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Mark Vessey Theory, or the Dre am of the Book (Mall armé to Bl anchot) The Early Christian Book between History and Theory A sickly young monk is sent to convalesce in a city not far from his island monastery. His hosts hire a tutor to give him lessons in grammar and rhetoric. One night he falls asleep over his book. As he sleeps, he dreams that his arm is being devoured. The Latin is insinuating: videt . . . bracchium quo innixus fuerat codici DRACONE CONLIGANTE conrodi. “He sees the arm on which he was leaning against the book being gnawed by a serpent that was coiling itself about [him].”1 Or by a serpent that was coiled about the book. Or (making best sense of the first con- prefix) by a serpent that wound itself about him and the book, joining them in a lethal embrace. The verb ligare in later Latin is also used of bookbindings. This book, a spine-hinged codex rather than a volumen or roll, was of a kind to be bound. And it appears to have found an unusually voluminous binding, as if the snake were guarding its contents against saintly intruders. The monk wakes up in a sweat, upbraids himself for trying “to join the light of the rule of salvation with the foolish wisdom of the world,” and forswears all future contact with pagan literature.2 241 1. Uncredited translations are mine. 2. Vita Caesarii 1.9, in Germain Morin, ed., Sancti Caesarii Episcopi Arelatensis Opera Omnia, 2 vols. (Maredsous, 1937–1942), 2:299–300; William E. Klingshirn, trans., Caesarius of Arles: Life, Testament , Letters (Liverpool, 1994), 13–14. The monk’s name was Caesarius. The island he left behind in the early 490s was one of the little group known then as now by the name of Lérins, on the Côte d’Azur. The monastery had been founded early in the century by Honoratus , who was said to have purged the island of snakes.3 The city to which Caesarius came for his health was Arles, where he would abide for the remaining fifty years of his life, forty of them as bishop and metropolitan. The wellinformed authors of the Life of Caesarius, one of whom may have been related to the sponsor of the ill-fated literature lessons, go on to describe the bishop’s prowess as a Christian orator and expositor of scripture. A tireless preacher, he took care to have copies made of the sermons he delivered, so that other clerics could use them in their churches.4 The preface to one set of sermons advises its users to heed its contents and make them available to others: I urge this [says the preacher] because there are many people, including perhaps some dedicated to a religious lifestyle, who like to own a number of shiny and beautifully bound books [libros . . . nitidos et pulchre ligatos], yet keep them shut up in cupboards, neither reading them themselves nor lending them to others to read. They fail to observe that there is no point in our owning books if the obstacles of this world prevent us from reading them. For a nicely bound and shiny book [liber . . . bene coopertus et nitidus], so long as it remains unread, does not make a shiny soul, whereas one that is constantly read, and on account of frequent handling [et pro eo quod saepe revolvitur] ceases to be beautiful without, makes the soul beautiful within.5 In another place, Caesarius exhorts his listeners to constant conversation with God through the medium of the sacred text. Such reading or hearing is prophylactic : “Now see if the devil can creep up on someone whom he sees intently talking with God.”6 By maintaining intimate contact with God-in-scripture, 3. Hilary of Arles, Vita Honorati 15 (SC 235:106–110): Fugit horror solitudinis, cedit turba serpentium —an episode in Lerinian mythology that surely contributed to the dream of Caesarius. 4. Vita Caesarii 1.52, 55. See further William E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1994), 73–74 (the dream), 146–51 (Caesarius as preacher), 183–84 (preaching, the Bible, and literacy in early sixth-century Gaul). 5. Caesarius, Serm. 2, ed. Germain Morin (CCSL 103:18). The theme is ancient; see Seneca, De tranquillitate animi 9.6 for the Roman gentleman dozing over his books, cui voluminum suorum frontes maxime placent titulique. Also Jerome, Ep. 22.32...

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