De la penitance Adam by Colard Mansion (review)

Sylviane Messerli’s edition makes available an interesting and hitherto under-studied vernacular translation and compilation of three linked prose narratives tracing the history of Adam and Eve during and after the expulsion from Paradise, and the history of the wood that would ultimately form the True Cross from Old Testament times to New. Commissioned by one of the most influential literary patrons and book collectors of the late-fifteenth-century Low Countries, Louis de Gruuthuse of Bruges, the translation from Latin was (at least in part, Messerli shows) undertaken by Colard Mansion, as was the production of the presentation manuscript for de Gruuthuse. Mansion was himself an important figure in the landscape of Brugeois book production and trade. Exercising the overlapping and complementary roles of author, translator, scribe, and, later, printer between c. 1457 and 1484, Mansion collaborated with other entrepreneurial figures, such as William Caxton, to produce a range of vernacular texts in print, as well as undertaking scribal and translatorly commissions. Messerli’s edition and discussion of the three linked narratives that make up De la penitance Adam, and her detailed analysis of the three remaining manuscript witnesses to the text, thus open up a window on a peculiarly fruitful moment in Brugeois literary history, and suggest a closely connected coterie of readers for this particular work: one, possibly two, of the surviving manuscripts was de Gruuthuse’s own, bearing a frontispiece featuring a presentation scene possibly including de Gruuthuse’s son next to him, while the third was owned by a close associate of de Gruuthuse, Jan III de Baenst. Messerli’s edition is clear and well presented and is equipped with a manageable critical apparatus, an extremely useful index of proper names giving both textual references and explanatory glosses, and a detailed modern French summary of the narrative content of the work. She retains the division into chapters found in her base manuscripts, and adds references that facilitate comparison with the relevant editions of Latin source texts where possible. Her insightful introductory commentary on the text’s production, its theological and devotional emphases, and its circulation should inspire interest in this work from a wealth of critical perspectives. For example, the discussion of Mansion’s translatorly technique (and also the discussion of variants) forms a fascinating example of what we might term a ‘close’ or deliberately Latinate translation practice: scholars of medieval translation are increasingly interested in unpicking the potential semantic and aesthetic significations of this kind of vernacular translation, and are less keen than formerly to write such work off as derivative or unoriginal. A second example is found in Messerli’s brief but exciting analysis of typology within the text: those interested in the weaving together of biblical and apocryphal narrative; in medieval comprehension of the complex relationships between sin, suffering, salvation, and redemption; and in the processes by which literary compilation techniques can construct parallels, connections, and antitheses to undertake detailed theological discussion will find this edition to be an excellent resource.