par son divorce jamais." (P. Decourcelle et A. Maurel, La Rue

There are also a number of unclassified aphorisms on marriage that are of interest.

"Un ménage assorti est un miracle plus grand que celui de la mer rouge." (E. Fleg, La Maison du Bon Dieu,45 II, iii).

"On peut vivre admirablement sans se comprendre, ça c'est le mariage." (D. Auriel, A. Obey, La Souriante Madame Beudet,40 II, ix).

"C'est une chose curieuse que vous autres grands hommes, vous n'ayez jamais ou rarement, le foyer et la femme que vous méritez. Vous admittez au partage de votre intimité des compagnes qui vous sont nettement inférieures." (H. Bataille, La Tendresse, I, ix).

47

"Je crois que les femmes sont faites pour être mariées, et que les hommes sont faits pour être célibataires. C'est de là que vient le mal. Les veufs se remarient bien moins que les veuves." (S. Guitry, Mon Père Avait Raison,48 I).

"Dans chaque ménage presque, l'un des deux a fait un jour une saleté à l'autre et si l'autre l'a oublié il n'arrête pas du moins de se souvenir qu'il l'a oublié." (S. Guitry, Je t'Aime,49 III).

"Le bonheur le plus probable c'est celui d'être avec l'homme qu'on aime et ce n'est pas prouvé, après tout, que le mariage soit ce qu'on a trouvé de mieux pour ça." (D. Niccodemi, Les Requins,50 II, i).

It is not strange finding a priest pleading with a wife to pardon a husband who has been remiss. A husband is a master appointed for women by God, and some day the man she wants to leave may need her. (H. Kistermaekers, La Flambée,51 I, xi). Of divorce one says: "C'est toujours de cette façon qu'une

44 1913.

45 1920.

46 1921.

47 1921.

48 1920.

49 1921.

50 1913.

51 1912.

femme change de mari." (S. Guitry, La Prise de Berg-opZoom,52 III, i).

CONCLUSION

The foregoing material is drawn from thirty-seven plays which are the work of twenty-nine writers or sets of collaborators. From it we may safely deduce certain attitudes toward marriage and its various problems, not necessarily as found in actual French life, but as reflecting the stage point of view. In spite of some displacements, caused by the war, and general changes in standards of conduct and in values, marriage is still a serious and necessary institution, carrying binding obligations, and not to be entered upon too lightly. Compatibility of age, fortune, and social position is not often neglected. Young people have more voice in the matter of their marriage than formerly. Love is desirable, but not the dominant factor. It may be expected to follow naturally if other elements are present. A double standard of sex morality is still recognized, but not so rigidly enforced as formerly. There is some slight awareness of the principle of bear and forbear as a means to better mutual understanding. In the eyes of a few, civil marriage is no marriage. Girls should marry young. An unmarried woman is looked upon as not normal. Divorce is an accepted institution except in the minds of those who reject it on religious grounds. It is constantly mentioned as a possibility, and yet there is a steady feeling that after all it is not very respectable and often brings sorrow or a stigma on guiltless parties. It has not accomplished, on or off the stage, what its early advocates claimed for it. The most noteworthy conclusion is that marriage and its problems are out of fashion so far as serious treatment is concerned. Even Brieux and Curel have ceased to carry on their own earlier crusades. Hervieu is dead, and no one seems ready to take his place.

52 1913.

A VADE MECUM OF LIBERAL CULTURE IN A MANUSCRIPT OF FLEURY

By E. K. RAND

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Among the narratives of hairbreadth escapes in the imminent, deadly breach, there are, for those who share Silvestre Bonnart's enthusiasm for mediaeval catalogues, few incidents so exciting as the dispersion of the library of Fleury. That venerable monastery, founded in the early seventh century and known far and wide as the final resting place of the bones of St. Benedict, was among the foremost seats of culture as long as culture was embodied primarily in monasticism. Even after the Renaissance it enjoyed a respectable fame, and nothing disturbed its serenity till the year 1562, when the Protestants sacked its library and scattered its treasures. By various routes the manuscripts of Fleury, sometimes split into fragments, have found their way into libraries as widely separated as those of Orléans, Paris, London, Leyden, Berne, and Rome.1

It is to one of these much travelled and sorely lacerated books of Fleury that I would invite the reader's attention in this paper, Codex Leidensis Vossianus Latinus Q 86. Those who have studied this manuscript are aware that it is not generally considered a book of Fleury. I feel confident enough so to label it, though admitting at the start that the conclusion of the following argument is highly probable rather than absolutely certain.

The Codex Vossianus in its present condition is only a torso, but for all that its contents are most varied. It starts off with Arator's epic on the Acts of the Apostles; then come the Augustinian epigrams of Prosper; then other Christian poems, including the little epics on Jonah and Sodom, here ascribed to Tertullian ; and the two hymns of Sedulius. Now we pass to pagan works, the Disticha Catonis, the beast fables of Avianus, selections from the Anthologia Latina, selections from Martial. Then another

1 On the manuscripts of Fleury and allied centres see Traube, Vorlesungen und Abhandlungen, iii (1920), pp. 12 ff. Traube's notes are here supplemented by Brandt, Lehmann and Weinberger.

Christian epic poet appears, Avitus, and at the end, a part of St. Isidore's chapter on grammar from his Etymologiae; the excerpts end abruptly-there was plainly more to follow.

3

The book was written, almost everybody agrees, in the ninth century; I will endeavor in a moment to assign a more precise date. For most of the works that it contains, the manuscript has been utilized and highly estimated by editors. In his edition of Avitus, Peiper calls it Avitianorum librorum multo praestantissimus. Less important, because interpolated, in Peiper's estimation, is the text of the epics on Sodom and Jonah. But Lucian Mueller, certainly not inferior to Peiper as a textual critic, thought it the pure and uncontaminated form and a reliable source for filling lacunae in the version that Peiper preferred.* For Avianus, our manuscript is Lachmann's antiquissimus, and heads the list of Baehrens's codices.5 Nor does Professor Oldfather, who is preparing a new edition of the Fables, essentially modify the opinions of his predecessors. The manuscripts of Martial, according to Lindsay,' descend in three distinct lines from ancient sources, so that, as he puts it, a veritable judgment of Paris is offered the editor; three goddesses are constantly making advances for the prize of his decision. There are human failings in these divinities, as Lindsay has abundantly shown, but whatever be the true history of the text, the value of Class A, to which the Vossianus belongs, is incontestable. In the Anthologia

8

2 Mon. Germ. Hist., Auct. Ant., VI, 2 (1883), p. LXVI. Cf. Corp. Scrip. Ecc. Lat. XXIII, p. xix.

3 Corp. Scrip. Ecc. Lat., XIII, p. xix.

4 Rhein. Mus., XXII (1867), p. 332.

5 Poet. Lat. Min., V, p. 31.

6 I am indebted to Professor Oldfather for a letter on this point, and for his photographs of the pages of Avianus in the Vossianus.

7 "The Ancient Editions of Martial," in St. Andrews University Publications, II (1903), and the preface to his edition of Martial in the Oxford Classical Texts.

8 Lindsay has proved, I believe, the existence of two ancient editions of Martial's text, the original and an improved form, proceeding from the author himself. Class C, the "vulgate," represents the original form (Ed. I), though it likewise is well sprinkled with interpolated glosses, which, in my estimation, may be mediaeval. Class B is the recension of Gennadius in the fifth century. He has built on C, but has corrected it, though not in all places, with the help of Ed. II. He likewise has added "improvements" of his own. Some of the curious errors of this class may perhaps be due to a still later infusion of glosses. Class A,

Latina its importance is still more striking. The nucleus of the modern editions that bear this title is the famous Codex Salmasianus, an uncial book of the seventh or the eighth century, written possibly but not surely in Spain. Besides this venerable source, there are three principal manuscripts, one closely associated with the Vossianus, the other on a different branch from either it or the Salmasianus,10 so that again, it would appear, the editor is confronted by three goddesses; clearly the divinity of our codex is proved. One can see its eminence at a glance by turning to Riese's edition of the Anthologia Latina and observing that no less than eighty-eight of the poems11 are found in the Vossianus alone.

It is surprising that with such qualities, our manuscript has not been used by the editors of the other works that it contains. Lindsay might well have found no new material here for the text of St. Isidore, whose encyclopaedia is preserved in so many manuscripts much nearer to the source than our codex is.12 The Vossianus is not reckoned among the oldest manuscripts of Arator by his only modern editor,12a and of Prosper there is no modern edition at all. When this work receives its due-and any student of mediaeval letters will admit its value-our Leyden codex should be examined among the first. It is not included, strange to say, in the list of twenty-odd manuscripts of the "elegant" edition, also represents a basis of Ed. I corrected from Ed. II, and then systematically softened in the interests of propriety. This added "elegance” is, in my opinion, a mediaeval affair. The exact relation of C to A is yet to be determined, but from certain considerations I suspect that they descend from the same original. In that case we have two, not three ancient sources for the text.

9 Paris Lat. 10318. See H. Omont, Anthologie de Poètes Latines dite de Saumaise, 1903 (facsimile edition), p. 3. Traube (Vorl. u. Abh., iii, p. 51) thought that the manuscript was written in Spain, but Lehmann is not so sure (Berl. Phil. Woch., 1921, c. 323).

10 Riese, preface to his edition of the Anth. Lat., I (1884, pp. XIII, XXXIII ff.).

11 Nos. 393-480. A few of these poems appear also in other manuscripts, but in almost all cases we may thank the scribe of the Vossianus that the verses have not perished altogether.

12 Professor Beeson (Isidorstudien, in Traube's Quellen u. Untersuchungen, IV, 2, (1913), p. 86) mentions the Vossianus among the manuscripts containing excerpts. He regards its "Schriftheimat' as France and its "Bibliotheksheimat" as Cluny. On the nature of the text of our fragment see below pp. 268 ff.

12 G. L. Perugi, Venice, 1908.