Le Livre de Boece de Consolacion: revision of the translation in some later manuscripts

Le Livre de Boece de Consolacion: revision of the translation in some later manuscripts* Latin commentaries and vernacular translations are an integral part of the medieval transmission of the Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius. Of the twelve or thirteen distinct French translations undertaken between the thirteenth andfifteenthcenturies,1 Le Livre de Boece de Consolacion which is contained in sixty-four known extant manuscripts can be judged the most popular.2 It seems to have originated in Paris: the oldest manuscript Dijon, Bibliotheque publique, 525, is dated Paris 1362, and the next oldest, Paris, Bibliotheque nationale, fr. 1728, was copied by Henri du Trevou, possibly for Charles V (1364-80). It is associatedtextuallywith two other translations—a slightly earlier anonymous verse-prose translation and the verse translation of Renaut de Louhans3 —and, through its prologue and one or two occasional features of its evolution, with the prose translation of Jean de Meun (in the oldest manuscriptforexample, the verse-prose translation lacks a prologue and stops at V, metre 2, and the remainder is the prose translation of Jean de Meun; in the next oldest manuscript the verse-prose translation is complete and enhanced by Jean de Meun's prologue4 ). While intended for the laity, the translation of Le Livre de Boece de Consolacion was augmented with glosses selected and translated mainly from a compilation of William of Conches' commentary on the Consolatio.5 This stage in its development occuned before 1383, when the unglossed version was already in circulation. However, sixteen manuscripts of the unglossed translation against forty-eight of the glossed indicate the greater popularity of the * An earlier version of this article was read at the Second International Conference the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, held at the University of Wales, Cardiff, August 1989; I am grateful to Dr Roger Ellis for his valuable comments. 1 A. Thomas and M. Roques, 'Traductions francaises de la Consolatio philosophiae de Boece', Histoire Littdraire de la France 37, Paris, 1938, pp. 419-88; R.A. Dwyer, Boethian Fictions: Narratives in the Medieval French Versions of the Consolatio philosophiae, Cambridge, M A , 1976, pp. 129-31. 2 Glynnis M. Cropp, 'Les Manuscrits du Livre de Boece de Consolacion', Revue d'Histoire des Textes 12-13 (1982-83), 263-352. 3 J. Keith Atkinson and Glynnis M. Cropp, 'Trois Traductions de la Consolatio philosophiae de Boece', Romania 106 (1985), 198-232. 4 Glynnis M. Cropp, 'Le Prologue de Jean de Meun et Le Livre de Boece de Consolacion', Romania 103 (1982), 278-98. 5 The compilation, sometimes entitled Commentum domini Linconiensis, is found in the manuscript N e w York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M222, which is studied here. See also Glynnis M. Cropp, 'Les Gloses du Livre de Boece de Consolacion', Le Moyen Age 42 (1986), 367-81. 18 G. Cropp latter, which was still being produced, according to a date attached to one manuscript as late as 1497. In an essay in The Medieval Boethius,6 I situated Le Livre de Boece de Consolacion in its cultural and historical environment, and, through a study of the prologue, the verse and prose styles, and the glosses, I described the evolution from translation to glossed text. To complete that study, I wish now to examine the revision of the translation found in three manuscripts of the second half of thefifteenthcentury (all of them glossed). These are: 1. The Ysendyke, Private Collection manuscript (1460-70), probably copied by David Aubert's atelier, possibly for a member of the de Croy family, to w h o m it certainly belonged ca 1600. It was sold at Sotheby's, London, in 1973 and is now privately owned.7 2. Jena, Universitatsbibliothek, El. f.85, which is signed by David Aubert and dated 1476, and was copied at Ghent for the Duchess of Burgundy, Margaret of York, who had come to Bruges in 1468 to marry the Duke, Charles le T6meraire. The manuscript has been in Jena since 1558.8 3. N e w York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M222, which was copied in the second half of the fifteenth century for the Bissari family of Vicenza, in northern Italy. It has six illuminations, and the glossed...