sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 9

Mirko Breitenstein / Susanne Linscheid-Burdich (eds.): De interiori domo sive Liber de conscientia

The object of this book is the anonymous late-twelfth-century text best known as De interiori domo, although its earliest title was Liber de conscientia (hereafter referred to as LdC). According to the description on the back cover, this book contains the first critical edition and modern German translation of LdC and is preceded by an Introduction that explains central aspects of the work and opens new approaches to understanding it.

The Introduction, indeed, lives up to this description. It is the culmination of Mirko Breitenstein's important contributions to the study of pseudonymous texts and most notably this treatise. Bringing together the findings of his earlier studies, the Introduction is the most comprehensive overview of this anonymous, late-twelfth-century text to date. Breitenstein shows the importance of LdC as witnessed by several hundred surviving manuscripts and by its continued popularity well into the modern era. He does an excellent job of situating the text within the patristic and monastic tradition and of tracing the interrelations between it and similar works from the late twelfth century. He also shows a comprehensive knowledge of previous studies on the question of LdC's attribution.

Of special value is part III of the Introduction (XLVI-LXX), which treats three central aspects of the work, namely, the metaphor of the conscience as a book, the concept of cleansing the conscience through prayer and confession, and the metaphor of the conscience as an inner house. Breitenstein describes how the LdC expands the eschatological meaning of the book of life in the Apocalypse to include an ethical aspect of a kind of record-book of the conscience, where one can gauge one's own moral progress. In this expanded concept, thanks especially to the monastic tradition, the book of conscience becomes a tool for self-knowledge and a way of taking responsibility for one's own development. This sense of responsibility then finds expression in self-examination before God and confession to a superior, both of which are poignantly modeled in the LdC. The conscience, once cleansed and set in order, can then be imagined as an inner house, i.e., a dwelling-place for God.

As satisfying as are the literary and theological perspectives provided in the Introduction, the philological aspects of the book leave much to be desired. It is difficult to see why the editors use the term "critical edition" to describe their work. As stated in the Introduction, no attempt is made to establish a history of the text (XV). The editors see the textus receptus as the end point of an evolution and consider the other versions of the work as stages in this process. This presupposition, which is not based on the textual history of LdC, influences the editors' view throughout this work.

According to a recent critical edition of the LdC that the editors were apparently unable to consult in time [1], the earliest stage of the work consisted of the Prologue and paragraphs 1-61 (i.e., chapters I-XXVIII of the Migne edition). To that core were added shorter texts that often circulated in the same manuscripts with the LdC. At the same time, from that core, a few well-attested abridgements were made. Contrary to the editors' statement that the abbreviated versions of the text are building blocks of the treatise (XXIII), the most common of these short versions developed late in the text's transmission. In general, there is a clear correlation between these versions and the textual families to which they belong. The textus receptus represents only one of those textual families.

In essence, the contents of the edition are those of the textus receptus, i.e. the 41 chapters and 88 paragraphs found in the Migne edition (hereafter PL). The Latin text, however, is reconstructed from the manuscript Poitiers, Médiathèque François-Mitterrand, Ms 74, where the different sections that make up the textus receptus appear as separate works. The Poitiers manuscript is an excellent early witness, but it does not belong to the family of manuscripts from which the textus receptus was derived.

There is no critical apparatus in the usual sense of that term. Instead, endnotes to each chapter give the readings in PL that differ from those in the Poitiers manuscript. At most, this method tells the reader that a given reading in the Poitiers manuscript differs from the PL edition or from the earlier printed editions from which the PL edition was derived or from the manuscripts used for those earlier editions. These endnotes also signal variants found in the incomplete Dijon, BM, 582 (339) manuscript, which, like the Poitiers manuscript presents the different sections as separate works. These variants do not clarify the relationship between these manuscripts; they only tell the reader that two early manuscripts differ in some readings.

An unusual aspect of this edition is the presentation in a parallel column of sections of the text as found in Aarau, Kantonsbibliothek, MS Muri 2, a fragmentary witness that contains only 13 paragraphs of the text. The reason given for this choice is that the Aarau manuscript represents a form of the text that appeared as the third part of a treatise on the virtues and vices, the identity of which is the object of some speculation on the part of the editors (XVI-XVIII). But this form of the text, which appears in over twenty manuscripts, has already been identified and described in detail by Cédric Giraud [2], whose book the editors refer to elsewhere on several occasions.

An annoying aspect of the text-translation part of the book is the restructuring of LdC, using new chapter numbers. As mentioned in the Introduction, most earlier studies and translations of LdC used the numbering system of the Migne edition (X). The Breitenstein/Linscheid-Burdich text and translation does retain Migne's paragraph numbering, which is helpful, but the lack of any reference to the former chapter numbers is inconvenient. On the other hand, a praiseworthy aspect of the edition is the source apparatus that appears beneath the Latin text, which identifies many sources not found by earlier editors. Numerous appendices also add to the usefulness of this volume.

In summary, then, this German translation of the textus receptus of the LdC, albeit based on a patchwork of manuscripts from different textual families, makes this important work available to a modern audience. It is accompanied by an extensive and well researched introduction, an impressive source apparatus, abundant bibliography, and useful indices.

Notes:

[1] Elias Dietz: The Anonymous Late Twelfth-Century Liber de conscientia (De interiori domo): Introduction, Critical Edition, and Translation (= Cîteaux - Commentarii cistercienses; 74, fasc. 1-2 (2023)).

[2] Cédric Giraud: Spiritualité et histoire des textes entre Moyen Âge et époque moderne. Genèse et fortune d'un corpus pseudépigraphe de méditations, Paris 2016, 222-223.