John of Wales

On the trail of some medieval Occitan apologues of Barlaam and Josaphat’s Historia the paper traces their path from Catalonia to Umbria passing through the region of Montpellier, where a group of Beguins was received into the Carceri, the friary just above Assisi, in the first decades of 1300. These are the audiences of the two spiritual Franciscan manuscripts written in Umbria by Occitan scribes: Assisi, Chiesa Nuova, 9 and Todi, Biblioteca Comunale Leonij, 128. This study aims to show the actual entry of  Barlaam into the Franciscan homiletic narrative and to clarify the nature of the little collection of Occitan sermons contained in the Assisi codex (ff. 99r-126r). It is not a mere homiletic hotchpotch, as it has hitherto been considered, but instead a perfectly organised collatio, actually the only one preserved the Occitan translation – adapted with amplifications by Mathieu de las Bosiguas – of the section on Confession from the final part of the Communiloquium, the rich summa of source-material used in popular preaching, one of the most widely diffused works of the British Franciscan scholar John of Wales. A singular affinity between the explanation of the example of Lazarus (Lk 16, 19-31) in the Assisi collatio (ff. 111r-118v) and the one transmitted by ms. Paris, BnF, nouv.acq. fr. 6504 (ff. 216v-226v) allows to postulate the existence of a vernacular homiletic collection, the exemplar for both of these codices, which must have been circulating among the pauperistic and penitential Franciscan fraternities of Languedoc since the end of the XIIIth century.

The paper introduces the project Mare Historiarum whose purpose is to reconstruct the corpus of historical writings composed or just present in within Latin-speaking societies of Southern Italy since sixth until mid-fifteenth century. The project intends to overstep the previous scholarship, which focused on Southern Italian chronicles as either primary sources for historical events or literary compositions, by research into the circulation and readership of both local and foreign, medieval and Classical historical writings as attested by different rearrangements and single manuscript copies, which were produced in or imported to the South during the Middle Ages. Study of this latter group is illustrated by considerations on the miscellany of Classical historians and antiquarians, handed down in the MS BAV, Vat. lat. 1860, of Neapolitan origins and datable to the mid-fourteenth century. Both its material features and textual models are discussed.

This publication is the first scholarly translation of Breviloquium de sapientia sanctorum, the treatise written by John of Wales in Paris around 1272. This treatise is the last in John’s sequence of -loquia, and up to now it has not attracted much attention from scholars. The number of the copies survived is 28. The current translation is based on the following three manuscripts: Assisi, Sacro Convento, ms. 397, fol. 216–221; Paris, Mazar. 727 = 1255, fol. 109–113; Paris, BNF. lat. 17834, fol. 178–0193.

Настоящая публикация является первым академическим переводом «Краткой беседы о мудрости святых» Иоанна Уэльского. Это трактат, написанный в Париже около 1272 года, является заключительным произведением в цикле вероучительных сумм, созданных Иоанном. Перевод опирается на 3 из 28 сохранившихся рукописей: Assisi, Sacro Convento, ms. 397, fol. 216 — 221, Paris, Mazar. 727 = 1255, fol. 109 — 113 и Paris, BNF. lat. 17834, fol. 178–0193.

Present article focuses on analysis of John of Wales' classification of several types of knowledge on the basis of his "-loquia" sequence (consisting of “Breviloquium de philosophia, sive sapientia sanctorum”, “Communiloquium” or “Summa collationum”, “Compendiloquium” and “Breviloquium de virtutibus antiquorum Principum et Philosophorum”). John, a crucial Franciscan theologian and an industrious collector of exempla of the 13th century, designates scientia (knowledge), sapientia (wisdom) and philosophia (philosophy). According to him, the latter is the supreme form of knowledge that a human been can seek, it is true wisdom inherent in Christian saints and Church fathers. As to wisdom, it is accessible for pagans as for Christians, but a wise man needs to possess a specific set of characteristics such as high humility, sobriety, and patience, etc. And scientia represents the practical, human knowledge, quite useful (for making fair laws, for example) but not leading to the virtuous life.

Oggetto dell’articolo è il ms. London, Wellcome Library 556 (datato 1430), miscellanea di volgarizzamenti finora pressoché ignota agli studi. il codice risulta di notevole interesse sia per i testi che contiene (in particolare la serie, finora conosciuta solo parzialmente, dei volgarizzamenti attribuiti a «Maestro Pier da Reggio»), sia perché la silloge appare molto vicina a un codice, fino a oggi non identificato, appartenuto a Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535-1601), quindi spogliato nel «Quaderno riccardiano» e passato da qui tra le allegazioni del Vocabolario della crusca.

The article provides a detailed analysis of the ms london, Wellcome Library 556 (dated to 1450), a miscellany of vernacular translations which was almost unknown until now. The codex is of noteworthy interest for the texts it contains (especially the vernacular translations, until now only partially known, attributed to «Maestro Pier da Reggio»), and because it proves to be close to a codex, previously unidentified, which belonged to Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535-1601) and was then used by the Accademici della Crusca to compile the first edition of the Vocabolario.