The Authorship of the Moralium Dogma Philosophorum

Abstract

THE didactic literature of the later Middle Ages abounds in treatises dealing with the virtues and vices. One of the most popular of these was the Moralium Dogma Philosophorum, or, as some modern writers cite it, the De Honesto et Utili.1 Though not entirely lacking in originality, the work is essentially a compilation of ethical maxims drawn from the De Offlciis of Cicero, the De Beneficiis of Seneca, and the writings of a considerable number of other Latin authors. Little to the taste of a twentieth-century reader as such a compendium may be, there is every indication that in its day it was a general favorite. Not only is the Latin original extant in at least sixty-seven MSS,2 but, what is more significant, a translation into Old French survives in thirty-eight.3 A few scattered MSS prove, moreover, that it was rendered wholly or in part into other vernacular tongues, Italian,4 Franconian German,5 and even Icelandic.6 These MSS are widely dispersed through Western Europe.