Le 'Racional des divins offices' de Guillaume Durand. Livre IV: La messe, Les 'Prologues' et le 'Traité du sacre'. Liturgie, spiritualité et royauté: une exégèse allégorique (review)

This is the first edition of Book IV of Jean Golein's version, completed by 1371, of Durandus of Mende's Rationale divinorum officiorum (1291), a highly influential and often-printed treatise offering historical and mystical interpretations of liturgical ceremony. Golein's Book IV describes the practice and symbolism of the Mass, with constant attention to both mysticism and the fulfilment of the Old Covenant by the New. Its interest is wide: for liturgical and ecclesiastical history; as a fourteenth-century French response to and transposition of thirteenth-century Latin rhetoric and exegesis, illuminating by the method as well as the content of the adaptation; for its many lexical innovations to express the new material; and for its political significance as a work of nationalistic and monarchic propaganda produced for Charles V and his court, which integrates the king into the symbolism of the liturgy and praises him through the text. The edition is extremely thorough. A 250-page Introduction presents Golein's life, work, literary and spiritual personality, and Durandus's life, work, and influence, then analyses the text chapter by chapter, summarizing it and showing Golein's method as translator and commentator, and the relation of the French text to the Latin. Golein's language and style, especially syntax and lexis, are discussed in detail to show his contribution to the development of Middle French. Of the nine extant manuscripts, five are used to establish the text, while the others, together with a printed edition of 1503, are cited occasionally; all are described. The base MS, X (Paris, BnF, f. fr. 437), though not the oldest, is chosen because it belonged to Charles V and has additions revealing its connection to the king and his court. Variants are analysed to show the linguistic relationship between X and ABCD. There is a long bibliography. Golein's text is presented in great detail and complexity. Variants from ABCD and sometimes from other manuscripts are given, and rejected readings made clear and justified. The corresponding paragraph numbers of Durandus are given for each paragraph of Golein to facilitate comparison and to show where he expands or abbreviates. There are textual, philological, and explanatory footnotes, variants at the end of the text, and a substantial glossary. The complexity of presentation (incorporating numbers for chapters, paragraphs, sentences, footnotes, folios, and Durandus's paragraphs, variants keyed only to sentences, and bold type to indicate corrections) is a price worth paying for the wealth of information. The glossary gives much linguistic and historical information. The only caveat is the large number of obvious typographical errors in the modern French editorial matter, which does not inspire confidence in the reliability of the Middle French text. The glossary certainly has mistakes: for example, vachecte for the text's vachete, the mistyped form being contrasted with 'vachete' in Tobler-Lommatzsch, Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch; under habitacle the quotation is garbled by two errors. I cannot check the transcription of the base manuscript, but MS C^a confirms that Latin 'donc ponam' on p. 384 should read 'donec'. It is a pity that such blemishes cast shadows on this monumental work.