Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 61

Gripla XXXIV (2023): 59–112
Alice Fardin
GENESIS AND PROVENANCE OF
THE OLDEST SOUL-AND-BODY DEBATE
IN OLD NORSE TRADITION
The philosophical disputatio between two antithetical figures that often
confront and find fault with one another on metaphysical matters—such
as the tumultuous relationships between vice and virtue, summer and
winter, and the soul and the body—enjoyed wide circulation throughout
the Middle Ages and inspired the composition of countless Latin and
vernacular texts.1 The oldest known soul-and-body debates are two Latin
poems known as Nuper huiuscemodi (hereafter, Nuper), also known as the
Royal Debate, and Visio Philiberti.2 One theory proposes Nuper huiuscemodi
as the direct source of Visio Philiberti, as demonstrated by Eleanor Kellogg
Henningham through a lexical analysis of the two texts.3 A second theory
views Nuper as a sort of imitation of Visio Philiberti,4 a text that enjoyed a
wide circulation, attested by the fact that more than 157 extant manuscripts
transmit this text, with a high degree of variation among them. Although a
1 On the philosophical disputatio as a literary genre, see, for instance, Michel-André Bossy,
“Medieval Debates of Body and Soul,” Comparative Literature 28.2 (1976): 144–63, at 144.
On the variety of its antithetical protagonists, see especially Barbara Peklar, “Discussing
Medieval Dialogue between the Soul and the Body and Question of Dualism,” Ars &
Humanitas 9.2 (2015): 172–99. On the international context of the debate, see Théodor
Batiouchkof, “Le débat de l‘âme et du corps I–II,” Romania 20, 77 and 80 (1891):1–55; 513–
78, and Claudio Cataldi, “A Literary History of the ‘Soul and Body’ Theme in Medieval
England” (PhD diss., University of Bristol, 2018).
2 Alessandra Capozza, “Per una nuova edizione della Desputisun de l’âme et du corps” (PhD
diss., University of Macerata, 2011), 6–8 (hereafter cited as Capozza).
3 Eleanor Kellogg Henningham, ed., An Early Latin Debate of the Body and Soul, Preserved
in MS Royal 7 A III in the British Museum (New York: published by the author, 1939), 68.
The Nuper huiuscemodi. London, British Library, Royal 7 A III, fols. 123r–145r will be
designated throughout as L.
4 George Sanderlin, “Reviewed Work(s): An Early Latin Debate of the Body and Soul, Preserved
in MS Royal 7 A III in the British Museum by Eleanor Kellogg Heningham,” Modern
Language Notes 57.3 (1942): 217–19.