Le Livre de Boece de Consolacion : revision of the translation in some later manuscripts

Abstract

Latin commentaries and vernacular translations are an integral part of the medieval transmission of the Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius. Of the twelve or thirteen distinct French translations undertaken between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, Le Livre de Boece de Consolacion which is contained in sixty-four known extant manuscripts can be judged the most popular. It seems to have originated in Paris: the oldest manuscript Dijon, Bibliotheque publique, 525, is dated Paris 1362, and the next oldest, Paris, Bibliotheque nationale, fr. 1728, was copied by Henri du Trevou, possibly for Charles V (1364-80). It is associated textually with two other translations—a slightly earlier anonymous verse-prose translation and the verse translation of Renaut de Louhans—and, through its prologue and one or two occasional features of its evolution, with the prose translation of Jean de Meun (in the oldest manuscript for example, the verse-prose translation lacks a prologue and stops at V, metre 2, and the remainder is the prose translation of Jean de Meun; in the next oldest manuscript the verse-prose translation is complete and enhanced by Jean de Meun's prologue). While intended for the laity, the translation of Le Livre de Boece de Consolacion was augmented with glosses selected and translated mainly from a compilation of William of Conches' commentary on the Consolatio. This stage in its development occuned before 1383, when the unglossed version was already in circulation. However, sixteen manuscripts of the unglossed translation against forty-eight of the glossed indicate the greater popularity of the