| Paper 205-c | New 'Source Value' through Old-Fashioned Philology: The Bern Ms. of the Letters of Lupus of Ferrieres
(Language: English)
Michael I. Allen, Department of Classics, University of Chicago, Illinois
Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Manuscripts and Palaeography, Medicine |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
Abstract withheld by request.
Paper -b:
Modern scholars believe that the Ars minor of the 4th-century grammarian Donatus, structured as a series of questions and answers, represents the typical pedagogy of late antiquity: a student's responses to a master's questions. 9th-century readers of Donatus, however, interpreted the text very differently. A number of commentaries assert that Donatus arranged his dialogue to represent the questions of a student and the responses of a master or another student, and that this model of pedagogy was well suited to the needs of elementary teaching. This apparent shift suggests a serious engagement with pedagogical theories on the part of these Carolingian commentators, who seem to have embraced a model that valued student interaction and flexibility. The theories expressed in these commentaries provide a context for understanding the 9th-century predilection for classroom texts structured as dialogues, almost invariably arranged as the questions of a student and the responses of a master. Moreover, these school texts provide evidence that the dialogue format represents the realities of 9th-century classroom practices, prompting a re-evaluation of the methods, theory, and goals of pedagogy at the time of the Carolingian reforms.
Paper -c:
Lupus of Ferrières (ca. 805-862) was one of the great Classical Scholars of the Carolingian Renaissance. A collection of his letters (ms. Paris, BnF, 2858) assembled near the time of his death provides a unique window into his activity over thirty years. Owing to a partly damaged leaf, itself later fully excised in the mid-17th century, three letters (nos. 72-74) survive with textual gaps. Careful reassessment of the earliest prints and of a related late manuscript misconstrued in existing studies and editions (ms. Bern, Burgerbibl. 141, item 321) now allows a much improved reconstruction of the lost leaf, and reveals important new information about the date and nature of Lupus's intense scribal interest in Livy.
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