Liber epigrammatum

168 Pages·2016·1.287 MB·Latein

by  Albertus G. A. Horsting (editor), Prosper Aquitanus

Prosper Aquitanus
Liber epigrammatum
Corpus Scriptorum
Ecclesiasticorum
Latinorum (CSEL)
Herausgegeben von der Arbeitsgruppe CSEL
an der Universität Salzburg
Band 100
Prosper Aquitanus
Liber
epigrammatum
Edited by Albertus G. A. Horsting
International Advisory Board:
François Dolbeau, Roger Green, Rainer Jakobi, Robert Kaster, Ernst A. Schmidt, Danuta Shanzer,
Kurt Smolak, Michael Winterbottom
Zur Erstellung der Edition wurde das Programm CLASSICAL TEXT EDITOR verwendet.
ISBN 978-3-11-033398-5
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-033662-7
ISSN 1816-3882
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
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Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen
Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über
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© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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♾ Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier
Printed in Germany
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Acknowledgments
In preparing this edition of Prosper’s epigrams I have benefitted from the generous
and gracious assistance of many people. This project began as a dissertation under
the direction of Professors John Cavadini and Hildegund Müller at the University of
Notre Dame. Professors Kurt Smolak and Dorothea Weber kindly accepted the edi-
tion for publication in the CSEL. Since then, I have enjoyed the unparalleled critical
and technical oversight of Clemens Weidmann and Victoria Zimmerl-Panagl, who
have subtly improved so much of what follows.
Thanks beyond measure are due to Professors John Cavadini and Hildegund
Müller. I have been saved from many pitfalls by their judicious oversight. I likewise
owe a debt of gratitude to my readers: Brian Daley, SJ, Daniel Sheerin, and Kent
Emery, Jr. have guided and encouraged me in manifold ways. Beyond my committee
I must especially thank Michael Allen of the University of Chicago for his counsel on
a number of difficult paleographical and interpretative difficulties in my work. I also
wish to express my gratitude for his invitation to present some of the results of my
investigation at the Workshop on Late Antiquity and Byzantium.
My research was funded with the generous support of the Graduate School of
the University of Notre Dame, research grants from the Institute for Scholarship in
the Liberal Arts, the Zahm Travel and Research Grant, the Social Science Research
Council, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The Nanovic
Institute for European Studies provided me with a grant at a vital moment at the
beginning of this project. With it and the support of David Sullivan, Marina Smyth,
and Alan Krieger of Hesburgh Library I was able to acquire the microfilms and pho-
tographs which allowed me to explore the feasibility of the edition. I wish to thank
the Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library at Saint Louis University for a few
vital weeks with their microfilm collection. I also have the pleasure of spending a
cold Spring at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library. I am grateful for the kind
hospitality and intellectual community they provided during that time, and espe-
cially for the conversations with Columba Stewart, OSB.
This study took shape during the hectic leisure of a year at the American Acad-
emy in Rome. That welcoming environment, divided by only a short walk from the
Vatican Library, afforded me the opportunity to study and to listen. I am especially
grateful for the friendship of Jennifer Davis and Benjamin Brand for their solidarity
in our adventures in Montecassino and beyond. The academy’s many visitors also
enriched me deeply. I think especially of Brian Stock, Elizabeth A. R. Brown, and
Michèle Mulchahey. I also thank the American Academy and the Scuola Normale
Superiore di Pisa for granting me a second year in Italy to complete my work.
I think with gratitude of the directors and staff who welcomed me into the col-
lections under their care. I especially wish to thank Charlotte Denoël of Bibliothèque
nationale de France for granting me access to the manuscripts of Prosper preserved
VI | Acknowledgments

there and Timothy Janz for welcoming me at the Vatican Library shortly after my
arrival in Rome.
Finally, I wish to thank my friends and family. I am especially grateful to Philip
and Melinda Nielsen whose constructive idleness and distraction is such a delight to
me. My debt to my wife Rachel is too great to calculate. I think especially of those
cold and wet days in Pisa spent collating and your cheerful encouragement as I
came to realize just how large and complicated this project had become. I hope I can
be even half so supportive to you. Finally, I would like to thank my mother for her
support and timely aid and for the many sacrifices she had made for the sake of my
education and welfare.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments | V
1 The Liber epigrammatum and its sources | 1
1.1 The Expositio psalmorum | 3
1.2 The Liber sententiarum | 5
1.3 The composition of the Liber epigrammatum | 6
2 Remarks on the structure of the Liber epigrammatum | 9
2.1 Sententia 58 and scire volens in qua rerum sis parte locandus | 14
2.2 Two epigrams on the incarnation | 16
2.3 The cohortatio ad veram sapientiam | 17
2.4 Other epigrams lacking sententiae | 19
2.5 The concluding epigrams | 19
2.6 Summary of conclusions | 20
2.7 Doublet verses | 20
3 Textual transmission | 22
3.1 Patterns of textual transmission for the Liber epigrammatum | 23
3.1.1 The corpus poetarum | 23
3.1.2 Prosper compilations | 24
3.1.3 Augustine compilations | 25
3.1.4 Theological miscellanies | 25
3.2 Description of collated manuscripts | 25
3.3 Manuscript families | 41
3.3.1 P L and P | 42
2 1 1
3.3.2 The hyparchetype ψ | 43
3.3.3 The hyparchetype φ | 46
3.3.4 Family μ | 47
3.3.5 Family β | 47
3.3.6 Family ν | 49
3.3.7 Family δ | 49
3.3.8 Family ε | 52
3.3.9 Family γ | 53
3.3.10 Unaffiliated manuscripts | 56
3.3.11 Stemma codicum | 57
3.4 Printed editions | 58
3.5 Indirect text transmission | 63
VIII | Table of Contents

4 The principles of the present edition | 64
4.1 The constitution of the text | 64
4.2 Note on conventions | 65
Bibliography | 67
Abbreviationes et signa in apparatibus adhibita | 73
Conspectus Siglorum | 75
Sancti Prosperi Aquitani Liber epigrammatum | 77
Index | 157
1 The Liber epigrammatum and its sources

The Liber epigrammatum, dating from the final years of the life of Prosper of Aqui-
taine,1 is usually described as a testament to Late Antiquity’s decadent predilection
for strange new literary forms. Günter Bernt calls it “die eigenartigste Neuschöpfung
der spätantiken Epigrammatik”, and says that though it was much admired in the
medieval world, the form was rarely copied.2 Paul Gehl, in a similar tone, describes
it as “a bizarre undertaking” and as “the most minor work of the minor father.” The
first thing to strike a reader of Prosper’s Liber epigrammatum is the idiosyncrasy of
the work’s form.
The text presented to a modern reader in the Patrologia Latina is indeed an odd-
ity: a little more than one hundred poetical units: a title, a short prose passage on a
moral or theological topic (a sententia), and a poem composed in elegiac couplets
that restates and expands on the sententia. This triad of title – sententia – epigram
forms the repeated basis for the Liber epigrammatum.
Previously scholarship has unanimously assigned the Liber epigrammatum to
the final period of Prosper’s life.3 And yet, external evidence concerning the circum-
stances of the work’s composition is scarce. Aside from the evidence derived from its
intertextual connections to Prosper’s other works and those of Augustine, some
scholars have seen in the two epigrams on the incarnation (64 and 65) evidence of a
refutation of the Eutychian heresy, which would suggest a date of composition
around the time of the Council of Chalcedon.4 The difficulty with such claims is of
course one of priority and specificity. Are the formulae employed by Prosper in the
Liber epigrammatum close enough to those used in Leo’s Tome to mean that one
came from the other? If so, which came first?
In addition, there is the other possibility that the two works are simply employ-
ing certain theological phraseology that was quite widespread and commonplace in
||
1 The last certain date in Prosper’s life is AD 455, in which he published a revised edition of his
Chronicon: eodem anno pascha dominicum die VIII kal. Maias celebratum est pertinaci intentione
Alexandrini episcopi, cui omnes Orientales consentiendum putarunt, cum sanctus papa Leo XV kal.
Mai. potius observandum protestaretur, in quo nec in ratione plenilunii nec in primi mensis limite
fuisset erratum (Chronicon, sub anno 455; MGH Auct. ant. 9, 484).
2 BERNT, Das lateinische Epigramm, 84.
3 CAPPUYNS, Le premier représentant, 335, says the work is the result of “l’esprit de conciliation”
that comes over Prosper after the death of John Cassian. His interpretation is followed by SOLIGNAC,
Prosper d’Aquitaine, col. 2446.
4 See LEBRUN DES MARETTES – MANGEANT, Prosperi Opera omnia, 611–614 (admonitio … in epigram-
matum librum): “Cum autem alicubi, id est, epigrammatis 65 et 66 [= 64 and 65], videatur sanctus
Prosper Eutychianos impugnare, quibus non placuit corpus Christi corpori nostro fateri con-
substantiale, dum sic scribit: …. Ex quibus omnibus non aegre conicias hoc opus non longe ante
tempus Concilii Chalcedonensis, quod anno 451 congregatum constat, fuisse exaratum, cum
aliunde certum fiat S. Prosperum huiusce concilii temporibus supervixisse.”
2 | Prosperi liber epigrammatum

the decade before the Council. Antelmius was perhaps the first to compare in detail
the language of the two works. And yet, the overall impression given by his collec-
tion of parallels is not of a strong, precise connection, but of a diffuse and common-
ly held orthodoxy. One can glean very little from noting that both Prosper and Leo
say that Christ suffered no diminution in becoming man, or that the only hope for
human salvation is the incarnation, a thought already ubiquitous in Augustine’s
writings.5 The language concerning Christ’s hypostatic unity is more compelling.6
Prosper states that the fact of the incarnation does not mean that divine nature is
combined or confused with the human or that Christ is not a single person. And yet,
Leo already employs the language of ‘mingling’ as early as 442 in rejecting a Nesto-
rian Christology of indwelling.7 It may be correct to say that Prosper’s epigrams on
the incarnation do demonstrate similarities with themes and language found in the
works of Leo, but the argument for a close textual correspondence with the Tomus is
not convincing.8 The language of incarnation found in the Liber epigrammatum is
certainly Leonine, but this reveals no more than the broad similarity between the
two theologians.9 The linguistic connections, therefore, between the epigrams and
Leo’s writings are of very limited use in dating the work.
||
5 ANTELMIUS, De veris operibus, dissertatio 5 (pp. 318–340).
6 64,9f.: hinc verbum carni insertum carnemque receptans, nec se confundit corpore nec ge-
minat. Compare Conc. Chalcedonensis, definitio fidei (Schwartz II 3,2 Actio V 34, pp. 137f.): unum
eundemque Christum filium dominum unigenitum, in duabus naturis inconfuse, immutabiliter,
indivise, inseparabiliter agnoscendum, nusquam sublata differentia naturarum propter unitionem
magisque salva proprietate utriusque naturae et in unam personam atque subsistentiam concurrente,
non in duas personas partitum sive divisum, sed unum et eundem filium unigenitum deum verbum
dominum Iesum Christum.”
7 Leo M. serm. 23,1 (CCSL 138, p. 103, 21–23): Hic enim mirabilis sacrae virginis partus vere humanam
vereque divinam una edidit prole naturam, quia non ita proprietates suas tenuit utraque substantia, ut
personarum in eis posset esse discretio, nec sic creatura in societatem sui creatoris adsumpta est, ut
ille habitator et illa esset habitaculum, sed ita ut naturae alteri altera misceretur.
And yet, even this may be considered taking the evidence too far. The concern that the two natures
of Christ are conjoined but not confused can already be found in Tert. adv. Prax. 27,6: videmus
duplicem statum, non confusum sed coniunctum in una persona, deum et hominem Iesum.
8 In saying this, I am not taking a position on the question of the more general intellectual rela-
tionship between the two men, but only on whether this relationship can be demonstrated in the
Liber epigrammatum. The case for the more general connection between Prosper and Leo has been
convincingly argued in ARENS, Die christologische Sprache. See also JAMES, Leo the Great; BARCLIFT,
The Shifting Tones.
9 This is the thesis sustained in a section of Bernard Green’s recent study of Leo’s soteriology dedi-
cated to his intellectual relationship to Prosper: GREEN, The Soteriology of Leo the Great, 193–201.
Perhaps Leo read and imitated Prosper. Perhaps Prosper read and imitated Leo. Perhaps they col-
laborated on certain works. The internal evidence provided by the works is largely inconclusive and
the external evidence provided by Gennadius and others after him are too vague to warrant the
precise claims that have been advanced since the time of Antelmius.