [Spalte a] Clementis dicitur et primo quidem vagitus innotescerent corripantes quasdam fecit ac timpana percutere ut ab strepante sunitu vagitus vel veretur pueri sed ex uteri in [Spalte b] Deocolion circa (circum ac.) parnassum montem morabatur et fugentes ad se ratibus suspicieban quidum decocalionem quasi deorum calidissimus dictum esse putant sub decalione facit diluvium

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Verso Transkription: [Spalte a] ut nocte fecerentur sed reputans deo calio eo facto (facta ac.) iovem posse offerendi extincsit quo facto miseratur iob iter a quo mercorius vel temis dea iustissima nititur ut post se ossa matris suae iactarent [Spalte b] donorum iopiter fontem fulmine ictum in aerida flumen inprecipitavit cuius mortem sorores tam diu fluerunt donec in arbores populos motarentur ex quibus sucus colore elec

Der anscheinend einzige, der sich bisher mit diesem Fragment beschäftigt hat, war Bernhard Bischoff: Er  publizierte eine knappe kodikologisch-paläographische Beschreibung, worin der Inhalt des Stücks als “mythologischer Text” bezeichnet wird, welcher ein Zitat aus den pseudo-clementinischen Recognitiones enthalte.2

2. Zur Vorgeschichte des Fragments Laut einer internen Notiz des OÖLA wurden die beiden Pergamentstreifen im Jahr 1956 aus der Handschrift StA Mondsee Hs. 58 ausgelöst, der enthaltene Text (zu Unrecht) als Augustinus, De civitate dei bestimmt.3 Bei StA Mondsee Hs. 58 handelt es sich um ein Urbar der ehemals kaiserlichen Herrschaft Wildenegg für die Jahre 1625–1636.4 Wildenegg war 1678 vom Benediktinerstift Mondsee erworben, die Archivalien dem eigenen Bestand einverleibt worden. 1791 erfolgte die Aufhebung von Stift Mondsee, ein Teil des erhaltenen Archivmaterials – darunter jenes Urbar – gelangte zu Beginn des 20. Jh. an das OÖLA. Bernhard Bischoff, Die südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der Karolingerzeit 2:  Die vorwiegend österreichischen Diözesen (Wiesbaden, 1980), S.  25 sowie Id., Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts 2: Laon – Paderborn (Wiesbaden, 2004), S. 90 (nr. 2344). Im Bischoff-Nachlass an der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München befindet sich unter der Signatur Ana 553.A.I.Linz ein Zettel mit Notizen zu dem Fragment, aus denen hervorgeht, dass Bischoff sich intensiv um eine Identifikation des Texts bemüht hat. Er  notierte in einem ersten Schritt “offenbar Aug[ustinus], [De] civ[itate] D[ei]” und zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt: “Aug[ustinus] [De] civ[itate] D[ei] Hier[onymus] Oros[ius] Mythographi > nach Indices nicht gefunden.” 3  Darauf bezieht sich offenbar auch eine Mitteilung im 66. Jahresbericht des OÖLA von 1962 (ohne Seitenzählung), derzufolge der Archivar Georg Grüll “die Sammlung der Buchdeckelfunde und Einlageblätter geordnet, verzeichnet und in Schachteln aufgestellt [habe] … durch jene Stücke vermehrt, die Grüll seit 1947 beim Ordnen der verschiedenen Archive von den Deckeln der Handschriften ablösen konnte … bemerkenswert sind zwei Stücke aus Augustinus De civitate Dei (8. Jh.) …” Die Jahresberichte des OÖLA sind als PDF einsehbar über die Homepage https://www.landesarchiv-ooe.at/ueber-uns/ jahresberichte/ (letzter Zugriff: 20.2.2019). 4  Ignaz Zibermayr, Oberösterreichisches Landesarchiv. Stiftsarchiv Mondsee (Linz, 1928), S. 381 (online einsehbar über https://www.landesarchiv-ooe.at/bestaende/kirchliche-archive/stiftsarchiv-mondsee/; letzter Zugriff: 20.2.2019). Auf der genannten Homepage und in der Einleitung von Zibermayrs Verzeichnis findet man genauere Informationen und weiterführende Hinweise zur Geschichte des Mondseer Archivbestands. 2 

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Derzeit lässt sich nicht sagen, wann und wo StA Mondsee Hs.  58 den heutigen Einband erhalten hat, und aus welcher Quelle die dabei als Makulatur benutzten Pergamentstreifen möglicherweise bezogen wurden. Somit ist auch unklar, ob die karolingische Handschrift, deren Reste in den beiden Pergamentstreifen vorliegen, aus altem Besitz des Klosters Mondsee stammte oder anderswoher.5 An der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Wien läuft derzeit (Stand Februar 2019) ein umfassend angelegtes Projekt zur Erschließung der mittelalterlichen Handschriftenfragmente aus Mondsee, wobei die einzelnen Stücke auch in digitalisierter Form, gemeinsam mit modernen Beschreibungen, online zugänglich gemacht werden sollen.6 Möglicherweise werden sich im Zuge dieser Forschungen neue Erkenntnisse ergeben, welche für eine genauere Rekonstruktion der Vorgeschichte unseres Fragments von Bedeutung sind.

3. Paläographische Beurteilung des Fragments Das Fragment wurde von einer einzelnen Hand in einer frühen karolingischen Minuskel geschrieben.7 Die aufrechte Schrift, etwas in die Breite gehend und rundlich, mit eingekrümmtem und oft spitz abschließendem Bogen von m, darf man kurz nach 800 ansetzen und im südostdeutschen Raum lokalisieren.8 In  den erhaltenen Partien erscheint ausschließlich karolingisches a und gerades d. Der obere Bogen von g ist meist so weit geöffnet, dass er geradezu verkümmert wirkt. Der Schulterstrich des r ist am Wortende oft stark aufgebogen, der Schaft reicht bisweilen unter die Zeile. Neben lı wird auch lȷ gebraucht. Unter den zahlreichen Ligaturen finden sich: er; et; ex; nt (am Wortende); re; st. Kürzungen sind eher sparsam eingesetzt, der Kürzungsstrich für -m (in steil-geschwungener Form) und die alte Häkchen-Form für -ur nur am Zeilenende. Unauffällig ist -b; = -bus, merkwürdig hingegen die zahlreichen Abbreviaturen durch Hochpunkt, darunter auch willkürliche In den erhaltenen mittelalterlichen Bücherverzeichnissen aus Mondsee (die freilich nur recht magere Angaben bieten) findet sich jedenfalls nichts Passendes; vgl. Herbert Paulhart, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Österreichs 5: Oberösterreich (Wien, 1971), S. 66–82. Zur Mondseer Bibliothek und zum Skriptorium von der frühen Karolingerzeit bis ins Hochmittelalter vgl. neben Bischoff, Schreibschulen 2, S. 9–16 auch Carl Pfaff, Scriptorium und Bibliothek des Klosters Mondsee im hohen Mittelalter (Wien, 1967), S. 22–66 und Kurt Holter, “Die Buchkunst im Kloster Mondsee,” in Buchkunst – Handschriften – Bibliotheken. Beiträge zur mitteleuropäischen Buchkultur vom Frühmittelalter bis zur Renaissance, Bd.  2 (Linz, 1996), S. 785–833 sowie die dort jeweils angeführte Literatur. 6  Vgl. jetzt Ivana Dobcheva, “Reading Monastic History in Bookbinding Waste: Collecting, digitizing and interpreting fragments from Mondsee Abbey,” Fragmentology 2 (2019), 35–63. Ich bedanke mich herzlich bei Katharina Kaska (ÖNB) für wertvolle Hinweise und Auskünfte. 7  Der leichte optische Bruch bei Recto b, Z. 3/4 ist durch Wechsel der Tinte (und Feder?), nicht aber der Schreiberhand, bedingt. 8  Auf dem o. Anm.  2 genannten Zettel hatte Bernhard Bischoff notiert: “senkr[echte], südost­d[eu]t[sche] verh[ältnismäßig] schlechte Schrift saec.  IX 1/3.” In  seinen Publikationen nennt er dagegen den etwas früheren Ansatz “saec. VIII–IX.” 5 

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Suspensionen: ſ∙ (mit oder ohne Kürzungsstrich) = sed; fac∙ mit Kürzungsstrich = wohl als facit aufzulösen (sollte im Kontext aber factum heißen); flu∙ mit Kürzungsstrich = flumen. Möglicherweise waren in der Vorlage, von der unser Text kopiert wurde, noch mehr derartige Suspensionen vorhanden, die der Schreiber – soweit er sie nicht unverändert “abmalte” – falsch aufgelöst oder ganz ausgelassen hat: Dies würde den extrem fehlerhaften Wortlaut des Texts teilweise erklären, auf den später zurückzukommen ist. Nachträgliche Korrekturen sind durch Punkte unter den abzuändernden Buchstaben angezeigt. Einziges Interpunktionszeichen in den erhaltenen Passagen ist der Hochpunkt, der –  wie wir gesehen haben  – auch für Kürzungen häufig eingesetzt wird. Das nachträglich ergänzte a, mit dem ein Korrektor circum zu circa abgeändert hat (Recto b, Z. 1), zeigt einen merkbar insularen Duktus. Dazu kommen Hinweise, dass der Text auf ein Exemplar in insularer Schrift zurückgeht: Akzente über Monosyllaba, wie sie bei se auf Recto b, Z. 4 und Verso a, Z. 9 vorliegen, sind dafür typisch.9 In dem Skriptorium, aus dem unser Fragment stammt, war demnach ein gewisser insularer Einfluss vorhanden. Bernhard Bischoff hat das Fragment aus gutem Grund in die Abteilung “Handschriften zweifelhaften oder fremden Ursprungs aus Mondsee” gestellt.10 Das gänzliche Fehlen von cc-a wäre in einem Mondseer Produkt um 800 selbst auf so kurzem Raum außergewöhnlich. Außerdem scheint man im karolingischen Skriptorium von Mondsee hauptsächlich biblische Bücher, Liturgica, Homiliare und einzelne patristische Schriften kopiert zu haben. Ein Text wie der hier vorliegende (zum Inhalt gleich mehr) passt nicht in das Bild, das sich bei Durchsicht des bisher bekannten Materials zweifelsfrei Mondseer Ursprungs abzeichnet. Schließlich ist über insularen Einfluss in Mondsee, wie er sich mit Blick auf den Inhalt im Folgenden noch erhärten wird, nichts bekannt. Dieses Element lässt eher an das nicht allzu weit entfernt liegende Skriptorium von St Peter in Salzburg denken. Manche paläographischen Details würden tatsächlich zu dem dort gepflegten “Alt-Salzburger Stil I” passen, doch gibt es auch abweichende Elemente, sodass man die Schrift nicht einfach St Peter zuweisen darf.11 Angesichts der Kürze unseres Fragments ist die Frage nach dem Abfassungsort einstweilen unentscheidbar; sehr wahrscheinlich handelt es sich aber um ein Skriptorium im Gebiet Oberösterreich – Salzburg – Bayern. Vgl. Bernhard Bischoff, Paläographie des römischen Altertums und des abendländischen Mittelalters, 3. Aufl. (Berlin, 2004), S. 226. Auf dem o. Anm. 2 erwähnten Zettel notierte Bischoff: “! ſé nach ir[ischer] Vorl[age].” Seine Spezifizierung “irisch” (statt allgemein ‘insular’) hängt wohl mit der korrupten Orthographie des Texts zusammen; ich halte dieses Argument aber nicht für beweisend. 10  Vgl. Bischoff, Schreibschulen 2, S. 25. 11  Vgl.  zum “Alt-Salzburger Stil I” Bischoff, Schreibschulen 2, S.  54–59. Zum dortigen Usus passen würde etwa der konsequente Gebrauch von karolingischem a sowie die Form des g, nicht aber das ­Fehlen von rundem d und der oR-Ligatur. 9 

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4. Diskussion des Inhalts Die auf dem Fragment vorhandenen Textpartien erzählen Geschichten aus dem klassischen Mythos.12 Zuerst lesen wir, wie das Schreien des neugeborenen Jupiter durch den Lärm der Korybanten übertönt wurde (Recto a); dann, wie Deukalion am Parnass Überlebende der großen Flut aufnahm (Recto b) und den göttlichen Rat empfing, durch den Wurf von “Knochen seiner Mutter” ein neues Menschengeschlecht zu erschaffen (Verso a); schließlich, wie Phaethon, getroffen vom Blitz des Jupiter, in den Eridanus stürzte, woraufhin seine Schwestern so lange um ihn weinten, bis sie in Pappeln verwandelt wurden (Verso b). Wie haben wir uns das literarische Werk vorzustellen, aus dem diese Stücke stammen? Offenbar liegt kein dezidiert christlicher Text vor, denn in einem solchen wäre entweder Polemik gegen die referierten Mythen oder allegorische Auslegungen derselben zu erwarten. Von beidem fehlt jede Spur, und es erscheint unglaubwürdig, dass die materielle Verstümmelung der Handschrift gerade diese Elemente vollständig dahingerafft hätte. Man kennt trockene Nacherzählungen von Geschichten aus dem klassischen Mythos, wie sie hier vorliegen, ganz ähnlich aus mythographischen Texten, die uns entweder als eigenständige Werke (z. B. die unter dem Namen des Hygin überlieferten Fabulae) oder aber als Scholienmaterial bzw. in der Form eines “mythographic companion” zu römischen Dichtern (wie z. B. die Narrationes des – fälschlicherweise so genanten – “Lactantius Placidus” zu Ovids Metamorphosen) überliefert sind.13 Zu einem mythographischen Text passen neben Inhalt und Sprache unseres Fragments auch der namentliche Verweis auf eine Quelle: “Clemens” – gemeint sind die pseudo-clementinischen Recognitiones in der Übersetzung Rufins  – wird als Gewährsmann für die Geschichte von Jupiter und den Korybanten angeführt (Recto a, Z. 1). Der genaue Vergleich unten wird zeigen, dass ganze Sätze mit nur wenigen Änderungen aus jenem Werk übernommen sind, und auch andere Textpartien werden sich als literarische Übernahmen erweisen. Somit handelt es sich bei dem Fragment aus Mondsee offenbar um Reste eines unbekannten mythographischen Texts, welcher stark kompilatorisch erstellt wurde, wie es bei dieser Art von Literatur nicht unüblich war. Leider können wir anhand des Erhaltenen nicht mehr nachvollziehen, wie der Übergang von einer Geschichte zur nächsten gestaltet war. Aus diesem Grund ist es auch nicht leicht zu entscheiden, ob wir es mit einem eigenständigen mythographischen Werk oder mit entsprechenden Scholien bzw. einem “mythographic companion” zu Für eine restituierende Edition samt Übersetzung vgl. u. Abschnitt 5. Vgl. Alan Cameron, Greek Mythography in the Roman World (Oxford, 2004); Gregory Hays, “Roman Mythography,” in A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology, hg. Vanda Zajko und Helena Hoyle (Hoboken, 2017), S. 29–41. 12  13 

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tun haben. Handelte es sich um ein eigenständiges Werk, dann bestand dieses zweifellos aus kurzen, in sich abgeschlossenen Kapiteln, welche Titel wie “De Iove infante,” “De Deucalione,” “De Phaethonte” o.ä. getragen haben könnten. Die Abfolge der Geschichten “Jupiter  – Deukalion  – Phaethon” legt ein kosmogonisch-historisches Organisationsprinzip nahe. Die Geschichten von Deukalion und von Phaethon stehen in Ovids Metamorphosen, in denen bekanntlich mythographische Quellen verwertet sind, nicht allzu weit voneinander entfernt.14 In den hyginischen Fabulae sind sie fest miteinander verbunden (152A–154),15 und wir werden später sehen, dass sich diese Zusammenstellung in der lateinischen Literatur der Spätantike öfter belegen lässt. Der von unserem Fragment überlieferte Wortlaut ist stark korrupt. Die Palette an Fehlern umfasst u.  a. die in älteren Handschriften notorischen o/u-Unsicherheiten (mercorius), Buchstabenumstellungen und Endungsschwund (suspicieban  = suscipiebat) sowie a/u-Verwechslungen (quidum = quidam), welche eine Vorlage nahelegen, in der die vor- und frühkarolingischen Formen von cc-a oder offenem a gebraucht waren. Besonders schlimm hat es die Eigennamen im Text getroffen, deren Fehlschreibung manchmal auf groteske Weise christlich beeinflusst zu sein scheint (deo colion = Deucalion; iob iter = Iuppiter). Wir müssen davon ausgehen, dass es in der Überlieferungskette mindestens ein Exemplar gegeben hat, welches den Kopisten durch ungewohnte Schrift und möglicherweise auch durch willkürliche Suspensionskürzungen große Probleme bereitete. Glücklicherweise lässt sich aber vieles durch Vergleich mit anderen Texten korrigieren. Wie bereits gesagt, ist die auf Recto a erhaltene Partie zum größten Teil Zitat aus den pseudo-clementinischen Recognitiones.16 Sie ist dort Teil eines langen polemischen Exkurses über die heidnische Götterwelt (10.17–34), welcher selbst aus älteren mythographischen Quellen gespeist sein dürfte.17 Der Vergleich mit der Edition von Rehm und Strecker deckt die zahlreichen Überlieferungsfehler in unserem Text auf: Man wollte die Kombination der beiden Katastrophen, die auf den gegensätzlichen Elementen Wasser und Feuer beruhen, teilweise auf Hesiod zurückführen; vgl. Brooks Otis, Ovid as an Epic Poet (Cambridge, 1966), S. 91–92 und Cameron, Mythography, S. 44–45. 15  Abhängig davon ist der entsprechende Abschnitt der Scholien zu den Aratea des Germanicus, bei denen es sich im Wesentlichen um einen “mythographic companion” handelt. Vgl. Alfred Breysig, Germanici Caesaris Aratea cum scholiis (Berlin, 1867), S. 154 und 174, und allgemein Cameron, Mythography, S. 18–23. 16  Die Pseudoklementinen. II: Rekognitionen in Rufins Übersetzung, hg. Bernhard Rehm und Georg Strecker, 2. Aufl., Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller 51 (Berlin, 1994), hier S. 337. 17  Für die in der Forschung übliche Annahme “orphischer” Quellen vgl. Lautaro Roig Lanzil­lota, “Orphic Cosmogonies in the Pseudo-Clementines? Textual Relationship, Character and Sources of Homilies 6.3–13 and Recognitions 10.17–19.30,” in The Pseudo-Clementines, hg. Jan N. Bremmer (Leuven, 2010), S. 115–41. 14 

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Recognitiones 10.18.6–19.1 et primo quidem ne vagitus pueri innoterescet, Corybantas quosdam cymbala fecit ac tympana percutere, ut obstrepente sonitu vagitus non audiretur infantis. Sed cum ex uteri inminutione…

Fragment, Recto a et primo quidem vagitus innotescerent corripantes quasdam fecit ac timpana percutere ut ab strepante sunitu vagitus vel veretur pueri sed ex uteri in 〈…〉

Von den 26 Wörtern dieses kurzen Abschnitts sind nicht weniger als 11 entstellt oder gänzlich verloren.18 Man mag erwägen, ob einzelne Auslassungen bzw. Umformungen bewusste Eingriffe des Kompilators sind; ich halte das aber – abgesehen von der sicherlich bewussten Ersetzung von infantis durch pueri in Zeile  4 des zitierten Texts – für sehr unwahrscheinlich. Diese Partie lässt erahnen, welch trauriges Bild der vollständige Text in der ursprünglichen Handschrift abgegeben hat, und es ist zumindest nicht auszuschließen, dass der Codex in späterer Zeit eben deshalb zur Makulatur bestimmt wurde, weil sein Inhalt durch die extreme sprachliche Fehlerhaftigkeit weitgehend unverständlich erschien. Auch die auf Verso a erhaltene Textpassage lässt sich durch Vergleich mit anderen Werken gut korrigieren. Relevant sind hier in einem ersten Schritt die sogenannten Scholia Bernensia zu Vergils Eklogen und Georgika (im Folgenden: SchB), eine Sammlung von spätantikem exegetischen Material, das in irischen Kreisen des frühen Mittelalters tradiert wurde,19 sowie der von SchB abhängige Mythographus Vaticanus  II (im Folgenden: MV II):20 Eine überzeugende Verbindung zu einem bestimmten Strang der direkten Überlieferung lässt sich kaum herstellen. Die einzige mögliche Ausnahme könnte die Auslassung von pueri in der ersten Zeile des oben zitierten Texts darstellen: Das Wort fehlt auch in den beiden Recognitiones-Handschriften Vercelli, Biblioteca capitolare CLVIII (CLA 4:468a; geschrieben im 7. Jh., vielleicht in Spanien, aber spätestens seit dem 8. Jh. in Italien) und Verona, Biblioteca capitolare 37 (35) (CLA 4:493; geschrieben im 6. Jh. in Italien), die laut Rehm und Strecker, Pseudoklementinen, S. XXXVI–XXXIX eng miteinander verwandt sind. Da aber die Recognitiones reich überliefert sind, sollte man aus dieser Übereinstimmung keine voreiligen Schlüsse zu ziehen. 19  Scholia Bernensia ad Vergili Bucolica atque Georgica, hg. Hermann Hagen, Jahrbücher für classische Philologie, Suppl. 4 (Leipzig, 1867), S. 675–1014, hier S. 798 (ich folge der originalen Seitenzählung, nicht der abweichenden des Nachdrucks von 1967); David C. C. Daintree, Scholia Bernensia. An Edition of the Scholia on the Eclogues of Virgil in Bern Burgerbibliothek Manuscript 172 (Ph.D. diss., University of Tasmania, 1993), hier S. 200. Vgl. auch David Daintree, “Virgil and Virgil Scholia in Early Medieval Ireland,” Romanobarbarica 16 (1999), 347–61 sowie, zur Forschungsgeschichte und Textkonstitution, Luca Cadili, “Gli  Scholia Bernensia alle Georgiche di Virgilio,” Lexis 21 (2003), 381–92. 20  Mythographi Vaticani I et II, hg. Peter Kulcsár, CCSL 91C (Turnhout, 1987), hier S. 166 (nach dieser Edition die Siglen u. in Anm. 23 und 24); Nevio Zorzetti, Ricerche sulla tradizione manoscritta e sulle fonti del secondo mitografo Vaticano (Trieste, 1993), hier S. 78. Weder Kulcsár noch Zorzetti weisen auf SchB als Quelle des fraglichen Kapitels hin, obwohl dies bereits Ferdinand Keseling, De Mythographi Vaticani 18 

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SchB ad Ecl. 6.41

MV II, 91 K. = 73 Z

Fragment, Verso a

ut nocte facte uterentur, sed reputans Deucalion eo facto Iovem posse offendi, ut prius commento igneo Prometheus offenderat 21, ignem extinxit. Ob hoc miseratus Iuppiter per Mercurium monuit, 〈ut〉22 post se lapides iacerent

ut nocte uterentur, sed reputans Deucalion eo23 facto Iovem offendi posse,

ut nocte fecerentur sed reputans deo calio eo facto iovem posse offerendi

extincsit quo facto ignem extinxit. Ob hoc ­ ercurium miseratur iob iter a quo mercorius miseratus Iuppiter per M vel temis dea iustissima nititur monuit, ut post se ossa matris suae iactarent ut post se lapides24 iacerent

Das unmögliche fecerentur unseres Fragments entpuppt sich als Entstellung von face uterentur. In diesem Detail steht der Text näher an SchB als an MV II, wo face gänzlich ausgefallen ist, und dasselbe gilt für die Wortstellung posse offe[re]ndi gegen offendi posse. Dagegen wäre die Auslassung des folgenden Nebensatzes ut prius … offenderat geradezu als Bindefehler unseres Fragments mit MV II anzusehen, ließe sich nicht argumentieren, der Augensprung von offendi zu offenderat habe durchaus zweimal unabhängig voneinander passieren können. Es ist also soweit nicht völlig klar, ob unser Fragment mit SchB oder mit dem davon abhängigen MV II in engerer Verbindung steht. Glücklicherweise existiert aber ein dritter Vergleichstext, der nicht nur diese Frage klärt, sondern darüber hinaus für die Bewertung unseres fragmentarisch erhaltenen Texts von fundamentaler Bedeutung ist. Es handelt sich um eine Glossensammlung zu den Büchern 1 und 2 des Geschichtswerks des Orosius (im Folgenden: GlO), welche anscheinend singulär auf fol. 1r–10v der Handschrift Vatikan Reg. lat. 1650 überliefert ist.25 secundi fontibus (Halle, 1908), S. 90 festgestellt hat. Für die Übermittlung von Kopien aus Zorzettis Arbeit, die außerhalb von Triest kaum zugänglich ist, danke ich Rainer Jakobi, dessen Aufsatz “Zur Überlieferung des Zweiten Vatikanischen Mythographen,” Revue d’histoire des textes 3 (2008), S. 283–86 von grundlegender Bedeutung für die Textkonstitution von MV II ist. 21  Dieser von Hagen, Scholia Bernensia, S. 798 im Apparat notierte Vorschlag (für tradiertes ostenderat) ist zweifellos in den Text aufzunehmen. 22  Ergänzung von mir. Zwar ist bei der Konstruktion monere + Konjunktiv die Angabe von ut nicht zwingend erforderlich (vgl. TLL 8:1411.8–18), doch spricht der Wortlaut des von SchB abhängigen MV II für Textausfall, wie er nach monuit ja leicht passieren konnte. 23  Die Lesart von M (E liest et) ist hier im Einklang mit der Quelle SchB gegen das in A und B tradierte ex in den Text aufzunehmen. Wie Jakobi, “Zur Überlieferung” nachgewiesen hat, bilden die Codices M und E einen eigenen Überlieferungsstrang, der stemmatisch allen übrigen Handschriften gleichwertig gegenübersteht. 24  Die von M und  E gebotene Wortstellung ist im Einklang mit der Quelle SchB in den Text aufzunehmen. 25  Edition mit ausführlicher Einleitung und Kommentar von Olivier Szerwiniack, “Un commentaire hiberno-latin des deux premiers livres d’Orose, Histoire contre les paiens,” Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 51 (1992/3), S. 5–137 (die Glossen von fol. 1r–5r) und 65 (2007), S. 165–208 (die Glossen von fol. 5r–7v); die Glossen von fol. 7v–10v sollen in einem künftigen Artikel ediert werden. Ein digitalisierter Mikrofilm der Handschrift Vatikan, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Reg. lat. 1650 ist online einsehbar unter

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Jener Codex wurde im letzten Drittel des 9. Jh. in Soissons geschrieben, die OrosiusGlossen sind aber deutlich älter. Sie entstammen einem gelehrten irischen Kreis und verwerten in ihrer Erklärung von historisch-mythologischen Details des Orosius-Texts neben anderen Quellen insbesondere das aus SchB bekannte Vergil-Scholienmaterial, allerdings in einer älteren und reichhaltigeren Fassung, als sie uns überliefert ist.26 Wenn Orosius Hist. 1.9.2 berichtet, dass es um das Jahr 810 vor der Gründung Roms eine große Flut in Thessalien gegeben habe, die nur wenige überlebt hätten, darunter Deukalion, der Flüchtlinge bei sich am Parnassgebirge aufgenommen habe, dann bietet GlO zusätzliche Informationen über Deukalion und dessen Schicksal. Hier eine Gegenüberstellung unseres Fragments mit dem entsprechenden Teil der Glosse27: GIO ad Oros. Hist. 1.9.2

Fragment, Verso a

ut nocte face uterentur, sed reputans Diocalion et facto Iovem posse offendi extincxit, quo facto miseratus Iovis immisit Mercurium vel Themis dea iustissima inmissa est, ut ossa, id est lapides, matris suae, id est in terre, post se iactaret

ut nocte fecerentur sed reputans deo calio eo facto iovem posse offerendi extincsit quo facto miseratur iob iter a quo mercorius vel temis dea iustissima nititur ut post se ossa matris suae iactarent

Anders als SchB und MV II hält GlO, so wie unser Fragment, explizit fest, dass Merkur “oder Themis, die gerechteste Göttin” von Jupiter zu Deukalion geschickt wurde.28 Außerdem findet man in GlO ebenfalls die ursprüngliche Form des Orakelspruchs, in welchem von den “Gebeinen der Mutter” die Rede ist (die Lösung “ossa matris suae”  = “lapides” wurde allerdings ergänzt). Schließlich fehlt in  GlO, so wie in unserem Fragment, nicht nur der Nebensatz “ut prius … offenderat,” sondern auch das darauf folgende Wort “ignem,” und der Anschluss an das Weitere geschieht mit “quo https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Reg.lat.1650 (letzter Zugriff: 20.2.2019). Vgl. zu dem Codex Bernhard Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts 3: Padua – Zwickau (Wiesbaden, 2014), S. 441 (nr. 6794). 26  Dass GlO Zugang zu einer umfangreicheren Form des in SchB tradierten Materials hatte, wurde bereits von Paul Lehmann, “Reste und Spuren antiker Gelehrsamkeit in mittelalterlichen Texten,” Philologus 83 (1928), S. 193–203 dargelegt. Vgl. jetzt Szerwiniack, “Un commentaire,” S. 27–28 sowie Michael W. Herren, “Literary and Glossarial Evidence for the Study of Classical Mythology in Ireland A.D. 600–800,” in Text and Gloss. Studies in Insular Learning and Literature Presented to J. D. Pheifer, hg. Helen ConradO’Briain, Anne Marie D’Arcy, und John Scattergood (Dublin, 1999), S. 49–67, hier S. 55–61. 27  Vatikan, Reg. lat. 1650, fol. 6ra; Szerwiniack, “Un commentaire,” S. 177 (Text) und S. 192–93 (Kommentar). Vgl.  Orosius, Hist.  1.9.2, hg.  Karl Zangemeister, Pauli Orosii Historiarum adversum Paganos ­Libri VII, CSEL 5 (Wien, 1882), S. 53–4: “Anno DCCCX ante urbem conditam (…) aquarum inluvies maiorem partem populorum Thessaliae absumpsit paucis per refugia montium liberatis, maxime in monte Parnaso, in cuius circuitu Deucalion tunc regno potiebatur, qui tunc ad se ratibus confugientes susceptos per gemina Parnasi iuga fovit aluitque; a quo propterea genus hominum reparatum ferunt.” 28  Die Einführung einer derartigen Alternative, zum Ausdruck gebracht durch vel oder sive, spricht dafür, dass hier zwei verschiedene Quellen zusammengearbeitet wurden.

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facto,” nicht mit “ob hoc,” wie es in SchB und MV II der Fall ist. Damit ist klar, dass unser mythographisches Fragment mit SchB bzw. dem davon abhängigen MV II nicht so eng verwandt ist wie mit GlO (wobei GlO aber – wie gesagt – aus einer uns nicht erhaltenen älteren und umfangreicheren Fassung von SchB schöpft). Die Verbindung geht noch über die oben zitierte Partie hinaus. Denn die Deukalion-Geschichte unseres Fragments beginnt ja bereits auf Recto b, wo u. a. zu lesen steht: “quidum decocalionem quasi deorum calidissimus dictum esse putant.” Dem entspricht der Satz “Pira autem fuit mulier Diacolioonis deorum callidissimi,” der sich in GlO einige Zeilen vor dem zitierten Abschnitt findet. Die etymologische Erklärung des Namens “Deucalion” als “deorum callidissimus” lässt sich aus keinem weiteren mir bekannten Text belegen und basiert offenbar allein auf dem lautlichen Anklang im Lateinischen. Sie kann somit unmöglich auf eine griechische Quelle zurückgehen, wie es bei einem griechischen Namen grundsätzlich denkbar wäre. Weder GlO noch unser Fragment sagt explizit, warum Deukalion – der traditionell als Exempel für Rechtschaffenheit galt, nicht für Schlauheit – als “Schlauester unter den Göttern” bezeichnet werden sollte.29 Vor allem aber impliziert diese Namenserklärung einen göttlichen Status des Deukalion, was mit dem klassischen Mythos nicht zusammenpasst.30 Diese etymologische Erklärung ist also in mehrerer Hinsicht höchst merkwürdig, die Gemeinsamkeit von GlO und unserem Text signifikant. Nun hat unser mythographischer Text die seltsame Interpretation sicherlich nicht selbst erfunden, sondern aus einer Quelle übernommen, denn sie wird explizit anderen zugeschrieben (“quidam putant”). Wurde sie etwa aus GlO bezogen? Sicherlich nicht, wie ein erneuter Vergleich mit SchB ad Ecl. 6.41 lehrt, wo man einige Zeilen vor dem oben zitierten Ausschnitt liest: “Themis dea iustissima petentibus propter raritatem hominum responsum dedit, ut ossa matris suae terrae31 post tergum posita tollerent.” Beim Schlussteil des fraglichen Abschnitts von GlO, also den Worten “ Themis dea iustissima inmissa est, ut ossa, id est lapides, matris suae, id est in terre, post se iactaret,” handelt Vielleicht aufgrund seiner Entscheidung, Jupiter nicht durch die Entzündung von Feuer zu reizen, oder wegen der Lösung des Orakelspruchs über die “Gebeine der Mutter” (was freilich üblicherweise Deukalions Gattin Pyrrha zugesprochen wurde). Auch die Abstammung von Prometheus mag relevant sein, worauf Greg Hays mich hinweist. 30  Die einzige mir bekannte Stelle, auf die man als Parallele hinweisen könnte, findet sich im überlieferten Textbestand des dogmatischen Lehrgedichts Apotheosis des Prudentius: Dort (292) wird der Häretiker einem Heiden gleichgestellt und als venerator Deucalionum beschimpft, woraus sich göttlicher Rang der “Deukalionen” (!) ableiten lässt. Diskussion bei Christian Gnilka, “Unechtes in der Apotheosis,” in Prudentiana I. Critica (München/Leipzig, 2000), S. 459–647 (hier S. 558–62), der diese Passage (sowie den folgenden Halbvers 293in.) als spätere Interpolation athetiert. Die Parallele ist merkwürdig, doch halte ich einen genuinen Zusammenhang zwischen jenem Vers und unseren mythographischen Texten für schwer möglich. 31  Das Wort terrae ist möglicherweise als eine später in den Text eingedrungene Glosse zu tilgen. Hagen, Scholia Bernensia, S. 798 liest “sive terrae” und athetiert beide Wörter. 29 

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es sich um eine selbständige Umformung jenes Satzes. Hätte unser fragmentarisch erhaltener Text GlO als Quelle benutzt, wie hätte er dann gegen diese Vorlage die ursprüngliche Formulierung “ut post se ossa matris suae iactarent” herstellen können, und warum hätte er das überhaupt tun wollen, wo doch GlO nicht nur den Orakelspruch, sondern auch dessen Lösung (“id est lapides”) bot? Folglich geht entweder umgekehrt GlO auf unseren Text zurück, oder – dafür werde ich im Folgenden argumentieren – es gab eine Zwischenquelle, aus der unser Text und GlO unabhängig voneinander schöpften. In GlO folgt wenige Zeilen nach der Glosse zu Deukalion eine Glosse zu Phaethon, anknüpfend an dessen Erwähnung in Orosius Hist. 1.10.19, sodass sich wie in unserem Fragment die Abfolge “Deukalion – Phaethon” ergibt.32 Diese Phaethon-Glosse ist erneut aus Text konstruiert, der mit wenigen Änderungen aus dem in SchB tradierten VergilScholienmaterial stammt (ad Ecl. 6.62).33 Allerdings gibt es in diesem Fall keine schlagenden Berührungen mit dem Wortlaut unseres Fragments. Dies untermauert, dass Letzteres nicht von GlO abhängt, und spricht für die Annahme einer gemeinsamen Quelle (auch wenn sich nicht letztlich ausschließen lässt, dass auf dem verlorenen Abschnitt unseres Texts eine zu GlO analoge Geschichte zu finden gewesen wäre). Denn die Phaethon-Geschichte auf Verso b unseres Fragments weist mit keinem mir bekannten Text schlagende wörtliche Übereinstimmungen auf; die deutlichsten inhaltlichen Parallelen finden sich in einer Passage der Etymologiae Isidors, die aber sicherlich nicht direktes Vorbild waren.34 Interessanterweise sind die Etymologiae auch für GlO eine wichtige Quelle, wurden aber für die Phaethon-Geschichte nicht herangezogen. Somit werden die Kompilatoren von GlO und von unserem mythographischen Text unabhängig voneinander auf eine gemeinsame Quelle zurückgegriffen haben, in der Isidors Werk bereits benutzt war. Freilich genossen die Etymologiae schon im frühen Mittelalter derartige Prominenz, dass ihre Rezeption in zwei Texten nicht als signifikanter Hinweis auf eine von diesen geteilte Zwischenquelle gewertet werden kann. Aber betrachten wir ein anderes Beispiel: Die Jupiter-Geschichte auf Recto a unseres Fragments zitiert, wie gezeigt wurde, aus einem mythographischen Exkurs der pseudo-clementinischen Recognitiones. Vgl. Oros. Hist. 1.10.19, hg. Zangemeister, S. 59: “His etiam temporibus adeo iugis et gravis aes­ tus incanduit, ut sol per devia transvectus universum orbem non calore affecisse, sed igne torruisse dicatur (…) ex quo etiam quidam (…) ridiculam Phaethontis fabulam texuerunt.” Der entsprechende Teil von GlO, hg. Szerwiniack, “Un commentaire,” S. 178: “Faeton et Cleminae filius Solis, cum incerte originis argueretur, petit a patre Sole (ut fingit gentilitas), ut uno die equos eius regeret ad testimonium generis sui. Unde certissimam orbitam devitans hoc incendium fuisse discribitur et per ignorantiam lapsus in Eridianum flumen cecidit. Cuius sorores obitum defleverunt et flendo in arbores converse sunt” (Vatikan, Reg. lat. 1650, fol. 6rb). 33  Hagen, Scholia Bernensia, S. 801; Daintree, Scholia Bernensia, S. 207. Vgl. zu der Übernahme Szerwiniack, “Un commentaire,” S. 194–95. 34  Etym. 16.8.6, hg. Wallace Martin Lindsay, Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX, Bd. 2 (Oxford, 1911), S. 199–200; vgl. u. Anm. 54. 32 

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Diese waren sicherlich nicht die naheliegendste Quelle für Informationen über die heidnische Götterwelt – und doch bezog GlO Angaben über das Titanengeschlecht aus dem selben Abschnitt der Recognitiones (10.17.5–6).35 Dies deutet auf die Existenz eines längeren Recognitiones-Exzerpts hin, welches jenem mythographischen Exkurs in seiner Gänze entsprochen haben dürfte, und das zweimal unabhängig voneinander ausgewertet und unterschiedlich gekürzt wurde. Betrachten wir schließlich den Beginn der Deukalion-Geschichte auf Recto  b unseres Fragments. Die Formulierungen “Deucalion circa Parnassum montem morabatur” und “sub Deucalione factum diluvium” (Recto b) klingen deutlich an zwei benachbarte Einträge in der von Hieronymus übersetzten Eusebius-Chronik an (an. 1537 / 1527 a. C.), wobei die letztere Stelle die Geschichten von Deukalion und von Phaethon miteinander verknüpft und Quelle für Orosius gewesen sein dürfte.36 Die in unserem Fragment dazwischen platzierte Aussage “(Deucalion) fugientes ad se ratibus suscipiebat” geht eindeutig auf Orosius Hist. 1.9.237 bzw. auf den davon wörtlich abhängigen Isidor Etym. 13.22.438 zurück: “… in monte Parnaso, in cuius circuitu Deucalion … tunc ad se ratibus confugientes susceptos per gemina Parnasi iuga fovit.” Es sieht also ganz danach aus, als würde unser Fragment hier einen unbekannten Text verwerten, welcher aus der Eusebius/Hieronymus-Chronik und aus Orosius bzw. Isidor schöpfte. Nun zählt die Eusebius/Hieronymus-Chronik neben Isidor zu den am intensivsten benutzten Quellen der Orosius-Glossensammlung GlO.39 Just die genannten Passagen finden sich in GlO aber nicht aufgenommen. Ich sehe darin eine weitere Bekräftigung für die Annahme einer gemeinsamen Quelle von GlO und unserem Fragment: In dieser müssen die genannten Texte bereits exzerpiert gewesen sein. Wie hat man sich diese gemeinsame Quelle vorzustellen? Nach dem Vorangegangenen könnte man vielleicht an einen umfangreichen Orosius-Kommentar denken, der in dem Fragment aus Mondsee auf seinen mythographischen Gehalt hin “verdünnt” worden wäre, während GlO darüber hinaus auch geographische, historische und sprachliche Erläuterungen übernommen hätte. Aber gegen diese Idee spricht eindeutig das Vorhandensein der Jupiter-Geschichte am Beginn unseres Fragments: Diese lässt sich an keine Orosius-Passage vor Hist. 1.9.2 sinnvoll anknüpfen, und es ist – anders als bei Deukalion und Phaethon – nicht ersichtlich, warum ein Orosius-Kommentar an der fraglichen Position eine Geschichte über die Geburt Jupiters geboten haben sollte. Vgl. Szerwiniack, “Un commentaire,” S. 48 (Vatikan, Reg. lat. 1650, fol. 1ra). Eusebius Werke  VII: Die Chronik des Hieronymus, hg.  Rudolf Helm, 3.  Aufl., Die  Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller 47 (Berlin, 1984), S. 42b: “Deucalion aput eos regnare orsus, qui circa Parnassum demorabantur” (einige Codices lesen “morabantur” oder “morabatur,” wie unser Fragment) “… diluvium, quod sub Deucalione in Thessalia, et incendium, quod sub Faetonte factum est.” 37  Vgl. o. Anm. 27. 38  Hg. Lindsay, S. 110. 39  Vgl. Szerwiniack, “Un commentaire,” S. 167. 35 

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Vielmehr ist bei jener gemeinsamen Quelle an einen exegetischen Text zu Vergils sechster Ekloge zu denken, in dem jene Mythen identifiziert und nacherzählt wurden, auf welche der poeta doctus Vergil nur kurz anspielt.40 Denn wir haben ja gesehen, dass die Deukalion-Geschichte auf Verso a unseres Fragments sowie die Geschichten von Deukalion und von Phaethon in GlO auf Textmaterial zurückführen, welches SchB zur Auslegung von Vergil Ecl. 6.41 bzw. 62 überliefert. Nun lautet Vers 41 der sechsten Ekloge: “Hinc lapides Pyrrhae iactos, Saturnia regna.” Die erste Hälfte dieses Hexameters führt in SchB zur Mitteilung der bereits bekannten Deukalion-Geschichte, die zweite zu folgender Bemerkung: “Sine ordine posuit; ante enim ‘Saturnia regna’ et sic ‘Pyrrhae’ (…) Saturnia regna, quae perhibentur aurea fuisse.” 41 Eine regelrechte Geschichte zu Saturn gibt es in dem uns überlieferten Text von SchB nicht. Aber in jener älteren und umfangreicheren Form von SchB, die dem Kompilator von GlO zugänglich war,42 dürfte sie vorhanden gewesen sein. Eine derartige Saturn-Geschichte wird, anknüpfend an das Lemma “Saturnia regna,” von der Abfolge der Weltzeitalter und damit auch von der Geburt Jupiters erzählt haben, und sie wäre wohl vor der Deukalion-Geschichte platziert gewesen, wenn die in SchB eingemahnte “richtige” Reihenfolge eingehalten gewesen wäre, also “Jupiter – Deukalion – Phaethon,” so wie in unserem Fragment.43 In diesem Zusammenhang gilt es auch zu betonen, dass mehrere von jenen Werken, die in der postulierten gemeinsamen Quelle ausgewertet waren, in der uns überlieferten Form von SchB nachweislich benutzt und sogar namentlich zitiert sind: Isidor, die Eusebius/Hieronymus-Chronik und (vielleicht) Orosius. Die Einarbeitung dieser Texte in SchB wurde plausibel mit jener frühmittelalterlichen Überlieferungsstufe verbunden, in welcher der spätantike Kern des Vergil-Scholienmaterials durch gelehrte irische Kreise überarbeitet worden ist.44 Somit erscheint es naheliegend, die postulierVergilexegetische Werke gehörten zu den bedeutendsten “mythophorischen” Texten für das f­ rühe Mittelalter. Zum Terminus “mythophorisch” und allgemein zu den Quellen, aus denen das frühe Mittelalter seine Kenntnisse über die antike Mythologie bezog, vgl. Michael W. Herren, “The Earliest European Study of Graeco-Roman Mythology (A.D. 600–900),” Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debrecensiensis 34/5 (1998/9), S. 25–49, hier S. 28–30 zur Vergil-Exegese. Zur Bedeutung von Mythographie in antiken Vergil-Kommentaren vgl. Cameron, Mythography, S. 184–216 und Hays, “Mythography,” S. 34–35. 41  Hagen, Scholia Bernensia, S.  798 (mit der unnötigen Konjektur tunc für sic); Daintree, Scholia ­Bernensia, S. 201. 42  Vgl. dazu die o. Anm. 26 genannte Literatur. 43  Antike und moderne Kritiker haben sich immer wieder an der Abfolge der Mythen in Vergils sechster Ekloge gestoßen und sie unterschiedlich zu erklären versucht. Vgl. dazu etwa Michael Paschalis, “Semina ignis: The Interplay of Science and Myth in the Song of Silenus,” American Journal of Philology 122 (2001), 201–22. 44  Vgl.  Herren, “Evidence,” S.  58–59 sowie Fabio Stok, “Was Philargyrius a Christian?,” Giornale Italiano di Filologia 70 (2018), S. 233–47, hier S. 235–36. Man findet die einschlägigen Passagen in SchB 40 

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te gemeinsame Quelle von GlO und unserem Text mit der von der älteren Forschung überzeugend erschlossenen umfangreicheren Fassung von SchB zu identifizieren, die in GlO für die Erklärung des Orosius nutzbar gemacht wurde. Nicht letztlich klären lässt sich die Frage, ob in unserem Fragment der Überrest eines eigenständigen mythographischen Werks oder aber einer Art von “mythographic companion” zu Vergil vorliegt.45 Letzteres darf man angesichts der Entstehungszeit unseres Texts – nach dem Tod Isidors († 636), aber vor der Wende vom 8. zum 9. Jh. – für wahrscheinlicher halten. Das Fragment aus Mondsee, geschrieben kurz nach 800, stammt von einem Buch, das bereits mehrere Stufen vom “Autorenexemplar” entfernt war, wie der extrem korrupte Text anzeigt. Die paläographische Untersuchung hat einen insularen Überlieferungshintergrund nahegelegt, und im Lichte der engen Verbindung zu GlO sowie zu einer älteren Form von SchB darf man diesen als irisch präzisieren. Unser mythographischer Text geht vielleicht unmittelbar, jedenfalls aber mittelbar auf denselben irischen Kreis des späteren 7. bzw. früheren 8. Jh. zurück, in dem GlO kompiliert wurde, wie die textlichen Übereinstimmungen gegen die uns überlieferte Form von SchB anzeigen. Graphisch dargestellt: erschlossene ältere Form von SchB

uns überlieferte Form von SchB

GlO

Fragment aus Mondsee

5. Edition und Übersetzung des Texts Abschließend mein Versuch einer rekonstruierenden Edition. Man kann nicht davon ausgehen, dass alle Heilungsversuche das Richtige getroffen haben, insbesondere bei jenen Partien, für die keine wörtlichen Parallelen bekannt sind. In den Fußnoten über den Namensindex bei Hagen, Scholia Bernensia. Benutzung von Orosius kann vorerst nicht als gesichert gelten, da die fragliche Stelle anscheinend in der wichtigsten Handschrift fehlt. Die Quellen von SchB sollten – wie auch andere Aspekte dieser Scholiensammlung – nochmals genau untersucht werden: Wahrscheinlich lassen sich mit den uns heute zur Verfügung stehenden Hilfsmitteln noch einige Erkenntnisse gewinnen. Wie unzureichend bereits der Text von Hagens Edition ist, zeigt etwa Rainer ­Jakobi, “Beiträge zu antiken und frühmittelalterlichen Exegeten der Vergilischen Bucolica und ­Georgica,” Museum Helveticum 58 (2001), S. 54–63, hier S. 57–58. Daintree, Scholia Bernensia bietet keine kritische Edition, sondern weitgehend eine Transkription einer einzelnen Handschrift. Auf diesem Gebiet ist noch viel zu tun. 45  Selbstverständlich hätte dieser Text nichts mit jenem “Mythographus Vergilianus” aus dem 2. Jh. n. Chr. zu tun, für dessen Existenz Cameron, Mythography, S. 184–212 argumentiert.

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begründe ich meine Entscheidungen. Eine moderne Interpunktion wurde zur leichteren Lesbarkeit eingefügt, ebenso eine ‘klassische’ Orthographie hergestellt, obwohl diese sicherlich nicht der Schreibung des frühmittelalterlichen Kompilators entspricht. Aber der tradierte Text ist derart korrupt, dass man auch die überlieferten Formen nicht einfach als original ansehen kann. Die beigegebene Übersetzung unterscheidet im Druckbild nicht zwischen überliefertem und (konjektural) erschlossenem Textbestand. 〈…Rhea Iovem subtraxit patri, ut in libris〉46 Clementis dicitur, et primo quidem, 〈ne〉 vagitus47 innotesceret, Corybantas quasdam 48 〈cymbala〉 fecit ac tympana percutere, ut obstrepente sonitu vagitus non audiretur pueri. Sed 49 ex uteri in〈minutione〉 〈…〉 〈…〉 Deucalion circa Parnassum montem morabatur et fugientes50 ad se ratibus suscipiebat. Quidam Deucalionem quasi deorum callidissimum dictum esse putant. Sub Deucalione factum diluvium 〈…〉 〈…ignemque fecerunt,〉51 ut nocte face uterentur, sed reputans Deucalion eo facto Iovem posse offendi extinxit. Quo facto miseratur Iupiter; a quo Mercurius vel Themis dea iustissima mittitur, ut post se ossa matris suae iactarent 〈…〉 〈…rex〉 deorum52 Iupiter Phaethontem fulmine ictum in Eridanum flumen praecipitavit.53 Cuius mortem sorores tam diu fleverunt, donec in arbores populos mutarentur. Ex quibus sucus colore elec〈…〉54 Diese Ergänzung bringe ich bloß exempli gratia vor, um zu demonstrieren, wie der erhaltene Text ursprünglich mit dem folgenden Recognitiones-Zitat verknüpft gewesen sein könnte, aber auch in inhaltlicher Hinsicht mit der Erwähnung von Jupiters Vater Saturn. Die Recognitiones sind handschriftlich unter Titeln wie Libri (recognitionum) / Itinerarium / Historia Clementis o.ä. überliefert; vgl. Rehm und Strecker, Pseudoklementinen, S. XVIII–XIX. 47  Eine Ergänzung von “pueri”, analog zum Recognitiones-Text, erscheint nicht zwingend. 48  Man kann das überlieferte Femininum halten, denn der frühmittelalterliche Kompilator mag bei “Corybantas” tatsächlich an Frauen gedacht haben. 49  Ob hier analog zu den Recognitiones ein “cum” zu ergänzen ist, lässt sich nicht entscheiden, solange man nicht weiß, wie der Satz ursprünglich weitergelaufen ist. 50  Vielleicht ist mit Orosius bzw. Isidor “confugientes” zu schreiben. 51  Diese Ergänzung, analog zum Text von SchB, MV II und GlO, scheint sicher. 52  Es ist schwer vorstellbar, wie das überlieferte “donorum” in den Kontext passen soll. Ich vermute, dass hier ursprünglich etwas wie “rex deorum Iupiter” oder “supremus deorum Iupiter” stand (vgl. etwa Augustinus, Civ. Dei. 4.10; Macrobius, Sat. 1.23.1). 53  Da ein Verb inpraecipitare nicht belegt zu sein scheint, gehe ich von einem Versehen des Schreibers aus, wie es nach flumen leicht passieren konnte. 54  Zu welcher Form von electrum man das unvollständige elec auch ergänzen will, es ist klar, dass eine Version der Geschichte im Hintergrund steht, ähnlich wie bei Isidor, Etym. 16.8.6, hg. Lindsay, S. 199– 200: “Sucinus, quem appellant Graeci ἤλεκτρον, fulvi cereique coloris, fertur arboris sucus esse et ob id sucinum appellari. Electrum autem vocari fabulosa argumentatio dedit: Namque Phaethonte fulminis ictu interempto sorores eius luctu mutatas in arbores populos lacrimis electrum omnibus annis fundere iuxta Eridanum amnem (…).” 46 

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(…) Rhea schaffte Jupiter heimlich von seinem Vater weg, wie es in den Büchern des Clemens heißt, und damit sein Geschrei nicht auffalle, ließ sie zuerst einige Korybanten Schellen und Trommeln schlagen, sodass man das Geschrei des Babys bei dem furchtbaren Lärm nicht hören konnte. Aber wegen des Zurückgehens ihres Babybauches (…) (…) Deukalion hielt sich beim Parnassgebirge auf und nahm jene, die auf Flössen zu ihm flüchteten, bei sich auf. Manche glauben, er sei Deukalion genannt worden, weil er gleichsam ‘der Schlaueste unter den Göttern’ war. Unter Deukalion fand die Sintflut statt (…) (…) und sie machten Feuer, damit sie es nachts als Lichtquelle nutzen konnten, aber Deukalion meinte, dadurch könnte Jupiter verärgert werden, und löschte es aus. Aufgrund dieser Tat hatte Jupiter Mitleid; von ihm wurde Merkur oder Themis, die gerechteste Göttin, ausgeschickt, auf dass sie die Knochen ihrer Mutter hinter sich würfen (…) (…) der Götterkönig Jupiter traf Phaethon mit einem Blitz und ließ ihn dadurch in den Fluß Eridanus stürzen. Die Schwestern des Phaethon weinten so lange über seinen Tod, bis sie in Pappeln verwandelt wurden. Von ihnen stammt der bernsteinfarbige Saft (…)

Symbolism and Typology in Bede’s Passion of St Albanus Thomas D. Hill Cornell University One of the first narratives in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica is the story of the martyrdom of Albanus.1 Scholars have explored questions about this legend – where Albanus was martyred, for example – and the source texts of the legend which Bede used have been identified and published,2 but a literary question which has not been discussed, to the best of my knowledge, is why Bede chose to write about the passion and death of this particular martyr. Albanus was not the first Christian in England nor was he the first or only martyr – Bede tells the story very briefly of two other martyrs who experienced particularly cruel deaths3 – but there is no question that he gives much more attention to Albanus than to any other victim of the persecutions in Britain. I would propose that Bede was interested in the Albanus story for a variety of reasons – that this story is particularly rich in terms of its symbolic and typological resonances and it was for this reason that he chose to emphasize the Albanus story as he did. One immediate possibility is onomastic. Alba is the Scots Gaelic name for Scotland, the related name Albion is a name for Britain as a whole and the Latin name Albanus is at least reminiscent of these generic names for the island of Britain or large portions of it. Again, and perhaps more convincingly, the name Albanus means “the white one” (Latin albus), an obviously appropriate name for a saint and a martyr. More importantly, however, the details of the story of Albanus are typologically very suggestive. At the beginning of the story Albanus is defined as a pagan, but one who is sympathetic to and supportive of Christianity. We are not told whether at this All Latin quotations are from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and Roger A. B. Mynors, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1969) by book, chapter and page numbers. I also quote the translation from this edition. For a new edition see Beda, Storia degli Inglesi, ed. Michael Lapidge, trans. Paolo Chiesa, 2 vols. (Milan, 2008). The Albanus story is edited and translated into Italian at vol. 1, pp. 40–49, with notes at pp. 298–300. For commentary and discussion see also Baedae Opera Historica, ed. Charles Plummer, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1896) and John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People: A Historical Commentary (Oxford, 1988). 2  Wilhelm Meyer, Die Legende des h. Albanus des Protomartyr Angliae in Texten vor Beda, Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, N. F. 8, no. 1 (Berlin, 1904). For discussion and recent bibliography see Michael Moises Garcia, “Saint Alban and the Cult of Saints in Late Antique Britain” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Leeds, 2010). 3  Hist. Eccl. 1.7, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 34–35: “Passi sunt ea tempestate Aaron et Iulius … diuersis cruciatibus torti.” 1 

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point in his life he is officially a catechumen, but he hides and protects a Christian priest who is a refugee from the (Diocletianic?) persecutions. Moved by the devotion and sanctity of his guest, Albanus asks to be baptized in this time of danger and is indeed baptized, presumably by the priest whom he is sheltering. Shortly thereafter, the priest in hiding is revealed to an unnamed persecutor. Albanus puts on the clothes and the cloak of the priest he is sheltering and goes voluntarily to the persecutor, who is in the process of sacrificing to pagan gods, and announces that he is a Christian. Now it is important for our understanding of the story to focus on the theological implications of this portion of the narrative. It is a universal commonplace of Christian thought and morality that all Christians are also sinners. “If we say we sin not we deceive ourselves.” 4 Even the most devout and austere saints are still capable of and implicated in venial sin at the least. Only Jesus lived among us without sin. At the same time, it is also a universal Christian truism that baptism washes away all sin. One (perhaps flippantly) wonders whether a Christian who expired at the very moment when he or she emerged from the font would not die wholly free from sin? This is, however, not a very practical option for most of us. But the practice of delaying baptism until one’s death bed as the emperor Constantine did, or his devout mother’s deliberate postponement of Augustine’s baptism past his adolescence so that the sins of his youth would not count against him, suggest that some Christians in the late antique world were very aware of this aspect of the efficaciousness of baptism and deliberately delayed it to avoid the burden of sins incurred in secular life. From this perspective, a Christian like Albanus who has recently been baptized is in a very special situation, in that as long as he maintains his baptismal vows he is free from sin (although not venial sin) in a way that even devout Christians who have lived the Christian life for a more extended period of time cannot claim to be. And Albanus’s first significant act as a Christian is to dress himself in the cloak and clothes of the priest whom he is sheltering and go before the persecutor and define himself as a Christian. Now among the saints and heroes of Christian history the martyrs occupy a very special place. A saint may have lived a very austere life but a martyr endures torture and finally sacrifices his or her life for the Christian faith. The  martyrs are the supreme Christian heroes and a martyr who seeks out martyrdom is particularly admirable even among this elite group. Those catechumens and Christian sympathizers who died a martyr’s death before they were baptized were universally thought to be baptized by the blood they shed and exalted in heaven along with the saints and other martyrs. Thus, martyrdom is in a sense a second baptism and Albanus moved from the status of a newly baptized Christian to martyrdom in a short period of time. The point of reiterating these commonplaces is that while Christian dogma insists that Albanus is not sinless, he is about as close to being sinless as any mortal human 4 

Jn. 1.8.

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could be and he sacrifices his life for others, specifically for the priest whom he is sheltering and in a larger sense for the Christian community of Britain as a whole. And his sacrifice is efficacious in that the priest is saved and that after his death, the persecutor, impressed by the miracles which occurred during the passion of Albanus, ceases to trouble the Christians and the crisis is resolved. Now, the passion and death of any martyr recapitulates and typologically parallels the passion and death of Jesus. But the passion of Albanus is particularly close to the passion of Jesus in that it is wholly voluntary. And Albanus is close to being sinless and the effect of his passion and death is salvific. Given these parallels it is appropriate to speculate about another detail in the narrative. It is said of Albanus that when he went to encounter the persecutor, he dressed in the clothes and cloak of the priest whom he was sheltering. Bede does not offer any explanation for Albanus’s behavior at this point and a commonsense explanation might be that Albanus is disguising himself as the priest at this point. One immediate objection, however, is that since Albanus is presumably at his home, his neighbors and friends could recognize him easily enough no matter how he dressed. And he immediately announces himself to the persecutor in any case. But he is dressed in the clothes of the person he saves. The traditional Christian definition of the nature of Jesus is that Jesus is true God and true man. He is indeed God, but God incarnate. The mystery of the incarnation raises a whole sequence of philosophical and theological questions which have been debated for millennia. The “orthodox” understanding of the incarnation has been defined in a series of dogmatic statements affirmed by various synods, notably the first Council of Nicea. But there remain numerous problems in understanding this claim, and in explaining it to faithful Christians a variety of metaphors and figures were framed to explain how Jesus could be true God and true man. One common metaphor or likeness was that Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, “clothed” himself in humanity when he was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary. This metaphor has its difficulties – one can change one’s clothes after all and clothes are external to and clearly distinct from the body which they cover – but the figure was a very common one. Another related allegorical interpretation of the “clothes” of Christ is the Church – that Christians both clothe themselves with Christ and are the clothes of Christ as members of the body of the faithful. Thomas Aquinas summarized centuries of exegesis in his commentary on Psalm 44 when he wrote: Vestimenta Christi possunt esse duplicia: scilicet corpus eius: Isa.  63: quare rubrum est uestimentum tuum? Item uestimentum Christi sunt sancti omnes: Isa. 49: his omnibus uelut ornamento uestieris.5 Thomas Aquinas, In Psalmos reportatio 44.6, in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici Ordinis Praedicatorum Opera Omnia, vol. 14 (Parma, 1863), p. 323. For further examples of these figures see the Brepols Library of Latin Texts s.v. “vestiment* Christi.” For a gathering of allegorical glosses on 5 

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The clothes of Christ can be [understood] in two ways: to wit, his body, Isaias 63:1 “why is your garment reddened?” Again, the clothes of Christ are all the holy ones. Isaias 49:18 “you shall be clothed with all these as with an ornament.”

Either allegory is appropriate to Albanus’s behavior. He is sacrificing his life to save the man whose clothes he is wearing and he comes before the persecuting judge as a representative of the Christian community as a whole. However persuasive scholars may find this interpretation of Albanus dressing himself in the clothes of the priest who presumably baptized him, and for whom he is sacrificing himself, it seems to me that Albanus is a strikingly Christ-like figure as a (virtually) sinless Christian hero who sacrifices himself for others. The trial scene is thoroughly conventional according to Bede’s account of the passion of Albanus, but one aspect of it is interesting and possibly relevant to why Bede chose to emphasize this particular narrative in his history. At  the beginning of the trial, the judge asks Albanus his family and race. Tum iudex ‘Cuius’ inquit ‘familiae uel generis es?’ Albanus respondit: ‘Quid ad te pertinet qua stirpe sim genitus? Sed si ueritatem religionis audire desideras, Christianum iam me esse, Christianisque officiis uacare cognosce.’ Ait iudex: ‘Nomen tuum quaero, quod sine mora mihi insinua.’ Et ille: ‘Albanus,’ inquit, ‘a parentibus uocor, et Deum uerum ac uiuum qui uniuersa creauit adoro semper et colo.’ 6 The judge said to him, ‘What is your family and race?’ Alban answered, ‘What concern is it of yours to know my parentage? If you wish to hear the truth about my religion, know that I am now a Christian and am ready to do a Christian’s duty.’ The judge said, ‘I insist on knowing your name, so tell me at once.’ The man said, ‘My parents call me Alban and I shall ever adore and worship the true and living God who created all things.’

Albanus was, of course, a Romano-Briton while Bede and his audience were AngloSaxons; the Anglo-Saxons had conquered most of what we now identify as England and parts of Scotland and some of the descendants of the Romano-Britons thought of the Anglo-Saxons as hereditary enemies who should be expelled from the island of Britain. Thus, it might be asked, “why should the Anglo-Saxons reverence a British saint?” The British Church indeed refused to recognize the legitimacy of the AngloSaxon Church. But in this exchange Albanus makes a forceful claim for the universality of the Christian faith. “What do you care about my race (stirps)? I am a Christian!” Albanus would feel more kinship to Bede and Bede’s audience than to the pagan worshippers of his own ethnic group. Indeed, it is not clear from Bede’s account whether Albanus was what modern scholars would call a Romano-Briton or a Celtic Briton. The name Albanus is a Latin one, but nothing further is said about the question. vestimentum, including “caro Christi” and “ecclesia,” see Jean Baptiste Pitra, Analecta sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi parata, vol. 3 (Paris, 1855), pp. 150–52. 6  Hist. Eccl. 1.7, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 30–31.

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At any rate, after Albanus has been tortured and it is clear that he will not abandon the faith, the judge orders him to be executed and he is led away. The path to the execution site is through the town across the river and to a hill site of extraordinary richness and beauty. But when Albanus comes to the river, the bridge across the river is packed by an immense crowd of spectators and it appears difficult to proceed to the execution site by the normal means. Albanus, however, who ardently desires martyrdom, raises his eyes to the heavens and the river bed dries up, making a path available to him (and presumably to the execution party which is accompanying him, although this is not specifically said in the text). Upon seeing this miracle one of the executioners throws down his sword and offers to join Albanus as a martyr and witness to the Christian faith. They proceed to the hillside and Albanus first calls forth a beautiful spring from the ground and then he and the converted executioner suffer martyrdom, while the bad executioner who actually kills the martyrs is blinded as a punishment. The consequence of the narrative as a whole is that the cruel persecutor is so impressed by these miracles that he ceases to persecute the Christians and a church to commemorate Albanus is built on the site. Albanus saved the Christians of England just as Christ saved (potentially) all mankind. From the perspective of the modern reader the problem with this narrative is that the occasion of the miracle seems inappropriate. For the sake of dealing with a problem of crowd control, which presumably a few policemen (or whatever the equivalent of police was in Roman Britain) could have dealt with in a few minutes, Almighty God suspends the natural order and works a public miracle which proves beyond doubt the sanctity of Albanus and motivates one executioner to convert, but does not prevent the execution of the saint. One answer to this pragmatic challenge is obvious – the miracle which Albanus works recapitulates one of the great themes of the Bible – specifically the Old Testament. Moses leads his people dry-shod through the Red Sea on the way to the promised land and Joshua leads the Israelites across the Jordan river into the promised land. The  first event is broadly parallel, while the second, which involves crossing a river, is more exact, but both events are related, and Albanus’s miracle echoes both. These Biblical prototypes explain the emphasis in Bede’s account on the beauty of the site where Albanus is executed. One might think that the horror of the execution would preclude any comment on the natural beauty of the site where it occurred, but if this site is in some sense an anti-type of the promised land which the Israelites conquered, then its richness and beauty are comprehensible. The point of this analysis is that Bede chose to emphasize this particular British passion narrative because the first portion of the narrative, the conversion and judgment of Albanus, parallels strikingly the essential mythos of the Gospels in that in Britain a (virtually) sinless person sacrifices himself for others, specifically the priest whom Albanus is sheltering and in a larger sense for the British Christian community as a whole and his sacrifice is efficacious in that it ends the persecutions. The passion

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of Albanus proper and the miracle which he works echo a central mythos of the Old Testament in which the man of God leads the people through either the Red Sea or the Jordan to the promised land, a mythos which Christians from the time of Paul on interpreted as the Christian journey from a state of sin through the waters of baptism to salvation.7 The story of Albanus in a sense summarizes the Bible as a whole. There were other Romano-British martyrs and Bede indeed mentions others, but the story to which he gives emphasis is one which has broad symbolic implications. I would like to conclude this paper by offering a speculative account of the origins and development of this narrative – at least of the later portion of it. As I said, the miracle seems very implausible to modern readers. Working a dramatic miracle to save a little time in crossing the river seems extreme and extravagant. One could suggest that the author of the original version of the narrative simply made up the story, which is certainly a possibility.8 But why make up this particular story? One can imagine a possible answer to this question. If Albanus was a real historical figure he might have been martyred in some Romano-British town which was bordered by a river. Verulamium is a real possibility.9 At this point in history and indeed until relatively recent times, all historical narrative was oral history until some scribe, on the basis of oral narratives, wrote a text. That is, first there was an event which seemed notable and the witnesses to that event told the story to others, and the story circulated in oral tradition. Thus, a story might go through multiple versions before a scribe intervened and created a fixed version of the narrative. During this period of oral transmission the narrative was subject to what are sometimes rather pretentiously called ‘the laws of oral narrative.’ And one of these laws is that the more stories circulate, the more dramatic and exciting they become. No one is exactly lying, but narrators want to please their auditors and the more exciting the story the better. To return to the Albanus passion narrative, we may speculate that some of the observers of Albanus’s execution were British Christians who revered Albanus as a Christian hero and described his saintly death to fellow believers. Roads often follow what were originally trails and when trails lead to a river which people might want to cross, they come to fords – passages across which people and animals can safely wade. Later when a road is developed a bridge is built at that site and no one uses the ford any more, but of course it is still there. For Paul see 1 Cor. 10.1–2. See further Franz Josef Dölger, “Der Durchzug durch das Rote Meer als Sinnbild der christlichen Taufe,” Antike und Christentum 2 (1930), 63–69; Jean Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame, 1956), pp. 86–98. 8  For the suggestion that the Albanus narrative is a relatively late fiction see Garcia, “St  Alban,” pp. 59–60. The earliest written version of the Passio Albani may indeed be relatively late, but that does not mean that Albanus was not an historical figure or that the narrative was not based upon genuine oral tradition, however much it was reshaped in the process of transmission. 9  Wallace Hadrill, Commentary, pp. 12–13. 7 

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Now when Albanus was led out to be executed, he would normally have been led across the bridge, but a huge crowd of spectators jammed the bridge and the execution party was blocked. The flow of water can vary greatly in a river and at this time at least the ford was passable. When Albanus and his accompanying soldiers saw that the bridge was jammed by a huge crowd, somebody (I presume Albanus) said “let us wade the ford” and they did and the execution proceeded. When the Christian witnesses who heard this exchange and saw what happened told this part of the story, they said (hypothetically) “by the grace of God, the water was low and Albanus led the executioners to the site where he was martyred.” Now this line of narrative is moderate and reasonable and after all potentially true, but as the story was retold, it was altered progressively into something like “And God graciously / miraculously lowered the water,” which then was intensified into the dramatic intervention in the passion narrative as Bede tells it. Igitur sanctus Albanus, cui ardens inerat deuotio mentis ad martyrium ocius peruenire, accessit ad torrentem, et dirigens ad caelum oculos, illico siccato alueo, uidit undam suis cessisse ac uiam dedisse uestigiis. Quod cum inter alios etiam ipse carnifex, qui eum percussurus erat, uidisset, festinauit ei, ubi ad locum destinatum morti uenerat, occurrere, diuino nimirum admonitus instinctu, proiectoque ense, quem strictum tenuerat, pedibus eius aduoluitur, multum desiderans ut cum martyre, uel pro martyre, quem percutere iubebatur, ipse potius mereretur percuti.10 St Alban, whose ardent desire it was to achieve his martyrdom as soon as possible, came to the torrent and raised his eyes towards heaven. Thereupon the riverbed dried up at that very spot and he saw the waters give way and provide a path for him to walk in. The executioner who was to have put him to death was among those who saw this. Moved by a divine prompting, he hastened to meet the saint as he came to the place appointed for his execution; then he threw away his sword which he was carrying ready drawn, and cast himself down at the saint’s feet, earnestly praying that he might be judged worthy to be put to death either with the martyr whom he himself had been ordered to execute, or else in his place.

The author of the Albanus passion legend may well have been constructing his narrative on the basis of oral tradition which derived ultimately from witnesses who actually saw the execution of the saint. But as their story circulated in the British Christian community, it became more dramatic and the miraculous aspect of the narrative heightened. It is important to remember, however, that no one actually lied and that these developments occurred incrementally. But the end result was that a community of devout Romano-British Christians believed firmly that God had intervened dramatically and directly when their hero Albanus went to his death. The man or woman who produced the written version of the text had no reason to question their faith and honesty and wrote the passion narrative as we have it. 10 

Hist. Eccl. 1.7, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 32–33.

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This account of the literary development of the Albanus passion narrative is of course pure speculation, but it does account for the oddity of the miraculous passage through the waters of the river as a miracle. In glancing at the commentaries on the Albanus legend in the Historia Ecclesiastica, one has the impression that historians are somewhat puzzled as to why a serious scholar such as Bede should emphasize such an extravagant legend as the passion of Albanus. I would agree that the story of Albanus as we have it is unhistorical, but it is an interesting legend in a variety of ways and I hope this attempt to explicate some aspects of this story will please and honor Danuta Shanzer.

Teach Yourself Greek: The Textbook Example of John Scottus Eriugena Michael W. Herren York University and Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto The very best scholars, past and present, come to the realization early in life that they must master a set of diverse skills if they are to reach the heights of Parnassus. They also recognize that they must continually renew and strengthen their skill-set – go back to basics, if necessary. At the same time, they must grow in new directions, using what they already know and connecting it to new fields of learning which they must master.1 They develop study programmes early on and stick to them. Iron discipline, bordering on asceticism, is required. Asceticism, to be sure, is alien to human nature. John Scottus Eriugena cultivated the discipline minus the asceticism, for he enjoyed a drink and a joke as much as anyone, as several of his poems prove. In this essay I should like to show how John began his study of Greek and developed it systematically, as far as the evidence goes, over three decades. Let us begin near the finishing point of that study programme, namely with the completion of John’s translation of the corpus of writings by the late-fifth-century Neo­platonist theologian named Dionysius, who in eighth-century Francia was conflated with both the disciple of St Paul, known as the Areopagite, and with a Dionysius who was the first bishop of Paris. He is familiar to many today as St Denis. I emphasize the word near, as John was aided in his task by a complete translation of the Dionysian texts made by a team of Greek-speaking scholars working in Francia under the direction of Hilduin, abbot of St Denis.2 The translation is based on the Greek codex that survives as Paris BnF grec 437, a gift sent to Louis the Pious by the Byzantine Emperor Michael the Stammerer in September 827. The codex was almost immediately entrusted for translation to Hilduin, at the time the archchaplain of Emperor Louis. The task was probably completed in the early 830s. Because of its numerous deficiencies, a new translation was commissioned by Charles the Bald at some time in the 850s. John Of present scholars of my acquaintance, I can think of no one who exemplifies these ideals more than Danuta Shanzer, our honoree. She has used her set of hard skills – impeccable knowledge of Greek and Latin, modern languages, paleography, textual criticism, and historical method – to range over a wide variety of fields that include textual criticism, literary history and criticism, religious studies, and hagiography – to name but some. 2  On Hilduin’s role in this project see Michael Lapidge, Hilduin of Saint-Denis: The ‘Passio Dionysii’ in Prose and Verse, Mittellateinische Studien und Texte 51 (Leiden and Boston, 2017), pp.  64–80 and passim. 1 

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Scottus, who by then had a growing reputation for his knowledge of Greek, accepted the challenging assignment. Maïeul Cappuyns, whose biography of Eriugena remains the best available, argued convincingly that the task was completed c. 860–862.3 John prefaced his work with two poems; here is the beginning of the first: Hanc libam sacro Graecorum nectare fartam Aduena Iohannes spondo meo Karolo. Maxime Francigenum, cui regia stemmata fulgent, Munera uotiferi sint tibi grata tui. Vos qui Romuleas nescitis temnere ΤΕΧΝΑΣ, Attica ne pigeat sumere gymnasia.4 This cake filled with the sacred nectar of the Greeks I John, a foreigner, dedicate to my Charles. O greatest of the Franks, radiant in your royal crown, may these gifts of your devoted servant be pleasing to you. You who know not how to scorn the arts of Romulus be not reluctant to take up Attic training.

These elegiac distichs open Eriugena’s dedicatory poem to his king, Charles the Bald. They preface his translation of the theological works of Pseudo-Dionysius, an astonishing feat for a western scholar far removed from easy contact with the Greek-speaking world. There is no sure evidence that John ever travelled outside his native Ireland and northeastern France. We can trace his steps to centres such as Laon, Compiègne, Soissons (St Médard), probably also Rheims. There is no record of his having a Greekspeaking teacher, although it is not impossible that one or more may have been arranged by the influential Hilduin, whose “team translation” of the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus was put at John’s disposal, possibly by Hilduin himself, who had once held the abbacy of St Médard and maintained his connection to it by enriching it with relics; he died in 855. John was a resident at St Médard during the abbacy of Wulfad (858–860), but, in all likelihood, spent the latter part of his career (c. 855–post 870) at that establishment.5 John could have met Hilduin in the year of his death or a little before.6 Although it is possible that John’s Greek studies were helped along by a teacher at some Maïeul Cappuyns, Jean Scot Érigène, sa vie, son œuvre, sa pensée (Louvain and Paris, 1933), pp. 151–58. Carm. 20, 1–6, ed. Michael W. Herren, Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Carmina, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 12 (Dublin, 1993), pp. 108–109. See id., Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Carmina, CCCM 167 (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 44–45. The revised edition in the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, published without translation, contains a fuller apparatus criticus, apparatus fontium, and apparatus biblicus than the Dublin edition, which has a facing-page translation. It also corrects a few readings and offers new ideas on the authenticity of some poems. The bibliography is updated to 2020. 5  Gangolf Schrimpf, “Johannes Scottus Eriugena,” Theologische Realenzyklopädie  17 (Berlin and New York, 1988), p. 160. 6  See now discussion in Herren, ed. Carmina, CCCM 167, pp. xv–xvi. 3 

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point in his career, it remains true that he dedicated himself to those studies throughout his entire life and viewed them as indispensable to his progress in philosophical and theological achievement.7 The advice to his king to engage in Greek studies himself is consistent with John’s characterization of Charles as “rex atque theologus idem,” “king and theologian in a single self.”8 Although Hilduin’s translation was roundly criticized in its own time, modern scholarship has shown that it was not entirely faulty; in fact, in a number of places it is to be preferred to John’s.9 And so we must mark the years  860–862, the years in which he was engaged in the Pseudo-Dionysian translation, as the penultimate stage in John’s development as a scholar of Greek – penultimate, because he did not undertake the work unaided. The same would have held for his translation of Greek biblical passages cited in the De praedestinatione a decade earlier, more precisely, in 851: Quod ex contextu sanctae scripturae facillime colligitur, in epistula ad romanos ΤΟΥ ΟΡΙΣΘΕΝΤΟΣ ΥΙΟΥ ΘΕΟΥ ΕΝ ΔΙΝΑΜΕΙ, destinati filii dei in uirtute; ad efeseos ΕΝ ΑΓΑΠΕ ΠΡΟΩΡΙΣΑΣ ΗΜΑΣ, in caritate praedestinans nos; et paulo post: ΠΡΟΩΡΙΣΤΗΝΤΕΣ ΚΑΤΑ ΠΡΟΣΘΗΣΙΝ ΘΕΟΥ, praedestinati secundum propositum dei.10 This is very easily gathered from the context of Holy Scripture; in the Epistle to the Romans: “of the son of God marked out in power,” [trans.] “of the son of God destined in power”; to the Ephesians: “having predetermined us in love,” [trans.] “predetermining us in love,” and a little later: “predetermined according to the intention of God,” [trans.] “predestined according to God’s plan.”

This passage from chapter 18.2 of Eriugena’s De praedestinatione reveals the author’s earliest datable attempt to use biblical passages in Greek with their Latin translations, in this instance to support his idea of what constitutes divine predestination. There are variants in the modern editions of the Greek and Latin passages, and the translation of the second pericope is taken from a version of the Vetus Latina; however, these differences are not our chief concern. What matters is that in 851 John had access to a Greek version of the quoted Pauline texts that was accompanied by a facing-page or interlinear Latin translation.11 Moreover, John was not content simply to quote the passages, Édouard Jeauneau, “Jean Scot Érigène,” Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin du Cange) 41 (1979), 5–50, at pp. 6–26. 8  Carm. 10.11, ed. Herren. 9  See discussion below, pp. 381–82. 10  De praedestinatione 18.1, ed. Ernesto Mainoldi, Giovanni Scoto Eriugena De praedestinatione liber: edizione critica, traduzione, e commento (Florence, 2003), p. 190. 11  As tempting as it is to bring these Pauline quotations into relationship with the famous ninthcentury Irish codex Dresden, Sächische Landesbibliothek, MS 145b (Codex Boernerianus), which contains the letters of St Paul in Greek excepting Hebrews, we are prohibited from doing so, because one of the passages cited by John (Rom. 1.4) is missing from that manuscript. Romans begins with the Pauline 7 

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but proceeded to etymologize the Greek ΠΡΟΩΡΩ (rather than the ΠΡΟΟΡΙΖΩ of the Greek text) from ΩΡΟ (“see”) to support his argument that God foresees but does not predetermine. He concludes: “Vbi profecto intelligendum non aliud quam quod uoluit in uerbo praeuisionis” (“Assuredly, nothing other should be understood in that passage than what he [Augustine] intended by the word ‘foresight.’”)12 The De praedestinatione provides proof that John had access to a bilingual text of Romans. It also shows that he could accurately match Greek and Latin phrases word for word. But could he have translated a text without the aid of a crib? If I am right that he was responsible for arranging the interlinear bilingual versions of the gospels found in St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek MS 48,13 we may hypothesize that he worked from existing facing-page bilinguals in the same way as Bede was able to translate passages of the Acts of the Apostles.14 In other words, his progress towards the ability to translate Greek texts independently began with the facility to use bilingual editions to accurately match Greek and Latin phrases. However, he would have still needed a basic grasp of Greek morphology and syntax. He would have had to know, for example, that the genitive case used in Greek for comparisons must be rendered by an ablative case in Latin, and that the Greek dative in certain constructions was to be translated by the Latin ablative. Moreover, since there is variation between the word order of the Greek text and that of Latin, and the right Latin word had to be written directly above its corresponding Greek, he must have had no doubt about the meaning of the words in both languages, and he would have had to know how to parse them. Let one example from the ninth-century Greek-Latin Interlinear MS St Gall 48, p. 23 (Matth. 1.24) suffice: Exsurgens autem Ioseph a somno fecit sicut ΔΙΕΓΕΡΘΕΙΣ ΔΕ ΙΟΣΕΦ AΠO ΤΟΥ YΠΝΟΥ ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕΝ ΩΣ praeceperat ei angelus Domini ΠΡΟΣΕΤΑΞΕΝ ΑΥΤΩ O ΑΓΓΕΛΟΣ ΚΥΡΙΟΥ15 greeting in verse 1 and picks up with verse 7. A generous space for the missing verses was left by the scribe. There is no evidence of tampering or mutilation. We can expect no help from the closely related Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B. 17. 1 (Codex Paulinus Augiensis), since the text of Romans commences only at Rm 3.19. 12  De praedestinatione 18.1, ed. Mainoldi, p. 190. 13  Michael W. Herren, “St Gall 48: A Copy of Eriugena’s Glossed Greek Gospels” in Tradition und Wertung: Festschrift für Franz Brunhölzl, ed. Günter Bernt, Fidel Rädle, and Gabriel Silagi (Sigmaringen, 1989), pp. 97–105; with refinements: “John Scottus Eriugena and the Bilingual Bibles Attributed to the Circle of Sedulius,” in The Bible and Hermeneutics. Proceedings of the Ninth International Colloquium of the Society for Eriugenian Studies, 1995, ed. Gerd Van Riel, Carlos Steel, and James McEvoy (Leuven, 1996), pp. 303–20. 14  A. C. Dionisotti, “On Bede, Grammars, and Greek,” Revue Bénédictine 92 (1982), 111–41. 15  In transcribing the text, I have expanded abbreviations and omitted the mid-line periods inserted to separate words. The Latin text is a Vulgate version, identical to that printed by Weber and Gryson. The first word of the Greek text, ΔΙΕΓΕΡΘΕΙΣ, is a variant to ΕΓΕΡΘΕΙΣ, printed by Nestle-Aland.

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Whoever made the translation knew how to place the Latin translation words over the right Greek words, knew that Greek articles (ΤΟΥ and Ο) have no proper equivalents in Latin (hence, the blank spaces), and that the Greek genitive YΠNOY after AΠO should be translated by a Latin ablative. With this knowledge, it would have been possible to transpose a facing-page bilingual gospel text to the interlinear format. If John was responsible for the translation, it fell into the period of his preparatory studies when he still required the help of Latin translations. The work would have provided the perfect Vorstufe for the more difficult task of translating the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus, for which, as noted, he used the translation of Hilduin as a help. If we posit a decade-long preparatory period in the 850s that preceded the Versio Dionysii, we should probably include in that stage the publication of the Annotaciones in Marcianum, a commentary on Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, transmitted in a single manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 12960. That it is the authentic work of John Scottus was shown by its editor, Cora Lutz, who pointed out that verbatim citations ascribed to John occur in the commentary on the same text by Remigius of Auxerre.16 I do not believe that the work is an early product of John’s scholarship, that is, when John was a teacher at the court of Charles the Bald or before. The Annotaciones in Marcianum shine light on an immigrant scholar now fully immersed in his continental environment. Sources which, as far as we know, were not available in the Ireland of his day, are strikingly prominent: Macrobius’s Commentarius in Somnium Scipionis, the Mitologiae of Fulgentius, Chalcidius’s translation of Plato’s Timaeus, and Boethius’s commentary on the Categoriae Aristotelis – to name only some.17 A mark of John’s maturing scholarship is his interest in the application of ancient exegetical strategies. The recovery of Fulgentius in the Carolingian period opened a door to the riches of ancient allegorical myth interpretation, which had been abandoned during the seventh and eighth centuries in favour of a plodding Euhemerism – albeit Theodulf of Orléans had offered a glimpse of its riches a generation earlier.18 Reading the Annotaciones, one is also struck by the increased use of Greek and the etymologies of Greek words and names in comparison to the Glossae Iohannis Scotti Annotaciones in Marcianum, ed. Cora E. Lutz (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), pp. x–xii. For the commentary by Remigius and its relation to the Eriugenian commentary, see Lutz, “The Commentary of Remigius d’Auxerre on Martianus Capella,” Mediaeval Studies 19 (1957), 137–56; Colette Jeudi, “L’œuvre de Remi d’Auxerre: État de la question,” in L’École Carolingienne d’Auxerre. De Muretach à Remi 830–908, ed. Dominique Iogna-Prat, Colette Jeudy, and Guy Lobrichon (Paris, 1991), pp. 373–97, at 390–91. 17  More work on the sources of the Annotaciones is needed. 18  Michael W. Herren, “John Scottus and Greek Mythology: Reprising an Ancient Hermeneutic,” The  Journal of Medieval Latin 22 (2012), 95–116; id., “Classical Allegoresis and its Continuities: From Theagenes of Rhegium to Bernard Silvestris,” Florilegium 30 (2015), 59–102. 16 

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divinae historiae. Eriugena also demonstrates his command of Greek declensions, for example, at 153.7 (De dialectica): Κηρυκείω. Κῆρυξ interpretatur praedicator, inde κήρυκος praedicatoris, inde κήρυκι praedicatori, ex quo nascitur κηρύκειον et, conversa ultima syllaba apud nos in um, CERYCEUM dicitur et est locus quo populo praedicatur.19 Κηρυκείω. Κῆρυξ means “one who proclaims,” hence κήρυκος, of him who proclaims, hence κήρυκι, “to him who proclaims,” from which is derived κηρύκειον and, by changing the final Greek syllable [-on] to our Latin -um, we get CERYCEUM, which is the place where proclamations are made to the people.

John shows in this passage not only mastery of a Greek third-declension noun, but also his recognition that the Greek ending -on is taken over into Latin as -um. A similar show of erudition is on display at 53.16: ΣΤΟΑ nominativus et adiuncta Σ fit genitivus ΣΤΟΑΣ, addita uero Ι genitivo singulari, dativus pluralis fit ΣΤΟΑΣΙ. Flectitur ergo sic, ΣΤΟΑ nominativus, ΣΤΟΑΣ genitivus singularis, ex quo nascitur dativus pluralis ΣΤΟΑΣΙ, qui pro ablativo ponitur.20 Στοά is nominative, by adding σ you get the genitive στοᾶς, by adding ι to the genitive singular the dative plural becomes στοᾶσι. It  is declined in this way: Στοά nominative, στοᾶς genitive singular, from which is formed the dative plural στοᾶσι, which is used for the ablative.

Again, John reveals an accurate knowledge of Greek declensions, including his recognition that the Greek dative is used for the Latin ablative in some constructions. The entry also shows that John knew something about teaching Greek, simplifying the process of learning a declension. All you must do is add sigma to the nominative to get the genitive singular, and iota to the genitive singular to get the dative plural. Displaying one’s knowledge of Greek declensions may strike the modern student of Greek as too elementary to be used as proof of a serious knowledge of Greek. However, we must recall that, for westerners of the early Middle Ages, the lack of a grammar, even of declension lists, was the biggest obstacle to learning the language.21 John Scottus played an extraordinary role in creating and disseminating materials needed for learning Greek grammar. His most important achievement in this area was the compilation of one recension of the treatise by Macrobius, De verborum Graeci et Latini differentiis et societatibus (“On Differences and Similarities between the Greek and Latin Verb”).22 Ed. Lutz, p. 92. Annotaciones Marciani 53.16, ed. Lutz, p. 63 (modified). 21  Anna Carlotta Dionisotti, “Greek Grammars and Dictionaries in Carolingian Europe,” in The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks: The Study of Greek in the West in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Michael W. Herren and Shirley Ann Brown, King’s College London Medieval Studies 2 (London, 1988), pp. 1–56, at 19–26. 22  See Paolo de Paolis, ed. Macrobii Theodosii De Verborum Graeci et Latini Differentiis vel Societatibus Excerpta, Testi Grammaticali Latini 1 (Urbino, 1990), pp. xl–xli. For a useful summary of the three 19 

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He  was also responsible for the set of Greek paradigms ascribed to a ΙΩΑΝΗΣ in London, British Library, MS Harley 2688. It is very likely that John contributed at least some of the paradigms and word-lists that make up the most important repository of graeca from the Carolingian age, namely Laon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 444, written by Martin of Laon.23 Was John, at the point when he was working on the Martianus commentary, able to work with a line of Greek poetry without the aid of a Latin crib? At the beginning of 1.19, Martianus cites a line that he claims to be the work of Homer: Φοῖβος ἀκερσεκόμης λοιμοῦ νεφέλην ἀπερύκει (“Unshorn Phoebus keeps away the cloud of the plague.”) This is not a genuine Homeric line. Only the first two words are the poet’s (Iliad 20.29); the rest comes from Lucian’s Alexander 36. John’s text, as we can construct it from the commentary is as follows: ΦΟΙΒΟΣ ΧΡΥΣΟΚΟΜΗΣ ΛΟΙΜΟΥ ΝΕΦΕΛΗΝ ΑΠΟΡΡΕΙ

John read a variant text, in which χρυσοκόμης replaces ἀκερσεκόμης, and ἀπορρει replaces ἀπερύκει. Here is what he makes of the passage: ΦΟΙΒΟΣ novus dicitur, quia novum vultum semper sol manifestat in ortu; idem ΧΡΟΥΣΟΚΟΜΗΣ, id est auricomus propter radiorum crines. ΛΟΙΜΟΣ a Graecis dicitur pestis, cuius genitivus ΛΟΙΜΟΥ. Nubes vocatur a Graecis ΝΕΦΕΛΗ. ΑΠΟΡΡΕΙ tertia persona est verbi ΑΠΟΡΡΕΩ, hoc est refluo vel reicio, ex quo versu videlicet, et est sensus: Monebat Mercurius per versum Maeonii posse se ipsum fugare pestes si prima vota hominum pro peste pellenda pedes eius attingerent …24 PHOEBUS is called “new,” because the sun always shows a new face at its rising; he is called χρυσοκόμης, that is “golden-haired,” on account of the strands of the sun’s rays. Λοιμός, genitive λοιμοῦ, is the word for plague in Greek. A cloud is called νεφέλη by the Greeks. ΑΠΟΡΡΕΙ is the third person of the verb ἀπορρέω, which means “flow back” or “fling back.” The sense of the verse is: Through Homer’s verse Mercury advises that he can put the plague to flight if the first prayers of people for driving away the plague reach that one’s [Phoebus’s] feet.

The parsing of the received text is excellent, but why does John hold back from doing the obvious, namely, fully translating the verse that he has parsed? (“Golden-haired Phoebus flings back the cloud of the plague”). Rushing to interpret the passage, he relied on his erroneous paraphrase of Martianus’s comment that followed the Greek line immediately: “ex  quo pestem fugari posse Mercurius, si uoces prime uestigiis recensions of this work with bibliography, see James E. Zetzel, Critics, Compilers, and Commentaries: An Introduction to Roman Philology 200 BCE – 800 CE (Oxford, 2018), pp. 300–301. 23  Dionisotti, “Greek Grammars and Dictionaries,” pp.  48–54. For  Martin’s scribal activity see John J. Contreni, The Cathedral School of Laon from 850 to 930: Its Manuscripts and Masters (Munich, 1978), pp. 95–111. Contreni, pp. 97–98, lists twenty-one manuscripts written in Martin’s hand. 24  Annotaciones 15.7, ed. Lutz, p. 24 (modified).

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eius accederent, admonebat” (“from which [verse] Mercury advised that the plague could be put to flight if voices first reach his [Phoebus’s] feet”).25 For  his etymology of χρυσοκόμης, John may have drawn on Macrobius, who tells us that “Apollo Ξρυσοκόμας cognominatur a fulgore radiorum.”26 The technique of parsing a passage, then attempting to find its “sense” rather than exact meaning is replicated in John’s attempt to translate passages from Homer drawn from Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae. Concentrating on the graeca, John compiled a series of glosses and scholia that survives as Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, BPL 67.27 The scholia are identifiable as i1, now agreed to be the hand of Eriugena.28 Bernhard Bischoff dated the scholia to c. 860, a dating confirmed by the presence of Abbot Wulfad, who is mentioned along with Carloman, a son of Charles the Bald, in a poem, believed to have been written by John Scottus himself; it is one of four short poems copied into the margin of fols 2r–3r.29 Wulfad was appointed abbot in 858 or 859, then deposed by Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, in 860. Evidence for his efforts in Greek translation are provided by examples of his copying of passages from Homer’s Odyssey and other classical works into the margins of Dubthach’s manuscript; the Greek hexameters are provided with Latin interlinear glosses after the manner of the glossing of the Greek line in Martianus discussed above. Here is a passage of the Odyssey 1.163–65 as it appears in modern editions: εἰ κεῖνόν γ᾿ ’Ιθάκηνδε ἰδοίατο νοστήσαντα πάντες κ’ ἀρησαίατ’ ἑλαφρότεροι πόδας εἶναι ἢ ἀφνειότεροι χρυσοῖό τε ἐσθῆτός τε. Were they to see him returned to Ithaca, they would all pray to be swifter of foot, rather than richer in gold and in raiment.30

25  26 

p. 95.

Mart. Cap. 1.19, ed. James Willis, Martianus Capella (Leipzig, 1983), p. 9. Macrobius, Sat. 1.17.47, ed. James Willis, Ambrosii Theodosii Macrobii Saturnalia (Leipzig, 1970),

Paul Edward Dutton, “Evidence that Dubthach’s Priscian Codex Once Belonged to Eriugena,” in From Athens to Chartres: Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Édouard Jeauneau, ed. Haijo J. Westra (Leiden, 1992), pp. 15–45; edition by Anneli Luhtala, “Early Medieval Commentary on Priscian’s ‘Institutiones Grammaticae,’” Cahiers de l’Institut de Moyen Âge Grec et Latin 71 (2000), 115–88. 28  In 1989, I examined this manuscript in situ and suspected that it contained i1 scholia. My suspicion was confirmed by Bernhard Bischoff in conversation. For manuscripts containing the hand of i 1 and evidence that the hand is the autograph of Eriugena, see Édouard Jeauneau and Paul Dutton, The Autograph of Eriugena, Autographa Medii Aevi (Turnhout, 1996). 29  App. 3–6 in Herren, ed. Carmina, SLH 12, pp. 124–25 (with translation); id., Carmina, CCCM 167, pp. 56–57. For a different reading of App. 5.1, see Dutton, “Evidence,” pp. 25–26. 30  Translation from Homer, Odyssey, Vol. 1: Books 1–12, tr. Augustus Taber Murray, 2nd ed. rev. George Edward Dimock, Loeb Classical Library 104 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), p. 25. 27 

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Here is the glossed text as it appears on the bottom margin of fol. 32v of BPL 67 in the hand of i1: Illum et ulixen deli insola uero agone ΕΙΚΕΙΝΟΝ ΤΕ ΙΘΑΚΗΝ ΔΗΛΟΥ ΔΕ ΑΓΟΝΟΣ ΕΑΝΤΑ Eante :/ per arma prudentior :/ ΕΑΝΤΟΣ ΚΑΡΗΣ ΔΙΑ ΤΗΛΑ ΦΡΟΝΩΤΕΡΟΙ ΥΓΘΛΗΙ Esse ditiore auro et pectore et ΕΙΝΑΙ ΑΦΝΕΙΟΤΕΡΟΙ ΧΡΥΣΟΙ ΤΕ ΣΘΕΤΟΥ ΤΕ

The signes de renvoi over EANTE and ΥΓΘΛΗΙ connect to the explanation nomen herois followed by a declension of the first name: eas, eantos, eanti, eanta and a start on the second. The marginal insertion concludes with: “Talis sensus est: ΚΑΡΗΣ prudentior in armis EANTE ditior et auro et pectore quam ΥΓΘΛΗΣ. (“Such is the sense: Kares is more prudent in arms than Eas (for Aiax, perhaps?). 〈Eas〉 is richer in gold and and bravery (?) than Ygthles”). The Homer quotation does not appear in Dubthach’s Priscian codex, but in a section of the Institutiones discussing the two ways of constructing the comparative in Latin; this occurs on the same folio (32v) that has the Homeric quotation in the bottom margin. Eriugena must have imported the text from the copy of Priscian’s work that he used to correct and gloss the Dubthach codex. As with the “Homeric” line in Martianus Capella that John found and glossed, the quality of the glossing depended on the quality of the text used. Perhaps John recognized this, as his use of two manuscripts in his work on Priscian here has a parallel in his use of two Martianus manuscripts,31 and that may have been the reason why, in both cases, John preferred the Servian talis sensus to a translation.32 John could often get things right where the text was sound; however, he never gained the ability to spot errors in a Greek text. The same judgement can be reached when considering John’s sortie into large-scale translation. Jean Pépin’s pronouncement on Eriugena’s work on Letter IX of the PseudoDionysian corpus is worth noting: “Toutefois, beaucoup d’erreurs objectives de Jean Scot viennent de la mediocre qualité de manuscrit M [Paris BnF grec 437]: quand celui-ci offre une leçon certainement erronée, la traduction décalque ne peut être satisfiante.”33 Pépin On the different Martianus manuscripts used by John, see Michael W. Herren, “The Commentary on Martianus Attributed to John Scottus Eriugena: Its Hiberno-Latin Background,” in Jean Scot Écrivain. Actes du IVe Colloque international Montréal, 28 août – 2 septembre 1983, ed. Guy-H. Allard (Montréal and Paris, 1983), pp. 265–86, at 270–71. A difference to his work with Priscian is that, in the instance of Martianus, there was a time lapse between his glossing activity, whereas in the case of Priscian he used two different manuscripts at the same time. 32  For the Servian formula see e.g. ad Aen. 3.686, ed. Arthur Frederick Stocker and Albert Hartman Travis, Servianorum in Vergilii Carmina Commentariorum Editionis Harvardianae Volumen III (Oxford, 1965), p. 233: “sensus ergo talis est …” 33  Pépin, “Jean Scot traducteur de Denys,” in Jean Scot écrivain, p. 140. 31 

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then shows that John erred when translating words or passages that Hilduin got right, even though both used the same exemplar, and John had Hilduin’s work to hand.34 It is clear that even by 860, when, presumably, John was fully engaged in executing the king’s commission, his command of Greek grammar and vocabulary was still far from perfect. Indeed, John was rarely able to eradicate his faults of translation.35 They can be found in abundance in all his translations. His resources were too few, his lack of training at an early stage too critical.36 He was probably aware that faults would be discovered in his work when he wrote its poetic preface: Quod si quorundam mordetur dente feroci, Hoc leve: namque meo contigit Hieronimo.37

However, while he was probably still at work on the Pseudo-Dionysian project, he adopted a new strategy of self-education. He undertook the exercise of writing in Greek himself. The exercise of translating one’s native language into a foreign tongue is the backbone of all foreign language instruction. Even with the so-called “dead” languages, it has held a significant place in modern pedagogy. The typical Greek textbook of today is divided into chapters, each with one or more grammar lessons, a vocabulary list, and ten or so sentences for the student to translate from Greek to his native language, then another ten for the reverse. Such elementary primers, of course, did not exist in the ninth century. One had to cobble together information from glossaries, declension and conjugation lists, and bilingual conversation manuals such as those found in the colloquies of the Hermeneumata Dositheana.38 These early-day phrase books, available in several versions by the ninth century, could be read in two directions: from Greek to Latin and from Latin to Greek. They are written in what was still classical Greek and contain conversations dealing with topics of everyday life. Subjects typically include school life, dinner parties, bathing in the Roman style, business transactions, and the like. Even a list of useful words and phrases for an argument is included. Greek is usually in the left-hand column, Latin in the right. Translations are not always exact. Ideally, then, a Greek speaker could learn Latin phrases by reading left to right, while a Latin-speaker could learn Greek phrases by reversing the procedure. Pépin, “Jean Scot traducteur de Denys,” p. 141. For a detailed discussion of the faults of John’s work on the corpus, see Gabriel Théry, “Scot Érigène traducteur de Denys,” Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 6 (1931), 185–278, and the defence of John’s efforts by Jeauneau, “Jean Scot Érigène et le grec,” pp. 40–50. 35  Pépin, “Jean Scot traducteur de Denys,” p. 140, found an example in the Dionysian text that John managed to correct in his translation – “par on ne sait quel miracle.” 36  Jeauneau, “Jean Scot Érigène et le grec,” pp. 13–14. 37  Carm. 20.15–16; translation in Herren, Carmina, SLH 12, p. 29: “But if my work be bitten by the savage teeth of certain parties, / this is trifling; the same lot befell my Jerome.” 38  Recently edited by Eleanor Dickey, The Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2012–2015). 34 

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Without any doubt, however, the most useful vocabulary resource for a westerner attempting to write in Greek was the dictionary known as Pseudo-Philoxenos.39 Here we find a large alphabetized Latin to Greek glossary. A copy of it, amplified with biblical words, was available at Laon, included as item 21 in Martin of Laon’s famous compilation of graeca, now Laon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 444.40 As it had to have been written before Martin’s death in 875, it would have been available to Eriugena. Indeed, it is possible that John himself added entries to the glossary. John’s only Greek compositions are the Greek lines found in his poems. John did not write poetry only in order to his improve his Greek. He would have written the poems anyway, especially as he needed to maintain royal protection. The poems have frequently been criticized as pedantic and ostentatious mainly because they contain Greek. However, John wished to achieve a higher level of aptitude than the simple decoding of Greek: he aspired to thinking in Greek, maybe even dreaming in the language. There is no better way to achieve that goal for learning any language than by writing in it. Yet most writers who choose to adopt a new tongue to the requirements of the pen have a great advantage, that of living in an environment where the new language is spoken. They absorb a great deal by osmosis, so to speak – accents, rhythms, idioms. Consider the words of Augustine regarding his experience with Greek vis-àvis Latin: Credo etiam graecis pueris Vergilius ita sit, cum eum sic discere coguntur ut ego illum [sc.  Homerum]. Videlicet difficultas, difficultas omnino ediscendae linguae peregrinae, quasi felle aspergebat omnes suavitates graecas fabulosarum narrationum … Nam et latina aliquando infans utique nulla noveram … didici vero illa sine poenali onere urgentium, cum me urgeret cor meum ad parienda concepta sua, †et qua† non esset, nisi aliqua verba didicissem non a docentibus sed a loquentibus …41

To be sure, Eriugena, unlike Augustine, did not learn Latin from his nurses, but had to learn it in school. However, his mastery of Latin was complete and has been compared Editions: Georg Goetz, Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1888), pp. 3–212; Wallace Martin Lindsay, Glossaria Latina, vol. 2 (Paris, 1926), pp. 123–291. See Dionisotti, “Greek Grammars and Dictionaries,” pp. 6–10. 40  For a good discussion of the contents of that manuscript, see Dionisotti, “Greek Grammars and Dictionaries,” pp. 45–54. 41  Augustine, Confessiones 1.14.23, ed.  James  J. O’Donnell, Augustine Confessions (Oxford, 1992), 1:11–12: “I suppose that Greek boys think the same about Virgil when they are forced to study him, as I was forced to study Homer. There was, of course, the difficulty which is found in learning any foreign language, and this soured the sweetness of the Greek romances … As a baby, of course, I knew no Latin either … I learned it without being forced by threats of punishment, because it was my own wish to be able to give expression to my thoughts. I could never have done this if I had not learnt a few words, not from schoolmasters, but from people who spoke to me” (trans. Richard Sydney Pine-Coffin, Saint Augustine Confessions (London, 1961), p. 35). 39 

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to that of the Church Fathers of the fifth century.42 Learning Greek from native speakers would not have been a problem for Augustine growing up in the late fourth century, but for Eriugena there was the difficulty that there were few Greek speakers in the transalpine West. A further complication was that the spoken language of the period had undergone many changes in vocabulary, morphology, and syntax from the biblical and patristic Greek that Eriugena was attempting to learn. Pronunciation had also changed.43 The collective influence of those changes is attested in western transliterations of Greek texts.44 The composition of the main body of poems extends from 859 to 869, and thus overlaps the period of John's major translation projects. The use of Greek extends from (1) inserting single words in Greek characters, beginning with poem 1 to (2) whole couplets, already in poem 2, and finally, (3) short free-standing poems. Most of these last cannot be dated, but I put them into the later phase because of their placement in Martin’s collection of excerpts known as L2. Here are illustrations: (1) Illis Iliacas flammas subitasque ruinas Eroumque ΜΑΧΑΣ dicere ludus erat.45 It was play for the ancients to recite the flames of Troy, sudden destructions and battles of heroes. (2) ΟΡΘΩΔΟΞΟΣ ΑΝΑΞ, ΕΥΣΗΒΗΣ ΕΝΚΛΥΤΟΣ 〈ΑΡΧΟΣ〉, ΣΟΦΡΟΝ, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΦΟΡΟΣ, ΚΙΡΡΙΟΣ Ω ΚΑΡΟΛΟΣ.46 Charles, our orthodox lord, reverent ruler renowned. Our moderate master, bearer of Christ. (3) ΘΑΥΜΑΣΤΩ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙ ΚΑΡΟΛΩ ΖΩΗ ΤΕ ΦΑΟΣ ΤΕ. ΟΡΤΩΔΟΞΟΣ ΑΝΑΞ ΦΡΑΓΓΟΝ, ΤΩ ΔΟΞΑ ΤΙΜΕ ΤΕ. Ludwig Bieler, “Remarks on Eriugena’s Original Latin Prose,” The Mind of Eriugena, Papers of a Colloquium, Dublin, 14–18 July 1970, ed. John J. O’Meara and Ludwig Bieler, pp. 140–46, at 141: “The first thing about Eriugena’s Latin that strikes the reader is its overall normality. His grammar is that of an educated writer of late Christian antiquity, as Augustine or Boethius. His style also is evidently modelled on theirs.” 43  On the difficulty of determining the correct accent of a Greek word, see Contreni, The Cathedral School of Laon, pp. 107–108, in regard to the correct accent of blasphemus (βλάσφημος according to modern dictionaries). 44  Michael W. Herren, “Evidence for ‘Vulgar Greek' from Early Medieval Latin Texts and Manuscripts,” in The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks (as in n. 22), pp. 57–84. 45  Carm. 1.1, ed. Herren. Translation in this and the following examples from the SLH edition facing the texts. 46  Carm. 2.67–68, ed. Herren. 42 

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ΘΕΣΠΕΣΙΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΑΓΑΘΟΣ, ΠΙΣΤΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΑΚΡΟΣ ΤΕ ΜΟΝΑΡΧΟΣ, ΕΛΠΙΣ ΤΗΣ ΠΑΤΡΙΔΟΣ, ΤΗΣ ΑΞΙΟΣ ΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΑΣ, ΩΝ ΔΕ ΦΟΡΟΝ ΣTΕΦΑΝΟΝ ΧΡΙΣΙΟΝ ΤΑ ΔΕ ΣΤΕΜΜΑΤΑ ΠΑΤΡΟΝ, ΕΝΧΕΥΡΟΣ ΣΚΕΠΤΡΟΝ, ΡΑΒΔΟΣ ΓΑΡ ΤΗΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΑΣ. ΧΡΙΣΤΕ, ΣΟΣΟΝ ΔΟΥΛΟΝ ΣΟΝ, ΤΟΝ ΜΟΙ ΚΥΡΡΙΟΝ ΕΙΠΩ, ΤΟΝ ΚΑΡΟΛΟΝ ΜΗΓΑΛΗΝ ΕΜΟΝ ΠΟΛΛΟΝ ΤΕ ΚΟΡΥΦΗΝ, ΟΣ ΣΟΦOΣ, ΟΣ ΔΥΝΑΤΟΣ, ΠΑΝΥ ΣΟΦΡΩΝ ΤΕ ΚΡΑΤΟΣ ΤΕ, ΕΙΠΡΕΠΗΣ, ΕΥΜΟΡΦΟΣ, ΦΑΥΝΟΝ ΩΣ ΗΝΚΛΥΤΟΣ ΑΡΧΟΣ, ΩΣ ΤΟΝ ΟΥΡΑΝΙΟΝ ΣΤΙΛΒΟΝ, ΔΙΑΔΕΜΑΤΟΣ ΑΣΤΡΟΝ, ΗΛΙOΣ ΟΣ ΛΑΜΠΡΟΣ, ΟΣ ΦΟΣΦΩΡΟΣ, ΟΣ ΘΕΑ ΛΗΙΚΕ. ΔΩΣΕΙ〈Σ〉 〈T〉Ω ΚΑΡΩΛΩ ΖEΙΝ ΕΙΣ ΤΟΙΣ ΠΑΝΤΑΣ ΑΙΩΝΑΣ. ΕΥΧΕΤΕ ΤΑΙΤΑ, ΛΑΟΙ, ΝΥΝ ΕΥΧΕ ΣΥ, ΦΡΑΓΓΙΑ ΠΑΣΣΑ.47 To our marvelous king Charles life and light! Orthodox king of the Franks, glory and honour! Our wonderful, good and devout monarch on high Is the hope of the fatherland and worthy of eternal life. He wears a golden crown and the laurels of his fathers And holds in his hand a sceptre (for it is the rod of the kingdom). Christ, save your servant and him whom I call my Lord, Charles, our great head and head of many, Who is wise and powerful, and moderate and mighty. He is comely, well-formed, radiant as a brilliant commander, Like Mercury in the heavens, a star of the diadem. He is like the flashing sun, like the evening star, like the white goddess. Grant to Charles life for all eternity. Now, O people, pray for these things, pray, thou, all Francia.

I shall not comment on the aberrant spelling with its frequent confusion of omega and omicron, eta and epsilon, as well as Y for I and vice-versa. Such confusions are endemic in the graeca written in the West. What I find interesting is Eriugena’s fondness for piling up adjectives with nouns and avoiding verbs as much as possible. In example (2) there is no verb at all. Indeed, that is the case for several of the lines and couplets elsewhere in the poems. When he does want a verb, John often reaches for an imperative, whether present or aorist (one of the aorist in line 7 of the third example, two of the present in line 14). His poems frequently call for prayers for his king, or send a request to God to protect him. Hence, the frequency of the imperative is understandable. Moreover, John clearly knows how to inflect the present active participle, as we see in Carm. 12b.3, where two occur in the same line: ΡΗΜΑΤΟΣ ΟΠΛΑ ΘΕΟΥ ΖΩΝΤΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΣΤΟΜΑΤΟΣ ΕΧΩΝ Holding in his mouth the weapons of the word of the living God

47 

Carm. 17, ed. Herren, CCCM 167, p. 40; trans. Herren, SLH 12, p. 102.

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As daring (and laudable) as these attempts are, they must be classified as bricolage. The phrase θεοῦ ζῶντος in this passage is biblical (e.g. Romans 9.26); ὀρθόδοξος ἄναξ in Carm. 2 mingles Homeric and patristic Greek. (We might imagine the patriarch of Constantinople baptizing Agamemnon on Mt. Ida.) Πνύξ, “the place in Athens where assemblies were held,” does not occur in Lampe’s A Patristic Greek Lexicon; it was kidnapped from its classical environment and relocated in Carolingian Francia, where it was used by John to mean “Church” in the sense of institution.48 John’s Greek shows no sense of register or style; it is simply cobbled together from glossaries and disparate sources. John suffered the same disadvantage as his contemporaries in northern Europe, where there was little or no daily contact with spoken Greek. One did not hear it on the street, in church, or in the monastery; it was a learned language. But where could one have learned it, short of travelling to Constantinople? Greek was not used as a school language, as Latin presumably was by the ninth century, or as a lingua franca for communication between those who spoke “barbarian tongues” (i.e. Franks, AngloSaxons, and Irish) and speakers of Romance (in Italy, Spain, and southern Francia).49 We began this study of John Scottus’ progress in Greek in media re. We looked for a fixed date and found 851. Can we find any vestiges of an earlier interest in Greek? We first meet John Scottus Eriugena as a teacher in the court of Charles the Bald in the year 847.50 We know nothing of his prior history other than that he was born in Ireland, as the name Eriugena (Eriu-gena, “born in Ireland”) tells us. Scholars, notably Maïeul Cappuyns, have argued that John could not have learned much, if any, Greek in the Ireland of his day, and that he must have spent considerable time as a student on the continent before his appearance at the royal court.51 However, we have no documentary evidence to support the theory that he studied on the continent before his time at the court. It is possible, however, to push back his Greek studies before 851. John published a set of brief biblical notes known as the Glossae divinae historiae, now available in an edition with introduction and commentary by John Contreni and Pádraig Ó Néill.52 Carm. 2.13; 13.2, ed. Herren. Roger Wright, “Foreigners’ Latin and Romance: Boniface and Pope Gregory II,” in A Sociological Study of Late Latin (Turnhout, 2002), pp. 95–109; Michael W. Herren, “The Cena Adamnani or SeventhCentury Table Talk,” in Spoken and Written Latin: Relations between Latin and the Romance Languages in the Earlier Middle Ages, ed. Mary Garrison, Arpad P. Orbán, and Marco Mostert (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 101–12. 50  That John Scottus arrived as a teacher in the court of Charles the Bald in 847 is based on the hypothesis that he replaced Prudentius of Troyes as the royal teacher when Prudentius was elevated to his episcopate. However, this happened in 873, which leaves a gap of four years. The question of John’s arrival at the court is unresolved. 51  See Cappuyns, Jean Scot Érigène, pp. 14–29 on Irish learning from the seventh to the ninth century. 52  Glossae Divinae Historiae. The Biblical Glosses of John Scottus Eriugena, Millennio Medievale  1 (Florence, 1997). Note the strictures of Carmela Franklin regarding the manuscript base of this edition in her review, The Journal of Medieval Latin 11 (2001), 216–19, at pp. 218–19. 48 

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A scholarly consensus supports the authenticity of this work.53 The glosses treat books of the Old Testament as far as 2 Macchabees. They can be described as of the Antiochene type associated with Irish exegesis, as they concentrate heavily on name identifications and the meanings and etymologies of words. What distinguishes the compilation is its use of Old Irish; the editors report that Irish words occur in about one eighth of the interpretations.54 John does not use Irish in any other of his authentic writings, and one can only wonder if he added Irish definitions to assist his students at home, or perhaps an Irish cohort in the classes he taught at the court of Charles the Bald. Some of the Irish language interpretations in the Glossae occasionally require familiarity with terms that are peculiar to Irish culture.55 The editors of the collection point out a number of features that are drawn from Irish law and from the sagas.56 Legal terms include éric, a fixed penalty or fine for crimes such as homicide,57 and imthadacht, a state of concubinage. Words drawn from Irish literature are also in play. Morrigain (“queen of nightmares”) is used to gloss lamia, “witch”: “Lamia, monstrum in feminae figura, id est morrigain.” 58 The morrigain figures prominently in the most famous Irish saga, Táin Bó Cuailnge (“The Cattle Raid of Cooley”), which would have been inaccessible to scholars on the continent. Similarly, geltig (MS  for correct geltach), glossing pilosi (“satyrs”), formed from geilt, “madness,” would have reminded Irish readers of Suibne Geilt (“The Madness of Sweeney”), but would have been meaningless to everyone else. Out of the 79 entries that contain Irish words or phrases, 31 of these are Irish only, i.e. no Latin explanation is provided. In nine of the entries that contain both Latin and Irish, Irish interpretations occur first. Of special interest are four entries where the Irish word occurring in a mainly Latin definition is crucial to the understanding of the whole phrase. Let us look at two of these: 50. Craticula, id est indén in medio altaris.

The Irish provides an exact definition for craticula (“grating”), but the information would have been useless to anyone who did not know Irish well. Similarly: 250. Luterem, uas rotundum in modum ballain. Luter, round vessel in the shape of a ballan. See e.g. Patrizia Lendinara, “On John Scottus’ Authorship of the Biblical Glosses,” Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 33 (1992), 571–79; reprinted as no. VII in Lendinara, Anglo-Saxon Glosses and Glossaries (­A ldershot, 1992); Jeauneau, “Jean Scot Érigène et le grec,” p. 32. 54  Ed. Contreni and Ó Néill, p. 40. 55  Padraig P. Ó Néill, “The Old Irish Words in John’s Biblical Glosses,” in Jean Scot écrivain, pp. 287–97. 56  Ed. Contreni and Ó Néill, pp. 54–55. 57  Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin, 1988), Index. 58  Glossae 298, ed. Contreni and Ó Néill, p. 146. The word monstrum connects lamia and morrigain through their terrible aspect. 53 

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As the editors note, the compiler adjusted the case of ballan to a genitive following Latin in modum. However, a reader who had never encountered an Irish ballan would be none the wiser. Readers without Irish would also be left unenlightened by Irishonly glosses, which, at one place (251–54) occur in a run of four. Although non-Irish readers could glean useful information from the 25 entries that place Irish second, and from the 90% of entries that have Latin only, it is doubtful that the collection would have served as a “go-to” source for continental readers. Despite the evidence supporting composition of the Glossae in Ireland – or rather, the lack of evidence against the supposition – one obstacle cannot be overcome. In presenting the successive books of the Bible John followed the arrangement given by Theodulf of Orléans rather than the standardized version of the Vulgate adopted by Alcuin. There are also textual variants that point to Theodulf’s Bible.59 Given this fact, one must conclude that John compiled, or completed, the Glossae Divinae Historiae after his arrival on the continent. Theodulf died at the end of 821, well before any putative date of John’s arrival in Francia. We may suppose, then, that the Glossae was the first token of John’s work composed after leaving Ireland. He may have composed it while at the court, but the presence of so many Irish glosses and Irish cultural references tempts one to think that John compiled the Glossae for a colony of Irish scholars such as that resident in Laon.60 The evidence of knowledge of Greek exhibited in this collection is limited to glosses on Greek words and etymologies. Here is a sample: Penteteotho, V. editiones. Teothos a uerbo ticto, id est edo. Inde ΘΕΟΤΟΚΟΣ, id est genetrix uel editrix.

In this case, John was misled by his exemplar. Obviously, Penteteucho has been corrupted. The first gloss, “V. editiones,” should have been enough to put the glossator on track with the rest. However, John gets the rest of it right: edo, “bring forth,” “give birth to,” is an apt interpretation of τίκτω (“give birth,”), for which τόκος (“birth”) in ΘΕΟΤΟΚΟΣ is the correct verbal noun. Another attempt at etymology concerns latomorum, which occurs in 3 Reg. 5.15: “et octoginta latomorum in monte.” The graeca collecta ex Hieronimo has the following: “Latomorum, id est ΛΑΤΩΜΟΣ (for – ΩΝ), id est lapidi (for lapidis) caesor.” John’s entry here reads: “Latomorum, lapidum caesorum; ΛΙΘΩΝ graece lapidum, ΘΟΜΗ sectores.” 61 Unlike the compiler of Jerome’s graeca, John correctly identifies latomorum as genitive and gives the correct genitive ΛΙΘΩΝ, “of stones,” although the first Ed. Contreni and Ó Néill, p. 38. John Contreni, “The Irish Colony at Laon during the Time of John Scottus,” in Jean Scot Érigène et l’histoire de la philosophie. Laon 7–12 juillet 1975. Colloques internationaux du Centre national de la recherche scientifique no. 561, ed. René Roques (Paris, 1977), pp. 59–67. 61  Glossae 235, ed. Contreni and Ó Néill, p. 135. 59 

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element is properly λάων from λᾶς, and ΤΟΜΗ should be read for ΘΟΜΗ. However, we gather from the sprinkling of graeca that John’s work in Greek was limited to transcribing definitions and etymologies of Greek words from the sources he had to hand. One such seems to have been the Pseudo-Cyrillus Greek-Latin dictionary that John allegedly brought with him from Ireland to Laon.62 I believe that we are now able to identify the stages of John Scottus’s quest to teach himself Greek: 1. Elementary Greek studies in Ireland 2. Use of Greek glossaries and dictionaries in commentary, providing etymologies (Glossae divinae historiae, before a. 851) 3. Matching Greek to Latin biblical texts (De praedestinatione, a. 851) 4. Interlinear translations of biblical texts aided by Latin translations (850s?) 5. Solidification of knowledge of declensions and conjugations (Annotaciones in Marcianum, 855–858?) 6. Independent interlinear translations of short passages from Homer and other Greek authors cited by Priscian (859–860) 7. Translation of a major patristic work (Versio Dionysiaca) aided by existing translation (860–862) 8. Independent translations of other patristic works (Maximus the Confessor, ­Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius (862–866?)63 9. Composition in Greek (Carmina, 859–869)64 The reader may object that the list is over-schematized. Perhaps it is. However, a programme of this sort is wholly consistent with John’s approach to mastering theology. He  postponed his magnum opus, the Periphyseon, to a time when he had not only made progress in the Greek language, but also had used the acquisition of that language to further his translation of the entire corpus of Pseudo-Dionysius, the Ambigua and Ad Thalassium of Maximus the Confessor, the De imagine Dei of Gregory of Nyssa, perhaps also the Ancoratus of Epiphanius – all works that he cited in the Periphyseon. To these he added his close acquaintance with the works of the Latin Fathers Dionisotti, “Greek Grammars and Dictionaries,” pp.  10–15; Michael  W. Herren, “The  Study of Greek in Ireland in the Early Middle Ages,” in L’Irlanda e gli irlandesi nell’Altomedioevo. Spoleto, 16– 21  aprile 2009. Settimane di studio della Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 57 (Spoleto, 2010), pp. 511–28, at 516–17. 63  The dating is very difficult to determine. For examples, traces of Eriugena’s use of Gregory of Nyssa’s De imagine appear in early works such as the De praedestinatione. See now Giovanni Mandolino and Chiara O. Tommasi, ed., Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae De imagine, CCCM 167 (Turnhout, 2020), pp. cxv-cxx. 64  Dates refer to main collection. For dates of poems and questions of authenticity, see Herren, ed., Carmina, CCCM 167, pp. xxxviii–lxviii. 62 

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– ­Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose – all of whom are also cited in that work.65 Despite the efforts of some scholars to date the Periphyseon to the early 860s, I am persuaded by the solid argument of Max Manitius that he wrote it around 867, between the completion of his translation of the Ambigua of Maximus the Confessor and Heiric of Auxerre’s use of the Periphyseon in his scholia.66 Just as John spent the better part of his life in preparing to publish his masterwork of theology, so, too, after many stages of preparation, he finally built up his nerve to publish a fourteen-line poem written entirely in Greek.

Goulven Madec, “Jean Scot et ses auteurs,” in Jean Scot écrivain, pp. 143–86; for a catalogue of citations, many nominatim, see pp. 154–86. 66  Max Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3  vols. (Munich, 1911–1931), 1:328. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Érigéne, p. 189, is essentially in agreement, setting the publication of the work between autumn of 866 and some time in 867. 65 

Politics and Religion: Ideal and Reality in the Carolingian Specula Principum Thomas F. X. Noble University of Notre Dame In the light of the rise in recent decades of militant Islam and of the so-called “religious right,” the doublet “religion and politics” has become both interesting and urgent in ways that it was not for a long time. In the following pages I wish to take my readers back to the ninth century, to the Carolingian world, and to offer four manifestly religious texts for consideration in terms of their religious content and their political implications. Normally labeled Specula Principum, “Mirrors for Princes,” they are: Smaragdus of St.-Mihiel, Via Regia, written in 811 or 812 for Louis the Pious when he was king of Aquitaine;1 Jonas of Orleans, De institutione regia, addressed in about 831 to Louis the Pious’s son Pippin who was then king of Aquitaine;2 Sedulius Scottus’s Liber de rectoribus christianis written in 869 for Charles the Bald;3 and, finally, Hincmar of Reims’s De regis persona et regio ministerio written around 873, also for Charles the Bald.4 The fundamental introduction to these four works remains after fifty years that of Hans Hubert Anton.5 These texts are full of moral advice for kings intended to give them long and successful reigns and to win for them eternal salvation. The texts draw heavily on the Bible and the Church Fathers, especially Ambrose and Augustine. Jonas has one Virgilian line probably lifted from Augustine’s City of God.6 Hincmar has a tag from Terence (long proverbial), and a quotation from Cicero embedded within a longer quotation from Augustine.7 Otherwise no classical authors are mentioned or Via Regia, PL 102: 931–70. Jonas d’Orléans Le métier du roi (De institutione regia), ed. Alain Dubreucq, Sources chrétiennes 407 (Paris, 1995); for the date see pp. 45–49. 3  Liber de rectoribus christianis, ed. Sigmund Hellmann, Sedulius Scottus, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 1.1 (Munich, 1906), pp. 1–91. English translation by Edward Gerard Doyle, Sedulius Scottus on Christian Rulers and the Poems, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 17 (Binghamton, 1983), pp. 49–96. 4  De regis persona et regio ministerio, PL 125:833–56. 5  Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherethos in der Karolingerzeit (Bonn, 1968). 6  Jonas, Inst. 5, ed. Dubreucq, p. 208 quoting Virg. Aen. 6.853, “parcere subiectis et debellare superbos” which Jonas could have found at Augustine, Civ. Dei 1.6, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1928), p. 10. 7  Hincmar, De regis persona praef., PL 125:833C quoting Ter. Andr. 68 “obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit”; 18, PL 125:845D–846A quoting Pro Ligario 37 “nulla de virtutibus tuis nec admirabilior nec gratior misericordia est,” as part of a longer quotation from Augustine, Civ. Dei 9.5, ed. Dombart and Kalb, p. 375. 1 

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cited. A few Christian emperors are cited by way of example but not a single secular classical figure. Religious texts indeed. So where are the politics? Hiding in plain sight is my answer. In 1990 Judith Butler famously wrote about “Gender Trouble.”8 I have no claim to fame but I wish to write about “genre trouble.” A great deal of scholarship has accumulated around the Mirrors and, of course, mirror literature in general was by no means exclusively a Carolingian, or medieval, or western phenomenon.9 That scholarship has overwhelmingly concentrated on tracing sources for individual texts, looking for ways one text influenced another, and creating something almost like check-lists of the virtues – Herrschertugen­ den our German colleagues call them – that are supposed to be present. In other words, it has largely been a matter of deciding whether texts fit into a genre. No text ever bore spec­ ulum in its title before Godfrey of Viterbo’s Speculum regum written in about 1180.10 From the late twelfth century to the sixteenth, Mirrors for Princes were produced dozens of times. I respect the scholarship and have learned much from it. But it troubles me because it robs individual texts of their specificity and deprives them of their context. It imposes on Carolingian texts a categorization, a theme, a genre that, I suspect, their authors never imagined. I want to argue that, read properly and within a Carolingian framework, my four texts were intended to participate in ninth-century political discourse. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London, 1990). It would be pointless to try to cite all the relevant literature that treats mirrors in their full range. An  important early contribution was Lester  K. Born, “The  Specula Principis of the Carolingian Renaissance,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 12 (1933), 583–612; there is still much of value in Born’s lengthy introduction to his The Education of a Christian Prince: Desiderius Erasmus (New York, 1936), pp. 1–130, esp. 99–130. The first comprehensive study was Wilhelm Berges, Die Fürstenspiegel des hohen und späten Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1938). Valuable especially from a philosophical perspective is Pierre Hadot, “Fürstenspiegel,” Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 8  (1972), 555–632. For  the late medieval period see Cary  J. Nederman, “The  Mirror Crack’d: The  Speculum Principum as Political and Social Criticism in the Late Middle Ages,” The European Legacy 3 (1998), 18–38. More recent and wideranging is Specula Principum, ed. Angela de Benedictis (Frankfurt, 1999). In that volume Hans Hubert Anton grappled with the genre questions that interest me here: “Gesellschaftsspiegel und Gesellschafts­ theorie in Westfranken/Frankreich: Spezifik, Kontinuitäten und Wandlungen,” pp. 51–120. Excellent summary studies are to be found in the articles entitled “Fürstenspiegel,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 4 (Munich, 2002), specifically: Anton, “Lateinisches Mittelalter,” cols. 1040–49; Michael Richter, “­Volkssprachliche Literatur,” cols.  1049–53; Christian Hannick, “Byzantinischer Bereich und slavische Literaturen,” cols.  1053–58; Lutz Richter-Bernberg, “Arabisch-islamisch-osmanischer Bereich,” col. 1058. I cite these studies because of their stunning range and their rich citation of literature that is, now, nearly two decades out of date. Nothing so comprehensive has since appeared. Smaragdus’s Via regia has been studied in detail by Otto Eberhardt, Via Regia: Der Fürstenspiegel Smaragds von St Mihiel und seine lite­rarische Gattung (Munich, 1977) – note his subtitle. Raffaele Savigni, Giona di Orleans: una ecclesiologia carolingia (Bologna, 1989), esp. pp. 111–44, is important. On Hincmar, after Anton, see Jean Devisse, Hincmar archevêque de Reims 845–882, vol. 2 (Geneva, 1975), pp. 671–723. 10  Hadot, “Fürstenspiegel,” p. 556. 8 

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At this point I need to take a series of detours in order to establish that very framework in which my mirrors might have contributed to Carolingian politics. I will say something first about the broad realm in which it is possible to speak about Carolingian politics. Then I  shall turn to the specific venues in which Carolingian politics took place. And finally I shall speak of the language – one might say the diction or the rhetoric – of Carolingian political discourse. In a series of studies Mayke de Jong has demonstrated that ecclesia and respublica were not in the Carolingian period distinct realms of experience and conduct.11 They are not two sides of the same coin but they are complementary aspects of the same polity. She has refuted the study of Johannes Fried that there was no polity in the Carolingian world and that there was only Kirchendenken, which implies that everything that was said either pertained only to a distinct realm of the church or else was expressed by churchmen who had no role in a polity.12 In a related vein, there has been a discussion of whether one can speak of a “public” in the Carolingian world. This point has a double valence. Must there be an Offentlichkeit in Jürgen Habermas’s terms and is it possible, in speaking about the ninth century, to talk about things that happened visibly, in front of many, and with potential impact on everyone?13 With respect to the first point: no, the Carolingians had no pubs, coffee houses, or broadsides as in Habermas’s eighteenth century. But, as I shall argue, there were public spaces where important things were discussed, debated, and resolved. With respect to the second point: are we likely to ascertain a “public” where no such thing existed or where we are guilty of serious anachronism? In fact, as Chris Wickham14 and, in luxurious detail, “Ecclesia and the Public Domain in the Carolingian World,” in Italy and Early Medieval Europe: ­ apers for Chris Wickham, ed.  Ross Balzaretti, Julia Barrow, and Patricia Skinner (Oxford, 2018), P pp. 486–500; “Ecclesia and the Early Medieval Polity,” in Staat im frühen Mittelalter, ed. Stuart Airlie, Walter Pohl, and Helmut Reimitz (Vienna, 2006), pp. 113–32; “Sacrum palatium et ecclesia: L’autorité religieuse royale sous les Carolingiens (790–840),” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 58 (2003), 1243–69; “The Empire as Ecclesia,” in The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 191–226. 12  “Der karolingische Herrschaftsverband im 9. Jahrhundert zwischen Kirche und Königshaus,” ­Historische Zeitschrift 235 (1982), 1–43. 13  The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass., 1962; repr. 1989). The relevance of Habermas for the Middle Ages is treated broadly, albeit neglecting the early medieval period in L’espace public au moyen âge: débats autour de Jürgen Habermas, ed. Patrick Boucheron and Nicolas Offenstadt (Paris, 2011). 14  “Consensus and Assemblies in the Romano-Germanic World: A Comparative Approach,” in Recht und Konsens im frühen Mittelalter, ed. Verena Epp and Christoph H. F. Meyer, Vorträge und Forschungen 82 (Sigmaringen, 2017), pp. 389–426. Very useful in the same connection is Political Assemblies in the Earlier Middle Ages, ed. Paul S. Barnwell and Marco Mostert, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 7 (Turnhout, 2003). See below for citation of one of the articles from this volume. 11 

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Andrey Grunin,15 have demonstrated, there most certainly was a Carolingian public sphere, or space, where something that we might call politics took place. Tim Reuter argues that a public was created when the Carolingians assembled, and that it dissolved when the assembly broke up.16 The Carolingian and Habermasian worlds were different but neither “public” nor “polity” are exclusively modern realities (leaving aside the question of whether the Roman world possessed either or both). That brings me to space, to venue. Traditionally, Carolingian kingship was assessed under either a Germanist or a Romanist perspective. That is, either the kings were products of a kind of forestial democracy or else they inherited Roman autocracy.17 Both views are exaggerated, though neither is completely wrong. Considerations of space require me to leave on one side here the debate about early medieval Staatlichkeit which ran very hot for twenty years or so but that has cooled more recently.18 I shall simply assert, without fear of being either fully wrong or right, that there was a Carolingian political venue, namely the assembly, and that assemblies embodied a political community. That pretty straight-forward assertion begs some questions. Chief among them is: what was an assembly? And then: what did assemblies do? And finally: is what assemblies did politics? Hincmar’s treatise De ordine palatii, whose introduction is itself a kind of mirror, was addressed to King Carloman in about 882.19 The work may well be no more than “Imaginer l’empire. Étude d’un concept étatique carolingien et evolution du vocabulaire politique dans le royaume et l’empire franc entre 768–840 et dans Francia occidentialis entre 840–877” (Ph.D. diss., University of Avignon, 2010). There is a synopsis (under the same title) in Revue de l’Institut français d’histoire en Allemagne 3 (2011), 146–51. 16  “Assembly Politics in Western Europe from the Eighth Century to the Twelfth,” in Medieval Poli­ ties and Modern Mentalities, ed. Janet L. Nelson (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 193–216. The volume is a posthumous collection of some of Reuter’s most important articles. 17  The literature on kingship is impossibly vast. One could trace the Germanist-Romanist controversy to the nineteenth century (and before!) in the work of, say, Georg Waitz and Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges. A classic presentation of the Germanist view is Fritz Kern, Kingship and Law in the M ­ iddle Ages, trans. Stanley Bertram Chrimes (New York, 1956). His views were at least in part sustained by some of the contributors to Das Königtum: Seine geistigen und rechtlichen Grundlagen, Vorträge und Forschungen 3 (Darmstadt, 1963). The shift to a more Romanist perspective is apparent in Early Medieval Kingship, ed. Peter H. Sawyer and Ian Wood (Leeds, 1977). For a balanced account see Janet L. Nelson, “Kingship and Royal Government,” in The  New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Rosamond M ­ cKitterick, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 383–430. 18  I think the best place to begin is still Staat im frühen Mittelalter, ed. Stuart Airlie, Walter Pohl, and Helmut Reimitz (Vienna, 2006). For a fair and broad assessment see Christoph H. F. Meyer, “Zum Streit um den Staat im frühen Mittelalter,” Rechtsgeschichte/Legal History 1 (2010), 164–75. 19  Hincmarus, De ordine palatii, ed. Thomas Gross and Rudolf Schieffer, MGH, Fontes Iuris Germanici Antiqui 3 (Hannover, 1980). The introduction to the edition (pp. 9–20) sets out the key issues surrounding the preparation of this work. 15 

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a slight revision of a treatise written in  812 by Adalhard, an experienced and wellconnected cousin of Charlemagne. Quite likely the text gives us a view of almost the entire span of the ninth century. Hincmar (or Adalhard) says that the Carolingians traditionally had two assemblies each year. One was held in the winter with, apparently, a restricted set of advisers (“more senior men and distinguished counsellors”), and one was held later in the year – I will not here enter into the discussion of Marchfields and Mayfields – with the “greater men both clerics and laymen” plus “lesser men” (mi­ nores) who were there mainly to receive advice and to assent – and, again, I will not discuss whether this was the army or all the free Franks.20 Almost everything we know in detail about these assemblies derives from narrative sources that are, in fact, stingy with precise information. Hincmar says that the winter meeting set details – formed an agenda, we might say – and that the later meeting acted upon it. Let us suppose that that is literally true. And then let us listen a little more to Hincmar. He describes a situation before the general meeting where the king went tent-to-tent schmoozing (“confabulando”) with the key Franks.21 To an American this sounds like the threemartini lunch or power golf. Surely, this is politics. But on this evidence (or surmise) alone we cannot say what this means. But the matter is not quite so straightforward. Narrative sources almost always tell us where the king spent Christmas and Easter. Surely he was attended by his court and those meetings can be called assemblies. There were lots of other meetings of varying sizes held in different locales that can also be called assemblies. Daniel Eichler has attempted to create a kind of taxonomy of assemblies22 but it is hard to do better than Tim Reuter did when he said an assembly was “a meeting where as a rule a ruler had in his presence a considerable number of people who were not members of his permanent entourage.”23 What happened at those assemblies is exceedingly difficult to ascertain. In an immensely learned book Jürgen Hannig says we can see the Willenserklärung but not the Willensbildung.24 He means that the outcome of at least the greater assemblies is known to us from the capitularies issued by them. In more recent decades we have done better at discerning Willensbildung. Jinty Nelson believes that there must have been lots of preliminary discussion and even argument before firm decisions were proclaimed before the assembly and published as a capitulary. Yet we have no sources that reveal those discussions to us in detail. We can make some educated guesses. Nelson points De ordine palatii 7, ed. Gross and Schiefer, pp. 82–86, lines 468–70, 474–78, 480–500. De ordine palatii 7, ed. Gross and Schiefer, p. 92, lines 590–99. 22  “Karolingische Höfe und Versammlungen – Grundvoraussetzungen,” in Streit am Hof in frühen Mittelalter, ed. Matthias Becher and Alheydis Plassmann (Bonn, 2011), pp. 121–48. 23  “Assembly Politics in Western Europe,” p. 435. 24  Konsensus Fidelium: Frühfeudale Interpretationen des Verhältnisses von Königtum und Adel am Bei­ spiel des Frankenreiches, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 27 (Stuttgart, 1982). 20  21 

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to evidence for planning, agendas, written drafts, what she calls an “atmosphere of fa­ miliaritas,” and, as Hincmar tells us, face-to-face contact.25 If for purposes of discussion we may equate court and assembly, then it is worth quoting Stuart Airlie’s remark that there was “relentless traffic toward the court.”26 That remark points to what we have learned to call “connectivity.” Bear in mind that, as noted above, Hincmar said he was present at deliberations at court. Indeed, he was at the court of Louis the Pious and Linda Dolmen has examined the acrid and sustained controversies at Louis’s court.27 Mayke de Jong analyzes conflict in the reigns of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald by looking closely at the writings of Paschasius Radbertus.28 Speaking about the years of violent conflict among the sons of Louis the Pious, Chris Wickham says that Nit­ hard, the chronicler of the civil wars, approved of Charles the Bald precisely because he took counsel and disapproved of Lothar because he did not.29 Charles West argues that the court of Charles the Bald “simmered at the edge of violence.”30 Eric Goldberg sees the court of Louis the German as lively and combative.31 In light of all this Karl Brunner seems to have been prescient in arguing that it makes little sense to talk simply of strife between king and nobility when in fact there was competition among numerous pressure groups, as we might now call them.32 Martin Gravel’s recent work has given a strong boost to the idea of connectivity.33 An important book by Jennifer Davis also provides a pretty keen sense of what Nelson’s connectivity meant in practice.34 Against traditional attempts to define a single, coherent set of institutions by means of Janet Nelson, “How Carolingians Created Consensus,” in Le  monde carolingien: Bilan, perspec­ tives, champs de recherches, ed. Wojciech Fałkowski and Yves Sassier (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 67–81. See also Bernd Schneidmüller, “Konsensuale Herrschaft: Ein Essay über Formen und Konzepte politischer Ordnung im Mittelalter,” in Reich, Regionen und Europa in Mittelalter und Neuzeit: Festschrift für Peter Moraw, ed. Paul-Joachim Heinig, Sigrid Jahns, Hans-Joachim Schmidt, Rainer Christoph Schwinger, and Sabine Wefers (Berlin, 2000), pp. 53–87. 26  “The Palace of Memory: The Carolingian Court as a Political Center,” in Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, ed. Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks, and Alastair J. Minnis (York, 2000), p. 6. 27  “…evertit palatium, destruxit consilium: Konflicte im und um den Rat des Herrschers am Beispiel der Auseinandersetzungen am Hof Ludwigs des Frommen (830/31),” in Streit am Hof im frühen Mittel­ alter, pp. 285–316. 28  Epitaph for an Era: Politics and Rhetoric in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2019). 29  “Consensus and Assemblies,” pp. 389–90. 30  “Evaluating Conflict at Court: A West-Frankish Perspective,” in Streit am Hof im frühen Mittel­ alter, p. 320. 31  “Dominus Hludowicus serenissimus imperator sedens pro tribunal: Conflict, Justice, and Ideology at the Court of Louis the German,” in Streit am Hof, pp. 175–202. 32  Oppositionelle Gruppen im Karolingerreich, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 25 (Vienna, 1979). 33  Distances, rencontres, communications: Réaliser l’empire sous Charlemagne et Louis le Pieux, Collection Haut Moyen Âge 15 (Turnhout, 2012). 34  Jennifer Davis, Charlemagne’s Practice of Empire (Cambridge, 2015). 25 

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which the Carolingians governed their far-flung realm,35 Davis points to adaptability and flexibility as the hallmarks of the system. In political terms this means that many different regions, groups, and issues had to be accommodated and somehow brought into balance with each other. Connectivity, then, is like the obverse of a coin whose reverse is consensus. And flexibility must mean give-and-take which is always at the very heart of politics. There is today general agreement that the Carolingian political community – those who participated in assemblies  – sought consensus. Steffen Patzold calls the Adalhard/Hincmar treatise a “manifesto of consensual politics.”36 Consensus requires consenting parties and it is frustrating that we cannot confidently name those parties. We cannot identify factions, let alone enumerate the members of those factions. Stuart Airlie notes that we know of thirty-one assemblies at Frankfurt between 794 and 893 and yet we can only name 202 people altogether who attended.37 Surely more people than that attended each one of them if we are to take Hincmar seriously. The natural cycles of life must have meant that the elites changed shape every generation or two, so participation by well-known families was surely a constant, but participation by specific individuals much less so.38 No document known to me specifies who was obliged or invited to attend the Frankish general assembly, the placitum generale. Nineteenthcentury German constitutional historians twisted themselves into knots trying to define a legal basis for identifying those with Mitspracherecht. When we do have concrete evidence for attendees at the greater assemblies it is always and only aristocrats – and men too, for that matter – but this only means that Hincmar’s minores are invisible to us. Nevertheless, those minores can be seen as vigorous actors in documents that reveal controversies and settlements in assemblies at the local level.39 There is another way to think about consensus. Consensus happens when people agree or when they agree to stop disagreeing. That is so obvious as hardly to need saying. But, as Tim Reuter reminds us, “to insult, in a society in which the protection of For example in the classic study of François-Louis Ganshof, Frankish Institutions under Charle­ magne, trans. Bryce and Mary Lyon (New York, 1968). 36  “Konsens und Konkurrenz: Überlegungen zu einem aktuellen Forschungskonzept der Mediävistik,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 41 (2007), 75–103, quotation at p. 78. 37  “Talking Heads,” in Political Assemblies, p. 38. 38  Studied in great detail by Régine Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe-Xe siècle): Essai d’anthropologie sociale (Paris, 1995). 39  The literature is too large to do more than cite a few representative studies: The  Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (Cambridge, 1986), esp. Janet ­Nelson, “Dispute Settlement in Carolingian West Francia,” pp. 45–64; Wendy Davies, “People and Places in Dispute in Ninth-Century Brittany,” pp. 65–84; Chris Wickham, “Land Disputes and Their Social Framework in Lombard-Carolingian Italy, 700–900,” pp. 105–24; Wendy Davies, Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval Brittany (London, 1988); Warren Brown, Unjust Seizure: Conflict, ­Interest & Authority in an Early Medieval Society (Ithaca, 2001). 35 

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one’s honour was the trip wire defending the protection of one’s property and rights, and hence one’s power and standing, was to invite feud.”40 This interpretation points to the work of Gerd Althoff. In a series of studies that occasionally peeked back into the Carolingian world, Althoff argued that there were, in the conduct of public business, Spielregeln, “Rules of the Game.”41 The rules dictated that in the conduct of public business anything controversial was to be suppressed and everything consensual was to be presented. Rulership, in Althoff’s view, was carefully “staged.”42 This may or may not be true for the Carolingian period because we usually do not know how the Carolingian rulers presented their views, and in some ways themselves, to the assembly.43 Jinty Nelson has presented several cases where rulers argued before their “people,” even in the vernacular, but we simply cannot know if royal speeches were normal, exceptional, or effective.44 She has also “heard” the voice of Charlemagne in capitulary texts and those capitularies were promulgated after the general assemblies.45 I am not sure how far to push this argument. Althoff was writing in, indeed was a leader in, the whole discussion of ritual as a dimension of public, not merely religious or liturgical, life in the Middle Ages.46 He and others have taught us a great deal, but we must be careful not to be trapped in the rigidity and formality of their constructs. Not everything could be “staged” and there were probably both more and different “rules” than Althoff assumed.47 Some have suggested that Althoff’s model is applicable to Ottonian and Salian Germany more than to the Carolingian world. Althoff himself has admitted this. The matter is of some consequence historically and for my argument here. Ritual is central to Althoff’s rules of the game. A number of scholars have pointed out that whatever it was that constituted ritual in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the same rules did not apply in the ninth. But that observation does not help us understand the ninth century. Leaving aside scholars who are dubious about the whole concept of ritual outside liturgical settings, it is important to note Philippe Buc’s sharp criticism of “Assembly Politics,” p. 439. Spielregeln der Politik in Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde (Darmstadt, 1997). 42  Inszenierte Herrschaft: Geschichtsschreibung und politisches Handeln im Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 2003). 43  Geoffrey Koziol, The Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas: The  West Frankish Kingdom (840–987), Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 19 (Turnhout, 2012) makes a heroic effort to use performance theory to interpret important aspects of the preparation for royal diplomas. 44  “How Carolingians Created Consensus,” pp. 67–81, esp. pp. 72–74. 45  “The Voice of Charlemagne,” in Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages: Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting, ed. Richard Gameson and Henrietta Leyser (Oxford, 2001), pp. 76–88. See also her King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne (Berkeley, CA, 2019), pp. 248–51, 258, 290–92, 389–94, 395–98, 422–23, 435–38, 472–74. 46  Die Macht der Rituale: Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 2003). 47  Wickham, “Consensus and Asemblies,” pp. 414–15. 40  41 

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scholars who have failed to grapple seriously with the fact that we do not actually have access to medieval rituals but only to their textual representations.48 Those representations need not be taken as false but it is crucial to realize that the scenes which they describe are overlaid with layers of authorial intention and understanding. In more recent years some scholars have attempted to elude what might be called the ritual trap by focusing explicitly on language, coining labels such as “symbolic language” and “symbolic communication.”49 I am not quite sure what problem this move solves if our aim is to understand Carolingian politics and, within that realm, the achievement or rupture of consensus. Both ritual studies and analyses of symbolic language assume that “politics” in the Carolingian “public” were transactional and governed by unwritten rules much more than by institutional structures.50 My point is that recent scholars are largely singing from the same hymnal. But another important point is that even though courtesy and convention were supposed to have prevailed, it would be easy to cite a long list of occasions when anything remotely approaching civility failed utterly. Irene van Renswoude has shown that what she calls free speech was more prevalent and powerful in the early Middle Ages than has heretofore been assumed.51 Freespeaking Frankish aristocrats must have engaged in some epic tirades whose language was not exactly symbolic. To me, this suggests politics and indicates that if politics were meant to be consensual, they did not always achieve their goal. To repeat: not everything could be or was “staged,” to use Althoff’s term, gracefully and peacefully. With this fairly basic sketch of Carolingian politics in mind, let me turn to the four texts I mentioned at the outset. As a starting point let me begin with Smaragdus: “Do whatever you can for the office you hold, for the royal ministry that you bear, for the name of Christian that you possess, for the place of Christ in which you act.”52 Each of the four writers uses the word “ministry” to characterize the royal office that stands at the center of the advice which they offer.53 For each writer the royal ministry means an awesome set of responsibilities in terms of the king’s own moral formation and the duties he owes to the Christian people, a sense of service that transcends The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton, 2001). Ildar Garipzanov, The Symbolic Language of Authority in the Carolingian World (c. 751–877), Brill’s Series on the Early Medieval World 16 (Leiden, 2008); Christina Pössel, “The Magic of Early Medieval Ritual,” Early Medieval Europe 17 (2009), 111–25. This article is based in part on her 2003 Cambridge Ph.D. thesis “Symbolic Communication and the Negotiation of Power at Carolingian Regnal Assemblies,” which I have not seen. See also Leidulf Melve, “Assembly Politics and the ‘Rules of the Game’ (ca. 650–1150),” Viator 41 (2010), 69–90. Like Pösel, Melve uses the term “symbolic communication.” 50  Wickham, “Assembly Politics,” pp. 410, 414; Melve, “Assembly Politics,” pp. 69–70. 51  The Rhetoric of Free Speech in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2019). 52  Via regia 18, PL 102:958B. 53  Jonas, De institutione regia 4 (“Quid sit proprie ministerium regis”), ed. Dubreucq, pp. 198–202; Sedulius, Liber de rectoribus 1, ed. Hellmann, p. 52; Hincmar, De regis persona praef., PL 125:833D–34B. 48 

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immediate needs and realities. Those responsibilities are imposed by God and rulers will answer to God for their discharge of their duties.54 Ministerium represents a shift from the classical ideal of officium, which can be rendered as duty or responsibility, as it was articulated most clearly in Cicero’s De officiis. The shift began with Ambrose55 and was hardened into medieval shape by Gregory the Great.56 The Carolingian use of ministerium is distinctive in some respects. In the reigns of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious ministerium was applied to the royal and to the clerical office and the king was called Christ’s vicar. This important change has been treated in the past but recently received a thorough treatment by Corinne Margalhan-Ferrat who notes that echoes of ministerial kingship sound repeatedly in the provisions of capitularies that were products of the assemblies that I discussed already.57 The advice seems to have mattered. Of what did this ministry consist? Each of the four authors listed a consistent set of virtues that they urged the kings to display: charity, clemency, generosity, harmony, humility, justice, mercy, patience, piety, and prudence.58 The royal mirrors differ in this respect from the half-dozen or so lay mirrors produced in the Carolingian period and which I have discussed elsewhere.59 Namely, the lay mirrors are constructed as conflictus, drawing inspiration from Prudentius’s Psychomachia.60 That is, laymen were presented with a list of the seven cardinal virtues as remedies for each of the seven deadly sins. The royal mirrors urged several key virtues with no explicit sense of a spiritual battle. And charity, clemency, generosity, harmony, humility, mercy, patience, and piety were not among the cardinal virtues sent out to fight with the deadly sins. Let us look at these royal virtues a little more closely. Each of the authors says that the king must obey God’s law, must fear the Lord, and must suppress evil.61 Each text, albeit with slightly different words and emphases, says that kings must suppress adultery, luxury, theft, dishonesty, drunkenness, pride, Yves Congar, L’ecclésiologie du haut moyen âge (Paris, 1968). De officiis, ed. and trans. Ivor J. Davidson, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2001). 56  Regola pastorale, ed. Giuseppe Cremascoli (Rome, 2008). 57  “Le concept de ‘ministerium’ entre littérature spéculaire et legislation carolingienne,” in Specula Principum, ed. De Benedictis (as in n. 9), pp. 121–57. 58  Smaragdus, Via regia, 4–10, PL 102:941C–52A; Jonas, De institutione regia 3, ed. Dubreucq, pp. 184, 190, 196; 6, p. 212; 7, p. 218; 8, p. 220; Sedulius, Liber de rectoribus 10, ed. Hellmann, p. 49; Hincmar, De regis persona 2, PL 125:835B–36B; 19, col. 846A–D; 28, coll. 851B–52A. 59  “Secular Sanctity: Forging an Ethos for the Carolingian Nobility,” in Lay Intellectuals in the Caro­ lingian World, ed. Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 8–36. 60  Aaron Pelttari, The Psychomachia of Prudentius: Text, Commentary, and Glossary, Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture 58 (Norman, 2019). 61  Smaragdus, Via regia 3, PL  102:939C–41C; 4, coll. 942D–945A; 11, coll. 952A–53A; 31–32, coll. 969B–70C; Jonas, De institutione regia 8, ed. Dubreucq, pp. 220–24; 10, pp. 232–36; Sedulius, Liber de rectoribus 1, ed. Hellmann, p. 22; Hincmar, De regis persona, 16, PL 125:844B–D. 54  55 

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anger, violence, envy, jealousy, lust, greed, and familial discord.62 One hears unmistakably an implementation of the “Thou shalt not” clauses of the Decalogue. And even more than that. One might easily dismiss this as a kind of Christian boilerplate but I think our authors can be read in a more topical way. I believe this list of vices – the authors would say “sins” – is not an abstract omnium gatherum of possible faults but instead enumerates exactly the kinds of flaws and failings with which the rulers and clergy had to contend. All four authors said that the ruler must be able to control himself or he can never hope to control others,63 while Smaragdus, Jonas, and Sedulius call for the king to set a good example and to demand that his officials likewise set a good example.64 Where might kings have publicly set a good example except in the various kinds of assemblies that met in the Carolingian era? Jonas, Sedulius, and Hincmar urge that no respect be paid to persons according to rank and privilege.65 In the assemblies of the period the king regularly met with prominent people who would understandably have pressed their own interests. Sedulius says that a prince can become evil on account of wicked companions, detestable attendants, greedy eunuchs, and foolish and despicable courtiers.66 In light of the poetic and visionary texts produced – about which, again, I have written elsewhere67 – in the last years of Charlemagne’s reign and the early years of Louis’s, we may be pretty certain that there was great concern about dishonest, grasping officials. Hincmar says explicitly that the king cannot let affection permit him to excuse the offenses of his family, that it is a false mercy that forgives a criminal son because of a wife’s tears, and that relatives cannot be spared because of blood relations.68 Sons, Jonas says, must be obedient to their fathers and brothers should love one another.69 Sedulius insists that wives should be subservient but also notes the duties a ruler owes to his Smaragdus, Via regia 17–18, PL  102:957B–58C; Jonas, De institutione regia  3, ed.  Dubreucq, p. 188; 9, pp. 226–30; Sedulius, Liber de rectoribus 19, ed. Hellmann, p. 87; Hincmar, De regis persona, 2, PL 125:835B–36B. 63  Smaragdus, Via regia 4, PL  102:941D–45A; 7, coll. 946D–47D; 24, coll. 963A–64A; Jonas, De ­institutione regia 3, ed. Dubreucq, p. 188; Sedulius, Liber de rectoribus 2, ed. Hellmann, p. 25; Hincmar, De regis persona 2, PL 125:835B–36B. 64  Smaragdus, Via regia 17–18, PL 102:957B–58C; Jonas, De institutione regia 3, ed. Dubreucq, p. 184; 9, p. 230 (where he expressly urges officials not to betray their “palatine charge”); Sedulius, Liber de rec­ toribus 2, ed. Hellmann, p. 25. 65  Jonas, De institutione regia 3, ed. Dubreucq, p. 188; 4, p. 202; 5, p. 210; 6, p. 212; Hincmar, De regis persona 2, PL 125:835B–36B. 66  Liber de rectoribus 7, ed. Hellmann, pp. 41–42. 67  “Greatness Contested and Confirmed: The Raw Materials of the Charlemagne Legend,” in The Leg­ end of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages, ed. Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey (New York, 2008), pp. 3–21. 68  De regis persona, praef., PL 125:834B; 19, col. 846A–D; 29–30, coll. 852B–53D. 69  De institutione regia, Admonitio, ed. Dubreucq, pp. 160, 162–64. 62 

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wife and children.70 It surely cannot be coincidence that each of the four authors wrote in times of intense familial strife. Louis blinded and deposed his nephew Bernard and dismissed prominent counts. Louis’s sons fought each other violently in 830, 833–834, and 841–844. Louis’s second wife, Judith, figured prominently as both subject and object of strife. Charles the Bald executed more than a half dozen eminent opponents. The Carolingian world endured several periods of what can only be called civil war. Patience and mercy were wise counsels alongside warnings about familiar relationships. Jonas and Sedulius reminded kings that they would answer on the last day for their conduct and that their officials would likewise answer for those over whom they had authority.71 Sin, at every level, was a constant concern of the four authors. Hincmar says that long and wide rule is a gift of God and he agrees that death can come at any time and that, accordingly, kings must always be conscious of their conduct and of the conduct of all those appointed by them.72 What kinds of officials should the king appoint? There is complete agreement. They should be mature, sober, and thoughtful, and not liars, flatterers, adulators, and troublemakers.73 Not one of these qualities appears in exactly this way in the traditional lists of virtues and vices and all sound to me like sage warnings in the real world. Sedulius was a schoolmaster in Liège but the other three authors were prominent figures. Smaragdus was abbot of a major monastery. Jonas was arguably the most important bishop in the Carolingian world in the 820s and 830s. Hincmar was omnipresent in the great issues of the Carolingian world for four decades. I do not think that these authors were dispensing boilerplate, or Kirchendenken. I believe that they were offering practical advice in a world that they knew very well. To be sure, much of that advice came in the form of admonition. Nevertheless, in light of Mayke de Jong’s excavation of a culture of admonition in the central decades of the ninth century, I think that we can see these four authors as participating actively in that culture.74 Neither de Jong nor anyone else has cited these four texts in this way but I think they sit comfortably on the shelf next to the documents that have been cited. I want to close with two further points that arise from my four authors. Both of these, I believe, are topical and the first lines up very well with recent scholarship on assembly politics. Speech and language mattered a great deal no matter how far one Liber de rectoribus 5, ed. Hellmann, pp. 34–35. Jonas, De institutione regia, Admonitio, ed.  Dubreucq, p.  166; 12, pp.  252–58; Sedulius, Liber de ­rectoribus 3, ed. Hellmann, pp. 27–28. 72  De regis persona, 6, PL 125:840A–B. 73  Smaragdus, Via regia 28, PL 102:966B–C; Jonas, De institutione regia 3, ed. Dubreucq, pp. 188–90; 5, pp. 204, 208–10; 9, p. 230; Sedulius, Liber de rectoribus 6, ed. Hellmann, pp. 37–40; 7, pp. 41–42; 9, p. 46; Hincmar, De regis persona 2, PL 125:835B–36B. 74  The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious (814–840) (Cambridge, 2009). 70  71 

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wants to follow Gerd Althoff. All four of my authors actually have a lot to say about advice and speech. Smaragdus instructs the king to do everything with counsel.75 All four authors urge the king to take advice in all circumstances.76 Sedulius says that synods should be held frequently, two or three times per year, “where everything can be discussed” amid “friendly deliberation” (“benivola deliberatio”).77 A  synod was only one kind of assembly in the Carolingian period and many synods met in conjunction with the placitum generale – Hincmar’s big assembly. “Discussion” and “deliberation” imply speech. Evidently it was important to talk a lot, and to talk well, and to talk persuasively. Smaragdus says that the king’s speech is full of power that no one can resist.78 He and Sedulius say that the king should be affable and Smaragdus adds that the king should speak moderately, amiably, and sweetly; Hincmar adds that his speech should be “wholesome.”79 Looking at things the other way around, Jonas and Sedulius urge the king to avoid useless, indecent, idle, noxious, and trifling speech.80 Mayke de Jong has drawn attention to a passage in the Epitaphium Arsenii where eloquence really mattered81 and Jinty Nelson, with her almost unmatched ability to read between the lines of Carolingian sources, has interpreted several speeches by Carolingian kings, some of them in the vernacular, to show that royal speech could make a difference. Again, Nelson says that “creating consensus involves the art of persuasion.”82 All this prompting to take advice and all the advice offered by our authors makes no sense if it simply did not matter. My last point addresses a concern raised with emphasis and even urgency in all four of my texts. They tell the king to look out for the poor, widows, orphans, the oppressed, the destitute, strangers, and pilgrims.83 These concerns are reflected constantly in Carolingian capitularies, and also in various literary texts, from the reign of Charlemagne to the end of the ninth century.84 It is hard for me to believe that the aristocrats who Via regia 20, PL 102:959A. Smaragdus, Via regia 20, PL  102:959A–60B; Jonas, De institutione regia, Admonitio, ed.  Dubreucq, pp. 150, 164–66; Sedulius, Liber de rectoribus 2, ed. Hellmann, p. 25; Hincmar, De regis persona 4, PL 125:837C–39B. 77  Liber de rectoribus 11, ed. Hellmann, pp. 50–51; 19, p. 86. 78  Via regia 24, PL 102:964A. 79  Via regia 5, PL  102:945A–46A; Sedulius, Liber de rectoribus 18, ed.  Hellmann, p.  49; Hincmar, De regis persona 4, PL 125:837C–39B. 80  Jonas, De institutione regia 14, ed. Dubreucq, pp. 268–74; Sedulius, Liber de rectoribus 2, ed. Hellmann, p. 25. 81  Epitaph for an Era (as in n. 28), pp. 71–73. 82  “How Carolingians Created Consensus” (as in n. 25), p. 67. 83  Smaragdus, Via regia 9–11, PL 102:949A–53A; 16, coll. 956B–57B; 30, coll. 967B–69B; Jonas, De in­ stitutione regia 3, ed. Dubreucq, p. 188; 4, p. 198; 6, p. 214; Sedulius, Liber de rectoribus 19, ed. Hellmann, p. 87; Hincmar, De regis persona 2, PL 125:835B–36B. 84  See Margalhan-Ferrat, “Le concept de ‘ministerium.’” 75 

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principally populated the assemblies that issued those documents cared very much for the least among them. Is it possible that those who admonished kings to speak amiably, eloquently, and persuasively managed to help kings to move assemblies to take thought for the weak and vulnerable? Did constant haranguing about the royal ministry prompt concerns beyond those of the high and mighty? I regard Carolingian capitularies as aspirational more than as descriptive documents. Nevertheless, I look at the advice my four authors gave and I look at those capitularies, and I think that the advice mattered. And I am inclined to think that the texts I have discussed represent only the tip of an iceberg of advice. In the end, though, my conclusion is a modest one. Whether or not we accept Mayke de Jong’s identification of a culture of admonition, I hope to have added some documents to the dossier of admonition and to have invited you to think that admonitory texts played a role in Carolingian politics. Put a little differently, I have tried to provide a context within which to read the Specula Principum. If my arguments are at all persuasive, then I will have moved the Specula from the abstract realm of genre and from the limited realm of Kirchendenken to a more central place in Carolingian political discourse.

Later Middle Ages

Egbert of Liège and St Martin, or Where did Egbert Teach? Robert G. Babcock University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The Fecunda ratis is of one of the earliest and richest collections of medieval Latin proverbs and folklore, but almost nothing is known about its author and compiler, Egbert of Liège.1 The  date and place of his birth, the names, profession, and status of his parents and relations, the institutions where he studied and worked – all are matters for conjecture. There is a brief notice of the Fecunda ratis in Sigebert’s De viris illustribus, but it focuses on the work, not the author.2 Otherwise, our only evidence about Egbert derives from passages in his own work, the most important of which is the prefatory Letter to the Fecunda ratis, addressed to bishop Adalbold of Utrecht (1010–1026).3 According to this preface, Egbert was a priest and a teacher, and he and Adalbold had studied together as boys.4 Unfortunately, Egbert does not explicitly specify when, where, or under whom they had studied. It is surmised from other sources that Adalbold was a student of Notger of Liège († 1008), that he belonged to

The Fecunda ratis was edited by Ernst Voigt, Egberts von Lüttich Fecunda Ratis (Halle a. S, 1889). A bilingual Latin and English version is available in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, translated by Robert Gary Babcock (The Well-Laden Ship. Egbert of Liège, Cambridge, Mass., 2013). In producing that edition, I had the invaluable assistance of Danuta Shanzer and Gregory Hays, who were the DOML editors for the volume; it is a pleasure to honor both of them with the present contribution. Translations are my own except where noted. On  Egbert, see Wolfgang Maaz, “Egbert von Lüttich,” in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1981), cols. 1010–1019, with earlier bibliography; Franz Brunhölzl, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, vol. 2 (Munich, 1992), pp. 297–301; Franz Brunhölzl and Franz Josef Worstbrock, “Egbert von Lüttich,” in Die Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. Kurt Ruh, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (Berlin, 1980), cols. 361–63; Léopold Genicot and Paul Tombeur, ­Index ­scriptorum operumque latino-belgicorum medii aevi: nouveau repertoire des œuvres mediolatines belges. Deuxième partie: XIe siècle, ed. Paul-Irénée Fransen and Hubert Maraite (Brussels, 1976), p. 47; Sylvain Balau, Les sources de l’histoire de Liège au Moyen Âge (Brussels, 1903), pp. 153–54. 2  Sigebert of Gembloux, De viris illustribus 147, ed. Robert Witte, Catalogus Sigeberti Gemblacensis monachi de viris illustribus, Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters 1 (Bern/Frankfurt am Main, 1974), p. 93: “Egebertus clericus Leodiensis scripsit metrico stilo de enigmatibus rusticanis librum primo brevem, sed ampliato rationis tenore scripsit de eadem re librum alterum maiusculum.” Since the sole surviving manuscript of Egbert’s work does not include Egbert’s name, we are indebted to Sigebert even for the name of our author. 3  Babcock, Well-Laden Ship, pp. 2–5. 4  Babcock, Well-Laden Ship, pp. 4–5. 1 

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the circle of Heriger of Lobbes († 1007), and that he would have been schooled in the 970s and 980s.5 Sigebert calls Egbert a clericus Leodiensis; but there were many schools in Liège, and there is no documentary evidence to connect Egbert to any particular one of them. The school at the cathedral of St Lambert was the most distinguished in Liège, but in Egbert’s day there were also educational establishments at the collegiate churches of St Bartholomew, St Denis, St John, St Martin, the Holy Cross, St Paul, and St Peter.6 The most extensive scholarly effort to reconstruct the biography of Egbert is that of Ernst Voigt in the introduction to his edition of the Fecunda ratis.7 Voigt’s work remains the starting point for all study of Egbert; the quality and value of his edition are widely acknowledged. In contrast to his edition, however, his biographical account of Egbert was poorly received by his earliest reviewers.8 In  particular, Voigt’s argument that Egbert taught at the cathedral school of St Lambert’s in Liège was rejected by Godefroid Kurth and Gaston Paris.9 One objection to Voigt’s claim is that a series of men are known to have held the post of scholasticus in the Liège cathedral school in the period when Egbert was teaching (Notger until 1007, Wazo, 1008–1030, Adelmann, 1030–1047, Franco, 1047–1084), and there is no obvious place to insert Egbert into this list, the cathedral school having had only one scholasticus at a time. Voigt himself acknowledged this difficulty, then surprisingly went on to argue that Egbert was a submagister in the cathedral school.10 There is no evidence that Egbert ever held such a title.11 Notwithstanding the early criticisms of his reconstruction of Egbert’s biography, Voigt’s account has found its way into most subsequent scholarship on Egbert.12 The present study, which explores Egbert’s extraordinary interest in St Martin, may suggest that the school at St Martin was actually where Egbert taught. And whether or not Egbert’s references and allusions to St Martin aid us in understanding details of his biography, they certainly help us to better understand his Fecunda ratis, especially the prefatory Letter to Adalbold; and so they warrant a closer analysis. Voigt, Fecunda Ratis, pp. xiii–xviii; Fidel Rädle, “Adalbold von Utrecht” in Die Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. Kurt Ruh, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Berlin, 1978), cols. 41–42. 6  Albert Bittner, Wazo und die Schulen von Lüttich (Breslau, 1879), pp.  24–31; Godefroid Kurth, ­Notger de Liège et la civilisation au Xe siècle, vol. 1 (Paris, 1905), p. 257; Balau, Les sources, pp. 178–81. 7  Voigt, Fecunda Ratis, pp. ix–xli. 8  Godefroid Kurth, review of Voigt, Fecunda Ratis, in Moyen Âge 3 (1890), pp. 78–80. Gaston Paris, review of Voigt, Fecunda Ratis, in Journal des savants (Sept. 1890), pp. 559–72. 9  Ibid.; the criticisms of Kurth and Paris have been ignored in most modern studies, especially in encyclopedias and handbooks, e.g., Max Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, vol. 2 (Munich, 1923), p. 535, and Brunhölzl, Geschichte, pp. 297–98. 10  Voigt, Fecunda Ratis, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii. 11  See Kurth, review of Fecunda Ratis, (as in n. 8), p. 79. 12  See n. 9 above. 5 

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Egbert’s attention to St  Martin has not completely escaped scholarly notice. Voigt himself mentions the prominent reference to St  Martin at the close of the poem (2.604).13 In the verses in question, Egbert connects his own death and passage to heaven with Martin’s, implying, at the very least, that he felt a special connection with or affinity for St Martin. Voigt does not mention – but he was doubtless aware – that there are very few saints named in the Fecunda ratis; so it is not just the conspicuous placement of Martin’s name, but also the scarcity of other hagiographical references that makes Martin stand out.14 The scarcity of references to saints in Egbert’s work is particularly striking in light of his frequent recourse to personal names otherwise: Old Testament figures, Greek and Roman deities and luminaries, mythological and literary characters, and medieval folks, both real and fictional, abound in Egbert’s pages.15 But Voigt rejects the possibility that Egbert’s mention of St Martin warranted connecting him with the church or school of St Martin’s in Liège; for St Martin was, as Voigt rightly states, very widely venerated in the Low Countries. Voigt claims that the cathedral school of St Lambert jealously guarded its superiority over the other schools in the city and would not have tolerated rivals in its midst; so, according to Voigt, if Egbert was teaching in Liège, the cathedral would have stolen him away from any other institution. There is no evidence to support this suspiciously modern sounding reconstruction of academic rivalry in eleventh-century Liège. Voigt’s final argument is that the cathedra of Adalbold was in the cathedral of St Martin in Utrecht. So a reference to Martin would not be out of place in Egbert’s poem; it might be intended to flatter Adalbold. One might counter that it would be odd to place this flattery of Adalbold at the end of the work, instead of in the prefatory Letter addressed to him, and equally odd that Egbert specifically connects his own death with Martin’s, rather than Adalbold’s death. Be  that as it may, the fact that Martin was important to Adalbold does not prevent his also being important to Egbert; nothing prohibits both being connected with churches dedicated to St Martin. And if such were the case, Martin’s prominence in the poem, especially in the prefatory Letter to Adalbold, would be especially appropriate. Voigt’s effort to disassociate Egbert and St Martin appears to spring from nothing more than his conviction that Egbert was too important not to be connected with the cathedral school in Liège. Had he known, however, how many more references and allusions to St Martin there are in Egbert’s Voigt, Fecunda Ratis, p. xxix, n. 1. Other than Martin, the only saints Egbert names are the writers Paul, Augustine, Benedict and Gregory; the apostles Matthew, James, Thomas, and Peter; and St Helena. 15  Egbert’s frequent use of personal names is in keeping with the satirical tone of much of his work, especially of the longer sections of Book 2; the use of personal names is a common feature of ancient and medieval satire. 13 

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work, perhaps he would not have dismissed so quickly the significance of St Martin to Egbert.16 The first allusion to St Martin in the Fecunda ratis is at the very beginning of the work, indeed in the first sentence of the prefatory Letter. It was overlooked by Voigt. As mentioned above, Egbert states in the dedicatory epistle that he and Adalbold had been fellow students: “Ambo olim a pueris apud scolares alas in uno auditorio militavimus” (“From the time we were boys, we campaigned together among the scholarly ranks in the same schoolroom”).17 Wolfgang Maaz first recognized that Egbert is borrowing here from Sulpicius Severus’s Life of St Martin.18 Maaz also identified borrowings from Sulpicius in the final section of the Fecunda ratis, the same section of the poem in which Egbert explicitly names St Martin; these latter borrowings are from Sulpicius’s Epistulae 2 and 3 and deal with the end of Martin’s life and his death.19 Egbert is there writing about his own death, and reworks Sulpicius’s comments about the fear of death and of punishment. So Egbert describes his beginning (his childhood) and his end (his death) in the words Sulpicius used to describe Martin’s. His references and allusions to St Martin frame his poem, and his biography, from boyhood to death, and beyond. The borrowing Maaz identified at the beginning of Egbert’s work has not attracted further comment, but it deserves closer analysis. Sulpicius is discussing Martin’s service under the Emperor Constantius II among the sc(h)olares, the imperial guard comprised of well-connected young men – Martin’s father was a tribunus militum – who were in training for military and imperial service. Martin would have been about fifteen years old at the time, and his father was preparing him for a career in the army. As noted above, Adalbold is said to have been a pupil of Bishop Notger of Liège, so it follows that his condiscipulus Egbert was as well. Notger had served in the imperial chancery of Otto I before he was elevated to the bishopric of Liège in 972. Notger was one of the most influential and trusted counselors at the courts of Otto II, Otto III, and Henry II; and he was especially active during the regency of Theophanu (983–990).20 It was precisely during this timeframe that Egbert and Adalbold would Voigt, Fecunda Ratis, pp. xxvi–xxix. Babcock, Well-Laden Ship, p. 3. 18  Wofgang Maaz, “Brotlöffel, haariges Herz und wundersame Empfängnis: Bemerkungen zu Egbert von Lüttich und Giraldus Cambrensis,” in Tradition und Wertung. Festschrift für Franz Brunhölzl zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Günter Bernt, Fidel Rädle, and Gabriel Silagi (Sigmaringen, 1989), pp. 107–18, at 108 n. 5. The passage in Sulpicius reads: “Martinus … armatam militiam in adulescentia secutus inter scholares alas sub rege Constantio, deinde sub Iuliano Caesare militavit (2.1–2),” ed. Karl Halm, Sulpicii Severi libri qui supersunt, CSEL 1 (Vienna, 1886), p. 111. 19  Maaz, “Brotlöffel,” p.  108, n.  5; the passages in question are Epistulae 2.1, ed.  Halm, p.  142, and Epistulae 3.16, ed. Halm, p. 149. 20  Kurth, Notger, pp. 56–114. 16  17 

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have been studying under Notger. The imperial court was not stationary during this period, and Notger travelled with the court as it moved from city to city. According to the chronicler Anselm of Liège, Notger took his best students with him when he was travelling on imperial business, teaching them along the way: Maxima illi circa educandos pueros erat sollicitudo, eosdemque cum aecclesiasticis disciplinis instruendos, adeo ut quocumque uel ad proxima uel ad longinqua loca pergeret, scolares adolescentes, qui uni ex capellanis sub artissima non aliter quam in scolis parerent disciplina, secum duceret, cumque his librorum copiam ceteraque arma scolaria circumferri faceret. Sicque fiebat ut quos plerumque rudes et illiteratos a claustro abduxisset et ipsos quos prius magistros habuerant in litterarum perfectione redeuntes superarent.21 He took the greatest care in educating children and in instructing them in ecclesiastical disciplines, so much so that wherever he went, near or far, he brought with him the young scholars [scolares], who were subject to one of the chaplains22 under the strictest discipline, in no way different from what they were accustomed to in school; and he [Notger] saw to it that a supply of books and other teaching tools were carried around with them. And so it often happened that the boys whom he had brought away from the cloister mostly uneducated and illiterate returned surpassing in their perfection of literary studies even the very teachers they had left behind.

If, as seems likely, Egbert and Adalbold were among these scolares Anselm is describing, they too will have been sometimes in the retinue of the emperors, and intent on careers in the imperial court. After studying with Notger, Adalbold moved to the chancery of Henry II, and from there eventually to the bishopric of Utrecht. As Anselm presents it, Notger’s school was a training ground for imperial bishops like Adalbold;23 so the parallels between the scolares of Martin’s day and those in the circle of Egbert and Adalbold must have seemed particularly compelling to young men like them – perhaps even more so to one like Egbert, who followed Martin’s lead in rejecting the secular career in favor of a life in the Church. Egbert’s incorporation of this anecdote about St Martin appears to have special relevance to his own career in the Church, and to that of Adalbold in imperial politics, secular as well as ecclesiastical. It can hardly be an accident that the quotation appears in the first sentence of his work, and St Martin is also named in the last sentence of the work. Egbert does not just remind Adalbold of their period of joint study, he also interweaves into the Letter direct quotations from authors and texts they would have read Anselm of Liège, Gesta episcoporum Tungrensium, Traiectensium et Leodiensium  28, ed.  Rudolf Köpke, MGH SS 7 (Hanover, 1846), p. 205 (punctuation adjusted). 22  Among the travelling teachers may have been Heriger, who sometimes travelled with Notger as a counselor and secretary; see Robert Gary Babcock, The ‘Psychomachia’ Codex from St Lawrence (Bruxellensis 10066–77) and the Schools of Liège in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, Bibliologia 42 (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 258–59. 23  Anselm, Gesta episcoporum 29, MGH SS 7:205. 21 

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together in school. In addition to Sulpicius’s Vita Martini, these include the Disticha Catonis, Terence’s Adelphoe, and the Carmina of Venantius Fortunatus.24 All of these texts were popular in the Liège schools of the period when Adalbold and Egbert were studying there.25 Egbert’s larding of his Letter with quotations from ancient texts is consistent with Liège practice of the period; especially relevant examples are the letter of Bishop Everaclus of Liège to Ratherius (c. 968), inviting him to teach in Liège, and the prefatory letter to Heriger’s Vita Remacli (c. 972).26 Egbert crafts his Letter around his literary quotations – the first and last words of the Letter are among the quotations – and they carry much of the weight of the Letter’s meaning for its recipient. Immediately after his quotation about St Martin’s education, and grammatically dependent on that statement, Egbert appends an expression from Terence: quo magis ‘novimus nos inter nos’ (“whereby ‘we came to know one another’ better”).27 As Egbert presents it, studying together, including reading Terence together, had made Adalbold and himself close friends. Terence’s Adelphoe describes two wildly misbehaving adolescent brothers, sharing in one another’s misdeeds, but also depending on one another in the ensuing crises. The passage in Terence occurs just after one of the brothers, Aeschinus, has carried off by force from a pimp the lover of the other brother, Ctesiphon. We need not assume Egbert and Adalbold were involved in precisely similar escapades to follow Egbert’s meaning: their shared childhood experience made them as close as brothers; and, just as Aeschinus had rescued Ctesiphon, so Egbert is relying on Adalbold to come to his rescue, as an editor of his book: “Fretus de te, hoc … opusculum emendandum audeo commendare” (“relying on you, I dare to entrust this little work to you for emending”).28 Egbert describes his request to Adalbold as privatum (“private”),29 that is, he bases the request not on the official positions or current standing of either of the principals, but on their personal, pre-professional relationship, their boyhood friendship. Egbert’s next sentence begins with a quotation from the Disticha Catonis, one of the traditional first-readers in medieval schoolrooms, “multi … multa loquuntur” (“many people say many things”).30 Having explained why he turned to Adalbold for help in None of these quotations was identified by Voigt, so they have not figured in discussions of the Letter; the details are provided in Babcock, Well-Laden Ship, pp. 249–51. 25  For details see Babcock, The ‘Psychomachia’ Codex, pp. 254, 255, 259. 26  The letter of Everaclus is edited and commented by Hubert Silvestre, “Comment on rédigeait une lettre au Xe siècle. L’èpître d’Éracle de Liège à Rathier de Vèrone,” Le Moyen Âge 58 (1952), 1–30; Heriger’s prefatory letter is edited by Rudolf Köpke, MGH SS 7 (Hanover, 1846), pp. 164–65. 27  Babcock, Well-Laden Ship, pp. 2–3; see Terence, Adelphoe, 271: “quasi nunc non norimus nos inter nos.” 28  Babcock, Well-Laden Ship, pp. 2–3. 29  Babcock, Well-Laden Ship, p. 2. 30  Babcock, Well-Laden Ship, pp. 2–3. The quotation (Disticha Catonis, 1.13) was identified by Manitius, Geschichte, vol.  2, p.  539; for the Disticha see Disticha Catonis, ed.  Marcus Boas and Henricus ­Johannes Botschuyver (Amsterdam, 1952). 24 

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his first sentence, Egbert describes in his second sentence the nature of his project, and why it needs Adalbold’s assistance. The point of the couplet in the Disticha is that one should not trust other people’s promises, because what people say is often just talk. The last word of the distich in question is the verb loquuntur, and the sense of the lines turns on the meaning of that word: people say one thing, they do another. Egbert’s point also turns on the meaning of that verb, but Egbert’s point is not so negative. He explains that common people often say practical and profitable things, but if they remain mere speech, that is, if they are not recorded in writing, they can be lost and cease to be useful. Egbert’s work, the same as Cato’s, will have a practical value if it is written down by Egbert and corrected by Adalbold. In describing to Adalbold how he came to realize that there was value in vernacular proverbs (vulgi sententia, “the wisdom of the commoners”), Egbert employs the verb hausi (“I drank in”), introducing metaphorically the font, river, or ocean of eloquence and wisdom on which his little ship (ratis) is to sail.31 This is the guiding metaphor of Egbert’s work, advertised in its title: his little book is a raft that will sail the oceans, bringing wisdom from around the world to sate the thirst of his students. The “river of eloquence” metaphor is made explicit in the closing words of the preface, two verses, forming an epigram that continues the principal message of the Letter, that Adalbold should read and correct Egbert’s work: Nilus ut Egyptum perfundit flumine dextro, sic tua percurrat peto lingua diserta libellum.32 Just as the Nile pours over Egypt with its beneficial flood, so, I pray, may your fluent tongue run over this little book.

The lines are modeled on passages in two different panegyrics in the seventh book of the Carmina of Venantius Fortunatus. One is a poem about Duke Bodegisel: Si videas aliquem defectum forte labore, Nilus ut Aegyptum, sic tua lingua fovet.33 If you should see anyone worn out by suffering, your tongue brings relief, as the Nile does to Egypt.

Babcock, Well-Laden Ship, pp. 2–3. Babcock, Well-Laden Ship, pp. 4–5. Voigt, Fecunda Ratis, p. 3 printed these two lines at the beginning of the text proper of the Fecunda ratis, not at the end of the Letter. But they clearly belong to the Letter and continue to address Adalbold. The following two verses, lines 3 and 4 in Voigt’s edition, do belong to the Fecunda ratis and should be seen as an epigram that introduces Book 1 of the work; a twoline distich similarly begins Book 2 of the work. 33  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 7.5.33–34 (De Bodegisilio duce), ed. and tr. Michael Roberts, Poems. Venantius Fortunatus, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library  46 (Cambridge, Mass., 2017), pp.  430–31. I follow Roberts’s translation here and below. 31 

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The other poem concerns Duke Lupus: Nilus ut Aegyptum recreat, dum plenus inundat, sic tu colloquii flumine cuncta foves.34 As the Nile revives Egypt, when it bursts its banks in flood, so you with your river of eloquence bring comfort to all things.

In addition to extending the “river of eloquence” metaphor, these borrowings from Fortunatus are also apt because they are from panegyrics of dukes who are praised for their eloquence. Adalbold, at the time that Egbert wrote this Letter to him, was not only the bishop and spiritual leader of Utrecht, he also had military duties in defending the episcopal lands and was Count of Drenthe and Teisterbant, as well as Prince-Bishop and elector of the Holy Roman Empire. Not precisely a duke, then, but a highly placed nobleman and military leader. Adalbold was also a writer.35 Venantius describes Lupus and Bodegisel not only as powerful leaders, but also as eloquent orators. So Egbert is associating Adalbold with men who are eloquent as well as powerful – the combination, of course, is what makes him an appropriate corrector for Egbert’s work. They are also men about whom he and Adalbold would have read as schoolboys; Venantius’s Carmina were popular in Liège at the time.36 Another reason that Egbert quoted these lines is that they refer to Egypt and to the Nile; and as the contemporary glosses on the passage make clear, Egypt and the Nile were connected in Egbert’s mind with St Martin – and not just because Venantius was best known for his verse epic on the Life of St Martin, one of the most popular Latin poems of the earlier Middle Ages. The verses Egbert quotes from Venantius’s Carmina are extensively glossed in the sole surviving complete manuscript of Egbert’s poem, Cologne, Dombibliothek, MS 196, saec. XI2/2, fol. 1v–2r. The glosses in the Cologne manuscript are contemporary with the copying of the text, and they are likely to have been written by one of Egbert’s students: Ferunt, qui de terra Egypti vera didicerunt, quod in terra illius non pluat, sed, quoties Nilus ripas suas excedit et finitima arva abluit, postquam in alveum suum redierit, statim cultores semina iactent, deinde post paucos dies fructus colligant, et, si bis aut ter in anno effusio eius fiat, totiens serant et metant.37 Unde de quodam, qui ibi fuerat, legendo comperimus, qui hoc asserebat a die iacti seminis fructum in die trigesimo maturescere, et aditiens “uidi” inquit “ibi rem mirabilem: ollam feruentem ad solem et, si credi fas est, ova in meridie coquere posse in sabulo.” Nam sicut Nilus effluendo finitima loca percurrit et Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 7.7.35–36 (De Lupo duce), ed. Roberts, pp. 436–37. See Rädle, “Adalbold” (as in n. 5), cols. 41–42. 36  The Carmina of Venantius were widely read in Liège in the period; see Babcock, The ‘Psychomachia’ Codex, pp. 254, 260 n. 78. 37  While some of this information may come from Isidore, De natura rerum, 43: De Nilo, a precise source for this passage has not been identified. 34  35 

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cultores letificat, ut inde spem vivendi habeant, ita tu excurso libello et emendato, ut paucis possit prodesse, letificabis auctorem.38 Those who have learned the truth about the land of Egypt, say that in this land it does not rain; but every time the Nile exceeds its banks and washes the neighboring fields, after it has returned to its channel, the farmers immediately sow seeds. Then after a few days they gather the harvests; and if there should be a flood of the Nile two or three times in a year, they sow and reap just as many times. And I learned in my reading about a certain man who had been there, who asserted that the harvest is ripe on the thirtieth day after the seed is sown. And additionally he adds, “I have seen there a remarkable thing: a pot boiling in the sun and, if it can be believed, that eggs can cook in the sand at noon.” In fact, just as the flowing Nile runs over the neighboring places and gladdens the farmers so that they have, thereby, a hope of living, in the same way, you will gladden the author when you have gone over and emended my little book, so that it might be useful to a few people.

The passage in quotation marks (“I have seen … noon”) is from Sulpicius Severus’s Dialogi. In this work Sulpicius continues the account of the life and miracles of St Martin that he had begun in his Vita Martini. A character in the work named Postumianus describes his travels to Egypt to learn about the desert fathers. What he learns is that St  Martin is known everywhere, and is greater than the renowned Egyptian ascetics; consequently, most of the Dialogi are taken up with St Martin’s miracles. The Dialogi begin with Postumianus setting out on his journey to Egypt. He passes through Cyrene, which he says adjoins the desert between the provinces of Egypt and Africa. In Cyrene he finds a parched and rainless desert that produces only one crop, barley, which ripens within thirty days of planting because of the nature of the soil – not because of irrigation by the Nile, which is not even nearby: “Messis … fertur a die iacti seminis tricensimo die maturescere” (“The crop … is said to mature on the thirtieth day after the seed is sown”).39 Our gloss conflates this story about the swiftly-ripening crops in Cyrene with Postumianus’s slightly later description of an oasis he visited near the Nile. There, he says, he met a kindly old priest, who provided him with herbs grown in his own garden. This garden was irrigated with water drawn from a deep well. It was so hot that the pot used for cooking the herbs boiled in the sun, without aid of fire: “Ibi uidi, quod uos Galli forte non creditis, ollam cum holeribus … sine igne feruere: tanta uis solis est” (“There I  saw, what you Gauls perhaps will not believe, that a pot of herbs … boiled without a fire, so great is the power of the sun there”).40 The gloss is certainly garbled and inaccurate, but it makes clear that Egbert’s lines about Egypt and the Nile, which are modeled on the verses of Venantius Fortunatus, were explicated in Egbert’s circle by reference to Sulpicius’s Dialogi. Egypt was, for Egbert’s circle, as it was for Sulpicius, a place full of wonders – natural wonders as well as Babcock, Well-Laden Ship, pp. 250–51. Sulpicius, Dialogi, 1.3.5–6, ed. Halm, p. 155. 40  Sulpicius, Dialogi, 1.13.4, ed. Halm, p. 165. 38 

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extraordinary miracle-working monks; but the miracles of St Martin surpassed those of Egypt. Egbert’s reworking of the verses of Venantius emphasizes the beneficial results of the Nile’s flooding and allows him to elaborate his metaphors about fruitful “rivers of eloquence” and “floods of wisdom.” The allusions to Sulpicius in the close of the prefatory Letter echo the allusions to Sulpicius at the beginning of the Letter, just as the allusions in the Letter echo those in the final verses of the Fecunda ratis. School boys, ships, the Nile, Egypt, miracles, St Martin, eloquence, wisdom – these form the cluster of themes of Egbert’s Letter to Adalbold. Their early education together, the texts they read together, and St Martin are the ties that bind Adalbold and Egbert. The third Epistle of Sulpicius, the one Egbert alludes to at the very end of his work, concludes with Sulpicius’s hope that Martin “will watch over me writing, and you reading.”41 It is a fitting close to Egbert’s work as well: for it is St Martin and writings about him, the Vita Sancti Martini, the Dialogi, and the Epistulae of Sulpicius Severus, the poems of Venantius, and the Fecunda ratis itself, that unite Adalbold and Egbert.

Sulpicius, Ep. 3.21, ed. Halm, p. 151: “Me haec scribentem respicit, te legentem.” This passage is omitted in some later manuscripts. 41 

Scylla and Charybdis: Classical Marine Perils in Two Verse Bibles of the Later Middle Ages Greti Dinkova-Bruun Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies The mythical figures of Scylla and Charybdis were known in the Middle Ages either indirectly, through the writings of Church Fathers such as Augustine and Jerome1 and later encyclopedists such as Isidore;2 or directly, through close engagement with the poems of Virgil and Ovid as well as with their extensive commentary traditions. Of course, the two murderous monstrosities were first described in Homer’s Odyssey (12.88–126) in a conversation between the enchantress Circe and Odysseus, in which the goddess teaches the hero how to navigate through the dangers of two cliffs situated across from each other, of which one was inhabited by the misshapen multiheaded canine monster Scylla and the other by the treacherous whirlpool-like Charybdis. The set-up in Virgil’s Aeneid (3.420–32) is very similar but updated to fit the Roman context. Here it is the seer Helenus who warns Aeneas to steer away from Scylla and Charybdis, and the perilous locus is identified with the narrow strait between Italy and Sicily.3 Ovid’s Metamorphoses (13.730–37; 13.906–68; 14.12–67) greatly expand the background story of Scylla’s dreadful transformation which is effected by an angry Circe seeking revenge for being spurned by the handsome fisherman turned sea-god Glaucus, who himself was in unrequited love with the lovely Scylla. With the passage of time the names of Scylla and Charybdis become proverbial, their treacherous double act a quintessential representation of being forced to choose between two equally unappealing options. In  the medieval period the idiom was A number of relevant passages are listed in August Otto, Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer (Leipzig, 1890; repr. Hildesheim, 1962), p. 82, s.v. Charybdis, expanded with further references in the variorum volume Nachträge zu A. Otto Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer, ed. Reinhard Häussler (Darmstadt, 1968), pp. 54, 71, 98, 148, 265, s.v. Charybdis, and p. 211, s.v. Scylla. 2  See Isidore, Etym. 13.18.3–5 (Scylla and Charybdis) and 6 (Syrtes); Isidore’s own authority is Sallust (Hist. 4.27 for Scylla; Bell. Jug. 78.3 for the Syrtes). See Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1911), and more recently Isidoro di Siviglia, Etimologie, libro XIII De mundo et partibus, ed. and trans. Giovanni Gasparotto (Paris, 2004), pp. 110–13, with detailed notes on Isidore’s sources. 3  For an interesting discussion, see Pietro Li Causi, “Il mostruoso, la forma e l’informe. Storie di Scilla e Cariddi (in Omero e Virgilio),” in Miti mediterranei. Atti del convegno internazionale. PalermoTerrasini, 4–6 ottobre 2007, ed. Ignazio E. Buttitta (Palermo, 2008), pp. 66–77. 1 

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often used to describe difficult moral alternatives, and the advice frequently given was to navigate as deftly as possible between the two evils, thus avoiding the dangerous choice and saving one’s soul. It also was quite natural to link Scylla and Charybdis, together with other mythical creatures, such as the Chimera and the Sirens, to the alluring but wicked female sex, always the greatest enemy of male chastity.4 In this study I focus on two instances in which Scylla and Charybdis as well as other classical marine hazards appear in a somewhat unusual context, that is, the versification of the Bible. The two works chosen for this analysis are the Hypognosticon of Lawrence of Durham (1114–1154)5 and the Aurora of Peter Riga (d. 1209).6 Both poems are important representatives of the genre of biblical versification in the later Middle Ages, though it is the Aurora that is the champion in popularity among verse Bibles.7

Lawrence of Durham and Joseph Lawrence’s Hypognosticon was composed around 1130.8 The poem, comprising 4684 verses, is divided into nine books organized according to tempus ante legem (Books 1–3, totalling 1392  lines), tempus sub lege (Books  4–6, 2014  lines), and tempus sub gratia (Books 7–9, 1278 lines). Also incorporated into the narrative is the division of the six Ages of the World, with Books 1–6 covering the first five ages and Books 7–9 engaging with the sixth, during which the Saviour is incarnated and holy men (apostles, saints, martyrs, and doctors of the church) continue to labour until the present day for the diffusion and glory of Christianity. At the end of time, the seventh age will arrive, an eternal life in heavenly bliss when humanity will at last be truly redeemed and saved. The Hypognosticon begins with a prologue in which Lawrence explains the tripartite division of the work, discusses the meaning of its title, outlines its main theme of Fall and Redemption, and finally underscores its usefulness for the moral edification of the reader. In Lawrence’s own words, the poem “encourages the reading of stories For the image of the Chimera in medieval poetry, see Greti Dinkova-Bruun, “Libera nos a malo: Discussion of Luxuria as Evil in the Preaching Manual Qui bene presunt,” Mediaeval Studies 80 (2018), 231–52, at pp. 239–41; Siân Echard, “Iubiter et Iuno: An Anglo-Latin Mythographic Poem, Edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 64 and British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian E.xii,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 4 (1994), 101–17; and Jean-Yves Tilliette, “Hermès amoureux, ou les métamorphoses de la Chimère. Réflexions sur les carmina 200 et 201 de Baudri de Bourgueil,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen-Âge 104/1 (1992), 121–61. 5  See The “Hypognosticon” of Lawrence of Durham: A Preliminary Text with An Introduction, ed. Mary Liguori Mistretta (Ph.D. thesis, Fordham University, 1941); and Gottes Heilsplan – verdichtet: Edition des Hypognosticon des Laurentius Dunelmensis, ed. Susanne Daub (Erlangen and Jena, 2002). 6  See Aurora Petri Rigae Biblia Versificata, 2 vols., ed. Paul Beichner (Notre Dame, 1965). 7  Greti Dinkova-Bruun, “Marking One’s Own: Aegidius of Paris’s Revisions of Peter Riga’s Aurora,” Filologia Mediolatina 26 (2019), 127–42, at pp. 127–32. 8  A. G. Rigg, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature 1066–1422 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 54–61. 4 

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that depict not the shameful exploits of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mercury, but the wonderful deeds of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; not the cult of Vesta, but the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary; not fables, but history; not the portents of false gods, but the power of the heavenly dwellers; not the war of Troy, but the virtues of the saints; not the ridiculous vanity of poetic fiction, but the esteemed truthfulness of Sacred Scripture.”9 These statements are of course a familiar topos used by numerous Christian poets who extol the truthfulness of biblical knowledge over the falsehood of classical lore. Thus, Lawrence’s words would have merited only a passing notice, if he had actually followed his own precepts. In reality, classical literature and mythology feature prominently in the Hypognosticon. Some usages, such as addressing the poet’s Muse10 and replacing the ordinary nouns amor (mostly in the carnal and pejorative sense) and bellum with the names of the Roman deities Venus11 and Mars,12 are simply common features of poetic language. But in many other cases a much stronger classicizing effort is evident. The best examples of this trend are seen in Book 5.53–82, where the love binding the souls of David and Jonathan (1 Sam. 18) is compared to the affection between other famous male couples from classical literature: Nisus and Euryalus,13 Pylades and Lawrence of Durham, Hypognosticon: “Inuitaret, dico, non ad obprobria legenda Saturni, Iouis et Mercurii, sed ad opera miranda patris et filii et spiritus sancti; nec ad cultum exhibendum Veste, sed ad amorem affectandam Beate Virginis Marie; non ad fabulas, sed ad historias; nec ad portenta falsorum numinum, sed ad potentiam supernorum ciuium; ad uirtutes sanctorum, non ad bella Troianorum; et ad sanctarum scripturarum amplectandam ueritatem, non ad poeticarum inuentionum deridendam ua­ nitatem,” ed. Daub, Gottes Heilsplan, pp. 71.30–72.7. Quoted in Greti Dinkova-Bruun, “Rewriting Scripture: Latin Biblical Versification in the Later Middle Ages,” Viator 39/1 (2008), 263–84, at p. 269 and n. 33. 10  For example, at the end of Book 2 Lawrence mentions a muse three times: first an unnamed one (Musa, 2.350), then Thalia (mea Thalia, 2.357–58), and finally Camena (mea Camena, 2.363). None of these appellations is unusual in medieval poetic discourse; still, their concentration within a single passage gives it a strong classical flavour. Thalia seems to be Lawrence’s favourite. In addition to the already mentioned instance in Book 2, he invokes nostra Thalia at 3.338 and 622; 4.140; 5.538; and 9.38; whereas meis Musis are referred to at 2.1 and nostra Musa, nostra Camena, and mea Musa are mentioned at 2.135, 7.350, and 8.299 respectively. Lawrence’s self-referential addresses to the Muses are discussed in Susanne Daub, Von Bibel zum Epos (Köln – Weimar – Wien, 2005), pp. 222–30. 11  See for example Hypognosticon, 1.221–36, where the word Venus is used four times in 16 verses to denote the sweet evil of physical attraction in the context of Gen. 4.17–24, where the story of Cain and his progeny is related in the context of describing the consequences of the vice luxuria. See also 3.25–28 (Pha­ raoh’s lust for Abraham’s wife Sarah); 3.82–104 and 137–42 (both describing the shameful deeds of the Sodomites); and 5.567–638 (on the miseries of a man in love and the prison that love creates for the lover). 12  In the case of Mars and war, the two words are basically used interchangeably. See for example, 2.191–94; 3.118 and 154; and 4.296. 13  This couple is discussed as an exemplum of homoerotic love in Louis Zweig, “Questions of Love and Authorship in Parisinus Latinus 7972: A Previously Unedited Poem and Its Relationship with the De Ermafrodito,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 28 (2018), 95–113, at p. 103. 9 

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Orestes, Patroclus and Achilles, Pirithous and Theseus (5.67–68). These heroic friends and lovers have been immortalized in the works of Virgil, Ovid, and Statius, among others, but I  doubt that all of them were household names in the medieval period. In this respect Lawrence seems to be quite exceptional. His impressive knowledge of classical poetry is confirmed in Book 6 of the Hypognosticon where he includes at the beginning of his versification of the First Book of Maccabees a section of twelve verses (6.423–34) which state that the flagra, vulnera, and mortes (6.419) inflicted upon Israel by King Antiochus (1 Macc. 1.20–64) are so devastating, dreadful, and despicable that not even poets such as Ovid, Lucan, Horace, Statius, Juvenal, and Virgil would be able to do them justice, despite being skilled in describing tragedies.14 Furthermore, in the context of the cleansing and re-dedication of the Temple by Judas Maccabeus (1 Macc. 4.36–60) Lawrence offers an impressive list of Roman deities whose statues (simulacra) were removed from God’s holy dwelling and burned to ashes (6.481–90). The first to fall is Jupiter, followed by Thetis and Juno, the obscene Mars together with Venus, Proserpina, Minerva (called Pallas), and Io, Bacchus and Ceres, and finally Vulcan, whose own fire proved weaker than the cleansing flames of the Jews. This is an effective description of the utter obliteration of Roman religious presence in the Jerusalem Temple, and a story that is completely missing from the Bible. Lawrence takes as inspiration the biblical statement that the Gentiles (gentes) have defiled God’s sanctuary and imagines this profanation as a proliferation of statues of Roman major and minor divinities. The examples discussed above – and there are more15 – demonstrate that Lawrence possessed a wide-ranging knowledge of classical letters and was not averse to including The poets are afforded a couplet each, and it is impressive that the essence of their poetic output is presented in most cases through quotations from their compositions, which demonstrates a familiar­ity with these works going beyond trivial name dropping. For example, Ovid is called “tenerorum ­lusor amorum” (Tristia 4.10.1) which are words from the poet’s own grim epitaph; Lucan sings of “war worse than civil waged over the plains of Emathia” (De bello civ. 1.1); Statius tells the story of “fraternal w ­ arfare, and alternate reigns fought for in unnatural hate” (Theb. 1.1–2); and versatile Juvenal describes “the deeds of men, their vows, fears, angers, pleasures, joys, and running about” (Sat. 1.85–86). The exceptions are Horace and Virgil who are not characterized with quotations from their own compositions, although Lawrence follows Ovid in referring to “numerosus Oratius” (Tristia 4.10.49). 15  See for example Book 5.457–502, where Lawrence declares that Solomon’s wisdom is superior to that of the famed seven sages of Greece, named by Lawrence in the following order: Periander, Chilon, Bias, Cleubulus (=  Cleobolus), Solon, Pictacus (=  Pittacus), and Thales. In  addition, states the poet, Solomon is wiser than Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. In short, the Old Testament king encompasses philosophical knowledge in its totality and thus surpasses any particular school of philosophy (5.495–96). See also 9.43–48, where Lawrence states that even though his literary efforts cannot be compared to Quintilian’s thunders (fulmina), Plautus’s streams ( fluvii), Cicero’s riches (opes), Sallust’s brevity (breuitas), Ennius’s talent (ingenium), and Varro’s weight (pondus), they still serve the purpose of dispelling tedium and occupying the poet in worthy pursuits. 14 

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classical lore in a poem inspired by the biblical narrative. In this light, it is perhaps not surprising to find him using the story of Scylla and Charybdis in the Hypognosticon. Still, the framework in which the myth is incorporated is highly original. We find it in Book 3, in a section of the poem rubricated “Comparatio” and included after a description of Joseph’s suffering at the hands of his treacherous brothers (Gen. 37.12–35). In Lawrence’s account Joseph’s turbulent life is likened to a ship which, while traversing tempestuous seas, is steered masterfully by the most expert of navigators, God:16 Conspice naucleri moderamine currere nauem Inter inundantis mille pericla maris. Scilla licet uicina latret, Siren moduletur Aut Sirtes lateant seu tumeant scopuli, Ducit inoffenso cursu tamen hanc et in eius Debet conscribi laudibus huius iter. Nauis uita Ioseph, rector Deus, hoc mare mundus Accipitur, Sirtis fraus scopulusque tumor, Scilla latrans est ira furens, Sirenue resultans Cura uoluptatis sepe iuuando necans. Inter tot mortes et tanta pericula talem Tantus nauta ratem dirigit atque regit. Quodque Ioseph bonus est, quod agit sine crimine uitam, Quod uiget et prodest et placet, ipse dedit. Laus est ergo dei, quod uir sacer ille peregit Dignum laude; datum laus tribuentis erit. Look how the ship, steered by the rudder of a master navigator, runs through a thousand dangers in the swollen sea. Even when Scylla barks close by, a Siren sings sweetly, Syrtes hide or other rocks loom up, he leads her on a clear course and her route has to be assigned to his credit. The ship is Joseph’s life, the navigator is God, the sea is the world. The Syrtes represent deceit, the rock haughtiness, barking Scylla the raging anger, and the Siren the vibrant desire for pleasure, which often kills through enjoyment. Among so many deadly threats and such dangers such an impressive seaman navigates such a ship. That Joseph is a good man who leads a life without crime, that he is thriving, helpful, and pleasant, all of this he (i.e. God) gave to him. Thus, praise be to God that this holy man accomplished things worthy of praise; the praise will be the gift of the giver.

This symbolic representation of human life as a perilous sea journey is both effective and relatable. It is dangerous and unpredictable, but ultimately full of hope, since no matter what menaces the traveler encounters, he can trust in God to steer his ship to a safe harbour. There are thousands of deadly threats and dangers on the way, which Lawrence chooses to exemplify with three fabulous hazards from the classical past: Hypognosticon, 3.565–80, ed. Daub, Gottes Heilsplan, pp. 116–17. This episode is briefly discussed in Dinkova-Bruun, “Rewriting Scripture,” pp. 277–78 and n. 72, where also Gregory of Montesacro’s mention of Scylla and Charybdis in Book 1 of his verse encyclopedia De hominum deificatione is briefly discussed. 16 

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the barking Scylla (here without Charybdis but her presence is probably assumed), the enticing Sirens, and the treacherous Syrtes.17 Each of these deadly perils is associated with amoral behaviour which men need to avoid in order to save their lives; thus, the shallow Syrtes and the swelling rocks represent deceit and pride (fraus and tumor), Scylla denotes excessive anger (ira furens), and the Sirens embody the sin of lust (cura uoluptatis) which paves the road to certain death. Of the three, only the Syrtes do not have the shape of a monstrous female, although this association may have been made implicitly, especially in contexts such as the one in the Hypognosticon, which warns against moral danger and seduction. The imagery of Syrtian danger was used also by another biblical poet, the Danish scholastic theologian Andreas Sunesen (d. 1228), whose poem Hexaemeron was written probably between 1208 and 1219,18 thus almost 80 years after the Hypognosticon. In Book 1 of the poem, Sunesen presents the topos of the uselessness of pagan knowledge, stating that it is not mendacious words designed to charm the reader’s ear but the nuda materia of sacred scripture that offers man salvation. He will therefore privilege the latter in his verses.19 He adds at 1.151–54: Per scelerum Syrtes, per saeua pericula mundi deducens homines non est oneranda saburra uerborum sacrae scripturae nauis, ut ipsa cuncta pericla leuis pertranseat absque periclo. Guiding men through the Syrtian shallows of wicked deeds and the dire perils of the world, the ship of sacred scripture should not be weighted down by the sand of words, so that, being light, it can sail unscathed through all dangers.

If for Lawrence it was human life that could be seen as a ship navigating hazardous straits, for Sunesen the ship is Holy Scripture itself which is able to avoid all lurking dangers in the sea of beautiful but confusing literary language, thanks to its unpretentious As already stated, Scylla and Charybdis were believed to be the narrow strait between Italy and Sicily; the Sirens were identified with three rocky islands off the coast of Campania, while the name Syrtes is applied to two shallow sand banks on the north coast of Libya. For the location of Scylla and Charybdis as well as that of the Syrtes, see Isidore, Etym. 13.18.3–6. Isidore’s juxtaposition of these sea hazards probably underlies the otherwise rather odd association between Scylla/Charybdis and the Syrtes that we see not only in Lawrence but also in some of the other examples included in this study. 18  See Andreae Sunonis filli Hexaemeron, ed. Sten Ebbesen and Lars Boje Mortensen, 2 vols., Corpus philosophorum Danicorum Medii Aevi, vols XI.1 and XI.2 (Copenhagen, 1985), 1:42. On the poetic representation of the biblical Six Days of Creation, see Greti Dinkova-Bruun, “Why Versify the Bible in the Later Middle Ages and for Whom?: The Story of Creation in Verse,” in Dichten als Stoff-Vermittlung: Formen, Ziele, Wirkungen. Beiträge zur Praxis der Versifikation lateinischer Texte im Mittelalter, ed. Peter Stotz, Medienwandel – Medienwechsel – Medienwissen, Band 5 (Zürich, 2008), pp. 41–55, on Sunesen’s poem (pp. 44–46). 19  Hexaemeron, 1.142–50, ed. Ebbesen and Mortensen, pp. 79–80. 17 

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idiom and salvific message. Still, in both cases God is the captain who ensures that hospitable shores are reached in safety: in the Joseph narrative it is because God steers the ship of his life, and in Sunesen’s metaphor because the ship represents God’s own words. It  is remarkable that this thoroughly Christian message is brought to focus through classical imagery.

Peter Riga and Susanna The second verse Bible in which we find a reference to Scylla and Charybdis is Peter Riga’s hugely popular magnum opus, the Aurora.20 Riga himself does not make use of the topos about the foolishness of pagan poets, although in his prologue he states that he “ventured a little way into Aristotle’s labyrinth, not guided by the string of Daedalus, but instructed by the son of God.”21 Still, the so-called “Teacher’s Preface” to the poem offers an explicit and forceful warning against the foolishness of poetic fantasies, combining Boethius and the Bible: “Moreover, let those also become dumb, who, turning silly over poetic figments and puerile songs, squander their time with trifles in pitiable delight; those who often read with joy about ‘dramatic little harlots’ [Boethius, Cons. 1.1.8] and ‘sirens sweet until the final ruin’ [Boethius, Cons. 1.1.11], denouncing the reading of the sacred page and, wishing to be fed with pig’s husks,22 suffering blood loss with the hemorrhaging woman,23 and not trusting in the doctors to be cured, expend their life substance uselessly and foolishly.”24 Even though Riga must have been in full agreement with these dire warnings, he could not completely abandon the classical heritage. As we have already seen with Lawrence of Durham, the biblical poets quite willingly and successfully mined the oeuvres of their predecessors, both classical and late-antique, for stories and examples that would add flair and style to their versification of scripture. Riga’s classicizing impulse is perhaps less pronounced than that of Lawrence, but there are still interesting episodes that confirm his familiarity with the classical texts. One of these instances mentions the sea dangers personified by Scylla/Charybdis and the Syrtes, which we discussed above within the narrative of See above, nn. 6–7. See “Peter Riga’s Preface,” ed. Beichner, Aurora, 1:7.10–11: “laberinthum Aristotilis aliquantulum, non filo Dedali duce, sed Filio Dei docente, introiui.” The English translation does not do justice to the clever word play between filo and filio as well as duce and docente. 22  This is a reference to the Parable of the Prodigal Son told in Luke 15.11–32, esp. 15.16. 23  For this Gospel story, see Matt. 9.20–22; Mark 5.25–34; Luke 8.43–48. 24  “Porro et hi obmutescant qui, circa figmenta poetarum et puerorum nenias (uenias Beichner) desipientes, tempora sua in nugis misera demulsione consumunt; qui ‘scenicas meretriculas’ et ‘syrenes usque in exicium dulces’ gratanter lectitant, sacre pagine lectionem execrantes et, de siliquis porcorum saturari cupientes, cum muliere emoroissa fluxum sanguinis patientes et in medicos nil salutis conferentes, totam suam substantiam tam inaniter quam insipienter expendunt (expedunt Beichner),” ed. Beichner, Aurora, 1:5.18–25. Quoted in Dinkova-Bruun, “Rewriting Scripture,” p. 270, n. 35. 20  21 

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the Hypognosticon. In the Aurora, however, the mythical reference is placed in a different context and given a new interpretative angle. The marine dangers are mentioned in Riga’s versification of the story of Susanna and the Elders that was appended to the original Book of Daniel as Chapter 13.25 The episode is well known: the lovely and pious wife of the rich Babylonian Jew Joakim inadvertently inflames the lust of two elderly judges who secretly watch her bathe in the garden attached to her house. They try to force her to yield to them and, after she refuses, they mendaciously accuse her of having an adulterous relationship with a young man, which results in a death sentence for the blameless woman. At the last minute she is saved by the young Daniel who proves her innocence by cross-examining the elders, who give contradictory testimonies about the tree under which the fabricated amorous act took place. The elders are convicted as liars and put to death, and Daniel’s reputation for wisdom and prophetic powers is firmly established. Riga versifies this story in the Aurora’s Liber Danielis, lines  451–646 (a total of 196 verses).26 It is a popular section of the work, which Riga originally incorporated into his earlier poetic anthology, the Floridus aspectus, and then reworked for inclusion in the second edition of the Aurora.27 This text was later expanded and changed from a dialogue into a narrative by Aegidius of Paris, Riga’s self-appointed editor and revisor.28 The intricacies of these versions do not concern us here. For the present discussion, Riga’s original account in the Aurora is the one that matters, because only this text seems to include a reference to Charybdis and by extension to Scylla, even though instead of her the poet mentions the Syrtes.29 This happens in a dramatic moment, On the deuterocanonicity of this account, see the brief discussion in Rita Beyers, “Suzanne et les vieillards: Le regard de Pierre Riga,” in “Contez me tout”: Mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales ­offerts à Herman Braet, ed.  Catherine Bel, Pascale Dumont, and Frank Willaert (Louvain, 2006), pp. 435–52, esp. 437–38. 26  See Beichner, Aurora, 1:360–67. 27  For a discussion of the manuscript transmission of the two texts and their confusing textual relationship, see Beyers, “Suzanne et les vieillards,” pp. 436–37, with nn. 5–6. The two versions are printed on the basis of five English manuscripts in John H. Mozley, “Susanna and the Elders: Three Medieval Poems,” Studi medievali n.s. 3 (1930), 27–52. For another, previously unknown versification of the story, which seems actually to represent a modification of Riga’s account, but without the classical references under discussion here, see Patryk M. Ryczkowski, “Susannas verlorene Stimme. Das Gedicht Versus de sancta Susanna: Erstedition und Analyse,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 52 (2017), 400–25. 28  Aegidius’s expansions to the Aurora are presented in detail in Greti Dinkova-Bruun, “Corrector Ultimus: Aegidius of Paris and Peter Riga’s Aurora,” in Modes of Authorship in the Middle Ages, ed. Slavica Rancović (Toronto, 2012), pp. 172–89. Aegidius’s verses are printed separately from Riga’s own text in Beichner, Aurora, 1:371–74. 29  As we have seen above, in Lawrence’s account we have the opposite situation, i.e. Scylla named but not Charybdis. These cases suggest that a mention of one of the two monsters was probably sufficient 25 

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when Susanna is faced with the terrible dilemma of choosing between yielding to the base desires of the elders and being accused of adultery. Her  emotions, alternating between hope and fear, are movingly expressed in the words with which he addresses the elders:30 Sperans et metuens fluitat Susanna; ministrat31 Spem diuinus amor, lingua dolosa metum. Mens trahitur ueloque spei uentoque timoris, Spemque metumque sequens inter utrumque uolat (natat Mozley) Deuotaque uolans ad celum mente loquelam Fletibus undantem fudit in aure senum: “Nauis quo fugiet geminis impulsa procellis? Hinc michi nulla salus, hinc fuga nulla patet. Syrtes incurret fugiens mea cimba Caribdim, Et mea fata cauens in mea fata ferar. Peccem? Peccantem me puniet ira Gehenne. Clamem? Clamantem puniet ira senum. Sed quid? Vestra, senes, manus in me seuiet; iram Leniet Inferni uerbere trita caro. Vt dampnum carnis animam lucretur ematque Portum celestem, naufraga uita michi.” Hoping and fearing, Susanna wavers; the love of God offers her hope, the treacherous tongues (of the elders) make her afraid. Her mind is pulled by the sail of hope and by the wind of dread, and yielding one moment to hope and the next to fear, she flies between the two.32 With pious mind flying to the heavens, she pours words overflowing with tears into the ears of the elders: “Where can a ship escape when propelled by two storms? On this side there is no safety for me, on the other side there is no escape. While fleeing from Charybdis, my boat will run into the Syrtes, and while I pull away from my fate, I am drawn towards it. Shall I commit a sin? If I do, Hell’s ire will punish me as sinner. Shall I cry out? If I do, the elders’ anger will punish the one shouting. What then? Your hand, o elders, shall rage against me, (and) my body marred by the whip shall soothe the fury of the underworld. So that the harm of the body can save the soul and gain (passage) to the harbour in heaven, my life has become a shipwreck.”

Susanna is indeed caught in a terrible dilemma that is perfectly exemplified by the Scylla/Syrtes and Charybdis trope. The passage is masterfully constructed by Riga to invoke both in the reader’s mind. Interestingly, in Riga’s case, Syrtes seems to be used almost as a synonym of Scylla. 30  Liber Danielis, 613–28, ed. Beichner, 1:366. 31  Beichner prints minstrat, presumably a typo. 32  Or “she swims between the two,” if we are to adopt the variant reading in Mozley’s edition (see above, n. 27), which enhances even further the image of Susanna being lost in the sea of her emotions. Mozley’s text contains some additional differences in comparison with Beichner’s edition (see above, n. 6), but none of them is as important as this one for the present argument.

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who manages to intimate that Susanna is lost in a dangerous sea even before the ship metaphor is presented, for she is cast about by warring emotions (fluitat), while being at the same time pulled by the sail of hope (velo spei) and pushed by the wind of dread (vento timoris). Because of the two dreadful options presented to her, Susanna embarks on a journey leading towards certain shipwreck in the perilous dwelling of famed sea monsters.33 In this, she is unlike Lawrence’s Joseph, whose voyage through life was dangerous but not hopeless because he was guided by God to safety and salvation. In the end, Susanna is rescued too, by Daniel, who in Aegidius’s allegorical interpretation of the story is described as a prefiguration of Christ who, being the only true and merciful judge (uerus iudex miserans), liberates the faithful Church, i.e. Susanna, and punishes the sinners, i.e. the elders.34 Thus, salvation by divine intervention is the final outcome in both the Hypognosticon and the Aurora. Other versifications of the Susanna episode do not explicitly mention Scylla and Charybdis in this context.35 However, the Tractatus metricus de Susanna, attributed to Alan of Melsa and written in c. 1300,36 alludes to the two unappealing alternatives offered to the heroine by her accusers and then offers a long speech in which Susanna compares her own predicament with that of the noblewoman Lucretia from Rome’s legendary past:37 Palluit, erubuit Susanna timore, pudore, Inter utrumque labans traxit utrimque notas. “O res noua,” inquit, “noua lex, nouus improbat actor Quod deus et ueteres instituere patres. Susanna’s predicament is similar to that of Darius in Book 5 of the Alexandreis of Walter of Châtillon (1135–1180) who falls into the hands of one enemy while fleeing another. Walter’s verse describing the hopeless situation (5.301) has become a well-known proverb: “Incidis in Scillam cupiens uitare Caribdim.” See Galteri de Castellione Alexandreis, ed. Marvin L. Colker (Padua, 1978), p. 133. 34  Liber Danielis, 35–40, ed. Beichner, Aurora, 1:374. 35  Interestingly, in the Versus de Susanna composed by the nun Willetrudis (fl. 1230–1240) Scylla is brought into the story in two unexpected moments: first, when the poetess says that Susanna entered the bath in her garden without fear of snakes and poison in the water which, as we know from Greek fables, caused Scylla’s transformation into a dappled dog-monster because of Circe’s envy (vv. 66–70); and second, Scylla is invoked again when we are told that the malicious rumour about Susanna’s invented adultery contained as many lies as the spots (maculae) on Scylla’s cursed body (vv. 143–45). Thus, in Willetrudis’s Versus there is a much stronger emphasis on Scylla’s monstrous physical appearance than on the danger she represents together with Charybdis for sea travelers. For an edition and a short study of Willetrudis’s poem, see Gabriel Silagi, “Willetrudis Versus de Susanna: Eine unbeachtete Frauendichtung aus dem 13. Jahrhundert,” Aevum 73/2 (1999), 371–84. The poem is also discussed in Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2005), pp. 130–37. 36  Mozley, “Susanna and the Elders,” pp. 28–29 and 41–50. 37  Tractatus, 251–82, ed. Mozley, “Susanna and the Elders,” p. 47; quoted here are lines 251–56 and 269–72. 33 

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Femina gentilis gladio Lucretia pectus Fodit adulterio tacta, coacta tamen. … In scelus armati sceleris commenta paratis Ut rea conuincar uel rea crimen agam. Mors mihi, si faciam; si non, conuincar iniquis Testibus ut mortis iudicer esse ream.” Susanna paled for fear and blushed for shame; wavering between the two, she displayed the signs of both. She said: “Oh new circumstance! Oh new law! A new accuser discredits what God and our father have instituted. Lucretia, a gentile woman, pierced her heart with a sword when she was stained with adultery, although (in fact) she was forcefully taken. … Armed for (committing) a crime, you prepared lies of another crime, so that I am either convicted as a culprit or I commit the crime, (thus becoming) the culprit. If I do it, that would be my death; if I don’t, I would be convicted by unfair witnesses to be sentenced to death for being the culprit.”

While this text does not use the ship metaphor and the dangers of sailing through life, it outlines perfectly the impossible dilemma of Susanna who has to choose between yielding to the elders’ lecherous desire and committing adultery or being mendaciously accused by them of that very crime. The shame of being unfairly suspected of such a transgression is clearly an intolerable burden to bear for both the pagan Lucretia and the Jewish Susanna, the first killing herself to prove her innocence, the second waiting in fear to be sentenced to death despite being innocent. In both cases the women choose to firmly defend their good reputations. The difference is that Lucretia could not expect help from anyone and thus had to take a desperate action to clear her own name, while Susanna says that she puts her trust in her Lord and all-powerful God who knows all secrets, judges everyone fairly, and is not so easily deceived by human treachery (Tractatus, 346–354)38 – and she is justified in her belief, since God saves her through Daniel’s agency. This is a message of hope to all believers that the Almighty will always ensure that good defeats evil and that justice is served after tribulations and suffering.

Conclusions The accounts in Lawrence’s Hypognosticon and Peter Riga’s Aurora represent two complementary ways in which the classical stories of the hazardous Scylla, Charybdis, and Syrtes might be employed in the context of Latin biblical versification from the later Middle Ages. In both works the poets use the well-known metaphor of human life as a ship sailing through turbulent waters, but the journey is framed differently in each case. For Lawrence and his Joseph, the dangerous place of the sea monsters is simply one obstacle among many that the traveller needs to avoid in order to arrive safely at his destination. In this endeavour he is helped by a divine navigator, God, 38 

See Mozley, “Susanna and the Elders,” p. 49.

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who is the only captain who does not need instruments, measurements, or guidance by the stars in order to bring his passengers to salvation’s safe harbour. For Riga and Susanna, Scylla and Charybdis represent the difficult dilemma of having to choose between two equally perilous alternatives. In this case, the ship of human life is certainly headed towards a shipwreck, a desperate situation that can only be resolved through God’s grace and mercy. Both these understandings are given universal meaning in the biblical versifications of Lawrence of Durham and Peter Riga, and it is important to stress that the classical motif of Scylla and Charybdis is subjected in these poems to the same mode of allegorical moralization used by numerous biblical exegetes to unlock the deeper meaning of Sacred Scripture. Classical lore is thus incorporated into the Christian discourse of redemption and salvation, classical heritage is infused with Christian meaning, and the falsehood of pagan tales is transformed into a truthful Christian message. This poetic metamorphosis is executed by Lawrence and Peter with skill and confidence which make them worthy successors of their Classical precursors. Poetry has the ability to reconfigure the established boundaries of signification, and biblical versification is no exception.

Goliae Dialogus inter Aquam et Vinum: A New Edition* Winthrop Wetherbee Cornell University The tradition of medieval Latin debate poetry seems to have begun with imitations of Virgilian pastoral by Carolingian poets. Alcuin’s Conflictus Veris et Hiemis and the Ros­ ae et Lilii Certamen of Sedulius Scottus are the best known of these poems, in which the singing contests of Virgil’s shepherds, each of whom chooses the matter of his song, are replaced by a debate between allegorical figures, on a set theme with moral and spiritual implications. Virgil’s shepherds show themselves aware of political and social questions, but it is ostensibly the quality of the singers’ verse that matters, and the significance of their song is often elusive;1 in the typical medieval debate the issues are clearly defined, and poetry is a vehicle, never an end in itself.2 Though variously labelled,3 these poems almost invariably involve two opponents, who may be personified abstractions or embodiments of opposed positions or points of view. The  poetic debate assumed its characteristic form in the twelfth-century schools, and reflects more immediately their emphasis on disputation, reasoned argument, and the resolution of conflicts between authorities. Like Alcuin’s Winter and Spring the debaters are commonly animated versions of the terms of the debate itself: truth argues with falsehood, soul with body, philosophy with fortune. The poems typically end with a judgment that is a foregone conclusion, less often with a reconciliation. Judgment is only occasionally framed in legal language, and is often treated humorously. *  In offering this admittedly rather staid production to Danuta Shanzer I am invoking not just her scholarly eminence, but her lively humor, her superb taste in wine, and her tact and efficiency in dealing with stuffy people. She was a wonderful colleague in her Cornell days, and it has been a pleasure to serve under her on the Latin editorial board of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, to which she has given countless hours and invaluable expertise. Danuta, I salute you. 1  Joseph Farrell, “Philosophy in Vergil,” in The Philosophizing Muse: The Influence of Greek Philosophy on Roman Poetry, ed. Myrto Garani and David Konstan (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014), pp. 63–72. 2  Peter Stotz, “Conflictus. Il contrasto poetico nella letteratura latina medievale,” in Il genere “ten­ zone” nelle letterature romanze delle origini, ed. Matteo Pedroni and Antonio Stäuble (Ravenna, 1999), pp. 165–87, at 168–69. 3  Among the terms used to characterize the debate poem are altercatio, certamen, conflictus, conten­ tio, disputatio, dialogus, and iudicium. See Hans Walther, Das Streitgedicht in der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (Munich, 1920), reprinted with supplementary annotation by Paul Gerhard Schmidt (Hildesheim, 1984), p. 3. D O I 10 .14 8 4/ M . P J M L . 5 .1 2 8 7 3 0 : 4 2 9 – 4 4 4 ©

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The debate in these poems is commonly staged in an ideal landscape, a locus amoe­ nus which recalls the pastoral origins of the genre, and is often displayed to the poem’s narrator in a dream. The Dialogue between Wine and Water (henceforth DAV) is clearly the work of a sophisticated poet, but shows no trace of pastoral convention, and only the names of the two debaters, Thetis and Bacchus, recall the classical tradition. The poem opens with the narrator, evidently a monk, asleep after drinking heavily, and moves abruptly into his dream or vision of the celestial court, where God sits enthroned and Thetis and Bacchus are to be judged (1–8). The debate begins immediately, and occupies all but the poem’s concluding stanzas, where a kind of judgment is delivered, not by the heavenly court, but by a chorus of singing birds (161–64), and the poet awakens and offers a prayer to the Trinity (165–68). DAV was evidently popular, and survives in thirteen manuscripts. None of these is earlier than the early thirteenth century, and they provide no evidence of the poem’s date or place of origin. English manuscripts follow a common fashion in ascribing the poem to Golias or Walter Map. On  the continent it is credited arbitrarily to Hugh Primas. The content of the Dialogus is unusually edifying, and the tone, though boisterous at times, never becomes heated. The debate is remarkable for its dense body of references to the Bible, which are used ingeniously by both disputants, but follow no clear order. Thetis’s rather chilly arguments are unvaryingly assertive of her value, and disdainful of the effects of wine, while Bacchus is twice able to acknowledge the sacramental function of water (DAV 65, 129), and though never guilty of impiety, manages to be both humorous and bon vivant. In the end one respects the positions of both debaters, but is disposed to accept the final judgment in favor of wine, implicit in the singing of a chorus of birds (161–64). Though its humor and the fluency of its “Goliardic” stanzas4 suggest familiarity with the Latin debate tradition, the only poem to which DAV bears some resemblance is a debate between wine and water from the Carmina Burana, identified by its opening line, “Denudata veritate.” 5 It is very different in tone and content from DAV, and far less attractive. There are certain common themes: as in DAV, mixing wine with water is wrong, even a sin (stanzas 1–2, 29), though here it is the narrator and not Wine himself who declares this.6 Wine asserts that a meal without wine is dull (stanza 5); men are rejuvenated and made wise by wine (stanzas 15–17). Water points to her role as the source of fertility The typical Goliardic stanza consists of four thirteen-syllable lines (the meter is that of “Good King Wenceslas”), ending with the same two-syllable rhyme. 5  The only complete text of this poem is Carmina Burana, ed. David A. Traill, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2018), 2:278–91. There is a rather impressionistic summary in James Holly Hanford, “The Medieval Debate between Wine and Water,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 28 (1913), 315–67 at pp. 316–19. 6  This notion is a commonplace in the Latin poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Examples are cited by Hanford, “The Medieval Debate,” pp. 319–21. 4 

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and preventer of famine (stanzas 20–22). But “Denudata veritate” has little of the verve and fluency of DAV. The debaters have nothing good to say about each other, and most of their energy is devoted to harsh criticism. Water dwells at length on the haplessness of the drunken man, and the immoral behavior provoked by wine (stanzas 8–11, 18–20). Wine focuses aggressively on the uncleanness of water and the filth it carries (stanzas 3–7, 23–24, 27–28), and claims victory when Water, shamed by the disgusting picture he creates, is reduced to tears. The victory achieved in this way is as unsatisfying as that of Helen in her altercatio with Ganymede, where her harsh words on anal intercourse leave her opponent shocked and silent.7 “Denudata veritate” ends underwhelmingly with the narrator’s prayer that those who mix wine with water be cursed and excommunicated. From the thirteenth century forward a large number of vernacular debates of wine and water appear.8 Early examples include a French Disputoison du Vin et de l’Iaue (late thirteenth century), and a Spanish Razon de amor y denuestos del agua y el vino (early thirteenth century). In the Disputoison a debate among different wines is ended by the abrupt intervention of Water, who presents arguments against wine similar to those in the Latin debates, and persuades the company that water is essential to human well-being, while wine is not, though the God of Love, who is overseeing the contest, ends by declaring that every wine is necessary in its season, and bids them be at peace: “Et en joie ensemble buvrez!”9 The Spanish poem, one of the earliest texts to appear in Castilian, is apparently a combination of two separate pieces: the debate is preceded by an idyllic meeting between the narrator and his beloved, in an olive orchard. The lady leaves, and the narrator observes a dove, about to drink from a vessel of wine; frightened by the unexpected presence of the narrator, the dove accidentally causes a vessel of water to discharge its contents into the wine. Immediately wine and water begin to quarrel, and their debate, which closely resembles the “Denudata veritate,” occupies the rest of the poem.10 The debate of wine and water continued to be a common theme; the Disputoison was widely circulated in cheap printed form, and French, Spanish, and Italian versions of the debate continued to appear, into the Renaissance and beyond, in forms which range from the relatively sophisticated to popular ballads. Where these works reflect the influence of the Latin debates, it is “Denudata veritate” that is recalled most often, Rolf Lenzen, “‘Altercatio Ganimedis et Helene’: Kritische Edition mit Kommentar,” Mittellatei­ nisches Jahrbuch 7 (1972), 161–86. 8  Helen McFie, “The Medieval Debate between Wine and Water in the Romance Languages: Tradition and Transformation” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981), provides both a survey of the tradition and edition of ten poems. 9  Disputoison, line 566; Albert Henry, Contribution à l’étude du langage oenologique en langue d’oïl (XIIe-XVe  s.), Académie royale de Belgique, Classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques (­Mémoires de la Classe des Lettres, 3e série, vol. 14), 2 vols. (Brussels, 1996), 1:138–52, at p. 152. 10  Mario Barra Jover, “Razón de Amor: texto crítico y composición,” Revista de Literatura Medieval 1 (1989), 123–53. 7 

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and there is almost none of the deft use of biblical and Christian imagery that distinguishes DAV, which nonetheless clearly remained popular. There are three modern editions of DAV. The edition of Thomas Wright, is based on two English manuscripts: London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus A.xx, saec. ­X IIIex.; and Cambridge, University Library, MS Ee.6.29, saec. XIV.11 That of Francesco Novati is founded on Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, MS 603, saec. XV.12 Aloys Bömer, apparently unaware of Novati’s edition, provides a transcription of the text of Münster, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS 301, saec. XIV, which is printed side by side with the text of Wright, and followed by notes which compare the two editions and the manuscripts on which they are based.13 The texts of Wright, Novati, and Bömer are roughly equal in quality; each can often be corrected from the others, and at several points it is difficult to choose among rival readings which seem equally acceptable. My edition is based on Bömer’s transcript of the Münster manuscript, emended on the basis of Wright, Novati, and Bömer’s notes.

Goliae Dialogus inter Aquam et Vinum 1.

Cum tenerent omnia medium tumultum, post diversas epulas et post vinum multum, postquam voluptatibus ventris est indultum, me liquerunt socii vino iam sepultum.

2.

At ego, vel spiritu vel in carne gravi, raptus sum, et tertium caelum penetravi, ubi sacratissima quaedam auscultavi, quae post in concilio fratrum reseravi.

3.

Dum sederet equidem in excelsis Deus, et coepisset spiritus trepidare meus, statim in iudicium Thetis et Lyaeus intrant, et alteruter actor est et reus.

4.

Thetis ab exordio multum gloriatur: “Ego sum cui merito laus et honor datur, cum sim ex qua machina mundi formabatur, cum super me spiritus Dei ferebatur.”

5.

Bacchus ad haec incipit talia referre, “Mos est prius vilia, cara post conferre; sic et Deus voluit te prius proferre, et me post, ut biberent peccatores terrae.”

5

10

15

20

The Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes, Camden Society o.s.  16 (London, 1841), pp. 87–92. 12  Carmina medii aevi (Florence, 1883), pp. 58–66. 13  Zeitschrift für vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte, n. f. 6 (1893), 123–33. 11 

Goliae Dialogus inter Aquam et Vinum 6.

T. “Meum decus admodum Christus ampliavit, quando me de puteo potum postulavit; de torrente siquidem, attestante David, bibit et propterea caput exaltavit.”

7.

B. “Cum in vite Dominus fructum dedit istum uvae nil aquaticum fecit intermixtum; ergo qui potaverit vinum aqua mixtum peccat contra Dominum et adversus Christum.”

8.

T. “Me contentus respuit Nazarenus vina, cum in me sit posita vitae medicina, quod ex evangelica patet disciplina, cum sanaret Angelus aegros in piscina.”

9.

B. “Te quivis aquaticus bibat Nazaraeus, sed quantum salutifer sit effectus meus patet, cum apostolus docet atque Deus ut me propter stomachum bibat Timotheus.”

10.

T. “Medicinae Naaman liquerant humanae, nec prodesse poterant cuti male sanae, sed voces propheticae non fuerunt vanae, postquam fuit septies lotus in Iordane.”

11.

B. “Caesus a latronibus Ierosolymita, visus a presbytero, visus a Levita, incuratus forsitan excessisset vita, ni fuissent vulnera vino delinita.”

12.

T. “Cum tu saepe causa sis intemperiei, ego sum opposita tuae rabiei; quia, sicut legitur, aquae, non Lyaei, impetus laetificat civitatem Dei.”

13.

B. “Tu tamquam vilissima funderis in planum, ego velut nobile mittor in arcanum; te potat in montibus pecus rusticanum, sed meus laetificat potus cor humanum.”

14.

T. “Fructum temperaneum reddit excolenti lignum quod est proximum aquae defluenti; par est bono nuntio, longe venienti, potus aquae frigidae viro sitienti.”

15.

B. “Satis contemptibilis, satis et egena, si qua forte sumitur sine vino cena; non exterret homines paupertatis poena, cum me promptuaria sint eorum plena.”

16. T. “Prima ego fidei portam reseravi quando Dei filium in Iordane lavi;

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et figuram veteris legis consummavi, cum de suo latere foras emanavi.”

17.

B. “Ad baptismi gratiam venit per te reus; per me multos homines iungit sibi Deus; nec fuisse legitur aqua, sed Lyaeus, de quo dixit Dominus, ‘Hic est sanguis meus.’”

18.

T. “Ego pulchritudinis, ego claritatis mater sum, et omnibus offero me gratis; ego pratis aufero pestem siccitatis, desuper cum intonat Deus maiestatis.”

19.

B. “Quantumcumque sapidus, quantumcumque carus, sine vini traduce, cibus fit amarus; tuo gaudet poculo pauper et avarus, sed calix inebrians, o quantum praeclarus!”

20.

T. “Ego flammas tempero solis in pruinis, potum do volucribus, opem molendinis, et mundum circueo fluctibus marinis, ubi sunt reptilia quorum non est finis.”

21.

B. “Ego de palmitibus in torcular ivi, et exinde vegetans ventrem introivi, vasculorum genera multa pertransivi, et in potatoribus requiem quaesivi.”

22.

T. “Ratio confunditur, oculi caecantur, his qui tuis potibus nimis immorantur; blande dum ingrederis exta mordicantur, et velut a reguli morsu venenantur.”

23.

B. “Potus tuus pestifer est et venenatus, ni foret prophetico sale dulcoratus; in me tuus pestifer potus est mutatus, cum fuit ad nuptias Iesus invitatus.”

24.

T. “Per te Noe femora dormit denudatus, unde maledicitur irridendo natus; per te mundo prodiit partus infamatus, cum fuit in montibus Loth inebriatus.”

25.

B. “Tu deceptrix hominum, quibus dum te praestas placidam, post fluctibus subitis infestas; rogat super alias David res funestas, ‘Ne demergat’, inquiens, ‘aquae me tempestas!’”

26.

T. “Prohibetur homini Pauli disciplina vinum, ut luxuriae turpis officina; nulla virtus colitur ubi regnant vina, quibus lege trahitur prudens a divina.”

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Goliae Dialogus inter Aquam et Vinum 27.

B. “Vitium luxuriae tibi coaptatur, cum incesto filio Iacob imprecatur; qui fusus ut aqueus liquor increpatur, dum per eum patruus thorus maculatur.”

28.

T. “Ego sapientiae sum assimilata, cuius alma pectora fonte sunt potata, qua quae semel fuerint corda fecundata, non affliget amplius sitis iterata.”

29.

B. “Sponsus Sponsae numerans singula decora, ut amborum osculo coniunguntur ora, vina super alia bona potiora ponit, cum sint ubera Sponsae meliora.”

30.

T. “Ad caelestis speciem ego Trinitatis una sum de testibus terrae commendatis, unde fons exprimitur per me caritatis, in vitam exsiliens sempiternitatis.”

31.

B. “Postquam dies gratiae gentibus illuxit, quam ex eis vineam Sponsam sibi duxit, Sponsus in vinariam cellam introduxit, ubi quo sit ordine caritas instruxit.”

32.

T. “Dextro templi latere meus est egressus; per me culpae luitur si quis est excessus; actus elemosinae mystice concessus est mihi quo criminum ignis est oppressus.”

33.

B. “Virtus per te siquidem vitae figuratur, sic per me compunctio cordis designatur, quod Deo virgineus pudor geminatur, cum reus conteritur et iustificatur.”

34.

T. “Si qui falsos hactenus coluerunt deos, si renasci faciam se per fontes meos, rex in caelo respicit et absolvit eos, nec qui caelos habitat irridebit eos.”

35.

B. “Ex vino praedicitur hostia reorum, in vino diluitur stola beatorum, vinum Iacob additur pro summa bonorum, vinum tandem bibitur in regno caelorum.”

36.

T. “Laudem meam placite quisquis intuetur, calix aquae frigidae penset quid meretur; super caelos legitur aquam; ergo detur quod ex vini meritis nusquam superetur.”

37. B. “Vitis non deseruit, vinum ut regnaret, vinum hic praeposuit qui non commutaret,

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vinum Sponsus miscuit cum Sponsam praeparet, aquam venter respuit, calix ut probaret.”

38.

T. “Israel cum duceret se compendiose servitutis vinculo contumeliosae separavit Dominus me miraculose, ut cantarent canticum Deo gloriose.”

39.

B. “Vini, vir, miraculum noli obaudire, securos ac nobiles reddit suos mire; mutis eloquentiam, contractis salire, dat, et inter verbera facit non sentire.”

40.

B. “Si quis causa qualibet cessat a Lyaeo, non resultat canticum neque laus ab eo; si refectus fuerit tandem potu meo, tunc decantat ‘Gloriam in excelsis Deo.’”

41.

Ad hanc vocem avibus caeli concitatis, quasi rationibus vini comprobatis, inclamatur fortius vocibus elatis, ‘Terrae pax hominibus bonae voluntatis!’”

42.

Quibus ego vocibus tale post examen excitatus expuli somnii velamen, et laudavi consonans patrem, natum, flamen, terminans “in Gloria Dei patris. Amen.”

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The Goliard Dialogue between Water and Wine 1. When all things were in a tumultuous state, after various sumptuous dishes and much wine, after indulgence in the pleasures of the belly, my companions left me buried in vinous slumber. 2. But I was caught up, either in spirit or in my heavy body, {5} and entered the third heaven, where I heard certain most sacred things which I later revealed in the council of brothers. 3. For God himself was enthroned on high, and my spirit had begun to tremble, {10} when all at once Thetis and Lyaeus entered to be judged; each was both plaintiff and defendant. 4. Thetis began very boastfully: “I am she to whom praise and honor are rightly given, for it is from me that the structure of the universe was created, {15} when the spirit of God was borne over me.” 5. Bacchus replied to her words in this way: “It is customary to produce inferior things first, and precious ones later; thus God chose to bring you forth first, and me later, that the sinners of this world might drink.” {20} 6. T. “Christ greatly enhanced my dignity when he asked for a drink from the well; and as David attests, drank from a stream and therefore raised his head.”

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7. B. “When the Lord bestowed the fruit of the vine {25} he did not intermingle water with the grape’s juice; thus he who drinks his wine mixed with water commits a sin, against God and against Christ.” 8. T. “The Nazarene, content with me, rejected wine, for in me resides a vital medicine; {30} a Gospel lesson gives proof of this, for an angel cured sick men in a pool.” 9. B. “Any watery Nazarene you please may drink you, but it is clear how healthful is my influence, for God and the Apostle instructed {35} Timothy to drink me for the good of his stomach.” 10. T. “The medicine of men had failed Naaman; it could do his unhealthy skin no good. But the words of the prophet were not without result, when he had been bathed seven times in the Jordan.” {40} 11. B. “The Jerusalemite, beaten by thieves, was observed by a priest and by a Levite, but he would perhaps have departed this life uncared for, had his wounds not been treated with wine.” 12. T. “Since you are often the cause of intemperate behavior, {45} it is my task to withstand your madness; for as Scripture says, it is the influence of water, not wine, that brings joy to the city of God.” 13. B. “You, being utterly commonplace, flow along the ground, but I, being more noble, am stored away. {50} Rude flocks in the mountains drink you, but drinking me brings joy to the human heart.” 14. T. “The tree which is close to flowing water gives back fruit in its season to him who cultivates it; like good tidings come from afar {55} is a draught of cool water to a thirsty man.” 15. B. “If a meal should chance to be eaten without wine it is mean and impoverished. But the pain of impoverishment does not frighten men when their storerooms are filled with me.” {60} 16. T. “I first opened the gateway to faith when I washed the son of God in the Jordan; and I fulfilled the figural prophecy of the old law when I flowed forth from his side.” 17. B. “The guilty come to the grace of baptism through you; {65} through me God drew many men to himself; we read that it was not water, but Lyaeus, of which the Lord said ‘this is my blood.’” 18. T. “I am the mother of beauty and clarity, and I offer myself freely to all; {70} I remove the plague of drought from the fields, when the Lord of majesty thunders from on high.” 19. B. “However tasty and however costly it may be, food becomes bitter without the transformative power of wine; the poor and the covetous are happy with your cup, {75}, but how magnificent is the intoxicating goblet!” 20. T. “I temper the burning sun with frost; I give drink to the birds, power to mills, and I encircle the world with the sea’s floods, where there are swimming creatures whose number is limitless.” {80}

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21. B. “I pass from the vine into the press, and next I enter the belly, bringing life; I have passed through vessels of many kinds, and I have sought rest within the drinker.” 22. T. “The reason of those who linger too long over your drink is confused, their eyes are blinded; {85}  though your entry is pleasant, their innards are gnawed, and they are poisoned as if by the bite of a serpent.” 23. B. “Your drink breeds pestilence, it is poisonous, unless it be seasoned with the salt of prophecy; {90} your pestilential drink was turned into me when Jesus was invited to the wedding.” 24. T. “Because of you Noah slept with his naked thighs exposed, so that his son was cursed for laughing. Because of you a disgraceful birth entered the world, {95} when Lot became drunk in the mountains.” 25. B. “You are a deceiver of men, when you show yourself calm, then assail them with sudden swells; above all other fatal calamities David pleads, ‘let not the stormy waters wash over me!’” {100} 26. T. “Wine is forbidden to men by the teaching of Paul, as a vile cause of lechery; no virtue is practiced where wine rules; the wise man is drawn away from divine law by wine.” 27. B. “The sin of lechery is linked to you {105} when Jacob inveighs against his unchaste son, who is rebuked for being as unstable as water, since his father’s bed was defiled by him.” 28. T. “I am likened to Wisdom, whose nurturing breasts are offered as a fountain, {110} and recurring thirst will no longer afflict hearts that have once been nourished by this spring.” 29. B. “The Bridegroom, enumerating the different graces of his Bride, as the mouths of the two are united by a kiss, sets wine above other goods; {115} they are inferior, the gift of the Bride is superior.” 30. T. “I am unique among the earthly witnesses cited as likenesses of the heavenly Trinity, for the fountain of charity, flowing forth into everlasting life, is represented by me.” {120} 31. B. “After the day of grace shed its light on the nations, the bridegroom led into the wine-cellar the vineyard he had chosen from among the others as his bride, and there he taught her the way of charity.” 32. T. “I come forth on the right side of the church; {125} through me whatever guilty excess there may be is washed away; there is a power of charity, mysteriously granted to me, by which the burning of guilt is quenched.” 33. B. “If indeed life-giving power is represented by you, then the heart’s remorse is indicated by me; {130} for virgin purity is granted by God a second time, when a sinful man is stung by guilt and justified.” 34. T. “Whoever has hitherto worshipped false gods, if I cause them to be reborn through my waters, the king in heaven looks on the sinful and absolves them; {135} he who dwells on high will not mock them.”

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35. B. “Through wine is proclaimed the offering of the sinful; in wine are washed the garments of the blessed; wine is bestowed upon Jacob as the capstone of his blessings; and finally, wine is drunk in the kingdom of heaven.” {140} 36. T. “Let whoever graciously inspects my panegyric consider what reward a glass of cold water earns. Scripture records that water is above the heavens; let us prescribe, therefore, what may never be surpassed by the merits of wine.” 37. B. “The vine did not shirk its duty, that it might reign as wine; {145} he who would not change the wine granted it supremacy. The Bridegroom mixed wine to prepare the Bride. His belly cast out water, that the wineglass might approve.” 38. T. “When Israel was hastily withdrawing itself from the bonds of shameful slavery, {150} the Lord miraculously divided me, that the people might sing a song to the glory of God.” 39. B. “Do not, O man, ignore the miraculous power of wine; it renders its subjects free from care and ennobles them wonderfully; it gives eloquence to the silent, causes those withered by age to dance, {155} and makes men feel no pain from their sufferings.” 40. B. “If anyone for whatever reason gives up wine, no song or speech of praise is heard from him; but if he has been refreshed by my drink, then he chants, ‘Glory to God in the highest.’” {160} 41. At these words, the birds of the sky were aroused, and as if in approval of the arguments for wine, their high voices rang forth boldly: “and on earth peace to men of good will!” 42. Awakened by their voices after this long discussion, {165} I cast off the veil of sleep, and gave fitting praise to Father, Son, and Spirit ending in “the glory of God the father. Amen.”

Notes to the Text B Ca H N W 1 4 5 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

= Bömer = Cambridge, University Library, MS Ee.6.29 = Gregory Hays, per litteras = Novati = Wright omnia medium NW: medium omnia B liquerunt BN: liquerent W vel … vel in B: in … non in W: in … velut N reseravi W: revelavi BN equidem W: siquidem BN coepisset BN: caepisset W statim in iudicium B: ecce in iudicio W est BW: fit N ab BN: in W Ego sum cui B: dicens mihi W firmabatur W: formabatur B

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cum B: tunc N: et W proferre W: conferre N: offerre B: Meum decus NW: Me vitis B Christus BN: Deus W W = 26 BN W = 25 BN potaverint W: potaverit B sunt adversus Dominum vel W: peccat contra Dominum et B sit posita NW: reposita sit B Te quivis aquaticus bibat Nazaraeus, sed quantum B: Te quamvis … Nazareus quantum N Tandem si te iugiter lambat Nazaraeus, quam tamen W 35 cum apostolus docet W: dum apostolis probat B: dum apostolus mandat, immo Deus N 37 liquerant BN: liquerunt W 39 sed W: cui BN 43 excessisset vita BN: extitisset ita W 45 saepe causa sis B: causa semper sis N: causa fueris W 46 opposita BN: apposita W 47 quia NW: nam B: namque N 49 tamquam NW: namque B 50 ego velut nobile W: ego vero vegitis BN 51 te potat W: tu potas BN 55 par est bono nuntio scripsi: prodest bono nuntio N: par est bono miracolo  B: profert fructus segetis W 56 potus aquae frigidae BN: prodest aqua frigida W 58 sumitur W: ducitur B: dicitur N 59 non NW: tunc B 61 Prima ego fidei portam B: Primam N: Primam partem fidei ego W 63 figuram BN: figuras W 67 fuisse legitur B: fuisse dicitur N: fuit, ut legitur W 70 et W68: in B 72 desuper cum intonat W: cum super intonuit B 73 quantumcumque carus B: quantum quoque carus W 74 vini traduce BN: vino traditus W 76 o quantum B: est o quam N: quam sum W 78 opem, BW: agris, N 82 vegetans W: vegetis BN 87 exta B: extra NW 89 est et venenatus B: estque venenatus N: potus est mutatus W 90–91 om. W. 92–168 are numbered 90–166 in W. 97 hominum BN: omnium W95 98 subitis N: subditis BW96 99 David W97: iustus B funestas B: honestas W97 104 trahitur prudens a divina W102: retro se prudens in pruina B: quorum lege retrahit potus a divina N 105 W, 107N = 108 B 106 W, 108N = 107 B

Goliae Dialogus inter Aquam et Vinum 105 vitium BN: vinum W103 110 sunt BN: sum W108 113 numerans BW: nuntians N 114 osculo coniunguntur W112: oscula conjugantur B: osculo coniungantur N 115 vina coni. H: vinum BNW113 116 cum sint ubera coni. H: quod sint ubera N: quae sint vilia B: quae sunt vilia W114 118 terrae BW: tribus N 121 Postquam BN: Per quam W119 122 om. N: eis B: vinis W120 post 124 sponsus vino pulchrior oculis traduxit N 126 excessus BW: transgressus N 127–30 om. B 127 concessus W: progressus N 129 per te … vitae W: ista … in te N 130 sic coni. H: si W: sed N 132 conteritur BW: convertitur N 133 qui NW131: quos B 134 faciam B: fecerint N: faciant W132 136 caelos habitat W134: in caelis habitat BN 137–48 (W135–46) om. BN post 136 in B: Viam coeli dare est actuum meorum, nam ne longe gratiam petas exemplorum, per me subintravit (hic) atria caelorum, ubi collocatae sunt animae sanctorum. post 136 in N: Via lata data est actibus illorum, ne a longe gratiam petas exemplorum, per me subit Tantalus atria caelorum, ubi collocatae sunt animae sanctorum. post W134 in Ca: Viam caeli dare est actuum meorum per me subintravit hic Deus (lege Dominus) caelorum ubi collocatae sunt animae sanctorum. 147 Sponsam scripsi: Sponsa W 148 ut coni. H: fractus W 149 Israel cum duceret W147: Ut Moyses subduceret B: ut Jacob educeret N 152 canticum NW150: Domino B 153–56 om. BN 161 avibus BW: civibus N 163 inclamatur W161: inclamatum B inclamarunt N fortius BW: fortibus N 164 terrae BN: in terra W162: 165 tale BN: tandem W163 166 expuli BN: extuli W164 167 consonans W165: continens B concinans N 168 terminans in gloria W166: usque ad in gratiam B: in gloriam N

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Explanatory Notes The phrasing seems intended to recall the chaos of Gen. 1.2. Walther, Streitgedicht, p. 47, sees a reference to Wis. 18.14, but the similarity is very slight. 5–7 See 2 Cor. 12.2–4. 8 Paul declares that these sacratissima are “things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” 11 Thetis, the mother of Achilles, was a sea-nymph; her name is used of the sea itself: Virgil, Ecl. 4.3; Claudian, De raptu Pros. 1.148. Medieval writers often conflated her with the more powerful seagoddess Tethys. Lyaeus (“relaxer,” “deliverer from care”) is a name of Bacchus: Virgil, Georg. 2.228–29; Ovid, Met. 4.11. 15 Gen. 1.6–9. 16 Gen. 1.2. 20 Ps. 74 (75).9. 21–22 Jn. 4.7–14. 23–24 Ps. 109 (110).7. Grammatically the subject of bibit and exaltavit is Jesus, but the acts described are David’s, and the verse must be read typologically. 29–30 Jdg. 13.4–5. 31–32 Jn. 5.2–9. The angel is mentioned in an addition to verse 3 not included in the canonical text. 36 1 Tim. 5.23. 37–40 2 Kgs. 5.9–14. 41–44 Lk. 10.29–34. 47–48 Ps. 45 (46).4; Rev. 22.1–2. 52 Ps. 103 (104).15. 53–54 Ps. 1.3; Eze. 47.12. 55–56 I have emended this line in the light of the clear allusion to Prov. 25.25. 60 Ps. 143 (144).13. 61–62 Matt. 3.13–17; Mk. 1.9–11; Lk. 3.21–22. Christ’s baptism is the porta fidei because of the clear signs of his divinity that follow it, the dove and the divine voice that descend from heaven. 63–64 Jn. 19.33–37. 68 Matt. 26.27–28; Mk. 14.23–24; Lk. 22.20. 74 I have followed the reading of B and N, taking traduce as “transmission” or “translation,” facilitating and enhancing the ingestion of food. 82 vegetans, “quickening,” “animating,” recalls Genesis 9:15, where God speaks of the “anima … quae carnem vegetat.” 85–88 Prov. 23.30–33. 91–92 Jn. 2.6–10. 93–94 Gen. 9.20–25. 95–96 Gen.19.30–38. 100 Ps. 68.16 (69.15). The language is that of the Vulgate translation of the Septuagint version. 101–102 Eph. 5.18. 105–108 Gen. 49.4, where Jacob calls his son Reuben “unstable as water” (“effusus ut aqua”), and accuses him of defiling his father’s bed. 109–110 Prov. 18.4. 111–12 Jn. 4.14. 1

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Song 1.2, 7.9. I print and translate the text as emended by Gregory Hays. 1 Jn. 5.6–11. The immediate reference is to Jn. 4.14, but the fons caritatis appears in a wide range of homiletic texts and sacred poetry. In Jer. 2.13 God speaks of himself as “the fountain of living water.” Alcuin compares the fons caritatis to the fountain of life in Paradise. In the twelfth century the Trinity is imagined as a fountain in Bernardus Silvestris, Microcosmus 5.3, and Alan of Lille, Anticlaudianus 6.234–48. 121 Acts 10.45, 11.17. 122 For the bride as vineyard (vineam), Song 8.12. 122–24 Song 2.4, 8.6–7. 125–28 Thetis presumably refers to the baptismal font, commonly though not invariably placed on the right or south side of the medieval church, near the entrance. But the line also recalls Ezekiel 47.1. 130 In the Vulgate version of Ps. 59 (60).5 based on the Septuagint, an angry God is said to have made his people drink “the wine of compunction” (vino compunctionis). 133–34 Bömer reads quos in 133, which he says should be understood as eos, qui, but the construction remains awkward; I read qui assuming that its referent is eos understood. 135 Compare Ambrose, “Aeterne rerum conditor,” 25–27, ed. Arthur Sumner Walpole, Early Latin Hymns (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 33–34: “Jesu, labantes respice, / et nos videndo corrige; / si respicis, lapsus cadunt.” 137 The reference is unclear. 138 Gen. 49.11. 139 This line may recall Gen. 27.37, where wine is the final item in the blessing bestowed by Isaac on Jacob. 140 Matt. 26.29; Mk. 14.25; Lk. 22.18. 143 The language recalls the waters “above the firmament” of Gen. 1.7, but the context suggests that the line refers to the water of life that flows from the throne of God in the new Jerusalem, Rev. 22.1. See above on 119. 145 Jn. 15.1–5. 146 Apparently a reference to the wedding at Cana: Christ declined to switch from wine to water and instead made more wine. 147 Song 8.2. 148 Jn. 7.38. I have followed Gregory Hays in replacing the unrhythmical fractus with ut, which restores rhythm and motivates the subjunctive probaret. 149–51 Ex. 14.21–29. 152 Ex. 15.1, where gloriose refers to the triumph of the Lord. 153–56 This stanza, which does not appear in the texts of Bömer and Novati, may be an interpolation. As  “Vir” in line  151 indicates, it is directed, not to Thetis, but to men, and it is not followed by an answering stanza from Thetis, but by a stanza which is clearly the climax of Bacchus’s argument. 153 obaudire, which in classical Latin means “hear,” “obey,” in medieval Latin can also mean “fail to hear,” “disobey.” 160 Lk. 2.14. The verse is completed by the birds in 164. 168 The narrator has evidently recited the “Gloria,” a very early Christian prayer which was introduced to the western Church by Hilary of Poitiers (d. 368), and was later incorporated into the Latin mass. It begins by quoting Lk. 2.14, and its final words are “in gloria Dei patris. Amen.”

St Edmund’s “Privatae Convenciones” and the Cockfield Case of 1201 Paul R. Hyams Cornell University When the Suffolk landed knight, Adam II of Cockfield, died in the mid-1190s, he managed to leave behind just one child, a daughter born in his final months. At such a time, the child’s christening party, if indeed he held one, cannot have been a merry affair. Just possibly this is why our sources for the story in this paper give her three different names, Margaret (as I shall call her), Margery, and ultimately Nesta.1 They accurately represent the truth, that the babe was important essentially as a means of transmission for the family lands and wealth. What worried the disappointed kinsfolk, friends, and neighbors clustering round the dying man’s bed was where those good things would now pass and in what manner. Their fear was that too much of this heritage would be lost to the family, possibly for good, while Margaret was surviving her first decade. The Cockfields were among the most prominent gentry tenants of St  Edmund, whose abbey at Bury dominated much of the shire. Members of the family frequently played significant roles in Bury’s seignorial politics, sometimes assuming administrative tasks for the house, often also out to appropriate their share, and more, of its bounty.2 The abbot had better pay close attention to deaths in such a family. Samson (c. 1135–1211), abbot since 1182, moved swiftly enough to take control of Adam’s three core manors in fee. Cockfield (which provided their toponymic surname), Semer, and Groton were all situated within a few miles of one another in south-eastern Suffolk, quite close to the monastery. Such estates, long-term but owing money rents and so somewhat less prestigious than fees held by knightly service, were coming to be described as held in fee-farm.3 Samson had to intervene to safeguard his saint’s perpetual right to the property and ensure Margaret’s peaceful succession by custom and the king’s law. Since she was both female and very much under age, he needed to assert his wardship over both Margaret and all property due to her on her majority, in order to take temporary but William Farrer, Honors and Knights’ Fees, 3 vols. (Manchester, 1923–1925), 3:362–63. Barbara Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 909– 1049 (Ithaca, 1989) is a classic account of the complex relations between a great abbey and its lay neighbors and clientele somewhat earlier. 3  John  Hudson, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, Volume  II: 871–1216 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 338–39, 633–35, etc. I return to the matter of tenure below. 1 

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profitable possession of this orphaned asset.4 Almost at once, king Richard I began to harass him with a request of the kind that could not be refused, on behalf of one Thomas de Burgh, whose brother, Hubert, was already an influential rising star at court.5 Samson resisted as manfully as he could, flourishing the name of St  Edmund, and made the best bargain he could for his house. When Thomas acquired the wardship at a price below market value, a substantial loss to the abbey, Samson had no option but to put Thomas into seisin of Margaret, but refused him those three core manors, when he put in his claim at the abbey’s court.6 Not put off by this temporary setback, Thomas moved, when ready, to acquire in his ward’s name a writ of mort d’ancestor in order to obtain seisin in Bury’s despite. The great abbey, with its liberties and overwhelming local landed power was well placed to influence, even manage, any trial in Bury, over the heads of the sitting royal justices. To optimize his chances, Thomas therefore had the case transferred out of Suffolk to be tried on the other side of the country, coram rege, very possibly in the presence of his royal patron. Moreover, later events suggest that he also persuaded the sheriff of Suffolk to pack the assize jury with knights having no reason to favor St Edmund’s lordship.7 In this chapter, I  shall re-examine the resulting lawsuit through four largely in­ dependent sources that make it possible to offer something like a microhistory of the Cockfield inheritance dispute,8 to explain how the abbey of Bury lost almost all of its rights in these three core fees, and to expand a little the context in which the narrative has previously been set.9 As evil as Thomas seemed to both medieval monks and many The Cockfields held much other real property in a variety of ways, below, pp. 448–49. Antonia Gransden, A  History of the Abbey of Bury St  Edmunds, 1182–1256 (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 55, 62, 69–71, 73–76, shows that Hubert was usually a great supporter of the house. 6  This secular jurisdiction may not yet have been clearly distinguished from the ecclesiastical one by which the abbot dispensed canonical justice over the monastic community and others. This paper derives from a project for a study of the medieval Lord’s Court, there being – astonishingly – no general study of this important institution in England. 7  I have failed to trace the proffers to the king by which Thomas secured these advantages from the rolls on which they should have been recorded. Angevin kings never gave such favors away free to any but the very greatest in the realm. Puzzlingly, Samson’s biographer, Jocelin, (see next note) never accuses Thomas of corruption, or criticizes his litigation strategy. 8  These are: (1) the royal plea roll, Curia Regis Rolls, vol. 1 (London, 1922), p. 430 [hereafter CRR]; (2)  the Life of Abbot Samson written after 1202 by a monk who knew him well; (3)  the Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, ed. and tr. Harold Edgeworth Butler (London, 1949) [hereafter JB]; (4) the brief but valuable memorandum on our case by the Bury chaplain William of Diss, placed at the end of the Chronicle and printed by Butler, Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, pp. 138–39 [hereafter WD], on which more below. 9  My interest in the case is of long standing. See my “The Common Law and the French Connection,” Anglo-Norman Studies 4 (1982), 82–83 and “The Charter as a Source for the Early Common Law,” Journal of Legal History 12 (1991), 180–81. I contributed a lecture on it to a Cambridge series in honor of Sir James Holt c. 1982, which remained unpublished after his account of the case in “Notions of Patrimony,” 4  5 

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modern readers, he had as colorable a case as any tenant seeking at this date to control “their” patrimony against the unjust exactions, as he contended, of his landlord. Even the fact that he would later marry Margaret followed a common enough pattern of guardians marrying their wards to secure their estates forever – because they could. I open with a narrative of the story behind the case. Then, in the second part of the paper, I seek to explain the origins and some of the wider significance of the privatae convenciones of my title.

Preparations for Battle A little after Easter in 1201, Margaret’s assize came before the king’s justices in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. Thomas was, of course, its real author. His writ in Margaret’s name claimed that her father had until his death held the estates “in demesne as of fee farm,” a claim that Adam (deceased) had held in hereditary fee albeit for a money rent. Thomas sought to enjoy these fruits while Margaret was a child and perhaps already thought of marrying her if she survived into adulthood. No sentiment here. As her father’s nearest heir, Margaret spelled money, and Thomas intended it to be his. Samson’s initial actions demonstrate that the lawsuit was equally important to Bury, especially once he received word of Thomas’s pre-trial politicking. Suits of mort d’ancestor in its first generation seem to have been less about inheritance than on the terms by which the deceased ancestor had held his land. Where the heir was undisputed, as here, the main issue was tenurial. Had Adam held “in demesne as of fee-farm” or not? And even that issue was more one of the duration and “quality” of his holding than its level or the rent and service due from it.10 The jurors had to focus on such quale (“how”) questions, notably whether Adam had held on terms that allowed him to die confident that his heir would succeed him in the same seisin, provided only that s/he did what was necessary to “relieve” it of her lord’s claims. This was about as close as the age came to modern ownership, with the abbot retaining for his saint the service, while his tenant held the land itself “in demesne.”11 Samson and his monks trusted that Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1983), 193–220. See also John Hudson, The Formation of the English Common Law (London, 1996), pp. 187–92, and id., Oxford History of the Laws, pp. 627–30. I wish I had discovered Gransden’s A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds sooner. 10  Hudson, Oxford History of the Laws, pp. 605–606. See below, p. 450, n. 19, for more on the question of what it meant to hold land, and how far men talked in 1201 in terms of what would become the Common Law “tenures,” on which see my “Notes on the Transformation of the Fief into the Common Law Tenure in Fee,” in Laws, Lawyers, and Texts: Studies in Medieval Legal History in Honour of Paul Brand, ed. Susanne Jenks, Jonathan Rose and Christopher Whittick (Leiden and Boston, 2012), pp. 21–49. 11  John Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford, 1994); id., Oxford History of the Laws; and John Marsh Kaye, Medieval English Conveyances (Cambridge, 2009), are good recent guides into the secondary literature on the twelfth-century development of heritable land fees since Samuel E. Thorne, “English Feudalism and Estates in Land,” Cambridge Law Journal 17 (1959), 193–209.

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the Cockfield interest in the three manors would remain in 1201 as it had always in their view been: to hold at will from their house, or in any event for no longer than the lifetime of the current tenant, so that each incoming postulant must negotiate a fresh bond of vassalic “friendship” with their monastic lords, with a rent rise always possible. At such moments an abbot, like any sensible litigant, turns to the key adviser on his legal team. William of Diss, not a monk but a secular cleric and chaplain, was a Suffolk man, who had served the house over a full generation and knew its archive like the back of his hand. Specifically, he could tell you which lands and offices the Cockfield family had held from Bury and on what terms, which had and which had not been granted heritably.12 He will have attended all the relevant abbey assemblies and private consultations with its advisers on Thomas’s lawsuit. We can measure the extent of his knowledge from his own memorandum on property relations with the Cockfields which found its way onto the end of Jocelin’s chronicle-life of Samson.13 This could well represent a pre-trial brief written for abbot Samson. To William fell the duty of reading documents out aloud in public when required, perhaps also for translating these into an acceptable vernacular paraphrase. He could, for instance, have explained to the court or to individual jurors that the civil war grants of Semer and Groton had been intended to safeguard them for St Edmund, that they doubled the previous rent while remaining at the monks’ will and without specifying a term, and unaccompanied by any charter to secure the holding in any way. The holder could not even be sure of holding it his whole lifetime. Such details marked the wartime grant as different than the Cockfield one, which was recorded by charter and might reasonably be expected to pass to the holder’s heirs. It is probably going too far to claim that even William believed that “hereditary tenure was synonymous with tenure by charter”; most of those attending the grant occasion believed the acts they witnessed as normative. When William writes of a cartam … hereditariam, he probably meant only that it should be taken as one specially weighty indication of the parties’ intentions.14 In any event, William knew of none for Cockfield. The closest was a single doubtful writ of Henry I’s, apparently confirming The Kalendar of Abbot Samson of Bury St Edmunds and Related Documents, ed. Ralph Henry Carless Davis (London, 1954), esp. index, s.v. “Agreements,” “Final Concords,” shows much that was available to William in the archive. 13  Jocelin’s 1949 editor worked from London, British Library, MS Harley 1005, and described William’s memorandum as an “appendix” (fol. 163r–v). Although William refers to himself in the first person, this memorandum appears simply as an extension to Jocelin’s main text, without heading, change of hand, or break. I am extremely grateful to Professor Julie Hofmann for kindly confirming this and another point at n. 25 below. 14  Holt, “Notions of Patrimony,” 196–97 in my opinion puts undue weight on William’s talk of “hereditary charters,” perhaps forgetting that these often were, as he himself noted, “produced in special circumstances.” 12 

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to Adam I, Adam’s grandfather, on condition that the rent was paid up to date, a firma – i.e. a life “lease,” ruling out any kind of hereditary feudum.15 All of William’s evidence naturally favors St Edmund’s case. True, he ended by admitting that he had heard Robert, Adam II’s father, express his belief that Cockfield represented his hereditary right propter longam tenuram unbroken since his own father Adam I’s day. But this he counters by his denial that Robert had ever had any charter from the monks de predicta terra, for that specific land. William, king of the archive, was possibly less well equipped for oral advocacy. But in any event, the assize’s summary procedure offered no opportunity for the long speeches that enliven so many case narratives related by churchmen. Jocelin mentions no outside pleaders for either party, and attributes Bury’s pleas, very much along the lines of William’s memorandum, to abbot Samson alone.16 In real life many people sought to tell the purportedly “self-informing” jury members how they should answer the questions put to them. William may have tried this, but we hear nothing of such matters.

A Travesty of a Trial? As the story reaches us, it was Abbot Samson who offered Bury’s exception to the assize, that is, its formal objection.17 The assize should not proceed concerning Semer and Groton, because Robert, Adam II’s father, had twice publicly acknowledged that he held these manors at the king’s request for life only, and had on his deathbed forbidden Adam to claim similar right after his death. Adam had therefore had to negotiate with the monks for his grant of a life interest in the three manors, secured by a chirograph (identical twin charters, one for each party) – the monks’ produced theirs and had it read aloud. As to Cockfield, Samson admitted, possibly after interrogation by the justices, that the dying Robert had expressed his belief in an inherited right; he could apparently raise no objection against the assize going ahead. The justices at once awarded Margaret her seisin of Cockfield, and the issue put to the assize jury was confined to the other two manors. On this, the assize knights had much to say. Adam II’s grandfather (Adam I) had held the manors the whole of his long life without challenge and had died on them (in illo). His son Robert likewise had held them until If this writ ever existed, it would be of unusual interest as a royal confirmation conditional on service or rent due to a mesne lord. 16  The plea rolls never mention pleaders at this date. So the silence of the plea roll cannot prove either that Samson spoke for his abbey, or indeed that baby Margaret did not plead on her own behalf! 17  The exception procedure (borrowed from Roman law) was a formal objection to stop the assize in its tracks or divert it into a side issue which could be put to a preliminary jury verdict: see Hudson, Oxford History of the Laws, pp. 593, 618–19 and Anne Duggan, “Roman, Canon and Common Law in Twelfth-Century England: The Council of Northampton (1164) Re-Examined,” Historical Research 83 (2010), 379–408, and on the Roman original, see Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (Philadelphia, 1953), pp. 458–59. 15 

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his own death there (in illis). They therefore well know18 and “on account of their long tenure” believe (credunt) that Adam had died “seised therein ut de feudofirma.”19 In other words, the jurors reported that physical control of the manors and their fruits had been passed down three generations without obstruction from the abbey or challenge by any claimants, peacefully and with full color of right. (To succeed in seizing, one needed to show not absolute right, just more right than the opposition; ius was not yet to be identified with Roman dominium.)20 Their verdict, tailored to meet the requirements of the writ, enabled them to find for Thomas and his infant ward. Yet they and their audience certainly knew that they were following an incomplete and loaded version of the truth. In addition to the chirograph relating to Semer and Groton, whose text the court had heard read aloud, the abbey possessed almost as strong documentation for Cockfield too and plenty of good witness. Neither the justices nor the king showed much interest in it.21 The court ruled that Margaret should have her seisin and the abbot be amerced (fined). In theory, after losing in the assize, Samson and his team could now have proceeded to sue Thomas and Margaret back in the right.22 But this would have been costly, slow and difficult. Thomas now had seisin of both land and heir, and all the litigation cards. The monks surely understood from the start how much the move to Tewkesbury had complicated their task.23 Not only would the abbot on his home turf have been able to influence jury selection, but in all probability the justices’ deliberations too. In Bury the assize knights, though many of them were presumably not Bury vassals, might never have dared deem the monks’ charter to have no force (nullam vim), nor would it have mattered if “the whole court was against us.”24 But in far-away Gloucestershire, the knights could dare to claim they knew nothing “de cartis nostris, nec de priuatis The words “set bene sciunt quod” were apparently inserted into the entry after its completion. So CRR, whose clerk was probably quoting the writ wording, which will have varied from the exemplar in Glanvill, 13.3, ed. George Derek Gordon Hall, The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England Commonly Called Glanvill, Oxford Medieval Texts (London, 1993), p. 150 to take account of the fact that rent alone was due. This suggests that the legal establishment already saw fee-farm as a “tenure,” that defined the pecuniary nature of the quid pro quo and the grant’s duration. 20  This is proven by the use of “maius ius” in the writs for the Grand Assize: see Glanvill, 2.8, ed. Hall, p. 29; 2.11, ed. Hall, p. 30. Glanvill’s treatment of the Breve de recto basically supports this reading, despite some apparently inconsistent references to ius (and rectum) in the singular. 21  There is nothing new about this situation. An  eleventh-century archbishop of Canterbury had complained to king Cnut that “he had charters of freedom in plenty, if only they were good for anything,” S. 985 (1017/20), in Florence E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), pp. 181–82 (no. 26). 22  By a Breve de recto or Praecipe writ. 23  Because of the abbey’s many royal privileges, the abbot actually sat with the justices, when they came to try cases at the regular eyre sessions in Bury where St Edmund’s power and influence was hard to challenge: see Gransden, History of the Abbey of Bury, pp. 236–37. 24  JB, p. 124. 18 

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conventionibus.” They could declare, in Jocelin’s words, that the Cockfields had, one after the other, held the manors in feudum firmum for a hundred years back on the days when they were alive and dead, a declaration that sounds as if it might be very close to words actually spoken in court.25 Given the suspiciously precise wording of their verdict, it almost looks if they had been coached on what to say. But – if the editor has his text right – they went on to express the way Adam’s two predecessors had held the manors neither in terms of the common lawyers’ emerging fee-farm tenure (as the plea roll clerk did) nor in the language of a schools-trained canonist. Instead, they echo the vernacular of their neighbors. The Cockfields had always held these manors in the same way as their peers, as a firm (i.e. stable and lasting) fee. Ergo, their most recent member, little Margaret, should continue so to do. What more was there to say? Jocelin himself cannot conceal the monks’ shock at this cruel injustice.26 And in such a manner, he moans, were we disseized by court judgment despite all our efforts and expense. Like both their monastic brothers and the educated secular clergy too, the monks took their written parchments more seriously than their secular neighbors and benefactors yet did. Because the lay gentry possessed all the hard power, the clergy could secure its pious and comfortable lifestyle without costly royal intervention only through the parchments in their archive. When the right documents were not there, plenty of them felt the urge to create what they needed in a “golden age of forgery.”27 And, in a period when the Church increasingly pressured churchmen to ensure the inalienability of the property endowments committed to their care during their individual lifetimes,28 the loss of these key estates so shamefully stripped away by bloodied knightly hands was one the monks of Bury would not easily forget or accept. Jocelin acidly comments that his abbot had seemingly been deceived by the specter of justice to a devastating loss of his and his saint’s honor.29 JB, p. 124. The knights were careful to distinguish between their knowledge (se nescire) and their beliefs (se credere). But if the editor has his text right, they expressed the nature of the two past generations in layman’s language rather than plea rolls legalese. Examination of the manuscript (London Harley 1005, fol. 158r), confirms the editor’s reading. 26  Yet Glanvill had already presented as settled law the unique power of a royal charter to establish the required tenure in a mort d’ancestor, below p. 456. 27  As Adrian Morey and Christopher N. L. Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters (Cambridge, 1965), p. 128, describe the decades around 1100. But even canonists preferred live witness, below, p. 453. 28  The best introduction to this topic in the English context remains Mary Cheney, “Inalienability in mid-twelfth-century England: Enforcement and Consequences,” in Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. Stephan Kuttner and Kenneth Pennington (Vatican City, 1985), pp. 467–78. See further John Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship, pp. 230–51 (= ch. 8). 29  JB, p. 124. This is my free understanding of the paragraph that follows Jocelin’s account of the case. It cites Horace’s Ars Poetica and alludes to the Old Testament, Is. 42.8 and 48.11, whose reference to gloria he converts to honor! I need our honorand’s interpretative assistance – not for the first time – to check my reading here. 25 

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Abbot Samson seems to have been surprisingly unprepared to meet the privata convencio argument. He had had to get up canonical procedure in a hurry early but never studied secular law, perhaps relying overmuch on native wit to get him through.30 His recorded defense of Cockfield was designed to parry an attack never made. Team St Edmund should surely not have been caught napping. By 1201 at least some in the king’s itinerant curia regis must have been aware of the privata conventio tag and its technical sense in the schools and ecclesiastical courts. That it implied something more important than the common-sense reading given it by our modern translations was no secret. The status of private commitments in royal courts, whether made and recorded in writing or not, was no new issue in the royal courts either. Several royal justices had studied the learned law of the ius commune, canon law and its Roman parent, in one or other of the new law schools. The distinction between public and private law was so basic to the subject that new students met it close to the very start of their course. Ius publicum concerned Rome and the state, ius privatum matters useful to individuals. It followed that public pronouncements, imperial enactments, carried more weight than merely private ones. Within this private law, conventio was a general term for agreements made between private individuals, such as contracts and litigation settlements,31 and agreements made ex privata causa were naturally enough subordinated to public treaties and the like.32 A classical Roman jurist, Paulus, had consequently declared in his Sententiae that “functio dotis pacto mutari non potest, quia privata conventio iuri publico nihil derogat.”33 This became available to canonists and other literati through one of the most widely read pre-Gratian canonical collections.34 Additionally, the widely cited maxim conventio

Jocelin says that he acquired his secular law from the judge’s bench, “naturali ratione ductus” (JB, p. 34). 31  Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary, pp.  415–16. But  the persuasive thesis of Stroud Francis Charles Milsom, “Reason in the Development of the Common Law,” in id., Studies in the History of the Common Law (London, 1985), ch. 6, underestimates the problematic nature of the term; on this see Anglo-Norman Dictionary, ed. William Rothwell et al. (London, 1977–92), s.v. “covenant” and the range of conventio cognates in Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. Ronald E. Latham et al. (­Oxford, 2018). 32  Inst. 1.1.4, ed. Paul Krüger, Corpus Iuris Civilis, vol. 1, 17 th ed. (Berlin, 1963), p. 1: ius privatum treated what was ad singulorum utilitatem. See Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary, pp. 651, 661, s.v. privatim, privatus (adj.), publice, publicus. But canonists had their own line on this by 1200; see Kenneth Pennington, “Gratian, Causa 19, and the Birth of Canonical Jurisprudence,” in Panta rei: studi dedicati a Manlio Bellomo, ed. Orazio Condorelli, vol. 4 (Rome, 2004), pp. 339–55, at 341–47. 33  Paulus, Sententiae 1.1.6, ed. Emil Seckel and Bernhard Kuebler, Iurisprudentiae anteiustinianae reliquiae, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1911), p. 17. English students had access to such texts from the 1190s; see Peter Stein, “The Vacarian School,” Journal of Legal History 13 (1992), 23–31, at p. 26. 34  Ivo of Chartres (?), Decretum 201 (PL 167:943A). The fact that the next text (202 in Migne’s manuscript) is headed “Quae actiones in haeredes transeant” may well have caught the attention of searchers interested in cases like ours. 30 

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­vincit legem35 though perhaps originally descriptive of the purpose of all agreements also helped to explain the attraction of the privatae convenciones formula. Thin though this trace is, it suggests one way in which the message on privatae convenciones could reach almost anyone who had studied the learned laws. The anonymous author of a treatise written in the late 1180s and circulating later under the name “Glanvill,”36 was one such. Writing explicitly on the law of his king’s court, he produced what the French might a little later have called its stilus curie.37 His use of the privata convencio tag gives us a reason why Team Bury should probably not have been surprised by the reference to it in 1201. The issue addressed was one that must have constantly troubled secular courts. What was the status of written documentation? Were charters merely aides-mémoires to recall what had been done and said on a particular occasion, no more probative because they were now set into writing? Or did the parchment convert the words it carried into proof that what was inscribed committed its grantor (and his heirs) for the future?38 Was it dispositive? Although scholars usually present this question as a matter of diplomatic rules on proper documentary drafting, the underlying essence of the matter is how to keep a man to his word. Most medieval discussion on the subject was moral. Ecclesiastical litterati certainly emphasized the value of writings more than their secular kinsmen. Yet, at least in northern Europe, even canonists retained a preference for live witness as against the dead leather of animals and what was scratched on top of it.39 Since men lie almost as freely with the pen as orally, neither constituted conclusive Dig. 16.3.1.6, ed. Theodor Mommsen and Paul Krüger, Corpus Iuris Civilis, vol. 1, 17 th ed. (Berlin, 1963), pp. 242–43: “contractus enim legem ex conventione accipiunt.” See Richard L. Keyser, “Agreement Supersedes Law, and Love Judgment: Legal Flexibility and Amicable Settlement in Anglo-­Norman England,” Law and History Review 30 (2012), 37–88. 36  The edition by Hall (as in n. 19) is the starting point for discussions of authorship, dating (1187/9), and influences. My  suggestion long ago in “The  Common Law and the French Connection,” Anglo-­ Norman Studies 4 (1982), 77–92, 196–200, that this work be regarded as the first of the thirteenth-century coutumiers, is quite consistent with its author’s exposure to the ius commune. 37  Glanvill, 14.8, ed. Hall, p. 177, ends his book with a declaration that his principal purpose was to consider only the curia regis. The volume Stilus – Modus – Usus, ed. Jessika Nowak and Georg Strack (Turnhout, 2019) is now the work to consult on stilus curiae. 38  Note Pilate’s refusal to change his inscription on the Crucifixion: “quod scripsi scripsi,” below at n. 55. 39  Bruce Brasington, Order in the Court: Procedural Treatises in Translation (Leiden, 2016), p.  133, n. 124, 251, n. 432, citing Jean-Philippe Lévy, La hiérarchie des preuves dans le droit savant du Moyen-Âge (Paris, 1939), pp. 89–90; Chris Wickham, Courts and Conflict in Twelfth-Century Tuscany (Oxford, 2003), p. 152; see also Ricardus Anglicus, Die Summa De Ordine Iudiciario des Ricardus Anglicus, ed. Ludwig Wahrmund, Quellen zur Geschichte des Römisch-Kanonischen Processes im Mittelalter, vol. 2.3 (Innsbruck, 1915), pp.  51–53. Eadmer, Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed.  Martin Rule (London, 1884), p.  138, gives a colorful early twelfth-century anecdotal expression of this prejudice from the papal curia itself. 35 

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proof, though public or notarially authenticated writings came closest. Thus, as I understand it, even in the twelfth century documents were, if always respected, seldom essential.40 Moreover, if documents did not automatically commit their authors to perform what they had promised to (or in) the Church, we should not expect lay men and women to regard them as placing an unbreakable bond on them either. In all moral and legal decisions the ultimate judge was God, and the laity had their own methods of seeking what they represented as God’s judgments, sealed by oaths, but also by other means soon to be dismissed as irrational. It was in the long twelfth century not the principle of divine judgment that was doubted, but the methods by which it should be sought.41 Courts informed God towards His judgment by offering him a witness to the truth, guaranteed by individual oaths on holy objects. But the judgment thus generated was His alone. Written charters had, of course, long been part of lay justice too. But in England at least, the practice of recording in writing the private acts of such gentry as the Cockfields was unusual into the mid-twelfth century. Before the 1160s, many lay charters were only written down in order to safeguard odd or atypical acts.42 Even in 1201, run-of-the-mill charter grants like the Cockfield ones were only beginning to seem routine.43 This seems to have been the situation in which the Glanvill author applied to his king, Henry II, the privileges that Roman law had conferred upon the emperor.44 He took royal acts as “public” in contrast to all others, which were private. (Maybe this is why draftsmen or archive custodians sometimes stressed the preliminary negotiations between the parties as to a convencio.)45 It is worth establishing this point from the details of his whole text, which is most likely the ultimate source from which those

Brasington, Order in the Court, pp. 163, 203. The best short introductions to proof in the canonists are: James A. Brundage, “Full and Partial Proof in Classical Canonical Procedure,” Jurist 67 (2007), 58–71, and Richard H. Helmholz, Oxford History of the Laws of England, vol. 1: The History of the Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction 597–1649 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 327–41. For secular practice, see Helmholz’s index s.v. “Proof.” 42  The key legal change here was the introduction from the 1160s of Romano-canonical dual process, by which petty assizes largely bypassed the slow divine proof process which was now confined to actions in the right. 43  Obviously, such a claim cannot be established from extant written evidence. But the famous remarks of c. 1180 against the sealing of charters by petty knights comparable to the Cockfields by a great man who should have known what he was talking about, The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. and trans. Eleanor Searle (Oxford, 1980), p. 214, imply a process of charter sealing at that social level under way but still incomplete. 44  See Kenneth Pennington, The Prince and the Law, 1200–1600 (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 8–37 (= ch. 1). 45  See above, p. 451 and below. 40  41 

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Suffolk knights derived their dismissive tag of privatae convenciones. It makes sense to start with Glanvill’s two direct references to privatae convenciones. Neither of these directly mentions land title or heritability. That these come in his book on debt, patently organized round basic principles of Roman law, should perhaps have warned us that the phrase meant more than “private agreements,”46 and that its resonances might come from something more specialized than simple vernacular common sense. For the fact is that the public/private distinction was for him a principle so basic and evident that it needed no justification. He  has used in this book (Book 10) a slew of Roman law technical terms otherwise rare in England.47 The first passage was prompted by gages (as in “mortgages”) intended to secure money loans. It  says that the king was not in the habit of protecting or warranting (i.e. endorsing with his approval) these kinds of privatae convenciones. The  second comes in a summary at the end of the book. He explains that he has been treating some “contractus qui ex privatorum consensu fiunt,” which presumably means acts or agreements whose force rested solely on what the privati who made them could give it themselves. He repeats his denial that the king’s court would protect privatae convenciones and, slightly oddly, further extends this to cover contractus resembling these. Like all Christians, the king was expected to keep his own word once given (warranty), and, as the lawgiver, he expected that ordinary mortals should do the same. His justices willingly saw to this but no more. That our author stated the matter explicitly only in this context was perhaps due to the tainted reputation of the loan business. His only other explicit indication of the distinction between public and private also comes in a context of disapproved conduct. In his final book, a public law appendix, as it were, on criminal pleas, he had to discuss the crimen falsi, a broad category covering various kinds of forgery including charters.48 To falsify a carta regia, he says, constitutes the capital offence of lèse-majesté,49 whereas the same act on a carta privata was The editor’s translation in Glanvill 10.8, ed. Hall, p. 124; 18, p. 132, as in JB, p. 124. Arguably there was a convencio behind every charter grant (Hyams, “The Charter as a Source,” p. 174). 47  The author’s other use of contractus is at 10.14, ed. Hall, p. 130. There was probably as yet no agreed technical equivalent in English legal parlance for our modern “contract,” and he had used another quasisynonym, pactum, in the previous sentence. For some Latin possibilities, see Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary, pp. 413–14, 415–16, 614–16, 651, s.vv. contractus, conventio (and cognates), pactum, privatus, and DMLBS, s.v. contractus, pactum, etc. But none of these was in the French that would provide the lawyers with their professional vocabulary. 48  Glanvill, 14.7, ed. Hall, pp. 176–77. Glanvill’s list includes coins, weights and measures, etc., which all come under the broad Roman head of falsum; see Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary, p. 467. While Roman law influence on forgery offenses was very ancient by the 1180s, the legal distinction between crime and civil wrongs (tort) in English courts dates only from 1166; see Paul Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca, 2003), pp. 220–24. 49  Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary, s.vv. crimen maiestatis, maiestas, pp. 418, 572–73. 46 

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more leniently punished by a mere corporeal penalty, which a merciful king might even pardon.50 The underlying message for landholders seems clear: to be fully secure on your property, the wise should buy a royal confirmation. Now, there had, indeed, been a flurry of royal charter grants after Henry II’s accession, as at the start of every new reign. But after 1154, because of the recent civil war, the volume was bigger than usual, and may have amounted to more than half of the total for the whole reign, while Henry was confirming his supporters in both ancestral and newly acquired lands.51 Their numbers were high enough to affect property law in general. Angevin supporters naturally expected an end to all claims from rivals who had chosen the wrong side. This may explain why the courts of Glanvill’s day accepted a royal confirmation as proof of tenure “in demesne as of fee” sufficient to defeat an assize of mort d’ancestor.52 The important increase in royal jurisdiction over real property resulting in good measure from this must have become quite noticeable by the 1180s. The principle that royal authority was special and enhanced by a uniquely public character that could best be implemented through his written word, is a given throughout Glanvill’s treatise. “Public” justice remained personal to the crowned king. One writ, for example, which forbade royal justices to delegate their trial duties to others without the king’s warrant, implicitly proclaimed that such (public) power was not to operate at the will of his justices but only by the king’s warrant.53 Our author believed his king to be endowed with special powers through his public role of ruling in the common interest. He could claim to wield an authority derived from his publica potestas54 that was superior to and quite different in kind from that of the most powerful prelate or baron. See also Dialogus de Scaccario 1.5, ed. Charles Johnson (Oxford, 1983), p. 31 and 14, p. 62, on royal acts as scriptae patentes, i.e. privilegia and “public documents,” according to the original edition by Arthur Crump, Charles G. Hughes and Charles Johnson, De necessariis observantiis scaccarii dialogus: ­Commonly called Dialogus de scaccario (Oxford, 1902), pp. 181–82, which had to remain erasure-free. 51  Thomas K. Keefe, “Place-date Distribution of Royal Charters and the Historical Geography of Patronage at the Court of King Henry II Plantagenet,” Haskins Society Journal 2 (1990), 179–188 at p. 181. 52  Though Glanvill, 13.11, ed. Hall, pp. 154–55, presents this plea in a section devoted to mort d’ancestor, it must surely apply to any “holding whose seisin was sought by assize.” A fortiori, the king’s justices could surely not deny land claimed in the right to any plaintiff armed with his charter. 53  This writ, Glanvill, 12.19, ed. Hall, p. 145, probably originated in some specific but undocumented judicial malfeasance, and never reached the registers. Its inclusion is noteworthy, given that papal judges delegate could sub-delegate without having to consult the pope. He placed it among a series of writs that expanded royal jurisdiction by commanding sheriffs unable to do right themselves to surrender cognizance (back) to the king, Glanvill, 12.9, ed. Hall, p. 141; see also 12.10–22, ed. Hall, pp. 141–47; these merit study as a group. 54  This formula was widely understood in Angevin court circles. Examples are John of Salisbury, ­Policraticus, 4.1.12, ed.  Clement  C.  J. Webb, 2  vols. (London, 1909), 1:235–36 and 4.2.3, pp.  278–79; 50 

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The Glanvill author shares the universal if banal sentiment of keeping one’s word. The  king himself was proverbially bound to this, a rule which some turned into a doctrine that the royal word, if not incontrovertible, at least exceeded other forms of proof.55 Our author, however, confines himself to the routine practice of the courts. This was, as we have seen, that nobody should expect the king’s justices to aid their efforts to implement agreements to which he himself was not in some sense a party. They should rely on their own resources (which might include self-help) or lesser, more local, courts, including those of the Church.56 But  the wealthy and well connected could always directly seek aid from the king as fount of all justice – at a price. Records survive of a decent scattering of Justicies writs, ordering their addressees (not always a sheriff) to command those allegedly in breach of their undertaken promises to perform their obligations or come and justify their non-compliance. These seem already from the 1160s to follow an almost standard form envisioning judicial argument in the shire court, and close to that of the future common-law writ of Covenant, which is becoming visible in the records from the 1190s.57 It  would be enlightening to understand why this did not become a writ “of course” (available to all for a small fee) like so many others. But almost all early writs of this type concerned land transactions, naturally enough since all land grants rested on previous agreement between the parties.58 Many, indeed, must have resembled our Bury case, in that they seem to have pitted lay inheritance claims against ecclesiastical life grants in the form of reversionary leases and often supported by writings. Perhaps it was thought therefore that the new real property writs and actions (including our assize) adequately met the demand. Dialogus de Scaccario, 1.8, ed. Johnson, p. 46, and 2.4, p. 84; Ralph of Diss, in Radulfi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis opera historica, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1876), 1:234. See also Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. potestas, esp. senses 4, 8. 55  Thomas D. Hill, “Stet verbum Regis: Why Henryson’s Husbandman is Not a King,” English Studies 86 (2005), 127–32. For the incontrovertibility of the royal word, see Frederick Pollock and Frederic W. Maitland, History of English Law, 2nd  ed., 2  vols. (Cambridge, 1898), 2:669; Julius Goebel, Felony and Misdemeanor (Philadelphia, 1937; repr. 1976), pp. 49–51. Note also Jn. 19.20–22, where Pilate is made to announce that, “What I have written, I have written,” a text that happens to feature on the Cloisters Cross from Bury itself. 56  There is almost no literature on non-royal enforcement, and the most cited study remains Robert L. Henry, Contracts in the Local Courts of Medieval England (London, 1926). Nor, apart from a brief ­mention in Hudson, Oxford History of the Laws, p. 692, is there much on the pre-history of the action of Covenant. But Keyser, “Agreement Supersedes Law” (as in n. 35), tries to make sense of the difficult material from the early twelfth century. 57  Raoul  C. Van Caenegem, Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanvill (London, 1959), ­i ndex, s.v. conventio produces several examples from the footnotes, and no. 163 (1163/6), which may be compared with common-law forms in Elsa De Haas and George Derek Gordon Hall, Early Registers of Writs (London, 1970), Hib 49 (note rubric), CA 36. 58  As I noted in my “The Charter as a Source,” p. 174.

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And again, there is that slight smell of the loan business and usury, since leases and gages were conceptually so closely intertwined.59 In 1201, one had to pay to get one’s private charter agreement considered by a royal court. There was no routine settled procedure for the purpose. One might expect the Cockfield dispute to have become a “leading case” on the subject. But there is no sign that contemporaries thought in such terms yet. The more defined doctrine of precedent, stare decisis, and the official record and professional lawyers’ Year Books required to make such a notion workable, were still to emerge. Even so, the doctrine those anonymous Suffolk knights were proclaiming, that the courts did not have to register the contents of private charters when trying actions like our assize, can reasonably claim to represent current practice in the decades around 1200. The occasions when such “private,” non-royal, charters and agreements were judicially examined were never routine, always in some way special. One of the most important effects of the Angevin law reforms seems thus to have been to encourage royal justices to dismiss written documents (and formal oral witness) from consideration before judgment in what would become the “possessory” actions concerning seisin, suits like our assize. This enabled gentry families like the Cockfields with long and honorable connections to their estates, to convert de facto control and long enjoyment of “their” property into something protected against challenge from anyone, including the lords to whom they now owed in law little beyond due service. It was these sitting tenants, not their baronial betters, whom God and the king’s justice would now recognize as having greater right (maius ius) than all other humans. Abbot Samson and Team Bury were anachronisms in a way, still intellectually embedded in a past which had expected vassals to perform agreements with their lord, without routine right of appeal. Jocelin of Brakelond and William of Diss were peddling a commodity past its sell-by date. Once upon a time powerful lords never doubted that they could by their social position and through their own courts confidently require tenants to stick to old deals about the quality and duration of their landholdings. No longer, or not without the expense and prolonged effort of suits in the right, with no certainty of ultimate success.60 Provision of standard writs to cover leases and gages begins to show from Glanvill, 10.9, ed. Hall, pp. 125 and 13.26–30, pp. 164–66, but needs more space than is available here. Though the eventual rule was that only sealed writings were enforced by the courts, this requirement did not exist in 1201. Alfred W. B. Simpson, A History of the Common Law of Contract (Oxford, 1987), pp. 9–52 (= ch. 1), esp. pp. 10–11, summarizes medieval developments, but does not go properly into the way the law came to be settled. As for the 1234 case widely cited as a possible first sighting of the rule, now printed as Curia Regis Rolls, 15.1073 (Coram Rege, 1234–35), Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, 2:220, n. 1, who miscite the MS reference (!), seem to me also to have misstated its relevance. 60  The monks of Bury never forgot their former position and returned to the attack each time they thought they saw an opportunity: see Gransden, History of the Abbey of Bury, p. 184, and especially Vivian 59 

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This attempt to further contextualize the Cockfield saga and reconcile the differing accounts in our sources has alerted me to a number of possible problems with aspects of our received narrative of the legal changes in both the birth of the common law and England’s place in the triumph of classical canon law in the West. People must have discussed this intriguing story for a while over Suffolk hall dinners, perhaps also at moots and around the inns of court and Westminster Hall where budding lawyers gathered to learn their trade. Naturally, this is not the place to pursue such matters. It is my hope that our honorand will enjoy it for itself, and enjoyed spotting the errors of interpretation as well as the occasional clever bits. If she were to offer me corrections of Latinity, logic or scholarly method, they would of course be gladly received; it would not be my first time.

Hunter Galbraith, “The Death of a Champion,” in Studies in Medieval History presented to F. M. Powicke, ed. Richard W. Hunt, William Abel Pantin, and Richard W. Southern (Oxford, 1948), pp. 283–95.

Danuta R. Shanzer: Bibliography 1982–2021 1982 Review article on William Harris Stahl, Richard Johnson & Evan Laurie Burge, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, vols 1–2. In Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 104, 110–17. 1983 “How long was Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus?,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 18, 233–37. “Me quoque excellentior: Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae 4.6.38,” Classical Quarterly 33, 277–83. “Ennodius, Boethius, and the Date and Interpretation of Maximianus’s Elegia III,” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 111, 183–95. 1984 “Three Textual Problems in Martianus Capella,” Classical Philology 79, 142–45. “The Death of Boethius and the Consolation of Philosophy,” Hermes 112, 352–66. “Tatwine: An Independent Witness to the text of Martianus Capella’s De  Grammatica?,” ­R ivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 112, 292–313. 1985 “Merely a Cynic Gesture?,” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 113, 61–66. 1986 A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella’s ‘De Nuptiis Philologiae et ­Mercurii’ Book 1. University of California Publications in Classical Studies 32. Berkeley. “The Late Antique Tradition of Varro’s ONOS LYRAS,” Rheinisches Museum 129, 272–85. “De Iovis exterminatione,” Hermes 114, 382–83. “The Anonymous Carmen contra paganos and the Date and Identity of the Centonist Proba,” Revue des études augustiniennes 32, 232–48. “Felix Capella: Minus Sensus Quam Nominis Pecudalis.” Review article on Martianus Capella ed. James A. Willis. In Classical Philology 81, 62–81. 1987 With Margaret Gibson and Nigel Palmer. “The Anticlaudianus in the British Isles,” Studi ­Medievali 28, 905–1001. “De Tagetis exaratione,” Hermes 115, 127–28. “Rutilius Namatianus,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol.  10, ed. Joseph Reese Strayer. New York. Pp. 597–98.

D O I 10 .14 8 4/ M . P J M L . 5 .1 2 8 7 3 2 : 4 61– 4 6 9 ©

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1988 Review of Christine Ratkowitsch, Maximianus Amat: zu Datierung und Interpretation des ­Elegikers Maximian. In Gnomon 60, 259–61. 1989 “The Date and Composition of Prudentius’s Contra Orationem Symmachi Libri,” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 117, 442–62. “The Punishment of Bertrand de Born,” Yearbook of Italian Studies 8, 95–97. “Allegory and Reality: Spes, Victoria and the Date of Prudentius’s Psychomachia,” Illinois Classical Studies 14, 347–63. “Alan of Lille, Contemporary Annoyances, and Dante,”Classica et Mediaevalia 40, 251–69. 1990 “Asino vectore virgo regia fugiens captivitatem: Apuleius and the Tradition of the Protoevangelium Jacobi,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 84, 221–29. “Once again Tiberianus and the Pervigilium Veneris,” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 118, 306–18. “A New Prologue for Alain de Lille’s De Planctu Nature?,” in Arbor amoena comis: 25  Jahre ­Mittellateinisches Seminar in Bonn 1965–1990, ed. Ewald Könsgen. Stuttgart. Pp. 163–74. “Rhetoric and Art, Art and Ceremony, Martyrs and History, Martyrs and Myth: Some Interdisciplinary Explorations of Late Antiquity.” Review article on Sabine MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity; Martha Malamud, A Poetics of Transformation: Prudentius and Classical Mythology; Anne-Marie Palmer, Prudentius on the Martyrs; Michael Roberts, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity. In Envoi 2, 231–68. Review of Robert McMahon, Augustine’s Prayerful Ascent: An Essay on the Literary Form of the Confessions. In Envoi 2, 411–18. 1991 “Parturition Through the Nostrils? Thirty-Three Textual Problems in Alain de Lille’s De Planctu Nature,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 26, 140–49. “Arcanum Varronis iter: Licentius’s Verse Epistle to Augustine,” Revue des études augusti­niennes 37, 110–43. Review of Michael Roberts, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase in Late Antiquity. In ­R omance Philology 44, 472–78. 1992 “Latent Narrative Patterns, Allegorical Choices, and Literary Unity in Augustine’s Confessions,” Vigiliae Christianae 46, 40–56. Review of Restauration und Erneuerung: die lateinische Literatur von 284 bis 374 n.  Chr., ed. ­Reinhart Herzog. In Journal of Roman Studies 82, 244–45.

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Review of Marianne Kah, “Die Welt der Römer mit der Seele suchend …” Die Religiosität des Prudentius im Spannungsfeld zwischen ‘pietas christiana’ und ‘pietas romana.’ In  Gnomon 64, 676–80. 1993 “Iuvenes Vestri Visiones Videbunt: Visions and the Literary Sources of Patrick’s Confessio,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 3, 169–201. 1994 “The Date and Identity of the Centonist Proba,” Recherches augustiniennes 27, 74–96. “A New Edition of Sedulius Scottus’s Carmina.” Review article on Sedulii Scotti Carmina, ed. Jean Meyers. In Medium Aevum 63, 104–17. Review of Latin vulgaire-latin tardif. Actes du Ier Colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif (Pécs, 2–5 septembre 1985), ed. József Herman. In Romance Philology 47, 324–32. Review of Gerard O’Daly, The Poetry of Boethius. In Medium Aevum 63, 306–307. 1996 “Pears before Swine: Augustine, Confessions 2.4.9,” Revue des études augustiniennes 42, 45–55. “Piscatum Opiparem … Praestinavi: Apuleius, Met. 1, 24–25,” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 124, 445–54. Review article on Lucio Cristante, Martiani Capellae De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ­Liber IX. In Gnomon 68, 13–28. Review of Bernhard Pabst, Prosimetrum: Tradition und Wandel einer Literaturform zwischen Spätantike und Spätmittelalter. In Speculum 71, 749–52. “Martianus Capella,” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., ed. Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth. Oxford. Pp. 932–33. 1997 “Two Clocks and a Wedding: Theodoric’s Diplomatic Relations with the Burgundians,” ­R omanobarbarica 14, 225–58. “The Date and Literary Context of Ausonius’s Mosella: Ausonius, Symmachus, and the ­Mosella,” in Style and Tradition: Studies in Honour of Wendell Clausen, ed. Peter Knox and Clive Foss. Stuttgart. Pp. 286–307. Review of Peter Dronke, Verse with Prose: The Mixed Form from Petronius to Dante. In Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 32.2, 26–32. Review of The Berlin Commentary on Martianus Capella’s De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii Book I, ed. Haijo Jan Westra. In Speculum 72, 238–40. 1998 “The Date and Literary Context of Ausonius’s Mosella: Valentinian I’s Alemannic Campaigns and an Unnamed Office-Holder,” Historia 47, 204–33.

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“Dating the Baptism of Clovis: The Bishop of Vienne vs. the Bishop of Tours,” Early Medieval Europe 7, 29–57. “Text, Image, and Translations: The Marriage of Philology and Botticelli?.” Review article on Gabriella Moretti, I Primi volgarizzamenti italiani delle Nozze di Mercurio e Filologia. In International Journal of the Classical Tradition 5, 79–88. 1999 Review of George  W. Shea, The Poems of Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus. In  Classical Review 49, 404–406. Review of Sabine MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine. In Catholic Historical Review 85, 439–41. “Martianus Capella,” in Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, ed. Glen Warren Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar. Cambridge, Mass. P. 566. 2001 (ed.) With Ralph W. Mathisen. Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul: Revisiting the Sources. Aldershot. “Bishops, Letters, Fast, Food, and Feast in Later Roman Gaul,” in Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul: Revisiting the Sources, ed. Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer. Aldershot. Pp. 217–36. Review of Christian Rohr, Der Theoderich-Panegyricus des Ennodius. In  Speculum 76, 446–49. Review of Alexander Arweiler, Die Imitation antiker und spätantiker Literatur in der Dichtung ‘De spiritalis historiae gestis’ des Alcimus Avitus. In Classical Review 51, 264–65. Review of Dennis E. Trout, Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems. In Catholic Historical Review 87, 481–83. Review of Peter Godman, The Silent Masters: Latin Literature and Its Censors in the High ­Middle Ages. In English Historical Review 116, 1218–19. 2002 With Ian Wood. Letters and Selected Prose of Avitus of Vienne, Translated Texts for Historians 38. Liverpool. “Avulsa a latere meo: Augustine’s Spare Rib – Augustine Confessions 6.15.25,” Journal of Roman Studies 92, 157–76. “History, Romance, Love, and Sex in Gregory of Tours’ Decem Libri Historiarum,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood. Leiden. Pp. 395–418. “Laughter and Humour in the Early Medieval Latin West,” in Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Guy Halsall. Cambridge. Pp. 25–47. Review of André-Louis Rey, Centons Homériques. In Speculum 77, 1382–84.

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2003 “So Many Saints – So Little Time … the Libri Miraculorum of Gregory of Tours,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 13, 19–60. Review of Stephanie  A.  H. Kennell, Magnus Felix Ennodius: A  Gentleman of the Church. In Classical Review 53, 391–94. 2004 “Epilogue,” in Romane Memento: Vergil in the Fourth Century, ed.  Roger Rees. London. Pp. 201–13. “Intentions and Audiences: History, Hagiography, Martyrdom, and Confession in Victor of Vita’s Historia Persecutionis,” in Vandals, Romans and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late ­Antique North Africa, ed. Andrew Merrills. Aldershot. Pp. 271–90. Review article on Martin Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century. In Medieval Prosopography 23, 247–66. Review of R.  Newhauser, The Early History of Greed: The Sin of Avarice in Early Medieval Thought and Literature. In Journal of English and Germanic Philology 103, 532–35. 2005 “Augustine’s Disciplines: Silent diutius Musae Varronis?,” in Augustine and the Disciplines: From Cassiciacum to ‘Confessions,’ ed. Karla Pollmann and Mark Vessey. Oxford. Pp. 69–112. “Gregory of Tours and Poetry: Prose into Verse and Verse into Prose,” in Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose, ed. James Noel Adams, Michael Lapidge, and Tobias Reinhardt, Proceedings of the British Academy 129. Oxford. Pp. 303–19. “Editions and Editing in the Classroom: A  Report from the Mines in America,” in Vom Nutzen des Edierens: Akten des internationalen Kongresses zum 150-jährigen Bestehen des ­Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, ed. Brigitte Merta, Andrea Sommerlechner, and H ­ erwig Weigl, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Ergänzungsband 47. Vienna. Pp. 355–68. 2006 “Voces Mediolatinae: Teacher, Audience, Context, and Matter,” Illinois Classical Studies 30, 266–70. “Latin Literature, Christianity, and Obscenity in the Later Roman West,” in Medieval Obscenities, ed. Nicola MacDonald. York. Pp. 179–202. “The Cosmographia Attributed to Aethicus Ister as Philosophen- or Reiseroman,” in Insignis sophiae arcator. Essays in Honour of Michael Herren on his 65th  Birthday, ed.  Carin Ruff, Gernot Wieland, and Ross Arthur. Turnhout. Pp. 57–86. 2007 “Bede’s Style: A Neglected Historiographical Model for the Style of the Historia Ecclesiastica,” in Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill, ed. Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs, and Thomas N. Hall. Toronto. Pp. 329–52.

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2008 “Bible, Exegesis, Literature, and Society,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 18, 130–57. “Representations and Reality in Early Medieval Literature,” Comment on Papers by Paul Dutton, Joaquín Martínez Pizarro, and Jan Ziolkowski, in The  Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies, ed. Jennifer R. Davis and Michael ­McCormick. Aldershot. Pp. 209–15. “Some Treatments of Sexual Scandal in (Primarily) Later Latin Epistolography,” in In Pursuit of Wissenschaft: Festschrift for William M. Calder III zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. Stephan Heilen, et al. Hildesheim. Pp. 393–414. Review of The New Cambridge Medieval History ca. 500–700, ed. Paul Fouracre. In Speculum 83, 435–38. Review of Philip Burton, Language in the ‘Confessions’ of Augustine. In American Journal of Philology 129, 442–46. 2009 “Voices and Bodies: The Afterlife of the Unborn,” Numen 56, 326–65. “Literature, History, Periodization, and the Pleasures of the Latin Literary History of Late Antiquity,” History Compass 7, 917–54. “Hisperic Faminations,” in Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee, ed. Andrew Galloway and Robert F. Yeager. Toronto. Pp. 44–68. “Interpreting the Consolation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, ed. John Marenbon. Cambridge. Pp. 228–54. “Poetry and Exegesis: Two Variations on the Theme of Paradise,” in Lateinische Poesie der Spätantike, ed. Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer and Petra Schierl, Schweizerische Bei­ träge zur Altertumswissenschaft. Basel. Pp. 217–43. “Jerome, Tobit, Alms, and the Vita Aeterna,” in Jerome of Stridon. Religion, Culture, Society and Literature in Late Antiquity, ed. Andrew Cain and Josef Lössl. Aldershot. Pp. 87–103. Review of Valerie Allen, On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages. In Reviews in History, March. http://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/733 2010 “Haec quibus uteris verba: The Bible and Boethius’ Christianity,” in The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, ed. Andrew Cain and Noel Lenski. Aldershot. Pp. 57–78. “The Tale of Frodebert’s Tail,” in Colloquial and Literary Latin, ed. Eleanor Dickey and Anna Chahoud. Cambridge. Pp. 376–405. “‘Incessu humilem, successu excelsam’: Augustine, Sermo Humilis, and Scriptural ὕψος,” in Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics: Art, Architecture, Literature, Music, ed. C. Stephen Jaeger. New York. Pp. 51–77.

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“Argumenta leti and ludibria mortis: Ekphrasis, Art, Attributes, Identity, and Hagiography in Late Antique Poetry,” in Text und Bild: Tagungsbeiträge, ed. Victoria Zimmerl-Panagl and Dorothea Weber, Sitzungsberichte der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse 813. Veröffentlichungen der Kommission zur Herausgabe des Corpus der lateinischen Kirchenväter. Vienna. Pp. 57–82. Review of James Noel Adams, The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC–AD 600. In Journal of Late Antiquity 3, 176–82. 2011 (ed.) With Ralph W. Mathisen. Romans and Barbarians and the Transformation of the Roman World. Aldershot. “Licentius,” Augustinus-Lexikon 3.7/8. Basel. Pp. 985–87. 2012 (ed.) With Ralph W. Mathisen. The Battle of Vouillé 507 CE: Where France Began. Berlin. “Who was Augustine’s Publicola?,” Revue des études Juives 171, 27–60. “Augustine and the Latin Classics,” in The Blackwell Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey. Oxford. Pp. 161–74. “Vouillé 507: Historiographical, Hagiographical, and Diplomatic Re-Considerations and ­Fortuna,” in The  Battle of Vouillé  507: Where France Began, ed.  Ralph  W. Mathisen and ­Danuta Shanzer. Berlin. Pp. 63–78. 2013 Review article on Martiani Capellae De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. Vol. 1, Libri I/II, ed. comm. and trans. Lucio Cristante and Luciano Lenaz. In Wiener Studien 126, 281–308. Review of Martiani Capellae De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. Vol. 1, Libri I/II, ed. comm. and trans. Lucio Cristante and Luciano Lenaz. In Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2013.05.48. https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2013/2013.05.48/ “Saint Augustine,” in The Literary Encyclopedia. http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople. php?rec= true&UID= 183] 2014 “Sex, Lies, and Ordeal-by-Oath: A Case Study of Augustine, Epp. 78 and 80,” Reading Medieval Studies 40, 11–33. “Incest and Late Antiquity: Décadence?,” in Décadence: “Decline and Fall” or “Other Anti­ quity”?, ed. Marco Formisano and Therese Fuhrer, Bibliothek der klassischen Altertum­ swissenschaften 140. Heidelberg. Pp. 149–67. “One Dead Girl, Two Living Ladies, Quohelet, and the Judgment of Man: Eschatological Problems, Particular Judgment, and Jerome’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes,” in Hieronymus als Exeget und Theologe. Interdisziplinäre Zugänge zum ‘Koheletkommentar’ des Hieronymus, ed.  Elisabeth Birnbaum and Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 268. Leuven. Pp. 147–70.

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“Hell, the Resurrection, and Last Things: Philology in Orientius’ Afterworld,” in Edition und Erforschung lateinischer patristischer Texte, ed.  Victoria Zimmerl-Panagl, Lukas  J. Dorfbauer and Clemens Weidmann. Berlin. Pp. 139–56. With Daniela  E. Mairhofer. “Autoritative Texte: Überlieferung und Rezeption,” in Kinder Abrahams. Die Bibel in Judentum, Christentum und Islam, ed. Armin Lange and Bernhard Palme. Vienna. Pp. 61–67. “Auctor, Auctoritas and the Witness to Other Worlds,” in Auctor et Auctoritas in Latinis Medii Aevi Litteris. Proceedings of the VIth Congress of the International Medieval Latin Committee (Benevento–Naples, November 9–13, 2010), ed. Edoardo D’Angelo and Jan Ziolkowski. Firenze. Pp. 1019–1034. Review of Isabel Moreira, Heaven’s Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity. In History of Religions 53, 401–405. 2015 “Food and the Senses: One Very Special Taste of Paradise,” in The Cosmography of Paradise: The Other World from Ancient Mesopotamia to Medieval Europe, ed.  Alessandro Scafi. ­London. Pp. 163–81. “Capturing Merovingian Courts: a Literary Perspective,” in Le Corti nel’Alto Medioevo, Settimane di Studio 72. Spoleto. Pp. 667–99. 2016 “Monotheists’ Predication and Narrative: Challenges and Strategies in Late Antique (primarily Christian) Poetry,” in Bilder von dem Einen Gott. Die Rhetorik des Bildes in monotheistischen Gottesdarstellungen der römischen Spätantike, ed. Nicola Hömke, Gian Franco Chiai, and Antonia Jenik, Philologus Supplemente 6. Berlin. Pp. 175–91. Review of Helga Köhler, C. Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius, Die Briefe. In Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 20, 203–209. 2017 (ed.) With Daniela Mairhofer and Bernhard Palme. Handschriften und Papyri: Wege des Wissens. Vienna. “Augustine’s Anonyma I and Cornelius’ Concubines: How Philology and Literary Criticism Can Help in Understanding Augustine on Marital Fidelity,” Augustinian Studies 48, 201–25. “Evodius’ Strange Encounters with the Dead: Questions and Answers in Augustine, Epp. 158– 159,” in Scrinium Augustini. The  World of Augustine’s Letters, ed. Przemysław Nehring, ­Mateusz Stróżyński, and Rafał Toczko. Turnhout. Pp. 273–304. Review of Robin Lane Fox, Augustine: Conversions to Confessions. In Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 86, 474–77. 2018 “‘Backwards in high heels’: Detecting Epistolary Unfriendliness Across the Abyss of Time,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 22, 50–70.

Danuta R. Shanzer: Bibliography, 1982-2021

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“Beheading at Vercellae: What is Jerome, Ep. 1, and Why Does it Matter?,” in Zwischen Alltagskommunikation und literarischer Identitätsbildung. Studien zur lateinischen Epistolographie in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter, ed. Gernot Michael Müller, Roma Aeterna. Beiträge zu Spätantike und Frühmittelalter 7. Stuttgart. Pp. 145–67. Review of Raphael Schwitter, Umbrosa lux. Obscuritas in der lateinischen Epistolographie der Spätantike. In Deutsches Archiv 74, 782–83. 2019 “Resurrections before the Resurrection in the Imaginaire of Late Antiquity,” The  Biblical ­Annals 9, 493–520. “The Twilight of the Ancient Gods,” in Geneses: Comparative Study of the Historiographies of the Rise of Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism and Islam, ed. John Tolan. New York. Pp. 35–63. Review of Klaus Rosen, Augustinus: Genie und Heiliger. Eine historische Biographie. In Gnomon 91, 380–81. 2020 “Grave Matters: Love, Death, Resurrection, and Reception in the De laudibus Domini,” in Poetry, Bible, and Theology from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, ed. Michele Cutino. Millennium Studies 86. Berlin. Pp. 289–308. 2021 “Salome’s Dance: Heads and Bodies between Narrative and Intertextuality,” in Choreonarratives, ed. Laura Gianvittorio and Karin Schlapbach. Leiden. Pp. 180–213. Review of M. Shane Bjornlie, Cassiodorus’ Variae: A Complete and Annotated Translation. In Early Medieval Europe 29, 353–55.

Index of Manuscripts Brussels Bibliothèque royale de Belgique 1893–99: 147 n. 16 10615–10729: 199 Cambridge St John’s College D.26: 199 n. 3 Trinity College B.17.1 (Codex Paulinus Augiensis): 375 n. 11 University Library Ee.6.29: 432; 439 Cologne Diözesan- und Dombibliothek 33: 153 196: 414 Dresden Sächsische Landesbiliothek 145b (Codex Boernerianus): 375 Dublin Royal Irish Academy 12 R 33: 74 n. 3 Florence Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana San Marco 554: 138 n. 114 Gotha Forschungsbibliothek Membr. I 60: 153 Laon Bibliothèque municipale 444: 379; 383 Leiden Universiteitsbibliotheek BPL 67: 380 Linz Oberösterreichisches Landesarchiv Buchdeckelfunde, Schachtel 6, Mappe III/5m: 347–63 StA Mondsee 58: 349–50

London British Library Cotton Titus A.xx: 432 Harley 1005: 448 n. 15; 451 n. 25 Harley 2688: 379 Harley 4831: 199 Lucca Biblioteca Capitolare 13: 154 Madrid Biblioteca Nacional 9448: 138 n. 114 10029: 117 n. 8 Milan Biblioteca Ambrosiana B 102 sup.: 199 n. 1 Montecassino Biblioteca dell’Abbazia 4: 154 Münster Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek 301: 432 Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek clm 6412: 203 clm 8113: 154 Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France grec 437: 373; 381 lat. 1745: 153 lat. 1746: 154 lat. 2832: 117 n. 8 lat. 7530: 50 n. 7 lat. 8093: 117 n. 8 lat. 8907: 151; 153 lat. 12960: 377 Princeton Princeton University Library 25: 23 n. 7

471

472

“Omnium Magistra Virtutum”

Ravenna Museo Arcivescovile s.n.: 154

Turin Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria 1163 (G.VII.15) (Codex Bobiensis): 228

Rome Biblioteca Angelica 603: 432

St Gall Stiftsbibliothek 48: 376 1398b: 143

Vatican City Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Pal. lat. 235: 199 n. 3 Reg. lat. 200: 199 n. 1 Reg. lat. 1650: 355–56; 358 n. 32; 359 n. 35 Urb. lat. 533: 199 n. 3 Vat. lat. 264: 154 Vat. lat. 266: 153 Vat. lat. 267: 154 Vat. lat. 3225 (Virgilius Vaticanus): 271 Vat. lat. 3867 (Virgilius Romanus): 271–72 Vat. lat. 5760: 154

St Paul Stiftsbibliothek 1, 1: 154

Vercelli Biblioteca Capitolare CLVIII: 354 n. 18

Salisbury Cathedral Library 140: 154

Verona Biblioteca Capitolare 37 (35): 354

Troyes Bibliothèque municipale 813: 153

Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 16: 50 n. 4

Saint-Claude Bibliothèque municipale 1: 153

General Index (Authors, People, Places, and Texts) Aaron (British martyr): 365 n. 3 Abbo, bp. of Auxerre: 332 Ablabius: 99; 101–2 Abraham: 419 n. 11 Acacian Schism: 76 Achilles: 258–59; 262; 420; 442 n. 11 Actium: 113 Actius (kinsman of Lupus of Soissons): 334 Adalbero I, bp. of Metz: 334 n. 33 Adalbero II, bp. of Metz: 334 n. 33 Adalbert II, bp. of Mainz: 334 n. 33 Adalbold, bp. of Utrecht: 407–14; 416 Adalgisel-Grimo, archdeacon: 338 n. 57 Adalhard: 395; 397 Adam: 121; 240; 291–94; 297–301; 303–5 Adam of St Victor: 9 Adelmann (scholasticus): 408 Aegidius (comes): 277–78; 281 Aegidius of Paris: 424; 426 Aeneas: 25; 209 n. 41; 252; 259; 271; 295; 301 n. 53 Aeschinus (character in Terence): 412 Aethicus Ister: 10 Aetius (nepos of Remigius): 336 Agamemnon: 259 n. 26; 386 Agathias: 89 Agathimerus (nepos of Remigius): 336 Agilbert, bp. of Paris: 342 Agis: 110 n. 105 Agnes (abbess): 120 n. 19; 121–22 Agricola (kinsman of Lupus of Soissons): 334; 336 Agrippina: 314 Alan of Lille: 10; 13; 443 n. 119 Alan of Melsa: 426–27 Alans: 99; 118; 132–33; 134 n. 94 Alaric: 204 Alba (= Scotland): 365 Alban, St: 16; 365–72 Albinus, vir consularis: 87–88 Albion (= Britain): 365 Alboin: 133 n. 85 Alcuin: 138 n. 117; 388; 429; 443 n. 119 Alexander the Great: 16; 93–114 Alexander, bp. of Alexandria: 185 Alexander Romance: 95; 97 n. 22

Altfrid, bp. of Münster: 331 Amalarius of Metz: 14 Amalasuintha: 80–81; 101 Ambrose: 15; 122; 143–68; 185; 205; 223; 229–30; 264 n. 38; 389; 391; 400 “Aeterne rerum conditor”: 443 n. 135 De excessu fratris Satyri: 15; 144–49 De fide: 15; 149–68; 264 n. 38 De virginibus: 185 Epistulae: 205 Explanatio psalmi 118: 236 n. 62 Ammianus Marcellinus: 26; 95; 100; 109; 260 n. 28 Ammon (monk): 179 n. 52 Ammonius: 174 Anastasius: 80 Anaxagoras: 86 Andrew, St: 120; 320–21 Anecdoton Holderi: 84 Angelelm, bp. of Auxerre: 332; 335 n. 35 Angilramn, bp. of Metz: 332; 333 n. 24 Anician family: 74 Annales regni Francorum: 329 n. 5 Annales Xantenses: 332 n. 21 Anonymus Valesianus: 81–83; 88 n. 44; 313 n. 48; 317 n. 84 Ansebert, bp. of Autun: 342 Anselm (author of Vita Adelberti): 334 n. 33 Anselm of Liège: 411 Anthemiolus: 312 Anthemius: 307–13 Antiochus: 420 Antony (M. Antonius): 113 Antony, St: 169; 175–81; 280; 286 Aper, Marcus: 45 n. 20 Aphrahat: 104 n. 71 Apollinaris (relative of Sidonius): 313–14 Apollo of Bawit: 180 Apollonius of Rhodes: 272 “Appendix Ovidiana”: 14 Aprunculus of Langres: 316–17 Apuleius: 284–85 De deo Socratis: 284 Metamorphoses: 253 n.  13; 255 n.  17; 260 n.  30; 304 n. 5

473

474

“Omnium Magistra Virtutum”

Aquila: 239 Aquinas, Thomas: 367 Arcadius: 272 Archestrates: 252–53 Aredius, abbot of Limoges: 326 Arians, Arianism: 125–26; 128; 130; 136; 155–57; 178; 183; 316 Aristotle: 89; 122; 377; 420 n. 15; 423 Arius: 83 Arnald, bp. of Toul: 332 Arnulf, bp. of Toul: 332 Arthur of Brittany: 329 Arusianus Messius: 57 n. 45 Arvandus: 310 Asper: 230 Athalaric: 81; 101 Athanagild: 130 Athanasius: 172; 176; 178; 185; 280–81; 285 n. 42; 286 n. 44; 287 Athelstan: 330 n. 11 Athena: 250; 262 Attalus: 340 n. 69 Attila: 94; 111–13 Audax (correspondent of Augustine): 242 Audoenus, bp. of Rouen: 343 Augustan History: see Historia Augusta Augustine: 12–13; 15; 73; 122; 155 n. 45; 201 n. 15; 213–23; 225–45; 286; 289–90; 301–2; 366; 376; 383; 389; 391; 409 n. 16; 417 Civitas Dei: 104 n. 71; 105; 113 n. 127; 174 n. 27; 219 n. 17; 240–41; 243–44; 283–84; 290 n. 8; 349; 362 n. 52; 391 Confessiones: 12; 213–23; 229; 231; 233; 235 nn. 59–60; 237; 383 Contra Academicos: 228; 285 n. 41 De beata vita: 210 n. 45 De catechizandis rudibus: 301–2 De correptione et gratia: 290 n. 8 De diversis quaestionibus: 284 n. 36 De divinatione daemonum: 280; 283–85; 286 nn. 43–44 De doctrina Christiana: 233–34; 237 n.  65; 242–43 De Genesi ad litteram: 232–33; 285 n. 41 De Genesi contra Manichaeos: 232 De gestis Pelagii: 238 De haeresibus: 184 n. 6 De mendacio: 237 n. 68 De moribus ecclesiae catholicae: 231–32; 237 De musica: 62 n. 70; 227

De ordine: 285 n. 41 De Trinitate: 235 n. 60 De utilitate credendi: 230 Enarrationes in Psalmos: 228 n. 21 Epistula ad Catholicos: 237 n. 65 Epistulae: 225; 226; 231 n.  35; 232 nn.  43–44; 235 n. 61; 238 nn. 69 and 71–72; 239 n. 79; 241 n. 85; 242 nn. 89 and 91; 243 n. 92; 244 n. 99; 302 n. 60 Regula: 227; 243 n. 94 Retractationes: 228; 230; 232; 242 n. 90 Sermones: 221 n. 19; 228 n. 21 Augustus: 25; 96; 113; 114 n. 128; 257 Aunarius (or Aunecharius), bp. of Auxerre: 341 Ausonius: 13; 204 Austregildis: 341 Austrenus, bp. of Orléans: 341 Auxentius, Arian bp. of Milan: 183 Avars: 115–16; 123 n. 38 Avitus (emperor): 132; 277 n. 14 Avitus, bp. of Clermont: 124 n. 43; 337 Avitus of Vienne: 11; 15; 137 n. 113; 289–302; 303–5; 307; 316 n. 82 Contra Arrianos: 290 n. 9 De spiritalis historiae gestis: 289–302; 303–5 Epistulae: 307 n. 1; 316 n. 82 Babes in the Wood, the: 329 Babylon: 194 Bacchus: 420; 430; 436; 442 n. 11; 443 n. 153–56; see also Lyaeus Balaam: 281 Balak: 281 Balamber: 106; 111 n. 110 Bartholomew, St: 120 Basil: 169 Basilius (Roman aristocrat): 88 n. 46 Basilius of Aix: 315 Baucis: 251 Baudilius of Nîmes: 328 Bede: 10; 13; 16; 342; 365–72; 376 Belisarius: 113–14 Benedict, St: 409 n. 16 Benedictine Rule: 14 Beornwine, nephew of Wilfrid: 342 n. 80 Berkeley: 10 Bern Scholia: see Scholia Bernensia Bernard, bp. of Verdun: 332 Bernard (nephew of Louis the Pious): 329; 402 Bernardus Silvestris: 443 n. 119

General Index (Authors, People, Places, and Texts) Bernoin, bp. of Verdun: 332 Berthulf, brother of Bertram of Le Mans: 337 Bertichildis (wife of Sigichelmus): 338 Bertram, bp. of Bordeaux: 337 Bertram, bp. of Le Mans: 334 n. 30; 337 Bias: 420 n. 15 Bible: 93; 103–6; 111; 113; 185 n. 12; 187–93; 196–97; 282 n. 32; 292; 294; 299–300; 369–70; 388; 391; 418; 423; 430 Acts: 188 n. 32; 189 n. 35; 192 n. 54; 218; 269; 270 n. 55; 376; 443 n. 121 Amos: 242 1 Chronicles: 192 n. 54 2 Chronicles: 192 n. 54 1 Corinthians: 189 n. 35; 190 n. 43; 201 n. 15; 211 n. 51; 269; 270 n. 55; 370 n. 7 2 Corinthians: 442 n. 5–7 Daniel: 94; 104–5; 111; 114; 143–45; 147–48; 192 n. 54; 194–95; 424 Deuteronomy: 190 n. 47; 192 n. 54; 218 Ecclesiastes: 231 Ecclesiasticus: 232 Ephesians: 201 n. 15; 211 n. 50; 375; 443 n. 101–2 Esther: 192 n. 54 Exodus: 109 n. 102; 169 n. 4; 191 n. 53; 192 n. 54; 218; 443 nn. 149–51 and 152 Ezekiel: 103 n. 65; 143; 144 n. 3; 148–50; 167; 192 n. 54; 443 nn. 125–28 2 Ezra: 191 n. 53; 192 n. 54 Galatians: 189 n. 35; 233 Genesis: 109 n.  101; 169 n.  4; 190 n.  46; 192 n.  54; 232; 290 n.  7; 294; 296; 298–300; 419 n. 11; 421; 442 nn. 1, 15, 16, 82, and 93–96; 443 nn. 100, 138, 139, and 143 Hosea: 192 n. 54 Isaiah: 165; 184 n.  10; 190; 230; 242 n.  90; 264 n. 38; 367–68; 451 n. 29 James: 214–15 Jeremiah: 103 n.  65; 190 n.  42; 192 n.  54; 443 n. 119 Job: 192 n. 54 John (gospel): 188 n. 32; 189 n. 35; 221; 255; 270; 287 n. 45; 366 n. 4; 442 nn. 21–22, 31–32, 63– 64, and 91–92; 443 n. 111–12, 119, 145, and 148 1 John: 443 n. 118 Jonah: 192 n. 54 Joshua: 109 n. 101; 169 n. 4; 192 n. 54; 195; 369 Judges: 110 n.  103; 169 n.  4; 254 n.  15; 442 n. 29–30 Judith: 192 n. 54

475

3 (1) Kings: 195; 388 4 (2) Kings: 192 n. 54; 442 n. 37–40 Lamentations: 146–47; 195 Leviticus: 169 n. 4; 192 n. 54 Luke: 184 n. 10; 188 n. 32; 189 and n. 35; 192 n. 54; 223; 255 n. 15; 256; 264 n. 38; 270 n. 55; 300; 303; 423 nn. 22–23; 442 nn. 41–44, 61–62, and 68; 443 n. 140; 444 nn. 160 and 168 1 Maccabees: 94; 104–5; 111; 192 n. 54; 420 2 Maccabees: 387 Mark: 189 n. 35; 211; 254 n. 15; 255 n. 16; 423 n. 23; 442 nn. 61–62 and 68; 443 n. 140 Matthew: 184 n. 10; 188–92; 196–97; 210 n. 49; 211; 249; 254 n. 15; 255 n. 16; 256; 265; 270; 287 n. 45; 326 n. 42; 376; 423 n. 23; 442 nn. 61–62 and 68; 443 n. 140 Micah: 144 n. 3 Numbers: 169 n. 4; 192 n. 54; 193–94; 281 n. 28 1 Peter: 214 Phillipians: 237 n. 66 Proverbs: 161; 214; 228; 442 nn. 55–56 and 85– 88; 443 n. 109–10 Psalms: 169 n. 4; 190; 192 n. 54; 229; 242; 436; 442 nn.  20, 23–24, 47–8, 52, 53–54, and 60; 443 nn. 100 and 130 Revelation: 192–93; 210 n. 44; 256; 443 n. 143 Romans: 211 n. 50; 231 n. 36; 375–76; 386 Ruth: 192 n. 54 1 Samuel (1 Kings): 169 n. 4; 191 n. 53; 192 n. 54 2 Samuel (2 Kings): 147; 191 n. 49; 192 n. 54 Song of Songs: 237 n. 65; 443 n. 113–16, 122, 122– 24, and 147 1 Timothy: 154 n. 43; 191 n. 49; 301 n. 54; 442 n. 36 Tobit: 147 Wisdom: 196; 231; 234 n. 55; 442 n. 1 Zechariah: 161 Bilimer: 312–13 Bischoff, Bernhard: 349; 351; 380 Bleda: 111 Bobo, Duke: 338 n. 57 Bodegiso, Duke: 413–14 Bodilo, cleric: 338 Boethius: 10; 12; 15; 73–92; 377; 384 n. 42; 423 Brittain, Charles: 10 Brown, Peter: 13 Brun, abp. of Cologne: 333 n. 28 Burgundians: 118–19; 131–3; 134 n. 94; 307–17 Burgundio (nephew of Felix of Nantes): 340 Bury: 445–51; 453; 457–58

476

“Omnium Magistra Virtutum”

Caecilius Niger, Quintus: 34 Caesaria the Elder: 336 Caesaria the Younger: 120 n. 19; 336–37 Caesarius of Arles: 120 n. 19; 336 Caesius Bassus: 49 n. 1; 54 n. 28; 68 n. 110 Cain: 240; 419 n. 11 Calder, William M. III: 11 Caligula: 86; 88 Candace: 97 Canius (Stoic martyr): 86; 88 Caracalla: 26 Caretena (wife of Gundobad): 312; 314 Carloman: 380; 394 Carmina Burana: 14; 249; 430 Carterius: 187 Caspian Gates: 103–4 Cassianus, St: 323–24 Cassiodorus: 57; 62 n.  75; 73; 74–76; 79; 81; 89; 99–102; 108 n. 93; 109 n. 97; 226–27; 308 Chronicon: 81; 101 n. 45; 313 n. 46; 81; 308 n. 7; 313 n. 46 Expositio Psalmorum: 145 n. 9 Historia Gothica: 77 n. 12; 81; 99–101 Institutiones: 57; 227 n. 14 Variae: 74–75; 84; 89; 101 n. 48; 102 n. 57 see also Anecdoton Holderi Cassius Dio: 97 n. 22 Cato: see Disticha Catonis Ceres: 420 Cethegus, Flavius Rufius Petronius Nicomachus: 75 Chaimoald, bp. of Rennes: 338 n. 54 Chalcidius: 377 Chaldaeans: 194 Challoner, Richard: 187 n. 28 Chararic: 125–6; 128; 130 Charimeris (referendary): 327 Charlemagne: 138 n. 117; 395; 398; 400–1; 403 Charles Martel: 342 Charles the Bald: 329; 332; 341 n. 79; 373–75; 377; 380; 384–87; 396; 402 Charles the Fat: 135 Charybdis: 16; 417–18; 421–28 Childebert I: 125 n. 48; 329; 340 Childebert II: 126; 327; 335 Chilon: 420 n. 15 Chilperic (Burgundian): 308–14; 317 Chilperic (Frankish king): 128 n. 63 Chimera: 418 Chlodomer: 239

Chlothild: 239 Chosroes: 89 Chrodegang, bp. of Metz: 332; 333 n. 24 Chronica Gallica: see Gallic Chronicle of 511 Chrysippus: 122 Cicero: 19 n. 1; 43–47; 49; 52 n. 18; 55; 57–58; 59 n. 59; 60–61; 64–69; 122; 228–30; 260 n. 28; 260 n. 30; 391; 420 n. 15 De imperio Cn. Pompei: 33; 37–40; 45 De inventione: 43 n. 15 De natura deorum: 19 n. 1 De officiis: 400 De oratore: 36 n. 8; 45 n. 18 Divinatio in Q. Caecilium: 33–37; 45; 68 n. 110 In Catilinam: 59 n. 59 In C. Verrem: 65; 67 n. 98; 68 n. 110; 69 Orator: 37 n. 10; 45 n. 20; 52 n. 18; 57 Philippics: 51 Pro Ligario: 391 n. 7 Pro Sulla: 60 n. 62 Tusculan Disputations: 210 n. 45 Circe: 417; 426 n. 35 Claudian: 205; 442 n. 11 Clement of Alexandria: 185 n. 14 Clement (Ps), Recognitions: 170; 173; 349; 352–54; 358–59; 362–63 Cleobolus: 420 n. 15 Cleopatra: 113 Clinton, Kevin: 10 Clovis: 13; 317 Cnut, King: 450 n. 21 Cockfield case: 445–59 Cockfield, Adam I: 449 Cockfield, Adam II: 445; 447–51 Cockfield, Margaret: 445–47; 449–51 Cockfield, Robert: 449 Columbanus: 136 n. 107 Conigastus: 87 Consentius: 56 n. 39; 67 n. 103 Constantine: 79; 178; 366; 410 Constantius II: 26; 79; 410 n. 18 Consularia Italica: 308 Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum: 135 n. 98 Cornell University: 10–11 Cornutus: 230 Corpus Iuris Civilis: 452 n. 32; 453 n. 35 Corybantes: 352; 362–63 Cosmas Indicopleustes: 105 Councils, Church Agde: 316

General Index (Authors, People, Places, and Texts) Arausicanum I: 287 Constantinople II: 184 Epaon: 316 n. 75 Nicea: 367 Tours I: 282 Vannes: 282 Criscentia: 327 Cronius: 179 n. 53 Crotechildis: 317 Ctesiphon (character in Terence): 412 Curtius, Quintus: 112 n. 120 Cyprian, St: 49 n. 3; 52 n. 15; 69 De habitu virginum: 211 n. 51 Cyprianus (delator): 83; 87 Cyprianus Gallus: see Heptateuch poet Cyrene: 415 Cyrillus (Ps.): 389 Dado, bp. of Verdun: 332 Daedalus: 423 Damasus I (pope): 197–98 Daniel: 104–5; 194–95; 424; 426–27; see also Bible Dante: 73 Darius III: 96; 107; 426 n. 33 David: 419; 433–34; 436; 438; 442 n. 23–24 David I of Scotland: 330 n. 11 de Burgh, Hubert: 446 de Burgh, Thomas: 446–48; 450 De laudibus Domini: 13 Demosthenes: 230 Deucalion: 352–53; 355–60; 362–63 Dialogus de Scaccario: 456 nn. 50 and 54 Dido: 252; 259; 271; 295–96; 301 n. 53 Dido, bp. of Poitiers: 341 Didymus the Blind: 175 n. 29; 178 Dietrich, bp. of Metz: 333 n. 28 Dio Chrysostom: 250–53 Diocletian: 366 Diomedes (grammarian): 50 n.  10; 52 n.  20; 68 n. 110 Dionysius (Ps.): 373–75; 377; 381–82; 389 Dionysius of Halicarnassus: 34 n. 5 Disciola, nun: 340 n. 70 Disputoison du Vin et de l’Iaue: 431 Dissertatio Maximini: 157 Disticha Catonis: 412–13 Domitian: 269 n. 51 Domitius, St: 328 Donatus (African bishop): 232

477

Donatus (grammarian): 230 Donoghue, Daniel: 14 Dracontius: 134 n. 92; 137; 290 n. 7; 295 Dubthach: 380–81 Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library: 14 Dungal of Bobbio: 199 n. 1 Eadmer: 453 n. 39 Eberhard, margrave of Friuli: 135 Ebo, abp. of Rhems: 332 Ecdicius: 310–12; 314–15 Eden: 303 Eddius Stephanus: 342 n. 80 Egbert of Liège: 16; 407–16 Elagabalus: 97 Eleazar: 243 Eligia (mother of St Praiectus): 335 Eligius, bp. of Noyon: 343 Elpidius: 82 Enoch: 240 Ennius: 420 n. 15 Ennodius: 62 n. 75; 73 n. 1; 74; 77; 78 n. 14; 97; 313; 315 n. 63 Panegyric: 78 n. 14; 97 Paraenesis didascalica: 74 Vita Epiphanii: 313; 315 n. 63 Epicureans: 86 Epiphanius: 389 Epistolae Arelatenses: 309 n. 27; 312 n. 38 Erasmus, Desiderius: 150 Eridanus: 352; 362–63 Erimbert (missionary): 332 Eriugena, John Scottus: 16; 373–90 Annotaciones in Marcianum: 377–79; 389 Carmina: 374; 382 n. 57; 383–86; 389 Glossae divinae historiae: 377–78; 386–89 De praedestinatione: 375–76; 389 Periphyseon: 389 Eucher, bp. of Orléans: 332; 334; 342 Eugenius of Toledo: 117 n. 8; 129; 137 n. 108 Euhemerism: 377 Euphronius, bp. of Tours: 124; 340–41 Euric: 132 n. 83; 309–12; 315–17 Euryalus: 419 Eusebius Gallicanus: 311; 316 Eusebius of Caesarea: 169; 171; 174; 178; 359–60 Chronicle: 359–60 Ecclesiastical History: 178 Eusebius of Vercelli: 325 Eustochium: 183 n. 4

478

“Omnium Magistra Virtutum”

Eutharic: 80–81; 89; 100–1 Euthymius: 174 Eutropius of Orange: 316 n. 74 Evagrius of Antioch: 177 Evagrius of Pontus: 169; 171; 173–74 Eve: 289; 291–302; 303–5 Everaclus, bp. of Liège: 412 Evodius: 12; 226–27 Excerpta Latina Barbari: 95–96 Excidii Acconis gesta: 255 n. 17 Fasti Vindobonenses Priores: 308 nn. 7–8 Faust: 217 Faustus (N. African bishop): 339 Faustus Niger (rival of Boethius): 87 Faustus of Riez: 311; 315–16 Felix, bp. of Nantes: 340 Felix of Bourges, St: 323–24 Felix of Nola, St: 15; 199–212 Fever (deity): 26 Flodoard of Rheims: 332 n. 19; 334 n. 32; 335; 336 nn. 43 and 45 Florentius (father of Gregory of Tours): 335 Fortunatianus of Aquileia: 186 Fortunatus, Venantius: 14; 119–124; 126–131; 134 nn. 92–93; 136–38; 265–70; 340 n. 70; 412–15 Fragmenta Bobiensia: 50–58; 64; 66 n. 89; 69–70 Fragmenta Palladii: 157 Fragmentum Sangallense: 143–47; 148 n. 22; 150–2 Franco (scholasticus): 408 Fredegar: 315; 334 n. 34 Fulgentius the Mythographer: 14; 95; 97; 107–8; 377 Fulgentius of Ruspe: 145 n. 9; 148 Gallic Chronicle of 511: 307; 312 n. 39 Galloway, Andrew: 10 Gallus, bp. of Clermont: 334 n. 30; 335; 339 Ganymede: 431 Ganz, David: 10 Ganz, Peter: 10 Ganz, Rosemary: 10 Gaudentius of Brescia: 170 Gauzbert (missionary bishop): 332 Geberich: 93 Gellius, Aulus: 14 Genesius, bp. of Clermont: 341 Genesius, Church of (Tarbes): 328 Gennadius: 169 n. 3 Genovefa: 328

Georgius (senator): 335 Gepids: 115 Gerfrid, bp. of Münster: 331 Germanicus: 314; 353 n. 15 Germanus, bp. of Auxerre: 273 Germanus, bp. of Paris: 337 Gesta episcoporum Tullensium: 332 n. 20 Gesta episcoporum Virdunensium: 332 n. 23 Gesta et passo sancti Leudegarii: 341 n. 77 Gesta pontificum Autissiodorensium: 332 n. 17; 335 n. 35; 341 Gesta Theoderici regis: 334 n. 34 Gibbon, Edward: 80; 82 Gibichungs: 307; 309–17 Gibson, Margaret: 10 Glanvill: 450 nn.  19–20; 451 n.  26; 453–57; 459 n. 59 Glaucus: 417 Glycerius (emperor): 313 Godfrey of Viterbo: 392 Goethe: 217 Gog and Magog: 103–4; 193 Golias: 429 Graecus of Marseille: 315 Gratian (canonist): 452 Gratian (emperor): 155–56; 159; 162 Gregory, bp. of Langres: 340 n. 69; 341 Gregory of Montesacro: 421 Gregory of Nazianzus: 122 n. 32; 169 Gregory of Nyssa: 122 n. 32; 389 Gregory of Tours: 11; 15; 124–31; 136; 138; 266; 273 n. 2; 277 n. 14 and 16; 282 n. 30; 309; 314–15; 316 n. 83; 317; 319–28; 334 n. 30; 335; 337; 339 De gloria confessorum: 319 n.  3; 320 and n.  4; 321 n.  12; 322 n.  13; 323 n.  22; 325 nn.  33–35; 326 nn. 40–41; 327 nn. 52–55; 328 nn. 57–58, 60–61, and 64 De gloria martyrum: 319 n.  3; 321 n.  11; 322 nn.  13–15 and 17; 327 and nn.  51 and 56; 328 nn. 57, 62–63, and 65 De miraculis Beati Andreae Apostoli: 319 n. 3; 322 n. 16 De virtutibus sancti Juliani: 314 n. 61; 315 n. 68; 323 n. 21; 328 n. 65 De virtutibus sancti Martini: 124–28; 277 n. 16; 321 nn. 8 and 10; 322 n. 17; 323 n. 20; 324 nn. 25, 26, and 28; 325 nn. 29–30 and 36; 326 nn. 37– 39 and 42–46; 327 nn. 47–48 and 50; 328 n. 59 Historia Francorum: 126–28; 131 n. 75; 277 n. 14; 282 n.  30; 209 nn.  14 and 20; 277 n.  14; 282

General Index (Authors, People, Places, and Texts) n. 30; 309 n. 14; 310 n. 25; 314 n. 55; 315 n. 71; 316 n. 83; 317 n. 85; 324 n. 27; 329 n. 7; 340; 341 n. 73 Vita Patrum: 319 n. 3; 322 n. 13; 323 nn. 19 and 22; 325 nn.  33–34; 327 n.  49; 334 n.  30; 335 nn. 37–39; 339 nn. 60–62 and 64; 340 nn. 65 and 67–68; 342 n. 82 Gregory the Great: 135–36; 400; 409 n. 14 Dialogues: 83 n. 21 Epistulae: 135 n. 97 Regula pastoralis: 400 n. 56 Groton: 445; 448–50 Gundioc: 308–10; 312; 314 Gundobad: 16; 307–17 Gunthar, bp. of Cologne: 332 Guntram (uncle of Childebert): 335 Hadoindus, bp. of Le Mans: 338 Hahn, Scott: 187 n. 28 Handel, G.F.: 15 Hartgar, bp. of Liège: 135 Heinrich von Neustadt: 252 Heiric of Auxerre: 390 Helen: 431 Helena, St: 409 n. 16 Helenus: 417 Helvidius: 15; 183–98 Henry I of England: 448 Henry II of England: 454; 456 Henry II (Holy Roman Emperor): 410–11 Heptateuch poet: 290 n. 7; 294 Heraclides (monk): 179 n. 50 Heraclius, bp. of Angoulême: 126 Heraclius (emperor): 131 Hercules: 27 Heribald, bp. of Auxerre: 332; 335 n. 35 Heriger of Lobbes: 408; 411 n. 22; 412 Hermanaric: 16; 93–114 Hermenegild: 126 Hermeneumata Dositheana: 382 Herodotus: 171 n. 15 Heruli (Herules): 102; 107; 115; 133 Hesiod: 353 n. 14 Hilarion (monk): 178 Hilary of Poitiers: 122; 186; 444 n. 168 In Matthaeum: 186 n. 23 Hildigrim, bp. of Châlons: 331 Hildigrim, bp. of Halberstadt: 331 Hilduin (nepos of Gunthar): 332 Hilduin, Abbot of St Denis: 373–75; 377; 382 Hill, Thomas: 10

479

Hincmar of Laon: 332 Hincmar of Rheims: 332; 335; 336 nn. 43–44; 380; 391; 392 n. 9; 394–97; 399 n. 53; 400 n. 58; 401–3 Hippo: 12; 226; 243 Hippolytus: 104 n. 71; 112 n. 117; 114 n. 128 Hisperica Famina: 10 Historia Apollonii regis Tyri: 252–55 Historia Augusta: 26 Homer: 27; 379–80; 383; 389; 417 Iliad: 27; 258–59; 379 Odyssey: 250–53; 265 n. 41; 380–81; 417 Honorius (emperor): 204; 272 Horace: 25; 420; 451 n. 29 Hugh Primas: 249; 430 Huns: 94; 102; 106; 108–14; 127 Hyams, Paul: 10; 14 Hyginus: 352–53 Iamblichus: 96 Illidius, bp. of Clermont: 323; 340 Illinois, University of: 11 Imad, bp. of Paderborn: 334 n. 33 Ingitrude: 324 Inpetratus, priest at Clermont: 335; 339 Io: 420 Isaac: 443 n. 139 Isidore (Egyptian monk): 174; 179 n. 50 Isidore of Seville: 129–31; 134 n.  91; 136; 358–61; 362 nn. 50 and 54; 417; 422 n. 17 Chronica: 131 n. 76 De natura rerum: 414 n. 37 De viris illustribus: 129–31 Etymologiae: 358–59; 417 n. 2; 422 n. 17 Historia Gothorum Vandalorum Sueborum: 130 n. 73 Ivo of Chartres: 452 n. 34 Jacob: 435; 438–39; 443 n. 139 Jacobson, Howard: 10 James, St (apostle): 124; 409 n. 16 Japheth: 103 Jericho: 322 Jerome: 14; 15; 133; 169 n. 9; 172–78; 183–98; 230; 235; 238–39; 241–42; 244; 349 n. 2; 417 Adversus Helvidium: 183–98 Chronicon: 359–60 Comm. in Danielem: 104 n.  71; 112 n.  117; 113 n. 127; 114 n. 128; 145 n. 6 Comm. in Ezechielem: 150 n. 34 Comm. in Galatas: 235 n. 58

480

“Omnium Magistra Virtutum”

Comm. in Hieremiam: 104 n. 71 Comm. in Micham: 287 n. 46 Commentarioli in Psalmos: 239 n. 78 Epistulae: 133 n. 85; 183 n. 4; 192 n. 57; 198; 236 n. 62; 239 n. 76; 244 n. 99; 262 n. 33 Praefatio in Chronicarum libros: 241 n. 84 Praefatio in Isaia: 230 n. 32 Praefatio in libro Regum: 196 n. 72 Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim: 239 n. 77 Vita Hilarionis: 175; 177–78 Vita Malchi: 175 Vita Pauli: 175; 177 Jesus Christ: 183–86; 188–89; 197; 211; 256; 270; 291–93; 300–2; 366–67; 426; 433; 436–38; 442 n. 23–24 Joakim: 424 Jocelin of Braklond: 446 nn.  7–8; 448–49; 451; 452 n.30; 458 Jocelyn, H.D.: 10 John, king of England: 329 John VIII (pope): 135 n. 98 John of Antioch: 307; 313 nn. 46 and 48 John of Biclar: 131 n. 77 John of Lycopolis: 174 John of Salisbury: 456 n. 54 John, St (evangelist): 124 John Scottus: see Eriugena Jonah: 241; 244; 292 n. 14; 302 Jonas of Bobbio: 136 n. 107 Jonas of Orleans: 391; 399 n. 53; 400–3 Jonathan: 419 Jordan, River: 322; 328; 369–70; 433; 437 Jordanes: 93–114; 116 n. 3; 134; 308; 309 n. 20; 314 n. 62 Joseph (husband of Mary): 183; 184 n.  12; 185 n. 14; 186; 188; 194 Joseph (patriarch): 109; 418; 421; 423; 426–27 Josephus: 99; 102–3; 239 n. 77 Joshua: 109; 322 Jovinian: 185 n. 17; 187 Judas Maccabeus: 420 Judith (wife of Louis the Pious): 402 Julian the Apostate: 258 n. 24; 410 n. 18 Julian of Brioude: 314–15; 320; 323–24 Julian of Toledo: 56 n. 39 Julian, Church of (Joué-les-Tours): 328 Julius (British martyr): 365 n. 3 Julius Nepos: see Nepos Juno: 420 Jupiter: 41; 43; 45–46; 132; 352–53; 355–56; 357 n. 29; 358–60; 362–63; 419–20

Justin (emperor): 80; 89 Justin (historian): 107; 110 nn. 104–5; 260 n. 28 Justina (niece of Gregory of Tours): 340 Justinian: 75; 79; 80–83; 85; 89; 96; 113–15; 130; 136 Justinus (brother-in-law of Gregory of Tours): 326 Juvenal: 420 Kaske, Carol: 10 “Lactantius Placidus”: 352 Lampridius: 132 n. 83 Laurentian Schism: 76; 79 Lawrence of Durham: 16; 418–23; 424 n.  29; 426–28 Lazarus: 292 n. 14; 300 Lefanu, Sheridan: 329 Leo (emperor): 312 Leontius of Arles: 315 Leudegar, bp. of Autun: 341 Leudochramnus, nephew of Bertram of Le Mans: 338 Leuthere, bp. of Winchester: 342 Leuvigild: 126 Lewis, C.S.: 9 Liber Constitutionum: 308 Liberius: 74 Licentius: 12 Licinius of Baetica: 241 Life of Eutropius of Orange: see Vita Eutropii Liudger, bp. of Münster: 331; 342 Liutprand, king: 73 Livy: 191 n. 51; 256; 260 n. 28 Lombards: 80; 133 n. 85 Lot: 292 n. 14; 293; 298–301; 434; 438 Lot’s wife: 289; 292 n. 14; 293; 298–300 Lothar (son of Louis the Pious): 396 Lothar I (Merovingian king): 329 Lothar II (Merovingian king): 329 Lothar, son of Louis of Outremer: 330 n. 11 Louis of Outremer: 330 n. 11 Louis the German: 396 Louis the Pious: 329; 373; 391; 396; 401–2 Lucan: 420 Lucian: 46; 253 n. 13; 379 Alexander: 379 Concilium deorum: 46 Icaromenippus: 46 Toxaris: 253 n. 13 Lucifer: 219 Lucomon (i.e. Tarquin): 314

General Index (Authors, People, Places, and Texts) Lucretia: 426–27 Lupus, bp. of Sens: 341 Lupus, bp. of Soissons: 334; 336 Lupus, Duke: 414 Lupus, priest: 326 Lyaeus: 432; 436–37; 442 n. 11; see also Bacchus Macarius of Egypt: 179 nn. 50 and 53 Macleod, Colin: 9 Macrobius: 362 n. 52; 377–78; 380 Magnus Maximus: 269 n. 53 Magog: see Gog Majorian: 132; 277 n. 14; 311 Malalas: 95–98; 136 n. 103; 307–8; 310; 312–13 Manichees, Manichaeanism: 219; 230–31; 237–38 Manilius, Gaius (tribune): 37 Manno of Saint-Oyen: 138 Mantel, Hilary: 76 n. 10 Marachar, bp. of Angoulême: 340 Marcellus of Die: 311–12; 314 Marius, Richard: 76 n. 10 Markovich, Daniel: 12 Mars: 419–20 Martianus Capella: 9; 11–13; 15; 33–34; 41–47; 49; 55 n. 31; 58–65; 67 n. 96; 69–70; 85 n. 30; 225; 377; 379; 381 Martin of Braga (Ps.?): 16; 115–39 Formula vitae honestae: 130 Martin of Laon: 383–84 Martin of Tours: 15; 119–120; 123–29; 131; 135; 138; 249–72; 273–74; 277; 281; 286; 320–21; 323–26; 328; 407–16 Mary: 15; 183–89; 194; 197; 367; 419 Mary and John, Church of (Tours): 328 Masaccio: 304 n. 4 Mathisen, Ralph: 11–12 Matthew, St (apostle): 120; 409 n. 16; 409 n. 16 Matilda: 330 n. 11 Maurentius: 24; 25 Maximianus: 77 Maximilianus (martyr): 258 n. 24 Maximus, bp. of Nola: 207 Maximus the Confessor: 389–90 Médard of Soissons: 327–28 Meinwerk, bp. of Paderborn: 334 n. 33 Memorius, bp. of Capua: 227 Mercury: 33; 41; 355–56; 362–63; 379–80; 385; 419 Methodius (Ps.): 104 Methuselah: 240–41 Michael the Stammerer: 373 Minerva: 420; see also Pallas

481

Miriam: 193–94 Mithridates VI: 37 Mohammed: 14 Mondsee: 16; 349–52; 359; 361 Monegund: 327 More, Thomas: 76 n. 10 Morrigain: 387 Moses: 193; 218; 369 Murgia, Charles: 13 Muses: 419 Mythographus Vaticanus II: 354–57; 362 n. 51 “Mythographus Vergilianus”: 361 n. 45 Naaman: 433; 437 Nantinus, count of Angoulême: 126; 340 Nausicaa: 250–53 Nazarius (panegyrist): 134 n. 91 Nebuchadnezzar: 98 Neoplatonism: 9; 283–85; 288; 373 Nepos, Julius (emperor): 313–17 Nepotianus: 328 Nero: 86 Nicetas of Remesiana: 133; 203; 212 Nicetius, bp. of Lyons: 320; 323–24; 340 Nicetius of Trier: 320 Nicetius (nephew-in-law of Gregory of Tours): 340 Nile: 280; 413–16 Nineveh: 241; 302 n. 60 Ninus: 113 Nisbet, Robin: 9 Nisus: 419 Nithard: 396 Nitria: 175 n. 29; 179 Noah: 103; 192; 292 n. 14; 301–2; 434; 438 Nomina provinciarum omnium: 133 n. 87 Norden, Eduard: 12; 197 Notger of Liège: 407–8; 410–11 Nussbaum, Alan: 10 Odoacer: 78; 313 Odysseus: 250–53; 272 Oea: 244 Oldfather, William Abbott: 12 Olybrius: 308; 312–13 Or (Egyptian monk): 174; 180 Ordo generis Cassiodorum: see Anecdoton Holderi Orestes (general): 313 Orestes (son of Agamemnon): 420 Orientius: 11

482

“Omnium Magistra Virtutum”

Origen: 169; 173–74; 179 n. 53; 185–86; 238; 239 n. 76 Commentary on Romans: 173 De principiis (Peri Archôn): 179 n. 4; 238 Homilies on Leviticus: 185 n. 15 Homilies on Luke: 185 n. 15 Letter to Africanus: 239 n. 76 Orosius: 16; 94; 96; 97; 99; 103; 107–8; 110 nn. 104– 5; 112 n. 118; 349 n. 2; 356; 358–60; 362 n. 50 Glosses on: 16; 355–61; 362 n. 51 Ostrogoths: 84–85; 94; 101; 106–7; 110–11; 114; 118; 132; 134 Otto I: 330 n. 11; 410 Otto II: 410 Otto III: 410 Ovid: 15; 260 n. 28; 264 n. 39; 304–5; 352–53; 417; 420 Epistulae ex Ponto: 304 Metamorphoses: 352–53; 417; 442 n. 11 Tristia: 305 n. 9; 420 n. 14 see also “Appendix Ovidiana” Pacuvius: 167 Palladius (author of Lausiac History) 174 n. 27 Palladius, bp. of Rathiaria: 156–57; 158 n. 60 Pallas (Athena): 43; 420 Pallas (son of Evander): 295 n. 28 Palmer, Nigel: 10 Pambo (monk): 179 n. 50 Pancratius, Church of (Rome): 328 Panegyrici Latini: 205 Pappolenus: 340 Paradise: 293–94; 300; 302; 303 Parnassus: 352; 356; 359; 362–63; 373 Paschale Campanum: 308 nn. 7–8 Paschasius Radbertus: 396 Epitaphium Arsenii: 403 Passio Praiecti: 334 n. 34; 335; 341 n. 75 Patermuthius: 180 Patiens, bp. of Lyon: 311; 314–15; 316 n. 74 Patrick, St: 10 Patroclus: 420 Paul the Deacon: 133 n. 85; 307; 312 n. 43 Paul the Simple: 179 Paul of Thebes: 177 Paul, St (apostle): 120–21; 124; 176 n. 31; 218; 229; 231; 237–38; 370; 409 n. 16; 434; 438; 442 n. 8 Paulinus (vir consularis): 87 Paulinus of Nola: 15; 133; 199–212; 242; 266 n. 44 Paulinus of Périgueux: 14; 15; 57 n. 47; 126; 257– 70; 273–88; 326 n. 39

Paulus (Roman jurist): 452 Peladius (uncle of Praiectus): 335; 341 Pelliccia, Hayden: 10 Periander: 420 n. 15 Peripatetics: 122 Perpetuus of Tours: 257 n. 21; 258 n. 23; 266 n. 44; 274; 277; 279; 282; 287 Peter (brother of Gregory of Tours): 340 Peter Damian: 255 n. 17 Peter Riga: 16; 418; 423–25; 427–28 Peter, St (apostle): 23 n. 7; 27 n. 25; 124; 238; 327; 409 n. 16 Phaethon: 352–53; 358–60; 362–63 Pharaoh: 419 n. 11 Philemon: 251 Philology (character): 33; 41 Philoxenus (Ps.): 383 Phoebus: 379–80 Pilate, Pontius: 453 n. 38; 457 n. 55 Pippin I of Aquitaine: 391 Pippin II of Aquitaine: 329 Pirithous: 420 Pittacus: 122; 420 n. 15 Pityrion: 179 n. 53 Plato: 42–43; 84; 86–87; 89; 122; 377; 420 n. 15 Platonists, Platonism: 77; 215; 217–23; 235 n.  60; 284 n. 38 Plautus: 262 n. 33; 420 n. 15 Pliny the Elder: 27 Plutarch: 95; 110 n. 105; 112 n. 120 Poemen: 179 n. 56 Pompey (Cn. Pompeius Magnus): 37 Possidius: 226; 232 n. 44 Postumianus: 415 Praetextatus (kinsman of Lupus of Soissons): 334; 336 Praetextatus (Roman aristocrat): 88 n. 46 Praetextatus, bp. of Rouen: 340 Pragmatic Sanction: 81; 96 Praiectus, bp. of Clermont: 335; 341 Principius, bp. of Soissons: 336 n. 43 Priscian: 380–81; 389 Priscus: 102; 111; 307 n. 5 Proba: 13 Probus (Ps.): 55; 57; 57 n. 50; 66 n. 89 Procopius: 82–83; 89; 115 Proculus, bp. of Limoges: 334 n. 34 Prodigal Son: 223; 423 n. 22 Prometheus: 355; 357 n. 29 Proserpina: 420

General Index (Authors, People, Places, and Texts) Protoevangelium Jacobi: 184; 185 n. 14; 186 Prudentius: 13; 119 n. 18; 205; 298 n. 41 Apotheosis: 357 n. 30 Contra Symmachum: 13; 119 n. 18 Hamartigenia: 298 n. 41 Praefatio: 205 Psychomachia: 13; 119 n. 18; 205 n. 28; 400 Prudentius of Troyes: 386 n. 50 Pseudo-: see under putative name Ptolemy II Philadelphus: 239–41 Publicola (correspondent of Augustine): 12 Pylades: 419 Pyrrha: 357 Pythagoras: 420 n. 15 Quintianus Afer, bp. of Clermont: 339 Quintilian: 33; 36 n. 8; 43 n. 15; 49 n. 2; 52 n. 18; 58 n. 53; 65 n. 80; 420 n. 15 Radagais: 204 Radegund: 120 n. 19; 121–22; 266 Ralph of Diss: 456 n. 54 Ratherius of Verona: 412 Ravenna Cosmographer: 315 Razon de amor y denuestos del agua y el vino: 431 Red Sea: 289; 292 n. 14; 369–70 Regino of Prüm: 332 n. 22; 335 n. 35 Remigius, bp. of Rheims: 334–36 Remigius of Auxerre: 377 Reuben: 443 nn. 105–8 Rhea: 362–63 Rhetorica ad Herennium: 43 n. 15 Richard I of England: 446 Richard III of England: 329 Ricimer: 80; 307–8; 311–13 Rimbert: 332 n. 16 Riotamus: 309–10 Risingham: 19 n. 1 Rufinus (grammarian): 57 n. 44 Rufinus of Aquileia: 15; 169–81; 238; 352 Apologia contra Hieronymum: 169 n. 2 De benedictionibus Patriarcharum: 169 n. 2 Expositio Symboli: 169 n. 2 Ruotger: 333 n. 28 Ruricius of Limoges: 137 n. 113; 316; 334 n. 34 Sacerdos, Marius Plotius: 52 n.  17; 55 n.  30; 57 n. 50; 64–70 Sacerdos, bp. of Lyons: 340 Sallust: 51; 264; 417 n. 2; 420 n. 15

483

Salomo I, bp. of Constance: 332 Salomo II, bp. of Constance: 332 Salomo III, bp. of Constance: 332 Salvius, bp. of Albi: 340 n. 70 Samson, Abbot of Bury: 445–50; 452; 458 Sarah: 419 n. 11 Satan: 193; 219 n. 17; 285; 294; 296–97; 299; 302 Saturn: 360; 362 n. 46; 419 Satyrus (brother of Ambrose): 144 Savaric, bp. of Orléans: 332; 334; 342 Scaliger, Joseph: 34 Scholia Bernensia: 16; 354–61; 362 n. 51 Scylla: 16; 417–18; 421–28 Scythia, Scythians: 83; 103; 106; 108; 112; 120 n. 21; 133 Sedulius Scottus: 135; 391; 399 n.  53; 400 nn.  58 and 61; 401–3; 429 Semer: 445; 448–50 Seneca: 33; 46; 86; 263 Apocolocyntosis: 46 Epistulae: 263 n. 36 Senoch: 328 Septuagint (LXX): 145; 146 n. 13; 148 n. 22; 150; 152; 194 n. 64; 238 n. 74; 239–43; 443 n. 100 Sequanus, abbot: 328 Serenus, Quintus: 26; 27 n. 23 Seronatus: 310 Servius: 258 n. 22; 381 Severus (friend of Paulinus of Nola): 210 nn. 46–47 Sheba, Queen of: 195–96 Sidonius Apollinaris: 119; 119 n. 18; 132; 134; 136– 38; 277 n. 17; 282; 308; 309 n. 16; 310–16 Sigebert of Gembloux: 407 Sigichelmus, nephew of Bertram of Le Mans: 337 Silius Italicus: 264 n. 39 Silvester of Chalon-sur-Saône: 328 Sinai, Mt.: 193 Sirens: 418; 421–22 Sisebut: 130 Slavs: 115–39 Smaragdus of St-Mihiel: 391; 392 n. 9; 399–403 Smolak, Kurt: 12 Socrates: 86; 420 n. 15 Sodom, Sodomites: 298; 419 n. 11 Solomon: 196; 420 n. 15 Solon: 420 n. 15 Soranus: 86 Sozomen: 179 n. 56 St Médard: 374

484

“Omnium Magistra Virtutum”

Stahl, W.H.: 34 Statius: 255 n. 17; 264 n. 39; 268; 420 Statuta ecclesiae antiqua: 287 Stephen, St: 127 Stilicho: 204 Stoics: 122; 244; 262 Stratas, Teresa: 15 Suetonius: 260 n. 28 Suavaricus: see Savaric Sueves: 118; 122–23; 125; 128–30; 132; 136; 308 Suibne Geilt: 387 Sulpicius Severus: 126; 172; 175–77; 254–59; 260 n. 30; 261 n. 31; 264–67; 276 n. 12; 278 n. 19; 322; 410; 412; 415–16 Dialogi: 276 n. 12; 415–16 Epistulae: 410; 416 Vita Martini: 175; 254; 256; 276 n. 12; 278 n. 19; 322; 410; 412; 416 Sunesen, Andreas: 422–23 Sunilda: 106; 109 Susanna: 423–28 Syagrius: 311 Syme, Ronald: 10; 13 Symmachus (father-in-law of Boethius): 82–83 Symmachus (translator): 239; 242 n. 90 Syrtes: 421–25; 427 Tacitus: 45 n. 20; 255 n. 17 Táin Bó Cuailnge: 387 Tanaquil: 314 Tantalus: 441 Tarquin: 314 Tatberht, relation of Wilfrid: 342 n. 80 Tellus: 25; 26 n. 16; 272 n. 60 Terence: 260 n. 28; 391; 412 Adelphoe: 412 Andria: 391 n. 7 Terentianus Maurus: 230 Teridius (nephew of Caesarius of Arles): 336–37 Terra Mater: 25 Tertullian: 133; 188 Adversos Iudaeos: 133 n. 88 Apology: 285 n. 40 De carne Christi: 185 n. 14 Tethys: 442 n. 11 Tetricus, bp. of Langres: 340 Thales: 420 n. 15 Thalia: 419 n. 10 Thaumastus (relative of Sidonius): 313–14 Theban Legion: 320

Themis: 356–57; 362–63 Theoderic: 74–75; 77–84; 88–91; 97; 100; 317 Theodahad: 77; 81; 89; 90 n. 50 Theodoret: 104 n. 71; 114 n. 128 Theodosius I: 74; 271–72 Theodosius II: 79 Theodulf of Orléans: 377; 388 Theofanu: 410 Theomastus of Mainz: 323–74 Theridius: 201 Thesaurus Linguae Latinae: 10; 12 Theseus: 420 Thessaly: 356 Thetis: 420; 430; 432; 436; 442 n. 11; 443 nn. 125– 28, 153–56 Theudemir: 130 Theuderic I, king: 339 Thiadgrim, bp. of Halberstadt: 331 Thietmar of Merseburg: 333 n. 28 Thomas, St (apostle): 120; 409 n. 16 Thoringus, nephew of Bertram of Le Mans: 338 Tiberinus: 259 n. 27 Timothy (apostle): 433; 437 Titans: 359 Tranquillus (confessor): 327 Trigguilla: 87 Troy: 419 Turnus: 295 Ultrogotho: 125 n. 48 Valens: 96 Valentinian I: 26 n. 18 Valerius, bp. of Hippo: 232 Valerius Maximus: 26; 27 n. 20; 46 n. 23 Valerius of Saint-Lizier: 327 Vanbrugh, Sir John: 225 Vandals: 99; 133; 307 Varro: 9; 12; 167; 420 n. 15 Venantius: see Fortunatus Veneti: 107 Venus: 419–20 Vergil: see Virgil Verres, Gaius: 34–37 Verulamium: 370 Verus: see Vita Eutropii Vesta: 419 Victor, Claudius Marius: 14; 290 n. 7; 294 Victorinus, Marius: 75 Victorinus of Pettau: 186 n. 21; 187 n. 24;188

General Index (Authors, People, Places, and Texts) Virgil: 122; 227 n. 18; 228–29; 257; 258 n. 22; 259; 271; 354; 361; 383; 391; 417; 420; 429; see also Servius Eclogues: 46 n. 23; 354; 360; 442 n. 11; see also Scholia Bernensia Georgics: 255 n. 16; 442 n. 11 Aeneid: 25 n. 13; 209 n. 41; 255 n. 17; 257; 259; 261; 264 n. 39; 295 nn. 26–27; 301 n. 53; 304 nn. 5 and 8; 391 n. 6; 417 Visigoths: 79; 94; 96; 106–7; 110–11; 117 n. 9; 126 n. 52; 132 n. 83; 136–37; 204; 277; 307; 309–12; 314; 315–17 Vitae Vita Adalberonis II Mettensis episcopi: 334 n. 33 Vita Ansberti: 342 n. 82 Vita Anstrudis: 342 n. 82 Vita Audoini episcopi Rotomagensis: 343 n. 84 Vita Betharii episcopi Carnotensis: 334 n. 34 Vita Boniti episcopi Arverni: 343 n. 84 Vita Eligii episcopi Noviomagensis: 343 n. 84 Vita Eucherii episcopli Aurelianensis: 333 n.  14; 334; 342 n. 82 Vita Eutropii: 311 Vita Iuniani confessoris Commodoliacensis: 334 n. 34 Vita Lupi episcopi Senonici: 341 n. 78; 342 n. 28 Vita Marcelli: 311 n. 37; 312 n. 38; 314 n. 60 Vita Meinwerki episcopi Patherbrunnensis: 334 n. 33 Vita Menelei: 342 n. 82 Vita Patrum Iurensium: 308 Vita Remigii episcopi Remensis: 334 n. 32

485

Vita Sigiramni: 342 n. 82 Vita Sturmi: 342 n. 83 Vita Walarici: 342 n. 82 Vita Wandregiselli: 342 n. 82 Vitiges: 113 Vulcan: 420 Walafrid Strabo: 203 n. 22 Waldo, bp. of Chur: 332 Waldo, bp. of Freising: 332 Waldram of St Gall: 135 Walter, abp. of Sens: 332 Walter, bp. of Orléans: 332 Walter Map: 430 Walter of Châtillon: 426 n. 33 Wazo (scholasticus): 408 Wetherbee, Winthrop: 10 Widsi∂: 98 Wilfrid, bp. of York: 342 Willetrudis: 426 n. 35 William of Diss (cleric): 446 n. 8; 448–49; 458 Willibald: 342 n. 83 Winterbottom, Michael: 9–10 Wood, Ian: 11 Wulfad: 374; 380 Ysengrimus: 14 Zeno (philosopher): 86; 89 Zeno (emperor): 78; 89; 90 n. 49 Zeus Xenios: 250 Ziolkowski, Jan: 14