The Hispanic Vernacular Reception of William of Orléans’s Bursarii ovidianorum: The Translations of Ovid’s Heroides

Abstract

Medieval translations of classical Latin texts into the vernacular, as well as being of interest in themselves, can also contribute to the study of the manuscript transmission of Latin commentaries on auctores. This article discusses two late-medieval Hispanic translations of Ovid’s Heroides (one into Catalan and the other into Castilian) as witnesses to the dissemination of William of Orleans’s Bursarii Ovidianorum in medieval Spain. A brief overview of the fifteenth-century Castilian translation, traditionally known as the Bursario, is followed by a detailed analysis of the introductions to the epistles in the fourteenth-century glossed Catalan translation. This analysis shows that the Catalan translation is very close to the text of manuscripts h and p of the Bursarii (Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS 2013 4°, and Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS lat. 7996) and offers an explanation for some of the particular features of these manuscripts.