In preparation for doing this review, I pulled out my “Jofroi of Waterford” file. With the photocopies, handwritten notes, and references that I’ve placed in it over several decades’ time, it’s substantial. One thing jumps out immediately: a number of great scholars in the field of medieval French studies have made significant contributions to the Jofroi “dossier”--Victor Le Clerc, Charles Victor Langlois, Jacques Monfrin, and Tony Hunt. We can now add Keith Busby to this list.
The “French works” of the volume’s title can be found primarily in Paris, BnF, fr. 1822. [1] Among the contents of the codex, a dozen items all in the same hand, are three translations from Latin into Old French, for which “Jofroi de Watreford” (i.e., the seaport city of Waterford in southeastern Ireland) takes responsibility: La gerre de Troi (Pseudo-Dares Phrygius, De excidio Troiae), Le regne des Romains (Eutropius, Breviarium historiae romanae ab urbe condita), and Le secré des secrés(the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum). In this last work Jofroi describes himself as “the least of the Order of Friars Preachers” (de l’Ordene az Freres Precheors le mendre) (191), and he asks that those who read “this book,” i.e., his translation of the Secretum, to pray for both himself “and for Servais Copale, who undertook this work and with the help of God brought it to a conclusion” (Ceus qui cest livre prient por frere Jofroi de Watreford...et por Servais Copale qui cest travail empristrent et par l’aÿde de Deu l’ont a chief menei) (348).
On the front cover is a color image of Le secré’s last page, including the word’s quoted immediately above. The volume opens with a General Introduction that has sections on, successively, Jofroi of Waterford and Servais Copale; Language (of the translations)--Orthography, Morphology, Syntax, Lexis; Previous Editions (of the three works in question); Bibliography. The body of the volume is divided into three sections devoted to editions of each of Jofroi’s translations. These editions are prefaced by short introductions and followed by detailed notes. Line numbers appear on each page and folio numbers are provided consecutively. There are also two very nice aesthetic touches here: each section opens with a black & white image from the Paris MS of the text’s first page, and the edition itself uses large single majuscules at the start of the text’s subsections and paraphs within them, just like in the MS itself. To conclude the volume, there is a substantial Glossary and an Index of Proper Names. It all amounts to a great tool for medievalists.
Le secré des secrés, which was done at the behest of a noble patron, is the largest of Jofroi’s productions in terms not only of length but of labor. While Jofroi cut some of the Secretum’s contents--they are spurious additions by Arabic translators to the Greek original, he says--he also makes substantial additions to the text using a variety of sources. Busby’s detailed notes, which cover all of this impressively, likewise include careful comparisons with the three modern Latin editions of the Secretum. [2] In addition, Busby uses the one other extant MS of Jofroi’s text, a fragment found in London, Society of Antiquaries, 101 (s. xiv1), by placing its readings on facing pages to the complete Paris version.
Solving the triple riddle of Jofroi’s identity, the identity of Servais Copale, and the nature of their collaboration has long eluded scholars. Busby’s success with the riddle is mixed. We start with the first part of the riddle. Busby wonders needlessly whether Jofroi was indeed a Dominican:
It is not entirely out of the question that Jofroi was a Franciscan, depending on how ‘le mendre’ is to be interpreted. The Order of Friar Preacher generally means the Dominicans, and the Friars Minor designates the Franciscans, but I am not aware of any occurrence of a phrase ‘ordo fratrum praedicatorum minorum’ or the like.
Realizing that he’s reached a dead end, Busby self-corrects: “I take ‘le mendre’ here as qualifying Jofroi rather than his order and as an expression of modesty...” (11). Yes, this is the modesty topos, used by scores of medieval authors. But instead of leaving well enough alone, Busby then adds, “It may even be something approaching a formal position in the monastery of the youngest brother or most recent recruit” (11-12). Unfortunately, without additional biographical information, we can’t push beyond Jofroi’s statement in the direction that Busby suggests. What it does tell us, however, is that Jofroi was sufficiently well read to know about the modesty topos and to feel obliged to use it.
In his prologue to the Secretum translation, Jofroi remarks that “indeed the Arabs use too many words and the Greeks have an obscure manner of speaking” (les Arabiiens trop ont de paroles en corte veritei, et les Grigois ont oscure maniere de parler) (191). Busby notes that the thirteenth-century writer on optics Witelo had made a similar observation in his Perspectiva (ca. 1274). However, from there Busby jumps to the conclusion that “it seems more than likely” that Jofroi had read Witelo (13). In fact, the observation is a standard one for medieval scholars to make. So no, Jofroi had not necessarily read Witelo, but we can say for sure that he had read at least one text wherein a comment like this was made, which serves as another useful clue as to the scholarly environment that had formed him.
Referring his readers back to an argument made in a preceding publication, Busby dismisses the “scholarly meme...[of Jofroi’s] supposed collaboration with Servais in Paris” (11) and he disputes that Jofroi had any connection to Paris at all. [3] Both of these contentions are problematic. The “scholarly meme” doesn’t exist. As far as I am aware, no modern scholar who has studied Jofroi “up close” and written about him substantively in an article or a monograph has said what Busby alleges here, and even if there are examples of such therein or in more general surveys and encyclopedia entries, they are the exception overall, and certainly not the rule. [4] Just as certainly, modern scholarship is perfectly justified in considering the possibility of a connection between Jofroi and Paris at some point in his career because of a statement by Jofroi himself: “We have translated the Physiognomy of Aristotle--turned from Greek into Latin [by Bartholomew of Messina ca. 1260]--according to the copies of Paris” (La phisonomie Aristotle solonc la translation de grieu en latin avons en roman tranlatee solonc les exemplaires de Paris) (343). Of course Jofroi might be describing copies having come from Paris to his current place of residence. Of course, this statement might be nothing more than “a conventional appeal to authority,” as Dominica Legge puts it; [5] an effort by Jofroi to validate his scholarly credibility in the eyes of his patron. But Jofroi might also be signaling that he had seen copies in Paris, where the text was widely known and easily available. What can also be put “on the scale” here for Jofroi having spent some time in Paris is his scholarly sensibility and confidence. He was, as Busby says, “a true scholar, familiar enough with a range of Latin texts to enable him to recall and locate passages for inclusion at appropriate moments” (12). Among the other texts used by Jofroi in his Le secré are Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and the Dominican Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on it. He is aware of the Livre de Vegitables (311), i.e., (Pseudo-) Aristotle’s De plantis, which, like the Nicomachean Ethics, was a required part of the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Paris. He is aware of the work of a number of medical authors (Galen, Dioscorides, Isaac Israeli, Avicenna). His treatment of the four cardinal virtues, as Busby acknowledges, following Monfrin, “reflects the teaching of the schools” (354). Then there is the critical stance that Jofroi takes toward the Secretum secretorum specifically: he rejects as spurious the Secretum’s chapters on magic stones and plants because “it more resembles fable than truth and philosophy” (quantque il dist en cest lieu de pieres et d'erbes et d’arbres est faus et plus resemble fable que veritei ou philosophie)(310).Doubts about the Secretum’s authenticity were widespread in Paris in the later thirteenth century. “And all the clerks who know Latin well know this,” he adds(et ce sevent tous les clers qui bien entendent le latin) (310). With his emphasis on “philosophy,” and the haughtiness with which he delivers his opinion here and elsewhere, Jofroi sounds like the proud graduate of a university Arts program. All of the foregoing points to a scholastic formation, and the premier place for that was Paris. Waterford had a Dominican house in the thirteenth century, but it was not the site of a major studium in the Dominican educational system, and its library must have been very modest at this time. [6] To become the scholar that Jofroi was, therefore, was much more likely to have happened in Paris than in Waterford, and in England or France rather than in Ireland. A similar argument holds for where he did his translations. But just to be clear, all of the foregoing is certainly not dispositive for Jofroi having been educated in Paris or having done his work there; at the same time, however, the possibilities cannot be dismissed out of hand.
We move now to Servais Copale. Monfrin noted long ago two documents connected to a Walloon named “Servais Copale” from the second decade of the fourteenth century. Busby located eight more between the dates of 1300 and 1321 for what seems to be the same person; interestingly, he was a merchant and customs official in Waterford. According to Busby, this was Jofroi’s collaborator and scribe, and the two men worked together in Waterford. Servais’ Walloon origin explains the Walloon characteristics found in the translations. The fact that he imported wine connects up with the knowledgeable expansion of Le secré’s section on wine. So far, so good. But there are some outstanding issues that require resolution before Busby’s hypothesis can be accepted. And that brings us to the third part of the riddle.
As Busby says, the pairing that he proposes is an odd one--a friar and a businessman. Beyond that, however, there is the claim that a businessman served as Jofroi’s scribe: this, too, is odd. Certainly, many businesspeople could read and write, but having the professional competence of a scribe for a formal bookhand is something else again. [7] And then there is the issue of dates. Paris, BnF, fr. 1822 has most often been described as (late) thirteenth-century. [8] If, for the sake of argument, we accept this as a fact, then it makes for a problem because the Servais Copale for whom we have documentation flourished in the first two decades of the fourteenth century. How do we explain that gap? That gap potentially opens even wider if, as Busby acknowledges, BnF, fr. 1822 might not be an autograph. [9] Given Jofroi’s commission from his patron to translate the Secretum, doesn’t it make sense to assume that the presentation copy prepared for the patron only included Le secré, along perhaps with the other two texts that he translated? The conclusion here is obvious: Jofroi would have been working on his translations several decades before the Servais Copale identified by Monfrin and Busby.
Lots of questions, then, remain, and the three-part riddle remains unsolved. Nevertheless, none of this should stop us for a second from appreciating and admiring what a significant work of scholarship that Keith Busby has put at the disposal of medievalists. It is a pleasure to see this edition in print and to know that it has been done so well.
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Notes:
1. The digitized MS is available online at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8425997k/. On its date, see below.
2. I have two quibbles. 1.) In two instances Busby thinks that Jofroi might have been influenced by Roger Bacon’s annotated recension of the Secretum (362). A comparison of the respective passages is not, in my opinion, convincing in this regard. Moreover, it is possible that Jofroi’s translation was done around the same time as when Bacon finalized his recension and accompanying materials (recent estimations put the latter ca. 1280). So, unless Jofroi was in Oxford in the late thirteenth century--and there is no evidence for that--it is highly unlikely that he had any knowledge of Bacon’s Secretum project. 2.) Busby says that part of paraph 144 on the subject of justice “appears to be Jofroi’s own” (388), though it is clear that Jofroi is basing his words on theSecretum’s Circle of Justice.
3. Busby goes into more detail in his French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French: The Paradox of Two Worlds (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 4-5, 150-167, 185. The book was reviewed in TMR by Marjorie Harrington 20.04.27.
4. Several modern scholars hypothesize that Jofroi and Servais met in Paris (Langlois, Hunt, Henry), but they don’t say that it was the site of their collaboration.
5. Quoted by Busby in French in Medieval Ireland, p. 156.
6. The education that took place in Dominican houses had theology as its priority. The proactive purchase or in-house copying for the library of most of the texts mentioned by Jofroi is not at all likely. While institutional libraries in the Dominican Order might well come to have these books, that is because they got there through donations; collections, we know, were slowly built up during the later Middle Ages this way, which is why booklists from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries need to be used with caution regarding the holdings of libraries in the thirteenth century. And so, when Busby says that William of Moerbeke’s translation of the Nicomachean Ethics was “easily accessible” to Jofroi (358), it is easy to give one’s assent to this if Jofroi resided in Paris, but not in Waterford, or even Ireland, at this time.
7. Except for those in the book trade.
8. Some scholars give the date as late thirteenth/early fourteenth century (e.g., Busby, 16, with the qualifiers “very end” and “very beginning”). In his French in Medieval Ireland, p. 151, Busby cites François Avril and Patricia Danz Stirnemann, Manuscrits enluminés d’origine insulaire, VIIe-XXe siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1987), no. 155, pp. 115-116, and pl. LXI, LXII, and their estimation, “Angleterre, XIIIe s. (dernier quart).” In the book under review here, Busby does not mention this volume. He does, however, include references to two scholars who provide, he says, “the best descriptions of fr. 1822” (16 n. 3)--Françoise Veilliard and Yela Schauwecker; going to their work, one finds “fin de XIIIe siècle” and “ca. 1300,” respectively.
9. “Whether BnF fr. 1822 is an autograph of Servais Copale or not, it is very close to his original.” (19)