Sinead O'Sullivan

Glossing Vergil and Pagan Learning in the Carolingian Age

Though a conventional diatribe against secular studies persisted in the early medieval period, avid glossing of pagan texts demonstrates that early medieval commentators had few qualms about reading them and that, crucially, the patristic bias against classical learning had been rendered obsolete. This paper focuses on a single ninth-century Vergil manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F. 2. 8, and its rich scholarly apparatus as an instance of the Carolingian penchant for classical antiquity. It furnishes evidence for a strong endorsement of pagan learning and shows that it was not only Vergil’s style but also his content that engaged Christian readers. It thus challenges the older view of confrontation between pagan and Christian cultures, already undermined byHaraldHagendahl in his reassessment of Jerome’s response to the classics. Utility and practice contributed to the lively appropriation of antique learning in the post-Roman world. Utilitarian principles generally trumped the strictures of excision with Christian scholars who argued that secular writings could be re-

Servius in the Carolingian Age: A Case Study of London, British Library, Harley 2782

EnglishIn Harley 2782, Servius’s late antique commentary on Vergil was transmitted as an independent text, edited, corrected, glossed, marked for mythological information, provided with NOTA monograms and headings, as well as interspersed and augmented with scholia adespota and non-Servian material. The scholarly conventions attested in this manuscript show the kinds of critical apparatus that fed into the early medieval appropriation of Vergil and above all demonstrate that Servius was a staple of the Carolingian world francaisDans le manuscrit Harley 2782, le commentaire tardo-antique de Servius sur Virgile a ete transmis sous forme d’un document independant, modifie, corrige, glose, prepare pour retrouver les informations mythologiques, enrichi de monogrammes Nota, ainsi qu’il a ete entrecoupe et augmente a l’aide des scholia adespota et du materiel non Servien. Les conventions scolastiques attestees par ce manuscrit montrent quels types d’apparats critiques alimentaient le debut de l’appropriation medievale de Virgile et surtout prouvent que Servius etait une composante essentielle du monde carolingien.

The Sacred and the Obscure: Greek and the Carolingian Reception of Martianus Capella

Carolingian scholars paid considerable attention to the Greek found in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, a late antique Latin work full of obscurities in language and imagery. This article, focusing on glosses on De nuptiis from the oldest gloss tradition, demonstrates that a range of material was available to ninth-century scholars to elucidate Martianus’s Greek and that Greek seems, at times, to have served as a means to obscure. I argue that their interest in obscurity reflects a widespread epistemology and strategy of concealment, hence their intellectual investment in Martianus. For ninth-century readers, then, the Greek in the glossed Martianus manuscripts, however decorative it may have been, also operated at the core of medieval hermeneutics.