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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
The name of the English Dominican Robert Holcot was still familiar to European intellectuals in the seventeenth century, thanks in part to the wide diffusion of his challenging Questions on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, but even more to the ready availability of his lectures on the biblical book of Wisdom.1 The latter commentary clearly was, as Fr. Joseph Wey observed, a ‘medieval best seller’;2 but few historians investigating late medieval thought or early modern access to it have recently studied the work. One who has done so, the late Beryl Smalley, has drawn attention to the verbal ‘pictures’ (Holcot's term) and extended plays on words that were surely among the pleasures that scribes and readers found in the book for at least three centuries.3 Any reader inclined to ‘look grave at a pun’ and not yet aware that the authors of Sentences commentaries commonly embedded their own cognomens implicitly (and often obscurely) in the biblical tags they chose as their incipits must have found cause for distress with the opening words of Holcot's Wisdom commentary.
* ‘A University of Iowa Faculty Scholarship made possible the research for this article. The quotation from which I draw my title is from Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark.Google Scholar
1 Holcot was still familiar enough to scholars in 1625 for Gabriel Naudé to cite him in the Apologie pour les grands hommes soupçonnés de magie when arguing that Girolamo Cardano's controversial horoscope of Christ's birth had orthodox antecedents in the work of Holcot and d'Ailly; see Shumaker, W., ‘Renaissance Curiosa' in Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 8 (Binghamton NY 1982) 59–62. I am indebted to John Beldon Scott for drawing my attention to seventeenth-century interest in Holcot.Google Scholar
2 Wey, in the article cited infra, n. 6. Holcot's Wisdom commentary survives in at least 175 fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts, and was printed twelve times between 1481 and 1586.Google Scholar
3 On Holcot's ‘pictures,’ see Smalley, B., ‘Robert Holcot,' Archivum fratrum praedicatorum 26 (1956) 5–97, esp. 26–28, 54–56, 65–82. She finds the term in Holcot's own statements, as her citations show; cf. e.g. (p. 19n): ‘De sex alis cherubim patebit in pictura,’ when referring to a verbal picture. Smalley's studies still constitute the most important beginning point for learning about Holcot. In addition to the above article, see her English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (New York 1960).Google Scholar
4 Trapp, D. has called attention to such self-references in ‘Augustinian Theology of the 14th Century: Notes on Editions, Marginalia, Opinions and Booklore,’ Augustiniana 6 (1956) 146–274. Among those preserved from Oxford, perhaps the most obvious incipit is Adam Wodeham's scriptural tag, ‘Ista est lex Adam, Domine Deus, 2 Reg. 7.’Google Scholar
5 Holcot, , Postillae in librum Sapientiae , in Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.2.25, fol. 2ra (with scribal identification of Holcot in margine): ‘Dominus petra mea et robur meum, II Reg. 22. Artes et scientie humanis studiis.adinvente … Hec sunt autem foramina domuncule sive case, in quibus iuxta cognominis mei sensum debeo conversari; ita cognomen habeo a “foramine case” datum. Et ideo sicut nomen meum in robure, ita cognomen meum intueor in foramine petre; igitur sacre scripture foramine ingressus rogabo.’ Smalley, B., ‘Holcot' 10, noticed (and repeated in English Friars 135) this passage.Google Scholar
6 Wey, J., ‘The Sermo Finalis of Robert Holcot,’ Mediaeval Studies 11 (1949) 219–23. For a list of the forty-eight known manuscripts in which Holcot's Sentences lectures survive in whole or in part, see my introduction to Streveler, P., Tachau, K., Gelber, H., and Courtenay, W. J., eds., Seeing the Future Clearly: Quodlibetal Questions on Future Contingents by Robert Holcot (forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 ‘"Cursum consummavi, fidem servavi,” <2> Thim. 4. Solicitudo scolastica studiosi circa sacrae theologiae notitiam adquirendam comparatur amicitiae amaturi, qui per laborosam militiam nititur quaerere sibi sponsam' (Wey ed., ‘Sermo finalis’ 220). For Holcot's allusions to his own lectures on the Sentences, see below at nn. 12–13, 15.+Thim.+4.+Solicitudo+scolastica+studiosi+circa+sacrae+theologiae+notitiam+adquirendam+comparatur+amicitiae+amaturi,+qui+per+laborosam+militiam+nititur+quaerere+sibi+sponsam'+(Wey+ed.,+‘Sermo+finalis’+220).+For+Holcot's+allusions+to+his+own+lectures+on+the+Sentences,+see+below+at+nn.+12–13,+15.>Google Scholar
8 The first steps in doing so fruitfully were taken in the important studies of Schepers, H., ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn [I],' Philosophisches Jahrbuch 77 (1970) 320–54, and [II], 79 (1972) 106–36; and Courtenay, W. J., Adam Wodeham: An Introduction to His Life and Writings (Leiden 1978) 96–99.Google Scholar
9 In the following discussion of Holcot's sermo finalis, I repeat portions of my introduction to Streveler et al., Seeing the Future Clearly (n. 6 supra). Google Scholar
10 These characterizations of Holcot's remarks as to some degree hostile are Courtenay's, Adam Wodeham 98, and idem, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton 1987) 65; Schepers and Wey also seem to have read Holcot's humor as tinged with bitterness. In this light, it was plausible to construe the sermo finalis as reflecting the strife between northerners and southerners, usually alleged as the cause of Oxford's Stamford Schism in the early 1330s. Recently, however, Walsh, K., A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate: Richard FitzRalph in Oxford, Avignon, and Armagh (Oxford 1981) 72–73, has pointed out that the causes of the schism are hardly uncontroversial, but that north-south disputes probably were not significant among them. The controversy continues in Catto, J. I., ed., The Early Oxford Schools (in Aston, T. H., ed. The History of the University of Oxford 1; Oxford 1984), whose authors mention three different dates (pp. 131, 186, 391) for the withdrawal of scholars to Stamford.Google Scholar
11 Most obviously, in the contexts of logic and grammar (two of the artes sermocinales, i.e., linguistic sciences), sermo means ‘what is spoken,’ ‘speech,’ or ‘word,’ as in the technical term ‘de virtute sermonis' (‘on the strength of the word,’ i.e., its import), or in the expression ‘quando fit sermo de …’ that is, ‘when one is speaking about … .’ Moreover, speeches given by non-scholars on public occasions might be called alternately harengae or sermones in the fourteenth century. Google Scholar
12 ‘Quamdam historiam breviter recitabo quam refert Ovidius Metamorphoses libro 10… . Fuit enim … virgo quaedam forma corporis pulcerrima … velocissima nomine Atalanta… . Isto modo, carissimi, in ecclesia militante de hac nobili puella, sapientia videlicet theologica, et his qui cum ea coniugium copulare desidèrant, Phoebo, i.e. deo, revelante, statutum esse videtur, videlicet, quod nullus, quantumcumque studiosus existat, inceptionis nuptias contrahat cum eadem nisi fide data quod cum ea currat et quattuor libros Sententiarum lectione cursoria plene legat' (Wey ed., ‘Sermo finalis’ 220). We may assume that Holcot's scholarly audience were amused as readily by the twist he has given to the inception ceremonies of masters of theology as by his play upon the academic and marital ambiguities of the label ‘bachelor.’ Google Scholar
13 ‘Ut ergo, carissimi, de me loquar, licet inter ceteros debilior, sacrae theologiae dilectione commotus, partim superiorum ordinatione compulsus, partim huius virginis consideratione contractus, anno preterito fidem dedi de faciendo cursus in dicto certamine cum eadem, dicens ei illud Cant. 2, “trahe me post te; curremus simul in odore unguentorum tuorum”’ (Wey ed., loc. cit.). Google Scholar
14 I.e., domini canes, perhaps the only pun from medieval sources still well known. On our reading, of course, Holcot understood that laughter provoked by play upon the name of his order also reverted upon himself; this in turn suggests that there could have been little sting in his reference (n. 17 infra) to Gosford as a dog, one who runs ‘in the pride of Durham,’ as Holcot, too, did either then or later as a member of the retinue of Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham. In the absence of such barbs, it seems to me that the Stamford Schism is not obvious as a motive for Holcot's humor, and so cannot be used to date this speech.Google Scholar
15 ‘Sed quia cursus rebus inditus illud habet quod omnis natura sollicitatur de fine, et omnis homo cum ad consummationem pervenerit de suo recogitat successore, ideo baccalarium reverendum et cursorem futurum, qui mihi non in tenementis quae quasi ad firmam tenui, sed in scolis Praedicatorum, quae mihi hereditarie debebantur, succedet, specialiter recommendarem, ut tarn de eo quam de me illud exponatur quod dicitur, Act. 13, “Cum autem implevit Iohannes cursum suum …’” (Wey ed., ‘Sermo finalis’ 222). Google Scholar
16 ‘Et certe quod actus et officium cursoris huic baccalario debeat congrue convenire potestis convincere specialiter ex duobus, videlicet, ex nominis expositione, et ex corporis dispositione’ (ibid.). Google Scholar
17 ‘Nomen enim suum in vulgari est Roger. In quo quidem nomine duae bestiae designantur quae inter animalia communia inveniuntur cursui magis apta, videlicet, caprea et canis. "Ro” enim anglice, latine dicitur “caprea"; et ipsum totum vocabulum quod est “Roger” canibus convenit per appelationem… . Et certe cursor iste futurus est fortis canis et pinguis, in tantum quod si homines de Derham eum pridie … habuissent …’ (ibid.). Google Scholar
18 ‘Ita iste cursor in profundis theologiae natabit sine periculo et in planis curret sine offendiculo. Et hoc in suo cognomine denotatur. Dicitur enim de Gosford, hoc est, de “vado aucae.” Sic ergo patet quod tarn ex nomine <i.e. Roger> quam ex cognomine, inventus est idoneus ad currendum’ (ibid. 223). The latinization of Gosford establishes that Courtenay, Adam Wodeham 96, and Schepers, ‘Holkot contra [I]’ 350, were correct in preferring it to A. B. Emden's reading of the name, Biographical Register of the University of Oxford (Oxford 1957–59) 2.794, as ‘Gofford,’ which will not yield a goose.+quam+ex+cognomine,+inventus+est+idoneus+ad+currendum’+(ibid.+223).+The+latinization+of+Gosford+establishes+that+Courtenay,+Adam+Wodeham+96,+and+Schepers,+‘Holkot+contra+[I]’+350,+were+correct+in+preferring+it+to+A.+B.+Emden's+reading+of+the+name,+Biographical+Register+of+the+University+of+Oxford+(Oxford+1957–59)+2.794,+as+‘Gofford,’+which+will+not+yield+a+goose.>Google Scholar
19 As I propose (on the basis of the sermo finalis and other evidence), in the introduction to Seeing the Future Clearly (n. 6 supra). If this corrects the earlier view of Schepers, ‘Holkot contra [I]’ 341, 346, and Courtenay, Adam Wodeham 97–98, that Holcot here refers to his confrère William Crathorn, our distinguishing between the latter and John Grafton confirms Schepers' and Courtenay's hypothesis that the Dominicans supported two Oxford lecturers on the Sentences (each reading for two years). Thus, in the introduction to Seeing the Future Clearly, I argue that during Holcot's baccalaureate, the Dominican bachelors' terms as sententiarius were staggered as follows: 1330–31, Crathorn, Crathorn (first of two years) and an unknown bachelor (second of two years); 1331–32, Holcot, (first of two years) and Crathorn, (second of two years); 1332–33, Grafton, Grafton (first and only year) and Holcot (second of two years); 1333–34, Gosford, Gosford (first of two years), possibly alone rather than with an unknown bachelor to replace the departing Grafton.Google Scholar
20 ‘Et licet de domo Praedicatorum isto anno in lectura Sententiarum cucurrerunt duo simul, ille tamen alius discipulus, qui Gra<fton> nominatur, usus favore, quia gratiam Universitatis de cito terminandis lectionibus habuit, citius praecucurrit iuxta illud Io. 20, “currebant duo simul, et ille alius discipulus praecucurrit citius Petro, et venit prior ad monumentum,” i.e. ad quiescendi tempus et locum. Ego autem communi potitus iustitia, laboribus non peperci, statutum tempus implevi, et multiplicem cursum feci inter omnes, ut aestimo, qui hic vel alibi cursu consimili cucurrerunt’ (Wey ed., ‘Sermo finalis’ 221). +nominatur,+usus+favore,+quia+gratiam+Universitatis+de+cito+terminandis+lectionibus+habuit,+citius+praecucurrit+iuxta+illud+Io.+20,+“currebant+duo+simul,+et+ille+alius+discipulus+praecucurrit+citius+Petro,+et+venit+prior+ad+monumentum,”+i.e.+ad+quiescendi+tempus+et+locum.+Ego+autem+communi+potitus+iustitia,+laboribus+non+peperci,+statutum+tempus+implevi,+et+multiplicem+cursum+feci+inter+omnes,+ut+aestimo,+qui+hic+vel+alibi+cursu+consimili+cucurrerunt’+(Wey+ed.,+‘Sermo+finalis’+221).>Google Scholar
21 I am grateful to the librarian, P. Giovanni Luisetto, and his assistant, Fabio Salvato, for their courteous assistance in the manuscript collection of the Biblioteca Antoniana. Google Scholar
22 A very preliminary codicological description and sketch of the manuscript's contents is provided in Abate, G. and Luisetto, G., Codici e Manoscritti della Biblioteca Antoniana (Fonti e Studi per la storia del santo a Padova 1, 2; Vicenza 1975) 2.529–530. Inasmuch as a complete listing and identification of the works contained in this codex was not possible in my brief research trip to Padua, I am able here only to add some precision to the current catalogue description, and to signal some of the items of particular interest for historians of late medieval thought.Google Scholar
23 The gatherings consist usually of twelve folios; the collation is as follows: quires i (12) fols. 1–12; ii (12) 13–24; iii (12) 25–36; iv (10) 37–46; v (10) 47–56; vi (12) 57–68; vii (12) 69–80; viii (14) 81–94; ix (12) 95–106; x (12) 107–118; xi (12) 119–130; xii (12) 131–142; xiii (10) 143–150 + ii. Changes of hand do not always correspond to changes of quires; the one non-cursive hand comprises fols. 81r–117 v, i.e., quires viii-ix and most of x. Although in their description Abate and Luisetto note only that (with the exception of these folios) the codex is written in ‘scrittura corsiva non italiana,’ the features of these hands, including descendent ‘r's are typically English. A further indication of origin is the scribal prayer for help addressed in middle English to God and ‘[Our] Lady’ (fol. 56 v): ‘got help, lidi help, got help, lidi, ladi help.’Google Scholar
24 E.g., the presence of quire tags linking quires i–vii, as well as xii–xiii; a cross reference from the bottom of fol. 130v (quire xi) to material on fol. 117v ‘in alio quaterno’ (i.e. quire x); and the continuity of some works from one gathering to another, as an instance of which cf. the two sermons clearly identified as Holcot's, fols. 78v–82 r (quires vii–viii).Google Scholar
25
Among the works clearly attributed by a scribe are three sermones labeled (fols. 78
v, 81
r, 119
r,
in margine) ‘Holcoth,’ i.e.,
Holcot, Holcot. On this basis, Abate and Luisetto falsely supposed that at least fols. 81r–120r were entirely sermons by ‘Holcoht’ [sic]; T. Kaeppeli, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum medii aevi (Rome
1976) 2
.319, repeats the mistaken ascription and typographical error. Until the contents of Padua, Bibl. Anton. MS 515 have been compared with the sermons ascribed to Holcot in Toulouse, Bibl. mun. MS 342, fols. 176v–79, 194–5
v, and in Cambridge, Peterhouse MS 210, fol. 1–192 (‘Holkot in sermonibus tarn dominicis quam feriis,’ according to Kaeppeli), we may be certain only of Holcot's authorship of those with scribal attribution. They are as follows: (1) fol. 78v–79
r,
incipit: ‘Voca operarios et redde illis mercedem. <Evangelium secundum> Mattheum 20.<8>;’ (2) 81r–81
v, ‘Per proprium sanguinem introivit semel in Sancta. <Epistola> ad Hebreos 9.<12>;’ (3) 119r–120
r, rubr.: Dominica prima quadragesimae; inc.: ‘Ecce nunc die salutis. Dicitur vulgariter, de omni negotio tempus est.’ Mattheum 20.<8>;’ (2) 81r–81 v, ‘Per proprium sanguinem introivit semel in Sancta.
That the works on the folios intervening between the second and third of these sermons are not Holcot's is proven by the marginal ascriptions (fols. 82v, 87r, 91r) to ‘Chamb9.’ The name intended by this abbreviation is unclear; but Chamberlanus (Chamberlain) is a reasonable possibility, perhaps the Dominican, Robert de Chamberleyn, ordained subdeacon in 1327 and priest in 1330, according to Emden A. B., A Survey of Dominicans in England Based on the Ordination Lists in Episcopal Registers (1268 to 1538) (Rome 1967). The three questions ascribed to him in the Padua codex bear the following incipits: (1) fol. 82v: ‘Quare rubeum est monumentum tuum? Secundum sententiam doctoris ly fuit questio angelorum in abscenci<a> domini et erit questio iudeorum in die iudicii, et rationabiliter potest esse questio Christianorum in die passionis'; (2) 87r: ‘Mundus Crucifixus est. <Epistola> Ad Galatas 6.<14>'; (3) 91r: ‘Percussa est tertia pars solis. Apocalypsis <Iohannis> 8.<12>.’
A third Dominican can be identified more securely. A sermon (fol. 40v–42v) under the rubric ‘In sancti Iohannis Evangelii’ and beginning with a line from Psalm 103 (102), ‘Tanquam flos agri sic efflorebit,’ hints at the name of its author as contained in the explicit, ‘qui vivit et regnat in secula seculorum, amen. Johannes Erduslowe.’ This is surely the Dominican John de Erdesle, who was ordained priest in May 1334 (cf. Emden, Survey of Dominicans 104, 334).
26 For one of many citations of Grosseteste, see fol. 1 r, inc.: ‘Erunt signa in sole … Secundum Lincolniensem… .’ The citation on fol.36 r, ‘Sanctus Thomas in prologo super Marcum,’ suggests that the author of the work in which it appears was a Dominican, for references in the early fourteenth century to Aquinas’ biblical commentaries are uncommon outside the order.Google Scholar
27 The principium on fols. 35r–37r begins: ‘"Fons sapientie Verbum Dei.” Ecclesiastici primo capitulo. Sacratissima scientia theologiae facultatis testatur, tunc (?) sic referri ei quod est fons sapientie Verbum Dei …’ and its author touches (fol. 35 v) on the material of all four books of the Sentences, as was usual in a bachelor's first principium. Moreover, it probably postdates 1323, inasmuch as its author refers (fol. 36 r, n. 26 supra) to Aquinas as Saint. We should credit the same anonymous author with the principium bearing the same incipit, fols. 37v–40 r.Google Scholar
28 As Olga Weijers points out in Terminologie des universités au XIIIe siècle (Rome 1987) 372–75, ‘Dans le contexte universitaire, il faut distinguer au moins trois emplois différents du terme collatio. Il peut désigner en effet une sorte de sermon, une discussion entre étudiants qui s'apparente à la repetitio, et finalement un genre de conférence.’ Given the nature of principial exercises, Weijers (345–47, 375–78) is doubtless correct to stress the longstanding synonymity of collatio and disputatio from early Christian times. On Principia (and their division into a collatio and quaestio collativa) at Oxford in the 1330s, see Courtenay, Adam Wodeham 172–77. Bachelors lecturing on books of the Bible also presented principia; that the ones discussed here are from courses on Lombard's Sentences is established by the internal references to that work.Google Scholar
29 The full title continues: ‘… reportatio Broke 9.’ Beyond confirming the impression that the texts themselves provide that these are reports of the orally delivered collationes rather than texts edited by their authors into ordinationes, this heading gives the name of another scholar connected with this manuscript's contents.Google Scholar
The three collationes here attributed to Friseby occupy the following folios: (1) 123v–126v, for which see below, at n. 31; (2) the collatio from the principium of book three, fols. 126v–128r; (3) the collatio from the principium to the fourth book of the Sentences (to judge from its internal references to that book and back to earlier collationes), fols. 128v–130v, with a cross-reference back to 117v (where the text continues through 118v).
30 Emden, , Biographical Register Oxford 3.2176 (Appendix). For the date of Holcot's reception of a license to hear confession in Lincoln diocese, see ibid. 2.946. The terminus ante quem for Friseby's doctorate (like those of Thomas Felthorp and Richard Kilvington, discussed in Courtenay, Adam Wodeham 86), and the licenses for hearing confession, are both consonant with the assumption that he was Holcot's slightly younger contemporary, perhaps present at Oxford while Holcot was lecturing.Google Scholar
31 Friseby, , ‘Collatio finalis ,’ fol. 123 v: ‘"Ubi spiritus <corr. ex Christus> Domini ibi libertas,” secunda <epistola> ad Corinthios 3. <17>. Reverendi patres auditoris assistentes caritatis specialis appropriata, spirituum bachelarii studentes profunditates doctrinales que est possessio domini: quia Deus scolarium donatus est vacationes.+Domini+ibi+libertas,”+secunda++ad+Corinthios+3.+<17>.+Reverendi+patres+auditoris+assistentes+caritatis+specialis+appropriata,+spirituum+bachelarii+studentes+profunditates+doctrinales+que+est+possessio+domini:+quia+Deus+scolarium+donatus+est+vacationes.>Google Scholar
32 I.e, Holcot's ‘sermo finalis’ is preserved with the remaining questions on the Sentences, while Friseby's ‘collatio finalis’ is extant in a manuscript containing only such related academic exercises as principia and University sermons. Google Scholar
