oa Les divisions mauristes des œuvres poétiques de Grégoire de Nazianze, des sous-corpus évolutifs à interroger

Preview this chapter:

Les divisions mauristes des œuvres poétiques de Grégoire de Nazianze, des sous-corpus évolutifs à interroger, Page 1 of 1

< Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/10.1484/M.IPM-EB.5.136883/M.IPM-EB.5.137790-1.gif

Gregory of Nazianzus’s poetic works have been divided into four subsections: Carmina dogmatica, Carmina moralia, Carmina de seipso, and Carmina quae spectant ad alios, for nearly two centuries. However, this classification proposed by the Mauriners and canonised in Caillau’s 1840 edition stems, of course, from a much later time than Gregory’s and its apparent artificiality invites us to consider its legitimacy and question the criteria that presided over its establishment. It appears, however, quite clearly that the Benedictines, in fact, delimited these sections taking into account the oldest acolouthiae found in the manuscripts. Indeed, some sequences attested in the Benedictine edition appear identically in the manuscripts, while others do, but in an embryonic state. How have these “pre-existing” subcorpora evolved? In the manuscript tradition poems were primarily grouped according to their form, but outlines of thematic groupings can also be observed. The Mauriners decided to renounce the first criterion and to systematize the second. This organization is moreover less arbitrary than it appears at first sight, since some sequences seem to have been constituted in order to bring together poems corresponding to categories that Gregory himself mentions in his poetry. The subcorpora may still evolve, moreover, as a more scrupulous and systematic analysis of the oldest acolouthiae leads to the removal from the Benedictine subsections of certain verses wrongly considered as forming poems or to moving some other works in there.