My first book, Notes from the School of William de Montibus, has now been published in the Toronto Medieval Latin Texts series, available from PIMS in North America or from Brepols in Europe.

Preserved in a single manuscript from the abbey library of Bury St Edmunds (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 860), and here edited for the first time, Samuel Presbiter’s series of short, extensively annotated poems offers a rare record of one of the innovative formats that medieval schoolmasters used to engage students beyond conventional lectures. The text affords the reader a vivid experience of immersion in the pedagogical techniques of the twelfth-century classroom. The poems and commentary present key lessons from the doctrinal instruction of William de Montibus (c. 1140–1213), the beloved master of the school of Lincoln Cathedral.

Below is an excerpt from the introduction. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version.

‘Hec sunt collecta ex diuersis auditis in scola magistri Willelmi de Monte’ – ‘These are collected from various things heard in the school of master William de Montibus’.1 This heading explains much about the collection (called Ex diuersis auditis hereafter), uniquely preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 860. Its compiler, Samuel Presbiter, remains obscure, and it is difficult to distinguish the specific contributions of William and Samuel. It consists of a series of lessons on the practical significance of theology, interspersed with a series of playful verses to aid memorization.

Samuel Presbiter’s Collecta

All that is certainly known of Samuel Presbiter is his claimed tutelage under William de Montibus, who taught at the cathedral school in Lincoln from the 1180s until some point before his death in 1213. A reference to the ‘lingua Britanie’ suggests that Samuel studied at William’s school in Lincoln rather than at Paris.2 Along with Ex diuersis auditis, Samuel records William’s lectures on the Psalms in Ex auditis super psalmos, and he asserts that he wrote the last part of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 860 after he left the school: ‘Hec composita sunt post dicessum a scola’ (fol. 108r). The only definite references to his name are the identical closing lines of the two manuscripts preserving his works: ‘Expliciunt collecta Samuelis presbiteri’, as found in Bodley 860, fol. 206v and Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 115, fol. 77r. The line is contemporary with the rest of the text in both cases, and in the Pembroke College manuscript it was first roughed in by a hand that might be Samuel’s. They once belonged to the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds, and may also have been produced there in the first half of the thirteenth century.

A few references in documentary sources might be uncertainly identified with the author, notably a ‘Samuel de Ounebi’ (Owmby by Spital, in Lincolnshire) who witnesses a charter alongside William de Montibus between 1196 and 1203;3 this was presumably the resident of the ‘mansionem Samuelis’ found in Owmby by Spital around 1200–1210,4 though one also finds a Samuel de Cartis (also recorded as Scartres and Chartres) there in 1230–40.5 The name Presbiter, which is unusual but attached to others in the city of Lincoln, was sometimes used to translate the name ‘Cohen’, leading Goering to suggest that Samuel may have been a Jewish convert, or from a family of converts;6 Foster makes the same assumption of a Samuel Presbiter living in Huntingdon.7 Given that both of the manuscripts containing Samuel’s works are from Bury St Edmunds, the author might somehow have been associated with the abbey. Like William de Montibus, Samson, abbot from 1182 until 1211, had studied in Paris and by his death had attracted an unusually high number of masters to the abbey.8 There was a magister Samuel at the nearby Benedictine abbey of St Benet at Holme in 1203,9 whose abbot at the time, Ralph, acted as a papal judge delegate alongside Samson, as did Hugh of Lincoln.10

Samuel labels almost all his works ‘collecta’, most combining verses with a prose commentary. Two works are in prose, which make almost no original contributions and are probably his earliest:

  • Collecta ex auditis super psalmos in scola magistri Willelmi de Monte (Bodley 860, fols. 9r–93v), an incomplete commentary on the Psalms;11
  • Collecta ex speculo beati Gregorii sine uersibus (Pembroke College 115, fols. 47r–77r);

In most of his works, both verses and prose were copied together, the prose often an extract from another work to show precisely what Samuel is versifying, and written directly above the verses to which it applies. These include:

  • the present work, Collecta ex diuersis auditis in scola magistri Willelmi de Monte (Bodley 860, fols. 94r–107v);
  • Collecta ex speculo beati Gregorii cum uersibus (Pembroke College 115, fols. 1r–41v);
  • De oratione dominica (Pembroke College 115, fols. 41v–44v), a versification of Hugh of St Victor’s De quinque septenis, from which Samuel copies the prose passages without citation;
  • four short compositions (Pembroke College 115, fols. 45r–46r), with the incipits:
    1. ‘Est proprium domini mentem bene pacificare’ (8 lines)
    2. ‘Est uagus hic cuius animus non recta cupiscit’ (2 lines)
    3. ‘Flos bonus est actus hoc est spes fulgor odorque’ (12 lines)
    4. ‘Multiplex hominis pacientia dicitur esse’, entitled ‘De patientia’ (2 lines)

In two works, the verses stand on their own, with glosses added in the margins:

  • Collecta ad habendam memoriam quorumdam utilium in sacra scriptura (Bodley 860, fols. 108r–206v);12
  • a verse paraphrase of Psalm 1 (Bodley 860, fols. 1r–8v);13

The two Ex speculo works abridge the Speculum Gregorii, Adalbert of Metz’s epitome of Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob;14 many copies of it existed in England, including one at Bury St Edmunds by the late twelfth century.15 Samuel also refers to it in his paraphrase of Psalm 1 (for example, Bodley 860, fols. 4r, 5r) and Ad habendam memoriam (fols. 128v, 130r), which are probably among his latest works. While his verses centred around prose usually summarize either William de Montibus or another book, the marginal glosses reflect increased confidence to work directly with biblical texts rather than secondary theological works, and often amalgamate references to many titles rather than summarize a single source.

Modern readers are often troubled in understanding the motive behind the authorship of books that may contain few original contributions.16 It is tempting to dismiss Samuel as a mere ‘excerpter’,17 or as Brian Twyne thought, little more than a devotee of William de Montibus.18 Samuel expresses his motives in a series of couplets written at the beginning and end of each of his manuscripts, which through their presentation as distinctiones can be read in four different ways. One on the first folios of Bodley 860 and Pembroke College 115 lauds the maintenance of the mind that it may be put to good use;19 the first page of Ex auditis super psalmos (fol. 9r) affirms Samuel’s diligence in understanding what he has collected, and his trust in its worthiness.20 Finally, the couplet at the end of both manuscripts enjoins the author and reader to pray for one another.21 This is typical of the medieval approach to writing and learning.22

Ex diuersis auditis and Its Authorship

Samuel structures Ex diuersis auditis under a series of headings, attaching to each of these a poem of one to eleven lines, with a commentary to explain its contents. It might seem odd to write a commentary on one’s own writing, but this is not unique: Alexander Neckam’s Sacerdos ad altare, for instance, is a collection of obtuse passages describing aspects of everyday life with a commentary teaching the unusual vocabulary and grammatical constructions.23 The poems direct memorization to learn the subject at hand: ‘memorato’, ‘commemorato’, ‘memora’, ‘poteris reminisci’. This was a common device in didactic literature of this period, used for teaching everything from the Bible to grammar.24 It was also a favourite tool of William de Montibus, and several of the poems in Ex diuersis auditis also appear in his similar work Versarius, where they have a much sparser commentary. As Samuel’s other works written in this format tend to follow their sources closely, the work’s opening heading should be read as documentation rather than a boast, indicating that it is an edited form of his teacher’s instruction.

William de Montibus was born in Lincoln and studied theology in Paris. There, Peter Comestor was among his teachers, and he knew both Alexander Neckam and Gerald of Wales. In the 1180s, Hugh, the bishop of Lincoln, invited him to teach at the cathedral school, where he was chancellor from at least 1194 until his death in April 1213 in Scotland, while England was under interdict. He was the best-known intellectual of Lincoln until the rise of Robert Grosseteste, and the praise heaped upon him after his death portrays him as a beloved teacher.25 The sixteenth-century antiquarian John Leland wrote, ‘The age in which he lived was sorely plagued by the thorny subtleties of the sophists, but he surmounted these difficulties so well that he gained for himself, if not truly flowing eloquence, then at least the stylistic vigour and substance of things, which he studiously passed straight on to others.’26 Keeping in mind Leland’s tendency to lionize every English author that preceded him, modern scholarship has not overturned his core point: William was one of the most pre-eminent teachers of his day, and though his writings are not high literature, they are evidence of creative and highly effective pedagogy.

Ex diuersis auditis is an important witness to what William passed on to his students, and of the cathedral schools in general; although there are many surviving student reportationes from Paris and the later universities,27 those from cathedral schools are more scarce, and especially those recording something other than a straightforward lecture. Lincoln did not grow further into a university, and serious theological teaching seems to have come to an end there around 1225, arguably because the school failed to seize upon the opportunity to become a centre for the study of canon law;28 clergy from the diocese in later periods received advanced theological training from other institutions.29

While only a handful of the poems in Ex diuersis auditis are attested elsewhere, the consistency of their style makes it probable that William was responsible for most of the verses. The text of those found in his Versarius is on a similar level of accuracy to the manuscripts for that work. The exception to this is the last section, 55, whose mixture of rhyming schemes is more consistent with Samuel’s other works, and the style of the commentary in this section outlined using schematic distinctiones rather than the formal prose found in the earlier sections of Ex diuersis auditis.30 One also presumes that it was Samuel who organized the work, unless he followed the chronological order of the lessons. William favoured structures that allowed for easy reference, arranging his Versarius under an alphabetical scheme, and Numerale through a numerical plan.

Samuel follows his written sources closely in the prose to Ex speculo cum uersibus and De oratione dominica, and it is likely that he did the same in Ex diuersis auditis. Many of William’s typical concerns are evident, and its presentation resembles William’s Distinctiones theologicae (as found, for example, in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 186, fols. 1r–20v), though it is more detailed. The text is certainly something other than a set of notes hastily copied during a lesson or from the memory of one. It includes many passages repeated from William de Montibus’s lectures on the Psalms in Ex auditis super psalmos, but without the framing of a commentary. These passages are just different enough to rule out straightforward copying from the Ex auditis super psalmos text. His quotations of Peter Lombard, Gratian, and the Glosa are accurate enough to suggest that he had access to a written source. This could show that Samuel carefully assembled the contents from various sources, or that he had a text from William from which he could copy directly; perhaps it was a mixture of both. The contents of Ex diuersis auditis are intellectually the work of William de Montibus, but recorded in a form reflecting the experience of Samuel Presbiter.

Goering has proposed that Ex diuersis auditis reflects the practice of scholastic collationes or repetitiones,31 discourses at the end of the school day resembling a modern university seminar.32 The verses recorded in Ex diuersis auditis are not as utilitarian as some other pedagogical literature from the period, some of which cannot be understood without external texts. Some versifications of the Gospels, for instance, simply cram together relevant words and phrases into a hexameter line, and are entirely incomprehensible without knowledge of the biblical text.33 The verses here always carry their sense independently, but cannot always stand on their own due to the use of mnemonics, explained only in the prose (as in nos. 12, 16, 18, 19, 27, 30, 33, 35, 36, 44, 47, 50, 51, and 55). These are typically acronyms that form imperatives (e.g. scope doces, ‘investigate, teach’, 27), or sometimes nonsense-words with a memorable sound (cim cisset nervo, 17). These are often thoroughly integrated with the subject matter: scinde (‘tear’ or ‘divide’, 18) stands for the various causes for which a marriage can be dissolved.34 Every modern student is familiar with the sequence ‘who, what, when, where, why, how’: its medieval form – ‘quid, cui, cur, quomodo, quando, quantum’ (12, literally ‘what, to whom, why, how, when, how much’) – is here used for remembering the purpose of works of charity.35 Numbers are also found throughout the text as a mnemonic device, the central feature of William’s Numerale and a practice that would become even more common in later writings.36

Ex diuersis auditis originated in a crucial period for the development of pastoralia, as Leonard Boyle called the literature of pastoral care, identifying a movement to create accessible manuals for the purpose between the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215.37 There is a great deal of interest in the priest’s role as a member of the community, promoting good character and judgement (see especially nos. 2, 4, 24, 25) and exceptional preaching (the topic that prompts the longest analysis in the work, no. 39). This reflects William de Montibus’s concern to transform theories into principles, shared by contemporaries such as Peter the Chanter and Alan of Lille.38 Another of William’s students, Richard of Wetheringsett, has a similar focus in his summa known from its incipit as Qui bene presunt.39

The Manuscript

The manuscript of Ex diuersis auditis, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 860 (SC 2723), is written entirely in Latin, with pages measuring around 200 × 270 mm. It is composite, consisting of three separate booklets,40 collated i, 18 || 28–68, 78–3 (6/7/8 canc.), 88–128 || 138–248, 258+2 (4/5 add.), 268, i. A note on the flyleaf in the hand of librarian Henry Kirkestede (ca. 1314–ca. 1378) testifies that it belonged to the abbey of Bury St Edmunds:

Liber monachorum sancti Edmundi in quo continentur
Postille seu collecta super psalterium
in scolis magistri G. de montibus
Collecta samuelis presbiteri in scolis predictis

A pressmark of B. 233 is also from the abbey library; B. 231, B. 232, and B. 240 also survive in modern libraries, all containing commentaries on the Psalms.41 It is written and decorated in a similar style to some other Bury manuscripts, and may have been produced there.42 The book was among others from Bury bequeathed to Pembroke College by William Smart in 1599;43 Thomas James lists it there in his survey of Oxford and Cambridge libraries,44 but it is one of thirty-one manuscripts separated from the Pembroke collection, with several of them now in Oxford.45 The Summary Catalogue conjectures that the Bodleian Library acquired the book in 1603 or 1604.

The scribe of Ex diuersis auditis was not always able to read the exemplar, but evidently sought to copy the original precisely without intervening in the text. In particular, the scribe often writes ‘c’ or ‘t’ for ‘m’ and ‘n’ (giving us, for example, ‘acumaretur’ for ‘animaretur’, ‘iutibra’ for ‘umbra’, ‘consideratis’ for ‘considerans’, ‘sitium’ for ‘sinum’) and for ‘r’ (‘tectum’ for ‘rectum’, ‘iurate’ for ‘iurare’, ‘considerate’ for ‘considerare’, ‘carhalogus’ for ‘cathalogus’, ‘fiete’ for ‘fieri’; in reverse, ‘ira’ for ‘ita’). There are also some lacunae, later filled in by a corrector whose hand appears throughout the Samuel Presbiter manuscripts; a faint note in the lower corner of fol. 103r, ‘usque hunc in parte’, suggests that he worked through the texts methodically. Some of the alterations are so obvious that any intelligent reader might have made them, but others seem to be original, in particular the five points in the text where the corrector adds a variant for understanding the verse (e.g. uel legit for posuit), a device found throughout Samuel’s works. These are usually unmetrical, and not emendations to the original verse (which the corrector does not hesitate to do, especially later in the manuscript for Ad habendam memoriam). There are also cases in which the corrector appears to be revising the work rather than replicating the exemplar, as when he changes ‘multi’ to ‘Pharisei’ to match the Vulgate, or when he removes a second ‘que’. He also carefully revises the punctuation, particularly adding more puncti eleuati to the verses. It seems plausible that this corrector is Samuel himself.

Sources

The work uses biblical texts as the basis for most of its arguments, making frequent use of allegorical interpretations. As is typical in this period, it introduces the majority of quotations only by a generic phrase such as ‘dicitur’ or ‘unde illud’ (if it signals them at all), and the text can vary wildly at times from any identifiable variant of the Vulgate, indicating that they are either quoted from memory or via another source.46 It treats biblical sources in a fluid way to suit a particular didactic purpose, for example in combining quotations from non-contiguous passages without any sign to the reader.

There are also quotations from classical authors (Juvenal, Ovid, Horace), never by name, but often conventionally identified as a ‘poeta’. There are also some references to the liturgy (‘in oratione’). It cites only one medieval author (Pope Alexander) by name, but identifies patristic sources explicitly (Jerome, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Chrysostom, Isidore, Origen). These are generally quoted via a more recent source, such as Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the classic medieval textbook on theology from the twelfth century;47 its peer in canon law, Gratian’s Decretum.48 Etymologies are often drawn from the marginal and interlinear Glosa (as 55 refers to it), later known as the Glossa ordinaria to the Bible, though its precise influence is difficult to pin down due to the lack of an edition representative of the version William or Samuel might have used.49

Ex diuersis auditis has many parallels with Peter the Chanter’s Verbum adbreuiatum and Summa de sacramentis et animae consiliis, but these appear to reflect the teachers’ shared milieu rather than direct use of either of these works. After R.W. Hunt suggested a link between the figures, Hugh MacKinnon argued that Peter the Chanter was a teacher of William de Montibus;50 Goering found the evidence for this to be unsustainable, while allowing that they might have known one another.51 The most recent editor of the Verbum adbreuiatum dates the short version of the work to 1187–91, the Summa de sacramentis to 1191–92, and the later versions of the Verbum adbreuiatum to after Peter’s death in 1197.52 William de Montibus could not have seen them in Paris, but a copy of the Verbum adbreuiatum was probably available in Lincoln during his time, as the Gemma ecclesiastica, which Gerald of Wales wrote while he was studying in Lincoln around 1196–99,53 is heavily dependent on this book.54 Gerald uses the short version now published as the textus prior,55 but Ex diuersis auditis has parallels in all three versions, with the least correlation to the textus prior. The resemblances to Peter the Chanter’s works in Ex diuersis auditis sometimes consist of nothing more than a similarity of unusual vocabulary or a kindred strain of ideas. There is also much relevant discourse in Peter’s works that is not used: in some cases, a section in Ex diuersis auditis with a title identical to a chapter of the Verbum adbreuiatum takes a divergent approach to the subject. Despite the number of similarities, one cannot here identify direct use of Peter the Chanter’s works with any certainty.

Though there is little direct evidence for the later use of Ex diuersis auditis, it includes several passages that resemble later works written by Peter the Chanter’s students, notably those by Thomas of Chobham,56 which appear without any known parallel in earlier scholastic works. One must be cautious about drawing inferences from this, as there are even certain passages in Ex diuersis auditis that have more in common with Bonaventure or Thomas Aquinas than works contemporary with William de Montibus, indicating the continuity of the oral scholastic tradition, and reflecting the number of sources from this period still left unpublished.

Metre and Rhyme

The verses use a combination of simple Leonines and elegi Leonini, which consist respectively of classical hexameters and elegiac couplets, with the addition of a rhyme between the caesura (always occurring in the third foot) and the end of the line.57 Written fluidly with relatively few syntactical contortions, these admirably achieve their purpose of functioning as a memory aid, with an uncanny ability to stick in one’s head.

Written in Leonines are 2, 3, 4, 7, 16, 18–20, 22–25, 27–35, and 37–54. Written in elegi Leonini are 1, 5, 6, 8–15, 17, 21, 26, and 36. The first two verses of no. 2 omit the rhyme, though the second of these adapts the penultimate verse of 37, which does rhyme. The last section, 55, is in hexameter, but uses an inconsistent scheme for its rhymes, and its commentary is also of a different character from the work. It uses Leonines for the first and fourth verses; verses two and three are collaterales (with the last syllable before the caesura rhyming with the successive caesura, and likewise for the end of each line); verse five is unrhymed. This mixture is also found in Samuel’s versification of Psalm 1,58 and it seems likely that Samuel himself wrote it rather than William de Montibus.

Most of the rhymes are monosyllabic (5.1–2, forming an elegiac couplet):

īntēr | sūr cā|dēs · ăbră|hām pŏsŭ|īt sĭbĭ | sēdes
    crīmĕn ĭn | hīs dē|lēt · uīr bŏnŭ|s ātquĕ că|uet

There are also many disyllabic rhymes (19.1–2, in hexameter):

sī mălĕ | iūrān|dī · fōr|mās sīt | mēns mĕmŏ|rāndi
pēr prī|mās fā|tō · pĕr ĭ|dōnĕă | cōmmĕmŏ|rāto

Some of the lines hardly fit the modern definition of a rhyme:

sēx īs|tīs uēr|bīs · nŏtĕt | ēssĕ tĕ|nēndă să|cērdos

In most cases, the scheme is consistently applied. Occasionally one must know the intended sound for individual letters, as in this verse (30.2):

quōd dē|sīgnāt | c[ē] · gĕnĕr|ālĕ uĕl | ēst spĕcĭ|āle

Verses such as this can be easily understood as long as one keeps in mind the differences between classical and medieval pronunciation, remembering at 42, for instance, that ‘cause’ rhymes with ‘tacere’.59

Editorial Practice

Ex diuersis auditis is here edited in its entirety for the first time; Goering printed the first section alongside the headings and first lines for the rest.60 My numbering differs from his (1–55 rather than 1–54), as I have split no. 16 into two parts. Sections that overlap with Versarius have been compared with Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 186, yielding one emendation (at 4); other variants from this manuscript are not reported. The division of the verses does not diverge from the manuscript.

The layout of the text as presented here does not reproduce the manuscript, presenting it instead using print conventions. As a result of these interventions, folio references can only specify the location of verses. The original begins with commentary rather than the verses, with individual lines of poetry copied underneath the relevant prose passage. The scribe shows the relationship of longer passages to their lines only through placement on the page, while shorter ones have a wavy line drawn to the word to which they apply. The edited text uses a combination of line numbers (referring to the verse lines) and lemmata indicating the relevant passage where necessary; this is generally applied only to those passages specifically linked using a line in the manuscript. While the references in the commentary are not entirely the result of editorial interpretation, readers should not surmise that the original is more precise than it truly is.

In the manuscript, the mnemonic acronyms used at several points in the commentary are only written out in the verse, using wider spacing to fit in the words above, and joining each letter by an individual line to its matching word. I have instead written the mnemonic in small capitals in the verse, and repeated the letters beside the words to which they apply. The commentary for the last section in the work (no. 55) is arranged using distinctiones, and translates poorly onto a small printed page. The edited text follows the form of an outline, in which each item higher in the hierarchy applies to the subordinate items; this does not entail rearrangement of the text.

The critical apparatus records the alterations to the manuscript and editorial changes, referring to the corrector as ‘another hand’. The text reproduces the spelling of the manuscript, even in its inconsistencies. The scribe uses ‘ci’ and ‘ti’ with particular irregularity; one finds, for instance, ‘iuditio’ at 12 but ‘iudicium’ at 12, or ‘ociose’ incompletely changed to ‘otiose’ in 19. The scribe never writes ‘Christus’ or ‘Cristus’ in an unabbreviated form, but some contemporary English manuscripts use the latter form; ‘Cristiani’, ‘Crisostomus’, and ‘crisma’ suggest the spelling without an ‘h’.61 Minuscule ‘v’ occurs only decoratively in the manuscript, in both an initial and medial position, and without any consistency; the edition makes no distinction between ‘u’ and ‘v’, using ‘V’ in the majuscule. The manuscript influences the punctuation as printed, but it has been freely adapted.

The commentary seeks to show sources and parallels for the text and assist students of medieval Latin, glossing words with particularly troublesome spellings in their classical form, and providing definitions for unusual words whose meaning might not be quickly guessed. For other vocabulary, readers will receive the best guidance from the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, to which the commentary refers for quotations helpful in illustrating the contemporary usage of a word or phrase.

  1. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 860, fol. 94r. Joseph W. Goering, William de Montibus (c. 1140–1213): The Schools and the Literature of Pastoral Care, Studies and Texts 108 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1992), 5–7, notes that William was called both ‘de Montibus’ and ‘de Monte’. The manuscript’s abbreviation is slightly ambiguous, but suggests the latter form.↩

  2. In Ex auditis super psalmos, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 860, fol. 59rb; noted by Goering, 499n9.↩

  3. C.W. Foster and Kathleen Major, eds., The Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, Publications of the Lincoln Record Society 27–29, 32, 34, 41, 42, 46, 51, 62, 67, 68 (Hereford: Lincoln Record Society, 1931–1973), 4:32–33 (nos. 1140/41).↩

  4. Foster and Major, 4:31 (no. 1138).↩

  5. Foster and Major, 4:33–35 (nos. 1142/43).↩

  6. Goering, William de Montibus, 45n68.↩

  7. Foster and Major, Registrum Antiquissimum, 3:200; Pipe Roll Society, ed., Feet of Fines of the Tenth Year of the Reign of King Richard I, AD 1198 to AD 1199, Publications of the Pipe Roll Society 24 (London: Love and Wyman, 1900), 71, https://archive.org/details/piperollsociety24pipeuoft (no. 104) records him there in 1198.↩

  8. Antonia Gransden, A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1182–1256: Samson of Tottington to Edmund of Walpole, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 31 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2007), 135–36.↩

  9. J.R. West, ed., St. Benet of Holme, 1020–1210: The 11th- and 12th-Century Sections of Cott. MS. Galba E.ii, the Register of the Abbey of St. Benet of Holme, Norfolk Record Society 2–3 (Fakenham, Norfolk: Miller, 1932), 1:59 (no. 99).↩

  10. Gransden, History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1182–1256, 77, 69.↩

  11. Goering, William de Montibus, 501–3, prints the text of fol. 9r.↩

  12. Listed alongside other works of this genre in Greti Dinkova-Bruun, ‘Biblical Versifications from Late Antiquity to the Middle of the Thirteenth Century: History or Allegory?’, in Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin Christianity: The Encounter Between Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpretation, ed. Willemien Otten and Karla Pollmann, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 87 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 333, 339–40, https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004160699.i-364.65.↩

  13. Edited in part by Greti Dinkova-Bruun, ‘Samuel Presbyter and the Glosses to His Versification of Psalm 1: An Anti-Church Invective?’, in Florilegium mediaevale: Études offertes à Jacqueline Hamesse à l’occasion de son éméritat, ed. José Francisco Meirinhos and Olga Weijers, Textes et études du moyen âge 50 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2009), 155–74, https://doi.org/10.1484/M.TEMA-EB.4.00759.↩

  14. Unedited, but studied in Lorenzo Valgimogli, Lo «Speculum Gregorii» di Adalberto di Metz, Archivum Gregorianum 8 (Florence: SISMEL, 2006).↩

  15. Richard Sharpe et al., English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 4 (London: British Library, 1996), B13.48a.↩

  16. For the classic case of Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the commentaries written on it, see Philipp W. Rosemann, The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard’s Sentences (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2007).↩

  17. Josiah Cox Russell, Dictionary of Writers of Thirteenth-Century England, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Special Supplement 3 (London: Longmans, 1936), 147 (s.v. ‘Samuel Presbyter’).↩

  18. ‘Qui Gulielmi de Monte celeberrimi suo tempore Oxoniae theol. professoris auditor diligens et admirator extitit.’ Quoted in Thomas Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, ed. David Wilkins (London: Bowyer, 1748), 651.↩

  19. Mens conseruetur per opus ne stulta uagetur.
    Sic studiis detur ut que prosint operetur.
    Mens conseruetur ut que prosint operetur.
    Sic studiis detur per opus ne stulta uagetur.↩

  20. Hec qui collegi studiose pleraque legi.
    Quedam que legi credite digna legi.
    Hec qui collegi credite digna legi.
    Quedam que legi studiose pleraque legi.↩

  21. Hec qui collegit eterna pace quiescat.
    Hec quicumque legit oret simul ut requiescat.
    Hec quicumque legit eterna pace quiescat.
    Hec qui collegit oret simul ut requiescat.↩

  22. Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd ed., Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 10 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 244–46, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107051126 is relevant to Samuel’s approach.↩

  23. Christopher J. McDonough, ed., Alexandri Neckam Sacerdos ad altare, Corpus Christianorum, continuatio mediaevalis 227 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).↩

  24. Greti Dinkova-Bruun, ‘The Verse Bible as Aide-Mémoire’, in The Making of Memory in the Middle Ages, ed. Lucie Doležalová, Later Medieval Europe 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 115–31, https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004179257.i-500.31; Vivien Law, ‘Why Write a Verse Grammar?’, The Journal of Medieval Latin 9 (1999): 46–76, https://doi.org/10.1484/J.JML.2.304114.↩

  25. Goering, William de Montibus, 26–28.↩

  26. ‘Erat saeculum in quod incidit spinosis sophistarum argutiis miserrime obnoxium; inter quas tamen ille ita eluctatus est difficultates ut, si non eloquentiam profluentem illam, at neruos interim et pondus rerum sibi conquisiuerit, ac aliis tanquam per manus studiose tradiderit.’ James P. Carley, John Leland: De uiris illustribus/On Famous Men, British Writers of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period 1 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010), chap. 255.↩

  27. Jacqueline Hamesse, ‘La technique de la reportation’, in L’enseignement des disciplines à la Faculté des arts (Paris et Oxford, XIIIe–XVe siècles), ed. Olga Weijers and Louis Holtz, Studia Artistarum 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 405–21.↩

  28. Frans van Liere, ‘The Study of Canon Law and the Eclipse of the Lincoln Schools, 1175–1225’, History of Universities 18 (2003): 1–13.↩

  29. F. Donald Logan, University Education of the Parochial Clergy in Medieval England: The Lincoln Diocese, C.1300–C.1350, Studies and Texts 188 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2014).↩

  30. Organization by distinctio was often manifested in the form of diagrams connecting various terms with lines to show their relationship. An excellent example of this method of layout translated into print is Joseph Goering and F.A.C. Mantello, eds., Robert Grosseteste. Templum Dei, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts 14 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984); on the use of the concept in the twelfth century, see Christoph H.F. Meyer, Die Distinktionstechnik in der Kanonistik des 12. Jahrhunderts: Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte des Hochmittelalters, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, 1st ser., studia 29 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2000).↩

  31. Goering, William de Montibus, 504–6, with references.↩

  32. Alexander Andrée, ‘Laon Revisited: Master Anselm and the Creation of a Theological School in the Twelfth Century (A Review Essay)’, The Journal of Medieval Latin 22 (2012): 263, https://doi.org/10.1484/J.JML.1.103258; Michael Clanchy and Lesley Smith, ‘Abelard’s Description of the School of Laon: What Might It Tell Us About Early Scholastic Teaching?’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 54 (2010): 19, https://doi.org/10.1484/J.NMS.1.100766; Pierre Riché and Jacques Verger, Des nains sur des épaules de géants: maîtres et élèves au Moyen Âge (Paris: Tallandier, 2006), 119.↩

  33. Greti Dinkova-Bruun, ‘Remembering the Gospels in the Later Middle Ages: The Anonymous Capitula Euangeliorum Versifice Scripta’, Sacris Erudiri 48 (2009): 235–73, https://doi.org/10.1484/J.SE.1.100559.↩

  34. Discussed in Greti Dinkova-Bruun, ‘Notes on Poetic Composition in the Theological Schools ca. 1200 and the Latin Poetic Anthology from Ms. Harley 956: A Critical Edition’, Sacris Erudiri 43 (2004): 304, 320, https://doi.org/10.1484/J.SE.2.300126.↩

  35. Goering, William de Montibus, 395 identifies some sixty uses of these words (in what he calls ‘circumstantial’ poems) in William de Montibus’s Versarius; for context and use in William’s Peniteas cito, see Marjorie Curry Woods and Rita Copeland, ‘Classroom and Confession’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 393–94, https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521444200.018; for other variants, see D.W. Robertson Jr, ‘A Note on the Classical Origin of “Circumstances” in the Medieval Confessional’, Studies in Philology 43, no. 1 (January 1946): 6–14, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4172741.↩

  36. Further references in M.B. Parkes, ‘Folia librorum quaerere: Medieval Experience of the Problems of Hypertext and the Index’, in Fabula in tabula: Una storia degli indici dal manoscritto al testo elettronico, ed. Claudio Leonardi, Quaderni di cultura mediolatina 13 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto medioevo, 1995), 34nn41–44.↩

  37. Joseph W. Goering, ‘Leonard E. Boyle and the Invention of Pastoralia’, in A Companion to Pastoral Care in the Late Middle Ages (1200–1500), ed. Ronald J. Stansbury, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 7–20, https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004183537.i-430.5; Leonard E. Boyle, ‘The Inter-Conciliar Period 1179–1215 and the Beginnings of Pastoral Manuals’, in Miscellanea Rolando Bandinelli, Papa Alessandro III, ed. Filippo Liotta (Siena: Accademia senese degli intronati, 1986), 45–56.↩

  38. Albrecht Diem, ‘Virtues and Vices in Early Texts on Pastoral Care’, Franciscan Studies 62 (2004): 193–223, https://doi.org/10.1353/frc.2004.0008.↩

  39. Joseph W. Goering, ‘The Summa Qui bene presunt and Its Author’, in Literature and Religion in the Later Middle Ages: Philological Studies in Honor of Siegfried Wenzel, ed. Richard G. Newhauser and John A. Alford, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 118 (Binghampton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1995), 143–59, https://archive.org/details/literaturereligi00newhuoft.↩

  40. For an explanation of this concept, see Alexandra Gillespie, ‘Medieval Books, Their Booklets, and Booklet Theory’, English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700 16 (2011): 1–29.↩

  41. Richard Sharpe, ‘Reconstructing the Medieval Library of Bury St Edmunds Abbey: The Lost Catalogue of Henry of Kirkstead’, in Bury St Edmunds: Medieval Art, Architecture, Archaeology, and Economy, ed. Antonia Gransden, Conference Transactions 20 (Leeds: British Archaeological Association, 1998), 210, categorizes these under a larger ‘Biblia’ section; for an earlier listing, see M.R. James, ‘Bury St. Edmunds Manuscripts’, English Historical Review 41, no. 162 (April 1926): 254, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/XLI.CLXII.251.↩

  42. Cf. Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 54: Gransden, History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1182–1256, plate 10, reproduces the first folio.↩

  43. M.R. James, On the Abbey of S. Edmund at Bury (Cambridge: Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1895), 15–16, https://archive.org/details/abbeyofsedmundat00jame, prints Matthew Wren’s list; for a summary of the Bury library’s history, see Sharpe et al., English Benedictine Libraries, 43–49.↩

  44. Thomas James, Ecloga Oxonio-Cantabrigiensis (London: Bishop and Norton, 1600), 2:132 (no. 149).↩

  45. Listed in M.R. James and Ellis H. Minns, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Pembroke College, Cambridge, with a Hand List of the Printed Books to the Year 1500 (Cambridge: University Press, 1905), xx–xxiii, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511692796, where this manuscript is no. 2077; this follows its enumeration in Edward Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ in unum collecti, 2 vols (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1697), which for Pembroke simply reprints the listing in @james:1600ecloga.↩

  46. The edited text generally follows Robert Weber et al., eds., Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, 5th ed. (1969; repr., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007); I have not reported variants found either in this edition or the larger ones it employs: for the Old Testament, Pontifical Abbey of St Jerome-in-the-City, ed., Biblia Sacra iuxta latinam vulgatam versionem, 18 vols (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1926–1995); and for the New Testament, John Wordsworth et al., eds., Nouum Testamentum Domini nostri Iesu Christi Latine, secundum editionem sancti Hieronymi, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889–1954).↩

  47. On the educational use of this book, see Ricardo Saccenti, ‘Questions et Sentences: L’enseignement entre la fin du XIIe et le début du XIIIe siècle’, in Les débuts de l’enseignement universitaire à Paris (1200–1245 environ), ed. Jacques Verger and Olga Weijers, Studia Artistarum 38 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 275–93, https://doi.org/10.1484/M.SA-EB.5.101387.↩

  48. For an introduction to Gratian, see Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th ser., 49 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chap. 1, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511496639.↩

  49. Margaret T. Gibson, ‘The Twelfth-Century Glossed Bible’, in Papers Presented to the Tenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford, 1987, ed. E.A. Livingstone, vol. 5, Studia Patristica 23 (Leuven: Peeters, 1989), 243 also notes its use in Ex auditis super psalmos.↩

  50. R.W. Hunt, ‘English Learning in the Late Twelfth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., 19 (1936): 21, https://doi.org/10.2307/3678685; Hugh MacKinnon, ‘William de Montibus: A Medieval Teacher’, in Essays in Medieval History Presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed. T.A. Sandquist and M.R. Powicke (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), 33.↩

  51. Goering, William de Montibus, 11–12.↩

  52. For a summary of her arguments and an alternate view, see John W. Baldwin, ‘An Edition of the Long Version of Peter the Chanter’s Verbum Abbreviatum’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 57, no. 1 (January 2006): 78–85, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046905006147.↩

  53. James F. Dimock, ed., Topographia Hibernica et Expugnatio Hibernica, vol. 5 of Giraldi Cambrensis opera, Rolls Series 21 (London: Longman, 1867), liiin2, https://archive.org/details/giraldicambrensi05gira; cited with further context in Brian Golding, ‘Gerald of Wales, the Gemma Ecclesiastica and Pastoral Care’, in Text and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care: Essays in Honour of Bella Millett, ed. Cate Gunn and Catherine Innes-Parker (Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2009), 48, 51.↩

  54. André Boutemy, ‘Giraud de Barri et Pierre le Chantre: Une source de la Gemma ecclesiastica’, Revue du moyen âge latin 2 (1946): 45–62; E.M. Sanford, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis’ Debt to Petrus Cantor’, Medievalia et Humanistica 3 (1945): 16–32; Golding, ‘Gerald of Wales’, 52–54.↩

  55. See for instance Gemma ecclesiastica 2.26 in Boutemy, ‘Giraud de Barri et Pierre le Chantre’, 49; this is only found in Monique Boutry, ed., Petri Cantoris Parisiensis Verbum adbreuiatum, Textus prior, Corpus Christianorum, continuatio mediaevalis 196a (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), chap. 22 (pp. 175–76, lines 71–90), which is much closer to Gerald’s text than the version Boutemy cites: @galopin:1639venerabilis.↩

  56. On their relationship, see John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 1:34–36.↩

  57. For an introduction to metre in this period, see A.G. Rigg, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, 1066–1422 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 313–29, with examples of Leonines at 319 and of Elegi Leonini at 322.↩

  58. Dinkova-Bruun, ‘Samuel Presbyter’, 156.↩

  59. For general guidance, see A.G. Rigg, ‘Anglo-Latin’, in Singing Early Music: The Pronunciation of European Languages in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Timothy J. McGee (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 46–61.↩

  60. Goering, William de Montibus, 508–14; the text was also briefly described in Beryl Smalley and George Lacombe, ‘The Lombard’s Commentary on Isaias and Other Fragments’, The New Scholasticism 5, no. 2 (April 1931): 141–42, https://doi.org/10.5840/newscholas19315217.↩

  61. Cf. Peter Stotz, Handbuch zur lateinischen Sprache des Mittelalters, Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft 2.5 (Munich: Beck, 1996–2004), 3:168 (VII 128.3).↩