El florilegio: Espacio de encuentro de los autores antiguos y medievales ed. by Muñoz Jiménez, María José

Abstract

Reviewed by: El florilegio: Espacio de encuentro de los autores antiguos y medievales ed. by Muñoz Jiménez, María José Linde M. Brocato Muñoz Jiménez, María José ed. El florilegio: Espacio de encuentro de los autores antiguos y medievales. Textes et Études du Moyen Age 58. Porto: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2011. 259 pp. ISBN: 978250353968 The ten chapters of this anthology are by members of the editor’s research groups, several of which began as conference papers, here brought up-to-date and combined with chapters on newer areas of research. Muñoz Jiménez begins the volume in an essay that defines the basic concept of the research program, expressed clearly in the title of the book and the essay: “Formas de coexistencia de los autores y obras en los florilegios latinos”, meaning the florilegium is here conceptualized as a space in which the compiler functions as an author who has produced a purposeful new work, creating dynamic interaction of the various extracts brought into the new circuit of meaning. The anthology as a whole presents both Latin and vernacular manuscripts mostly held in Spanish libraries, placed in the context of related manuscripts, particularly those within the tradition of the Florilegium Gallicum (FG). The first essay, by Muñoz Jiménez, focuses exclusively on Latin florilegia, specifically Escorial Q I 14 (14th c.), one of the main witnesses of FG, along with Toledo, Archivo Capitular 17-23 and 21-43, and Valladolid, Biblioteca Histórica de Santa Cruz, 246. The essay compares the authors anthologized, contrasts various modes of incorporation, distinguishing between medieval compilers who modified the texts of their selections in a dynamic relationship among the authors and texts, and Renaissance compilers who copied the texts with greater verbal accuracy, but also rendered them more static and impermeable. The four following essays attend to Latin florilegia, two on various witnesses of the FG tradition: Ana María Aldama Roy, “Los poemas de Claudiano en el FG”; and María Dolores Castro Jiménez, “Las epístolas literarias de Horacio en el FG”. Two attend to Douai, Bibliothèque Municipale, 749, an independent twelfth-to thirteenth-century French florilegium confected of quires from previous codexes: María Teresa Callejas Berdonés, “Juvenal en el manuscrito de Douai, Bibliothèque Municipale, 749-II”; and Beatriz Fernández de la Cuesta Gónzalez, “Pasajes selectos de Ovidio en el florilegio de Douai, Bibliothèque Municipale, 749”. These essays are largely of interest for their indications of the selection, [End Page 143] inscription, and circulation of classical authors and texts within a florilegial dynamic, as well as for details of provenance. The remaining five chapters examine Iberian florilegia, often multilingual. Two treat the library created by Pedro Fernández de Velasco, first Conde de Haro, who inventoried it in 1455 in order to donate a portion of it to his Hospital de la Vera Cruz in Medina de Pomar. He joined its community of hidalgos ancianos in 1459, and, upon his death in 1470, donated the remainder of the collection. His heirs later passed the library to the Crown, and around 1769, it passed into the Real Biblioteca Pública (now the BNE). The collection was inventoried again in 1553, and both manuscript inventories are preserved in BNE RES/141. Not only is this one of the earliest significant private Castilian libraries for which such documentation remains, the preservation of the collections allows comparison of the documentation with the materials themselves, particularly fruitful for the study of the conde’s florilegium, which exists in two versions. Patricia Cañizares Ferriz, “Los excerpta de la Rhetorica ad Herennium del Vademecum del Conde de Haro”, examines these two manuscripts (BNE, MSS/9513 composed between 1425 and 1455, and MSS/9522, a copy of 9513). This self-titled Vademecum (MSS/9513) in Latin, Castilian, and French, includes extracts from Ad Herennium IV.11-68, primarily definitions of figures (transcription provided). Of intense interest is the analysis of the Vademecum’s place in fifteenth-century intellectual culture. Also dedicated to the Haro library is María Felisa del Barrio Vega’s “La selecci...