the lives of saint dominic in medieval french and their relation to the latin sources

354 Pages·2015·2.14 MB·English

by  Denis John Cochrane

i

THE LIVES OF SAINT DOMINIC IN MEDIEVAL FRENCH AND THEIR RELATION
TO THE LATIN SOURCES

Submitted by

Denis John Cochrane

B.A. (U.N.E), Litt.B. (U.N.E.), Dip.Ed. (U.N.E.), Licence-ès-Lettres romanes (Université
Catholique de Louvain), Diplôme d’Études Médiévales (Université Catholique de
st
Louvain), M.A. (1 Class Hons. University of Sydney)

A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy

School of Arts and Sciences

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Australian Catholic University

December, 2012

Graduate Research Office
Australian Catholic University
1100 Nudgee Road
Banyo QLD 4014
ii

TO MY PARENTS

AND IN MEMORY OF FATHER CLIVE MAGILL
iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
ABSTRACT v
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
INTRODUCTION 1
1 THE SOURCES 3
The Latin Sources 3
The Vernacular Lives of Saint Dominic 8
The Geographical Distribution of the Latin and Vernacular
Manuscripts and Distribution by Religious Order 9
Distribution of the Dominican Order: Men’s Priories and Nuns’
Convents, Monasteries and Other Convents, and Béguinages in the
North of France and Belgium: a Possible Audience for the French
Lives of Dominic 12
The French Manuscripts 14

2 HAGIOGRAPHY AND THE WORLD IN WHICH DOMINIC
LIVED 19
3 COMMENTARY ON THE FRENCH VIES: Background
Commentary on the French Translations of the Legenda aurea 32
4 THE FRENCH PROSE LIVES OF SAINT DOMINIC 69
Abbreviatio in gestis sanctorum - Jean de Mailly
The Principles in Editing the French Manuscripts 70
Group 1 70
5 THE FRENCH PROSE LIVES OF SAINT DOMINIC 110
James of Voragine, Legenda aurea
Group 2 110
Group 3 184
Group 4a 207
Group 4b 232
Group 5 244
Group 6 250
Group 7 269
iv

Group 8 279
Group 9 314
Group 10 315
CONCLUSION 324
GLOSSARY OF THE FRENCH PROSE LIVES 326
APPENDIX 331
BIBLIOGRAPHY 336
v

ABSTRACT
The Lives of Saint Dominic in Medieval French and Their Relationship to the Latin
Sources
Although much work has been done on the Latin version of James of Voragine’s
Legenda aurea (written in the 1260s), a Latin legendary of saints’ lives set out in the order of
the Catholic Church’s liturgical calendar, not much has been done on the medieval French
translations, and little on that of the life of Saint Dominic. Nothing has been done on the
medieval French translations of Jeans de Mailly’s Abbreviatio in gestis sanctorum written a
little earlier. This thesis contains editions of the Old and Middle French translations or
adaptations of both Latin sources containing the life of Saint Dominic. The French manuscripts
have been divided into groups or families where the texts are almost the same. The groups
contain between one and five manuscripts.
De Mailly’s text, being older, contains fewer episodes than the fuller Voragine version
of the life of Saint Dominic. The oldest French manuscript in this group is the oldest of the
whole corpus (c.1275) and is written in an eastern French dialect and, thus, is of great linguistic
value.
There are two main translations of the Legenda aurea version: that of a mysterious
author, Jehan Beleth, and the very popular Jean de Vignay translation written for Jeanne de
Bourgogne in the 1330s. The oldest extant de Vignay manuscript spawned about twenty copies
during the following one hundred and seventy years. De Vignay’s translation was the most
popular in the Middle Ages.
Apart from the translations of Jean de Mailly’s Abbreviatio and the Jehan Beleth and
Jean de Vignay translations, there are a further seven groups of translations of the Legenda
aurea. These are either adaptations of or a mixture of translations of the Legenda aurea with
possible borrowings from Jean de Vignay.
This thesis includes a hagiographical/historical chapter which gives an overview of the
world in which Saint Dominic lived and worked, a literary chapter commenting on the content
of the manuscripts to explain what is happening where and when, and linguistic commentary at
the beginning of each group of manuscripts comparing the French translations with the Latin
sources, and linguistic commentary concentrating on dialectal features. The medieval French
manuscripts provide scholars with a rich mine of linguistic data, demonstrating the evolution of
the French language from about 1275 to 1500 (from the later Old French to the Middle French
periods). As the manuscripts are copies of earlier ones, one can see the same sentence written
in different dialects and the gradual changes in the French language over a period of two
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centuries. The edition of these manuscripts should provide future scholars greater scope for a
much more intense linguistic analysis.

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
This thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or part from
a thesis by which I have qualified or been awarded another degree or diploma.
No parts of this thesis have been submitted towards the award of any other degree or
diploma in any other tertiary institution.
No other person’s work has been used without acknowledgement in the main text of the
thesis.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many debts of gratitude that need acknowledgements in the production of this
thesis: firstly to Professor Pauline Allen of the Australian Catholic University and to Dr Janice
Pinder for agreeing to supervise this thesis and who have patiently guided me when difficulties
arose. Thanks are also due to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Bibliothèque de
Arsenal, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, and the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris; to the
Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels; to the Musée Condé in Chantilly, to the Fitzwilliam Museum
in Cambridge; to the British Library in London; to the municipal libraries in Arras, Douai,
Épinal, Lille, Rennes, and Tours; to the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire in Geneva; to
the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, and the Universitätsbibliothek in Jena; to the
Biblioteca Estense in Modena and to the Laurentian Library in Florence; and to the Pierpont
Morgan Library in New York for providing me with microfilms and photocopies of the many
manuscripts I have needed. On that score, I owe a great debt of thanks to the long-suffering
Sarah Howard at the Brisbane campus library of Australian Catholic University: her help and
patience have been invaluable in ordering manuscripts. I would also like to thank Professor
Giovanni Paolo Maggioni of the Università degli Studi del Molise for a copy of the relevant
sections of his editio princeps of Jean de Mailly’s Abbreviatio in gestis sanctorum.
Appreciation is also due to the Dominicans in Melbourne, Canberra, and Oxford for
granting me access to their priory libraries; and finally, to my parents, and friends Patricia
Robins, Graeme Curry, Peter Lugg, Helen Ledwidge, Dr Caroline Sheaffer-Jones, Clive
Magill, Michael Armstrong, Anne Skurray, Nick Psychogios, and Jalal Behzadi, Francis Joseph
Gross, and Edward Caruana (especially for their I.T. help) for their encouragement and
patience over the years. I would also like to thank the State Library of New South Wales, Rob
and Dave of the Beanbah Cafe in Sydney, and the management of Maggie’s restaurant at Potts
Point for allowing me to use their space to write a lot of this thesis.
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INTRODUCTION

The idea of editing the lives of Saint Dominic written in old and Middle French
developed while I was compiling a bibliography of hagiographical texts written in medieval
French. Until recently, little work had been done on the French versions of James of Voragine’s
1
Legenda aurea or other French Lives of Saint Dominic and Jean de Mailly’s Abbreviatio in
2
gestis et miraculis sanctorum (1230). There are at least fifty extant manuscripts with French
translations of the life of S aint Dominic.
This work includes a critical edition of the most important manuscripts of these texts,
along with an historical background to the life and times of Dominic and his hagiographers, the
background and content of the French Lives, and a linguistic analysis of the French manuscripts.
There are at least thirteen different translations or adaptations of the life of S aint Dominic
from Voragine’s Legenda aurea. There also exists a mystère of Saint Dominic. Copies of Jean
3 4
de Vignay’s 1333 translation have been partly edited by W.F. Manning. Manning’s edition of
an anonymous thirteenth-century version of a poem on the life of Saint Dominic was edited from
5 6
the Arras manuscript of this poem, with the Paris manuscript supplying some of the variant
readings, and readings where folios were missing in the Arras manu script. I believe that the
The Life of Saint Dominic in Old French needs to be re-edited, as the Paris manuscript
contains a complete text and has only been partially acknowledged in Manning’s apparatus
criticus. Manning has also made transcription errors or has ‘normalised’ the text. Editing such a
long text is outside the scope of this thesis.
A critical edition of these French texts is important because they provide an additional
historical source for the period of the Albigensian Crusade in the south of France in the

1
Giovan ni Paolo Maggioni, ed., Jacopo da Varazze Legenda aurea con le miniature del codice Ambrosiano
C240 inf. Testo critico riceveduto e commentario a cura di Giovanni Paolo Maggioni. Traduzione italiana
da Francesco Stella (Florence: SISMEL -Edizioni del Galluz zo and Milan: Bibliotheca Ambrosiana, 2012) 2
vols.This critical edition of the Legenda aurea is useful as it provides the Latin text for the French translation
of sections 60A and 60B of the life of Saint Dominic. These sections are absent in Graesse’s ni neteenth-
century edition.
2
Jean de Mailly, ‘Abbreviatio in gestis sanctorum,’ editio princeps, ed. G.P. Maggioni, (Florence: SISMEL -
Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2012).
3
W.F. Manning, “The Jean de Vignay version of the Life of S. Dominic,” Archivum Fratrum Pra edicatorum
40 (1970) 29 -46.
4
W.F. Manning, The Life of Saint Dominic in Old French Verse (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1944).
5
Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale 307 (anc. 851). The French title is La vie mon signeur saint Dominique.
6
Bibliothèque nationale de France, f.fr. 19531 (anc. S.G. fr. 1862). The French title is Li romans saint
Dominike.
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thirteenth century, for the history of the Dominican Order, and for medieval
hagiography/biography (with its biases, distortions, miracle and healing stories which in turn
gives us an insight into the lives of people eight centuries ago).
Linguistically, the French texts are important because they provide a unique insight into
the development of the French language at a diachronic and spatial level: the manuscripts
contain basically the same text but, as the manuscripts date from the thirteenth to the fifteenth
centuries, one can see how orthography, morphology, and grammar change over three centuries
in both ‘francien’ and other dialects (mostly northern).
7
Work already done on the Legenda aurea and the Légende dorée includes Fleith’s
classification of about 1,000 (there are possibly about 1,500) Latin manuscripts of the Legenda
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aurea and Maggioni’s edition (1999 and revised edition in 2007) is a critical edit ion based
upon the most authoritat ive manuscrip t witnesses of the third recension of the text (Genoa,
1292 - 1298). It supersedes Graesse’s nineteenth-century edition (based on just one manuscript
and thus missing some episodes in the Re manuscript now in the Vatican). Maggioni’s editions
not only include variant readings but also the sources used by Voragine and a facing Italian
translation (done by a team of translators). He has written extensively on the Legenda aurea.
9
Fleith and Morenzoni have published a series of articles on the same work. Brenda Dunn-
Lardeau has also published a series of conference papers on both the Latin and vernacular
10
versions of the text.

7
Barbara Fleith, Studien zur Überlieferungsgeschichte der Lateinischen Legenda Aurea , (Brussels: Société
des Bolandistes, 1991 Subsidia Hagiographica, no. 72).
8
Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda aurea con le miniature dal codice Ambrosiano C 240 inf. Testo critico
riveduto e commento a cura di Giovanni Paolo Maggioni. Traduzione italiana coordinata da Francesco
Stella, (Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo and Milan: Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 2007).
9
Barbara Fleith and Franco Morenzoni, De la Sainteté à l’Hagiographie. Genèse et usage de la Légende
dorée, Geneva: Droz, 2000.
10
Barbara Fleith, D“ e Assumptione Beate Viriginis Mari Qe.uelques reflexions autour dcuo mpilateur Jacques
de Voragine,” 41-74, and Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, “Le molte Legende auree,” 15-40 in Brenda Dunn-
Lardeau (ed.), Legenda aurea. Sept Siècles de Diffusion, Actes du colloque international sur le Legenda
aurea: texte latin et branches vernaculaires à l’Université du Québec à Montréal 11-12 mai 1983
(Montréal: Éditions Bellarmin & Paris: Librairie J. Vrin, 1986). This conference not only dealt with the Latin
text but also translations/adaptations into French, Occitan, Catalan, German and Dutch, Czech, and English.
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CHAPTER ONE - SOURCES
The Latin Sources
The first Latin life of Saint Dominic - the Libellus de principiis ordinis praedicatorum -
was written by Jordan of Saxony, Dominic’s successor as head of the Dominican Order, in
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c.1221/2 and revised in 1232/1233 - twelve years after Dominic’s death. One of Dominic’s
modern biographers, Guy Bedouelle, considers that it may have been written with the view of
an Order in its infancy and taking its first steps. He sees it not as an attempt at biography, but as
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‘history, touching on chronicles and personal testimony.’ Jordan wrote about the basics of
Dominic’s life from his personal knowledge of him. The life is factual and does not contain a
lot of information or miracles included in later lives (e.g. that of Petrus Ferrandi). Jordan
mentions a few miracles: at Dominic’s baptism his godmother sees a moon (not a star) on his
forehead. Later, during the debates with the Cathars, Jordan describes Dominic’s book of
arguments in favour of the Catholic faith miraculously leaping unscathed from the fire.
Jordan’s work was revised by Petrus Ferrandi, a Spanish Dominican, between 1238 and
3
1241. Ferrand i used Spanish and Italian tradition s as well as a list of miracles given duri ng the
canonisation process of S aint Dom inic. He included more than two - thirds of Jordan’s work but
4
added details about Dominic’s childhood. Lincoln thinks that this text was considered

1
The first version was composed c.1221/22 Jordan of Saxony, Libellus de Principiis Ordinis Praedicatorum ,
ed. D. H-C. Scheeben, MOPH 16 (Rome: Institutum Historium Fratrum Praedicatorum, 1935), 28-88. Simon
Tugwell, “Notes on the Life of Dominic,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 65 (1995), 1-169, and “Notes
on the Life of Dominic: V: The Dating of Jordan’s Libellus,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 68 (1988) 5-
33. See also: Kyle V. Lincoln, A Canon of Castile: the Early Life of St Dominic of Osma (1170/74-1221). A
Thesis Presented to the Graduate Faculty of Saint Louis University in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements of the Degree of Master of Arts (Research), 2012.
www.musicasacra.com/dominicans/studies/lincoln.pdf. Sighted 6 September, 2012.
2
Guy Bedouelle, O.P., Saint Dominic. The Grace of his Word (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987) (transl. by
Sr. Mary Thomas Noble), 51. The Libellus de principiis Ordinis Praedicatorum is edited by C. Scheeben in
Monumenta Ordinis Praedicatorum Historica fasc. II (Rome: Institutum FF. Praedicatorum, 1935) 1-88.
Jordan of Saxony, after hearing Saint Dominic preach in Paris in 1219, became attracted to the Order of Friars
Preachers. Jordan already had a Bachelor’s degree in theology and a Master’s in Arts. He received the
Dominican habit from Reginald of Orléans on 12 February, 1219. Three months later he and three others were
chosen by the friars in Paris to represent them at the first general chapter of the Order to be held at Pentecost
in Bologna. At this chapter he was appointed to teach theology at the priory of Saint-Jacques in Paris. In 1221
he was appointed as the first provincial of the Dominican province of Lombardy. After the death of Saint
Dominic Jordan was elected Master General of the Order of Friars Preachers at the third general chapter of the
Order. He made a point of visiting Paris and Bologna and other university centres to recruit men to the Order.
University-educated men, the kind of men he wanted, always joined the Order. (William A. Hinnebusch, The
History of the Dominican Order. Intellectual and Cultural Life to 1500 , Vol. 2, New York: Alba House,
1973) 285-6.
3
Lincoln, Dominic of Castile, 20. Petrus Ferrandi, Legenda Sancti Dominici, ed. M.-H. Laurent, O.P.,
Monumenta Ordinis Praedicatorum, Historica, fasc. II, (Rome: Institutum Historicum FF. Praedicatorum,
1935) 95-260.
4
Bedouelle, Saint Dominic, 52.