WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

immutable and eternal things. Indeed no one seeks counsel about the diameter, if it is
commensurable to the side or about any immutable thing whatsoever. 375
A quick glance at Giles’s original shows it to be quite different from Trevisa’s translation—in
length and emphasis. Trevisa draws out the example not only in his commentary but also in the
translation itself. Giles, on the other hand, appears to use it as if in passing without really caring
whether or not the geometric analogy helps further his argument.
This syntax may suggest a difference in each work’s target audience. Giles, writing for a
thirteenth-century Latin readership with access to a scholastic knowledge base, would not need
to have this geometric example elaborated. On the other hand, Trevisa, writing presumably to
vernacular speakers, would feel prompted to teach basic geometric concepts to the point of
creating lengthy, tangential asides. Linguistic proficiency, however, only represents a part of an
audience’s knowledge base. While it seems plausible to think that an English audience would not
know Latinate learning, it is harder to assume that Latin audiences would have understood
scholastic thinking. In explicitly dedicating his work to a young Phillip the Fair, Giles would
have faced the same conceptual difficulties, as Trevisa does, in teaching geometry to an audience
interested mostly in political and legal advice and the same questions about the relevance of an
aside on geometry in a place where he should be elaborating upon the idea of political advice.
If we are to understand how tangential Trevisa and Giles’s explanations looked to their
respective audiences, we should therefore look first at how an audience would have understood
the origins of the geometric aside itself by turning to their citations—namely, Aristotle’s Ethics:
“ideo dicitur iii. Ethicorum” “Þerfore, iii Ethicorum, it is iseid þat.” Explicit authorial citation
was not always a common writing practice in medieval translations. In fact, both Trevisa and
Giles inconsistently cite passages from their sources even when such citations would aid a
375 Aegedius Romanus, De Regimine Principum (Venetiis: Simon Bevilaqua, 1498) Book 3. Part 2. Chapter 16.
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