Article. Michael M. Gorman. Source Marks and Chapter Divisions in Bede’s Commentary on Luke. 2002.
Source Marks and Chapter Divisions in Bede’s Commentary on Luke.
Michael M. Gorman.
Michael M. Gorman. Source Marks and Chapter Divisions in Bede’s Commentary on Luke. Revue Bénédictine, Volume 112, Issue 3-4, pp. 246-290. 2002.While preparing his edition Josse Bade was fascinated by the fact that Bede indicated his sources by placing source marks in the margin of his commentaries on Luke and Mark, and he wondered why he could not find manuscripts of other commentaries by Bede in libraries in Paris which displayed the same feature. Except for his De locis sanctis, Bede employed source marks only in his commentaries on Luke and Mark. Here too it was M.L.W. Laistner who led the way. In 1933 an illuminating article from his pen explained how the extant manuscripts confirm what Bede wrote in the preface to his commentary on Luke :
Soon after reading the letter of your holiness, I dedicated myself to the task you gave me. Thanks to the long rope of monastic servitude, I could do what I wanted and was both notarius and librarius. Once the most famous and most worthy works of the fathers had been brought to me, I set out to determine what Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory (the apostle of our people), Jerome (the commentator on sacred history) and other fathers had thought and written about Luke’s Gospel. As you had ordered me, I wrote down on slips of parchment (schedulis) either their exact words or my summaries of what they said. Since it was tiresome to insert their full names to indicate what each author had written, it was easier to use the first two letters of their names [that is, AM, AV, GR, HR] to indicate the source, entering the first letter in the margin at the beginning of each citation and the second letter at the end of each citation. I was worried that someone might say that I had stolen the sayings of the fathers and that I had composed these citations myself. If by chance this work is considered worthy of being copied, by the Lord I beg and beseech my readers to remember to copy out these source marks (nominum signa) which they will find in my xemplar. Vnde et ego mox lectis tuae dulcissimae sanctitatis paginulis iniuncti me operis labori subposui, in quo ut innumera monasticae seruitutis retinacula praeteream ipse mihi dictator simul notarius et librarius existerem. Aggregatisque hinc inde quasi insignissimis ac dignissimis tanti muneris artificibus, opusculis patrum, quid beatus Ambrosius, quid Augustinus, quid denique Gregorius uigilantissimus iuxta suum nomen nostrae gentis apostolus, quid Hieronymus sacrae interpres historiae, quid caeteri patres in beati Lucae uerbis senserint, quid dixerint, diligentius inspicere sategi, mandatumque continuo schedulis ut iussisti, uel ipsis eorum syllabis, uel certe meis breuiandi causa sermonibus, ut uidebatur edidi. Quorum quia operosum erat uocabula interserere per singula et quid a quo auctore sit dictum, nominatim ostendere, commodum duxi eminus e latere primas nominum litteras inprimere, perque has uiritim ubi cuiusque patrum incipiat, ubi sermo quem transtuli desinat, intimare, sollicitus per omnia, ne maiorum dicta furari, et haec quasi mea propria componere dicar. Multumque obsecro, et per dominum legentes obtestor, ut si qui forte nostra haec qualiacumque sunt opuscula transcriptione digna duxerint, memorata quoque nominum signa, ut in nostro exemplari repperiunt, adfigere meminerint.
Michael M. Gorman. Source Marks and Chapter Divisions in Bede’s Commentary on Luke. 2002. by Venerabilis Bedae Studiosus on Scribd
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