An Ordinal of Christ in Medieval

Extract

In the later Middle Ages, scholars frequently translated ancient and medieval Latin texts into various vernacular languages, and the text studied here provides an example of this. Widely copied and modifi ed throughout the Middle Ages, the little text, called an Ordinal of Christ, appears in over eighty versions and has a threefold significance. First, it turns up as the first reported example of an Ordinal of Christ in Catalan. Second, the version of the text does not belong to a high or late medieval tradition, such as one might expect in a late medieval manuscript, but goes back at least to the ninth and tenth centuries in the early Middle Ages. Third, the text parallels a version found largely in southern Italy and thus illustrates the contacts and connections between Catalonia and southern Italy throughout the Middle Ages.