Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1996, Blaðsíða 147
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Spec. Pen. opens with a rendering of the first line of the Meditationes
Piissimae de Cognitione Humanae Conditionis, a work falsely attribut-
ed to Bernard of Clairvaux:
MArgir menn vita og skilia ymsa luti Multi multa sciunt,
enn skilia eigi sialf<a> sig og pvi er et se ipsos nesciunt.4
margr madr sialfum sier okunnigr.
The Pseudo-Bernard treatise enjoyed a very wide circulation in the
middle ages and is preserved in whole or in part in a great many manu-
scripts.5 An Icelandic translation of Pseudo-Bernard’s Meditationes is
preserved in fragmentary form in a fifteenth-century manuscript, AM
624 4to. Unfortunately, the Icelandic version lacks the opening part of
the treatise.6 Despite the wide circulation of the Meditationes, I have
found no version of this Latin treatise associated with a text which pro-
vides analogues for the rest of Spec. Pen. Leaving aside the matter of
dissemination of the gnothi se auton topos in the middle ages, some late
medieval discussions of self-knowledge cite variants of the exordial tag
which opens Pseudo-Bernard’s Meditationes,7 and the phrase in ques-
4 Pseudo-S. Bernard of Clairvaux, Meditationes Piissimae de Cognitione Humanae Con-
ditionis, in J.P. Migne, ed., Patrologiæ Cursus Completus (PL) 184 (2nd ed., Paris, 1854),
col. 485A. On the uncertain authorship of this text, which has also been attributed to
Hugh of St Victor, see A. Wilmart, Auteurs Spirituels et Textes Dévots du Moyen Age
Latin (Paris, 1932; rpt 1971), pp. 76-77 and 183, n.l.
5 See, e.g., M.W. Bloomfield, et al., Incipits of Latin works on the Virtues and Vices,
1100-1500 A.D., Mediaeval Academy of America Publication 88 (Cambridge, Mass.,
1979), pp. 269-271, no. 3126; cf. P.S. Jolliffe, A Check List of Middle English prose writ-
ings of spiritual guidance, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Subsidia Mediaeval-
ia 2 (Toronto, 1974), p. 100, H.19 and p. 143, 0.33. Several copies of Pseudo-Bemard’s
Meditationes are preserved in manuscripts which formed part of the library of the Brigit-
tine house of Vadstena; see M. Andersson-Schmitt and M. Hedlund, Mittelalterliche
Handschriften der Universitåtsbibliothek Uppsala. Katalog iiber die C-Sammlung, Acta
Bibliothecae R. Universitatis Upsaliensis XXVI: 1-6 (Uppsala, 1988-1993), MSS. C181:
6r-13r, C194: 7r-10r, C203: 189v-205v, C216: 104r-114r, C242: 45v-50v, C253: 5v-23r.
6 See AM 624 4to, ff. 1-14, described in Kr. Kålund, Katalog over den Arnamagnæanske
håndskriftsamling (Copenhagen, 1894), II, no. 1612, sect. 1, p. 38; printed in Porvaldur
Bjarnarson, ed., Leifar fornra kristinna froeda tslenzkra, (Copenhagen, 1878), pp. 188-
198.
7 See, e.g., J. Gower, Confessio Amantis VI, 1567-1568, 2295-2297, 2313-2314. The im-
portance of self-knowledge is, of course, a common topic of discussion in medieval theo-
logical manuals. Compare remarks in the main Latin source used by the author of Spec.
Pen., Hugh Ripelin of Strassburg’s Compendium Theologicae Veritatis (CTV), Il.lii. 75A,
18-19; conscientia est cognitio sui ipsius. Note that parallels from CTV presented here —>