L'auteur des «Lettres familières d'un moin du Bec» attribuée à Alain de Lille

Abstract

2009, in an article published in the Cahiers de Civilisation Medievale, I entertained serious doubts concerning the hypot hesis formulated in 2003 by Francoise Hudry 1 on the identity of the author of the Epistulae familiares, found in Paris Bibliotheque Nationale MS Latin 13575. The codex, a late twelfth-century compendium, had already been briefly described by Barthelemy Haureau in 1891. The letter collection has been available to readers of Latin since its edition and publication by Jean Leclercq in 1953 under the title Les lettres familieres d’un moine du Bec. Neither Haureau nor Leclercq claimed to identify the letters’ author(s) or recipients, although both recognized they were of monastic provenance, almost certainly from the famous abbey of Bec in Normandy. In 1972 Palemon Glorieux suggested that these letters showed certain resemblances to the work of Alan of Lille, whose writings are relatively well known but whose career remains to a large extent mysterious. F. Hudry's new edition of the letters sought not only to prove the conjectures of Glorieux but even to extend them beyond any previously accepted bounds. The historical and philological rectifications that I suggested in my article were such as to invalidate a whole series of forced interpretations and biographical guesses proposed by Francoise Hudry on Alan of Lille. By continuing to carry out research, I reached good evidence that the Epistulae familiares appear not to have been written by the doctor universalis and that the likely author of the letters is Henry, a monk from the Bec abbey, chosen by earl Galeran II de Meulan as abbot of Preaux in 1168.