Books of Knowledge in Late Medieval Europe: Circulation and Reception of Popular Texts

0549887 - FLÚ 2022 RIV BE eng M - Monography Chapter
Blažek, Pavel - Řezníčková, Barbora
The Pseudo-Bernardine Epistola de cura rei familiaris and its Reception in Medieval Bohemia and Moravia.
Books of Knowledge in Late Medieval Europe: Circulation and Reception of Popular Texts. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021 - (Cermanová, P.; Žůrek, V.), s. 85-135. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 52. ISBN 978-2-503-59463-7
Institutional support: RVO:67985955 ; RVO:68378092
Keywords : Household treatises * Bernard of Clairvaux * medieval manuscripts * medieval bestseller
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings); Linguistics (UJC-A)
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.USML-EB.5.125788

Another medieval ‘book of knowledge’ to have enjoyed a very large diffusion in the late medieval and early modern periods, was the Epistola de cura rei familiaris, a short letter treatise attributed typically to Bernard of Clairvaux and containing moral and practical advice for lay householders on how to govern themselves and their households. The text was diffused both in its Latin original as well as in numerous vernacular translations. The first part of the present study offers a survey of the history of the Epistola de cura rei familiaris in medieval and early modern Europe based on existing studies on the text. The second part analyses the Epistola’s hitherto unstudied reception, both Latin and vernacular, in medieval Bohemia and Moravia. The focus is on the manuscript diffusion of the Epistola in the medieval Czech lands, its uses by medieval Czech authors, and on its oldest full Czech translation of which it provides the first comprehensive analysis. The two appendices contain an updated bibliography of modern studies and editions of the text and a census of Bohemian and Moravian manuscripts transmitting it.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0325779