The Bologna connection

Textual Cultures of Medieval Italy. Ed. William Robins. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. 11-49.

Speculum, 1993

2005

Textual Cultures

Consentius’ De barbarismis et metaplasmis is the most detailed treatise on the "vitia et virtutes orationis" in the Latin grammatical tradition. This original text was probably produced in fifth-century Gaul by a non-professional grammarian as a section of a larger grammatical work. In the Middle Ages, a time when clergymen (especially those from the British Isles) had to learn Latin as a foreign language, this text enjoyed considerable success, for it was a practical guide to mistakes to be avoided in Latin speech. As happens with several grammatical works, the first stages of the medieval transmission of this text must have been due to Insular scribes, Irish in particular. The text then returned to mainland Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries, and was copied in several centres of the Carolingian Empire (probably Fulda and Regensburg), where Irish and German scholars could read it and cite it as an authority in their works. A southern offshoot of this text is to be seen in eight/ninth-century Monte Cassino and in the area where the Beneventan script was common. Still in the eleventh century, the De barbarismis et metaplasmis was available in Monte Cassino and Central Italy: I have recently discovered a manuscript containing both this work and some of its indirect sources. This text then sank into oblivion until some nineteenth German scholar brought it to light again. This paper is the reconstruction of the journey of a technical treatise over a thousand five hundred years through manuscripts and works of indirect tradition, and in a way it is also the reconstruction of the intellectual history connected to the diffusion of certain grammatical texts and ideas over a continent.