Edition of the Distinctiones Able of Pet er the Chanter

FAIN: RE-*0735-78

Stephen A. Barney
Regents of the University of California, Irvine (Irvine, CA 92617-3066)

To edit the Distinctiones Abel, a twelfth-century Latin dictionary of Biblical allegories. Over 60 manuscripts exist, but only a few fragments have been printed in modern times. A complete, edition will be useful to modern scholars in need of a guide to commonplace medieval symbols, just as medieval scholars wanted such a guide. But the Abel will also interest intellectual historians and offers insights into the medieval mind; the allegorical method, with peculiar patterns of interpretation, language and arrangement, is an important index of the mentality of the Middle Ages.

Associated Products

Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (CCCM 288): Distinctiones Abel, I and II (Book)
Title: Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (CCCM 288): Distinctiones Abel, I and II
Author: Petrus Cantor
Editor: Stephen A. Barney
Abstract: Peter the Chanter's 'Distinctiones Abel,' now edited for the first time from the manuscripts, is an influential and innovative work of twelfth-century biblical scholarship. Peter the Chanter's Distinctiones Abel displays the multiple senses of some eleven hundred biblical terms and arranges the terms in alphabetical order. Preserved in nearly ninety manuscript copies, it stands at the head of a series of similar aids for preachers and students of the Bible. Its immediate context is the practice of "distinguishing" the senses of terms in a biblical text as the backbone of a sermon, a novel practice employed by several masters of the late twelfth century, notably by Peter's colleague in Paris, Peter Comestor. The Distinctiones Abel was compiled in an age of organization and may be compared with such searchable reference works as Gratian's Decretum, the Glosa Ordinaria, the new Latin dictionaries, and Peter Lombard's Sentences. It is among the first scholarly works to use the alphabet as a technique of information retrieval. Only selections of the work have been printed before; this editio princeps will be of interest to intellectual historians and those interested in medieval biblical studies, homiletics, popular imagery, and allegory. The Introduction includes a brief account of Peter the Chanter's life and work, a survey of the genre 'distinctiones,' an extensive desciption of the manuscripts, many of them treated in print for the first time, along with a thorough exposition of the sophisticated methodology of textual criticism employed.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/petri-cantoris-distinctiones-abel/oclc/1200315746&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503578057-1
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 97825035780
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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