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Dialogus Inter Corpus Et Animam: A Fragment and a Translation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Clark Sutherland Northup
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Extract

“The fictitious quarrel,” to borrow the thought of Heine, “which Christianity has cooked up between the body and the soul” formed in mediæval times a literary motif which attained to considerable popularity among both authors and readers. The single Latin poem, for example, with which we are here alone concerned, and the authorship of which has long been one of the debatable questions of literary history, has come down to us in at least fifteen manuscripts, and doubtless others will come to light. Of these mss. Wright, in The Latin Poems Commonly Attributed to Walter Mapes, London, 1841, p. 95, mentions ten, as follows: 1) Harl. 978 fol. 88 v°; 2) Harl. 2851 [fol. omitted]; 3) Cott. Titus A xx. fol. 163 r°; 4) Cott. Calig. A xi. fol. 164 v°; 5) Roy. 8 B vi. fol. 18 v°; 6) Camb. Ee vi. 29 art. 1; 7) Corp. Chr. Coll. 481; 8) Bodl. 110 (Bern. 1963); 9) Douce 54 fol. 36 v°; 10) Univ. Coll. B 14. Wright also refers to the edition of Th. von Karajan (Frühlingsgabe für Freunde älterer Literatur, Wien, 1839, pp. 85–98) from ms. 3121 (formerly Historia Profana 279) in the Wiener Hofbibliothek. Three mss. are mentioned by Du Méril in his Poésies populaires latines antérieures au douzième sièele, p. 217: 1) Bibl. roy., fonds du Saint-Victor 472 fol. 289 r°; 2) Bibl. de Bruxelles 4363, unpaged; 3) Bibl. Mazarine 438, unpaged. Lastly, the fifteenth ms., containing the fragment which is printed below, is now in the President White Library of Cornell University, and may conveniently be called the White ms.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , 1901 , pp. 503 - 525
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1901

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References

Note 1 in page 503 At the end of his Latin text von Karajan speaks of two other mss. which Hoffmann von Fallersleben had mentioned to him too late to be of use in this edition, and says: “Ich .... will die Ausbeute seiner Nachweisungen, wenn mir erst Abschriften jener Aufzeichnungen werden zugekommen sein, bei nächster Gelegenheit veröffentlichen.” I have been unable to find out whether these notes were ever published, and should be glad if anyone could tell me.

Note 1 in page 504 Dr. Hennen, of Trier, dates it about 1325–1340.

Note 2 in page 504 Also, on the right margin of fol. 1 v°, in a somewhat later hand, are the following words: Benedictus rex glorie qui tue memorie dedisti nobis signaculum et cetera id est sacramentum | Sumunt boni sumunt mali sacramentum pariter signo quidem in equali et cetera s tangis signi specie et cetera | Fixum crucis patibulo pro redimendo populo nunc a nobis assumitur corpus dum signum editur et cetera | . . . . Of the rest a part of the following line can be seen, but so much has been cut away as to make it illegible. It will be observed that the above is in part metrical. Its source I am as yet unable to determine. On the use of the character cp. Hagen, in his facsimile of Cod. Bern. 363, Lugduni Batavorum, 1897, p. xxviii.; and the modern use of the sign by astronomers to indicate the sun.

Note 1 in page 505 Frühlingsgabe, p. 164.

Note 2 in page 505 Poésies pop. lat. ant. au xii5 siècle, p. 219, bibl. note.

Note 1 in page 509 The reading of Du Méril, morigenatus, is probably inferior, although morigenatus is found; cp. Du Cange, Glossarium, s. v. moriginatus.

Note 2 in page 509 Obviously better than ei tuus cognatus.

Note 1 in page 510 For cordial permission to publish this text and for valuable aid of more than one kind in preparing this paper, I am indebted to my teacher, Professor George L. Burr, librarian of the President White Library, who purchased the ms. from Dr. Hennen and brought it to Ithaca.

Note 1 in page 511 A line is drawn through this word; evidently the word was a scribal error.

Note 2 in page 511 Permitted by the sense; but it obviously spoils the metre.

Note 1 in page 512 Read Si.

Note 2 in page 512 Read nolunt ?

Note 3 in page 512 For statim, in anticipation of cepit.

Note 1 in page 513 So also Wright; the better reading Nec prauorum hominum adhesisses is found in Du Mér. and v. Kar. Cp. v. Stökken.

Note 1 in page 514 The scribe probably intended miserrimis but failed to write it. Wr. and v. Kar. both have si qua spes; Du Mér. has si quidquid sit.

Note 1 in page 515 The scribe first wrote ferreum, then drew a line through it.

Note 1 in page 518 The same idea is similarly expressed by Peter of Blois, archdeacon of Bath, in his Cantilena de Lucia Carnis et Spiritus, stanza 5:

Mundus et dæmonium

Fidem sanxere mutuam,

Fraudis ad consortum,

Carnem trahentes fatuam:

Sic per proditorias blanditias

Insidias procurant:

Et in mortem animæ miserrimæ

Nequissime conjurant.

The complete poem may be found in Migne, Patrologia, ccvii. cols. 1127–1130.

Note 1 in page 519 Here I follow Du Méril's suggested emendation, reading coercere, which, it will be noticed, is the reading of von Stökken's text.

Note 1 in page 523 The next section, ll. 309–360, is found, in the printed editions, only in von Stökken and Du Méril; it is probably a late addition to the poem, tacked on by a pious monk for whom the times were out of joint.

Note 1 in page 524 Von Stökken's text is possibly better here: “and thou my kinsman.”

Note 1 in page 525 The last ten lines of Du Méril's text do not appear in any of the other printed editions, and Du Méril remarks that they are not found even in the Brussels ms. Written in a different metre, they clearly have no organic connection even with ll. 309–360, to say nothing of the main part of the Dialogus; to which, I am inclined to think, it was never intended that they should be attached.