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Paul C. Burns THE WRITINGS OF HILARY OF POITIERS IN MEDIEVAL BRITAIN FROMC. 700 TO C 1330l Recent scholarship on extant manuscripts, medieval library lists, and quotations of sources enables us to track particular traditions or authors on the interpretation of biblical texts and theological issues from the Early Church through the MiddleAges. This paper investigates theevidence for the presence in Britain of the writings of Hilary, the bishop of Poitiers from c. 350 to 367, and suggests some reasons for their presence. Not all of the evidence is equally strong. The period under consideration ranges from the very beginning of the eighth century to the first third of the fourteenth century. During his episcopacy Hilary had produced a variety of texts dealing with exegesis of Scripture and with the theological issue of the Trinity; in addition, he wrote a dossier of documents, a collection of hymns, and polemical pamphlets aimed atthe Emperor Constantiusand at Auxentius,the bishop of Milan.2 The precise wording of some of the titles of individual works in the literary corpus of Hilary presents difficulties. Sometimes the conventional title follows clear evidence from Hilary himself; other titles seem to originate in later manuscript traditions; still others are assigned by bibliographical reports such as that of Jerome, which will figure at a later stage of this article.3 1present conventional titles for Hilary's works, which will be employed throughout this paper. His exegetical works comprise the Commentarii in Matthaeum,4 the Liber de Mysteriis,5 and the Tractatus super Psalmos.6 His theological works are the De Trinitate,1 and the Liber de Synodis* His polemical works consist of the Libellus in Constantium9 andLibellus contraAuxentium.10 Includedamongthe polemical workscould be an unsuccessful appeal to the Emperor, the Libellus (II) ad Constantium.l} The dossier of documents with commentarybyHilary can be called the Libri tres adversum Valentem et Ursacium.12 There is the Liber 201 FROMARABYE TO ENGELOND Hymnorum,13 and the various Epistulae, though these are falsely attributed to Hilary. Material from all of these titles does appear in Medieval Britain with the exception of the complex dossier entitled Libri tres adversum Valentem et Ursacium and the Liber de Mystems.^ Hilary's significant exegetical and theological contributions were overshadowed by the writings of Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome in the generation after him.Nonetheless, both Augustineand Jeromeheld Hilaryin high regard, although for slightly different reasons. Augustine valued Hilary's contributions to theological issues;15 Jerome acknowledged his contribution to the exegesis of scriptural texts.16 Augustine's practice of formulating theological arguments based ontheological predecessors, whom he cites from different places and times inthe Church, establishes Hilary as an authority for later generations. Jerome's De Viris Illustribus may have had some influence on the library collections including at least one centrein Britain and will be noted in that context. Manuscripts of Hilary's works show up frequently in French monastic and cathedral centres throughout the Middle Ages.17 To my knowledge, no systematic study has been undertaken on the presence of his writings in Britain. In this paper, Itherefore seek to identify the presence of his writings in monastic and cathedral libraries duringthe Anglo-Saxon period and after the Norman Conquest. The modern critical editions of Hilary's writings rest onthe evidence of increasing numbersof manuscripts. Manyofthese manuscripts can be dated and their places of origin determined. This particular study seeks to identify any evidence for the presence in Britain of Hilary's texts between the eighth and early fourteenth centuries. The somewhat dated edition of the Tractatus super Psalmos,published in 1891, rests onseven manuscripts from thistime frame. It also employs two from the sixth century and one from the fifteenth century. The Commentarii inMatthaeum, publishedmuchlater (in 1978and 1979), employs twelve manuscripts from this period. But so far there is no evidence that any of this material originated in a scriptorium in Britain or was to be found in a British library. The manuscript basis for the De Thnitate, published in 1979 and 1980, is much more extensive. Of the seventy-six manuscripts found bythe editor, six comefromthe earlier period of the fifth and sixth centuries while forty-three originate in the eighth to the fourteenth centuries (Smulders, "Remarks" 129-38).Noneofthese showany English connection. The only manuscripts employed in modern critical editions of Hilary currently in libraries in Great Britain are two from the fifteenth century, with the first one, at least, from the hand of an Italian 202 [3.15.218.254...

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