Ancora sull’origine del prologo al commentario sul Cantico dei Cantici di Gregorio d’Elvira

In two manuscripts of the commentary in the Song of the Songs by Gregorio of Elvira, the text is preceded by a prologue which critics have unanimously considered spurious, but proposals aimed at explaining its origin are scarce. Here we try to open a new way of approximation to the problem by analyzing the contents of the manuscripts. In addition to Gregory of Elvira, the manuscript traditions of the commentary in the Song of Songs of Justus of Urgel and the Excerpta Gregorii of Taio of Saragossa (commentary in each biblical book composed of extracts of Gregory the Great, whose surviving part is limited to sapiential books) as well as a case of indirect tradition, the Vox Ecclesie, are explored, which makes possible to verify that at least the second redaction of Gregory of Elvira (the one to which the prologue would originally be connected), the subarchetype η of Giusto (from which also the Vox Ecclesie derives), and the archetype of the surviving part of Taio’s work probably date back to a single manuscript. On the other hand, as it is possible to see by examining all this tradition, the supposed manuscript would have also contained four treatises on some homogeneous verses of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. These treatises are very related to the work of Taio, and only one of them, the De aenigmatibus Salomonis, has been edited and studied. Taking into account the content of these texts and the similarities between them, I think that its union stems from the desire to create an exegetical set on the sapiential books, where the reference point is fixed in Taio’s Excerpta. The false prologue of Gregory’s commentary seems to have a compositional and content relationship with the De anigmatibus and the other unpublished commentaries

Archetype · Art · Humanities · Literature · Prologue · Redaction · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Studies and Legal History · Classics · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Philosophy