In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Appendix Problems in the Manuscript Tradition of the Letters of Peter of Blois Peter of Blois’ letters remain among the most challenging sources for twelfth-century history because of the instability and general difficulty of their textual history. The present study, for the convenience of both author and reader, has referred to the nineteenth-century edition in J.-P. Migne’s Patrologiae Latinae Cursus Completus (which was based on that of J. A. Giles, not cited here also for convenience, since it is considerably less common than the PL in non-British libraries), when necessary referring to important manuscripts and past work on them by scholars.1 In the preface to an edition of one of Peter’s later treatises, R. B. C. Huygens neatly summarized the problems with the Patrologia version, complaining that it “manque presque totalement de méthode critique, elle fourmille d’inexactitudes, l’orthographe est arbitraire, pas d’apparat critique ni de relèvé des sources, indications tout à fait insuffisantes sur les manuscrites utilisés.”2 Moreover, the available editions, most of which can be traced to Goussainville’s 1667 effort, obscure the evidence of Peter of Blois’s own editorial work on his collection. Only a scholar familiar with recent textual studies and with some access to reliable manuscripts can read and interpret the letters with confidence. This appendix is offered to address concerns about the reliability of the available texts and to provide (1) a 269 1. J.-P. Migne, ed., Petri Blesensis Opera Omnia, Patrologia Latina, vol. 207 (Paris, 1855); J. A. Giles, ed., Petri Blesensis Archidiaconi Opera Omnia (London: Whittakeruni, 1846–1847). Both of these editions depend on that of Pierre de Goussainville, ed., Petri Blesensis Opera Omnia (Paris: Simeonis Piget, 1667 & 1672). There were three earlier editions of the correspondence: Epistolae Petri Blesensis (Brussells: Fratres Vitae Communis, ca. 1480), now available in the microfilm series Books Printed in the Low Countries before 1601, roll 330, item 3; Jacques Merlinus, ed., Petri Blesensis Divinarum ac Humanarum Litterarum Viri ad Modum Copiossissimi Insignia Opera (Paris, 1519); and Johannis Busaeus , ed., Opera Petri Blesensis (Mainz: J. Albini, 1600 & 1618). 2. R. B. C. Huygens, introduction to Dialogus inter regem Henricum secundum et abbatem Bonevallis, 377. 270 Problems in the Manuscript Tradition clearer understanding of the problems surrounding the manuscripts, and (2) a methodological underpinning for a sensible reading of the letters’ contents. To achieve these ends, it provides an overview of the past century of scholarship on the letters, followed by a summary of hypotheses about the development of Peter’s collection, concluding with a brief set of practical conclusions to aid those who approach the letters while the promised edition is prepared for the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis series.3 The Manuscripts and the Scholars The long-awaited edition has been so long in coming mainly because the manuscripts present difficulties that at times seem insurmountable. Numerous textual variants appear throughout the entire corpus, and the extant copies vary greatly as to the order in which the letters appear, and as to their contents. Even a cursory survey of lists of extant manuscripts of the letters of Peter of Blois points to the author’s great popularity in the later Middle Ages as at least part of the cause for confusion. Around three-hundred copies of the collection currently reside in the libraries of some sixteen European countries from Ireland to Russia,4 and the dates suggest that the letters were continuously copied right up to the advent of the printing press, especially in Germany. Giles Constable has noted that later medieval mystical writers took an especial interest in Peter’s oeuvre.5 While the letters of his contemporaries like John of Salisbury languished in a handful of manuscripts, Peter’s only grew in popularity throughout the Middle Ages. In this massive group of manuscripts one can find very few with identical contents and readings; past editors (most of whom were aware of not more than fifty or so manuscripts) tended to conflate all the possible readings of a given letter into a single, often awkward, piece, thus obscuring the fact that Peter significantly revised several letters. Critical sifting of the letters, beginning with the work of E. S. Cohn in 1926, has shown that the manuscripts can be sorted into clearly distinguishable groups based on letter order, contents (the letters included in a given copy), and readings (the actual text of a given letter). It is now clear that, of the letters printed in...

Share