1910 Articles

Commentaire Anonyme sur Prudence d'après le manuscrit 413 de Valenciennes par John M. Burnam

Rand, E. K.

The period following the Carolingian Renaissance abounded in commentaries. To compare small things with great, it suggests the Alexandrine age, which succeeded the creative period in Greek literature. Not many of the commentaries of the ninth century have been published, and the reason is not far to seek. They contain little information of value concerning the classical authors whose work they were written to explain; an attempt like that of F. Schlee in his Scholia Terentiana (1803) to sift out the ancient and profitable material, can furnish only ludicrous results. But viewing these commentaries as illustrations of the culture of their times, they acquire interest at once; in fact the history of the period cannot be written until many more of them are published. They can show how information about antiquity gradually increased in the ninth century, how it was accompanied, nevertheless, by gross ignorance and the readiness to invent when facts were lacking, and how the humanistic and belletristic tendencies of the times of Charlemagne yielded finally to the passion for philosophy of which we find the first great partisan in John the Scot.