Steven J. Williams: Beyond the Hyperbole: The Reception of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets as a Book of Knowledge in the Later Middles Ages (Keynote Lecture)

The pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets, said Lynn Thorndike, was "the most widely influential upon the medieval mind of all the spurious works attributed to Aristotle," and he quoted with seeming approval Moses Gaster's description of it as "the most popular book of the middle ages." Because Thorndike's History of Magic and Experimental Science long ago became a classic among scholars, with the reading of his pages on the Secret of Secrets often coming near the start of an acquaintance with the Secret of Secrets as a text, the lines – simple, straightforward, definitive, and backed up by the massive solidity of Thorndike's enormous scholarly accomplishment – have been remembered and repeated in the many decades that have followed. The question that requires asking is, "Are these statements true?" There are also the obvious follow-up questions: What are the criteria by which we measure popularity and influence? Using those criteria, what books, if any, were more popular and influential than the Secret of Secrets? Given that the Secret of Secrets, which, so says the translator of the complete Latin version, "contain[s] something useful about almost everything," fits the conference parameters as a "compendium of knowledge," can we say that the Secret of Secrets was so popular and influential precisely because it was a "compendium of knowledge"? How might the fact that the Secret of Secrets appealed to different audiences affect assessments of popularity and influence? What are the criteria for gauging how the Secret of Secrets was read? What factors might necessitate qualifying any assessments of its popularity and influence? In attempting answers to these questions, the goal would be not only to shine more light onto the extraordinary fortuna of the Secret of Secrets, but also to address some of the core concerns of the conference itself.

Baudouin Van den Abeele: The Physiologus Theobaldi: A most successful bestiary in medieval schools and monasteries

In the fertile litterary genre of medieval bestiaries, some texts have been less studied than others. This is the case of the Physiologus Theobaldi, a reduced and rhymed version of the Physiologus, presenting 12 animals in 303 verses of various poetic types. It has probably been written in the 11th century and has a rich but not well researched history. Since the work of its editor P.T. Eden (1972), who knew 78 manuscripts, the tradition has not been studied. Our inventory signals to date no less than 210 manuscripts and is certainly incomplete.
This lecture will present the first results of this inquiry. After its early diffusion in Northern France, the reception of the text is particularly high in Central Europe, culminating in the 15th century. The text is in most cases embedded in collections of texts, that can often be qualified as school manuscripts, according to several criteria. A few copies are illustrated and examples will be shown. The reasons of the succes of the Physiologus Theobaldi will be evoked in conclusion.

Vojtěch Bažant: Chronicle of Popes and Emperors by Martinus Polonus in urban milieu in Kingdom of Bohemia

The higher quantity of manuscripts extant from 15th century is connected with the process of spreading texts into new circles of users. The trend is traceable among many bestsellers of the period and is presupposed among others. That is the case of research on reception of Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum by Martinus Polonus in Czech Lands. Besides few minor indications, there is a rare witness at our disposal. A manuscript codex preserved in Széchenyi Országos Könyvtár in Budapest (Ms Clmae 203) was originally written in Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg) by Petr Přespole from Prague, a citizen in Kutná Hora, who was one of creators of literature in the city. As a translator and scribe, he left several manuscripts generally connected with juridical issues. The analysis of social and of codicological contexts aims to clarify relationship of Polonus’ chronicle to these juridicial texts and role of the chronicle among them in urban milieu of Kutná Hora.

Julia Burkhardt: A handbook for everyone? The circulation of the "Book of Bees" in Late Medieval Europe

Between the 13^th and the 16^th century, a Dominican exempla collection from Brabant made an incredible career (speaking in terms of manuscript circulation): More than 120 Latin as well as 15 vernacular manuscripts of the so called "Book of Bees" (Bonum universale de apibus) were, while excerpts from the work were included in more than 100 further manuscripts.
These data seems to correspond both with the content and the ambitions of the book's author: The "Book of Bees" is an extensive exempla collection dealing with the "ideal community" in religious and secular spheres. Its rather abstract topic is illustrated by elaborations on the characteristics of bees. By combining information about natural history with instructive stories on everyday religious life, the book offered a new and instructive approach to contemporary knowledge. Its author, the well-known Brabantine writer Thomas of Cantimpré, had explicitly wished for his work to be preserved, used and spread within the Order of the Preachers. Accordingly, one would expect that the "Book of Bees" was primarily circulated among and used within Dominican convents. But the analysis of the medieval provenance of the extent manuscripts as well as of processes of dissemination reveals an entirely different picture: The "Book of Bees" was produced and consulted in different religious and social contexts, by Mendicants as well as by members of monastic orders or by scholars and clerics, – in short: it seemed to advance to be a "handbook for everyone".
The presentation will discuss the circulation of the "Book of Bees" in general and then focus on some "regional" manuscript groups and their characteristics. By combining a codicological with a historical approach, I would like to rethink and discuss the importance of institutional and regional settings against the background of the process of exchanging manuscripts in Late Medieval Europe.

Godefroid de Callataӱ: The Impact of the encyclopaedic corpus known as RasāʾilIkhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity), with Emphasis on al-Andalus

There is ample evidence to affirm that the influence exerted during the Middle Ages by the encyclopaedic corpus known as RasāʾilIkhwān al-Ṣafāʾ was massive, both in the East and the West of the Dār al-Islām, and that it extended to Jewish and Christian communities as well. In this paper, I shall try to gauge this impact over the centuries, with particular emphasis on Andalusī literature. The objective pursued here is not so much to list names of authors and titles of works as to analyze the reception of the Rasā'ilfrom a thematic perspective. This is done by trying to identify categories of people and by seeking to understand accordingly what may have prompted a given medieval scholar to read this highly unorthodox corpus in the first place, and then what may have incited him in his own work to mention it, to quote from it, or to subtly allude to it by using a more cryptic form of expression.

Pavlína Cermanová: Secretum secretorum versus Auctoritates Aristotelis: Channels of Dissemination

The pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum formed a distinctive part of the genre of books of knowledge, both in Western and Central Europe. The text presented a combination of an encyclopedic handbook and a mirror of princes, in which the philosopher (Aristotle) provides the sovereign (Alexander the Great) with advice concerning reign, ethics, politics, and health. The short extracts of this text were also included in the popular florilegium of the Aristotelian texts, Aucroritates Aristotelis, the medieval university tool par excellence. The main attention of my paper will be focused on the manuscript tradition and channels of dissemination of Secretum Secretorum, respective Auctoritates Aristotelis in medieval Bohemia, or, as the case may be, in the region of Central Europe. The paper will first discuss the ways of the dissemination of given texts and the form in which they were transmitted. These will be primarily the commentaries on Secretum which will reveal for us the concrete cases of connections among the Central European Universities (Prague, Leipzig, Cracow, and Vienna). We will also ask what was the relation between Secretum and the extracts contained in Auctoritates Aristotelis when thinking about the reception of the text in different milieus, the University in the first place.

Lucie Doležalová: Between Scylla and Charybdis. The De tribus punctis christianae religionis (1316) by Thomas Hibernicus and its heyday in late medieval Bohemia

Thomas Hibernicus (fl. 1295-1338) was a secular cleric active at the Sorbonne. Besides his famous and much widespread handbook for preachers, Manipulus florum, he authored three opuscula. Two of them had limited circulation (De tribus hierarchiis survives in three and De tribus sensibus sacrae scripturae in eight manuscripts), but the third, De tribus punctis christianae religionis (1316), which is the focus of this paper, is witnessed in over 130 manuscripts. It is a brief handbook providing instruction on the very basics of moral education to be mastered by every Christian in later Middle Ages: the Confession of Faith, the Ten Commandments, and the seven vices. The text includes several features recurring in medieval “books of knowledge”: the author applied clear and concise structure, used simple and distinct vocabulary and mnemonic verses, appealed to the readers and asked for their corrections, and explicitly noted he had attempted to navigate between Scylla of brevity and Charybdis of obscurity (that is, tried to be brief without becoming unclear).
This paper will survey the transmission of the text in late medieval Bohemia where it reached a true heyday thanks to the fact that Earnest of Pardubice, the archbishop of Prague, attached it to his synodal statutes of 1349, and promoted it as the minimum Christian knowledge. In addition to a great number of manuscripts where the De tribus punctis is copied immediately after the statutes, there are many others, where its reception is more curious and surprising.

Selected sources:
Bloomfield, M. W., B.-G. Guyot, D. R. Howard, T. B. Kabealo, Incipits of Latin Works on the Virtues and Vices 1100–1500, Including a Section of Incipits of Works on the Pater Noster, The Mediaeval Academy of America, Publication 88, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979, no. 5134.
Dudík, Beda, Statuten des ersten Prager Provincial-Concils vom 11. und 12. November 1349, Brno 1872.
Hledíková, Zdeňka, Arnošt z Pardubic. Arcibiskup, zakladatel a rádce, Praha: Vyšehrad, 2018.
Jeauneau, Édouard, “Thomas of Ireland and his De tribus sensibus sacrae scripturae,” in: With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish, and Joseph W. Goering, Oxford Scholarship online, 2011.
Polc, Jaroslav a Zdeňka Hledíková, Pražské synody a koncily předhusitské doby, Praha: Karolinum, 2002.
Rouse, Richard and Mary Rouse, Preachers, Florilegia and Sermons: Studies on the Manipulus Florum of Thomas of Ireland, Turnhout: Brepols, 1979.

Barbora Hanzová - Pavel Blažek: The Pseudo-Bernhardine Epistola de cura rei familiaris and its Reception in Medieval Bohemia

The Epistola de cura rei familiaris, attributed in the Middle Ages to Bernhard of Clairvaux, belongs to the most widely read medieval "books of knowledge". A short moral didactic treatise on the household and housekeeping, written in the form of a letter of the famous abbot to an unknown miles Raymundus, the Epistola has been dated to the later twelfth or early thirteenth century. It enjoyed, especially in the fifteenth century, a very wide diffusion throughout Europe and was translated and adapted into numerous European vernaculars. The aim of the paper is to trace the Epistola's hitherto unstudied reception in late medieval Bohemia and thus to contribute to the Rezeptionsgeschichte of this medieval bestseller.

Nadine Holzmeier: Patterns of Knowledge in Late Medieval Historiography. The „Chronologia Magna“ of Paolino Veneto

This paper will discuss a particular and unusual late medieval attempt to present the history and spatial relations of known world: the “Chronologia Magna”. This exceptional chronicle was designed in the 1420s by the Franciscan Paolino Veneto, a diplomat in the service of the Republic of Venice and later bishop of Pozzuoli. Aiming at presenting the history of the world from its biblical beginnings up to his own lifetime, Paolino organised the “Chronologia Magna” as a synopsis arranged along a chronological and a spatial line. By doing so, Paolino presented a chronological sequence and a spatial juxtaposition extending far beyond Latin Europe combined in a single diagrammatic structure which not only allowed for simply retrieving information but also for connecting and correlating knowledge.
Der Vortrag wird am Beispiel einer sehr ungewöhnlichen, spätmittelalterlichen Weltchronik einen konkreten Versuch zeigen, die gesamte Welt mit ihrer Geschichte und ihren räumlichen Bedingungen zu erfassen. Die Chronik ist in den 20er Jahren des 14.jh.in Venedig entstanden. Ihr Autor war Franziskaner, Diplomat im Dienste Venedigs und später Bischof von Pozzuoli: Paolino Veneto. Er organisiert, orientiert an zwei ordnenden Linien das ihm bekannte weltgeschichtliche Wissen als große Synopse und parallelisiert die einzelnen Herrschaftsbereiche auch über Lateineuropa hinaus. Es wird dabei nicht nur das chronologische Nacheinander, sondern zugleich das synoptische Nebeneinander erfasst. Die Chronik organisiert Wissen in diagrammatischer Form und stellt damit nicht nur große Wissensmengen in kompakter Form bereit. Gleichzeitig bietet diese Art der Wissensdarstellung die Möglichkeit nicht nur festgefügte Informationen abzurufen, sondern auch zu einander in Beziehung zu setzen und damit Wissen zu verknüpfen.

Benedek Láng: What handbooks of practical magic were used for in the 14^th-15^th centuries?

Handbooks of practical magic formed a distinctive part of the genre of books of knowledge in late medieval Europe (both in Western and Central Europe). While a sophisticated classification of their content is possible (i.e. a differentiation between talismanic, natural magic, angelic and demonic texts offers itself), and examples pertaining different subgroups behaved differently in the medieval codices (their codicological context varied), their authorship and readership can be described in a rather unified way: learned intellectuals active in courts, monasteries and universities were responsible for their production, copy, reading and use. The talk addresses the last issue, that of application. While the books themselves as objects are mute and do not inform us about what their users and readers actually did with them, several in-text and external pieces of evidence provide us ample information about the use of these handbooks.

Lukáš Lička: Two Anonymous Commentaries on Peckham’s Perspectiva communis, Written by the Hand of Reimbotus de Castro

One of the most famous discoveries Ludwig Schuba made when preparing his catalogue of medical and quadrivial codices kept in Bibliotheca Palatina is the identification of the hand of Reimbotus de Castro (fl. 1350s-1380s), personal physician of emperor Charles IV, as well as a group of codices from his personal library, many of them including Reimbot’s autographs. This paper restricts its focus to two texts on science of optics (perspectiva) written by Reimbot’s hand and included in Pal. lat. 1380. Closer reading of these texts, hitherto unnoticed by historians of medieval science, reveals they are inspired by the famous 13th-century compendium of optical knowledge – Perspectiva communis by John Peckham which was widely read among medieval scholars (more than 60 manuscripts are extant today). Once the contents of these text are considered and compared with Peckham’s textbook, it may be suggested that the first text is Reimbot’s reportatio of lectures on Peckham’s text, whereas the second text is an optical treatise inspired by Peckham rather loosely (it borrows many propositions from Peckham but reworks the structure of presentation of optical knowledge significantly). It is surmised both texts originated in Paris university milieu, probably in the 1360s when Reimbot studied there. Finally, the aim of these texts and their intended audience are discussed, as well as why a royal physician might be interested in them.

David Morris: The Czech Connection: The Proliferation of Pseudo-Joachim in Medieval Bohemia

Joachim of Fiore (ca. 1130-1202) was among the most important figures in the intellectual history of the Middle Ages, and arguably the most influential apocalyptic visionary in the Christian tradition. Yet ironically, some of the most significant manifestations of his legacy were texts written decades after his death by authors pretending to be him. These pseudo-Joachite works were at least as popular as anything Joachim himself had written, and their surviving manuscripts' distribution and circulation around Europe has the potential to reveal much about Joachim's legacy and the intellectual, cultural, and scribal networks that helped convey it. My research has focused on one of the principal examples of the genre, a complex of images and texts called Super Prophetas—or more traditionally in the scholarship, the pseudo-Joachite Commentary on Isaiah—which probably originated in Joachim's own religious community in Calabria, appears to have been assembled over several years, and emerged in its final form around 1268. Despite being rooted in the concerns of the thirteenth-century Mezzogiorno, Super Prophetas saw European-wide distribution, with one of its epicenters being, surprisingly, Bohemia. Eight manuscripts—over a third of the total number of surviving copies—are of Czech provenance. I have argued that the people most likely for the introduction of the text into Bohemia were the Italian revolutionary Cola di Rienzo and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Beyond this point of likely origination, what was it about this text that made it especially receptive to a Czech audience before and during the Hussite upheaval? What does codicological analysis of the surviving manuscripts reveal about how Super Prophetas circulated around medieval Bohemia? Taking a broader approach, how does the Czech pattern of circulation compare to other epicenters of pseudo-Joachite activity (e.g. Italy, France)? These are the considerations of this current study.

Agnieszka Rec: Beinecke MS 650, A Book of Universal Knowledge

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library MS 650 is a very personal book of knowledge. Copied in the early fifteenth century by several scribes, it was organized by a single compiler, who added his corrections, notes, cross-references, and indices to the volume's many texts. The manuscript presents extracts and summaries of widely circulating texts on medicine, pharmacology, astronomy, and meteorology, among other subjects, alongside the compiler's own summaries of the history of the world. Thus the Regimen sanitatissalernitanum, Thomas of Cantimpré'sDe naturarerum, and Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae appear alongside chronologies of universal history. MS 650 represents the careful collection of knowledge by an individual with wide intellectual interests.
This paper will first introduceBeinecke MS 650and then explore how this particular book of knowledge illuminates the genre:How did this compiler's particular interests shape the volume?As this is a volume made by multiple hands, what can we recover of the production process? In creating his summaries and choosing his extracts, what information does the compiler choose to omit? As we examine the codicological context, what does it mean for these texts to travel together in this volume, and how unique a collection of texts does it constitute?The presence of German and Czech texts, alongside the Hebrew and Glagolitic alphabets, points to a Central European origin: did geography influence the transmission and dissemination of the texts in this manuscript, and were compendia of this sort typical of the region?

Gleb Schmidt: The Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis and its readers in the Late Medieval Italy (14^th-15^th centuries)

Elucidarium is by far the most read work of Honorius Augustodunensis. From the first years of the twelfth century this "encyclopaedia" has become a standard book on the important theological issues. Despite the emergence of numerous vernacular translations of the Elucidarium and circulation of many other theological manuals, the original Elucidarium in Latin has never lost its audience and has been constantly copied and read across the Middle Ages.
The aim of this paper is to propose a survey of Late Medieval manuscripts of the Elucidarium kept in Italian libraries.The major part of these copies is of Italian origin; thus, it will be possible to sketch out some general characteristics of the reception of the Elucidarium in Italy. Codicological study of surviving manuscripts will allow to determine valuable channels of the Elucidarium transmission as well as to demonstrate some interesting cases of its use.
On the hand, Italian manuscripts of Latin Elucidarium reveal much more professional attitude to the text, than one could think of this text, which is often labelled as trivial and simplistic. Careful annotation, division of the text into thematic chapters, creation of alphabetical indices and capitula were intended to make the selective reading of the Elucidarium easy. These codices witness the important role of the Elucidarium in theological education although this text has had, throughout the 14^th and 15^th centuries, many rival books. On the other hand, a considerable part of Italian copies is preserved in collections of devotional texts, whose reading did not imply reader's activity in commenting and contributing. Two of these contrasting examples outline the scope of the possible application of this Latin text in Late Medieval Italy.

Dana Stehlíková: Kristan's of Prachatice Latin Herbarium and its successful journey to the Old Czech literature

Thanks to Kristan's compilation, the original sources came to a far wider circle of readers than they had in their original form. The paper briefly sums up Kristan's progress in creating a new compilation, reflects on her target group, and points to the possibilities and pitfalls of today's reading of success readership.

Jaroslav Svátek: Devotion and Religious Polemics. Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis in Late Medieval Czech Lands

The Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis became a widely spread text in 14th and 15th century kingdom of Bohemia. Apart the existing vernacular adaptation, about 30 manuscripts of the Latin original (more or less precisely) come from this geographical area. Despite the missing evidence of the use of Elucidarium as an authoritative text at University, two other contexts seem to characterise the use of this spread catechetical handbook.
Elucidarium appears mainly among other devotional texts in the collections for pastoral or catechetical praxis (sermons, hagiography) proceeding from the monastic or parochial milieu. But in at least seven manuscripts from the 15th century this dialogue accompanies the texts dealing with actual problematic of confessional polemics in Hussite Bohemia (treatises on sub utraque, polemical songs, works of Jan Hus or Jan Rokycana, anti-heretical treatises). My presentation will focus on the question whether Elucidarium played any special role in this context. By the textual analysis I shall also try to specify if some aspects – like the role of predestination, questions about the life of clergy, or ecclesiology – were emphasized in the Bohemian copies of this popular catechetical dialogue.

Petra Waffner: "How Collections shape the Text" – manuscript evidences of the Book of Sidrac

The paper will present a quite well known french written text (last half of the 13th cty.): Le Livre de Sidrac – la fontaine de toutes sciences. This encyclopedic work (book of knowledge), in form of a teaching dialogue, offers its audience a wide range of knowledge. For this aim he uses parts of already well known other vernacular texts (f.i. Lucidaire, Livre de Trésor, Miroir de Monde and Secretum Secretorum), combining them with self written passages to an own volume.
The Book of Sidrac is therefore a collection of different sources used by a compilator for establishing his own work. Its writers produced about over 50 manuscripts and it is interesting enough to see that they mostly differ. They differ by the number of questions, the used topics, or the order of the passages. Therefore one can say that each writer created his own Sidrac.
This usage of the volume, its changes, includes in many manuscripts an emphasis on one or the other topic. This can be seen very easily when looking at collection manuscripts in which the Book of Sidrac is combined with other texts. The paper will therefore focus on some text evidences, showing how the Sidrac is an example for a medieval text in motion, t.i. changing its appearance with every text evidence.
The dissemination of the Book of Sidrac is another interesting fact. Probably originally written in a clerical surrounding in the Holy Lands, it was spreaded in the french nobility (it is known that one volume was owned by the french queen Joan I of Navarre, wife of Philip IV). Further it was transferred to the anglo-norman society and the text evidences show that the collections are adapted to the needs and wishes of the houses there.

Nicolas Weill-Parot: The commentaries on Aristotle's Physics in the universities of Central Europe (c.1350-c.1500) : a reassessment of the impact and metamorphosis of the "Buridanian" model.

The commentary on Aristotle's Physics was a standard activity of the Faculties of arts, especially in such universities as Paris and Oxford. From the middle of the fourteenth century onwards, in the new universities of Central Europe (Prague, Cracovia, Vienna, Erfurt, Heidelberg...), many commentaries was produced; most of them are unknown and are extant in manuscripts, hold in particular in the Amploniana Library (now in in the UFB of Erfurt).Generally, scholarship have argued that their quality was mediocre and that they were mere paraphrase of the Parisian commentaries by John Buridan, Albert of Saxony and Marsilius of Inghen. The aim of this presentation would be to scrutinize the use in these commentaries from Central Europe of some significantconcepts of natural philosophy expressed in John Buridan's or Albert of Saxony's commentaries.The purpose would be to reveal the subtle play with this model in these late commentaries on Physics.

Václav Žůrek: Chess, Moral Principles, and Ancient Stories. Reception of Cessolis’s Liber de moribus and other Classicizing Works in Medieval Bohemia

One of the most popular medieval lay work - Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium sive super ludum scaccorum written around year 1300 by Jacobus de Cessolis - could be read as an allegorical treatise explaining the functioning of the medieval society on the basis of the rules of the game of chess. Another possible way of reading this book, which was no less responsible for its reader’s success, see in it a text mediating the knowledge about ancient Rome and Greece in form of moral lessons related with famous personalities. This collection retelling the ancient history through stories, tales and exempla found a significant spread in medieval Bohemia as well as other similar collections used to the moral education (John of Wales Breviloquium, Gesta Romanorum or Pseudo-Burley’s Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum). The paper will present the spread and common destiny of these works on the example of several manuscripts containing them together. It will also focus on the main channels of transmission of these classicizing works in Central Europe.