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239 A P P E N D I X C Translation of Arnau of Vilanova’s Epistola ad gerentes zonam pelliceam This “Letter” was long known in only one incomplete manuscript copy, with some grounds for caution as to whether it was really the work of Arnau of Vilanova. Recent study of a second manuscript, however, has removed all doubt and has shown not only that this text was composed by Arnau but also that it must have been written toward the very end of his life. The work was first known to scholarship in the now-incomplete version found at the end of BAV lat. 3824,1 the grand compilation of Arnau’s Latin theological and apologetic works that he had prepared for Clement V by August 1305. An incomplete copy of the “Letter” is found on the last extant folios of this book (fols. 262–63), in a separate hand from that of the rest of the volume. This change of hand demonstrates that it was added on after 1305 but might seem to leave open the possibility that the “Letter” could have had nothing to do with Arnau; a later scribe could have copied it at the end of this manuscript simply to use up available blank folios. A more plausible hypothesis, however, would be that Arnau wrote his Epistola after 1305 and sent or gave a copy to the curia, where it was copied into the back of the manuscript that represented Arnau’s “collected works” (the manuscript surely did once contain the whole text; the last section has been lost because of a later removal of a concluding quire). Moreover, it seems highly likely that this copying probably did not occur until after the papal curia’s move to Avignon in 1309, where Arnau spent time in 1309 and 1310, just at the time of Guiard of Cressonessart’s incarceration, testimony, and sentencing.2 Recent work by Josep Perarnau on the second known manuscript , Genoa, Biblioteca Universitària, Gaslini, ms. A IX 27, confirms the work’s “Arnaldian” origins.3 The second section of this manuscript (fols. 99–132) was once an independent booklet, and Perarnau has shown that all the texts that make up this section either were very likely written by Arnau or were connected to him.4 The texts that made up this booklet must first have been copied together toward the very end of Arnau’s life (after 1310), and further copies may have been disseminated from Arnau’s “scriptorium” in Catalonia. Not only does the manuscript section in question show Catalan orthographical traits, but it was later owned and annotated by the “Renaissance magus” Pierleone of Spoleto (d. 1492), who is known to have acquired other manuscripts from Valencia.5 Thus this text was transmitted to the papal court but also prepared for circulation along with several of Arnau’s other late tracts. Internal evidence strengthens our certainty of Arnau’s authorship. For one thing, the author seems to have long personal experience with accusations of heresy—few authors were more habituated to defending themselves from such charges than Arnau. More conclusive is the extent to which this treatise develops language and ideas found in Arnau’s authentic writings. The opening words, for example (Cunctis viuere volentibus in euuangelica paupertate), are nearly identical with the beginnings of both of his main vernacular works of spiritual guidance for beguins.6 Just as strikingly, the fourfold division of the work (poverty, humility, charity, chastity) appears repeatedly in Arnau’s works, for example as the four “building blocks of the faith” laid out in the dedicatory letter to Clement V of 1305,7 or as the four “horns” of the true religion of Christ described in his commentary on the Book of Revelation in 1306.8 More generally, the main ideas put forth here return to Christo-centric and evangelical themes favored by Arnau, both in vernacular works such as the Informatio beguinorum (Lliço de Narbona ) and Latin works such as the Philosophia catholica et divina. Parallels are particularly pronounced with two of Arnau’s late treatises (surviving in Italian translations), a Tractatus de caritate (written for a 240 THE BEGUINE, THE ANGEL, AND THE INQUISITOR female religious) and a brief tract with the incipit “Per ciò che molti desiderano di sapero.”9 The notes provided by the work’s modern editors (Cartaregia and Perarnau) detail these congruencies in convincing detail and need not be repeated here. Taken together, these multiple indications...

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