Evidence That the Hebrew “King Arthur” Manuscript Is a Non-authorial Copy

Dharma Patanjala: A Saiva scripture from ancient Java studied in the light of related Old Javanese and Sanskrit texts By ANDREA ACRI Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2011. Pp. 615. Appendices, Plates, Notes, Bibliography, General Index, Index of Text Passages. doi: 10.1017/S0022463413000453 Andrea Acri, in this handsomely published sixteenth volume of the Gonda Indological Series, presents his readers with an edition, translation and extensive commentary on the Dharma Patanjala, an Old Javanese Saiva scripture. The edition is based upon a single nipah-palmleaf manuscript, which according to its colophon was copied in 1467 in Antiraga, a place whose exact location is unknown. The manuscript was part of a pre-sixteenth-century collection of manuscripts from West Java which at some time prior to 1758 had found its way to the Merapi-Merbabu region of Central Java, in all likelihood as part of an exchange of manuscripts between religious hermitages (kabuyutan) located in these two regions. The Dutch colonial government purchased the collection in 1851 on behalf of the Royal Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences. It seems that the Sanskritist Rudolf Friederich, who was in the employ of the Royal Society to carry out archaeological and philological research, presented the manuscript of the Dharma Patanjala to his compatriot Karl Schoemann who resided in Bogor and Batavia between 1845 and 1851 when he was tutor to the children of Governor General Rochussen. The manuscript was incorporated in the Staatsbibliothek of Berlin after Schoemann's death in 1877. Acri provides both a diplomatic and critical edition of the text of the Dharma Patanjala. The diplomatic edition, he explains, is intended to reproduce the text of the work in a form as close as possible to the state in which the fifteenth-century scribe preserved the work. In the present publication we are given a facsimile reproduction of the original nipah-palm manuscript and a parallel diplomatic edition accompanied by paleographic and codicological remarks. Acri justifies the need for a diplomatic edition because our access to the Dharma Patanjala is reliant on a single manuscript which forms part of a manuscript tradition in West Java about which little is known. In this regard he reminds us that the practices that gave shape to the form in which such a work is reproduced reveal valuable information about both the socioeconomic background of the scribe and the aesthetic values of the civilisation he was part of. The critical edition on the other hand, he argues, is designed with quite another purpose in mind. It is geared to reproduce as nearly as possible the text in the form it had in the mind of the author and so one which can be meaningfully compared with other contemporary works in the Indonesian Archipelago, continental Southeast Asia and the South Asian subcontinent. Accordingly Acri's starting point for his critical edition is the observation--founded upon the evidence of the Dharma Patanjala itself--that the author was 'a learned master' conversant with Saiva doctrine on which he drew creatively when he composed his work. It is on this assumption that Acri argues that the gaps, inconsistencies and mistakes in the single extant manuscript we have of this work are due not to its author but occurred in the process of subsequent reproductions. This, he points out, is as true of similar works preserved in Balinese manuscripts as it is true of the early Sanskrit Siddhantatantras from the South Asian subcontinent. It is on this premise that Acri--contrary to the practice of earlier editors of works based on the witness of a single manuscript who limited their corrections only to those which resulted from 'errors of writing'--has proposed more ambitious emendations which are intended to restore 'the meaningfulness and logical coherence' of the original work. In this he has been guided first by evidence internal to the whole of the text he is editing, then, when possible, on the witness of parallel passages from other closely related Old Javanese tattvas and tuturs, and in the case of listings of doctrinal elements, he has made use of relevant Sanskrit works. …

Reviewed by: Vitae Antonii Versiones Latinae (CCSL 170) ed. by P. H. E. Bertrand and Lois Gandt Scott G. Bruce Vitae Antonii Versiones Latinae (CCSL 170) P. H. E. Bertrand and Lois Gandt, Eds. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. Pp. 616. ISBN: 978-2-503-57748-7 Although it was composed in Greek, the hagiographical portrait of Saint Anthony by Archbishop Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 299–373) exerted an influence on the imaginations of Latin readers far surpassing that of any other saint in the eastern tradition. The impact of Anthony's exemplary life among Latin-reading audiences in North Africa and western Europe was only possible because of the industry of late antique translators who rendered Athanasius's Greek into Latin for distant readers eager for information about the desert saints. In the volume under review, P. H. E. Bertrand and Lois Gandt provide critical editions and expansive introductions to the two known Latin translations of Athanasius' Life of Blessed Abbot Anthony (Vita beati Antonii abbatis). The organization of the book is not as intuitive as one may like. The first half of the volume (242 total) contains the modern scholarly material, including a shared bibliography (7*–38*), Bertrand's long introduction (in German) to Evagrius's well-known literary Latin translation of the Vita Antonii (41*–188*) and Gandt's much shorter introduction (in English) to the so-called versio vetustissima, a little-known literal rendering of Athanasius's text into Latin which was written in the fourth century and survives only in a single tenth-century manuscript (191*–242*). The second half of the book (360 total pages) reboots the pagination to [End Page 175] present Bertrand's edition of the Vita beati Antonii abbatis Evagrio interprete (1–103) and Gandt's Vitae Antonii versio vetustissima (105–83), followed by a long appendix (see below). It would have made more sense to print the editions immediartely after their respective introductions and to present continuous pagination throughout the volume. Quibbles about the organization aside, the content of this volume offers readers much to admire. Bertrand's introduction to Evagrius's Latin translation of Athanasius's Greek text begins with a valuable summary of the careers of Anthony and Athanasius and a survey of the arguments for Athanasius's authorship of the Greek Vita Antonii, which heralded a new genre of Christian literature perhaps inspired by ancient biographies, but more explicitly related to the Gospels and the acts of the earliest martyrs. Bertrand then introduces his reader to Evagrius, who composed his Latin translation of Athanasius's work in 373. His was not a literal translation but a rendering ad sensum, that is, approximating the original text without losing sight of its meaning. The second part of Bertrand's introduction presents a reception history of Evagrius's translation from Late Antiquity to the eleventh century, with evidence of its oral transmission, its function as an Inspirationsquelle for early medieval readers, its direct influence on the works of later authors from Jerome's Vita Hilarionis to Odo of Cluny's Collationum libri tres, and its widespread presence in early medieval manuscripts (fifty-eight exemplars between the eighth and eleventh centuries) and monastic library catalogues (ten references). The third part of Bertrand's introduction describes the contents of the codices containing Evagrius's translation used as the basis for the edition (most are legendaries with an emphasis on desert saints), an analysis of the several families of variations in the manuscript tradition, and an explanation of editing principles employed. Perhaps unavoidably, Gandt's introduction repeats some of Bertrand's on the careers of Anthony and Athanasius before arriving at her topic, the versio vetustissima, a literal Latin translation of the Greek Vita Antonii discovered in 1914 by André Wilmart. The translator was most likely either Ammonius or Isidore, two learned monks who accompanied Athanasius during his exile in Rome in the early 340s. This vita did not enjoy the popularity of Evagrius's translation; it survives in toto in a single tenth-century manuscript. The importance of the versio vetustissima is not its influence on western audiences, Gandt shows, but rather its value as a literal, near-contemporary witness...

The main objective of the current study is to offer the first critical edition, accompanied by an English translation and introductory study, of a tripartite Latin text addressing world astrology preserved in a single manuscript: MS Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1407, fols. 55r–62r (14th/15th century). This study also includes the Middle English translation of discontinuous sections of this tripartite Latin text as transmitted in MS London, Royal College of Physicians, 384, fols. 83v–85r. It is argued that the first part of this tripartite text incorporates a hitherto unknown Latin translation by Henry Bate of the lost third version of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Sefer ha-ʿOlam. The other two parts include two Latin translations, also carried out by Henry Bate, of treatises ascribed to Ya‘qūb ibn Ishāq al-Kindī, the « philosopher of the Arabs ».

Teaching Classics in the Renaissance:Two Case Histories Julia Haig Gaisser I have always enjoyed this plenary session, and especially the awards, for they give us an opportunity to think about—and to celebrate—what it is to be a classicist, and what got us into this business in the first place: the desire to find out about the ancient world and the eagerness to convey our knowledge and enthusiasm to others. In a word: scholarship and teaching. These two activities are complementary and symbiotic in every field, but especially so in classics, where not only our discipline, but our material itself has depended on their interaction for over two thousand years. Both our reading of the ancient authors and the fact that we have them to read have depended on generations of scholars, teachers, and students reading them before us—and not just reading them, but transcribing, interpreting, imitating, and above all making them meaningful in terms of their own lives. The process is an active one—much too active to be described by the terms we use for it: classical tradition, transmission, or reception. If our predecessors had merely received and transmitted the ancient texts, handing them down like so many unopened packages, the continuum of classical scholars, teachers, and readers would have ended long ago. This afternoon I want to talk about two of our predecessors in this continuum—two great scholar-teachers of the Renaissance, Filippo Beroaldo and Pierio Valeriano. Each taught an author whose survival from antiquity hung by a slender thread, depending as it did on a single manuscript. Beroaldo lectured on Apuleius' Golden Ass, preserved only in an eleventh-century manuscript from Montecassino, Valeriano on Catullus, whose text was recovered only [End Page 1] at the beginning of the thirteenth century in a manuscript now lost to us. We have an excellent record of the teaching of both from their lectures, which suffered very different fates through the accidents of history. Beroaldo's teaching is preserved in his famous commentary on the Golden Ass, which was printed in many editions and is only now being fully superseded. Valeriano's lectures on Catullus are only partially preserved in a mutilated and almost unknown manuscript in the Vatican Library. Beroaldo's commentary influenced the way in which the Golden Ass was read all over Europe for generations. Valeriano's lectures influenced no one at all—except for the students who heard them. 1. Filippo Beroaldo In the late fifteenth century Filippo Beroaldo of Bologna was one of the most popular and influential teachers in Italy.1 As many as 300 students regularly attended his daily morning lectures at the University of Bologna.2 Many of these students were foreign, for Beroaldo's reputation extended far beyond Italy. They came from Spain and France, but above all from Germany and eastern Europe; indeed, a contemporary chronicler tells us both that he had 200 students "from the other side of the Alps" and that they all left Bologna after his death.3 Beroaldo's students were undoubtedly attracted by his kindly, genial manner, for he seems to have been a happy, hospitable man, deeply religious, but also good company and a bit of a bon vivant.4 But it was his teaching they came to hear. We know quite a bit about Renaissance teaching. Both the appearance of the classroom and the teaching style were inherited from the Middle Ages.5 The [End Page 2] professor, in his pulpit, read the text aloud, commenting on it word by word. He glossed difficult vocabulary, explained historical and mythological references, cited parallels from other authors, and corrected readings. The students either had texts or created them from the professor's dictation. This teaching method long outlasted the Renaissance: a form of it was still in use at the University of Edinburgh in the early 1960s, as I know from my own experience. By this time, of course, the students all owned printed texts, but the professor still went through the play—we were studying Aeschylus' Agamemnon—word by word, as his predecessors had done for a thousand years. As he prepared his lectures, the teacher (whether Renaissance or modern...

This chapter examines a case history of one of the late hagiographic compositions attributed to Julius of Aqfahs, the Martyrdom of John and Simon, documenting the historical shortcomings of this text. John and Simon were two martyrs from Lower Egypt. The Coptic text of their Martyrdom survives in a single manuscript from the Vatican Library, published by Henri Hyvernat with a French translation. The chapter concludes that the Martyrdom of John and Simon cannot be attributed to Julius of Aqfahs, and it is certain that it is based on a late redaction inspired by the lives of the recluses of the Middle Ages. This period was the Mamluk era, which was unfavorable for the Copts. An unknown author wanted to provide a model to his fellow Christians; he used a kind of “copy-paste” system to create martyrs who corresponded to the circumstances of his own times.

The valiant efforts of scholars and critics have not yet succeeded in rescuing the fourteenth-century lyric poet Cecco Nuccoli from his comparative obscurity. A notary and a native of Perugia, where he seems to have lived from about 1290 to about 1350, Nuccoli was the author of twenty-nine sonnets (two-thirds of them sonetti caudati) preserved in a single manuscript, copied at Perugia between 1345 and 1353 and now in the Vatican Library (MS Vaticano Barberiniano 4036). This source also contains the surviving work of several of Nuccoli's Perugian contemporaries, including Marino Ceccoli, Neri Moscoli, and Gilio Lelli; and it has become conventional to treat these men as the kernel of a self-conscious and cohesive group of poets working within the generic confines of poesia giocosa or comico-realistica. This approach owes much of its prestige to Mario Marti, who produced the (almost) definitive edition of the Perugians' poetry in 1956, and whose work has towered over interpretation of that poetry fo...

Bartholomew's Latin translation of the Essay, which survives in a single manuscript in Padua, Antoniana XVII 370, was published in a diplomatic edition by Kley 1936, 3-13, with a slight philological commentary. As a diplomatic edition, Kley's text reproduced exactly the wording, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation in the manuscript. Not having seen the manuscript, but also because of the nature of the slavishly literal translation, the author has thought it best to print the text as published by Kley except for the following features which are intended to enhance the usefulness of the Latin translation for the student of the Greek text of Theophrastus.Keywords: Bartholomew; Greek text; Kley; Latin translation; Theophrastus

176 Reviews grasped the significance of the tetralogy for the play but gave a 'deeply anachronistic' (p. 92) reading of the ending, and Anthony Sher's acrobatic Richard. Glen Byam Shaw's and William Gaskill's productions at the R.S.C. show the way forward by their balance and truth to the text. The main faults of the book are some rather long sentences, which may be, paradoxically, the result of a straggle to say it all as briefly as possible, and the absence of notes. Kevin Magarey Department of English University of Adelaide Stork, Nancy P., Through a gloss darkly: Aldhelm's riddles in the British Library MS Royal 12.C.xxiii (Studies and texts, 98), Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990; paper; pp. vii, 274; 1 plate; R.R.P. CAN$39.50. In a study of Old English glosses in Latin manuscripts published in 1982, R.I. Page issued a call for a way of publishing gloss material that would go beyond the customary lists of transcribed lemmata and glosses. Such transcripts 'cannot give even the lexicographer all he needs, whereas the student who is interested, not just in Latin-Old English equivalents, but in the nature of glossing, the reasons it took the form it did, and the audience the glosses appealedto,will find many of the existing editions of limited use. There is no substitute for the manuscript, but there may be better ways of publishing the gloss material, of defining it more precisely, and it is time these were explored'. Page's challenge is admirably met in this new edition of Aldhelm's 100 Latin Enigmata and then associated glosses in a single manuscript: London, British Library, Royal 12.C.xxiii, fols. 79v-103v. Of Canterbury provenance and early eleventhcentury date, Royal 12.C.xxiii was written as a glossed manuscript, with interlinear Latin glosses designed to be transmitted along with the text. Generous margins were left for more extensive commentary glosses. The text hand, a finely written Caroline script, is responsible for all the Latin glosses and for 32 of the 77 O E glosses. A single second hand has contributed the remaining vernacular glosses. The O E glosses evidently had a lesser status and were added in an ad hoc fashion, having a much looser association than the Latin scholia with Aldhelm's text. The introduction covers a wide range of topics in a concise and practical form and in a lucid, easy style that makes the material accessible to the nonspecialist reader. After a full description of the manuscript and its contents, Stork discusses the often complex relationships between the extant manuscripts and their sets of glosses. Then follows a brief but systematic explication of all the types of gloss represented in the manuscript: metrical, grammatical, Reviews 177 syntactical, textual, lexical and the commentary glosses that draw so heavily on Isidore's Etymologiae. Her conclusion addresses such broader matters as the relation between text and gloss, the peculiarities of English manuscripts and the audience of theriddles.The appendices are especially useful. T w o indices of the Latin-Latin lexical glosses are provided, listed under both lemma and gloss, and an alphabetical list of the O E glosses in Appendix C is complemented by an analysis of the same material ananged in order of appearance in the manuscript on pp. 52-4. A n index to the commentary glosses is followed by an index of sources, a comprehensive bibliography and a general index. This book does not pretend to be a comprehensive edition of Aldhelm's text with full apparatus and notes. Rather the focus isfirmlyon the gloss material and its relation to the text in a single manuscript. Thus her edition presents an innovative reconstruction of each manuscript page with both interlinear and marginal glosses carefully located and clearly and accurately set out. The measure of her success with the layout can be gauged by comparison with the frontispiece plate, which reproduces folio 83r of the manuscript. Stork's edition allows us to read an important school text in the pedagogic context in which it was studied in later Anglo-Saxon England. Paul Sonell Department of English Otago...

There is another Prose Lancelot which, as great scholars such as Ferdinand Lot and Jean Frappier have shown, possesses a unity as a literary work, in spite of contrasts between the different branches. In that romance the tale of Lancelot’s childhood and adventures up to his installation as a companion of the Round Table forms only the first part of a great cycle which includes a Grail Quest firmly integrated in Lancelot’s own story through the person of his son Galahad, and a Mort Artu which recounts the tragic conclusion of Lancelot’s love for Guinevere and the destruction of Arthur and the Round Table. The non-cyclic and the cyclic Prose Lancelot share the same text up to Lancelot’s welcome into Arthur’s court (at the end of Sommer III), although some scribes, seeing the obvious contradictions between the Grail allusions in this part of the tale and the Galahad Quest, have tried to remove them or alter them, as will be seen in the last part of Chapter XI. The cyclic and non-cyclic romances, therefore, only diverge at the end of Sommer III (at the end of phase V in the work studied in Part I of this book), when Galehot takes Lancelot away from court and journeys to his own lands. It is this divergence into two different versions of the journey to Sorelois, the False Guinevere episode, and the death of Galehot which I propose to study in this chapter. I use the title ‘version (a)’ to designate the brief version (‘special version’ in the terminology of Micha) which corresponds to phase VI of the non-cyclic Lancelot and which brings the story to an end with the death of Galehot.2 I use the title ‘version (b)’ to designate the cyclic version. We have seen that version (a) (phase VI) is linked through references back and a

The subject of love and adultery in Arthurian romances usually calls to mind the love triangle that unites King Arthur, his wife Queen Guinevere, and the knight Sir Lancelot. The great love affair of Guinevere and Lancelot is often celebrated as an enduring passion that overcomes all obstacles, including the queen's marriage. Lancelot is inspired to accomplish extraordinary feats of prowess because of his love for the queen, and his successes in adventures, tournaments and contests contribute to the chivalric brilliance that establishes the reputation of Arthur's court and the Round Table. Yet even though the knight does great acts of chivalry for his beloved queen, his love for her must remain secret because it betrays the king. And although the queen rewards her knight with public displays of favour, her passionate love for him must remain hidden. Secrecy never adequately hides the queen's love affair from her husband, however, and the lovers are inevitably discovered. Indeed, medieval versions of the story recount a series of repeated episodes in which the love affair is revealed and then covered up again. That is, Arthur sees evidence of his queen's adultery, but he finds a way not to believe what he sees. In the thirteenth-century Old French Vulgate Cycle (also called the Lancelot-Grail Cycle by modern scholars), which combines the story of Lancelot with that of the Holy Grail, the final section, the Mort Artu ( Death of King Arthur ), recounts that the king repeatedly refuses to believe that Lancelot and Guinevere could betray him.

The Portuguese Demanda do Santo Graal preserved in a unique fifteenth-century manuscript, no. 2594 of the National Library of Vienna, and the Spanish Demanda del Sancto Grial the greater part of which has only survived in two early printed editions, Toledo, 1515 and Sevilla, 1535, derive ultimately, though not independently of each other, from the French Post-Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal and Post-Vulgate Mort Artu. The latter have not come down to us in their entirety in any single manuscript; only fragments of varying lengths have been preserved in MSS B.N. fr. 112, 116, 340 and 343. However, the second half of the Queste del Saint Graal incorporated in the Second Version of the prose Tristan offers us, apart from certain variants, substantially the same version as the latter portion of the Quest section of the Demanda. As regards the first half of the Quest section, the Demanda here also shares a number of incidents with the Tristan Queste, but whereas the latter reproduces faithfully the corresponding incidents of the Vulgate Queste, the Demanda presents these in a partially remodelled form. In addition, the Demanda contains a series of incidents which are not in the Tristan Queste.

The Portuguese Demanda do Santo Graal preserved in a unique fifteenth-century manuscript, no. 2594 of the National Library of Vienna, and the Spanish Demanda del Sancto Grial the greater part of which has only survived in two early printed editions, Toledo, 1515 and Sevilla, 1535, derive ultimately, though not independently of each other, from the French Post-Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal and Post-Vulgate Mort Artu. The latter have not come down to us in their entirety in any single manuscript; only fragments of varying lengths have been preserved in MSS B.N. fr. 112, 116, 340 and 343. However, the second half of the Queste del Saint Graal incorporated in the Second Version of the prose Tristan offers us, apart from certain variants, substantially the same version as the latter portion of the Quest section of the Demanda. As regards the first half of the Quest section, the Demanda here also shares a number of incidents with the Tristan Queste, but whereas the latter reproduces faithfully the correspondin...

Allusive Fonteinnes:Love as Trouble in La Mort le Roi Artu David S. King Scholars have long noted how the first half of the thirteenth-century French prose romance, La Mort le Roi Artu, parallels the narrative of Béroul’s twelfth-century verse Roman de Tristran.1 David F. Hult, in the preface to his recent edition and translation of the Mort Artu, indicates the resemblance as evidence that the prose romancer sought to glorify the adulterous love between Lancelot and Guenevere. Hult, like many other scholars, sees the final installment in the Lancelot-Grail cycle as turning away from the ascetic concerns of its immediate predecessor, La Queste del Saint Graal (63).2 But one must not mistake the secular focus of the characters in the Mort Artu for that of the author. The same portion of the romance that resembles Béroul’s poem makes a number of smaller scale allusions to other texts that suggest kinship with the spirit of the Queste. These allusions center on the image of the fonteinne (fountain or spring), first evoked in a description of Guenevere recalling the lovers’ initial meeting in the Prose Lancelot. Following that point, two springs appear in the narrative. Lancelot stops to rest by one when chased from court by Guenevere’s jealousy, and again by another when drawn back by peril she faces. Elements of these scenes allude to the Narcissus myth, as told in the twelfth-century Lai de Narcisse, and to Biblical verses that associate fountains with marital fidelity/infidelity and the water from such sources with knowledge of the divine. The scenes also recall Lancelot’s oneiric encounter with the sole fountain in the Queste, a vision underscoring the knight’s unworthiness. With these references in mind, we may understand Lancelot’s behavior at the springs in the Mort Artu as suggesting his obsession with worldly matters and his neglect of the spiritual. The allusions encourage the reader to think of adultery as a source of turmoil [End Page 453] rather than as an inspiration, a message in harmony with the Queste’s attitude toward carnal passion. The description of the queen given in the opening folios of the Mort Artu recalls and recasts the one given on Lancelot’s and Guenevere’s initial meeting. In the Prose Lancelot, he steals furtive glances at her, losing interest in the beauty of all other women. The narrator endorses the young knight’s infatuation: “il n’avoit mie tort, se il ne prisoit envers la roine nule autre dame, car che fu la dame des dames et la fontaine de biauté. Mais s’il seust la grant valor qui en li estoit, encore l’esgardast il plus volentiers, car nule n’estoit, ne povre ne riche, de sa valor” (7: 274).3 The Mort Artu’s narrator, by contrast, tells us that: “la reïne estoit si bele que touz li monz s’en merveilloit, car a celui tens meïsmes qu’ele iert bien en l’aage de cinquante anz estoit ele si bele dame que en tout le monde ne trouvast l’en mie sa pareille, dont aucun chevalier distrent, por ce que sa biauté ne li failloit nule foiz, qu’ele estoit fonteinne de toutes biautez” (3-4).4 This narrator is less effusive in his praise. He attributes the fountain simile to others rather than vouch for its truth himself. The queen’s inner virtues merit no mention, and her beauty is a feature of this world, thereby hinting at the beauties of another world that escape the attention of those at court. What precedes the description motivates this inference. The narrator reminds us that “Lancelos se fust tenuz chastement par le conseill del preudome a qui il se fist confés quant il fu en la queste del Seint Graal et eüst del tout renoiee la reïne Guenievre” (3). We then learn of the hero’s surrender to temptation following the quest – “il rencheï el pechié de la reïne autresi comme il avoit fet autrefoiz” (3). Soon thereafter, Agravain denounces the lovers to the king. In this context, the allusion to the Prose Lancelot reads...

The current article examines autograph manuscripts of three little-known Sufi doctrinal works of the eighteenth-century Central Asian Sufi, Ṭāhir Īshān, a native of Khwarazm. Ṭāhir Īshān is better known as the author of the eighteenth-century Naqshbandī hagiographical compendium Tadhkira-yi Ṭāhir Īshān, which was completed in 1160/1747. The works in question, entitled Ḥujjat al-sālikīn va rāḥat al-ṭālibīn, Rumūz al-kalām, and Risāla-yi sayr ilā Llāh, survived in their autograph copies in a single manuscript codex preserved at the Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), under the inventory number of MS 5121. Given that the Rumūz al-kalām and Risāla-yi sayr ilā Llāh only survived in their autograph copies, MS 5121 serves as a crucial gateway to these doctrinal texts of Ṭāhir Īshān.

Reviewed by: Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Textby Sarah McNamer Barbara Newman Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text. By Sarah McNamer. [ The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature, Volume 14.] (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 2018. Pp. clxxx, 264. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-268-10285-2 hardcover; 978-0-268-10287-6 e-book.) Few medieval religious texts enjoyed greater influence than the early fourteenth-century Meditationes Vitae Christi(MVC), often known as "pseudo-Bonaventure" because so many manuscripts credit the Franciscan saint. Mary Stallings-Taney, editing the text in 1997 for the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, ascribed it instead to an obscure Tuscan friar, Johannes de Caulibus. In this revisionist study, Sarah McNamer turns all previous inquiries into authorship on their head. On her telling, the original core of the lengthy MVC was a short Italian text preserved in a single manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian MS Canonici Italian 174). This brief devotional work meditates only on Christ's infancy and passion—by far the most popular parts of the Meditations—from a markedly feminine point of view, with casual references to "our sweet spouse" suggesting that the writer and her intended audience were nuns. In a long, tightly argued introduction, McNamer posits that this Italian author was a Poor Clare from Tuscany, whose work was soon afterward Latinized and expanded by one or more clerics. The book presents an edition and facing-page translation of the Canonici text, prefaced by a study addressing the textual history of the MVC, its authorship, date and place of composition, and the manuscript itself. A linguistic analysis by Pär Larson is also included. McNamer's thesis, first aired in a 2009 Speculumarticle, has already sparked controversy; she is engaged in ongoing debate with two Hungarian scholars, Dávid Falvay and Péter Tóth. Space does not allow a full discussion of the issues here, but no one with an interest in affective piety or the vicissitudes of women's authorship can overlook this volume. [End Page 361] As McNamer rightly observes, only the absence of close reading maintained the priority of the received Latin text for so long. Single authorship for the MVC is difficult to support in view of the work's sharp tonal and stylistic contrasts. Its deeply affective meditations on the infancy and passion have little in common with the much longer, central portion on Christ's public ministry, which is heavily didactic and includes numerous citations from St. Bernard and other authorities. Unlike the Italian text, the public ministry section pointedly calls attention away from women and low-status people. The Latin redactor, McNamer argues, also deleted a long, sentimental scene in which the Virgin kisses Christ's body from head to toe—a compelling case of a male cleric toning down feminine affectivity. It is no wonder that his material proved less attractive to a growing lay audience, hungry for devotions that could move them to tears. If McNamer is right, our broader narrative about the Franciscans' role in the evolution of lay piety will have to change, for everything that Johannes de Caulibus or another friar added to the nun's meditations was designed not to produce an affective text, but to neutralize one. Much is at stake here, and it will take time for Italianists and Franciscan scholars to give these issues the thorough vetting they deserve. In the meantime, McNamer's compelling arguments have already changed our understanding of the MVC and its reception. Marshaling the revisionist potential of textual scholarship at its finest, her monograph won the MLA's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Award for the best work of the year in Italian literary studies. Barbara Newman Northwestern University Copyright © 2019 The Catholic University of America Press