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Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and the Medieval Popular Bible Author(s): James H. Morey Reviewed work(s): Source: Speculum, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 6-35 Published by: Medieval Academy of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2863832 . Accessed: 02/04/2012 17:01
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Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and the Medieval Popular Bible

By James H. Morey
The Bible in the Middle Ages, much like the Bible today, consisted for the laity not of a set of texts within a canon but of those stories which, partly because of their liturgical significance and partly because of their picturesque and memorable qualities, formed a provisional "Bible" in the popular imagination. Even relatively devout and educated moderns may be surprised by what is, and what is not, biblical. The medieval popular Bible took shape within an encyclopedic tradition largely responsible for the variety of materials now associated with the Bible. Prior to and even after full-scale Reformation translations, biblical material was disseminated in the vernaculars through sermons, homilies, commentaries, universal histories, picture Bibles, the drama, and a large corpus of biblical paraphrases. Each of those literary forms owes debts to the others, but a significant influence on them all, and especially those produced in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century France and England, is Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica (c. 1170). Peter produced the Historia as a biblical abridgment and gloss for students at the cathedral school of Notre Dame in Paris. Translated into every major western European vernacular, it became a widespread resource for biblical material until the Reformation. Because of its comprehensive assembly of apocryphal and legendary elements, and because of its frequent translation and paraphrase, the Historia was the single most important medium through which a popular Bible took shape, from the thirteenth into the fifteenth century, in France, England, and elsewhere. The Historia received papal approval at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The general chapter of the Dominican order meeting at Paris in 1228 stipulated and the glossed Bible, the Historiabe studied that, with Peter Lombard's Sentences in a kind of triadic core curriculum.' The Historia was equally important in England. An Oxford University statute of 1253 allowed no one to complete theological study "nisi legerit aliquem librum de canone Biblie vel librum Sen1 "Statuimus autem ut quelibet provincia fratribus suis missis ad studium ad minus in tribus theologie providere teneatur, et fratres missi ad studium in ystoriis et sentenciis et textu et glosis precipue studeant et intendant." Quoted from A. G. Little and F. Pelster, Oxford Theologyand Theologians, c. A.D. 1282-1302 (Oxford, 1934), p. 25, n. 2. Cf. the thirteenth-century guide to monastic life by Humbert de Romans: "Officium boni lectoris est ... [d]are operam ut ex lectionibus suis proficiant auditores, aut circa veritatem librorum, aut circa quaestionum utilium intelligentiam, aut circa aliqua quae possint ad morum aedificationem esse; litteram tantum legere, relicta multitudine eorum quae dici possunt ad singula; quod auditores sub eo proficiant ad sciendum Bibliam, et Historias, et Sententias:maxime lectiones, aut omnes, aut saltem unam continuare libenter" (Opera de vita regulari, ed. Joachim Joseph Berthier, 2 vols. [Rome, 1888-89], 2:254).

Speculum68 (1993)

Peter Comestor

tentiarum vel Historiarum vel predicaverit publice universitati."2 Roger Bacon expressed his displeasure that the Sentenceswere preferred to the Historia: Et mirumest quod est exaltatusliber Sententiarum, est magis quia liber Historiarum propriustheologiae;nam prosequiturtextum a principiousque ad finem, exponendo ipsum.3 Bacon preferred the Historia because of its comprehensive and unfragmented treatment of sacred history, a preference shared by the "friends" for whom Peter wrote the work: Causasusceptilaborisfuit instanspetitio sociorum.Qui cum historiamsacraeScripturaein serie,et glossisdiffusam brevemnimiset inexpositam, lectitarent, opus aggredi me compulerunt, ad quod pro veritate historiae consequenda recurrerent. (PL 198:1053) One may also suspect that readers liked the Historia because it is indeed a book of stories. Apart from indicating the obvious popularity of Peter's work, these quotations set up an overlapping network of authorities and sources for biblical material extending from the Bible itself, through its commentaries and compendia, to the university lecture. Peter's lectures at Paris were the means by which the Historia was first promulgated and the reason why it was produced at all. Even among the learned, the Historia mediated between Scripture and public exposition. This same kind of mediation existed between the vernacular paraphrases of the Historia and their lay audiences. In the process, Peter's own work was "canonized" and regarded as a biblical resource of considerable authority. The bulk of this essay seeks to consolidate the disparate bibliography on Peter's sources and influence. In accomplishing that task, I hope to prove the claim that there was what we may call a pre-Reformation vernacular Bible which enjoyed widespread influence and authority in learned and lay circles. I examine first the achievement of Peter Comestor, with particular attention to the Historia; Parts 2 and 3 review the principal works in French and in English which carried Comestor's biblical narratives into the vernacular.
1. PETERCOMESTOR, "MAGISTER HISTORIARUM" Despite the importance of Peter Comestor in the twelfth-century renaissance and his role in the rise of the University of Paris, his major work, the Historia

scholastica,remains without a critical edition or a major study.4 His epitaph (no

longer visible) in the abbey church of St. Victor, Paris, is perhaps his most frequently read work:

2 Little and Pelster, Oxford Theology,p. 25, n. 2. 3Little and Pelster, Oxford Theology,p. 26, n. 1, quoting from Bacon's Opus minus. 4 In 1855 J. P. Migne reprinted the edition of E. Navarro (Madrid, 1699) in PL 198:1049-1722, with an "Ordo rerum" in columns 1876-92. A much-abridged Latin text and a fifteenth-century des 15. Jahrhunderts,2 vols. German translation appear in Hans Vollmer, ed., Eine deutscheSchulbibel (Berlin, 1925-27).

Peter Comestor
Petrus eram quem petra tegit, dictusque Comestor. Nunc comedor, vivus docui, nec cesso docere Mortuus, ut dicat qui me videt incineratum: Quod sumus iste fuit: erimus quandoque quod hic est.5

The Historia was one of the most popular books in the late Middle Ages; it is extant in many manuscripts and was one of the earliest works to be printed.6 Beryl Smalley's chapter "Masters of the Sacred Page," in her influential book The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, gives Peter rather short shrift in comparison with two other Paris masters, Peter the Chanter and Stephen Langton, the latter of whom wrote a commentary on the Historia.7Peter suffers the same der scholastischen Methode.8Other neglect in Martin Grabmann's Die Geschichte followers of the "biblisch-moralische Richtung der Theologie" receive much more treatment than Peter, who, even as the "Vertreter dieser Richtung," is mentioned only incidentally in connection with other figures. Fortunately, Smalley and others have published important articles on Comestor (below passim), which demonstrate that his influence on medieval vernacular religious literature was more significant than either Langton's or Peter the Chanter's. It is tempting to speculate that Dante placed Peter in the circle of the blessed not only because of his reputation for learning but also because of his usefulness to poets and other literati.9 Friedrich Stegmiiller lists translations of the Historia into Saxon (c. 1248, by order of Heinrich Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia), Dutch (c. 1271, the Rijmbijbel by Jacob van Maerlant), Old French (c. 1295, the Bible historiale by Guyart
5 PL 198:1048. Gaetano Raciti quotes another quatrain from Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS E.69 sup. (fifteenth century): Petrum petra tegit, animam petri XP;. Sic ibi diuisit utraque petra petrum. Uxor, uilla, boues, cenam clausere uocatis. Mundus, cura, caro celum clausere renatis.

See "L'autore del 'De spiritu et anima,' " Rivista difilosofia neo-scolastica53 (1961), 385-401, here p. 398. 6 Early printings were at Strassburg and Reutlingen circa 1470. The oldest manuscript (c. 1183) is Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS latin 16943. D. Lortsch prints from this manuscript a facsimile of the beginning of chapter 118 in the Historia's Gospel harmony (PL 198:1599-1600): Histoire de la Bible en France (Paris, 1910), pp. 70-71. For Caxton's use of the Historia see Sarah M. Horrall, "William Caxton's Biblical Translation," Medium Evum 53 (1984), 91-98. Abridging the Historia was a popular fifteenth-century pastime: e.g., London, British Library, Harley 3858; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Lat. 109, University College 42, and Magdalen College 53. John Hunt, "Doctor and Professor of Divinity at Oxford, besides other Polite Literature, was very knowing in Tongues," and is credited with a mid-fifteenth-century abbreviation of the Historia (see John Stevens, The History of the Antient Abbeys... Being Two Additional Volumesto Sir William Dugdale's "Monasticon Anglicanum" (London, 1723), 2:174. 7 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1983), pp. 196-263. For Langton's literal and moral "exposition" of the Historia see Friedrich Stegmuller's Repertorium Biblicummedii aevii, 11 vols. to date (Madrid, 1950-), 5:7710-43 and 7:10729, and Smalley, Study of the Bible, pp. 214-15. Nigel Wireker produced circa 1194 a commentary on the Historia now extant in Cambridge, Trinity College, B. 15.5. See Nigellus de Longchampdit Wireker,ed. A. Boutemy (Paris, 1959), pp. 5, 23-24, 44-45. 8 2 vols. (Freiburg, 1909-11). See 2:476 on Peter. 9 Paradiso 12.134, where he appears with Hugh of St. Victor, Donatus, and others.

Peter Comestor

Desmoulins), Portuguese (fourteenth century), and Czech.10There are also Castilian, Catalan, and Old Norse translations unlisted by Stegmuller."1 The principal Old French and Middle English productions will be discussed below in Parts 2 and 3. Oddly enough, no English prose translation seems ever to have been made beyond the Genesis portion.12 The early-fifteenth-century Speculum devotorumdoes mention that
called the mayster of storys, & hys boke in englysch the scole story....13

I have folowyd in bis werke tweyne doctorys of the chyrche, bat one ys commonly

The other doctor is Nicholas of Lyra. It seems more likely, however, that the phrase "in englysch" refers simply to "scole story"-the translated title-and not to an English translation of the work itself.14 Any effort to contextualize
10 4:6567-71. For the Dutch (Maerlant's and two later anonymous versions) see Cebus Repertorium, C. De Bruin, "De prologen van de eerste Historiebijbel geplaatst in het raam van hun tijd," in The Bible and Medieval Culture, ed. W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (Louvain, 1979), pp. 190-219. For the Portuguese, see Serafim da Silva Neto, ed., Biblia medieval portuguesa (Rio de Janeiro, 1958), and for the Czech, Jan V. Novak, ed., Petra Comestora Historia scholastica,3 vols. (Prague, 1910-20). n The Castilian version (the Generalestoria d'Alfonso el Sabio [1221-84]) has been edited in two parts by Antonio G. Solalinde (Madrid, 1930) and Lloyd A. Kasten and Victor R. B. Oelschlager (Madrid, 1957-61). For the Catalan version (27,655 lines composed c. 1300) see Catherine Ukas, "New Research on the Biblia rimada: The Apocryphal Legends," in Nathaniel B. Smith et al., eds., Actesdel Quart Colloquid'Estudis Catalans a Nord-America(Montserrat, 1985), pp. 123-38. The Old Norse version (c. 1300, by order of Hakon Magnusson, king of Norway [1299-1319]) appears in three manuscripts known collectively as Stj6rn:see Stj6rn:Gammelnorsk Bibelhistorie,ed. C. R. Unger (Christiania [Oslo], 1862), facsimile by Didrik Arup Seip, Stj6rn, AM 227 Fol.: A Norwegian Version in Iceland (Copenhagen, 1956). See also IanJ. Kirby, Bible Translation Transcribed of the Old Testament in Old Norse (Geneva, 1986). Comestor's work is also a major source of the 6,165-line Historien der Alden E, ed. Wilhelm Gerhard (Leipzig, 1927). Dating from 1338-45, it is a versified treatment of "die geschichtlichen Ereignisse des Alten Testaments" (p. xlviii). 12 A fifteenth-century English translation of the Genesis portion of the Historia appears in Cambridge, St. John's College, 198 (G.31), transcribed by S. R. Daly, "The Historye of the Patriarks," dissertation, Ohio State University, 1951. 13 Quoted from Elizabeth Salter, Nicholas Love's "Myrrour of the BlessedLyfofJesu Christ," Analecta Cartusiana 10 (Salzburg, 1974), p. 107. Other works based on the highly influential pseudo-Bonaventuran MeditationesVitae Christi have filiations with the Historia. See M. Jordan Stallings, Meditacionesde passione Christi (Washington, D.C., 1965), p. 22. 14 Margarete Andersson-Schmitt ("Die Verwendung der Historia scholastica in einigen volksi Uppsala,Arsbok sprachigen Bibelwerken des Mittelalters," Kungl. HumanistiskaVetenskaps-Samfundet [Uppsala, 1985], pp. 5-31) has studied five "Historienbibeln" based on the Vulgate but which borrow from the Historia in order to discover whether the borrowings are independent or whether there is a common principle of adaptation. She concludes, "Das wiirde erklaren, dass die hier untersuchten Texte nicht immer dieselben Hist.schol.-Stellen eingefugt haben, obwohl sie offensichtlich einer gemeinsam Texttradition folgen. Ausserdem muss man ja mit sekundarer Einfugung oder Auslassung solcher Stellen rechnen" (p. 19). Pages 19-26 make several observations concerning the illustrations in these works. The role played by picture Bibles (e.g., The Holkham Bible Picture Book, facsimile ed. W. O. Hassall [London, 1954]; Anglo-Norman text ed. F. P. Pickering [Oxford, 1971], esp. pp. xvi-xviii) in the dissemination of biblical material requires a separate study, but two other illustrated texts with connections to the Historia are the Acre Bible made for St. Louis (c. 1250; see C. A. Robson, "Vernacular Scriptures in France," in The CambridgeHistory of the Bible, 2, ed. G. W. H. Lampe [Cambridge, Eng., 1969], pp. 443-45) and London, British Library, Egerton 1894, the Egerton Genesis. Produced in fourteenth-century England, its 150 scenes appear with text derived from the Historia (see Francis Wormald, "Bible Illustration in Medieval Manuscripts,"

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Peter Comestor

this profusion of redactions of the Historia requires a review of Comestor's life and work in order to establish his methods and motives. Particulars of Peter's life are scarce, but Saralyn R. Daly and Ignatius Brady have assembled the best information we have.15He was born in Champagne, in Troyes, and there is evidence for Comestor being a family name, despite the usual explanation of the name as a playful reference to his reputation for having eaten and digested the Scriptures and many other books. The young Peter probably heard Peter Abelard and John of Tours (both students of Anselm of Laon) teach at Paris. He certainly heard Peter Lombard (the "magister Sententiarum") before becoming dean of St. Peter's in Troyes in 1147. Peter was later chancellor of Notre Dame in Paris (c. 1164-78), where he also held the theology chair until he resigned it in 1169. He was both dean of Troyes and chancellor to the end of his life, but relief from teaching duties seems to have allowed completion of the Historia scholasticaby 1173; the dedication, at least, is to William, archbishop of Sens, who held that office from 1169 to 1175.16 Work on the compendium was carried on at the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris, where he came in contact with the Victorines.17 Brady, citing the cartulary of Notre Dame Cathedral and other documents, dates Peter's death to October
22, 1178.18

Apart from the Historia, Comestor's main works are his sermons, a Gospel commentary, and Questions(an abridgment of Lombard's Sentences).19 Raymond Martin and Artur Landgraf consider and print samples of both spurious and probably authentic material.20All of his works exhibit a wide range of learning,
CambridgeHistory of the Bible, 2:319-20). M. R. James, in his facsimile edition (Illustrationsof the Book of Genesis [Oxford, 1921]) prints extracts from the Historia which parallel the Anglo-Norman text (pp. 9-22). 15 Daly, "Peter Comestor: Master of Histories," Speculum32 (1957), 62-73; Brady, "Peter Manducator and the Oral Teachings of Peter Lombard," Antonianum41 (1966), 454-90. See also David Luscombe, "Peter Comestor," in The Bible in the Medieval World:Essays in Memoryof Beryl Smalley, ed. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood (Oxford, 1985), pp. 109-29; Sandra Rae Karp, "Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica:A Study in the Development of Literal Scriptural Exegesis," dissertation, Tulane University, 1978; and Jean Longere, "Pierre Le Mangeur," Dictionnairede spiritualite, asc'tique et mystique,doctrineet histoire, 12/2 (1986), 1614-26. 16 Robert of Auxerre's (d. 1212) entry for 1173 in his Chronicon (MGH SS 26) indicates his awareness of Peter's work in that year: "Petrus Comestor celebris habetur in Francia, magistrorum Parisiensium primas, vir facundissimus et in scripturis divinis excellenter instructus; qui utriusque testamenti historias uno compingens volumine, opus edidit satis utile, satis gratum, ex diversis hystoriis compilatum" (p. 240). Cf. Ranulph Higden's account (below, n. 87). William, later archbishop of Reims and cardinal, is the same "Guillaume aux blanches mains" renowned for his literary and scholarly patronage. 17 "It is often said that the Historia Scholastica... fulfils an express wish of [Hugh of St. Victor's] Didascalicon and shows Victorine influence" (Smalley, Study of the Bible, p. 198; see also p. 179). 18 Brady, "Peter Manducator," p. 484. Smalley's Study of the Bible (p. 197) misassigns his death to 1169. 19The questions have been identified by Br .dy as numbers 288-334 in J. B. Pitra's edition of the QuaestionesMagistri Odonis Suessionensis,in Analectanovissimaspicilegii Solesmensisaltera continuatio, 2 (Paris, 1888; repr. Farnborough, Eng., 1967), pp. 98-187. 20 R. M. detheologieancienne Martin, "Notes sur l'oeuvre litteraire de Pierre le Mangeur," Recherches ecrits de Pierre le Mangeur," et medievale 3 (1931), 54-66, and A. Landgraf, "Recherches sur les

Peter Comestor

11

but among his sources the most important are Josephus's Antiquitiesof theJews, Augustine's De Genesiad litteram,Jerome's introductions to Vulgate books and his studies of Hebrew onomastics (PL 23), Bede's Hexaemeronand Pentateuch commentary, and the Glossa ordinaria. The Enarrationesin Evangelium Matthaei (PL 162:1227-1500), falsely ascribed to Anselm of Laon, is a main source for New Testament material in Comestor's Gospel commentary, which remains in manuscript.21 Thirty-nine of his sermons are printed after the Historia in PL 198:1721-1844 (another twelve appear among the collection of Hildebert of Le Mans [PL 171:343-964]).22 These sermons, like the Historia, enjoyed great popularity.23 The variety of sources for the Historia is truly formidable. For example, Peter cites, as if unsure exactly whose Gospel harmony he is using, "Quidam enim scribentes unum ex quatuor" (PL 198:1558) to discuss the order in which Jesus undertook some preaching. Smalley here notes an indebtedness to Zachary of BesanSon's (alias Zachary Chrysopolitanus) conflated Gospel text and commentary (In un:m ex quatuor, PL 186:11-620, c. 1140-45) based on Tatian's Diatesseron.24 Apocryphal sources are perhaps the most obscure. In his Matthew
ibid., pp. 292-306 and 341-72. Martin argues for Peter's authorship of the De sacramentisin the introduction to his edition of that work, printed as an appendix to Maitre Simon et son groupe, ed. Henri Weisweiler, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, Etudes et Documents 17 (Louvain, 1937). Raciti, "L'autore" (see above, n. 5), suggests in addition Peter's authorship of the De spiritu et anima and five other works. Luscombe, "Peter Comestor" (see above, n. 15), pp. 117, 121-26, reviews these either in arguments as well as others which ascribe the Allegoriae super Vetuset Novum Testamentum whole or in part to Comestor. 21 de theologieancienne Beryl Smalley, "Peter Comestor on the Gospels and His Sources," Recherches et medievale46 (1979), 84-129, repr. with additional notes in Smalley's Gospelsin the Schools,c.1100c.1280 (London, 1985), pp. 37-84. Hubert Silvestre notes several of Comestor's debts to the De divinis officiisof Rupert of Deutz (d. 1129): "Le jour et l'heure de la Nativite et de la Resurrection pour Rupert de Deutz," in Pascua mediaevalia: Studies voor Prof Dr. J. M. De Smet, ed. R. Lievens et al. (Louvain, 1983), pp. 619-30, here pp. 623-26. 22 A previously unedited sermon of Peter appears as appendix 3 in J. P. Bonnes, "Un des plus grands predicateurs du XIIe siecle: Geoffroy du Loroux, dit Geoffroy Babion," Revue benedictine 56 (1945-46), 174-215. See also M.-M. Lebreton, "Recherches sur les manuscrits contenant des de l'Institutde Recherche et d'Histoiredes Textes sermons de Pierre Le Mangeur," Bulletin d'information 2 (1953), 25-44, and 4 (1955), 35-36. 23 The quality of Peter's sermons as "school sermons" has been discussed by Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse in Preachers,Florilegia and Sermons:Studies on the "Manipulusflorum" of Thomas of Ireland, Studies and Texts 47 (Toronto, 1979), pp. 66-84. Elsewhere the Rouses point out that Comestor employed the rhetorical distinctio extensively in his sermons and was one of the first to do so: "Statim invenire: Schools, Preachers, and New Attitudes to the Page," in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century,ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable with Carol D. Lanham (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), pp. 201-25, here p. 215. See also Balduinus ab Amsterdam, " 'Historia Franciscana24 (1954), Scholastica' Petri Comestoris in 'Sermonibus' S. Antonii Patavini," Collectanea 83-109, who documents the dependence of Antony of Padua's (d. 1231) influential sermon collection on the Historia. 24 de theoBeryl Smalley, "Some Gospel Commentaries of the Early Twelfth Century," Recherches logie ancienne et medievale 45 (1978), 147-80, here p.'177 (repr. with additional notes as above [n. 21], pp. 1-36). Smalley also notes (p. 178) that in one of Peter's Gospel prologues he borrows from Zachary a discussion of which animal in Ezekiel's vision represents which Evangelist (Peter prefers Jerome's grouping, Zachary prefers Augustine's), but Smalley knows of no other dependences on Zachary elsewhere.

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Peter Comestor

commentary Peter dismisses the apocryphal tradition ("non est autenticum") that while Mary was pregnant with Jesus her face radiated such splendor that eam, quia non potuit eam intueri." Peter associates the Joseph "non cognoscebat with similar "in hoc libro forte de infantia Salvatoris, in quo etsi a one legend multa vera tamen respuit eum ecclesia velut apocriphum."25Whereas Peter may have been reluctant to credit New Testament apocrypha, he was not inhibited in his choice of materials for the primarily Old Testament contents of the Historia. Several of the apocryphal motifs which appear in the Historia can be traced to texts with Irish affiliations. A notable instance appears in the chapter "De oblatione et nominibus magorum" (PL 198:1542), where the peculiar pseudoHebrew and Greek, as well as the Latin, names for the Magi appear in a form "completely outside the patristic tradition."26 Robert E. McNally believes that they derive from Irish texts such as the pseudo-Isidorean Liber de Numeris. The Fifteen Last Signs, in the tradition attested by Comestor, Peter Damian, and Pseudo-Bede, probably originated in the tenth-century Irish Saltair Na Ran and (as with the Magian names) traveled thence in Latin translations to the Continent to appear in works like the Historia.27 It has also been suggested that the pseudoBedean Collectanea(PL 94:555) is the specific source for Comestor's treatment of the Fifteen Signs.28 The dating and circulation of these texts are very uncertain, and these details are perhaps minor, but they give some indication of the range of materials Comestor may have consulted and the significance of the Historia as a watershed. A profound influence on Comestor's intellectual milieu was Jewish learning. Medieval Jews, because they knew Hebrew, were, in Smalley's phrase "a kind of telephone line to the Old Testament."29 Comestor's exposure to Hebrew biblical commentary was ensured during his tenure first as priest and then dean of the cathedral at Troyes, the city where the great rabbinical commentator Solomon Ben Isaac (known as "Rashi," d. 1105) had his school.30 One of Rashi's
Smalley prints (Study of the Bible, p. 239, n. 5) this comment on Matt. 1.25, adding that "This particular legend, which is mentioned with less detail in the Gloss, is not in the Liber de Infantia Salvatoris." The radiance of the infant Jesus (cf. Isa. 9.2) is mentioned in the Protoevangelium of James 19.1. Elsewhere Smalley writes, "Odd as it may seem, Comestor showed rather more reserve on Christian apocrypha, for all their color and piety, than he did on rabbinic traditions on the Old Testament" ("Peter Comestor" [see above, n. 21], p. 116). 26 Robert E. McNally, "The Three Holy Kings in Early Irish Latin Writing," in Kyriakon:Festschrift Johannes Quasten,ed. Patrick Granfield and Josef A. Jungmann, 2 vols. (Muinster, 1970), 2:667-90, here p. 671. Cf. PL 198:1542: "Nomina trium magorum haec sunt: Hebraice Appellus, Amerus, Damasius; Graece Galgalat, Magalath, Sarachim; Latine Baltassar, Gaspar, Melchior." Either Peter or a scribe, it would appear, was unsure of which names derive from which language. 27 See Martin McNamara, The Apocryphain the Irish Church (Dublin, 1975), pp. 55-56, 131-32, 134. 28 William W. Heist, The Fifteen Signs beforeDoomsday(East Lansing, Mich., 1952), pp. 26, 197. 29 Study of the Bible, p. 362. 30 See Herman Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars(Pittsburgh, 1963), p. 111, and Aryeh Grabois, "The HebraicaVeritasand Jewish-Christian Intellectual Relations in the Twelfth Century," Speculum50 (1975), 613-34. Peter uses the term "hebraica veritas" in PL 198:1064, 1070, 1097, 1098, and passim. Karp, "Peter Comestor's Historia" (see above, n. 15), pp. 81-116, discusses the influence of Jewish life and worship on Comestor, and Guido Kisch (Sachsenspiegel and Bible [Notre Dame, Ind., 1941, repr. 1960]) outlines the role played by Comestor in transmittingJewish learning to medieval German law books (esp. pp. 62-88, 167-68, 198).
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grandsons, Rabbenu Tam (1100-1171), also a rabbinic authority, lived in Troyes during Peter's lifetime, and though there are no records of their meeting, it is possible, and the debt of the Historia's Genesis section to Hebrew scholarship is demonstrable.31 Peter's frequent use of the phrases "Hebraei tradunt" and "Hebraeus ait" suggests some specificity of reference. How Peter mediated Hebrew scholarship both to later biblical exegesis and to the vernacular paraphrases remains largely unexplored. On the one hand, Esra Shereshevsky and Aryeh Grabois regard the Old Testament and the streets of Troyes as a common meeting ground for Christians and Jews, while Samuel Lachs insists that the interpretation of the Bible was the prime generator of hostility between them. The facts remain, however, that Peter expressed no such hostility and that Hebrew traditions, either through personal contact or texts, appear in the Historia with details independent of Jerome, Hrabanus, or Josephus. An example of this independence concerns the legend which grew up around the following cryptic passage (Gen. 4.23-24): DixitqueLamechuxoribussuis Adae et Sellae:Audite vocem meum uxores Lamech, Auscultatesermonemmeum: Quoniamoccidi virum in vulnus meum, Et adolescentulumin livoremmeum.Septuplumultio dabiturde Cain:De Lamechvero septuagies septies. In order to explain these verses, Jerome and later Comestor understood the "vir" to be Cain, whom the blind Lamech mistakenly slew while hunting. The "adolescentulus" was taken to be Lamech's unfortunate guide, who told Lamech to shoot and whom Lamech beat to death after discovering his mistake (PL 198:1079). Emile Male found the first identification of the "vir" with Cain in a letter from Jerome to Pope Damasius, where Jerome cites a "Hebrew book."32 Genesis commentators (e.g., Bede [CCSL 118A, p. 90]) simply repeatedJerome's account, but in the Glossa ordinaria the legend appears in a fuller version. To account for the increase in the number of details, Male proposed that Hebrew doctors reintroduced the legend to Christian scholars in the ninth century. Peter followed the Glossa version but added a seemingly gratuitous comment concerning Lamech's marital difficulties: "Hebraeus ait: Mulieres suae saepe male tractabant eum" (PL 198:1079).33 The motivation for their ill-treatment of him
Esra Shereshevsky, "Hebrew Traditions in Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica," Jewish Quarterly Review 59 (1968-69), 268-89, and Paul Perdrizet, Etude sur le "Speculumhumanaesalvationis" (Paris, 1908), pp. 68-93. Shereshevsky has been criticized by Samuel T. Lachs, "The Source of Hebrew Traditions in the Historia Scholastica,"Harvard TheologicalReview 66 (1973), 385-86, who maintains that Jerome can account for the Hebrew material and that proximity does not prove influence. According to Lachs, "Judaei" is the term reserved for contemporaryJews and "Hebraei" describes "those of the biblical period or those who use their knowledge of Hebrew for biblical interpretation" (p. 386). But how the latter category excludes rabbinic scholars of Peter's acquaintance is unclear. Middle English paraphrases include Hebrew material usually without attribution, a rare exception being lines 73-74 of Genesisand Exodus (see below, n. 93) regarding the day of Lucifer's creation: "Dis ilk wort in ebrisse wen, / He witen be sobe, bat is sen" ("This very report [is] in Hebrew belief, / They know the truth, that ig clear"). 32 Jerome, Epistles 36, in CSEL 54 (Vienna, 1910). Emile Male, "La legende de la mort de Cain3rd ser., 21 (1893), 190-91. For a general a propos d'un chapiteau de Tarbes," Revue archeologique, treatment see Ruth Mellinkoff, The Mark of Cain (Berkeley, 1981), pp. 61-73. 33 A similar comment appears in Hugh of St. Victor's Notulae (PL 175:45).
31

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Peter Comestor

is obscure, but it seems to be tied to their knowledge of the seventyfold vengeance which will be taken for his death. Peter tied the vengeance to the seven generations of Lamech, which subsequently perish in the flood-a flood caused by carnal sin (cf. Gen. 6.1-5). Lamech was a bigamist and known to have a concubine, and thus his wives were apprehensive over the coming doom which Lamech, "res divinas sapienter sciens," had apparently foretold.34 A full and amusing discussion of the wives' motivations appears in Nicholas of Lyra's Postilla litteralis, and Nicholas drew on these traditions as well as on other Hebrew explanations. The point to make here is that Christian doctors, confused over some obscure biblical verses, turned to their Hebrew counterparts for an explanation not only as the Glossa took form but also in the later twelfth (with Peter) and fourteenth (with Nicholas) centuries.35 In this case, Peter seems to be piecing together something he heard or read only imperfectly, and Nicholas tried to make sense of the matter by citing several alternatives, but perhaps the Hebrew explanations were confused to begin with.36 Peter used Hebrew traditions either through direct contact or as preserved in Andrew of St. Victor's commentary on the Octateuch (c. 1163, Ruth is omitted), which was written "in consultation with Jewish teachers."37Peter probably knew Andrew (d. 1175), and the Octateuch commentary was another important source for the Old Testament section of the Historia. Biblical commentary was closely allied to universal history, and Peter claimed, as did many contemporary chroniclers, to synchronize Jewish, classical, and barbarian records ("De historiis quoque ethnicorum, quaedam incidentia pro ratione temporum inserui" [PL 198:1054]). For purposes of comparison, and in order to glean a rough idea of the Historia'spriorities and scope, the Table on the following page summarizes the contents of the Historia, although readers should remember that Peter himself offered his work as a "lima" (a "draft," PL 198:1054). The Old Testament sections cover 489 columns of the Patrologia, from Genesis through Maccabees (the New Testament sections cover 184 columns). The chapter divisions for the Historia have manuscript authority, though the chapter divisions for the Bible itself were not standardized before Stephen Langton (a student of Comestor
34 Cf. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 1.65: ". .. because through his clear knowledge of divine things he saw he was to pay the penalty for Cain's murder of his brother, he made this known to his wives" (Josephus,trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, 8 vols. [London, 1930], 4:31). 35 Other Hebrew legends in the Historia include the 100-year mourning of Adam and Eve after Abel's murder (PL 198:1080); Moses' casting down of Pharaoh's crown (col. 1144; see below, n. 45); Hur's refusal to worship the golden calf and his subsequent execution (col. 1189); and Evilmerodach's cutting of his father Nebuchadnezzar into three-hundred pieces (4 Kings 25.27, col. 1453). Perdrizet, Etude (see above, n. 31), p. 90, notes martyrdoms of saints which may also be of rabbinic origin. 36 For what Genesis 4.23-24 may have meant to a reader of the Hebrew see Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry(New York, 1985), pp. 5-12. He suggests, based on parallel structure, that the man and the boy may refer to the same person, or that the movement from a man to a boy is meant to demonstrate the increasing ruthlessness of his vengeance. 37 de theologieancienneet medievale Beryl Smalley, "The School of Andrew of St. Victor," Recherches 11 (1939), 145-67, here p. 145. Grabois, "HebraicaVeritas,"p. 627, adds the interesting speculation that, once the Historia achieved wide circulation, contact with the Jewish community diminished given the independence from consultation with Hebrew scholars which the Historia provided.

Peter Comestor Respective Contents of the Bible and the Historia scholastica
Chapters of the Vulgate PL Columns of the Historiaa Chapters of the Historia

15

Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Joshua Judges Ruth 1 Kings 2 Kings 3 Kings 4 Kings Tobit Jeremiah Ezekiel Daniel Judith Esther 1 Maccabees 2 Maccabees Historia evangelica Acta Apostolorum
a Some b Numbered

50 40 27 36 34 24 21 4 31 24 22 25 14 52 48 14 16 16 16 15 28

87 53 23 33 13 13 21 3 29 25 39 47 7 3 5 29 15 17 15 17 107 77

115 78 32 53 20 17 22
1b

28 23 40 46
ic 2d

6 20e 10f lOg 15 26 198

123h

columns have been counted twice to avoid fractions. as the twenty-third chapter of Judges. Cf. Hugh of St. Victor's comment (Didascalicon 4.8): "To this book Uudges] some persons join the history of Ruth so as to form a single work" (trans. Jerome Taylor [New York, 1961], p. 108). c After this chapter, which covers Tobit in full, the direction is given that "Nunc ad historiam captivitatis Jerusalem revertemur, et post historiam Judith et Esther locis suis explicabimus" (PL 198:1438). d These chapters cover only Jeremiah 40-42 and are numbered as chapters 2 and 3 of Tobit. e Including Susanna and Bel and the Dragon, as does the Vulgate. fJudith ends with several stories from Esdras and Nehemiah (cols. 1481-90). g Esther ends with several accounts, independent of the Vulgate, of the kings who succeed Assuerus and Alexander the Great (cols. 1495-1502). After these stories, material from 1 and 2 Maccabees appears before the formal opening of 1 Maccabees in column 1505. h Comestor ended his work with the Ascension of Christ (cf. Mark 16.19, Luke 24.51). The continuation through Acts was added by Peter of Poitiers. See below, n. 41.

and future archbishop of Canterbury) in the early thirteenth century.38 Fairly complete and sequential coverage of biblical books begins to break down after Tobit, and the comment at the end of that book (see Table, n. c) indicates that Peter or a scribe realized that the Vulgate order had been abandoned. After
38 See History of the Raphael Loewe, "The Medieval History of the Latin Vulgate," in Cambridge Bible (see above, n. 14), 2:147-48.

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the Books of Kings there is much less historical material in the Old Testament, and given the extensive hexaemeral tradition it is to be expected that Genesis would receive the most attention. Apart from simply being first, Genesis achieved prominence because of the number and importance of its stories. Narrative discontinuities among them invited the kind of explanation and smoothing over that is the modus operandi of the Historia. More important, however, is that Genesis is not so much the story of Creation as the story of the Fall. For Peter and the Victorines, as for Augustine, the study of the natural world and of Scripture not only explains why the world is the way it is but also reveals the way it was. Restoring man's fallen condition is a primary object.39 The very beginning of the Historia shares these concerns with man-centeredness and with salvation by describing how "homo mundus dicitur, quia in se totius mundi imaginem repraesentat" (PL 198:1055). Man's place in the world precedes the story of the six-day creation, whereas man is not mentioned in Genesis itself until the sixth day (Gen. 1.26). Man, not creation in general, is thus the real subject of the book. The Middle English paraphrases share the same emphases, and this anthropocentric retelling of the Genesis story lends itself, as I shall point out in Parts 2 and 3 below, to the individualistic and egalitarian slant of the paraphrases. Here is one example of a twelfth-century exegetical practice filtering down into the popular program of a vernacular literature. The Historia scholastica ends with the "Historia evangelica"-a Gospel harmony. Peter's Gospel commentary is especially relevant to the New Testament portion of the Historia since the commentary exists only as reportationes-student lecture notes-and thus represents the "Historia evangelica" in the process of formation from 1159 to 1178.40 A continuation through Acts was added (c. 1168-83) by his successor in the theology chair at Paris, Peter of Poitiers, who also devised the Compendiumhistoriae in genealogia Christi, a condensation of biblical history, based on and often prefixed to the Historia, which was reproduced on large animal skins and hung on the classroom wall for ease of reference and to facilitate the instruction of clerks too poor to buy books.41
39 Jerome Taylor comments in his introduction to the Didascalicon(see the Table, n. b) that "Hugh's approach to the materials of Genesis focuses upon their relation to the spiritual perfectibility of man.. ." (p. 13). 40 Smalley is the only scholar to have worked extensively with Comestor's Gospel commentary. She notes a preoccupation with the liturgy and speculates on the existence of some kind of liturgical drama in the lecture hall ("Peter Comestor" [see above, n. 21], p. 116). References to liturgical practice in the Historia include explanations of why the pope is absent at Palm Sunday services (PL 198:1597-98; because in imitation of Mary Magdalene, who anointed Christ on that day John 12.1-3], he is out distributing alms), why the host is made of wheat (col. 1603; because Christ compares himself to a "granum frumenti" in John 12.24-25), and why the host should be wrapped in linen (col. 1634; because Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus used linen to wrap the body of Christ UJohn19.40]). 41 See Philip S. Moore, The Worksof Peter of Poitiers, Master in Theologyand Chancellorof Paris (1193-1205) (Notre Dame, Ind., 1936), p. 108, n. 20; pp. 118-22. Edinburgh University Library MS 18 (thirteenth century, English) is one example of a Historia manuscript with the Compendium. M. T. Clanchy (From Memoryto Written Record: England, 1066-1307 [Cambridge, Mass., 1979]) provides as plate 12 a facsimile of the Compendium's prologue, with illustrations (Harvard University, Houghton Library, fMS Typ 216, c. 1210).

Peter Comestor
2. PETER COMESTOR IN FRANCE AND ANGLO-NORMAN ENGLAND

17

Old French versifications of the Bible enjoyed a long and colorful history.42 One of the earliest, by Herman de Valenciennes, is perhaps most remarkable for doing in the vernacular what Comestor had done in Latin only some ten or fifteen years before.43 The parallel conceals Herman's originality, however, since he is more eclectic than even Comestor. Ina Spiele emphasizes how the poem
combines "la chanson de geste, le roman et la Vie de saint."44 Apocryphal stories, especially several having to do with the Virgin Mary which are indigenous to France, are added to the mix. The debts to Comestor are most obvious in the

Genesis section. Spiele's innovative and very important contribution lies in her study of how the liturgy influenced the structure and content of the poem. If Spiele is right in her thesis that Herman's principal source for biblical material was a missal or breviary, then we have a unique and early example of a vernacular lectionary turned into a distinguished poem. At the same time Herman adopted the Comestorian model of telling stories within a biblical historical frame. One possibility which Spiele does not consider is that, given Comestor's predilection for glossing liturgical practice (see above, n. 40), the liturgical material may already have been in the Historia and that it was in large part transferred by Herman into his Bible. The poem begins with a 16-line catalogue of highlights from "li viez testeme[n]z et li noviaus" and continues for some 7,000 lines in laisses of various lengths. The first half retells selected biblical stories from the creation of Adam and Eve to contests between Solomon and David. The narrative digresses with several apocryphal Mary legends and then resumes (at line 3806) with New Testament stories up to the crucifixion. Among the important stories which Herman shares with Peter and several redactors of the Historia is the popular account of Moses and the crown of Pharaoh.45This account may serve as a test case of sorts for the adaptation of legendary material by Peter and vernacular poets. In Peter, Pharaoh places the crown on Moses' head in a playful act of affection, but the child casts it to the floor and breaks it because it bears the idol Ammon. For this action the Egyptian elders demand the infant's death, but one suggests
42 A basic reference work is by Jean Robert Smeets, "Les traductions, adaptations, et paraphrases de la Bible en vers," in La litteraturedidactique,allegorique et satirique, Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters 6 (Heidelberg, 1968-70), 6/1:48-57 (text), 6/2:81-96 (documentation). Henceforth referred to as GRLMA. Pioneering studies by Samuel Berger, La Biblefrancaiseau moyen age (Paris, 1884), and Jean Bonnard, Les traductionsde la Bible en versfrancais au moyenage (Paris, 1884), remain helpful. 43 See the edition by Ina Spiele, Li romanzde Dieu et de sa mered'Hermande Valenciennes(Leiden, 1975). Her criteria for dating, p. 3, are unnecessarily tortuous: the poem clearly postdates the Historia, as her table of correspondences on pp. 28-29 demonstrates. 44 Spiele, Li romanz, p. 1. The title is taken from Spiele's base manuscript, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS fr. 20039 (thirteenth century). There are thirty-five manuscripts of the poem in various states of completion: most are thirteenth century, and seven are of identifiably English provenance (see pp. 144-59). 45 PL 198:1144. Spiele prints the Old Frehch version from New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 526, fols. 7d-8b, on pp. 155-56 of her edition.

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Peter Comestor

that Moses first be given some live coals with which to play. By naively placing the coals in his mouth, Moses not only proves his innocence but also burns his tongue-thus accounting for his halting speech (Exod. 4.10). For the first few details, Peter seems to follow the version in the Antiquities of Josephus (2.23337).46 There, too, Pharaoh places the crown on Moses' head, and he casts it down. No mention is made of an idol, however, or of the coals. The coals appear in the Midrash, where they are part of a much more elaborate trial by choice. The Midrash version also differs in that Moses takes the crown from Pharoah, and it is for this usurpation of authority that the elders demand his execution.47 The trial by choice follows in which an elder suggests that Moses be presented with a live coal and a golden vessel. The infant reaches for the vessel, but an opportune bump on the elbow by the archangel Gabriel saves Moses from the incriminating choice. As in Peter, he takes the coal and burns his mouth. It is, first of all, clear that Middle English poets followed Peter for the most part.48 The evidence that Herman followed the Hebrew legend rather than Josephus seems as clear, since Herman shares with the Midrash the details that Moses takes the crown, undergoes the ordeal, and is saved by an angel. Yet Herman resembles Peter in the important detail that Moses breaks the crown.49 The Midrash is silent on this point. To sum up, since Herman includes the trial by choice and the angelic intercession, he probably consulted both Josephus and some form of the Hebrew legend now found in the Midrash. While there is nothing in Herman from Josephus that he could not also have obtained from the Historia, Herman clearly had access to Hebrew legend beyond what Peter had. It is hard to believe that Peter would have omitted the Gabriel episode had he known it. Herman is known to have contributed to two Middle English poems, the Cursor mundi and lacob and losep. Lois Borland and Philip Buehler have pointed out the indebtedness of the Cursormundi poet to Herman not only in the Genesis section but also in excerpts from historical and prophetical books through to Christ's Passion.50 One of the most interesting parallels concerns the story of
See Thackeray's translation of the Antiquities (above, n. 34), p. 267. See Midrash Rabbah Translated into English with Notes, Glossary,and Indices, ed. H. Freedman and Maurice Simon, 3rd ed., 10 vols, vol. 3 trans. S. M. Lehrman (London, 1983), p. 33, Exodus 1.26. 48 For example, lines 2633-58 in Genesis and Exodus (see below, n. 93) and stanza 132 in the Middle English Metrical Paraphraseof the Old Testament(see below, n. 101). The version in the latefourteenth- or early-fifteenth-century Mirour of Mans Saluacioun, ed. Avril Henry (Philadelphia, 1987), derives, along with many other stories, from Peter (lines 1327-56). 49 This action is clear from the text, and the Pierpont Morgan manuscript has two illustrations of the story, one of which shows Moses throwing the crown to the ground. Spiele reproduces them as plates A and B in her edition. 50 Borland, "Herman's Bible and the CursorMundi," Studies in Philology 30 (1933), 427-44, and Buehler, "The CursorMundi and Herman's Bible-Some Additional Parallels," Studies in Philology 61 (1964), 485-99. Buehler concentrates on parallels in the Noah, Abraham, and Jacob and Esau stories. Borland suggests that Herman lived and wrote in England (p. 443). It should be remembered that the Cursormundi poet frequently relied on Comestor and referred to him by name: "Als peirs mayner, be god clerk, / telles of lis in sumkin work" (Richard Morris, ed., EETS OS 57 [London, 1874], lines 1921-22, concerning Noah's leaving the ark in the Historia, PL 198:1085). "Mayner"
46 47

Peter Comestor

19

the floating grain. Here Joseph pours chaff into the Nile; Jacob sees the chaff float by in Canaan, improbably enough, and thereby knows that grain is to be had in Egypt.51The same story almost certainly once appeared on a now missing leaf in the thirteenth-century Middle English ballad lacob and Iosep.52Arthur Napier noted the parallel with Cursormundi and with Herman and Geoffrey of Paris's Bible du sept etats du monde(see below, n. 58), but Spiele goes on to show through similarities in style and order of presentation that Herman was the direct source for the lacob and losep poet.53 Other French versifications contemporaneous with or earlier than the English paraphrases in which the Historia is prominent are the following: Evrat's Genesis(1192-c. 1200), a poem of some 20,800 lines, covers the whole of that book. It was commissioned by his patroness, Marie de Champagne.54 There are clear correspondences with the Historia, and Evrat attributes some of his material directly to a "Maistre." Jean Robert Smeets suggests that given the length of the work and the number of glosses, it was meant for reading among Marie's courtiers.55 Evrat's appeals to "cler et lai" and to "grant et menour" would argue, however, for a broader audience. Jane Henderson points out how in subsequent revisions, perhaps in response to Marie's complaints, antifeminist rhetoric was replaced by "outspoken praise of women."56The work
may be an anglicization of "Mangeur." The other three manuscripts printed by Morris read "peris maior" ("Peter the greater"?). See also Dr. Haenisch's "Inquiry into the Sources of the 'Cursor Mundi,'" EETS OS 101 (London, 1893), pp. 3-13, where numerous parallel passages between the Historia and the Cursorare printed. 51 Spiele, Li romanz, lines 1464-1500; Cursor mundi, lines 4749-4805. The source of Jacob's knowledge is suppressed in Genesis 42.1. The transmission of information via floating objects (as for example when Tristan signals his presence to Iseult within the garden) is a common romance motif. 52 Ed. Arthur S. Napier (Oxford, 1916); see pp. xii-xiii. See also Frederic E. Faverty, "Joseph in Old and Middle English," PMLA 43 (1928), 79-104. 53 Spiele, Li romanz, pp. 34-35. The chaff-in-the-Nile legend does not appear in the Historia scholastica.See Sarah M. Horrall, "An Old French Source for the GenesisSection of CursorMundi," Mediaeval Studies 40 (1978), 361-73, where she supplements Napier's discoveries by pointing out that the Cursorborrowed material from the thirteenth-century Bible anonyme,a nearly 9,000-verse paraphrase principally of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers followed by a history of the wood of the cross (ed. Julia C. Szirmai, La Bible anonymedu Ms. Paris B. N. f.fr. 763 [Amsterdam, 1985]; see esp. pp. 64-65). Horrall downplays the influence of Comestor on the Cursormundi in "'For the commun at understand': Cursormundi and Its Background," in De Cella in Seculum:Religious and SecularLife and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge, Eng., 1989), pp. 97-107. 54 A critical edition of Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS fr. 12456, is in preparation by Alice M. Colby-Hall. Partial editions of the same manuscript have appeared byJane Frances Anne Henderson, "A Critical Edition of Evrat's Genesis:Creation to the Flood," dissertation, University of Toronto, 1977 (first 2,568 lines with notes and glossary), and by Reinhold R. Grimm, Schopfungund Sundenfall in der altfranzosischen des Evrat (Frankfurt, 1976), first 1,312 lines. Genesisdichtung 55 GRLMA 6/2, entry 1824, though this observation (as well as other, more recent comments by Smeets on French biblical paraphrases and their intended audiences) is in "La Bible de Jehan Malkaraume," in The Bible and Medieval Culture (see above, n. 10), pp. 220-35, here p. 224. 56 Henderson, "A Critical Edition," p. 2. These "revisions" appear in the two other manuscripts of the poem (BN fr. 900 and fr. 12457, also thirteenth century), which, Henderson maintains, drew "even more heavily" on the Historia (p. 45). Henderson observes that Evrat's "vocation to expound the holy word to his unenlightened countrymen shines forth from every page and from the whole conception of the poem" (p. 15).

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Peter Comestor

is strongly typological, and material extraneous to both the Vulgate and the Historia appears. For example, shortly before Jacob meets Rachel, he encounters some shepherds at a well blocked by a stone (Gen. 29.2-10). The stone poses no difficulty in the Bible, but Evrat says the stone is so heavy that the shepherds cannot lift it. Jacob does so single-handedly and thereby prefigures Christ's lifting the stone of the old law.57 The Bible des sept etats du monde (1243) by Geoffrey of Paris is a free mix of biblical, hagiographic, and legendary material, of which only the first two "ages" are of interest here.58 They adapt the Old and New Testaments respectively, whereas later ages concern the Antichrist, the Last Judgment, and the like. Geoffrey probably drew on the same legendary sources as Herman or on Herman himself, since, for example, the motif of the floating grain reappears. Also noteworthy is the preservation of a legend that casts Judas Iscariot not only in his well-known role as treasurer (John 13.29) but also in the role of Shylock: Judas lends money on the condition that he may cut off a limb of the debtor for nonpayment.59 The Bible of Mace de la Charite (c. 1300), 43,000 lines of rhyming verse, translates Peter Riga's verse commentary on the Bible, the Aurora, and adds a 9,000-line Apocalypse.60The Aurorawas produced in three versions from 1170 to 1200, and in its longest version reached 15,000 lines, though Mace's work is roughly equal in length since his verses are half as long as Riga's. The Historia scholasticais one of Riga's most prominent sources.61 In the first volume of the massive seven-volume edition of Mace, Smeets compares the Genesis and Exodus sections with the Historia,Josephus's Antiquities, and the Vulgate; he finds fortynine instances of the Historia's direct influence (independent of the Aurora) on Mace's Bible.62The Aurora and another work by Peter Riga, De quatuor evanet significationibus,were the sources of some passages in gelistarumproprietatibus the Cursormundi.63
57 I owe this reference to Alice Colby-Hall's materials for her edition: lines 10067 ff. (fols. 85v86r). 58 GRLMA 6/2, entry 1836. 59See Bonnard, Traductions(above, n. 42), pp. 47-48. 60 GRLMA 6/2, entry 1852. Paul E. Beichner first pointed out the debt of Mace to the Aurora, in "The Old French Verse Bible of Mace de la Charite, a Translation of the Aurora," Speculum22 (1947), 226-39. The poem was so called to indicate how it dissipated the darkness of the Old Testament. For the Apocalypse, see Brent A. Pitts, "Versions of the Apocalypse in Medieval French Verse," Speculum 58 (1983), 31-59. 61 See Aurora Petri on the Bible, ed. Paul E. Beichner, Rigae, Biblia versificata:A VerseCommentary 2 vols. (Notre Dame, Ind., 1965), 1:xiii-xxvii. Chaucer named the Aurora (Genesis section, lines 465-84) as the source for his comment on the origin of music (Bookof the Duchess, lines 1155-69). See Karl Young, "Chaucer and Peter Riga," Speculum 12 (1937), 299-303, and Beichner, "The Medieval Representative of Music, Jubal or Tubalcain?" in Textsand Studies in the Historyof Mediaeval Education, 2 (Notre Dame, Ind., 1954), pp. 5-27. The Aurora is an occasional source for Gower in his Vox clamantis. See Beichner, "Gower's Use of Aurora in Vox clamantis," Speculum 30 (1955), 582-95. 62 La Bible de Mace de la Charite, 1: Genese,Exode, ed. J. R. Smeets (Leiden, 1967), p. xxxii. Smeets comments elsewhere that Mace "a en vue un auditoire de clercs peu lettres et de laiques" ("La Bible de Jehan Malkaraume" [see above, n. 55], p. 224). 63 Paul E. Beichner, "The Cursormundi and Petrus Riga," Speculum24 (1949), 239-50.

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21

A versification reminiscent of Herman's eclecticism is Jehan Malkaraume's Bible (c. 1300), also edited by Smeets. The unique manuscript, defective at the beginning, contains 10,592 verses: the first 6,574 treat Genesis (from chapter 9) and the beginning of Exodus, followed by a summary up to the death of Moses. The Vulgate, the Historia, and the Aurora are the major sources, though the latter half of the poem is a collection of "tableaux"-short pieces drawn from the Bible and Ovid. Some astonishing grafts occur, as, for example, when Abraham's servant meets Rebecca (Gen. 24) at a "fontainne" strikingly reminiscent of the fountain of Narcissus, or when Potiphar's wife (Gen. 39) is given the speech of Medea when spurned by Joseph.64 A little-known and relatively short poem (460 verses) is La creationdu monde of Robert of Blois.65 Its version of the Creation story, based on the Historia, emphasizes the four constitutive elements, the holiness of the Sabbath, and Peter's commentary on the verse "crescite et multiplicamini" (Gen. 1.28) as the sanctification of marriage. Later in the poem apocryphal traditions appear having to do with the derivation of Adam's name and the twofold deception of Eve by the devil. The former tradition is widespread; one possible source is the Aurora (lines 316-18), but since Robert's poem is some twenty years earlier than Mace's translation, Robert must have seen either the Aurora or the apocryphal text itself.66La creationdu mondethus contains proportionally more apocryphal material than is usual in these paraphrases, though conventional moralizing is not uncommon. Crowning this list is the single most important figure in Old French biblical paraphrase: Guyart Desmoulins. His Bible historiale combined the Historia scholastica with the first full translation of the Bible into French. A few words concerning this early and important vernacular translation, called the Bible du XIIIe siecle (BXIII) by Samuel Berger, are in order. It was made from the socalled Paris Bible produced by Lombard, Comestor, and Langton following corrected Latin texts compiled from Alcuinian versions. Circa 1160 Peter Lombard had assembled a biblical text on which he based his Sentences.Later, this text was combined with the earlier Glossa, and what became the Vulgate textusreceptuswas nearly always accompanied by its gloss.67 Clive Sneddon favors a
64 La Bible de Jehan Malkaraume, ed. J. R. Smeets, 2 vols. (Assen, 1978), esp. 1:24-28, 40-46. Jehan's own redaction of the 30,000-line Roman de Troie appears between the halves of the poem. While not part of the Bible proper, comments by Jehan clearly indicate that the Roman is integral to his project. See Smeets's article, "La Bible de Jehan Malkaraume," p. 232. 65 GRLMA 6/2, entry 2424. See Florence McCulloch, "La Creation du Monde de Robert de Blois," Romania 91 (1970), 267-77. She calls Robert "un vulgarisateur de certaines commentaires sur la Bible et un transmetteur d'une ancienne legende d'origine juive" (pp. 267-68). 66 "Adam" is derived either from the four regions of the earth (Secretsof Enoch) or from four stars at the points of the compass (Pseudo-Cyprian, Liber de montibusSina et Sion [PL 4:992-93]). Cf. The Ormulum,ed. Robert Holt, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1878), lines 16400 ff. Eve's deception by the devil, disguised as an angel offering forgiveness soon after the Fall, appears in the Vita Adae, ed. N. F. Blake, Middle English Religious Prose (Evanston, Ill., 1972), pp. 103-18. 67 Smalley, Study of the Bible, pp. 46-66. The Paris text is known to have circulated quickly and widely. Late-twelfth-century Gospel books in Durham include or substitute some of the Paris readings (see H. H. Glunz, History of the Vulgate in England from Alcuin to Roger Bacon [Cambridge, Eng., 1933], pp. 265-67). The earliest dated Paris Bible was written at Canterbury in 1231; it is notable for imposing the canonical order of books with Langton's chapter divisions (see Loewe, "Medieval History of the Latin Vulgate" [above, n. 38], p. 148).

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Peter Comestor

date before 1284 for BXIII, "but not necessarily much before."68 At times it is an extended gloss rather than a translation, since text and gloss were translated together.69 The translation is generally good, but some books drawn from preexisting versions (the Psalter, Acts, Catholic Epistles, and Apocalypse) vary in quality.70The point here is that the BXIII texts (translation and gloss) survive primarily because Guyart included them in his Bible historiale (BXIII as adapted by Guyart plus extensive excerpts from the Historia). After Berger's work there was considerable doubt that BXIII existed independently, but three manuscripts have been found that contain the Paris translation free of any material from the Historia.71 One is entitled to wonder, in light of this complex textual tradition, what exactly the term "Bible" meant to a reader of the Historia, of the BXIII, or of Guyart's combination of the two, be that reader a university master, a university student, or a lay patron.72 Guyart, who supplied detailed information concerning himself and his work, was born in June 1251 and finished the Bible historialein 1295.73 In his preface (after Peter's dedicatory letter) he writes that
En ceste maniere,je, qui cest ouvrage ... translatai, . . n'i ai ajoust6, ains ai poursuivi cest saint mestre en histoires en toutes les choses qui en roumans doivent estre par raison translatees ...

and then, in rubrication,

Ci doit on savoir que je ai translate les livres historiaus de la Bible selonc le texte de 74 la Bible et selonc les Histoires les escolastres....
68 Clive Sneddon, "The 'Bible du XIIIe siecle': Its Medieval Public in the Light of Its Manuscript Tradition," in The Bible and Medieval Culture (see above, n. 10), pp. 127-40, here p. 135. 69 For a study of the gloss in the Genesis portion see pp. 13-36 of the edition by Michel Quereuil, La BiblefranSaise du XIIIe siecle: Edition critiquede la Genese(Geneva, 1988). He edits part of Paris, Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, MS 5056 (thirteenth century), which uses "une sorte de parenthese" (p. 13) to distinguish the text from the gloss, whereas other manuscripts make no distinction. 70 For the enfranSais au XIIIe siecle, ed. L. Delisle and P. Meyer (Paris, Apocalypse see L'Apocalypse 1901). This so-called Norman Apocalypse was translated into Middle English twice: see Elis Fridner, Versionwith a Prose Commentary, Lund Studies in English ed., An English FourteenthCenturyApocalypse der Apokalypse mit Kommentar 29 (Lund, 1961), and Walter Sauer, ed., Die mittelenglischeUbersetzung (VersionB), dissertation, University of Heidelberg, 1971. 71 See Sneddon, "Bible du XIIIe siecle," p. 130. Robson, "Vernacular Scriptures" (see above, n. 14), p. 446, suggests that the BXIII was a stationers' venture meant to capitalize on the growing interest in biblical studies. While this does not make it clear what group actually made the translation, it does introduce the possible role of the profit motive. 72 The Bible historiale circulated widely in deluxe copies. Edinburgh University Library MS 19 (D.b.I.3; French, 1314-15) is one very fine example and the earliest dated copy of the work. For a color reproduction of the Red Sea Crossing, see Manuscript Treasuresin Edinburgh University Library:An Album of Illustrations, comp. J. D. T. Hall (Edinburgh, 1980), plate 14. 73 Guyart wrote the work "a la requeste dun mien especial ami qui mout desierre le proufit de la moie ame" (quoted from Rosemarie Potz McGerr, "Guyart Desmoulins, the Vernacular Master of Histories, and His Bible historiale," Viator 14 [1983], 211-44, here p. 221). Interestingly enough, the work of translation benefits his soul (i.e., Guyart's). Readers of the work were also to benefit, but the motivation to translate Scripture for one's personal salvation, independent of any wider application, was a powerful one. 74 Quoted from Berger, Biblefrancaise, p. 178. Note that Comestor is called "saint"-i.e., "holy," if not "beatus."

Peter Comestor

23

Berger takes Guyart to task for ignoring his stated policy of not adding ("ajoster") material to his sources. In the light of A. J. Minnis's work on authorship, however, it would appear that Guyart enforced the distinction between an "auctor" and a "compilator."75 Guyart meant that he added nothing on his own authority or of his own creation. Whenever Guyart did depart from the Bible or the Historia he identified his source, as, for example, when he attributed the legend of the destruction of Jerusalem to Josephus. One would wish for more information here, especially when Guyart speaks of "those things which ought rightfully to be translated into romance." Guyart affirmed in another version of his preface that seur l'ame de moi, je n'i ai riens ne mis ne ajouste, fors tant seulement pure verite, si cor je l'ai el latin de la Bible trouve, et des Historesles escolastres....76 This juxtaposition of the Bible and the Historia as "pure truth" (Peter himself referred his friends to the work "pro veritate historiae" [see above, p. 7]) enhances the stature of Comestor's work and shows that a vernacular Bible was not thought to be possible without it. Similar sentiments are expressed in the prologues to the English paraphrases of the Historia (see below, pp. 27-32). The Bible historialebegins with a table of contents, from Genesis to a Gospel harmony.77After a prologue (imitated from Peter) Guyart juxtaposes a literal translation of Genesis 1.1 with the first line from the Historia scholastica:"Au commencement fut li filz / Et li filz estoit le commencement / par lequel / et ouquel le pere crea le monde."78 Here is a very good example of how Guyart combined the Vulgate with Comestor's version and of how easily the text evolved through multiple paraphrases. The rest of Genesis is a mass of legendary material, following Comestor for the most part, though material extraneous to both the Vulgate and Peter also finds its way into the Bible historiale:for example, the inventio crucis legend, Seth's journey to paradise, and material from the Legenda aurea. Guyart gives what is a very common justification for including apocryphal material-"pource quelles sont moult plaisans. et agreables. et assoagens les oreilles des escoutans."79 The latter sections of the Bible historiale
75A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theoryof Authorship,2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 192-93. Berger, Biblefranqaise, p. 160, quoting Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, fr. 160. 77 Berger outlines the contents of the most complete manuscript, British Library, Bible 19 D III, on pp. 163-78 of his Biblefranqaise. See also Robson, "Vernacular Scriptures" (above, n. 14), pp. 445-52. An apocryphal life of Pontius Pilate and a lost life of Judas Iscariot, attested only by a marginal notation, finish the work. Lives of Pilate and Judas are similarly paired at the end of the South English Legendary,ed. Charlotte D'Evelyn and Anna J. Mill, EETS OS 236 (London, 1956), and in the Stanzaic Life of Christ, ed. Frances A. Foster, EETS OS 166 (London, 1926), pp. 21938. GyGinga saga (in the most complete Stj6rnmanuscript) also contains a life of Pilate. Since French words appear in Stjdrn, the Norse translator may have known Guyart as well as the Historia (Kirby, Bible Translation [see above, n. 11], pp. 67, 106). 78 Quoted from McGerr, "Guyart Desmoulins" (see above, n. 73), p. 230. Cf. Comestor: "In principio erat Verbum,et Verbumerat principium, in quo, et per quod Pater creavit mundum" (PL 198:1055). Guyart thus glosses the "Word" as "Son" and rings another change on a quotation which itself conflates the openings of Genesis andJohn. 79 Quoted from McGerr, "Guyart Desmoulins," p. 217. Lore from the Historia includes Isidorean etymologizing-the moon is "li lune ... com des lumieres une"; the sun ("solaus") is so called "car il luist seus"-and odd pieces of natural history (the sun is eight times bigger than the earth). See Berger, Biblefranqaise, pp. 168-69.
76

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Peter Comestor

follow a pattern consistent with other historiated Bibles. Whereas a great deal of legendary material is integrated into Genesis and Exodus, later additions tend to be self-standing. For example, a "Pety Job" takes the place of the Book of Job, and the inventio crucis legend appears as a piece.80 The Bible historiale is a highly complex work and exists in multiple versions which resist generalization.81 They were the primary medium for spreading on both sides of the Channel not only the vernacular Paris translation (BXIII) but also Comestor's biblical text, legend, and commentary. In her Viatorarticle Rosemarie Potz McGerr edits the prologue and the text up to what corresponds to chapter 11 in Peter (PL 198:1065; Gen. 2.3, where God rests on the seventh day).82 McGerr argues that the work was meant to provide orthodox church teaching to a vernacular readership with a limited grasp of biblical vocabulary or basic theology. Guyart "identifies speakers, characters, and situations that the Comestor could be sure his audience would recognize," as, for example, in the very beginning of the work, when he glosses "the Word" by "filz," or when he tells his readers that the dove signifies the Holy Spirit.83 McGerr also argues that his greatest innovation was to provide the whole of the biblical text in question, whereas Peter quotes only the first verse. Guyart forestalled possible objections to such complete translations of Scripture by including Peter's orthodox commentary.84 The question of the church's reception of vernacular biblical material lies outside this study, but it is important to point out that the presence of Peter's commentary very often sanctioned the biblical translation. Reformation translations encountered such stiff resistance primarily because they translated the text alone. It is perhaps paradoxical that nonconformists like Wyclif were archconservatives when it came to presenting Scripture, whereas Comestor and the vernacular paraphrasers indulged a taste for apocrypha and legend and literally rewrote biblical verses. Before I turn to the English versifications, another medieval genre heavily dependent on the Historia should be recognized. The role played by universal histories, whether in Latin or the vernacular, in the dissemination of biblical material is often overlooked. The Histoire ancienne, claimed by its editor to be "the earliest known ancient history in vernacular prose" (c. 1210), bases much
80 See Lawrence L. Besserman, The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 56-65, and J. Kail, ed., Twenty-SixPolitical and OtherPoems (including "PettyJob"), EETS OS 124 (London, 1904). Since the Historia scholasticaomits Job, one may suspect that it was as difficult to explain then as it is now. 81 Sneddon, "Bible du XIIIe siecle," p. 129, counts some seventy-eight manuscripts which contain BXIII and Bible historiale in various proportions. 82 She edits folios 3r-10v of New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 129. Dudley R. Johnson, "The Biblical Characters of Chaucer's Monk," PMLA 66 (1951), 827-43, observes that the Yale manuscript may in some sections (such as Maccabees) preserve more of Guyart's "original version," whereas other manuscripts contain a greater percentage of the BXIII (p. 840, n. 41). 83 McGerr, "Guyart Desmoulins," p. 225. 84 But cf. the case of Jacob van Maerlant, who translated the Historia into Dutch (circa 1271; see above, n. 10) and encountered opposition for having translated no more than those biblical passages which Peter provided even though accompanied by Peter's commentary (see Margaret Deanesly, The Lollard Bible and OtherMedieval Biblical Versions[Cambridge, Eng., 1920], p. 72).

Peter Comestor

25

of its Genesis section on corresponding parts of the Historia.85On the other side of the Channel, Ranulph Higden drew extensively from the Historia in his Polychronicon(c. 1327-c. 1360).86 The entry for the year 1164 reads in part: bat tyme was maisterPeres Comestorin his floures in Fraunce;he wroot a storye of
be eyter Testament, bat hatte Historia Scolastica. Also he wroot allegorias upon eyter Testament, bat is a book of gostliche understondynge. Also he made a nobil book of sermouns, and he made afterward his allegorias in a book of metre, and cleped be
book Aurora.87

Thus not only does Peter get credit for the Allegoriae (see above, n. 20) but also for Peter Riga's Aurora (see above, n. 61). As we have seen, Riga's frequent use of the Historia could easily account for the confusion. Whereas Higden overestimated Comestor's achievement, Comestor's contributions to the opening books of four prominent historians (and very probably more), Helinand of Froidmont, Vincent of Beauvais, Matthew Paris, and Brunetto Latini, are often overlooked by readers eager to get to the "real" history.88 This review of biblical paraphrases in Old French along with related Middle English texts leads to two main conclusions. First, a quantity of vernacular material in prose and verse existed from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries whereby a lay person in France or England could derive considerable biblical knowledge. Second, the Historia scholasticaunderlies nearly every one of those texts. Other sources (apocryphal, rabbinic, native, etc.) do of course exist, and most of the authors discussed here appropriated and recycled large chunks of material without perhaps clearly knowing, or caring about, their origins.89 In this respect Middle English biblical paraphrases differ markedly
85 A MoralizedHistory,the GenesisSectionof the HistoireAncienne Mary CokerJoslin, TheHeard Word: in a Textfrom Saint-Jean d'Acre, rev. ed. (University, Miss., 1986), pp. 13-14. A table of material derived from the Historia appears on pp. 36-38. 86 See David C. Fowler, The Bible in Early English Literature (Seattle, 1976), chap. 6, and John Taylor, The "UniversalHistory" of Ranulf Higden (Oxford, 1966), who notes that Comestor was "a (p. principal source for the narrative contained in the third and fourth books of the Polychronicon" 84). 87 This is John Trevisa's translation (made in 1383): Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis;togetherwith the English Translationsof John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writerof the Fifteenth Century,ed. C. Babington andJ. R. Lumby, 9 vols., Rolls Series 41 (London, 1865-86), 8:43. Peter is named as a source in 1:22, and there are debts throughout to the Historia: see, for example, a passage in Polychronicon,2:278-79, concerning the euhemerization of Baal taken from the Historia (PL 198:1090) and traditions concerning Alexander the Great (G. H. V. Bunt, "The Story of Alexander the Great in the Middle English Translations of Higden's Polychronicon,"in Vincentof Beauvais and Alexander the Great:Studies on the "SpeculumMaius" and Its Translationsinto Medieval Vernaculars,ed. W. J. Aerts et al. (Groningen, 1986), pp. 127-40, esp. pp. 128-29. 88 E. R. Smits, in "Helinand of Froidmont and the A-Text of Seneca's Tragedies," Mnemosyne, 4th ser., 36 (1983), 324-58, notes that Helinand (c. 1160-c. 1230), whose Chroniconwas one of Vincent of Beauvais's major sources, "argues with Peter Comestor throughout the Chronicon"(p. 339, n. 66). Citations of Comestor are omnipresent in Vincent's very influential Speculumhistoriale. Matthew Paris borrowed from Comestor repeatedly in his Chronica majora(see the marginal notations in the first volume of Henry Richards Luard's edition, 7 vols., Rolls Series 57 [London, 1872-83]). Brunetto's debts to the Historia are primarily in the Genesis section of his Tresor(1268): see Francis J. Carmody, "Latin Sources of Brunetto Latini's World History," Speculum 11 (1936), 359-70. 89This kind of hypertrophic accumulation of material (as in the Romanceof the Rose) may find a counterpart in what Per Nykrog calls "gigantophilia" in post-twelfth-century romance/epics: "The Rise of Literary Fiction," in Renaissanceand Renewal (see above, n. 23), pp. 593-612, here p. 610.

26

Peter Comestor

from the French poems. The English poets relied more heavily on Peter alone and were more conservative: eccentric treatments like Herman de Valenciennes's or Jehan Malkaraume's have no counterparts across the Channel.

3. PETERCOMESTOR IN ENGLAND

The Historia circulated in England very soon after its completion. It appears in a list of gifts from Bishop Hugh de Puiset to Durham cathedral in 1194 and in the 1202 inventory of the library of Rochester cathedral.90By 1480 twentyone copies were listed in the library of Christ Church Canterbury.91 The earliest and perhaps the best paraphrase of the Historia scholastica to survive in Middle English is Genesisand Exodus.92 The title is misleading; its 4,162 verses paraphrase the Pentateuch up to the death of Moses (Deut. 34). In the corpus of Middle English biblical poetry, this poem has the greatest percentage of material which derives directly from the Historia. Leviticus is omitted except for the briefest of summaries in lines 3629-35, and substantial parts of Numbers and Deuteronomy are also cut.93The date of original composition has been set circa 1250, though the unique manuscript, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 444, is written in a hand circa 1300-1325 and in what is perhaps an East Midland dialect. Because of its early date it has been studied primarily from a philological perspective; its vocabulary and spelling resemble that of the Middle English Bestiary, Lagamon, and Orm. Olof Arngart argues that the scribe (a Norman?) was unfamiliar with the language since edh appears initially and thorn never appears: nevertheless the vocabulary is almost 85 percent English and alliteration is common.94 The poem's primary source is the Historia scholastica, though independent consultation seems to have been made of the Vulgate itself, and at one point (lines 269-332, the temptation of Eve) the poet drew more heavily on St. Avitus's
90Glunz, Historyof the Vulgate(see above, n. 67), p. 231; MaryP. Richards, Textsand TheirTraditions in the Medieval Library of RochesterCathedralPriory, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 78/3 (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 16, 34. 91 Deanesly, Lollard Bible (see above, n. 84), p. 177. 92 For a survey of biblical material in Middle English see Laurence Muir, "Translations and Paraphrases of the Bible, and Commentaries," in A Manual of the Writingsin Middle English: 10501500, ed. J. Burke Severs and Albert E. Hartung, 8 vols. to date (New Haven, 1967-), 2:381-409, 534-52. 93Richard Morris was the first to edit the poem, in EETS OS 7 (London, 1865, 2nd ed. 1873). His notes and glossary are a triumph of scholarship and informed judgment since he did not know at the time of either edition that the work follows the Historia scholasticaclosely. Bernhard ten Brink was the first to recognize the indebtedness, in his Geschichte der englischenLitteratur,2 vols. (Berlin, 1877-93), 1:247. See the introduction to Olof Arngart's edition, The Middle English Genesis and Exodus, Lund Studies in English 36 (Lund, 1968), and Philip G. Buehler, TheMiddle English "Genesis and Exodus":A Running Commentary on the Text of the Poem (The Hague and Paris, 1974). Morris's line divisions in his edition (p. xiv) are helpful: prologue 1-34, Genesis 35-2536, Exodus 25373628, Leviticus 3629-35, Numbers 3635-4118, Deuteronomy 4119-54, conclusion 4155-62. 94 Arngart's edition, pp. 13, 43.

Peter Comestor

27

work in Latin hexameters, Poematumde Mosaicae historiaegestis libri quinque.95 The spellings of some names leads Buehler to suggest that the poet followed a version of the Historia which contained more ofJosephus's Antiquitiesthan does Migne's edition.96 The Genesisand Exodus poet mentions Josephus by name only once, in line 1281 ("IF iosephus ne lege5 me"). Here he echoes one of Comestor's numerous "ut dicitJosephus" tags, and in a typically medieval way of citing sources his immediate source, Comestor, is glossed over in favor of the prior one. Methodius is also mentioned (lines 517 if., taken from the citations in the Historia, PL 198:1076, 1081), though the poet's description, "He wrot a boc Sat manige witen, / Manige tiding 5or-on is writen" (lines 523-24), perhaps indicates a firsthand acquaintance with the Methodian Revelations, as Charlotte D'Evelyn suggests.97 On the whole, however, the poet followed the Historia very closely. The first 18 lines are highly rhetorical and include the conventions characteristic of the prologues to any number of vernacular romances, penitential manuals, and biblical paraphrases: the appeal to the "lewd" (often with nationalistic overtones), the language dichotomy (here English vs. Latin), and the offer of moral edification-even the promise of salvation: 1 MAn og to luuen 6at rimes-ren De wisse6wel 6e logede men Hu man mayhim wel loken Dog he be lered on no boken, Luuen god and seruen him ay, 5 For he it h[i]m wel gelden may, And to alle cristeneimen Beren pais and luue bi-twen. Dan sal him almigtinluuen Her bi-ne6en and Bundabuuen, 10 And giuen him blisse and soules reste Dat him sal earuermorlesten. Ut of latin iis song is dragen On engleis speche on so6e-sagen; 15 Cristenemen ogen ben so fagen
95 Olof Arngart, "St. Avitus and the Genesis and Exodus Poet," English Studies 50 (1969), 48795. Alcimus Avitus, fl. c. 500, was bishop of Vienne; the Poematumappears in PL 59:323-82. A. Fritzsche, "Ist die altenglische 'Story of Genesis and Exodus' das Werk eines Verfassers?" Anglia 5 (1882), 43-90, notes that initial capitals in the poem frequently correspond to the chapters of the Historia (pp. 47-48; see the table on pp. 88-90). Fritzsche answers the question posed by his title affirmatively. 96 Buehler, p. 36. Manuscripts of the Historia, not surprisingly, varied in Running Commentary, their contents, and the citation of Comestor as an authority may have been an offhand convention. For example, The Middle English Prose Complaintof Our Lady and Gospelof Nicodemus,ed. C. William Marx and Jeanne F. Drennan (Heidelberg, 1987), cites the "Maister of Stories" (p. 189) for the legend that the two thieves who hanged with Christ ("Dismas & Gestas") had tried to rob Mary and Joseph while Christ was an infant. The editors cite other medieval occurrences of this legend (p. 210), but it is not in the PL edition of the Historia. 97 Charlotte D'Evelyn, "The Middle-English Metrical Version of the Revelationsof Methodius; with a Study of the Influence of Methodius in Middle-English Writings," PMLA 33 (1918), 135-203, here p. 146. Corrections in PMLA 34 (1919), 112-13.

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Peter Comestor
So fueles arn quan he it sen dagen, Dan man hem telle6 so6e tale Wi6 londes speche and wordes smale.98 One ought to love that run of rhymes Which well teaches lewd men How one may look after himself Even if he is not learned in books; [One ought] to love God and serve him always, For he may well reward him for it; And to all Christian men [One ought] to bear peace and love; Then the Almighty shall love him, Here beneath and beyond above, And give him bliss and soul's rest That shall last him evermore. Out of Latin this song is drawn Into English speech, as a true story; Christian men ought to be as delighted As birds are when they see day dawn, When one tells them a true tale In native speech and words plain. 1

10

15

The prologue is carefully structured: it is built on four parallel infinitives (in lines 1, 5, and 8), each of which is governed by the first two words, "one ought." One ought to love the poem, God, and one's neighbor. The syntactic compression and elided parts of speech may be a metrical expedient or a sign of colloquial usage; any reading aloud of this prologue would require considerable variation in intonation to make itself understood. Another instance of conscious patterning by this poet, on which no editor has commented, is that the opening 36 lines appear as six interlocking 6-line stanzas; after line 36 the poet continues his "run of rhymes" in couplets.99 At some points the poem is so close to the Historia that sense can be made of the Middle English only in consultation with the Latin. Of course native speakers would have less trouble than we do, but the lines referring to the first Sunday, "Dis dai was for5 in reste wrogt; / Ilc kinde newes ear was brog[t]" (lines 249-50), must at least have given a contemporary reader pause. The Latin is "Vel complevit, id est completum ostendit, cum nihil novum in eo fecerit, et tunc requievit ab operum generibus novis" (PL 198:1065). In many cases it would seem that the syntactic compression is due to the poet's attempts to retain the meaning of the Latin while still writing verse. At other points considerable sensitivity and virtuosity are displayed. Comestor's extended explanation of the various spellings and significances of Abrais refined into ham's and Sarah's names (Gen. 17.5 and 15; PL 198:1097-98) His name 6o wur6 a lettre mor, His wiues lesse 6an it was or.
98

993

All quotations are from Arngart's edition. The translation is my own. 99Including the missing line 21, the rhyme scheme is a a a a b b, a a a a c c, a a a a d d, d d d d e e, e e eff, ffff gg.

Peter Comestor For 5o wur6 abramabraham, And sarraysarrabi-cam.

29 996

When Abraham entertains the three angels (Gen. 18), a question must have been raised concerning the consumption of food by ethereal beings. The poet renders Comestor's clinical explanation, "De cibo quem sumpserunt, potest dici quod in masticando exinanitus sit, sicut aqua calore ignis" (PL 198:1099), with no little grace as So malt 6at mete in hem to nogt, So a watresdrope in a fier brogt. 1118 The poet occasionally interjects his own voice, as, for example, when he comments on the overly proud nature of women of his own time ("Wimmen 5o nomen of here erf kep; / Pride ne cu6e bi bat dai / Nogt so michel so it nu mai") and when, at the end of the Genesis portion, he prays for his own salvation in his capacity as translator ("God schilde hise sowle fro helle bale, / De made it 5us on engel-tale").100 At the very end the poet speaks in the first-person plural and extends his benediction (lines 4155-62) to include his listeners. Remarkable throughout is the poet's clear focus on how biblical knowledge is necessary to personal salvation. The other major English poem which owes the bulk of its material to the Historia scholasticahas been edited by two dedicated scholars in four volumes, plus a glossary. Its rather ponderous title, A Middle English Metrical Paraphrase befits the scale of the poem: 18,372 lines in 12-line stanzas.101 of the Old Testament, Herbert Kalen and Urban Ohlander edit Bodleian MS Selden Supra 52 (midfifteenth century) with variants from the only other manuscript, Longleat 257 (post-1420, since the manuscript contains a copy of Lydgate's Siege of Thebes). Longleat is missing Genesis and several other leaves throughout. Neither is the original, nor does one copy the other, although they do have a common source to which Selden seems to be the closer. One of the most interesting features of Longleat is that a corrector has noted in the margin deviations from the Bible and from the Historia, indicating that at least one fifteenth-century reader felt that the Historia, like the Bible itself, was entitled to textual integrity.102 Selden has retained all of its leaves; it selectively retells the Old Testament
100 Lines 2746-48: "Women then took care of their cattle; / Pride they knew not in that day, / Not so much as it now is." Lines 2525-26: "God shield his soul from hell torment, / Who made it thus in English speech." 101 Herbert Kalen edited the first 500 stanzas (rhyming a b a b a b a b c d c d) in Goteborgs Hogskolas Arsskrift 28, no. 5 (1923). Urban Ohlander finished the edition in Goteborgs Universitets Arsskrift 61, no. 2, also Gothenburg Studies in English 5 (1955), stanzas 501-802; Goteborgs Universitets Arsskrift 66, no. 7, also Gothenburg Studies in English 11 (1960), stanzas 803-1174; Gothenburg Studies in English 16 (1963), stanzas 1175-1531; and Gothenburg Studies in English 24 (1972), glossary. 102 E.g., at stanza 1249 the corrector writes, "Nota Digreditur ab historia," and at stanza 1255, "Caueat lector quia hic errat translator ut in plerisque alijs" (see Kalen's edition, p. ix). On p. cxciv Kalen lists several motifs unparalleled in either the Vulgate or the Historia, but he was rather careless in noting literary relationships: see S. B. Liljegren's review of Kalen's edition in Anglia Beiblatt 34 (1923), 227-28.

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Peter Comestor

from Genesis through 4 Kings (omitting, as is common in the paraphrases, Leviticus, even though the marginal notation "leuiticus" on folio 17r would lead one to believe that it is really there). Job, Tobit, Esther, and Judith also appear.103Next are two grisly stories from 2 Maccabees, "De matre cum vii filiis" and "De anthioco," which tell how the pagan king Antiochus torments the mother and her sons and then executes the seven for refusing to renounce their faith. Thirty-four verse tales of saints and monks (not included in the Gothenburg edition) finish the manuscript.104 Kalen favors a date of composition circa 1400, but I believe that this date may be somewhat late. Kalen assumed that this poem borrowed from the York plays since they share the same rhyme scheme and numerous lines, but, with no evidence to the contrary, it is more likely that the play cycle borrowed from the poem. This relationship would be in keeping with the dependence of the drama on the NorthernPassion and the Stanzaic Life of Christ, works which are themselves indebted to the Historia.05 The York plays exist in a single manuscript (British Library, Add. 35290, c. 1430-40) though all of the drama cycles took form throughout the fourteenth century. Given their uncertain (and in fact almost nonexistent) manuscript tradition, and the likelihood that the dramatic scripts were fluid over time, it is more likely that the plays borrowed from the paraphrase rather than vice versa. Thus the mystery plays, surely the most public medium for biblical material, are what might be called the end of the line of a complex literary tradition that began with Comestor's Paris lectures. After invoking the Trinity in the first stanza, the poet cites his sources and names his audience in stanza 2: This buke is of grett degre, Os all wettysthat ben wyse,
103 Kalen (p. cxcii) notes some debts in the Job section to the PetyJob (see above, n. 80), and only here in the paraphrase do Latin headings occur, with translation. The forgiveness of the good thief is mentioned in Job's lament .(stanza 1250). Other material from the New Testament includes the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16.19-31 at stanzas 1227, 1249), Judas as a sign of despair (stanzas 1092, 1094), and frequent prophecies of Christ. See Kalen, p. cxciii. 104 Some omissions and transpositions correspond to an Old French versification, largely unprinted, studied by Ohlander in a separate article: "Old French Parallels to a Middle English Metrical to English Syntaxand Philology, ed. Frank Behre Paraphrase of the Old Testament," in Contributions (Gothenburg, 1962), pp. 203-24. The Old French poem (London, British Library, Egerton 2710, among others; see GRLMA 6/2, entry 1808) is some 17,400 verses long and has many elements from the chanson de geste tradition not reproduced in the Middle English. Both poems share stories from Peter, such as the infant Moses averting his face from the breasts of Egyptian women, and perhaps most significantly both poems at times agree against the Historia. Ohlander states in the introduction to volume 3 of the edition that "It is an open question whether the English poet was influenced by the OFr. poem or whether both poets followed the same source" (p. 5). 105 The NorthernPassion is a source for the York, Wakefield (Towneley), and Coventry cycles. See Frances A. Foster, ed., The NorthernPassion: French Text, Variants, and Fragments, EETS OS 147 (London, 1916), pp. 81-101. The Chester cycle relies on the StanzaicLife of Christ,ed. Foster, EETS OS 166 (London, 1926), which repeatedly names the Historiaas a source (via Higden's Polychronicon). A sporadic but helpful treatment of Comestor's contribution to English drama appears in Rosemary Woolf's English MysteryPlays (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 115, 125, 135, 151, 159, 209, 228, 333, 390, 393, 399, 408. It may also be pointed out that B. D. Brown, in her edition of the SouthernPassion, EETS OS 169 (London, 1927), lists forty-two instances in which details or the ordering of events derive from Peter (pp. lxii-lxx).

Peter Comestor
ffor of the bybyll sail yt be The poyntes that ar mad most in price, Als maysters of dyuinite and on, the maystur of storyse, ffor sympyll men soyn [soon] forto se, settes yt bus in this schort assyse; And in moyr schort maner is my mynd forto make yt, That men may lyghtly leyre to tell and vnder take yt.

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It may be remarked that no specific appeal to "lewd" men appears here; only toward the end of the poem does the reference appear in a conventional prayer. In stanza 1479 the poet declares "god graunt hym hele bat hath turned yt / in

ynglysch lawd men forto lere." Here then is the same egalitarian appeal so common to vernacular poems, but in the prologue the poet varies the convention somewhat and directs the poem to "sympyll men" as a digest of biblical material. By "sympyll men" I would hazard the guess that the poet means those lay brothers in a monastery who were ignorant of Latin.106Only such an audience, and not lay people generally, would require such a massive production. Thus this poem is a means for the conversi to acquaint themselves with a text-the Historia scholastica-which had already become part of what I have called the monastic "core curriculum" (see above, p. 6). The prologue also demonstrates how the poet thought of biblical paraphrase in terms of a continuum from the "bybyll" itself, through the "maystur of storyse," to his own "buke." Peter set the material in "schort assyse," and the poet will now retell the same material "in moyr schort maner"; he simply continues a well-attested practice and assumes a considerable sense of authorship by referring to "my mynd." The poet elaborates on his rationale for making the poem in stanza 3: This boke that is the bybyllcald,
and all that owtt of yt is drawn, ffor holy wrytt we sail yt hald and honour yt euer os our awn; All patriarkes and prophettes yt told, so [e]uer ber saynges sekerly ar knawn,

And all wer fygursfayr to fald [set forth?]

how coymmyng of crist mi3t be kawn [meditated on?]. God graunt vs crist to knaw All our form faders crauyd And so to lere is law that our sawlis may be sauyd.

First, "all" that is drawn out of the Bible is "holy wrytt," including, as the parallelism from "This buke" of stanza 2 to "This boke" of stanza 3 implies, the Historia and this very poem. Second, the poet puts himself in the tradition
106 A very good discussion of such lay religious is Eric Colledge's introduction to The Chastising of God's Childrenand the Treatiseof Perfectionof the Sons of God, ed. Joyce Bazire and Eric Colledge (Oxford, 1957), pp. 1-90.

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of Bible tellers and has a very proprietary sense of Scripture. Holy Writ is "our awn"; since individuals cannot own what they cannot read, the poet envisions his project as a kind of empowerment. Third, the poem is a means to save souls. The influence of Comestor on Middle English literature beyond these two paraphrases has been considered in connection with the Gawainpoet, Langland, and Chaucer.107Peter Taitt compares references to the drunkenness of Lot, Noah, and Herod in Piers Plowman (C 11.177) with these lines from the Pardoner's Tale to argue for the influence of the Historia:108 Lo, how that dronken Looth, unkyndely, Lay by his doghtres two, unwityngly; So dronke he was, he nyste what he wroghte. Herodes, whoso wel the stories soghte, Whanhe of wyn was repleet at his feeste, Right at his owene table he yaf his heeste To sleen the BaptistJohn, ful giltelees.'09 Taitt cites a chapter ("De decollatione Joannis") in the New Testament section of the Historia (PL 198:1574-75) as the source for the above passage, or at least for the reference to "stories" in line 488. This is a well-documented, if ambiguous, way to signal the specific presence of Peter. Langland refers to the "clerc of the stories" in B 7.73, and the Middle English Metrical Paraphraseof the Old Testamentcites "maysters of dyuinite / and on, the maystur of storyse" (see above, p. 31) when Peter is clearly meant. Taitt's parallels are somewhat Peter strained, but Chaucer does invite us to search well to find his authority.110 will often assess culpability in morally ambiguous biblical action, and thus the Historia is a logical authority to cite. An even greater mystery is why, in five manuscripts of the Nun's Priest's Tale, including both Ellesmere and Hengwrt, the name "Peter Comestor" appears in the margin next to the following lines:
For the Gawain poet, see Ordelle G. Hill, "Patience:Style, Background, Meaning, and Relationship to Cleanness,"dissertation, University of Illinois, 1965. See esp. pp. 121, 135-42, which show how the treatment of Jonah's fear and anger corresponds to Comestor's treatment of Jonah as a disobedient preacher in his Ad praelatos, sermon 48 (PL 198:1838-39). Michael Twomey considers the possible influence of the Historia in conjunction with the Revelationessancti Methodii (one of Peter's acknowledged sources) on lines 263-76 of Cleanness:"Cleanness, Peter Comestor, and the Revelationessancti Methodii," Mediaevalia 11 (1989 for 1985), 203-17. Twomey discusses how the Cleannesspoet shares with Comestor the practice of freely adaptating biblical and apocryphal material so as to create an original pseudohistorical narrative. See also Marbury B. Ogle, "Petrus Comestor, Methodius, and the Saracens," Speculum21 (1946), 318-24. 108 Peter Taitt, "In Defence of Lot," Notes & Queries 216 (1971), 284-85. '09Geoffrey Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer,gen. ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1987), 6.485-91, p. 196. The Riverside note to line 488 points out the relevance in this context of line 709 in the General Prologue: "Wel koude he [the Pardoner] rede a lessoun or a storie"(my emphasis). 110 The main difficulties with Taitt's argument are that in Peter's treatment of Lot (PL 198:11012) Noah is not mentioned as being drunk and in the Herod chapter (PL 198:1574-75) drunkenness is not mentioned at all. In a characteristic move, Peter hedged by citing various opinions (Jerome, Strabus, the "Hebrews"). Chaucer's own position is unclear, since "unwityngly" (line 486) implies exoneration while the context of drunkards is clearly negative. See the Riverside note for other proposed explanations.
107

Peter Comestor God woot that worldlyjoye is soone ago; And if a rethor koude faire endite, He in a cronyclesauflymyghteit write As for a sovereynnotabilitee.11

33

The proverb, admittedly very common, has not been found in Peter's work, but it is notable that the name should appear in both of the best Canterbury Tales in his of and that Chaucer, manuscripts typically enigmatical way citing sources, should specifically mention some rhetorician's chronicle. The Historia scholastica does not as a whole reflect the Weltanschauung of Egeus in the Knight's Tale, but one Middle English paraphrase of Peter's work, the so-called Old Testament History, does.112It begins When hit comes in my bo3t; be mykelsorow & synne, bat sues here monkynne be soryness& wrechidnesse; Glad ne blybemay I be; ne wonder is hit no3t. More wonder hit is how ioy3;may come in oure bo3t13 and continues through approximately 1,800 lines, from the Creation to Daniel 14 (Habakkuk's impromptu journey). Moralizations at the end of the biblical narrative (i.e., those printed by Furnivall) center around Solomon and are taken from the 3-4 Kings and Bel and the Dragon sections of the Historia. They are largely conventional, and the poet makes some comments based on Ecclesiasticus 30.1-10 concerning human relationships, which are humorous in their extreme cynicism: be sure to trust no one, especially not women, lest they betray you; in order to enforce obedience, beat your sons, and smile at your daughters rarely; best of all, have no children at all.114Given the cynicism of the incipit and of these comments, and that the earliest manuscript (Egerton 1993) dates from the first half of the fourteenth century, it is interesting to speculate that some reader or readers of the Nun's Priest's Tale knew Peter's work through this paraphrase and that the similar tone of Chaucer's tale inspired the marginal notation. The notation may at least tell us something of the spirit in which the Historia was read. Whether Chaucer himself had this poem or even Peter in mind at all when he referred to the "rhetor" is impossible to say. In any event, this paraphrase deserves an edition: it includes some rare complimentary ref"I Riverside Chaucer7.3206-9, p. 258. See the Riverside note to line 3208.
See The Index of Middle English Verse,by Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins (New York, 1943), Supplementby Robbins and John L. Cutler (Lexington, Ky., 1965), entry 3973. Ten manuscripts exist of various parts of the poem. The Vernon manuscript begins with a complete version. Brief excerpts from Bodleian Library, Laud misc. 622 (fifteenth century) have been edited by F. J. Furnivall in Adam Davy's 5 Dreams about Edward II . . ., EETS OS 69 (London, 1878). Furnivall entitles the excerpts Solomon'sBook of Wisdom(pp. 82-90, 96-98); they come at the very end of the paraphrase in the Laud manuscript and correspond to lines 1489-1806. 13 Minnie E. Wells, "The Structural Development of the South English Legendary,"Journal of English and GermanicPhilology 41 (1942), 320-44, here (p. 334) quoting from Lambeth MS 223. Wells prints a few other brief extracts on pp. 334-35, and comments "The author follows Peter Comestor's Historia Scholasticawith very few digressions" (p. 335). 0. S. Pickering revises some of her conclusions in "The TemporaleNarratives of the South English Legendary,"Anglia 91 (1973), 425-55, esp. pp. 430-32. 114 Furnivall, Solomon'sBook, pp. 82-84.
112

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Peter Comestor

erences to the preaching of friars, an odd bit of Jonah lore, and a description of Enoch and Elijah's battle with Antichrist.1l5 Before leaving Chaucer one should note Dudley R. Johnson's argument that for the seven biblical characters in the Monk's Tale Chaucer drew on Guyart Desmoulins's Bible historiale (see above, pp. 21-24). Johnson builds a strong case; shared details are the strongest pieces of evidence, though the order of presentation is also significant: "Daniel provided Chaucer with the stories of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, Judith the story of Holofernes, and Maccabees the accounts of Alexander and Antiochus.... If Chaucer used the Bible Historiale, he would have found his information on the five Biblical characters of Nebuchadnezzar through Alexander in the consecutive series of Books listed
above."116

As the Table above shows, the (non-Vulgate) order of these biblical characters in the Monk's Tale corresponds to the order of books in Peter (and Guyart). It is not surprising that the Bible historiale could be one of Chaucer's sources, though in this case, it seems to me, the Historia is just as likely a source as Guyart. Johnson conclusively rules out, however, the Vulgate, Vincent of Beauvais's Speculumhistoriale, and Boccaccio's De casibus virorum illustrorum as primary sources for the biblical characters. The influence of the Historia's New Testament section extends beyond the passion narratives and mystery plays noted above (see n. 105). The Middle English Estoire del Evangelie, in a direct address to Jesus, blends biblical paraphrase with affective piety. It exists, fragmentarily, in seven manuscripts, some illustrated, one of which is the famous Vernon manuscript, where it appears at the beginning of part 2 (at fol. 105). No one to my knowledge has pointed out that Old Testament (the Old TestamentHistory, see above, n. 112) and New Testament poems, both indebted to the Historia, thus begin each part of the most important compendium of Middle English poetry and prose.117 While it may not surprise us to learn that Vernon thus adapted a biblical historical frame, it should be recognized that Comestor provided not only the raw materials for biblical paraphrases but also the model of beginning with a heterogeneous Old Testament paraphrase followed by a Gospel harmony. Lastly, an obscure sermon by the Franciscan Laurence Briton (fl. 1340) preserves a tantalizing reference to Peter before a version of the debate between the heart and the eye. The sermon is written in English and macaronic Latin:"18
The friars are likened to the apostles, "ffor of prechyng it worle nede: er be day of dome" 1"5 (Furnivall, Solomon'sBook, p. 89, line 264). The Jonah reference is in the context of 3 Kings 17.1724, where Elijah brings the widow of Sarephta's son back to life (Furnivall, p. 86). Following Peter, the poet identifies the son as Jonah: "Hunc puerum tradunt Hebraei fuisse Jonam prophetam" (PL 198:1379). "6Johnson, "Biblical Characters" (see above, n. 82), p. 839. 117 See Thorlac Turville-Petre, "The Relationship of the Vernon and Clopton Manuscripts," in Studiesin the Veron Manuscript,ed. Derek Pearsall.(Cambridge, Eng., 1990), pp. 29-44. The earliest manuscript of the Estoire, Dulwich College xxii (c. 1300), is printed with Bodleian Library, MS Add. C 38 (1410-20), by Gertrude H. Campbell, "The Middle English Evangelie," PMLA 30 (1915), 529613, additions and corrections pp. 851-53. 118 For the debate, see Carleton Brown, "A Homiletical Debate between Heart and Eye," Modern

Peter Comestor swyneshalle fendes falle church robbere whit wendere wrabewerchere herte rindere Lond lesere Lif reuere primo dico quod mulier mala est swyneshalle quia dicit petrus commestorquod meretrixest aula, scilicet dira. & luxuriosuses porcus. scilicetbe swynin be slo be frogh in be dich be werm in be dongis hul. primo quid est porcus in luto.

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This is a remarkable mixture of a rythmical paraphrase based on Peter with what was probably a popular rhyme. Perhaps we see here an example of material from Peter being composed into both a piece of doggerel and a sermon. The "Maistur of Stories" is named twice as an authority in at least two Middle English sermon collections.119Peter seems to have been known not only as a Paris master but also as a populist sage. These Middle English texts, like the ones in Old French, demonstrate the pervasiveness of Comestor's influence and the Historia's role in mediating biblical material to the vernaculars some 150 years before Wyclif. They not only made lay biblical knowledge possible but also account for what are to us the peculiar contents and character of the medieval popular Bible. The Historia scholasticawas finished shortly before the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215-a council dedicated to reawakening lay spirituality-and thus was perfectly poised to become the primary text for biblical instruction in the late Middle Ages. As a work of literature the Historia made the Bible, which can be very strange and intractable, into a coherent, orthodox, and entertaining narrative. Here we see how Comestor became the "magister historiarum." Peter neither allegorized nor typologized but, in the Victorine tradition of literal exegesis, assigned logical, effective causes to unexplained biblical action. The tradition of rabbinic haggadah ("narrative") is more relevant to his methodology than earlier patristic exegesis; the former fills gaps and explains while the latter interprets what is already there. Comestor's literary sensibilities were more highly developed than his theological or scholastic ones, and thus it is not surprising that his work lent itself to the literary adaptations which constituted the pre-Reformation vernacular Bible.
Language Notes 30 (1915), 197-98. I quote here from Homer G. Pfander, The Popular Sermonof the Medieval Friar in England, dissertation, New York University, 1937, privately printed, p. 49, where he reproduces Oxford, Merton College, MS 248, fols. 131r-132v. I preserve the column separation and line correspondence. Middle English Sermons "19 EditedfromBritishMuseumMS. Royal 18 B.xxiii, ed. Woodburn O. Ross, EETS OS 209 (London, 1940), p. 91, line 24; p. 307, line 8. Lollard Sermons,ed. Gloria Cigman, EETS OS 294 (London, 1989), p. 47, line 103; cf. p. 59, line 233.

James H. Morey is Assistant Professor of English at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 794093091.