The reception of Augustine and Pelagius in the Carolingian commentary on Romans preserved in Paris Bibl. Nat. lat. 11574. Cultural forgetting in medieval theories on grace, free will, and predestination.

This project centers on a never-before-published anonymous Carolingian commentary on Pauls Epistle to the Romans, preserved in a single 9th-century manuscript, Paris Bibl. Nat. lat. 11574, and consisting of fragments selected from the writings of patristic authors. Firstly, I propose to provide the first critical edition of this work. Secondly, I will offer an analysis of the fragments selected from Augustine and Pelagius, both of which are important sources in the commentary. In the past, research on medieval biblical commentaries in the form of anthologies has generally focused either on the value of these texts for the reconstruction of the manuscript transmission of the works of the Church Fathers, or on their role in theological and philosophical disputes. I intend to combine these two avenues through the concept of cultural forgetting, i.e. the necessity for a certain interpretation to be collectively forgotten in order for a subsequent generation to form its own interpretation. Specifically, I will examine how the transmission of the Augustinian and Pelagian views on the subjects of grace, free will, and predestination shaped and influenced the interpretation found in the commentary in Paris Bibl. Nat. lat. 11574 and how their conflicting opinions were handled by the compiler. This research question ties in with the broader inquiry into how compilers of medieval biblical commentaries read, interpreted, distributed, and forgot the interpretations of their immediate predecessors and their patristic sources in an uninterrupted dynamic of scriptural interpretation.

Keywords:Karolingische Bijbelcommentaar, Romeinen, Augustinus, Pelagius, Predestinatie, Editie, Transmissie

Disciplines:Linguistics, Theory and methodology of linguistics, Other languages and literary studies