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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
The medieval versions in Greek and Latin of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat made generally available to Christian writers a considerable amount of Eastern story material. The legend itself enjoyed wide readership in these and vernacular languages, and individual episodes provided the basis for further expansion. The viability of the legend in this regard owes much to the ten moral tales, or apologues, which appear during the course of the main story. These little fables proved attractive to writers for centuries, throughout and even after the Middle Ages, and they have long engaged the efforts of scholars to trace their route from ancient India to the English Renaissance stage. The apologues merit attention, however, in the form in which they were used in the eleventh century, for their application in the hagiographical context provides an interesting example of post-Scriptural parables and the allegorical interpretation of what might be termed ‘romance’ materials. This paper seeks to examine the attitudes toward parable, allegory and romance implicit in the ten apologues of the Vita.
1 Scholarship on the legend and apologues has concentrated largely on the Indian sources and the mode of their transmission; on the authorship and date of the Greek version which made the material generally available; and, to a lesser extent, on the spread of the legend after the composition of the Greek version. The literature on all three points, and such others as have received attention, is covered in Ernst Kuhn's ‘Barlaam und Joasaph: Eine biblio graphisch-literargeschichtliche Studie,’ Abh. Akad. Munich 20 (1893) 1–87.Google Scholar
Since the publication of Kuhn's study, the problem of authorship and date has been the almost sole concern of scholars of the legend. The traditional attribution of the Greek version to John of Damascus (d. 749) has been challenged, and Euthymius (d. 1028), abbot of the Iberian monastery on Mt. Athos, has been suggested as the author. The most recent contribution to this study of the legend which I have seen is Paul Devos’ ‘Les origines du “Barlaam et Joasaph” grec,’ Analecta Bollandiana 75 (1957) 83–104, in which a further bibliographical summary is to be found in the notes. The position of the Bollandists and others, that Euthymius was the author, seems to me correct, although for the purposes of the present study the point is not crucial.
The Greek text is most readily available in the edition of Woodward G. R. and Mattingly H. in the Loeb Classical Library (London 1914). References in this article are to the sixteenth-century Latin text reprinted in PL 73.443–604. The text has been checked against the twelfth-century Latin translation of British Museum Additional MS 17,299, and important variations will be noted. On the whole, the later version represents a rendering of the Greek original entirely consistent with the medieval translation.
Mention should be made of the attractive and useful L’Illustration du roman de Barlaam et Joasaph, ed. Sirarpie der Nersessian (Paris 1937).
2 The apologue of the caskets, for example, is to be found in Decameron, tenth day, first tale, and Merchant of Venice 2.7.9. The apologue of the fowler appears in ‘Le Lai de l'Oiselet,’ ed. Gaston Paris, Légendes du Moyen Age (Paris 1903) 225–291, and in Lydgate's ‘The Churl and the Bird,’ ed. MacCracken, H. N. The Minor Poems of John Lydgate II (EETS OS 192; London 1934) 468–485. See further Kuhn, op. cit. 74–82, 87; Crane, T. F. (ed.), The Exempla … of Jacques de Vitry (London 1890) 137, 144, 150, 153, 168, 169–70, 185, 191; and note 17 below.Google Scholar
3 Conybeare, F. C. has noted some of the earlier formulations and arrangements of the apologues in ‘The Barlaam and Josaphat Legend …,’ Folk-Lore 7 (1896) 101–142. The similarities or differences of such versions need not concern us; it is the ordering and selection of the first widely-available Christian form of the legend which reflects current modes of thought about hagiographical literature, and which exerted its influence in the later Middle Ages. The intent of the author is most discernible in his product, not his sources.Google Scholar
4 The exemplary motive was, as the author suggests, common: it is mentioned in hagiographical prefaces by Palladius, Historia Lausiaca (PL 73.1085–6); Siviardus, Vita Carilefi (PL 74.1247), and Leontius, Vita Sancti Joannis Eleemosynarii (PL 73.339–40). Google Scholar
5 The role of heroic saintly accomplishment as a type of diurnal Christian endeavor is noted by Evelyn Lohr, Patristic Demonology in Old English Literature (New York 1949) 4–6. MS bene et conuenienter (fol. 15r). Google Scholar
6 MS stulte et insipiens (fol. 14r). Barlaam and Josaphat Google Scholar
8 MS fatuum (fol. 27r). Google Scholar
9 MS bona et admiranda (fol. 28v). 10 MS fols. 26r, 37v. Google Scholar
11 This use of ‘romance’ materials in a Christian moral fable was not by any means new even in the day of John of Damascus. The fifth-century Apophthegmata Patrum (PG 65.209) contains the following: There was a beautiful courtesan, who had many lovers, living in a certain city. The rector of the province offered her marriage if she would remain faithful to him. She agreed and became his wife. When her lovers came to call on her, they found her gone and followed her to her new abode, where they stood and whistled for her to come down to them. She, however, sealed her ears, and fled to the innermost room of the house. The courtesan, explains the teller ol the tale — a desert monk, like Barlaam — is the soul; her lovers, the passions; the rector, Christ; the inner room, the aeterna mansio; the whistlers, evil spirits; and thus does the faithful soul fly to God in time of temptation A similar apologue, but without the exegesis, appears op. cit. 208–9, where it is called a παϱαβολή. Josaphat uses the same term to describe the apologue of the unicorn (Woodward and Mattingly 190). Google Scholar
12 MS ‘uerus … et … bene coaptatus’ (fol. 37v). 13 MS congruis ac dignis (fol. 39r). Google Scholar
14 Barlaam relies heavily on Biblical parables, as well as the apologues, to enhance his didacticism. In addition to those already noted, he makes use of the parable of Dives and Lazarus (476AB); the wedding feast (ibid.); the wise and foolish virgins (477AB); the prodigal son (485D-486A), and the Good Shepherd (486AB), among others, at length. Briefer mentions of figurative Biblical passages abound, e.g., ‘vestri vero et capilli capitis omnes numerati sunt’ (477B; Matt. 10.30), in which he interprets ‘capilli’ as ‘minutissimas … considerationes animique cogitationes.’ The interpretation is suggested in Bede, In Matthaei S. Evangelium expositio 2.10 (PL 92.55B). Google Scholar
15 These ideas can be observed in the homilies of a contemporary of Euthymius, Ælfric of Eynsham, ed. Benjamin Thorpe, The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church (London 1844–6). Christ as Wisdom is found frequently, e.g., vol. I 40, 228, 258, 278. The figurative meaning of the miracle at the Marriage at Cana is in vol. II 56. Cf. also Bede, In Joannis S. Evangelium expositio (PL 93.662AB). Google Scholar
16 In the MS, the word played upon is ‘intellectus’ not ‘prudentia’, and the wise pagan king is depicted as ‘regalem habens intellectum’ (fols. 46v, 45v). The ‘prudentissimus’ prince is ‘sapientissimus’ (fol. 46r). Google Scholar
17 Like the others, this apologue enjoyed considerable repetition in the later Middle Ages. In Decameron (fourth day, Introduction), in a slightly different version, it illustrates the power of natura over ingegno in the desires of a monastery-bred youth, i.e., the sway of the flesh over intelligence. In Heptalogus … de origine diffinitione et remediis peccatorum (Paris [c. 1518]), attributed to Robert Holcot, it appears in the section on luxuria, and the author says ‘legitur in vita patrum.’ This version, which is more like that of Decameron than that of the Barlaam and Josaphat legend, seems to make the same point as both of them. For these references, as for others in this article, I am indebted to Prof. Robertson, D. W., Jr., of Princeton University. The story appears elsewhere in a moralizing context, e.g., Jacques de Vitry's Exempla (see note 2 above) and the Speculum Morale of Vincent of Beauvais (Venice 1591). In the latter it once again appears in the section concerned with luxuria (fol. 250r), and Vincent acknowledges the Barlaam and Josaphat legend as his source. Elsewhere in the same section (fol. 245v) he notes the tradition that four verbal aberrations arise from luxuria, i.e. turpiloquia, scurrilia, ludicra and stultiloquia. He makes a pertinent remark regarding the latter: ‘Quarto quantum ad sententiam verborum quam peruertit luxuria per cecitatem mentis quam causat, & sic prorumpit in stultiloquia, vt pote cum suis verbis praefert delectationes, quas appetit, quibuscunque aliis rebus.’ Thus the tale could fill a moral purpose, but in our example it seems to illustrate in its use — urging, rather than condemning, the ascendancy of the flesh over the spirit — the kind of lecherous stultiloquia of which Vincent spoke.Google Scholar
18 E.g., Bede, In Pentateuchum commentarii 5.15 (PL 91.387B). Google Scholar
19 Cf. Super Thebaiden printed among the works of Fulgentius, ed. Helm, R. (Leipzig 1898) 180: ‘Poetarum inuestigabilem prudentiam ingeniique eorum uenam inmarcescibilem non sine grandi ammiratione retracto, qui sub blanditorio poeticae fictionis tegumento moralium seriem institutionum utiliter inseruerunt.’Google Scholar
Lydgate's ‘The Churl and the Bird’ (see note 2 above) opens with lines expressive of the same attitude, lauding the poets' use of ‘Problemys, liknessis & ffigures / Which previd been fructuous of sentence, / And han auctoritees groundid on scriptures / Bi resemblaunces of notable apparence, / With moralites concludyng in prudence….’ Here, as in Fulgentius, we find prudentia as a literary virtue, associated with the technique of including a useful moral nucleus within an attractive cortex of poetic fiction. Lydgate mentions in this class of literature ‘dirk parablesful convenyent’ and ‘feynyng fables,’ the first recalling Josaphat's, ‘conuenienter’ (note 7 above), and the second the Fulgentian ‘blanditorio poeticae fictionis tegumento….’Google Scholar