The Romance Text of the Strassburg Oaths. Was it Written in the Ninth Century?

Abstract

E VERY philologist knows that in the history of the French language and literature the poverty of documents of the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries what may be termed the First OldFrench period (before 1100) is very great. Even the most fundamental facts cannot be determined with certainty. The text of the Strassburg Oaths, a few literary fragments like the Cantilerne de Ste Eulalie, the Fragment of Valenciennes part of a homily on Jonas, and a few glossaries (Reichenau, Cassel, Tours, etc.), are all that have survived.1 Accordingly, inductive and inverse reasoning, hypothesis and conjecture, have necessarily been resorted to in order to bridge the gap. One document, however, the Strassburg Oaths,1 has ever been regarded as of unimpeachable integrity. Yet, as the result of a close study of Nithard, whose Historia 2 iS our sole source of information on this point, I have become convinced that a revaluation of the evidence is worth while, and that a new conclusion is to be formed. One need not be accused of excessive skepticism if he is on his guard in this matter on learning the history of the manuscript of Nithard. Only one manuscript is known, Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds latins, 9768, and this dates from at least one hundred and fifty years I after Nithard's death in 843. Certainly two, more probably three, copyists were intermediate between the original manuscript and that which we possess.4 In the first half of the fifteenth century the manuscript pertained to the abbey of St Magloire near Paris, founded by Hugh Capet between 970 and 980. In 1572 the