23 April 2024: We are investigating problems with ecommerce on Cambridge Core. We apologise for any inconvenience and hope to have full functionality restored shortly.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Statements in Latin concerning such topics as wisdom, truth, and virtue, attributed to the Proverbia Grecorum (less often the Parabolae Gregorum), are found in a number of early medieval manuscripts. They are of interest because of their stated connection with the Greeks, which pertains to the knowledge of Greek and Greek learning in the early medieval West, and because of the obscure vocabulary many of the proverbs contain, which relates to the study of the latinity of early medieval, especially insular, scholars. New findings concerning the origin and transmission of these statements have increased their importance because they have revealed connections between them and other important early medieval Latin texts, notably the Collectio canonum Hibernensis and certain florilegia found in the miscellaneous Collectaneum of Sedulius Scottus. The Proverbia Grecorum have been edited and studied in detail only once, by Sigmund Hellmann, in 1906. Since then new statements attributed to the Proverbia Grecorum have been found, and the characterization of early medieval Latin culture has been significantly revised. Hellmann's text, furthermore, has been found to be faulty in a number of places. Therefore, there is a need for a full re-edition and study of this proverb collection. This has been undertaken in the present work. Following this essay, which defines the current state of knowledge of the Proverbia Grecorum, there is a critical edition of all statements identified as Proverbia Grecorum. This is followed by a commentary in which parallel texts are cited, and points of linguistic interest are noted.
1 Hellmann, S., Sedulius Scottus (Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 1; Munich 1906) 121–35; edition reprinted in PLS 4.1262–1269.Google Scholar
2 This manuscript, which was once numbered 14 and later 37, was one of a group copied at the monastery of SS. Eucherius–Matthias, Trier (Manitius, K., ‘Eine Gruppe von Handschriften des 12. Jahrhunderts aus dem Trierer Kloster St. Eucherius–Matthias,’ Forschungen und Fortschritte 29 [1955] 317–19). On its contents see Marx, J., Verzeichnis der Handschriften-Sammlung des Hospitals zu Cues (Trier 1905) 47–51, and Williams, S., Codices Pseudo-Isidoriani (New York 1971) 9–10.Google Scholar
3 On Sedulius Scottus see Kenney, J., The Sources for the Early History of Ireland, I: Ecclesiastical (New York 1929, revised 1966) 561–69.Google Scholar
4 A full critical edition of the miscellaneous Collectaneum of Sedulius Scottus is in preparation by the present writer, and will be published in the Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis. The contents of this notebook have been inadequately described by Klein, J., Über eine Handschrift des Nikolaus von Cues, nebst ungedruckten Fragmenten ciceronischer Reden (Berlin 1866) and by Hellmann, , 96–99.Google Scholar
5 MS Karlsruhe Augiensis xviii, s. ix, in book 25.Google Scholar
6 Edited by Dümmler, E. in MGH Epistolae 4.501–505.Google Scholar
7 Edited by Hellmann, 19–91. See his concordance to the Proverbia Grecorum and the De rectoribus Christianis, 132–33.Google Scholar
8 Hellmann, 135.Google Scholar
9 These parallels have been found in a typescript of the ‘B’ text of the Hibernensis which Maurice Sheehy of University College, Dublin, whose critical edition is in progress, has generously let me read. It should be noted that the Karlsruhe manuscript contains the ‘A’ text with some ‘B’ additions.Google Scholar
10 At chapter 20 of book 40 of the ‘B’ text, fol. 81v of the Hatton manuscript, are found Proverbia Grecorum 1 and 2 of the Kues list; at chapter 4 of book 42, fol. 85v of the Hatton manuscript, is found Proverbium 65; and at chapter 10 of book 44, fol. 90r of the Hatton manuscript, is found Proverbium 69. The two statements attributed to the Proverbia Grecorum but which are not found in the Kues list concern the five periods of kingship (27.6, fol. 42r) and the six ways man's spiritual nature is made in the image of God (39.47, fol. 79r).Google Scholar
11 Attempts to understand the relation of the two recensions have been hampered by the edition of Wasserschleben, H., Die irische Kannonensammlung (Berlin 1885 2). Purportedly reproducing the ‘A’ text, Wasserschleben based his edition on the inferior St. Gall manuscript. Scholars such as Hellmann (op. cit. 142–43), who have compared the readings of the ‘B’ manuscripts with Wasserschleben's edition, have been misled into thinking that the ‘B’ recension is the older since it seemed its readings were closer to the excerpted originals. This conclusion is not upheld by the other ‘A’ manuscripts.Google Scholar
12 The ‘A’ recension can be dated to the early eighth century by the colophon of MS Paris, B.N. lat 12021, which names a Rubin of Iona as one of the scribes. It is known that Rubin died in 725.Google Scholar
13 Proverbia Grecorum 24 and 25 are found in subsection xxxi, entitled De opere, entries 13 and 14; the first half of Proverbium 64 is found in subsection xxxvii, entitled De regibus, entry 12. To Proverbium 3 should be compared the statement in subsection 1, De contrauersiis, entry 9: ‘Claues questionum est sapientis interrogatio.’ To Proverbium 35 should be compared entry 64 in the same subsection: ‘Aures nostras testes habemus: instabile eloquium indicium mendatii.’Google Scholar
14 Of the sentences which can be related to insular scholarship, the most striking is the statement, found in subsection XX, De penitentia, entry 13 (fol. 251v of the Kues manuscript), which is paralleled in the Old Irish Alphabet of Piety, section 8 (ed. Hull, V.; Celtica 8 [1968] 60–61). It reads: ‘Quatuor uirtutibus homo sanatur: penitentia, timore, spe, amore. Penitentia de preteritis peccatis, timor de futuris, spes premiorum, amor celestis regni.’ Parallels to statements in the Collectio canonum Hibernensis are found in eleven of its forty subsections.Google Scholar
15 On fol. 264v of the Kues manuscript. The text reads: ‘Homo noster interior .vi. modis ad similitudinem Dei factus est: citus, mobilis, subtilis, incorporeus, inuisibilis, aeternus.’Google Scholar
16 Origen, , Homilia in Genesi 1.13 (PG 12.155d). The text reads: ‘Is autem qui ad imaginem Dei factus est et ad similitudinem, interior homo noster est, inuisibilis et incorporalis, et incorruptus atque immortalis.’Google Scholar
17 Bischoff, B., Anecdota novissima (Stuttgart 1984) 98–100.Google Scholar
18 Lindsay, W. M., ‘The Irish Glosses in Ambr. F 60 sup.,’ Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie 7 (1910) 266–67. The excerpts glossed with Old Irish are printed and translated in Stokes, W. and Strachan, J., edd., Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus 2 (Cambridge 1901–1903) 234. They are also printed in the Commentary below.Google Scholar
19 Lowe, E. A., Codices Latini Antiquiores 3.336–40.Google Scholar
20 It should be added that there was a collection of Proverbia Grecorum at Lincoln in the twelfth century, as the Lincoln Cathedral Catalogue of Books indicates: ‘Librum Prouerbium Graecorum inutilem’ (Dimock, J. F., ed., Giraldi Cambrensis Opera 7 [London 1877] 166).Google Scholar
21 Hellmann, 121.Google Scholar
22 Bischoff, 99.Google Scholar
23 Especially remarkable in his letter are the reference to Apollo (Paean), and the frequent and graphic use of simile and metaphor. It also contains one medievalism which may prove significant: the writing of defendunt for diffundunt in the phrase: ‘Sicut enim herbarum holera et lilia agri uiam defendunt’ (line 12). The use of defendunt for ‘overgrow’ is also found in the eighth-century Latin/Anglo-Saxon Corpus glossary (D 207): defenditur: dispargitur (see note 32 below).Google Scholar
24 Bischoff 99. He in turn makes reference to Gougaud, L., Christianity in Celtic Lands (London 1932) 245f., and Ryan, J., Irish Monasticism, Origins and Early Development (Dublin 1931) 88f.Google Scholar
25 Ancient Laws of Ireland 3 (Dublin 1873) 53, 547, and 542.Google Scholar
26 This statement is one of a number which bear comparison with classical Greek and Roman themes, and which therefore hold forth the possibility that the Proverbia Grecorum have an ancient origin or inspiration. Until and unless concrete evidence is found to confirm this, it seems most reasonable to consider such parallels coincidental.Google Scholar
27 Ancient Laws of Ireland 4 (Dublin 1879) 372. I am indebted to Professors Francis John Byrne and Maurice Sheehy and Dr. Proínseás Ní Chatháin of University College, Dublin, for noting these parallels.Google Scholar
28 Some peculiarities of the latinity of the Proverbia Grecorum are cited in notes 32 to 34 below.Google Scholar
29 McNally, R., Der irische Liber de Numeris: Eine Quellenanalyse des pseudo-isidorischen Liber de Numeris (Munich 1957) 25; see also Dekkers–Gaar, , Clavis Patrum Latinorum no. 1130, and PLS 4.1262.Google Scholar
30 MSS Paris, Bibl. de l'Arsenal 8407 (Sedulius' Psalter) and Basel, Universitätsbibl. A.vii.3 attest Irish knowledge of the Greek Psalter.Google Scholar
31 Parallels to the Vulgate are noted in the Commentary below.Google Scholar
32 Lindsay, W. M., ed., The Corpus Glossary (Oxford 1921). Words which are found in the Proverbia Grecorum and the Corpus glossary are: brittanica (Proverbium 21, Corpus B 193) glossed: ‘Floris quae in siluis nascitur’; bacidones (Proverbium 23, Corpus B 3) glossed with the Anglo–Saxon: raedinne, ‘cluster of grapes’ (similarly in the Épinal–Erfurt glossary); and foratorium (Proverbium 25, Corpus, Intr. 137) glossed with the Anglo-Saxon buirus (= byrus): ‘chisel.’Google Scholar
33 The Abstrusa glossary, Lindsay, W. M. and Thomson, H. J., edd., Glossaria Latina 3 (Paris 1926), cites the word brittanica with the same explanation as the Corpus glossary. It also contains the entries: subdolus: subtilis, which may explain the unusual use of the word subdoloso in Proverbium 50, yielding the statement: ‘It is an unsafe city which is surrounded by a fragile wall’; and conluuium: commixtio, which may explain the unusual use of the word commixtiones in Proverbium 15, yielding the statement: ‘The intrigues of fools are the black pollutions of malice.’Google Scholar
34 Words found in the Proverbia Grecorum which are not explained by reference to a glossary or literary source are: betuletum (Proverbium 22) ‘birchgrove’; fuscinius (Proverbium 32) ‘three-pronged’?; bacheriosi (Proverbium 40) ‘ferocious’; infrustratus (Proverbium 59) ‘polluted’ (see p. 4); bachum (Proverbium 63) unidentified (see Commentary); and intacalta (Proverbium 66) unidentified. Words given unusual meanings are found in Proverbia 15: commixtiones ‘pollutions’; 37: deductio ‘protection’; 48: lenis (first occurrence) ‘kind’; 50: subdolosus ‘fragile’; 52: temperari (first occurrence) ‘to measure’; 61: fiducialis ‘confident’; and 62: superstitiones ‘make-up’?Google Scholar
35 MGH Epistolae 4.503 line 14.Google Scholar
