The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Dialogues

Author(s): L. D. Reynolds
Source: The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Nov., 1968), pp. 355-372
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
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THE MEDIEVAL

TRADITION
DIAL OG UES

OF SENECA'S

THE manuscript tradition of Seneca's Dialogues consists of one eleventh-

century manuscript, Ambrosianus C 90 inf. (= A), which is the main source

for the text, and a ruck of later manuscripts of lesser and disputed worth.
There are over a hundred of these, far more than has been supposed.
The purpose of this article is twofold. First, I wish to try to trace the history
of the transmissionof the text from its emergence in the eleventh century to the
period of its expansion in the fourteenth, devoting some attention to the part
played in the transmissionby Roger Bacon. Secondly, I shall try to examine
the relationship between A and the later manuscripts in an attempt to settle
the question whether they, or some of them, have any independent textual
value. As both parts are to some extent interlaced, a third section will present
some general conclusions.
I. THE

STORY

OF THE TRANSMISSION

The point at which any account of the transmissionof the Dialoguesmust

begin has been obscured by a long-standing and in some quartersstill current
misconception.2The history of Seneca's influence in the Middle Ages has often
begun with the story that Desiderius, the king of the Lombards (756-74),
ordered the copying of Seneca's works. This is a myth, founded on a schoolboy
blunder, and it is incredible that it has survived so long. The supposed evidence for this story is a passage in the Monte CassinoChronicle,3and it should
be obvious that the Desiderius in question is not the Lombard king but the
celebrated abbot of Monte Cassino (IO58-87). The time is the second half of
the eleventh century, and the place is specifically Monte Cassino.
From the chronicle we learn that during his abbacy Desideriusgave instructions for the copying of a number of manuscriptsof both Christian and pagan
authors, and that these included a text of Seneca. The Seneca text is not
specified, and in theory it could have been any of his genuine works or those
which circulated under his name. But the Dialoguesnaturally come to mind in
this context, because the Ambrosian manuscript is written in a Beneventan
hand and was copied, in the opinion of E. A. Lowe, at Monte Cassino itself.4
Lowe concluded from his study of the script that A was written during the
I am indebted to Dr. R. W. Hunt for I. Viansino, L. AnnaeiSenecaeDialogorumlibri
valuable assistance in the preparation of this III-IV-V
(Corpus Paravianum, Turin,
article, to Professor R. G. Austin and ProI963), p. xxii.
3 M. G. H., script. 7, pp. 746-7: 'non
fessor Sir Roger Mynors for helpful criticism
and comment.
solum autem in aedificiis, verum etiam in
2 It
libris describendis operam Desiderius dare
goes back at least as far as O. Rossbach, De SenecaePhilosophilibrorumrecensione permaximam studuit. Codices namque nonet emendatione(Breslau, i888), p. 2. It is renullos in hoc loco describi praecepit,
peated, for instance, by P. Faider, ttudes sur quorum nomina haec sunt: Augustinum
contra Faustum . . . Ovidium Fastorum,
Seneque(Gand, 1921), p. 1I4; Klaus-Dieter
Nothdurft, Studienzum EinflussSenecasauf die Senecam.'
4 E. A. Lowe (Loew), The Beneventan
Philosophie und Theologie des zwdlften Jahrhunderts (Leiden-Cologne, I963), p. I ;
Script(Oxford, I914), p. 71.
Aa

356

L. D. REYNOLDS

latter part of the eleventh century.' There is therefore a strong probability

that the Seneca text which Monte Cassino possessed in the eleventh century
was none other than the Dialogues,and that the extant Ambrosianus is the
manuscript written on the instructions of the abbot; but cautious scholars
have rightly refused to go further than this.2 To my mind probability turns
into virtual certainty when a new piece of evidence is brought into play.
The text of the Dialogueswas extremely rare in the early Middle Ages: they
were almost unknown between the sixth century, when the de ira was lavishly
plagiarized by the Spanish bishop, Martin of Braga, and their re-emergencein
the thirteenth. With one exception, no certain quotation from them has been
found in any writer between the sixth and late twelfth century; the one man
known to have broken this silence is Guaiferius of Salerno, who quotes from
the de constantia
sapientis.3Nobody seems to have given this fact the attention it
deserves. Guaiferius is known as a poet of the South Italian School; more
significantly, he was a monk at Monte Cassinoduring the abbacy of Desiderius.
The known quotation occurs in one of his prose works, his Vita S. Lucii
Papae,an ill-balanced but vigorously written Life of Lucius I, composed sometime after Io75.4 A single quotation could perhaps be dismissed as unimportant, and it has been suggested that Guaiferius may have culled his passage
from a florilegium.5But this is short of the mark. The central part of his vitais
a homily put into the mouth of the Pope; its theme is the contempt of worldly
goods, and Guaiferius'treatment of it has been justly praised for its vigour and
latinity. However, it has not been noticed that it owes the greater part of both
its vigour and latinity to another vigorous latinist, to Seneca himself. It is in
fact nothing but a brilliant Senecan pastiche, largely composed of elements
derived from one body of Seneca's work, the Ambrosian dialogues. An analysis
of the opening passage6 will illustrate his method:
PL, 1304 D-I305 B: Lubrica sunt et

incerta omnia, nec dici possunt bona

quae speciosa sed fallaci voluptate
miseros mortales alliciunt, pecunia,
dignitas, potentia et alia id genus ad
quae tot homines inducti caeca
cupiditate obstupescunt: ista cum
labore possidentur, cum invidia conspiciuntur, neminem non sollicitum
faciunt, neminem bene felicem, neminem bene securum.
Nullus stabili constitit loco, iactantur
omnes, pendent, fluctuant, in alter-

utrum illiduntur: alii alios cadentes

trahunt, alii aliis exitio sunt. Strages
est ista, non vita, et coacervatio alios
I Op. cit., p. 34I. There is a facsimile of
fol. 52v-53r in 1. Chatelain, PalMographie des
plate
classiques latins (Paris, I884-I900),

I67.

2 e.g. Lowe, op. cit., p. 50 n. 5.

3 PL
147, I306 D = const. io. 2; cf. M.

derlateinischen
Literaturdes
Manitius, Geschichte

Polyb. 9. 5: Omnia ista bona quae nos

speciosa sed fallaci voluptate delectant, pecunia, dignitas, potentia

aliaque complura ad quae generis
humani caeca cupiditas obstupescit,
cum labore possidentur, cum invidia
conspiciuntur, . . . lubrica et incerta
sunt.

Polyb. 9. 6: Numquam stabili consistimus loco, pendemus et fluctuamur

et alter in alterum illidimur.

vita beata I. 4: Nemo ita cadit ut non

et alium in se adtrahat, primique
Mittelalters,vol. ii (Munich, 1923), p. 487n. i.
4 Manitius, op. cit., p. 489.
s Nothdurft, op. cit., p. 13 n. 6.
6 Quotations from the
Dialogues occur,
though more thinly, in other parts of the
Vita, and also in his Vita Secundini.

THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION

super alios ruentium. Respondeat sibi

licet quisque ad votum, credatque
voluptatem summum bonum, gloriam
et saeculi pompas et ultima vitia in
summa felicitate ponat, omnia tamen
humana brevia et caduca sunt, nec
procedentia in partem aliquam temporis longioris: cito transeunt et
immaturo citra incrementum termino concluduntur, ut nec illis diu
stare contigerit. Etiam ad illa quae
vetustate gloriantur extendamus, si
libet, aetatis nostrae metam, cuius
medium pauci computant in annum
centesimum; inde ducatur animus ad
longissimaet infinita aevi spatia; haec
tempora, aeternitati comparata,
quam proportionemfacerent, etiam si
nobis aetas annum millesimum indulgeret?

OF SENECA'S DIALOGUES

357

exitio sequentibussunt. I. 3. Inde ista

tanta coacervatio aliorum super alios
ruentium.
Marc.2 I. : Omnia humana brevia et
caduca sunt et infiniti temporis nullam partem occupantia.

Marc. 2I. I: Videbis quam non diu

steterint etiam quae vetustate gloriantur.
cf. brev. 3. 2.
Marc. 21. 2:

Minorem

portionem

aetas nostra quam puncti habet si

omni tempori comparetur ...: quid
ergo interest id extendere cuius
quantumcumque fuerit incrementum
non multum aberit a nihilo?

Guaiferius does not belong to those medieval writers who throw in the odd
Senecan tag as a casual literary embellishment: he is making full use of his
material, thoroughly assimilatingit and then reproducingit in a form which is
both coherent and delicately adapted to suit the Christian context. He must
have known the dialogues backwards, for he is able to jump from one to
another with great ease, and he quotes from the whole extent of the text. To
have acquired such a grasp of his material he must have brooded over-or even
copied-a manuscript of the Dialogues,and it is reasonable to suppose that he
did this at Monte Cassino.
Of still more interest is the fact that Guaiferius was not using the extant
Ambrosianus. For the beginning of the de ira was omitted by the scribe of A
and not filled in until later; consequently in the eleventh century A offered an
area of blank page where de ira I. I-2. 3 should have been.' But Guaiferius
knew the beginning of the de ira, for he quotes passagesfrom i. I-I. 4.2 Therefore he was using either an independent copy of the text or, very possibly, the
manuscript from which A itself was copied; in other words, either a twin of A
or the archetype itself. This means that Guaiferius of Salerno will in future
deserve some mention as one who witnessed a critical stage in the transmission
of a classical text; it also means that we can be fairly certain that the Seneca
manuscript which Desiderius wished to have copied was in fact a manuscript
of the Dialogues,and that Monte Cassino was the home of the archetype.
Therefore in the late eleventh century there must have been at least two
copies of the Dialoguesat Monte Cassino,A and the archetype itself; and more
copies may have been made, either then or later. These probabilities will
what happened to A itself can
keep until we come to deal with the recentiores:
to a certain extent be traced. The twelfth-century catalogue of the Monte
I For a more detailed discussion of the missing part of the de ira, see
pp. 368-9.
I306 C.

L. D. REYNOLDS

358

Cassino library does not help very much. It contains two Seneca entries.'
The first is a copy of the de beneficiis,a fairly standard item in any twelfthcentury library; the second entry refers to a Seneca of unspecified content
which is held by the library as a deposit for another Seneca on loan, and we
have no means of knowing whether the Ambrosianus was involved in this
transaction. What is fairly clear is that by the fifteenth century A had passed
from Monte Cassino to one of the monasteriesof its congregation, for this can
reasonably be assumed from a partially erased ex libris.2By 1583 it was in the
hands of a private owner, Antonio Francesco Caracciolo,3 then living at
Messina and probably connected with the prolific Caraccioli dynasty which
flourished for centuries in the kingdom of Naples. From Caracciolo it passed
into the possessionof Cardinal Federigo Borromeo,4and thence into the library
which he founded.5 About the time that it left Caracciolo's possession it was
used by Muretus, who was professorin Rome from 1563 to 1584 and is surely
to be identified with the vetustissimus
Siculusmentioned in his 1585 edition.6
The important fact for future reference is that during the medieval period A
did not leave the orbit of Monte Cassino.
The story of the early history of this tradition, localized during this period in
the south of Italy, would end here were it not for one unexpected and intriguing piece of evidence. This evidence has to be reached by a long detour,
and the starting-point is to be found, rather surprisingly,in the Lettersof Peter
of Blois (c. II35-c.

I204):

in letter 175 of the printed collection of his cor-

respondence there is a definite and indisputable quotation from the ad Polybium.7This would be hard to explain if letter 175 were authentic, but it is in
fact one of the later accretions to his correspondence,an elegant sample of the
ars dictandiwhich has been transferredfrom one of the dictaminato another. It
is one of a group of three letters of similar content, all addressed to Italian
universities, and it was long ago suggested8 that all three more properly
belonged to Peter delle Vigna (c. I I90-I249),

the famous minister of Frederic

II; they are in fact found in both the manuscript and printed collections of his
correspondence. So the time of composition has been advanced to the thirteenth century, the scene has moved to Italy, and this begins to make sense;
but it is not the end of the story, for it seems certain that the letter in question
was no more written by Peter delle Vigna than by Peter of Blois. As printed in
Migne, the letter has a truncated and almost meaningless preamble, and the
I

G. Becker, Catalogi bibliothecarum

antiqui

I885), p. 246; I 9, I2 Seneca de

8 Senecammagistri amici
beneficiisI; I19,
(Bonn,

quem abemus pro alio Seneca monasterii in

pignoreI.
i
2 f. 2r 'Iste liber . .Congre
Casinen' ...
Cf. Lowe, p. 71.
3 f. 2r 'Antonii Franc. Neapolitae Caraccioli Siculi et amicorum Anno D.
Xo Kal. Novembr. MesMDLXXXIII
sanae.'
4 f. 2r 'Card. Federici Borrhomaei anno
I603'.
5 A note by the first librarian Olgiatus
(f. iV) tells us that it was already in the
Ambrosiana by I603.
6 This identification was disputed by
M. C. Gertz (Studiacriticain L. AnnaeiSenecae

Dialogos [Copenhagen, I874], pp. 9-10), who

found discrepancies between the readings of
Muretus' codex Siculus and those of A. But
inaccurate collations were not unknown in
the sixteenth century, and one would be
hard put to it to find another 'Sicilian' manuscript of the Dialogues. His liber Siculusof the
Lettersis almost certainly Ambrosianus C 85
inf., which also belonged to Caracciolo,
though again the readings do not entirely
tally.
7 'Testante philosopho, crudelitatem fati
aequalitas consolatur' (PL 207, 470 C) =
'ut crudelitatem fati consolaretur aequalitas'
(Polyb. I. 4).
8 By E. S. Cohn, English HistoricalReview
41 (I926), p. 46.

THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION

OF SENECA'S DIALOGUES

359

writer has so universalized his identity that he actually refers to himself as

quilibethomo.1But in 1865 the letter was properly edited from a more reliable
manuscript by Huillard-Breholles,2and it should begin:
Vagientibus adhuc in cunis artis grammaticae natis discipuliset majoribus
professioniscuiuslibet in amoena Bononia docentibus, Terrisiussolo nomine
dictus magister, homo qui sequitur veritatem, vitam bonam et exitum
meliorem.
Rescued from the ruins of a rhetoricalexercise, quilibethomobecomes the august
Magister Terrisius, to be identified with Terrisio di Atina, who moved in the
same circles as Peter delle Vigna, addressed a poem on the reform of judicial
abuses to Frederic II, was involved in a dispute arising out of the election of
Pandulfus to the abbacy of Monte Cassino in 1237, and became Professorof
Rhetoric in the newly founded University of Naples, where he was punningly
known to his pupils as the 'terror'of the schools.3The letter can, moreover, be
dated, for it is addressed to the Professorsand Students of the University of
Bologna and was written to console them on the death of one of their professors of Grammar, auspiciously named Bene. Bene may well have been
Terrisio's teacher; he was appointed to his chair in 1218, was still alive in 1226,

and probably died in I238.4 Therefore the letter containing the Seneca quotation was written in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. It has been
a long haul from Peter of Blois to the young University of Naples, but it is perhaps worth the effort to meet such a colourful character as Maestro Terrisio,
especially as he bears witness to the continued availability of the text of the
Dialoguesin southern Italy at this time.
Guaiferius of Salerno, Terrisio of Atina, and the Ambrosian manuscript
itself make it clear that the Dialogueswere both available and read in southern
Italy from the eleventh century onwards. But while enjoying this limited
circulation in the south, they were almost unknown north of the Alps. This is
remarkable, because the twelfth and thirteenth centuries formed what was
very much an aetasAnnaeana.The editors of medieval texts have indeed found
a number of echoes from the Dialoguesin twelfth-centurywriters, but these die
out on closer examination.
For instance, in the Florilegium Morale Oxoniense,5 compiled in England

towards the end of the century, there are threefosculi which are said to have
the Dialogues as their source: p. 69. 15 Difficilem habereoportetauremad crimina
('cf. ira 2. 22. 3'); I 13. 26 Ducunt volentemfata, nolentemtrahunt('cf. prov. 5. 7');
I16. 19-20 Inmodicaira gignit insaniam, et animo vitanda est, non moderationiscausa
sed sanitatis ('cf. ira. I. I. 2'). But the first (an iambic trimeter) is one of the

of Publilius Syrus (D I Meyer), the second is a quotation from letter

Sententiae
I PL 207, 469 D. It begins 'vagientibus
in cunis adhuc artis grammaticae, natisque
recens discipulis, quilibet homo, qui sequitur
veritatem, vitam bonam et exitum meliorem'.
2 A. Huillard-Breholles, Vie et
correspondance de Pierre de la Vigne (Paris, 1865),
pp. 300-2.
3 What is known about Terrisio has been
assembled by F. Torraca, 'Maestro Terrisio
di Atina', Archiviostoricoper le provincenapoletane 36 (I911),

pp. 231-53,

reprinted

in his

Anedottidi storia letterarianapoletana(Citta del

Castello, I925), pp. 33-59. Cf. also C. H.
Haskins, Studiesin Medieval Culture(Oxford,
I929), pp. I29, I35.
4 For Bene, see A. Gaudenzi, 'Sulle opere
dei dettatori bolognesi', Bulletino dell'Istituto
storico italiano 14 (I895), 150 ff.; C. Frati,
A propositodi maestroBene, Rome, I895.
5 MS. Bodley 633, edited by P. Delhaye
and C. H. Talbot, Analecta Mediaevalia
Namurcensia,5-6 (Namur-Lille, I955-6).

L. D. REYNOLDS

360

107. I i, the third from letter 18. 15. The compiler of the florilegium knew as

little of the Dialoguesas Peter of Blois. The same is true of the alleged echoes in
the Verbumabbreviatumof Petrus Cantor, written between

I171 and I 97.'

It is clearly safer to start from the premiss that the writers of the twelfth
century did not know the Dialoguesthan to assume that they did. There is,
however, one quotation which is ultimately derived from the de ira. This is
found in the Moraliumdogmaphilosophorum,2
written about the middle of the
nam
contra
autem
paremcontendere
century: summopere
fuge iurgia;
ancepsest, cum
derives
from
I: cumpare
cum
sordidum.
This
ira
2.
inferiore
34.
superiorefuriosum,
cuminferiore
It is curious that
sordidum.
contendere
ancepsest, cumsuperiorefuriosum,
et
the same excerpt appears in a slightly differentform in the Liberconsolationis
consilii3 of Albertano of Brescia, written in I246: on p. 93. I-3 we find con-

tenderecumsuperiore
cumpari dubium,cumminoreverefuriosumest velpericulosum,
cundum.
Albertano is more likely to have had access to our text than the author
of the Moraliumdogma,but it is very doubtful if he did.4 It is thereforepossible
that this one excerpt enjoyed some independent circulation, perhaps going
back to a secondarysource.5So far the twelfth century has thrown up only one
quotation from the Dialogues,and the discoveryof more will hardly change the
general position: the Dialogueswere virtually unknown in northern Europe
until the thirteenth century. When seen against this background, their rediscovery is somewhat dramatic, especially as they were to all intents and purposes 'rediscovered' by one of the most intriguing of all English medieval
figures, Roger Bacon.
Bacon discovered a manuscript of the Dialoguesin the year 1266. This was
the year in which Pope Clement IV sent Bacon the famous mandate requesting
a copy of his great opera-works which Roger had unfortunatelynot yet written.
The passage in Bacon relevant to his discovery reads:
Libros vero Senecae, quorum floresvestrae beatitudini conscripsi,numquam
potui invenire nisi a tempore mandati vestri, quamvis diligens fui in hac
parte iam a viginti annis et pluribus.6
The excitement which he derived from his discovery readily excuses the
I
conaequoanimosustinendasunt imperitorum
vitia, etc. (PL 205, 302 D) has nothing to do
with the de constantiabut, as has been noted
by Nothdurft (op. cit., p. 149), comes from
letter 76. 4. Again, quid refertan garcionesisti
superiusan inferius intonent?sicut in posteriori
parte,sicfetunt et in ore (ibid.) was not inspired
by any passages in the dialogi,as has generally
been supposed, but surely by letter 9I. 19:
Demetriusnostersolet dicereeodemloco sibi esse
voces imperitorumquo ventre redditos crepitus.
'Quid enim' inquit 'mea, susum isti an deosum
sonent?'Similarly 351 D-352 A is not a free
adaptation of ideas from the de brevitate,as
has been thought: it is the beginning of

letter
2

o01.

Edited by J. Holmberg, Uppsala, 1929.

For the quotation, cf. p. 50. 1-3.

3 Edited by Thor Sundby, Chaucer
Society, Ser. ii, pt. 8, London, 1873.

4 The
only other alleged quotation from
the Dialogues in the works of Albertano
which have so far been edited will not bear
examination. Liberconsol.,p. 55. 3-4 facilius
is not,
est vitia excluderequamadmissacomprimere
as has been assumed, an echo of ira I. 7. 2.
perniciosaquamregere,et non
facilius est excludere
admitterequamadmissamoderari,close though
it is: it is a direct quotation from letter 85. 3
cum facilius sit excluderequam admissa comprimere.
5 It is found in the de ira of Marin of
furiosum est,
Braga: cum superiorecontendere
cum pari anceps, cum inferiore iam sordidum
(C. W. Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis
OperaOmnia [American Academy in Rome,
19501, P. 153. 35); but this is not the source
of the two later quotations.
6
Opustertium,edited byJ. S. Brewer, Rolls
Series (London, I859), p. 56.

THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION

OF SENECA'S DIALOGUES

36I

publicity which he gave his find. He continually stressesthe rarity of this text,'
and makes its rarity his excuse for sending the Pope, in the form of his Moralis
what is little more than an abbreviated transcriptof the Dialogues:
Philosophia,2
Set et causa specialis est quod in hiis libris Senece morer; quia licet
huiusmodi prosecutussum ab infancia, tamen libros De ira et Ad Helbiamet
Cur bonismala accidantet An in sapientemcadantcontumeliaet iniuriaet Ad
Marciamet tres adhuc sequentes3non potui unquam videre nisi modo, et
nescio si ad manus Vestre Glorie pervenerunt; propterea habundanciushic
scribere sum conatus.4
The rediscovery of the Dialoguesin I266 by the doctormirabilishimself is
dramatic enough to rouse more interest than it appears to have done, and
C. H. Beeson, who has made the sole contribution to this subject,5 roundly
attacked Senecan scholars for their total neglect of the indirect medieval
tradition.6Beeson raised such stimulating questionsthat it matters little that he
provided what appear to me to have been the wrong answers, and it is high
time that Bacon's part in the transmission of the text should be examined
afresh.
Though Roger may have exaggerated the importance of his find in order to
impressthe Pope, hisjoy and excitement were genuine enough, and it is only in
the light of a closer historical investigation that his discovery begins to lose its
significance. In the first place, it will already be apparent that Bacon 'rediscovered' the Dialoguesonly in the limited sense that, with characteristic
panache, he proclaimed the arrival in northern Europe of a text which had
been known in southern Italy for a couple of centuries. To have been the first
to know the text in northern Europe would still have been something, but
Roger had in fact been anticipated by an older contemporary. For there is
a direct quotation from the de constantia
sapientis(8. 2) in the prologue to the
unedited Epithalamium
B. Marie Virginisof John of Garland:
Quapropter divine perfectioni sapientie vestre quoddam opusculum presento, considerans quod dicit Seneca de sapiente: sapiens autem vicinus
proximusque deo constitit, excepta mortalitate similis deo, ad summa
nitens et pergens excelsa.7
The Epithalamium
is now recognized to be one of John of Garland's earlier
works, written I220-I at the University of Paris.8 His use of one of the Dialoguesis the first sign that this text had really arrived in northern Europe. Its
'(Libri) Senece, qui sunt optimi et
rarissime inveniuntur' (Opus tertium, frag.
Duhem, p. I64); 'protraxi hanc partem
terciam Moralis philosophie gratis propter
pulcritudinem et utilitatem sentenciarum
moralium, et propter hoc quod libri raro
inveniuntur' (Opusmaius,p. 187. '-3 Massa).
2 Part vii of the Opus maius, which has
now been separately edited by E. Massa,
Baconis OperisMaioris Pars Septimaseu Moralis
Philosophia,Zurich, I953.
3 The three following are (i) the de brevitate vitae+ the ad Polybium,(2) the de vitabeata
+ the de otio, and (3) the de tranquillitate.
4 Massa, p. 133.
1-7.

5 'Roger Bacon and the 'Dialogues' of

Studiesin Language
Seneca', Manly Anniversary
and Literature(Chicago, 1923), pp. 243-53.
6 No one has looked at Guaiferius in this
connection, and the importance of the epitome of the de ira by Martin of Braga was not
pointed out until 1937 (C. W. Barlow, TAPA
xlviii [I937], pp. 26-42).
7 Quoted from a MS. in the Bodleian
Library (Digby 65, f. 02) by L. J. Paetow in
The Morale Scolarium of John of Garland
(Memoirs of the University of California, iv,
Berkeley, I927), p. IOI n. 87.
8 Paetow, p. I 3.

L. D. REYNOLDS

362

appearance at this great university centre is interesting in itself and fits in with
the rest of our story, for it is likely that Roger too found his manuscript at
Paris. It could have been sent to him by one of his contacts abroad; but
at the time of his discovery Roger was living under close supervision in the
Franciscan house at Paris, and the simplest assumption-which
fits the other
evidence-is that he found his text locally.
As the text was a rarity in northern Europe at this time, there is surely a
connection between the manuscripts used by John of Garland and Roger
Bacon; a more significant link between their Senecan interests is unlikely,
though Roger claimed to have heard John of Garland lecture at Paris.' Of
more interest is the discovery that Roger is but one of a group of individuals
who show an acquaintance with this text at approximately the same time.
The first of these is Roger Bacon, another is Guibert of Tournai.2 Guibert's
life and work have to be hung on a few scanty chronological pegs,3 but he
was born by the second decade of the century and is known to have died in
I284. He was therefore a contemporary of Bacon's; more than that, after
being a master of theology at Paris for many years, he joined the Franciscans
and so became attached to the very Franciscan house in which Roger was
constrained at the time of his discovery. Many of Guibert's works are not fully
explored and few are datable, so that we cannot be certain which of them got
hold of a text of the Dialogues first. In his de modo addiscendi,now dated to the
years 1264 to 1268, Guibert quotes lavishly from the epistulae, the de beneficiis,
and de clementia (the standard ration), but not from the dialogi. Of the three
works in which he uses the Dialogues, the de pace was written c. I275 and the
other two are apparently late, so that his knowledge of the text may not antedate Bacon's discovery in I266.
The third member of the trio, John of Wales, is contemporary with the other
two and likewise a Friar; he was born in the first third of the century and probably died in I285. He had become regent master at the Franciscan house in
Oxford by the late fifties and moved to Paris about I270, where he is known to
have been regent master of theology c. 1282. He quotes frequently from the
Dialogues in his edifying compendium of anecdote and table talk for preachers,
the Communiloquium.4It is unfortunate that the chronology of his works has
not been fixed; we do not even know whether they first appeared at Oxford
or at Paris. His acquaintance with the Dialogues suggests the latter, and one
cannot resist the conclusion that for this text he was using the same source as
Roger Bacon and Guibert of Tournai, the manuscript in the Franciscan house
at Paris.
studiiphilosophie(ed. Brewer),
Compendium
p. 453.

2 Balduinus ab Amsterdam (Collectanea

Franciscana 32 [I962], 234 ff.) has drawn
attention to a similar reworking of passages
from the de ira in three works by Guibert,
the de septemverbis, the de pace, and the de
nomineIesu. In the depace I have noticed an
adaptation of the beginning of the de vita
beata (De pace, ed. E. Longpre, Bibliotheca
FranciscanaAsceticaMediiAevi VI [Quaracchi,
1925], p. I62), so that his borrowings are not
confined to the de ira.
3 For the chronology I have mainly relied

on E. Bonifacio, Gilbertode Tournai;De modo

addiscendi (Turin,

I953), pp. 7 ff.

For his use of the Dialogues see A. G.

Little, Studiesin EnglishFranciscanHistory,Publications of the University of Manchester, Historical Series, xxix (Manchester, 1917), p.
i88, and in particular Robert A. Pratt inSpeculum, xli (I966), pp. 627 ff. For recent studies
of John of Wales, see Beryl Smalley, English
Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth
Century(Oxford, I960), pp. 5I-5; W. A.
Pantin, 'John of Wales and Medieval Humanism', in Medieval Studiespresentedto Aubrey
Gwynn,S.7. (Dublin, 196 ), pp. 297-319.
4

THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION

OF SENECA'S DIALOGUES

363

All this makes it clear that the Dialogueshad reached the schools of Paris by
the middle of the thirteenth century. Once the text had arrived at this active
intellectual centre, where other worksof Seneca had long been read and prized,
its wider distribution in France, England, and the Low Countries would
follow as a matter of course, and by the middle of the next century the Dialogues
were a fairly common text both north and south of the Alps. The Franciscans
may have played an important part in its dissemination.
This is as far as the indirect tradition takes us. The further exploration and
editing of thirteenth-centurytexts will doubtless fill in many of the details, but
the general picture is clear: the text re-emergedin southernItaly in the eleventh
century and again in the thirteenth in northern France. The origin of the
Baconian text has not been traced; the mystery which surroundsit, coupled
with its appearance at such an early stage in the development of the recentior
tradition, breeds the notion that Bacon had stumbled upon a good and untapped source for the text. Beeson in particularhas suggestedthat the extensive
extracts from the dialogiin Roger's Moralisphilosophiashould have received
serious attention from editors of Seneca,' and his vigorously propounded
thesis has been left unanswered by Senecan scholars. We can best find out
more about the texts used by Bacon and his contemporariesby looking at the
recentiores
themselves, and it is time in any case to move from the story behind
the text to a critical appraisal of the later manuscriptsand their use, if any, to
an editor.
II.

THE MANUSCRIPTS

In addition to what has been said by editors in the prefaces to their critical
texts,2a number of articles have been devoted specificallyto the problem of the
codicesrecentiores.3
Some of these studies contain much of interest and value, but
the contribution which they have made towards solving the fundamental
problem of the dependence or non-dependence of the later manuscriptson the
Ambrosianusis so minimal that I see no point in repeating what has been said.
It is clear that the later manuscripts have at most a modest contribution to
make to the text and there is a limit to the amount of time and energy which
should be expended on them. There is no point in beating about the bush.
What we need to know is simply this: are any of the recentiores
independent of
A and, if so, which ?
The later manuscriptsof the Dialoguesare for the most part both corrupt and
contaminated, and in such a jungle finessewill serve little purpose. I think that
a real start can be made in solving the fundamental questions if we forget the
laborious attempts which have been made to work out the affiliation of this or
Op. cit., pp. 248 ff.
In particular those of Gertz (i886),
Castiglioni (1946), and Viansino (I963).
3 L. Castiglioni, 'De quibusdam deterioribus codicibus Senecae opuscula De Ira
continentibus disputatio', Athenaum1(1913),
98-II ; J. Marouzeau, 'Ce que valent les
manuscrits des Dialogi de Seneque', RPh,
xxxvii (1913), 47-52; H. Wagenvoort, 'De
codice Senecae Angelico (MS. Lat. 1356)',
Mnem. 1913, 153-63; A. Bourgery, 'Apropos
des manuscrits du "De Ira"', REL xi
(I933), 369-78, A. Fontan, Algunos c6dices
I

de Seneca en bibliotecas espaiolas y su lugar

en tradici6n de los dialogos', Emerita xvii
(I949), 9-4I and 22 (I954) 35-65; B. L.
Hijmans B. L. F. and M. P. Forder, 'De
xxxii codicibus recentioribus L. A. Senecae
libellum De providentia continentibus',
Mnem. I960, 39-62. The last marks an advance on the others; although I cannot accept
their stemma or their conclusions, Hijmans
and Forder give some useful information
about a large number of manuscripts and
their affiliations.

364

L. D. REYNOLDS

that manuscript or group of manuscriptsand concentrate on the basic pattern

which to my mind emerges clearly from a general survey of the later manuscripts as a whole, namely that they appear to fall into two basic groups, a very
large group and a very small group. The large group I shall call ]3,the small
group y.
The line of division between the two groups inevitably becomes more and
more blurred as horizontal transmissiongathers momentum. The large group
(/), which comprisesthe vast majority of the extant manuscripts,contaminated
both with each other and with the manuscriptsof the y group, presentsa daunting problem. But the historical circumstancesof the transmissiongive a ray of
hope: it takes two, after all, to contaminate, and texts were so rare in the
thirteenth century that there must be a chance of finding some uncontaminated
witnesses among the earliest extant manuscriptsof this group. It is with these
that we must begin. With the aid of these it is possible, I think, to reconstruct
the basic / text, and this lies at the core of the problem.
Most of the manuscripts of the Dialoguesbelong to the fourteenth century
and later, and some of those which have been dated earlier are impostors.'
But a few can be assigned with confidence to the thirteenth century. The
manuscript with which I begin has never attracted any attention; it is a
Vatican manuscript (Chigi H.V. I53), which I shall call C.2 It belongs to the
first half of the thirteenth century and is almost certainly a little older than
Parisinuslat. 15086 (P), which it has been customaryto regard as the earliestof
The best of the later manuscriptshas by general agreement been
the recentiores.
B (Berlin Lat. Fol. 47), but B was written at least half a century later than
C and is a copy-and almost certainly a direct copy-of it. Owing to the loss
of a quire, C omits dial. 9. 15. 5-I2. 9. 2, and here B remains the best available
manuscript of this group.3 To these we may add Parisinus lat. 6379, which
I shall call Q; it is portentously corrupt, but it does not seem to be seriously
contaminated and belongs to the later reaches of the thirteenth century.4
CPQ are independent of each other and represent the whole range of subgroups into which the later manuscripts of this group can-more or less-be
I Laurentianus 76. 32, known usually as
L, and containing the de ira, was at one time
dated to the twelfth century, more recently
to the thirteenth. It should be placed firmly
in the second half of the fourteenth century.
On the strength of its spurious seniority it
was taken up by Gertz and eventually won
a place in the Teubner text. It is a poor piece
of work. Laurentianus 76. 38 (dated to the
thirteenth century by Marouzeau and
Viansino) is a perfectly decent fourteenthcentury manuscript. Perugia 57, catalogued
as thirteenth, belongs to the fifteenth century.
2 The
sigla are a headache. As a sample of
the confusion, Fickert's two Ambrosiani (B
2 sup. and C 293 inf.), which he called E and
D respectively, became D and E in Hermes'
Teubner text, and finally B and C in the
Pravia editions; Laur. 76. 38, 1 to Marouzeau, is F3 to Viansino in his edition of the
consolationes,while in his edition of the de ira
F3 is Laur. 76. 32, known to Gertz and
Hermes as L; P3 and P4 are usually-and

also in Viansino's edition of the consolationes

-Palatine manuscripts, but in his edition of
the de ira they become Parisini (6379 and
6380), known to Hijmans and Forder as Z
and ,, P being Fickert's designation for B,
known to Viansino as Ber. As unused sigla
are scarce (both the Greek and Latin alphabet have been exhausted), I see no alternative
but to start afresh and to allot unsophisticated sigla to those few manuscripts which
deserve them.
3 It remains a very important witness in
the ad Polybium, most of which is missing
in A.
4 The only other certain thirteenth-century
manuscript I have noticed is in Rome, Biblioteca Angelica 505. It belongs to the latter
part of the century, and contains the first
two books of the de ira and part of the third.
It was used by Barriera for his edition of the
de ira (Paravia, 919) and is a scrappy piece
of work with a mixed text.

THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION

OF SENECA'S DIALOGUES

365

divided. On the basis of CPQ or BPQ-or any two of these where the third is
lacking'-we can build up a picture of how the text of this large group of
manuscripts looked in the early thirteenth century.
C(B)PQ have more than two hundred omissions, transpositions,and other
errorsin common. This can only mean that they derive from a common parent,
namely /. A short list of some of the common omissionsand transpositionswill
serve to make this point:
Omissions: I. 4. 3 ipsi; I. 4. 5 si te; 2. 5. 3 ergosi . . . pervenire
nonpotest;3. 8. 2
inprimis;4. 7. 3 habentalius . . . cummatre;4. 28. 7 hocet ipse. . . invenies;5. 7. I.
tenerique. . . voluntas;5. 22. 4 et aliquid;6. io. i quodcirca; 6. 20. I laudatur
6. 24. I et in materno
. . . perseveravit;
expectatutque]
laudaturque;
7. 2. 2 ergo;7. 25. 5
esse; 9. 2. Io spes; 10. 2. 4 nemose sibi vindicat; i.

17. 6 sit.

contristari;2. 10. 2 factum dicTranspositions: I. 2. 5 numquam

flere numquam
his; 3. I4. I bonusvir non; 3. I9.4
tumque;2. 17. 3 ille potuit; 3. 6. 3 mollioribus
ipsi sibi; 7. 12. 3 a virtuteseparari;I . 7. 6 mihivivere; I . 17. 2 aliosin terra,alios
in mari; I I. I8. 6 pectoregemitus;I . I8. 9 verbahomini.
Not all / manuscripts will contain all these errors; but even the more contaminated manuscripts usually have a sufficient portion of them to leave no
doubt about their origin.
As can be seen, p has a number of extensive omissions. Some of these are
roughly equal in size, and are of the type which arise when a line of a parent
manuscript is accidentally omitted in copying, as for example the following
two (4- 7 3; 5. 7. ):
habent alius iudicia patris accusat quae vereri satius fuit alius cum matre
tenerique iam visa cum ipso cadunt ita fit ut frequenterinrita sit eius voluntas
The first light is shed on the problem of the recentiores
when one notices that
these groups of words omitted in the / manuscripts are in fact exactlines of the
Ambrosianus.To these may be added a line omission of another classic type
(6. 24. I), where the scribe has jumped from a point within a line to the same
point in the next line, omitting et in . . . perseveravit.
tuos noluit / et in materno contubernio cum vix paternum liberi ferant perseveravit / adulescens statura pulchritudine certo corporis robore castris
Still more instructive is an omission at 2. 5. 6-7, where A reads:
filias rapuerat hostis et patria in ali/enam condicionem pervenerat et ipsum
rex circumfususvictoris exercitus armis ex superiore loco rogitabat. / at ille
Here the words marked off by oblique strokes represent a line in A; they
have again been omitted in P. When the scribe jumped this line, bisecting
a word in the process, his copy must inevitably have read patria inaliat ille.
Our manuscript C, with touching candour, reads precisely this; Q offers
almost the same-patria mali at ille; P, the rogue, has shamelesslyemended to
patriamviolaveratille.
P has nothing after dial. 9. 15; Q has
only a fragment of the de ira and omits the
ad Helviam matremcompletely. Of the three
manuscripts used only C(B) is available for

the ad Helviam, so that / readings for this

dialogue can be reconstructed only by calling in other and later manuscripts.

366

L. D. REYNOLDS

Little more remains to be said.' The / manuscripts, which amount to

nine in ten of the extant manuscripts, are ultimately derived from the Ambrosianus and are of value only where it is lacking. Among the fallen idols are
a number of editorial favourites, manuscripts which here and there have come
up with the right answer. This is sometimes a happy conjecture, more often the
result of the transmission of variants horizontally from the other recentior
group (y).
Although many of the later manuscripts have absorbed some y readings,z
only four pure y manuscripts have come to light so far. They are Vaticanus lat.
2214 and 2215, Laurentianus 76. 35 and 76. 4I.3 The two Vaticani belong to
the fourteenth century, the two Laurentiani to the fifteenth. The Laurentian
twins are later in date and considerably more corrupt than the Vatican pair,
and as the latter are adequate for the reconstruction of y, we can dispense
with the services of the former. Vaticanus 2215, the better of the two, I shall
call R, the other V. Neither R nor V has ever been used by any editor.4
R and V have no less than a thousand errors in common. This is sufficient
to establish not only their common parenthood (y), but the fact that y was
prodigiously corrupt. But a corrupt source is not necessarily valueless, and y
has something to offer. When it has been reconstructed for the whole of the
text, a remarkable fact emerges: if we take the Teubner text as our standard, y
offers the right reading in over a hundred and fifty places where A (and consequently /3) have got it wrong. This is a high total; reputations have been made
on less. Moreover, y has an uncanny knack of anticipating generally accepted
conjectures by later scholars; it does this over thirty times, including the forestalling of three emendations by Madvig, four by Pincianus, four by Erasmus,
five by Muretus, and seven by Gertz. Either someone along the line had a flair
for conjectural criticism, or y goes back independently to the archetype.
Many of the correct y readings are well within the capacity of a medieval
scribe or reader, and some of them are doubtless conjectures. Others are more
impressive. Debate about the origin of these readings would be long and inconclusive. A high degree of probability is often a necessary substitute for
certainty in such matters, and with this proviso I would conclude that the y
tradition is in fact independent of A. Two examples will illustrate the nature of
the problem.
5. 8. 8. Quotiens disputatio longior et pugnacior erit, in prima resistamus,
antequam (robur accipiat): alit se ipsa contentio et demissos altius tenet;
facilius est se a certamine abstinere quam abducere.
I Line omission on this scale and to the
nearest letter of the line is as good evidence
as we are likely to get. But there is other
evidence for the dependence of /, not valid in
itself, but corroborative. Glosses in A appear
in the text of /3, and are particularly informative where an intelligible gloss in A is
garbled in /3,as, e.g., 4. 23. I: ecquis]pro an
quis Ac above the line, pro antiquiset quis P.
Wrong division in A causes trouble, e.g.
9. I. I neutrum]ne utrumA, utrumne P. Less
conclusive are the errors in P3arising from
the confusion of letters written in Beneventan, as at o. 12. 6 natare]noctare,and o. 9. 2

ituro] lauro, a classic miscopying in /Pwhich

has led to an orgy of emendation in its progeny: laturo,labituro,fluituro,duraturo,casuro.
2 And even whole stretches of y text.
3 An important step forward was the
emergence of these four as a group in the
stemma constructed by Hijmans and Forder.
4 But the Laurentian manuscripts have
been used. Laur. 76. 41 was collated by
Gertz for the ad Polybiumand the ad Marciam,
and his collations were taken over by Hermes
in the Teubner text; both have been drawn
upon by Viansino.

THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION

OF SENECA'S DIALOGUES

367

This is an old chestnut. The words roburaccipiatare missing in A and have to be

salvaged from a number of late manuscripts. They are accepted by editors,
by many as a genuine supplement of unknown source, by some as a felicitous
stopgap. There has been talk, but no facts. Some of the facts are these: robur
is one of Seneca's favouritewords, and he uses it with dare(epist.94. 46; I6. 8),
addere ( 6. I), habere(dial. I I. 6. i) and, more pertinently, colligere (dial. . 2. 6;
in Seneca; but it is
2. 3. 5). I have found no other example of roburaccipere
found in his nephew Lucan (4. 642) and his contemporary Columella (2. 9. 12;

is common enough.' Here the wordsgive excel4. 3. 4; 4. Io. 2), and viresaccipere
lent sense and, more significantly, an excellent clausula. Senecan in style and
rhythm, but not found elsewherein Seneca, this does not seem to be a medieval
interpolation. The genuineness of these words was rejected even by some
believers in the recentiores,
because they did not appear in their 'best' manuscripts. The 'better' a manuscriptis, i.e. the closer it is to A, the less likely it is to
have them. For it is clear that these words, whether conjectural in origin
or not, were initially confined to y, and that from there they percolated, at first
into the margins,2 then into the text, of some of the f manuscripts. Others3
used this supplement as a keystone for their classificationof the manuscripts,
a hasty step, for though the absence of these words is significant,theirpresence
is more often the result of horizontal than of vertical transmission.
This is not the only place where words missing in A (and all or most of the /
manuscripts) are supplied by y. There are eight in all: quid(3. 5. 2), in (4. 9. 4;
o. 15. 4;

I2.

14. 3), est (6 4.

2),

tam (6. I5.

2),

e (6.

24. 2),

nec (Io. 6. 4). These

are on a different footing: they could more easily be conjecturalsupplements,

but, if y is indeed independent, they need not be.
One other y reading is worth discussing,because it has not before been found
in a manuscript.
5. 2I. I. (Cyrus) Gynden late fusum amnem vado transire temptavit.
The river which gave Cyrus trouble was the Gyndes (modern Dijala) in
Babylonia. In A the name of the river appears as Gyges.The scribesknew better
than that, and emended to Ganges.The correct name was restoredby Erasmus
from Herodotus I. 189. But y quite correctly produces Gindes.The story is
found in Herodotus and very briefly alluded to in pseudo-Tibullus,4but the
chances of a medieval scribe correcting the text from either source are too
remote to merit consideration. The independence of y could be settled at
a blow, were it not that the story is repeated again in the fifth century by
Orosius,5an author widely read throughout the Middle Ages and not least in
southern Italy.6 A clever scribe or reader-at Monte Cassino, for examplecould have made the change; but the man who 'corrected' the y tradition
would have been such a critical virtuoso that I should be happier to accept the
simpler and more credible hypothesis, that the y manuscripts go back to a
parent which was close to A, and probably inferior to it, but which descended
independently from the archetype.
Cf. T.L.L. i. 317. 58 ff.
As in Balliol College MS. 129.
3 e.g.
Castiglioni, Athenesum19I3, p. Ioo:
tamquamfundamentumdiiudicandarumadfinitatum ponimus.

Hist. 2. 6.

6 There are two extant Beneventan manu-

4 4.

I.

141.

scripts of Orosius, Monte Cassino 303 and

Vaticanus lat. 3340, both of the eleventh
century.

368

L. D. REYNOLDS

Basically then the position is simple: we have a large number of manuscripts

(/3)which are ultimately derived from A itself, and a smaller number (y)
which appear to go back to an independent source. Most of the / manuscripts,
contaminated with each other and with the y tradition, form the vulgate text
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Any attempt to reduce these to
a stemma would, I think, be ill conceived and pointless: the result would look
more like a furze bush than a family tree, and it is difficult to see what use it
could be to anyone. The problem of the contaminatican legitimately be removed by ignoring them; an examination of these manuscripts confirms the
obvious, that they contain nothing of value which cannot be found in its
original form in either ,f or y. The process of contamination can be illustrated
from a concrete example, the manuscript AmbrosianusC. 293 inf., which has
its margin equipped with a selection of y variants.'
There are problems, however, which must be discussed, if not answered.
The first concerns the beginning of the de ira. Here the archetype must have
been damaged or illegible. The scribe of A, when faced with this difficulty,
skipped the beginning of the dialogue and began again at i. 2. 4, in midsentence. In the hope that the missing part of the text might be recoverable
later, he left a number of blank pages, apparently two leaves and the recto of
what is now fol. 4 (i.e. five sides in all); this may be an indication of the length
of the original text. At a later date the two blank leaves were cut out and the
blank recto of fol. I4 was filled up by anotherscribe (known as a), who squeezed
on to it the beginning of the de ira (i. 1-2. 3 capitis damna(tos>), stopping in the

middle of a word. This is a much shorter text than that originally intended to
cover five sides, and there is a manifest lacuna between 2. 3 (where a stopped)
and 2. 4 (where A had begun again). This loss has never been repaired. One
can only conclude that by this time it was impossible to salvage the beginning
of the de ira complete; the archetype had suffered further physical deterioration, perhaps the loss of a leaf or more, and it or such copies of it as could be
found contained this fragment of the missing passage and nothing more.
The first point is the date of a. This page has usually been assigned to 'the
fourteenth or even the fifteenth century'. The recentioresdo not omit i. I-2. 3,
and, as some of them are earlier than the fourteenthcentury, the fact that they
contain this passage has been regarded as incontrovertibleevidence2that they
must be independent of A. But such a late dating is absurd; Dr. Lowe, who
kindly inspected this page for me, is of the firm opinion that it could not have
been written later than the twelfth century. It therefore predates all the
and can no longer be regarded as an argument for their indepenrecentiores
dence. But the really curious fact emergeswhen we consider the ,f manuscripts.
Had the manuscript from which they descend (fl itself) been copied from A
before the addition of I. I-2. 3, we should expect them to omit this passage; if
later, we should expect them to have it in theform in which it isfound in A. They
do neither. They present us with this same fragment of the deira, but, although
they have taken the bulk of their text from A, they have not taken de ira
I. 1-2. 3 from a: they have taken it from a different source, and one close to
y.3 This can only mean that the original,f text was copied from A when A still
I This manuscript is known as D, E, or C,
and has found a place in most editions. A
number of corrections attributed in the
Teubner text to s can be traced back to

marginal readings in this manuscript and are

indeed not s' but y variants.
2
e.g. Beeson, op. cit., p. 246.
3 a has errors from which PB(and y) are

THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION

OF SENECA'S DIALOGUES

369

had a blank at the beginning of the de ira, i.e. not later than the twelfth century; faced with an obvious lacuna, the scribe did exactly what a was to do
under the same circumstances-he filled up the gap by referring to another
manuscript. The source from which a P y have taken the beginning of the deira
must ultimately be the same, since they present us with the identical fragment.
This makes it evident that f and y must also originate from Monte Cassino,
and that this great monastery has preservedfor us the whole sum of the text of
the dialogi.
Much more trying is the problem of the correcting hands in A. In addition
to the original scribe (A or A1) and the writer off. I4r (a), Gertz' distinguished
five hands, which he labelled A2 to A6. Admiration for his meticulous work is
often tempered with scepticism and few would emulate his confidence in
assigning an expunging dot to this hand or that, but one has to make the best
of an unsatisfactorysituation. I shall not insist on the attribution of any particular correction to a particular hand. Some of the changes made in the text
by these secondary hands and assigned to A2 and A3, i.e. to the twelfth century
rather than later,2 are genuine corrections or supplements which must have
been taken from an authoritativemanuscript source, either the archetype itself
or an independent copy of it. Other changes which appear to have been made
by the same hands are obvious interpolations, and various views are possible
about their origin. They could be conjectureson the part of A2 and A3; or they
could have been taken from the archetype, if we assume that it had suffered
correction since A was copied from it in the eleventh century, a likely enough
occurrence; thirdly, they could have been taken from an independent but
interpolated copy of the archetype.
These interpolations have often been incorporated into the text of f, and
there is nothing strange about this. Sometimes, though less often,3they appear
also in the text of y, as in the following examples:
2. 3. i itis infitias]post itis superscr.in A3: itis in infitias fy
3. 2 I. 3 venit morte contempta]postvenit add.uxor in marg.A3: venit uxor fy
9. 2. i. utique cum ex tempestate requievit] utique cum Haase: ut que cum
A: supracum A2 velpotiusman.recentiorlacus addidit:ut lacus que CQ: ut
lacus qui P: aut lacus cum y

At first sight it would seem that y might after all be derived from A. But this
argument would apply only if these interpolations originated as the brainchildren of A2 and A3: it is at least as probable that they took them from
the same source as they had taken the genuine corrections, from another
manuscript, either the archetype, now corrupted by time, or an independent
free: I. 4 depravantium se] se om. a; I. 5 in
abdito] in om. a; quietumque]-que om. a;
2. 3 viritim] virium a. ,B and y have conjunctive errors, e.g. 2. i. reorum a, eorum
gy; 2. 3 si tibi a, tibi si -y.
I L. Annaei Senecae dialogorum libri xii
(Copenhagen, I886), pp. ix-xx.
2 Many of the later corrections, particularly those of A5, a vicious meddler, are
simply taken from one or more of the
recentiores.It may be worth investigating
whether some of them, such as those assigned

to A6, are in the hand of Zanobi da Strada,

now well known for his habit of annotating
Cassinese manuscripts: cf. Gius. Billanovich,
I primi umanistie le tradizionidei classici latini
(Fribourg, I953), pp. 29 ff.
3 There are two glosses in the margin of
one page of A: 2. 2. 2 abstractus] in marg.vel
arreptus, and 2. 3. I tectum] in marg. vel
vestitum. There is no sign of these in y, but
the f manuscripts read abstractusvel arreptus
and tectumvel vestitum(or something similar).

370

L. D. REYNOLDS

but interpolated copy of it. The text of the y manuscripts is such that their
origin could easily be either of these. But there is little point in furtherspeculation, unless new facts come to light. If, as I have maintained, the early history
of this text took place under one roof, the most unorthodox things could
happen, and they probably did.
III.

CONCLUSIONS

It can now safely be assumed that the Seneca manuscript which Desiderius
caused to be copied at Monte Cassino during his abbacy (1058-87) was a text
of the dialogi,and that the Ambrosianuswas a product of this copying. What
happened to the text between the sixth and the eleventh century is unknown.'
When the text of the later tradition is examined, it becomes apparent that the
two main streams of this tradition spring from a source so close to the Ambrosianus-in one case indeed the Ambrosianus itself-that we can also
assume that Monte Cassino was not only the home of the best manuscript of
the Dialogues,but the unique source for this text, which can now take its place
alongside the other works-the later Annalsand Historiesof Tacitus, the Golden
Ass of Apuleius, Frontinus' De aquisand Varro's De lingualatina-which have
been preserved for posterity by this one monastery.
The conclusion that Monte Cassino is the source of the whole tradition
emerges fairly clearly from what has been said already; but I have produced
no evidence to show that the text which circulated in the schools of Paris in the
thirteenth century is in fact the same text as that known to previous generations in southern Italy. Now that we have discoveredwhich are the key manusome links between Italy and northern Europe can
scriptsamong the recentiores,
be established. The oldest manuscript after A and the earliest witness of the f
tradition is C, and both C and its copy B were written in Italy; the earliest
examples of the pure y text, R and V, are likewise Italian; the only thirteenthcentury manuscript with a mixed text, Angelicus 505, is also Italian. Thus the
tradition is Italy.
home of all forms of the recentior
P is a somewhat mysterious manuscript. Its composite nature has not been
noticed. The first part of the manuscript (if. 129-86, containing dial. I-4 and

part of 9) is written in one hand, the second part (if. I87-252, containing dial.
5-8) is in a different hand and has a different, though similar, strain of text.2
The second scribe takes over where the first leaves off, in the middle of a quire,
so that the book would appear to have been a piece of collaboration. The
second hand is distinctly Italian, the first is less easy to place; it is less obviously
Italian and possibly French. Once again we have a definite Italian connection,
but P eventually found its way to the abbey of Saint Victor at Paris and
probably reached France at an early date, for it has textual affinities with
I In addition to the Dialogues A has a
text of the spurious correspondence between
Seneca and St. Paul, edited by C. W. Barlow
(Papers and Monographs of the American
Academyin Rome, x, I938). A glance at his
stemma shows that this text is closely connected textually with four other manuscripts,
all of German provenance and associated
respectively with St. Emmeram, SaintArnoul (Metz), St. Gall, and Cologne. This
seems to me to be a clear result of the strong
ties existing in the eleventh century between

Germany and Monte Cassino, which had

recently had two German abbots. But the
Dialogues need not have come from Germany; there is no evidence that they had
ever left southern Europe.
2 The alien origin of the second part of P
is corroborated by the fact that other
manuscripts which are very close to P (e.g.
Hunterian MS. U. I. 9 in the University
Library in Glasgow, of the fourteenth century) contain only dialogues 1-4 and 9.

THE

MEDIEVAL

TRADITION

OF SENECA'S

DIALOGUES

371

manuscriptsfirmly rooted in the north. Q, the third of the three earliest extant
representativesof the f text, appears to have been written towards the end of
the century in France. The evidence is sketchy, but the Italian origin of the
texts which later circulated in France is clear enough.
And what of Roger Bacon and his celebrated manuscript? We have already
seen that the only really remarkablething about his discoverywas the loudness
with which he proclaimed it. He was in the van of those in northern Europe
who knew the text, but he was not the first, nor was his manuscript necessarily
and when he transcribed large
earlier than some of the extant recentiores;
it
for
the
of
the
from
edification
Pope, he came close to sending coals to
excerpts
Newcastle. Bacon's miracles and discoverieshave a habit of fading away in the
cold light of historical investigation and this discoveryis no exception. Though
he produced his manuscript like a rabbit out of a hat, there was nothing remarkable about the hat or the rabbit. It is clear from his excerpts that he had
come by a manuscript with a mixed text, no better than some which we still
possess. The manuscript which he actually used seems to have been lost. But
there are similar manuscriptsin abundance and three of these--there may be
more-have a certain degree of affinity with Bacon's text. These three have an
added interest in that they form an English branch of the tradition and so
mark a new stage in the disseminationof the Dialogues.The readingswhich are
peculiar to them and to Bacon's excerpts2 are not sufficiently numerous to
postulate a strong connection between Roger's manuscript and the parent of
the English group, but they probably give us a text which is very like that which
Bacon used, and as good. The use of an indirect tradition is full of pitfalls:
though Bacon quotes for the most part verbatim, he makes such changes as the
abbreviation of a longer text or the adaptation of a pagan source entails and
he is not above smoothing over or omitting corrupt or difficult passages and
introducing the occasional hasty correction of his own.3 If I thought that there
was anything of textual value to be gleaned from this area of the tradition,
I should prefer to use these manuscriptsrather than Bacon's excerpts, as being
complete and more reliable; but I have found nothing of value in either.
2
All three of the fourteenth century and
e.g. 2. 5. 5 movetur iactura; 5. 4. I
all now preserved in the libraries of Oxford defixiset haerentibus]defixoinhaerentibus;7. I. I
colleges: Balliol College 129, Merton Col- post lapsus est add.vir; 8. 6. 4 maioraegisse. . .
lege 297, and University College 6. A manu- gessissenterrores]maiora gessisse . . . egissent
script which appears to have been related to errores.If such common readings prove to be
them-to judge from such readings as have
more widespread than they appear to be,
been preserved-is the lost Coloniensis of then the affinity between Bacon and the
Gruter, lent to him by the Fratres minores English manuscripts will be more tenuous.
3 For example at I. 4. 9 the manuscripts
of Cologne (Animadversionesin L. Annaei
SenecaeOpera[Heidelberg, 1594], p. iv.) It is read velut perpetua ebrietate sopiti, but the
perhaps worth mentioning that the Balliol structure of the period demands a finite
manuscript, while in the possession of verb. Beeson has pointed out that Bacon
William Gray, later Bishop of Ely, travelled
(p. 7I. 8 in Massa's edition) supports Feldwith him to Cologne in 1442: cf. R. A. B. mann's sopiuntur.But if we read further, we
Mynors, Catalogueof the Manuscriptsof Balliol find Bacon quoting the same passage again
College,Oxford(Oxford, 1963), pp. xxix, Io8.
(p. Io6. 30), and this time he has sopiti.
A connection between a Cologne manuscript
Bacon does not support anyone; he has just
and a purely English group would be more had the same idea as Feldmann did a long
time after him, and both are wrong: a finite
explicable than appears at first sight; but
this text may well have travelled directly
verb has to be inserted somewhere, but the
from Paris to Cologne, and the Friars seem
rhythm shows that the end of the period
once again to provide the link.
should be left undisturbed.
Bb

372

L. D. REYNOLDS

For the bulk of the text only two out of about a hundred recentiores,
the two
earliest and best witnesses of the y tradition (R and V), appear to me to be of
any value. The position is differentwhen the Ambrosianusfails, as it does at the
beginning of the de ira and for nearly all of the ad Polybium.For de ira I. 1-2. 3
we have three witnesses-a f y; the area of text is too small to fix their interrelationship with certainty and they are best regarded as independent witnesses, with f y being closer to each other than they are to a. a has been
somewhat undervalued by recent editors, possibly because it had been dated
a couple of centuriestoo late: it is a carelesspiece of copying, but is still, I think,
more trustworthythan f y.' The text of the ad Polybiumhas rested on a whole
gaggle of manuscriptschosen at random, including some of very dubious merit,
such as the Hauniensis,which had the good fortune to end up in the town in
which Gertz professed.The textual basis of this dialogue can be rationalized
by simply reducing the manuscript evidence to two witnesses, f and y. As C
has lost the relevant quire and P does not contain this dialogue, the best
manuscript available on the f side is B; after that one has to scrape the bottom
of the barrel.
In general one may say that the manuscript tradition of the Dialoguesis
interesting in that it illustrates a pattern of transmissionnot easily paralleled
in the history of Latin texts. Here we have a text which was passed over by the
two great classical revivals of the Middle Ages, those of the ninth and twelfth
centuries, and yet had firmly established itself by the early fourteenth century
and was in time to appear, as an afterthought, in Petrach's list of favourite
books. It seems to have been the only one of the 'Monte Cassino texts' to have
had a medieval tradition in northern Europe; the others remained behind
the monastery walls until a Boccaccio or a Poggio let them loose upon the
Renaissance.
BrasenoseCollege,Oxford

I It is clearly right at least twice against

the other two: 2. I reorum(eorumf y) and
2. 3. si tibi (tibi si P y). An interesting case is
I. 4. Here most editors read (with a) flagrant
ac micantoculi. For ac micant[Boffers emicant,
V et micant,R micant.These readings open up
possibilities, but the same phrase appears in
Martin of Braga's epitome o :the de ira,
made in the sixth century, and he reads ac
micant. One cannot build an empire on a
conjunction, but a is strikingly supported,
and this support should not be undermined

L. D. REYNOLDS
by the fact that the only authoritative edition
of Martin's works (by C. W. Barlow, American Academy in Rome, I950) reads et
micant: the one medieval manuscript, on
which Martin's work (and Barlow's edition)
mainly rests, is Escorial M. III. 3, of the
tenth century, and that has ac micant, as
pointed out by A. Fontan (Emerita xviii
[I950], P. 378) and checked by myself (in
fact it needs hac micant, with the false
aspiration common in Visigothic manuscripts).