Augustine of Hippo is one of the first authors to give rise to anthologies, the earliest being produced right after his death. Anthologies (or florilegia) are essential to understanding that Augustine is, to a great extent, a mediated presence in the Middle Ages. Besides the exceptionally influential florilegia of Prosper of Aquitaine, Eugippius, and Florus, as the editors emphasise, there is a vast amount of material to be explored. Until recently, anthologies have been used to reconstruct Augustine’s text, with little work on the anthologies themselves. This excellent book provides a first step toward a new appraisal of this literature and its significance. The collection of studies published here is based on an international workshop held at Leuven (Belgium) in 2017; it covers the period from late antiquity to the seventeenth century. This breadth is one of the strengths of the book, since it provides an opportunity to reach a broad overview of the continuing importance of Augustinian florilegia throughout centuries.
In the introduction, Jérémy Delmulle, Shari Boodts, and Gert Partoens underline the great variety within the genre (excerpting techniques, aims, audience etc.) and call for more extensive studies. Most anthologies are still unedited and reliable information on their transmission and content is still lacking. To address these needs, Jérémy Delmulle is currently preparing a census of all known anthologies (ca. 100), which will be included within a broader Clavis florilegium patristicorum online database. The introduction also points to important issues which editors of anthologies face: as an open genre--where changes to the structure and content are commonplace--they are not easily identifiable in catalogues; editors have to refrain from using Augustine’s editions to correct the transmitted text of the anthologies, as the “corrupted text” often provides an essential witness to the manuscript transmission of Augustine’s works.
Papers are ordered chronologically, with five on the fifth and sixth centuries, one on Bede, three on the twelfth century, one on a fourteenth-century anthology, and finally two papers focusing on early editions from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. Compared with the workshop, which also included two papers on Florus of Lyons (ninth century) and two on the late middle ages, the published volume puts a stronger emphasis on late antiquity. The book ends with a general bibliography (283-309) and indexes of works, manuscripts and proper names cited (311-335).
Paul Mattei offers a presentation of the oldest anthology of Augustine, Vincentius’ Excerpta,which was composed in the early 430s--shortly after Augustine’s death. It deals with Trinitarian theology and christology and is composed from a limited selection of works--ten, including a number of letters. Vincentius left a clear mark on the collected extracts, reworking them as he saw fit. For Mattei, the work has a strong anti-Nestorian tone, while it also witnesses the typically Lerinian admiration for Augustine, without emphasis on the controversial aspects of his theology of grace and predestination. Concerning the text transmission, Mattei interprets the duality of the manuscript evidence (N/R witnesses) as proof of two different authorial redactions, leaving aside, perhaps too quickly, the hypothesis of a contamination ad fontes--the correction of anthologies through the use of direct witnesses of Augustine’s texts, a phenomenon which has only just started to gain attention. [1] Three appendices provide the titles of chapters, a list of sources, and references to the original passages of the anthology.
Michele Cutino presents Prosper’s Sententiae and Epigrammata, two anthologies composed shortly after Augustine’s death, which had a decisive impact on early reception. Cutino gives a list of sources of these anthologies and remarks that Prosper used more “neutral” texts of Augustine--such as his explanations of Psalms and John’s Gospel--with only 8% of extracts taken from Augustine’s anti-Pelagian works in the Sententiae. Augustine is never named but exploited as an authoritative interpreter of Scripture. Prosper deeply appropriated him: the anthologies include his own works alongside Augustine’s, with the aim of promoting his theology of grace.
The next three papers focus on Eugippius’ Excerpta, a wide and influential selection of Augustine’s works composed in early sixth-century Italy. Emanuela Colombi, in an important study, illustrates the challenges that scholars face when studying and editing anthologies. Colombi focuses on three related points: the stated aims of the Excerpta,found in the prologue and in the dedication letter to Proba; the variety and fluidity of the work in the manuscript transmission and related editorial challenges; and the possibility of recovering hidden motives of the compilation on the basis of a study of the selected extracts. Eugippius’ work was conceived for a monastic audience but also targeted intellectuals who would pursue his effort of reading, selecting and excerpting Augustine. Eugippius originally conceived his anthology as a work in progress, leaving open the possibility of later readers adapting the selection. As a result, it becomes difficult to identify the original compilation (the exact number and content of extracts) and the authorial aims in the structure and selection of extracts. For Colombi, even Cassiodorus’ numbering of 338 extracts cannot be taken as evidence for the original numbering in the Excerpta, but points to a single witness circulating in sixth-century Italy. A survey of key manuscripts shows widespread variety and adaptation of extracts throughout the transmission, a scenario which Eugippius planned from the start, and which, Colombi suggests, may be related to an originally open shape of the work--perhaps circulated in unbound fascicles. Colombi also emphasises the variety and inconsistency of titles of extracts in the transmission and calls for more research on the connection between titles in the Excerpta and titles in direct witnesses of Augustine’s texts. Despite the complex nature of the transmission, Colombi still shows that both broad thematic sections and local sequences (within a work of Augustine) can be identified in the Excerpta. A table (78) summarises the evidence, demonstrating how the anthology alternates between stable and unstable sections. Borrowing the concept from biblical philology, Colombi suggests that the Excerpta might be understood as a “rolling corpus,” where additions are made to unstable sections without affecting the overall structure of the corpus.For Colombi, the anti-Pelagian section (extracts 280-297) is of particular significance in understanding the aims of the compilation, which might have been triggered by the controversies over grace and predestination in early sixth-century Italy, as hinted by Eugippius in his letter to Proba.
Walter Berschin further emphasises the monastic audience of the Excerpta by focusing on excerpts from Augustine’s De doctrina christiana I-III. The paper also reflects more broadly on the structure of the anthology, which may be described as a movement from cosmology to anthropology. Two appendices offer an overview of Bonizo of Sutri’s reordering of Eugippius’ Excerpta in the eleventh century, and a short discussion of the meaning of the number 46 in Augustine and Eugippius.
The anti-Pelagian background of the Excerpta discussed by Colombi is further explored by Raúl Villegas Marín. Villegas provides a useful contextual overview situating Eugippius’ work within the on-going conflictual reception of Augustine’s and Faustus of Riez’s works on grace in early sixth-century Italy, which highlights the connection of the Theopaschite and Pelagian controversies. TheExcerpta take a stance in the debate by emphasising the continuity of Augustine’s views, bringing together excerpts from his earliest and latest anti-Pelagian writings, thus supporting Prosper’s defense of Augustine’s late works. It should be noted that the fluidity of the transmission of the Excerpta demonstrated by Colombi somehow leads to nuanced conclusions based on a fixed state of the collection. The uncertainty about how the Excerpta were conceived, then the variety of ways in which they were adapted and received, has an impact on any conclusion about the aim and reception of the work; this aspect will need to be given weight in future studies.
Nicolas De Maeyer offers a fresh look at Bede’s Collectio ex opusculis sancti Augustini in epistulas Pauli apostoli (CPL 1360), a little-known anthology of Augustine, which will soon receive its first critical edition, prepared by the author together with Jérémy Delmulle and Gert Partoens. The paper offers a compelling discussion of the peculiar status of this work within Bede’s literary production. Bede gives very little information about the work, with only a single reference in his Historia 5, 24 (discussed 111-115), where he states that he took care of collecting and transcribing extracts from Paul in Augustine. For De Maeyer the reference points to Bede’s own personal work of transcription, perhaps in the shape of index cards or notes, a work which was left unfinished. This conclusion is supported by an analysis of the Collectio itself, which bears no prologue, no division into books, and inconsistencies in the ways of referencing Augustine and in its structure.
Gert Partoens describes the only witness known to date of an anthology of ciu. contained in Ross. 343, f. 3r-72v, a manuscript copied in late eleventh- or early twelfth-century central Italy. The paper offers a transcription of the prologue of the anthology, a detailed analysis of its content--which focuses on books 5 to 22 of Augustine’s work--and concludes, from the absence of titles and numbering of extracts, that the anthology was composed for linear reading. Partoens also includes important corrections to the description of Ross. 343 in the recent catalogue of illuminated manuscripts from the Fondo Rossiano published in 2014, notably dating f. 3r-72v more precisely before 1114.
Gert Partoens and Shari Boodts provide a fresh study of unpublished florilegiafound in Royal 5.B.XIII (first quarter of the twelfth century). They consist of excerpts from six works of Augustine in two parts, one longer (with extracts from Io. eu. tr., trin. and ciu.) and one shorter (extracts from cura mort., an. et or., vera rel.). In the first part, the compiler provides two prologues--published in an appendix to the paper--which emphasise his aim: rejecting false interpretations of Scripture. Partoens-Boodts suggest that Royal 5.B.XIII is a witness to the original compilation, which was composed in Rochester in the context of the development of the scriptorium, a hypothesis supported by collations of the florilegia with manuscripts of the excerpted works originating from Rochester and Canterbury. The florilegia (both parts perhaps composed by the same author), are divided into short extracts and were designed for linear reading.
Xavier Morales considers Guillaume’s use of patristic florilegia, then explores Guillaume’s resort to Florus’ Expositio in epistolas beati Pauli, focusing on the last verses of Rm 11. Morales shows that Augustine played a prominent role in Guillaume’s theology, in particular in the context of his disputes with Abelard. Guillaume combined the use of anthologies with his own direct reading of Augustine.
Clemens Weidmann develops new insights into a set of Pseudo-Augustinian sermons usually dated to the twelfth century. After a description of the collection (193-197), Weidmann convincingly argues that these sermons have to be redated to the fourteenth century, because they use the Manipulus florum (MF)--a compendium consisting mainly of patristic extracts composed by Thomas Hibernicus in 1306--instead of being its source. The sermon collection is a forgery attempting to mirror sermons preached in Augustine’s Africa, which extensively borrows from the MF and medieval homiletic sources such as Galfredus Babio. Additionally, Weidmann argues that a number of other pseudo-Augustinian sermons (from the Sermones ad fratres in eremo collection) and letters similarly depend on the MF and were all composed in the same circle, or by the same author, to be situated either in Paris or in Italy, between 1306 and 1340--when the sermons were used by Roberto de Bardi in his Collectorium.
Anthony N. S. Lane sketches an overview of early printed patristic anthologies, highlights variety within the genre, and lists five main types: doctrinal, ethical, Biblical, polemical, and devotional anthologies. After emphasising that Augustine is predominant in early printed anthologies, Lane lists the earliest editions of famous florilegia(Prosper, Eugippius, Florus, Bartholomew of Urbino), and further nine printed anthologies created in the sixteenth century, which, he concludes, mainly had economical and polemical aims.
Jérémy Delmulle remarks that, at first, early editors of Augustine’s opera omnia had no interest in anthologies, which were published only thanks to individual endeavours. In an overview of fifteenth century editions, Delmulle (228) mentions the earliest editions of Prosper’s Epigrammata and Sententiae,published respectively in 1473-74 and 1528--thus correcting erroneous information found in Lane’s paper about the earliest editions of these works (217). A developed survey of the use of anthologies by editors of Augustine between the sixteenth and the seventeenth century follows. Delmulle shows that anthologies were mined by editors of sermons in particular: first Vlimmerius, who inaugurated the practice of publishing fragments of sermons often discovered in anthologies, then Sirmond and Vignier, who made use of Roberto de Bardi’s Collectorium and Bartholomew’s Milleloquium. In their massive and fundamental edition, the Maurists resorted to Bede’s Collectio, John the Deacon’s Expositum, as well as other already well-known anthologies (such as Eugippius and Florus) in the footsteps of their predecessors. Delmulle provides a list and analysis of manuscripts which contain anthologies of Augustine and were used by the Maurists--but not fully exploited. The survey shows that interest progressively grew among editors, but remained confined to philology. An appendix lists all fragments of Augustine published by early editors on the basis of anthologies from Vlimmerius’ 1564 edition to the Maurists, with a complementary list covering fragments discovered later, until the present day.
Paul Mattei concludes with an overview of the volume, which highlights essential aspects explored: the variety of techniques employed by florilegists, their changing aims, the open and fluid nature of the genre, and the value of anthologies for the history of the transmission and reception of Augustine’s texts.
This volume offers an excellent balance between broad surveys (Morales, Lane, Delmulle), studies of famous and influential anthologies (Cutino, Colombi, Berschin, Villegas Marin, De Maeyer) and new investigations into lesser-known works (Mattei, Partoens, Partoens-Boodts, Weidmann). The papers collected open new ground for research and provide a most useful guide for future scholarship on Augustinian anthologies. Important points emerge from this collective endeavour, among which in particular: the significant impact of anthologies on the image of Augustine as an author, the large amount of unstudied and unedited material still to be explored, the fluidity of anthologies at times planned from the outset by authors, the need for more comparative studies on the manuscript transmission of anthologies and of Augustine’s original works, as mutually informative sources. It is hoped, given the overall quality of the studies collected, that the editors will plan a sequel to this volume, which would provide an occasion to include more studies on the Middle Ages, particularly the Carolingian period, which was so influential for later developments.
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Note:
1. See J. Delmulle, “La ‘Contaminatio ex fontibus’ dans la transmission des florilèges: réflexions à partir du cas d’étude des florilèges augustiniens,” Filologia mediolatina 25 (2018), 1-44.