Portal, Society of the Seven Sages

375 Pages·2014·1.888 MB·English

by  Hans R. Runte

This is an unpublished PDF version of the author’s website, originally located
at http://myweb.dal.ca/hrunte/seven_sages.html . The author maintains an updated version and may
be contacted at the email address below.
Portal, Society of the Seven Sages
Hans R. Runte [email protected]
How to cite this document
If you make use of this version of the work, use the following information:
Runte, Hans R. (2014). Portal, Society of the Seven Sages. Retrieved from
<http://dalspace.library.dal.ca/handle/10222/49107>
This item was retrieved from DalSpace, the institutional repository of Dalhousie University.
DalSpace is available at http://dalspace.library.dal.ca
Society of the Seven Sages
Beyond 2013 the activities of the Society are continued at http://sevensagessociety.org
(Last modified 16 September 2013)
Contact: Hans R. Runte <[email protected]>
Professor Emeritus, Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
[Seven Vizirs, Ten Vizirs, Sah Baht, Mythologikon Syntipas, Mishle Sendebar, Sindibad-nameh, Tuti-namah, Libro de
los engaños, Forty Vizirs, Dolopathos, Llibre dels set savis de Roma, Seith Doethon Ruvsin, De syv vise Mestre, Van
den VII Vroeden van binnen Rome, Die hystorie van die seven wijse van Romen, Les sept sages de Rome, Cassidorus,
Helcanus, Kanor, Laurin, Marques, Pelyarmenus, Die sieben weisen Meister, Libro dei sette savj di Roma, Erasto,
Stefano, Historia septem sapientum Romae, Istorija Septyniy Mokintojy, Sem' mudrecov, Historja o siedmiu
medracach, Libro de los siete sabios de Roma, Historia lastimera del príncipe Erasto, Scala celi, Sju Vise Mästare,
etc.]
For a schematic overview of all Eastern and Western versions click here
Read representative versions of the European Seven Sages in English translations
- from the French
- from the Italian
Read the Seven Sages in a modern French translation
The Society of the Seven Sages (founded in 1975) is a loosely-knit, informal group of scholars and students interested in
the Oriental and European versions of the medieval Seven Sages of Rome cycle of stories. The Society has held
research meetings at irregular intervals, has published a bibliography (1984), and circulates an annual Newsletter
containing updates (to 2004 and from 2005 onward) of the 1984 bibliography, Research Abstracts, Research-in-
Progress reports, and Marginalia. The 1984 Analytical Bibliography is being up-dated annually on-line. See the
following links:
1. Oriental and European versions
2. The medieval Seven Sages of Rome cycle
3. Research Abstracts and Documents
4. Research in Progress
5. Marginalia
6. The up-dated 1984 ANALYTICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY vol. I and vol. II
7. Some Seven Sages stories
http://myweb.dal.ca/hrunte/seven_sages.html[3/17/2014 1:36:55 PM]
Eastern and Western Versions

ordered bibliographically
I. EASTERN AND WESTERN VERSIONS: GENERAL
II. EASTERN VERSIONS: THE BOOK OF SINDBAD
• General (1)
• Arabic (2)
• Bulgarian (3)
• Greek (4)
• Hebrew (5)
• Persian (6)
Sindibad-nameh (i)
o
Tuti-namah (ii)
o
• Rumanian (7)
• Serbian (8)
• Spanish: Libro de los engaños (9)
• Syriac (10)
• Turkish (11)
III. WESTERN VERSIONS: THE SEVEN SAGES
• General (1)
• Armenian (2)
• Catalan (3)
• Celtic (4)
Scots Gaelic (i)
o
Welsh (Version A) (ii)
o
• Danish (5)
• Dutch (6)
Version A (i)
o
Version H (ii)
o
• English (7)
General (i)
o
Manuscripts (ii)
o
Version A (iii)
o
 Midland (a)
 Northern (b)
 Scots (c)
 Southern (d)
Version H (iv)
o
 American (a)
 Copland (b)
 Dekker (c)
 Rolland (d)
 Pynson (e)
 Wynkyn de Worde (f)
 Continuations of Wynkyn de Worde (g)
Version I (v)
o
• French (8)
General (i)
o
Manuscripts (ii)
o
Dolopathos (iii)
o
Version A (iv) (see on-line edition) (see English translation)
o
Version C (v)
o
Version D (vi)
o
Version H (vii)
o
Version I (viii)
o
Version K (ix)
o
Version L (x)
o
Version M (xi)
o
Continuations (xii)
o
 General (a)
 Cassidorus (b)
 Helcanus (c)
 Kanor (d)
 Laurin (e)
 Marques (f)
 Pelyarmenus (g)
• German (9)
General (i)
o
Dolopathos (ii)
o
Version A: Allegatio septem sapientum (iii)
o
Version H (iv)
o
 General (a)
 Hans von Bühel, Dyocletianus (b)
 Anonymous verse redaction (c)
 Prose redactions (d)
 Sebastian Wild, Tragedij (e)
Aventewr von Diocleciano (v)
o
Hystorij von Diocleciano (vi)
o
• Hebrew (10)
• Hungarian (11)
• Icelandic (12)
• Italian (13)
General (i)
o
Version A (ii)
o
Version I (iii)
o
 Erasto (a)
 Stefano (b)
• Latin (14)
General (i)
o
Dolopathos (ii)
o
Version H (iii)
o
 Historia septem sapientum (a)
 Historia novercalis (b)
 Pontianus (c)
Version S (Scala celi) (iv)
o
• Lithuanian (15)
• Norwegian (16)
• Provençal (17)
• Slavic (18)
General (i)
o
Bohemian (ii)
o
Polish (iii)
o
Russian (iv)
o
• Spanish (19)
General (i)
o
Version H (ii)
o
Version I (iii)
o
Version S (Scala celi) (iv)
o
• Swedish (20)
General (i)
o
Version A (ii)
o
Version H (iii)
o
• Yiddish (21)
IV. ANALOGUES
• Frame narratives (1)
• Exempla (2)
• Frame story (3)
• Multiple analogues (4)
• Single analogues (5)
The Seven Sages of Rome
...is a medieval collection of stories about wise counselors and wicked women. It was,
throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, an extremely popular work which spread into virtually
all European languages. This success may be said to have been founded on a number of features
distinguishing The Seven Sages of Rome from other compilations of exempla.
Most importantly, the stories of The Seven Sages of Rome have been organically integrated or
embedded in an all-embracing frame structure which, while allowing for great diversity of
subject matter, nevertheless aligns them according to a global narrative order. Killis Campbell
summarizes the frame story as follows: "A young prince is tempted by his stepmother, the queen.
She, being rebuffed by him, accuses him of attempting to violate her, and he is condemned to
death. His life is saved by seven wise men, who secure a stay of execution of the royal decree by
entertaining the king through seven days with tales showing the wickedness of woman, the queen
meantime recounting stories to offset those of the sages. On the eighth day the prince, who has
remained silent up to that time, speaks in his own defense, and the queen is put to death." It is in
the resulting tension between static frame and dynamic context, between a frame story narrating
its own existence and embedded narratives deriving meaning from the frame, that the interest of
The Seven Sages of Rome resides.
The Seven Sages of Rome is a rich and varied font of popular story-telling material. Over one
hundred folktales are included in one or several of the many versions, antecedents and parallels
of the cycle. The Seven Sages of Rome normally contains, in slightly varying arrangements, the
following stories (given with their customary Latin titles):
1. Stepmother: arbor
2. 1st Sage: canis
3. Stepmother: aper
4. 2nd Sage: medicus
5. Stepmother: gaza
6. 3rd Sage: puteus
7. Stepmother: senescalcus
8. 4th Sage: tentamina
9. Stepmother: Virgilius
10.5th Sage: avis
11.Stepmother: sapientes
12.6th Sage: vidua
13.Stepmother: Roma
14.7th Sage: inclusa
15.Prince: vaticinium
For theories, both old and new, of transmission or polygenesis, of dissemination and origin, of
oral tradition and literary intent, these stories are extremely valuable. They show as well that The
Seven Sages of Rome is more than an exercise in traditional medieval antifeminism: the prince of
the frame story has been accused of plotting to overthrow his father, and his stepmother's stories
invite comparisons with many a medieval Fürstenspiegel.
As an undeniably didactic work, The Seven Sages of Rome belongs in the total cultural mosaic of
uncounted Narrationes, Sermones, Exempla and Summae and has no small contribution to make
to a fuller understanding of the European Middle Ages.
The Seven Sages of Rome has its ultimate roots in the East where it is usually known as The Book
of Sindbad [the Philosopher]. The Eastern parent version may go back as far as the fifth century
B.C., but the earliest extant mention of The Book of Sindbad and its probably oldest extant
version, the Syriac Sindban, date from the tenth century A.D. The Book of Sindbad originated
most likely in India, although Persia and the Jewish Near East have also been advanced as
possible birthplaces.
From The Book of Sindbad are derived two distinct, though not unrelated, Western narrative
traditions: the Dolopathos and The Seven Sages of Rome. The Dolopathos has replaced all but
one story from The Book of Sindbad (canis) by other material; and, like The Book of Sindbad, it
assigns only one teacher to the prince. The Seven Sages of Rome shares four stories (canis, aper,
senescalcus, avis) with The Book of Sindbad, but the sages tell only one story each instead of the
two or more in the Eastern tradition; The Seven Sages of Rome also has four stories (canis, gaza,
puteus, inclusa) in common with the Dolopathos.
Such complex textual evidence has made it extremely difficult to establish conclusively how The
Book of Sindbad reached the West, especially in view of the fact that the parent version of The
Seven Sages of Rome has been lost. The transmission theories of the last hundred years fall, in a
summary way, into two groups: the proponents of a written transmission posit Byzantino-Roman
(G. Paris), Hebrew-Latin (Hilka) or Arabic-Spanish (Libro de los engaños, G. Paris, Aiache,
Epstein) intermediaries between the Greek Syntipas and the Western parent version, while the
defenders of an oral transmission propose the crusaders as story-carriers (Le Roux de Lincy,
Ebeling, Campbell, Misrahi) and Byzantium-North Africa-Spain or Syria-Jerusalem as
transmission routes (Campbell). The precise sources of the Dolopathos are not known. It may
derive from The Book of Sindbad, or The Seven Sages of Rome, or other folktale traditions,
including oral ones, or indeed from a combination of these (Gilleland). Its only material link to
the East is the story canis.
The oldest extant Western text, French Version K, was written in the twelfth century. Campbell
proposed for the lost Western parent version a terminus ad quem of 1150, while the tenth century
as terminus a quo may be deduced from Epstein's research. The original Latin Dolopathos was
composed by Johannes de Alta Silva at the end of the twelfth century (G. Paris, Campbell,
Gilleland).
The textual tradition of The Seven Sages of Rome grew into two branches: one represented by
Version S as transmitted in the Scala celi, the other, much richer one, represented by Versions K
(French), D (French), and A (French, English, Italian, Swedish, Welsh). Version A gave rise to
the widely disseminated Latin Version H and its variants (with translations into most European
languages), to Version I (Italian) and its variants and translations, to Version L and M (both
French), and to the French Continuations of the cycle. Alta Silva's Dolopathos was translated
into French by a certain Herbert in the first quarter of the thirteenth century; there is also a late
German translation.
Campbell counted at least forty different versions, upwards of two hundred manuscripts and
nearly two hundred and fifty editions of The Seven Sages of Rome. That was almost ninety years
ago....
(Adapted from The Seven Sages of Rome and The Book of Sindbad: An Analytical Bibliography,
eds. Hans R. Runte, J. Keith Wikeley and Anthony J. Farrell [New York: Garland, 1984], pp. xi-
xvi)
Research Abstracts and Documents
Canis, gaza and (inclusa-)puteus
too literally translated from
He[r]bert, trans., Dolopathos
by Hans R. Runte
Canis
The [unnamed] first sage’s story
from MS. Paris, Bibl. nat. f.fr. 1450 (formerly 75355, formerly
Cangé 27, then 69), fol. 238-264, lines 4838-5154, edited by
[AB 424] Brunet, Charles and Anatole de Montaiglon, Li
romans de Dolopathos […], Bibliothèque Elzévirienne, Paris: P.
Jannet, 1856, pp. 168-178, to accompany the English translation
of Johannes de Alta Silva’s (Jean de Haute-Seille’s) Latin
original (ed. [AB 655] Oesterley, Hermann) by [AB 665]
Gilleland, Brady B., Johannes de Alta Silva: Dolopathos […],
Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance
Studies, 1981, pp. 40-42.
[Line 4838 of 6,450 rhymed couplets = 12,900 octosyllables]
“Good King,” he goes, “a young man / there was once, rich and
handsome, / a noble man and of high lineage. / He had great
land and a great inheritance. / He was of a large family and had
considerable belongings, / such as a rich man is supposed to
have. / Never did he care for avarice, / nor was there [ever] a
creature as generous [as he]. / He spent everything and gave [it
away], / nothing did he keep. / Never would he have kept a
thing, / if there was someone who asked him for something; / he
would never have refused anybody. / He wanted to make
[people] talk of him, / he wanted to have a great reputation /
before all those [people] of the country. / He was known to
many a person. / Knights he had and sergeants, / weapons and
horses he gave them, / and from another he did not take
anything. / Well did he want to drink and to eat well / and to
change every month robes, / beautiful horses and new weapons,
/ riding horses and harnesses and saddles. / Well spoken was he
and of beautiful expression, / from him nobody went away
refused, / [neither] damsel nor rascal, / [neither] minstrel nor
actor. / He wanted to have all these supplies / of entertainment,
of dogs and of birds. / He did not care for gaining / for keeping
nor saving / anything that came into his hand. / Never did he
think of the next day. / His family marveled much at this, / and
many a times they chastized him / and blamed [him for] his
mischievousness. / Because of that he did not at all give it up. /
He did not care for chastizing [himself], / nor for flattering or for
praying. / All those he hated who spoke to him [about it] / and
who chastized him for it. / He thought that they envied [him] /
for his glory and for his life[style]. / But to him who does not
want to believe advice / bad things come, I am not surprised by
it. / May you know for sure, whoever may complain about it, /
[that] he who loses a lot and gains little / can well become a poor
man. / Greater sense has he [who] keeps / lots of things than has
he [who] gains [them]. / He who did not want to save / carried
on until he had no more to spend. / By necessity it behooved him
to sell / his land and his entire inheritance, / for he [had] led too