Abstract
One of the least understood texts written during the transition from Old to Middle English is Vices and Virtues, a religious dialogue surviving in London, British Library, Stowe 34 (s. xiii1/4). Several scholars have shown from linguistic evidence that the work was probably composed in Eastern or Southeastern England sometime in the second half of the twelfth century, but its literary and intellectual context has received little attention. The present article identifies sources for two passages of Vices and Virtues in the Anselmian De similitudinibus and Hugh of St Victor’s (d. 1141) De sacramentis Christiane fidei. The second passage also has an important vernacular analogue in a French sermon by Maurice de Sully (d. 1196). Finally, a third passage is compared with close parallels from John of Salisbury’s (d. 1180) Policraticus and a few later texts. The sources and analogues identified here represent some of the most important clues to the work’s date so far discovered, and may allow us to assign the original composition of Vices and Virtues to the last third of the twelfth century. More significantly, these related texts help to situate more precisely the dialogue’s anonymous author within the intellectual landscape of post-Conquest England. The Vices and Virtues author’s knowledge and adaptation of the works of contemporary Latin theologians provides evidence of the vibrancy and utility of English religious prose in the late twelfth century.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Becker, W. (1980). The source text of Sawles Warde. Manuscripta, 24, 44–48.
Becker, W. (1984). The literary treatment of the pseudo-Anselmian dialogue De custodia interioris hominis in England and France. Classica et mediaevalia, 35, 215–233.
Berndt, R. (Ed.). (2008). Hugonis de Sancto Victore De sacramentis Christiane fidei. Corpus Victorinum: Textus Historici 1. Münster: Aschendorff.
Bethurum, D. (Ed.). (1957). The homilies of Wulfstan. Oxford: Clarendon.
Biffi, I., Granata, A., Marabelli, C., & Riserbato, D. (Eds.). (2008). Anselmo d’Aosta nel ricordo dei discepoli: parabole, dette, miracoli. Milan: Jaca book.
Boutry, M. (Ed.). (2004). Petri Cantoris Summa quae dicitur Verbum adbreuiatum (textus conflatus). Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis 196. Turnhout: Brepols.
Boutry, M. (Ed.). (2012a). Petri Cantoris Summa quae dicitur Verbum adbreuiatum (textus prior). Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis 196A. Turnhout: Brepols.
Boutry, M. (Ed.). (2012b). Petri Cantoris Summa quae dicitur Verbum adbreuiatum (textus alter). Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis 196B. Turnhout: Brepols.
Catalogue of the Stowe Manuscripts in the British Museum. (1895–96). 2 vols. London: British Museum.
Châtillon, J. (1948). Le contenu, l’authenticité et la date du Liber exceptionum et des Sermones centum de Richard de Saint-Victor. Revue du Moyen Âge latin, 4, 23–52; 343–366.
Châtillon, J. (Ed.). (1958). Liber exceptionum: texte critique avec introduction, notes et tables. Paris: J. Vrin.
Crawford, J. M. (Ed.). (1986). Vices and Virtues: re-edited from British Library MS Stowe 34. Doctoral dissertation, University of Sheffield.
Dickins, B., & Wilson, R. M. (Eds.). (1951). Early Middle English texts. London: Bowes & Bowes.
Ehlers, J. (1991). Hugo v. St-Victor. Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. V (cols. 177–78). Stuttgart: Metzler.
Faulkner, M. (2011). Archaism, belatedness and modernisation: ‘Old’ English in the twelfth century. The Review of English Studies, ns, 63, 179–203.
Faulkner, M. (2012). Rewriting English literary history 1042–1215. Literature Compass, 9, 275–291.
Fischer, B. (Ed.). (1951–54). Genesis. Vetus Latina: die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel, vol. II. Freiburg: Herder.
Forbes, H. F. (2010). Diuiduntur in quattuor: The interim and judgement in Anglo-Saxon England. The Journal of Theological Studies, ns, 61, 659–684.
Gatelais, S., & Toupin, F. (2012). The Kentish Sermons as evidence of thirteenth-century English and translation practice. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 113, 191–218.
Girolimon, M. T. (1994). Hugh of St. Victor’s De sacramentis Christianae fidei: the sacraments of salvation. The Journal of Religious History, 18, 127–138.
Goering, J. (1992). William de Montibus (c. 1140–1213): the schools and the literature of pastoral care. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.
Gräbener, H.-J. (Ed.). (1965). Ars poetica: kritische Ausgabe. Forschungen zur romanischen Philologie 17. Münster (Westfalen): Aschendorff.
Gunn, C. (2012). Vices and Virtues: a reassessment of manuscript Stowe 34. In R. G. Newhauser & S. J. Ridyard (Eds.), Sin in medieval and early modern culture: The tradition of the seven deadly sins (pp. 65–84). Woodbridge: York Medieval Press.
Hall, J. (Ed.). (1920). Selections from early Middle English, 1130–1250. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.
Hallik, S. (2007). Sententia und Proverbium: Begriffsgeschichte und Texttheorie in Antike und Mittelalter. Cologne: Böhlau.
Heinzmann, R. (1967). Die “Institutiones in sacram paginam” des Simon von Tournai: Einleitung und Quästionenverzeichnis. Veröffentlichungen des Grabmann-Instituts: Neue Folge 1. Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh.
Henel, H. (1934). Studien zum altenglischen Computus. Beiträge zur englischen Philologie 26. Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz.
Hilberg, I. (Ed.). (1996). Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi epistulae. Pars 1: epistulae I–LXX (2nd ed.). Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 54. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Holthausen, F. (Ed.). (1888–1921). Vices and Virtues, being a soul’s confession of its sins with Reason’s description of the virtues: A Middle-English dialogue of about 1200 A.D. Early English Text Society os 89 and 159. London: Oxford University Press.
Kabir, A. J. (2001). Paradise, death, and doomsday in Anglo-Saxon literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Keats-Rohan, K. S. B. (Ed.). (1993). Ioannis Saresberiensis Policraticus: libri I–IV. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis 118. Turnhout: Brepols.
Kleinman, S. (2013). Frið and grið: Laȝamon and the legal language of Wulfstan. In R. Allen, J. Roberts, & C. Weinberg (Eds.), Reading Laȝ amon’s Brut: approaches and explorations (pp. 391–417). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Kurath, H., Kuhn, S. M., & Lewis, R. E. (Eds.). (1954–2001). Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Laing, M. (1993). Catalogue of sources for a linguistic atlas of early Middle English. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
Le Goff, J. (1981). La naissance du purgatoire. Paris: Gallimard.
Longère, J. (1988). Les sermons latins de Maurice de Sully, évêque de Paris (†1196): contribution à l’histoire de la tradition manuscrite. Steenbrugge: Sint-Pietersabdij.
Luscombe, D. (2004). Salisbury, John of (late 1110s–1180). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/14849. Accessed 1 May 2014.
Manitius, M. (1931). Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters: dritter Band, vom Ausbruch des Kirchenstreites bis zum Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts. Beck: Munich.
Meyerhoff, E. (1913). Die Verbalflexion in den “Vices and Virtues.” Doctoral dissertation: University of Kiel.
Millett, B. (2005). The discontinuity of English prose: Structural innovation in the Trinity and Lambeth homilies. In A. Oizumi, J. Fisiak, & J. Scahill (Eds.), Text and language in medieval English prose: a Festschrift for Tadao Kubouchi (pp. 129–150). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Millett, B. (2007). The pastoral context of the Lambeth and Trinity homilies. In W. Scase (Ed.), Essays in manuscript geography: vernacular manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the sixteenth century (pp. 43–64). Turnout: Brepols.
Millett, B. (2010). Change and continuity: The English sermon before 1250. In E. Treharne & G. Walker (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of medieval literature in English (pp. 221–239). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morrison, S. (1995). A reminiscence of Wulfstan in the twelfth century. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 96, 229–234.
Morsbach, L. (1896). Mittelenglische Grammatik. Halle: Niemeyer.
Pelle, S. (2012). Continuity and renewal in English homiletic eschatology, ca. 1150–1200. Doctoral dissertation: University of Toronto.
Peppermüller, R. (1993). Petrus Cantor. Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. VI (cols. 1965–66). Stuttgart: Metzler.
Philipssen, M. (1911). Die Deklination in den “Vices and Virtues.” Doctoral dissertation: University of Kiel.
Robson, C. A. (Ed.). (1952). Maurice of Sully and the medieval vernacular homily, with the text of Maurice’s French homilies from a Sens Cathedral Chapter manuscript. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sanford, E. M. (1943). The Verbum abbreviatum of Petrus Cantor. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 74, 33–48.
Schmidt, G. (1899). Ueber die Sprache und Heimat der “Vices and Virtues”: ein Beitrag zur mittelenglischen Dialektkunde. Doctoral dissertation: University of Leipzig.
Southern, R. W., & Schmitt, F. S. (Eds.). (1969). Memorials of St. Anselm. Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spieralska, B. (2007). Les sermons ad populum de Maurice de Sully et leur adaptation française. Przegląd Tomistyczny, 13(1), 9–112.
Swan, M. (2007a). Mobile libraries: Old English manuscript production in Worcester and the West Midlands, 1090–1215. In W. Scase (Ed.), Essays in manuscript geography: vernacular manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the sixteenth century (pp. 29–42). Turnhout: Brepols.
Swan, M. (2007b). Preaching past the Conquest: Lambeth Palace 487 and Cotton Vespasian A. xxii. In A. Kleist (Ed.), The Old English homily: Precedent, practice, and appropriation (pp. 403–23). Turnhout: Brepols.
Thompson, N. (2002). “Hit segð on halgum bocum”: The logic of composite Old English homilies. Philological Quarterly, 81, 383–419.
Treharne, E. (2012). Living through conquest: the politics of early English, 1020–1220. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tristram, H. (1995). Early insular preaching: verbal artistry and method of composition. Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Klasse 623/Veröffentlichungen der Keltischen Kommission 11. Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Utley, F. L. (1972). Dialogues, debates, and catechisms. In A. E. Hartung (Ed.), A manual of the writings in Middle English, 1050–1500 (Vol. III, pp. 669–745). New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Wilson, R. M. (1968). Early Middle English literature (3rd ed.). London: Methuen.
Zeeman, E. (1956). Continuity in Middle English devotional prose. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 55, 417–422.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pelle, S. The Date and Intellectual Milieu of the Early Middle English Vices and Virtues . Neophilologus 99, 151–166 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-014-9397-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-014-9397-1