John of Garland, Integumentum Ovidii. Text, Translation, and Commentary by Kyle Gervais. TEAMS: Secular Commentary Series. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2022, xv, 201 pp.

Abstract

Some of the most exciting features of medieval philosophy and epistemology consist of the willingness to read the natural world allegorically, or as an integument, which altogether allows us today to recognize the essential epistemology pursued in the high Middle Ages. John of Garland was one of the more influential teachers of his time (b. ca. 1195, d. after 1258), and in his Integumentum Ovidii, superbly translated by Kyle Gervais, he offers an extensive discussion of how to approach Ovid’s Metamorphoses through an allegorical lens. We will profit from this translation in a critical fashion because it makes accessible in English a major study of high medieval interpretive analysis. As Gervais points out, John wrote at least a dozen philosophical treatises, which were well received by his contemporaries and successors.