Juvenal was one of the most widely read authors of the Middle Ages, as shown by the considerable number of surviving manuscripts of as well as commentaries on his poetic corpus. Among the latter, those ascribed to Heiric (ca. 841-ca. 876) and Remigius (Remi) (ca. 841-908) stand out as a turning point in the history of the post-classical reception of the Satirist. In fact, the extent and significance of Heiric’s contribution are far from being clearly assessed; as far as Remigius is concerned, however, it seems fair to link the versions of the Carolingian commentaries on Juvenal conventionally referred to by modern scholars as φχ to other commentaries on classical authors that can safely be attributed to Remigius. Needless to say, the project of understanding Juvenal proved a quite demanding task to men of letters such as Remigius and Heiric. Not only was the text of Juvenal crammed with references and allusions to historical events and characters, unknown locations and habits (not to mention the Graecisms and the hapax legomena); the text itself was ultimately unreliable, as it would have been for a long time, at least until the edition published by Pierre Pithou in 1585. These circumstances may account for the way the Carolingian commentators were inclined to assembling as much information as possible on a given text or subject, rather than focusing first and foremost on the reliability and consistency of their materials – an approach whose weaknesses were partly compensated by the unintended consequence of making available an encyclopedic (if idiosyncratic) repository of classical knowledge to be fruitfully used also by non-Juvenal scholars.
Leggere senza capire: i commenti carolingi a Giovenale
GRAZZINI, STEFANO
2016-01-01
Abstract
Juvenal was one of the most widely read authors of the Middle Ages, as shown by the considerable number of surviving manuscripts of as well as commentaries on his poetic corpus. Among the latter, those ascribed to Heiric (ca. 841-ca. 876) and Remigius (Remi) (ca. 841-908) stand out as a turning point in the history of the post-classical reception of the Satirist. In fact, the extent and significance of Heiric’s contribution are far from being clearly assessed; as far as Remigius is concerned, however, it seems fair to link the versions of the Carolingian commentaries on Juvenal conventionally referred to by modern scholars as φχ to other commentaries on classical authors that can safely be attributed to Remigius. Needless to say, the project of understanding Juvenal proved a quite demanding task to men of letters such as Remigius and Heiric. Not only was the text of Juvenal crammed with references and allusions to historical events and characters, unknown locations and habits (not to mention the Graecisms and the hapax legomena); the text itself was ultimately unreliable, as it would have been for a long time, at least until the edition published by Pierre Pithou in 1585. These circumstances may account for the way the Carolingian commentators were inclined to assembling as much information as possible on a given text or subject, rather than focusing first and foremost on the reliability and consistency of their materials – an approach whose weaknesses were partly compensated by the unintended consequence of making available an encyclopedic (if idiosyncratic) repository of classical knowledge to be fruitfully used also by non-Juvenal scholars.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
