Dictaminis Ephithalamium (The Marriage Song of Letter Writing) (review)

In spite of the importance of manuals of letter writing to medieval rhetoric, those interested in the topic have been limited to few editions and fewer translations. The recent translation of Juan Gil de Zamora’s Dictaminis Ephithalamium (The Marriage Song of Letter Writing) provides an accessible text in English for researchers as well as graduate and undergraduate students. The volume includes an introductory study by Richard McNabb and a translation by David Hirsch. The translation is the first of a work previously only available in Latin and, as McNabb indicates in an earlier article describing plans for the present volume, answers Richard Leo Eno’s call to “expand our knowledge of the history of rhetoric” (225). As such it is a welcome addition to the field and should make this text much more accessible to scholars and students alike.

Juan Gil de Zamora is one of the more important intellectual figures of thirteenth-century Iberia. Although relatively little is known about many of the details of his life, what is certain is that he moved in very high royal and ecclesiastic circles. Gil was born around 1240, became a Franciscan around 1270 and studied in Paris from 1273 to 1278, as Faulhaber documents (104). Later in life he was vicar and then minister of the Franciscan province of Santiago until his death around 1318. He was likely confessor to Alfonso X and tutor to Sancho IV. He was the author of numerous devotional, historical and didactic works. The Dictaminis Ephithalamium is among his didactic works.

This translation is based on Faulhaber’s edition and includes an introductory study that situates the work in the European ars dictaminis tradition. McNabb provides a short biography of Juan Gil before dealing with the Dictaminis Ephithalamium, which he classifies as a “non-narrative exempla” designed to provide ready and practical models to letter writers for a variety of situations (5). McNabb’s brief overview touches on the sources of the Dictaminis Ephithalamium, which draws from both the French and Italian ars dictaminis traditions, as well as classical authors, most likely cited from florilegia (10). The introduction also includes an analysis of Gil’s treatment of each of the five traditional parts of the letter, salutation, exordium, narration, petition and conclusion (11–18). The translation reads well and contains ample notes indicting sources of references to classical and medieval texts. Gil’s text is divided into six chapters, the first four of which cover praise and blame of virtues and vices, either for specific people or as abstract concepts. Chapter 5 discusses the parts of the letter, and chapter 6 provides examples of different types of letters. The volume also has a bibliography.

The Dictaminis Ephithalamium is certainly a thorough and well-executed study and translation. The introduction is a concise overview of the genre, and both it and the text of the Dictaminis Ephithalamium itself read well. However, given that this text had been previously published in Latin and much of the introductory material is drawn from previously published studies of medieval rhetoric, the real value of this volume lies most likely not in what it brings to specialists in the ars dictaminis, but in what it contributes to other areas of medieval literature and culture, and especially in its potential in the classroom. Obviously it would be useful for a class on the history of rhetoric, as well as for classes on Church history, monasticism or medieval intellectual history in general. Because of both Gil’s importance in his own time and his systematic treatment of virtues and vices, the Dictaminis Ephithalamium seems to be an obvious point of comparison for the Libro de buen amor; as a didactic text, it has a great deal to add to our understanding of many works from the vernacular and Latin.