Thursday 16th March 11:15—12:45, Session 3
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| Overview of programme | ||||||
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Session: |
History of Reception 2 |
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Place: |
Seminarraum 3 |
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Moderator: |
Pavlína Rychterová |
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Paper 1: |
Medieval Translation and Creation: Guillelmus of Aragon’s De Nobilitate animi |
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Paper 2: |
Manuscript Revelations in a Castilian Translation of John of Rupescissa’s Vade mecum in tribulatione |
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Paper 3: |
The Middle Welsh Sibylla Tiburtina: One Text, Two Translations |
Medieval Translation and Creation: Guillelmus of Aragon’s De Nobilitate animi
Michelle Bolduc
Guillelmus of Aragon’s De Nobilitate animi, composed between 1280 and 1290, describes a radical (for the time) conception of nobility, one based on acquired habit [habitus acquisitus] rather than inborn potential [potentia intrinseca], and thus on merit rather than birth, wealth, or even power. Deriving from the newly rediscovered Aristotelian tradition, it posits a pragmatic vision in which nobility is an ethical requirement of the political life.
The innovative and seemingly modern conception of nobility which De Nobilitate animi presents is, as I argue in this paper, grounded in translation. De Nobilitate animi offers its readers an abundance of quotations in translation from a broad diversity of source texts, wide-ranging in both genre and cultural provenance, and including works in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and in such Romance languages as French and Occitan. For example, Guillelmus quotes not only from philosophical and rhetorical texts (primary among them are the Latin translations of Aristotle, namely Moerbeke’s ca. 1269 Latin translation of Aristotle’s Rhetorica and the pseudo-Aristotelian Rhetorica ad Alexandrum), but also from proverbs and even poetry, particularly that of the Occitan Troubadours.
In this paper I explore, then, how Guillelmus relies upon an eclectic array of translations as the sources for his revolutionary vision of nobility. As both reader and compilator, Guillelmus creates a dialogue of voices in which translators and translations come together, and reveals how translation serves as an integral part of his philosophical/political (re)creation of nobility. By way of conclusion, I suggest that De Nobilitate animi unravels the notion that translation as creation is a resolutely modern, twenty-first century idea.
Manuscript Revelations in a Castilian Translation of John of Rupescissa’s Vade mecum in tribulatione
Robert Lerner
John of Rupescissa’s incendiary prophetic treatise, Vade mecum in tribulatione, written in 1356, was translated before 1500 into seven different vernacular languages: French, English, Italian, German, Czech, Catalan, and Castilian. The present talk concentrates on a manuscript containing one version of a Castilian translation that was made originally around 1460. This version is an adaptation of that translation, and was made sometime after 1485 and before 1496. The manuscript transmitting it was copied in or near Seville and is of great interest because of its revealing maniculae and marginalia. The maniculae point to predictions that could be applied to imminently expected events in the joint reign of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, and a marginal comment is taken from another prophecy known to have been applied to King Ferdinand of Aragon and read by Christopher Columbus.
The Middle Welsh Sibylla Tiburtina: One Text, Two Translations
Nely Ennys van Seventer
In the context of my PhD thesis I am researching the Proffwyddoliaeth Sibli Doeth, ‘The Prophecy of Sibli the Wise’. This is one of the two translations into Middle Welsh of the Sibilla Tiburtina, a prophecy attributed to the Tiburtine Sibyl featuring the Ages of Man, the coming of Christ, a list of kings to come, and the Apocalypse.
The Proffwyddoliaeth has survived in two manuscripts: the White Book of Rhydderch (mid-fourteenth century) and the Red Book of Hergest (end of the fourteenth century). A somewhat earlier but incomplete translation is found in manuscript Peniarth 14 (45-78) (second half of the thirteenth century).
The White Book/Red Book version and the one in Peniarth 14 seem to be based on a very similar source, which is a Latin text close to the source of the edition made by Sackur in the end of the nineteenth century.
After having worked extensively on the White and Red Book translation, I now research the translation in Peniarth 14. In my paper I will share with you the general tendencies of both Middle Welsh translations, as well as how they relate to the Latin text, and place all this in the wider context of translations into Middle Welsh.