Documento sin título

State-of-the-art on the Speculum al foder, the first medieval treatise on sexual higiene and erotic practices ever written in a Romance language (14th Century). The history, the sources and the style of this work will be studied and commented on the light of the recent critical edition.

David Barnett, A fifteenth-century collection of miracles of the Virgin from Barcelona Cathedral Archive

This paper aims to provide a broad contextualization of the substantial collection of miracles of the Virgin in Arxiu Capitular de Barcelona, MS 6. This early fifteenth-century Catalan collection is presented as a late vernacular manifestation of a predominantly Latin tradition. Codicological data, together with information about the donor, a Barcelona notary, provide a starting point for an analysis of the rationale behind the volume's compilation, its subsequent presentation to the Cathedral Library, and its intended readership.

Carmen Caballero Navas, The languages of science used by Catalan Jewish communities

The second half of the twelfth century marks a turning point in the way in which the Jewish communities in the West (the Iberian Peninsula, the south of France and Italy ) acquired and disseminated scientific knowledge. Thereafter, Hebrew starts to be considered a suitable medium for scientific discourse. In a departure from previous practice, scientific and medical texts begin to be translated, copied, glossed, and even - although to a lesser extent - drafted in this language. The spread of scientific literature in Hebrew is closely linked to an immense and prolific translation project which made it possible for a considerable number of Arabic, Latin and vernacular texts to be rendered in Hebrew between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. The Crown of Aragon - especially Catalonia - and Provence became the geographical centres, closely connected to one another, of a good part of this work of acquiring and broadcasting scientific knowledge that was carried out by the Jewish community. This circumstance had an impact not only on the ways and models in which it was produced and in the choice of texts, but also in the characteristics of the language or languages in they were written and circulated.

In the earliest Hebrew scientific texts, and right up until the end of the Middle Ages, it is possible to detect traces of the Jews' mother tongue, which is not Hebrew but the language of the territory in which they were living. Such is the case of Catalan, the language of a good number of Jewish authors, translators and copyists who take part in the processes of producing and disseminating science. Their impact is perhaps most evident in the high number of aljamía voices (Catalan written in Hebrew characters) which we find in Hebrew scientific texts. However, the influence of Catalan grammar and morphology is also evident in these same texts.

A new phenomenon appears from the fourteenth century: translations from vernacular languages into Hebrew. Some medical and scientific works are translated from Catalan, and at the same time some Hebrew works are translated into Catalan. This type of scientific dissemination is closely linked to another more widespread late-medieval phenomenon: the vernacularisation of knowledge. The Jewish communities are also involved in this process with another strategy for the transmission of scientific knowledge: the production of aljamía texts, in other words, the dissemination of texts written in Catalan (or other languages) but in Hebrew script. This makes medical and scientific texts accessible to a fair number of Jews who found it easier to understand discourse in their mother tongue or the vernacular, but written with characters which most males learnt in order to follow prayers in the synagogue. Marginal glosses in Hebrew found in some vernacular texts provide further evidence that Jewish physicians (or other readers) had access to texts in Catalan.

This paper aims to provide an introduction to the study of the different ways in which the vernacular or mother tongue of the Catalan Jewish communities came into contact with and affected their consumption and production of scientific knowledge in the Middle Ages. It will include a short preliminary analysis of the similarities and differences in the ways in which scientific knowledge was produced and disseminated in the heart of the Castilian Jewish communities.

Lluís Cabré & Montserrat Ferrer Santanach, Books from France and the court of Joan I of Aragon and Violant of Bar

Thanks to the Documents published by Antoni Rubió i Lluch (1908-1921), there is an excellent chapter in Jordi Rubió i Balaguer's history of Catalan literature (1949) on French influences in the fourteenth century, together with other valuable observations: for example, that the earliest translations of Classical texts came from the cultural centres of France, ‘and in the first instance from the literary court of Charles the Wise', through the marriage of Prince Joan of Aragon with Violant of Bar. In this paper we would like to extend this claim to other areas, revising data from published documents, adding some new ones, and comparing this corpus with the inventories of the library of Charles V of France and his son, and of other collections belonging to the royal family.

Antoine Calvet, French and Occitan translations of pseudo-Arnau de Vilanova's works on alchemy (14th-15th c.)

Medieval alchemy is a science that was disseminated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in both Latin and the vernacular. The works of pseudo-Llull and pseudo-Arnau de Vilanova are perhaps the most important. This study focuses on the oeuvre of pseudo-Arnau which attained considerable success and was translated several times. Following an enumeration of the translated texts, we take a more detailed look at certain treatises such as the Rosarius philosophorum translated into Occitan (Rozari) and French (Rosaire), or the Flos florum of which there is only one French fifteenth-century translation, by Oronce Finé who also translated the New Testament. We will also attempt to establish what conclusions can be drawn from this survey, with each of these vernacular versions contributing their share of innovations, particularly in terms of lexis.

With the development and consolidation of the printing press throughout Europe in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, Ramon Llull's colossal reputation –attested by the hundreds of manuscripts of his Latin and Catalan texts– continued apace. In Barcelona and in other European cities printers brought forth editions of the Lullian and Pseudo-Lullian corpus in Latin and in the vernacular. Rather than diminishing, this trend increased after 1500. The purpose of this paper is to set up a typology of early-modern editions of Llull and to assess the ways in which Llull's vast output received attention from printers, scholars and lecturers across Renaissance Europe in the period 1480 to 1520.

Maria Sofia Corradini, Medieval medical literature in Occitan from Antiquity to the Renaissance

In the field of medicine, Occitan literature underwent a decisive development when the decline of the Salerno School relocated the barycentre of Western medicine to the south of France, and in particular to Montpellier. Before the supremacy of the universities of Paris and Bologna, the Occitan city appropriated the knowledge and theory that had originated in Greek, Latin and Arabic milieux , and which had led to the formation of the canon of the Campania school, reworked it, updated it and opened it up to the Romance world thanks to a vibrant process of vernacularisation. The centre became a seat of cultural exchange whose reknown attracted scientists as eminent as Arnau de Vilanova and students from every corner of Europe, encouraged by William of Montpellier's 1180 edict guaranteeing access to higher education regardless of nationality or religious affiliation. Within this context, the Hebrew component played a crucial role in the reception and translation of medical texts, destined not only for teaching, but also for medical practice, and which has made a decisive contribution to the establishment of a scientific lexical system.

In the south of France the vernacularisation of medical and farmaceutical material was not restricted exclusively to universities but was also supported within some aristocratic circles. The Counts of Foix, well attuned to contemporary scientific culture, are a case in point: through them, the process of vernacularization carried out in this field helped to assign a starring role to Occitan because of their close links with the territory, and invested it with political and cultural importance. In addition to the legitimisation of the vernacular in universities, there was thus a parallel process sought by those in power, as happened in another Romance territory, namely the Sicilian court of Frederick II.

Sebastià Giralt, Astrological magic in the Middle Ages, between Latin and Catalan

The aim of this paper is to provide an introduction to the texts contained in the Codex Barberini Latin 3589, copied in the fourteenth century, the Llibre de puritats and the Llibre de ydeis de astrologia, two of the few medieval texts on the subject of astrological magic extant in Catalan, despite the fact that we find some passages in Latin. An attempt will be made to locate these works in the tradition of spiritualist magic, based on the use of astrological images from an analysis of their sources and the relationship between the two languages used in a single manuscript.

Bertha Mª Gutiérrez Rodilla, The Iberian peninsular languages and medieval medical metalexicography

Scientific lexicographical reference works compiled before the advent of printing are not generally well known. Indeed, the idea that specialised lexicography first emerged at the dawn of the modern age has become a commonplace. Despite this deep-seated conception, the later Middle Ages were crucial in this respect, since it was then that different lexicographical tools, monolingual and multilingual, were conceived, defined and perfected, for different purposes. These instruments went considerably further than simple ‘glossaries', the only category granted to medieval specialised lexicography. Many of these eminently practical reference works were originally drawn up to facilitate translations carried out in the principal languages of culture of the Middle Ages (Greek, Arabic, Latin); although later on, the progressive access of different vernacular languages to the transmission of specialised content was decisive. The dynamic role played in this sense by Castilian and Catalan is the subject of this paper, in which we focus on peninsular reference works drawn up mainly in the fields of pharmacy and medicine.

Harvey Hames, Translated from Catalan: looking at a fifteenth century Hebrew version of the Gospels

A fifteenth century manuscript in the Vatican Library contains a Hebrew translation of the four Gospels. It has been suggested that this translation was made from Catalan, and though the paleographical evidence indicates a Byzantine hand, it is a copy of something which originated in Catalonia. This paper will look at the evidence in the manuscript as well as looking at the broader context of the Jewish use of the Gospels in the context of polemics. In addition, the evidence for Catalan translations of the Gospels will be looked at. This will allow us to place the manuscript in context and argue that the original translation was made to meet the needs of the growing number of conversos in the fifteenth century.

Michael R. McVaugh, Turning the Chirurgia of Teodorico into Catalan: the role of master Bernat de Berriac

The Chirurgia of Teodorico Borgognoni, whose final version dates to the 1260s, was perhaps the most influential of the many Latin textbooks of general surgery that were produced in the thirteenth century. It exemplifies very well their authors' common concern to present surgery, not simply as a craft, but as a subject that could also be studied from texts and learned authorities, and that derived its foundations from medical theory. His Chirurgia was subsequently often translated into European vernaculars, and perhaps the earliest of these translations are two Catalan versions, each known today in a unique manuscript: one (at Paris) ascribed to the Valencian surgeon Guillem Corretger, the other (at Graz) to a “master Bernat,” probably the Montpellier master Bernat de Berriac, and both completed in the early years of the fourteenth century. Are these virtually simultaneous translations independent, or are they related in some way? What motives did each translator have for his work? And did the academic medical master take a different approach to vernacularization from the practicing surgeon?

Jaume Mensa, The vernacularisation into Catalan of biblical, theological and prophetic texts in Arnau de Vilanova's Confessió de Barcelona

Arnau de Vilanova wrote several spiritual works in Catalan, but only five have survived: the Confessió de Barcelona, the Lliçó de Narbona, the Raonament d'Avinyó, the Informació espiritual, the Alia informatio beguinorum; and two letters, one to King Jaume II and the other to Queen Blanca.

The Confessió de Barcelona, read before Jaume II and a distinguished assembly on 11 July 1305, is a summary of Arnau de Vilanova's main apocalyptical theses. In contrast with other Catalan works, the Confessió de Barcelona cites, summarises, reproduces or translates biblical texts (in particular from the New Testament and the Book of Daniel), works by theologians (Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, Peter Lombard, Isidore of Seville, Walafrid Strabo's Glossa ordinaria), and ‘special revelations' (the revelation of Cyril and those which Arnau called the Revelacions de senta Aldegardis).

Following an introduction to prove the authenticity of the Catalan text of the Confessió de Barcelona, we will focus our study on Arnau's use of these biblical, theological and prophetic texts. We will pay special attention to the relatively long Latin fragment and subsequent translation into Catalan of a prophetic text that Arnau de Vilanova attributes to Hildegard of Bingen; and in the synthesis of the signs which will precede the advent of the Antichrist, according to Cyril's prophecy.

The aim of this paper is to define the image of the Jews reflected in the main work of the Catalan Dominican Ramon Martí (c. 1215-c.1285). This involves understanding what sort of ‘science' the author attributed to the Jews: what do the Jews of the Pugio christianorum know? What is their sphere of knowledge? And how do they use this knowledge? The Pugio (together with another of Martí's works, the Capistrum Iudaeorum) represented an innovation in the story of the controversy between the Jews and Christians, because for the first time systematic use was made of the Hebrew language and of Rabbinical literature in defence of the Christian faith. Christian apologists had begun studying the Talmud in the previous century with a view to refuting Judaism; for Martí, however, the Talmud is not seen as a collection of foolish rantings and ravings, and he even says that some traditiones in the Talmud are veritatem sapiunt ... et Christianam fidem exprimunt. In this way, the extrabiblical Jewish tradition is apportioned a value almost of locus theologicus. It must be said, though, that this recognition does not represent any change in attitude to Judaism, which continues to be condemned and contrary to the truth, a relic of the past which has no reason to survive.

According to Martí, after the coming of Christ, the Jews have committed many errors of their own volition (and in particular four ‘great misdeeds'); the consequences have been tragic above all for the Jews themselves: for their obstinacy, Deus reprobavit illos et tradidit in reprobum sensum. The blindness of the Jews is thus the cause of their condemnation and at the same time it is also their punishment. A sort of corollary is drawn from this: the Jews are wily and yet foolish at the same time, crafty as foxes yet ignorant.

From his theological perspective, Martí does not see and does not want to see any ‘science' in the contemporary Jewish community. Did the author of the Pugio not know that many Jews were physicians, alchemists, magistrates, accountants and even officials in the royal court? He can not have been unaware of it, but he does not seem familiar with these Jews. The Jews against whom the Christian has to wield his fist (pugio), the Jews of the Talmud and of Rabbinical literature, are not everyday Jews. They could at most be the Jews of the disputations, but here we are dealing with rhetorical characters rather than real ones. Maybe Martí knew some Jewish people: it is likely that some conversos of Jewish origin worked with him, above all in his reading of the Talmud and his search for Rabbinical quotations, but these ‘real' Jews never make an appearance in the Pugio. Ramon Martí's dialogue with the Jews is a dialogue with books rather than with real people, and in the final analysis it is not a real dialogue at all, just like the disputations of Paris, Barcelona, and especially Mallorca or Tortosa, were not real debates either.

Michela Pereira, Telling the truth: Ramon Llull and philosophy in the vernacular at the end of the thirteenth century

Recent historiography of philosophy has expressed considerable interest in the emergence of philosophical treatises in the vernacular in the final decades of the thirteenth century, interpreting it on the one hand as a manifestation of ‘regionalism' (Sturlese, and see the approach of the 2007 SIEPM conference, where the plenary session confirmed the scarcity of studies on the subject) and of the ‘deprofessionalisation' of philosophy (De Libera); and on the other as a real cultural operation that raises the diglossia of intellectuals to the level of scientific and philosophical writing (Voigts), and which involves a review of the same concept of ‘philosophy', of the boundaries of the discipline and its sphere of reference (see Imbach on ‘lay philosophy').

The consistency, importance and variety of Llull's philosophical texts in Catalan and Latin (with the complex problems regarding the relationships between the different versions and languages) provide the basis for a comparison of the characteristics of ‘philosophy in the vernacular' until now contained in studies - above all in Italy and France - and which can be identified in the specific use of different languages by Llull.

We will outline a comparison with two authors contemporary with Llull, although each one for different reasons: Dante, who wrote the Convivio in Italian and who developed his theory of language in De vulgari eloquio; and Marguerite Porete, who describes her own mystical experience in the Miroir des simples âmes using her ‘mother tongue', which seems to offer an expressive capacity not guaranteed in Latin.

Stefano Rapisarda, Nicole Oresme's (self)translation of the Livre de divinacions (1366)

The intellectual activity of Nicole Oresme can be considered fundamental in the «Shaping of Linguistic Identities», as far as the case of France is concerned. It is well known in fact that when Oresme begins to translate Aristotle's works on behalf of king Charles V, the socio-linguistical statute of French is that of a low, not prestigious language specially for what concerns the capability of French in «receiving» philosophical and scientific texts. Oresme is probably the first to commit writing science and philosophy in vernacular French, though his clerical education brings him often to declare that he feels much more at ease with Latin than with French, in which he is afraid to be an inelegant writer. As a counsellor of the king he writes a Tractatus contra astronomos judiciarios (1349) and then he self-translates it as a Livre de divinacions (1366) in order to adapt it to a reader less competent in an autonomus reading of a Latin text. It is a quite rare occurance that an author self-translates in vernacular a text that he had priously written in Latin and this offers us the possibility to analyse in detail the intellectual activity which stays beyond a translation in vernacular.

Xavier Renedo, Translatio studii et imperii and history of the cities in Francesc Eiximenis' Dotzè del Crestià

A Chapters 15 to 21 of the Dotzè del Crestià by Francesc Eiximenis, together with chapters 28 and 191, present a peculiar vision of the history of towns related to the translatio studii et imperii. The transmission of «wisdom and science» and of political power from Orient to Occident runs from Enos, the first town mentioned in the Genesis to Paris, Oxford or Cambridge, the main intellectual centres in Fourteenth Century Europe; Eiximenis states that science «always follows the great buildings, the towns and the cities».

In the first third of the fifteenth century, an anonymous scribe copied three brief treatises on behaviour, in Catalan, consecutively on 53 folios (Biblioteca de Catalunya, ms. 42). This anonymous scribe understood that they had been written by ‘philosophers', or compiled from the writings of ‘philosophers'. The first and third treatises have been identified. They are Paraules de savis e de philòsofs by the Jewish author Jadufà Bonsenyor, and the (moral) Retòrica by Brunet Llatí. The second treatise, according to the compiler's colophon, is Lo Breviari de Baracan lo philòsof en Regiment d'Alberch; and a reader from the end of the fifteenth century gave it the title De re familiari. The practical norms of conduct that the treatise promotes, on four specific points, namely material goods, servants, women and children, allow us to locate it within the classic genre of Home Economics. In this paper, we provide an annotated version of the text, and identify the mysterious Baracan or Boracan.

Josep Maria Ruiz Simon, «Car nos ffassam aquest libre als homes lecs»: the reasons for vernacularisation in the works of Ramon Llull

The medieval manuscript tradition has left us with Llullian texts mostly in Latin, but also in Catalan, Occitan, French, Italian and other vernacular languages. In this paper, we will analyse and contextualise the reasons why Llull, in several works, has recourse to use, or translate into, these languages.

Irma Taavitsainen, Disseminating learning: linguistic features of the commentary tradition and other learned texts in Middle English

The pan-European vernacularisation boom reached England in the late fourteenth century. Scientific and medical texts deriving from academic sources are extant from the last quarter of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century in English: we have surgical writings, specialised texts and compendia from this early phase.

My contribution to the ICREA Conference deals with learned texts in Middle English that had their origins in the academic discourse world in Latin. I shall base my assessment on texts included in the electronic corpus of Middle English Medical Texts and complement the selection with some recently published editions, paying special attention to the top genre of scholasticism, the commentary, and its transfer into English. I shall focus on the author's role in reader guidance in the construction of knowledge. Metadiscursive passages reveal interpersonal author-audience relations in textual organisation, e.g. in the enumerative text strategy and attention catchers, expressions of certainty and hedges (or the lack of them). Transferring Latin conventions of learned writing into the vernacular shows vacillation e.g. in irregular pronominal shifts referring to the author (or translator). Problems in finding adequate expressions in the vernacular and the layered nature of texts can be detected by a microanalysis of the above textual and linguistic features.

Bibliography: MEMT = Middle English Medical Texts (2005). Compiled by Irma Taavitsainen, Päivi Pahta and Martti Mäkinen with software by Raymond Hickey. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. — Sex, Aging, & Death in a Medieval Medical Compendium: Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.52, Its Texts, Language, and Scribe (2006). Ed. by M. Teresa Tavormina. Tucson: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. — Taavitsainen, Irma (2004). Transferring classical discourse conventions into the vernacular. In: Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds), Medical and Scientific Writing in English 1375-1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 37-72. — Taavitsainen, Irma (2006). Thought-styles and Metadiscourse in Six Hundred Years of Medical Writing. Maurizio Gotti and Francoise Salager-Meyer, Medical Writing. Bern: Peter Lang. 431-456.

Ilaria Zamuner, On the Italian vernacularisations of the Chirurgia by Ruggero Frugardo of Parma (or of Salerno), with a note on a recently discovered manuscript

The Practica chirurgiae (or Chirurgia) by Ruggero Frugardo of Parma (or of Salerno) was compiled around the 1170s by a pupil of the renowned medieval physician, Guido d'Arezzo il Giovane, with the help of a group of collaborators. The work was disseminated rapidly throughout Europe, as attested to by the exceptional circulation of the Latin commentaries on the one hand, and numerous vernacularisations in different Western languages on the other. Two manuscripts have been located in Italy to date (Firenze, BNC, Conv. Soppr. B.3.1536 and Firenze, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 2163), both fourteenth century and from Tuscany , containing two probably independent translations of the Chirurgia . In this paper, we analyse these two vernacularisations with the aim of establishing their autonomy and their cultural context. The paper will also include a brief lexical survey.

Mauro Zonta, Vicent Ferrer translated into Hebrew: by whom, where, when, how, why?

I have announced in two previous articles of mine that a philosophico-theological work by Saint Vincent Ferrer O.P. (1350-1419), the Quaestio sollemnis de unitate universalis , was translated from the Latin original text into Hebrew, as it results from a recent examination of the contents of a ms. in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina. I have just finished a critical edition of the Hebrew translation, together with an English translation and a very tentative “re-translation” of it into Latin. The Hebrew translation shows to include a larger version of the already known Latin text of Ferrer's work. In my paper, I will try to examine five questions. Who was the Latin-into-Hebrew translator? Where die he make the translation? When was the translation materially made? Which is the relationship between it, its (almost totally lost) original Latin text, and the already published shorter Latin version? Finally: why such a work, obviously inspired by Saint Vincent Ferrer's firm and solid Christian theological ideas, was translated into Hebrew by a Jewish philosopher?