Une collection de commentaires aux classiques latins, le manuscrit de Berne, Bürgerbibliothek 411. Textes et contextes

Abstract

The manuscript Bern, Bürgerbibliothek 411, dated to the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century, constitutes an example, rather rare from this time, of the gathering of several school commentaries on classical Latin authors, namely those on Lucan, Virgil, Ovid, Statius, Sallust, and Terence, six of the ten that Birger Munk Olsen has defined as auctores maiores. The analysis of some of these commentaries allows us to ascribe them to the teaching of the schools of Orleans, intensively dedicated to the study of literature during the twelfth–fourteenth centuries. However, the volume, if homogeneous in appearance, is actually a 'recueil factice,' a compilation consisting of four originally independent codicological units. But a detailed codicological study reveals some clues, leading to the hypothesis that these elements were bound together at an early date, and that the result embodies a schoolbook of the end of the Middle Ages – this is also supported by the history of the manuscript and what can be deduced from some elements of the paratexts.