The Dominican friar Johannes Nider was a vocal theology master and dean at the Theology Faculty of Vienna university and a leading figure in the Dominican Observant movement, as well as a prominent participant in the Council of Basel, acting as a member of the committee charged with issues of Church reform and joining the delegation tasked to negotiate a settlement with the Czech Hussites. Considering Nider’s stature in early fifteenth-century society, it might seem peculiar that Nider’s Formicarius (Anthill) has not received a full critical edition until now. It is true that, with 24 manuscript witnesses (19 presenting the full text), the Formicarius did not see the same late medieval manuscript dissemination as several of Nider’s other works, such as his Manuale confessorum (ca. 100 known manuscripts), his Consolatorium timoratae conscientiae (82 known manuscripts) and his Tractatus de lepra morali (79 known manuscripts). Hence, it was initially not one of Nider’s most successful works. Yet the Formicarius had a considerable afterlife in print, going through at least nine editions between the late fifteenth and seventeenth century, including three incunable editions from 1473, 1480, and 1484. Moreover, the demonological parts of the Formicarius were excerpted in the second book of the Malleus maleficarum / Hexenhammer of Heinrich Kramer (Henricus Institoris), itself a major bestseller. In the long term, Nider’sFormicarius therefore outshone his other works.
Completed not long before Nider’s death, the work can be considered as this friar’s intellectual and religious testament and amounts to a veritable synthesis of his preoccupations with the necessary reform of the religious orders, the Church as a whole, and society at large. Inspired by the words of Salomon (Proverbs 6: “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!”), which upholds the society of ants as a model to emulate, the Formicarius, shaped as a dialogue between a theologian (i.e., Nider himself) and a young friar-apprentice named Piger (Lazy one), explains with recourse to ca. 160 miracle stories and exempla how to overcome the weaknesses and sins that had made Christianity so susceptible to heresy and demonic interference. It aims to instruct Nider’s envisioned interlocutor, personified in Piger, and beyond him young Observant friars in general, and ultimately all believers wishing to adopt a proper religious lifestyle.
Up till now, Nider’s Formicarius has predominantly attracted the attention of, on the one hand, specialists of demonology and witchcraft, and on the other hand church historians interested in the Conciliar movement and the Observant reforms of the fifteenth century. The former, including Joseph Hansen, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Werner Tschacher and Michael Bailey, have found in the final books ofFormicarius one of the first full-blown treatments of the witches-sabbath and see it alongside of theMalleus maleficarum / Hexenhammer as a defining document at the start of the European witch hunts; the latter, including Anne Huijbers and James Mixson, have used the first four books of the Formicarius as a key to understand the aims of Observant friars and spokesmen for the Church to transform Christianity.
All this time an up-to-date critical edition and in-depth study of the complete Formicarius has been lacking, and this is precisely what Catherine Chêne is aiming to amend with this two-volume tour de force. Chêne has already made a name for herself as a scholar well-versed in the late medieval vicissitudes of the Lausanne diocese; since 2000 she has been issuing a series of very informative essays on Nider as demonologist, preacher and reformer. Over time she expanded her studies on Nider and hisFormicarius with a PhD project under the direction of Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, which culminated into a doctoral thesis defended in November of 2021. A reworked version of that thesis is the present work, which has appeared in two volumes in the magnificent Micrologus Library of the Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino (SISMEL).
The first volume amounts to a lucid study of Jean Nider’s life and works, and a proper introduction to the editorial principles used to establish the text of the Formicarius (four chapters); an analysis of the major sources for its moral and allegorical teachings, its exempla and miracle stories, and its use of biblical, classical, patristic and medieval authorities (three chapters); and a portrayal of the five main topics Nider chose to discuss (five chapters). These topics are conversion, spiritual development, the erring ways of the religious and secular estates in Christian society, the search for perfection, and the workings of the Devil, not least regarding witchcraft and demonic possession. Chêne’s first volume closes with two “Annexes” (mapping out the properties and qualities of the anthill-society as developed in the Formicarius, and identifying all exempla and miracles contained in the work), a listing of abbreviations used, a lengthy and up-to-date bibliography, and three different indexes for both volumes (an index of places and persons, a source index, and a manuscript index).
The even longer second volume contains the complete text of the Formicarius in a critical edition, with the habitual critical apparatus and biblical references at the bottom, and with a facing translation in modern French. As the explanation of the editorial principles with its extensive manuscript descriptions in the first volume indicates, this edition is predominantly based on a careful collation of the 19 surviving manuscripts containing the full text. Combined with the introduction in the first volume regarding the editorial principles followed, the critical apparatus in the second volume gives a good inkling of the editorial choices made to arrive at a coherent and readable text, which, considering the size of theFormicarius,must have been a herculean task to complete. At many junctures the edition has explanatory footnotes identifying locations, written sources and providing documented guesses for some of Nider’s more hidden allusions, which in the process shed much light on the cultural landscape of Nider as a late medieval Dominican educator and preacher / reformer. Based on checks of several passages throughout the second volume, the facing translation follows the Latin rather closely and seems very dependable. Its faithfulness to the Latin notwithstanding, the French translation is by and large very accessible, even for a non-native reader of French like me.
To conclude, this is a very ambitious and well-executed study and edition of a very important late medieval text with an important afterlife. It will benefit many scholars, whether they are interested in late medieval and early modern religious reform, witchcraft and demonology, or have other questions to ask about religious life, gender roles, late medieval Latin culture, education, or later scholasticism.