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The Reception of Censorinus, De Die Natali, in Pre-Renaissance Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
Extract
De Die Natali is an obscure little treatise on human life, the influence of the planets and the divisions of time, written by the Roman grammarian Censorinus and dedicated to Q. Caerellius for his forty-ninth birthday in A.D. 238. It was not a very popular work before the fifteenth century, and there is no reason why it should have been. Even its Italian revival was probably due to its brevity, which encouraged its copying as an adjunct to the larger, more interesting works which accompanied it in the earliest manuscripts. The increasing popularity of astrology may also have influenced its dissemination during the Renaissance. It was not, however, completely lost from sight during Europe’s first millennium. The study of its early transmission and use throws some interesting light upon the revival of classical literature in that period, though it is unlikely to improve the state in which the text has come down to us.
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- Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1980
References
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15 On the dates and provenance of these two see Bischoff, B.Die südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der Karolingerzeit 13 (Wiesbadèn 1974), 90, 119 and n. 1Google Scholar (referring to Clm 6404 in error for 6406), 120.
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17 Thulin (‘Exzerptenhandschriften’ 48) maintained that Clm 6406 and 14836 were copied from 13084, but my own collation of the Censorinus extracts in these three manuscripts suggests that this could hardly be the case.
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22 Ibid. 13–14; James, M.R.Catalogue of Western MSS. in the Library of Trinity College Cambridge (Cambridge 1901–4), 2. 349;Google Scholar the opinion on its earliest provenance I owe to Dr M. Lapidge of Cambridge University.
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27 I record variants of Tbn from the DV group, not from Hultsch’s printed text; that is, I have not given obvious errors common to TbnDV. The readings of bn were recorded for Hultsch by Halm, not entirely accurately (Hultsch, xii–xiii).
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31 There is no recent study of the Orleans schools in the twelfth century, but see Rouse, R.H. ‘Florilegia and Latin Classical Authors in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Orleans’, Viator 10 (1979), 131–60,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and R.H. and Rouse, M.A. ‘The Florilegium Angelicum’ 11 n. 1 for earlier literature.Google Scholar
32 32 On which see R.H. and M.A. Rouse, art. cit.
33 Manitius, Beeson and Ullman have wrought confusion by calling Hadoard’sflorilegium and the Florilegium Angelicum a single florilegium compiled by Censorinus. The matter is clarified by R.H. and M.A. Rouse, 86–7.
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36 Idem, ‘The Reading of William of Malmesbury; Further Additions and Reflections’, Revue Bénédictine 89 (1979), 313–6.Google Scholar
37 Harl. begins at Hultsch p. 7 line 9 reperiri. Specimen readings: with V (and its ninth-century corrector V2) line 17 atque; hac; line 20 esse natos; p. 9 line 10 exortus as V2 in marg. Emendations: p. 9 line 11 lucumones D correctly: lucum honestum V; artem honestius Harl.; line 18 adiri DV; oriri Harl. Hultsch; p. 10 lines 20–1 uniueri DV: uniuersi Harl. Hultsch; line 21 arbitrantur V: arbitrentur D ante ras. Harl. Hultsch.
38 Omont, H. ‘Anciens catalogues des bibliothèques anglaises’, Centralblattfur Biblio-Jhekswesen 9 (1892), 215 no. 288.Google Scholar
* I wish to thank Mme G. Contamine of the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, Paris, for information about Censorinus MSS., Dr M. Lapidge of Cambridge University for collating the Trinity College MS. and for offering his opinion of its date and provenance, and Professor R.H. Rouse of the University of California, Los Angeles, for reading a draft of this paper and offering suggestions and helpful criticisms.