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IMC 2011: Sessions

Session 105: Medieval Latin: Manuscripts, Transmissions, and Glosses

Monday 11 July 2011, 11.15-12.45

Moderator/Chair:Michael I. Allen, Department of Classics, University of Chicago, Illinois
Paper 105-aCosmos and Commentary: The Glosses on the Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris
(Language: English)
Mark Kauntze, Department of Classics, Northwestern University
Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 105-bThe Place of the Glosae reginenses in the Commentary Tradition of Boethius' Consolatio: A Reconsideration
(Language: English)
Justin Stover, Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Manuscripts and Palaeography, Philosophy
Abstract

Paper -a:
A number of English manuscripts of the Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris are furnished with a stable and distinctive corpus of around 150 glosses. This paper will use these unpublished and previously unstudied glosses as a source for understanding the reception of the Cosmographia in late medieval England. Whilst many scholars have studied the medieval glossing of the classics, few have focused on the frequent glossing of medieval auctores such as Bernardus. This paper will draw some comparisons with published glosses on another 12th-century text (Alan of Lille's 'Anticlaudianus'), and will suggest directions for future research in this field.

Paper -b:
Almost eighty years ago, Dom André Wilmart identified and edited extracts from a 12th-century commentary on Boethius extant in two manuscripts in the Reginensis collection of the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana. Three decades later, Pierre Courcelle identified four more manuscripts of this commentary, but dismissed it as a primarily literal and grammatical exposition of little literary and philosophical import. Examining the section of this commentary on the 'O qui perpetua' (cons. 3m9), this paper will show its place in the tradition of Boethius commentary, and argue for a reevaluation of the intellectual interest of its contents.