Defining a Textbook: Gloss versus Gloss in a Medieval Schoolbook

Glossed medieval manuscripts have received well-deserved attention in recent years. Scholars have realized that glosses are extremely valuable for studying an era regarding which our knowledge is all too incomplete in the areas of educational practices and cultural attitudes towards literary texts. Most of the scholarship about annotated manuscripts to date, however, has approached marginalia in a somewhat limited and linear way. Glosses have been examined to identify textual variants, attribute scholia to a particular author, track the development of vernacular languages, or identify the concerns of one individual reader. Yet one of the most important categories of glossed manuscripts has been neglected to a certain extent: the stratified, glossed text. ¹

Stratified glosses exist in the schoolbook that has several centuries of commentary inscribed in its margins by various hands. This type of glossing primarily occurs for a text that was part of the canon of medieval and humanist education. The manuscript I will discuss in this paper, New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library MS. 332, a late twelfth-century codex of the Roman poet Lucan's De bello civili (commonly known as the Pharsalia), addresses the issues between gloss and gloss, shedding light in particular on how medieval schools defined and utilized textbooks. The examination of the glosses in this codex reveals that the student glossators of this work engaged in a dialectical relationship about how to approach this medieval textbook. The medieval understanding of the text differed depending on the chronological period of its readers. Furthermore, the glosses in this manuscript suggest we should perhaps seek an alternative definition of what constituted a textbook in the Middle Ages.

Lucan, the author of the poem in this manuscript, is a representative example of a classical author used in the medieval schools. His epic poem of the war between Caesar and Pompey, the De bello civili, was a standard text for classroom instruction in both grammar and rhetoric, disciplines that included the study of the recte loquendi, or correct grammatical usage; the enarratio poetarum, or interpretation of the poets; and the forms and uses of rhetorical figures and tropes. ² Moreover, as they did with all classical auctores in medieval schools, students mined Lucan's poem for information about geography, history, natural history, astronomy, and mythology. ³ Model curriculums in the Middle Ages frequently cited the De bello civili and it had a long commentary tradition, with both facts implying the demand for the text in the medieval and humanist classroom. ⁴ In addition, as E.M. Sanford established, medieval citations of the De bello civili demonstrate erudition most probably obtainable only within the schoolroom setting, rather than a superficial knowledge of the poem. Medieval authors who quoted the De bello civili did not limit themselves to a few specific passages, as would be expected if they simply copied well-known sections of the poem from florilegia. In total, medieval authors cited 3870 verses out of the 8060 that embody the poem - an extremely varied selection. ⁵ There are over 400 extant manuscripts of the De bello civili and a majority of them are glossed—a sure sign that Lucan's poem was used for didactic purposes. ⁶

Beinecke MS. 332, an Italian codex dating from the late twelfth century, contains many characteristics and devices suggesting its function as a student's textbook. ⁷ Factors that indicate the codex wasindeed a student's copy include its large numbers of glossators, the poor quality of its parchment, lack of decoration or illumination, line numbering, and rubricked headings. ⁸ MS. 332's commentary is extensive, comprised of both interlinear and marginal notation written by eleven primary glossing hands. The glosses date from the late twelfth century to the sixteenth century. Chronologically the hands may be divided as follows: there are three glossators from the late twelfth and thirteenth century, three from the fourteenth century, three from the fifteenth...