AN OLD SPANISH TALE FROM ADD. MS. 14040, flf ... - British Library

Learning Latin in Thirteenth-Century England, i
(Cambridge, 1991), pp. 74, 86, i6of. Although
Weijers does not cite any Hispanic witnesses, the
Disciplina was known in Spain: see Saragossa
Cathedral MS. 15-58 and Barcelona, Biblioteca
de Catalunya, MS. 559 (book i only). There are
also references in inventories: see Gabriel
Llompart,' El lhbre catala a la casa mallorquina',
Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia, xlviii {1975), pp.
193-240; xlix-1 (1976-77), pp. 57-114, at p. 72
(citing a Majorcan inventory of the fifteenth
century) and Manuel Jose Pedraza Garcia,
Documentos para el estudio de la historia del libro
en Zaragoza entre 1501 y 1521 (Saragossa, 1993),
p. 65 (a Saragossa inventory of 1503). Further on
the Spanish reception of Ps-Boethius, see Francisco
Marquez Villanueva, 'La Celestina y el
pseudo Boecio De Disciplina scolarium', in E. M.
Gerli and H. L. Sharrer (eds.), Hispanic Medieval
Studies in Honor of Samuel G. Armistead
(Madison, 1992), pp. 221-42. The Disciplina is
quoted very closely by John of Wales, Communiloquium
(Strassburg, 1489; British Library,
IB.2012), sig. f2'-f3'': for example, he includes
the names ofthe protagonists. Other texts which
cite the Disciplina as their source do not follow it
in such detail and it is possible that they use the
Disciplina via the Commumloquium: see the
Speculum laicorum, ed. J.-Th. Welter (Paris,
1914), no. 296, p. 61, ch. 38; its Spanish
derivative the Especulo de los legos, ed. J. M.
Mohedano {Madrid, 1951), no. 287, ch. 42, pp.
196-7; and the first redaction of Castigos e
documentos del rey don Sancho, in P. de Gayangos
(ed.), Escritores en prosa anteriores al siglo XV,
Biblioteca de autores espanoles, Ii {Madrid,
i860), p. 90.
12 Curiously, Zeno himself was the protagonist of a
story in which, on the cross, he bit off the nose
of his persecutor: see John of Wales, Breviloquium,
part iv, ch. iii, in Summa Johannis
Valensis de regimine vite humane... {Lyons, 1511),
f. ccxiiij'".
13 Odo of Cheriton, Parabolae, in L. Hervieux
(ed.), Les Fabulistes latins, vol. iv (Paris, 1896),
no. 133, p. 316.
14 T. F. Crane (ed.). The Exempla or Illustrative
Stories from the ^ Sermones vulgares^ of Jacques de
Vitry (London, 1890), p. 121, no. 287, p. 259.
185
15 Etienne de Bourbon (d. 1261), Tractatus de
diversis materiis predicabilibus. Book i, De dono
timoris, in A. Lecoy de la Marche (ed.). Anecdotes
historiques legendes et apologues tire's du recueil
ine'dit d^Etienne de Bourbon (Paris, 1877), no. 43,
pp. 51-2. Etienne is the source for Humbert of
Romans (d. 1277), De dono timoris: see J.-Th.
Welter, VExemplum dans la litterature religieuse
er didactique du Moyen Age (Paris, 1927), pp.
215, 224—8. The De dono timoris is a source for
the Alphabetum narrationum of Arnold of Liege
(d. 1345), according to Welter, p. 312. The Latin
text of the Alphabetum is still unpubhshed, but
see the Catalan and English translations: Recull
de eximplis e miracles, ed. M. Aguilo y Fuster
{Barcelona, 1881), vol. i, no. 185, p. 169; An
Alphabet of Tales, ed. M. M. Banks {London,
1904), no. 217, p. 152. The same configuration of
motifs occurs in the versions of the story given
by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum morale. III, iii,
7 {Douai, 1624), p. 1015; Clemente Sanchez de
Vercial, Libro de los exemplos por a.b.c; in
Gayangos (ed.), Escritores en prosa (as in n. 10),
p. 513, no. 273; and Philippe of Novare, Les
Quatre temps d'dge de thomme, ed. M. de Freville
(Paris, 1888), pp. 161-4.
16 J. Gonzalez Muela (ed.), Libro del caballero Zifar
(Madrid, 1982), pp. 252-56; for the illustration
of this story in Paris, Bibhotheque nationale,
MS. Esp. 36, see John E. Keller and Richard
P. Kinkade, Iconography in Medieval Spanish
Literature (Lexington, Ky, 1984), pp. 68-70.
17 The editors of the Spanish text (cited in n. 9)
note that while a woodcut in the Spanish editions
of 1489 and 1496 shows the son biting his
mother's ear, as in the text, the illustration in the
Spanish edition of 1488 shows him biting her
nose: this represents a combination of motifs not
found to my knowledge in the written witnesses.
18 As in n. 16, pp. 394-5. Charles Philip Wagner,
'The Sources of El Cavallero Cifar\ Revue
Hispanique, x (1903), pp. 5-104, at p. 77, gives
some parallels. The closest is in Straparola, who
does not however have the same punch-line.
19 Sergio Augusto, Este mundo e um pandeiro (Sao
Paulo, 1989), p. 57.
20 J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary
(London, 1982), pp. 180-1.