: Salvatore Calomino
: From Verse to Prose: The Barlaam and Josaphat Legend in Fifteenth-Century Germany
: Digitalia
: 9780916379681
: 1
: CHF 52.00
:
: Kunst, Literatur
: English
: 229
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: PDF

This monograph examines a fifteenth-century German prose redaction of the Barlaam and Josaphat legend. Through a comparison with contemporary versions of the story, the text edited here is shown to be an original contribution to the corpus of fifteenth-century hagiographic literature. A discussion of innovations in the prose Barlaam and Josaphat text further emphasizes differences from earlier poetic versions of the legend. Through an expansion of liturgical references and corresponding deletion of any secular commentary, the prose reviser has effectively adapted his material to a fifteenth-century clerical audience.
Introduction (p. 1)

The legend of Saints Barlaam and Josaphat, a Christianized version of the legend of Buddha, enjoyed wide popularity throughout the Middle Ages.1 The main story tells of the conversion of Prince Josaphat by the hermit Barlaam. During the catechism of Josaphat the narrative is interspersed with brief exemplary stories. Barlaam interprets each exemplum, so that Josaphat may understand the immediate point of religious or secular wisdom.

The extant versions of the Barlaam legend are traditionally divided into three groups: Manichean, Islamic-Arabic, and Christian. All three are presumably derived from a lost prototype written in Pahlavi, or Middle Persian. The latter version would have been based on either a Sanskrit or a Pali story of Buddha`s life.

The interdependence of the Manichean, Islamic- Arabic, and Christian branches and their relation to the prototype remain until now a moot point. Although a Manichean fragment written in Turkish survives from the year 799, some theories postulate a Christian Greek version as early as the seventh century.

The authorship of the earliest Christian version of Barlaam and Josaphat has long been disputed. Scholars have mainly disagreed on the question of Greek or Georgian primacy. Because many manuscripts bear the name John of Damascus (ca. 675-749), it was generally assumed that he had composed a Greek version in the early eighth century.

The Greek Barlaam and loasaph was thus included in the theological canon of St. John of Damascus.4 During the late nineteenth century Hermann Zotenberg first presented historical and stylistic evidence to show that John of Damascus could not have composed the original Greek version. In his monograph, Notice sur le livre de Barlaam et Joasaph, Zotenberg fixes the year 634 as the latest possible date for composition of the Greek Barlaam.

This date would eliminate John of Damascus, who was born only later in the seventh century. Zotenberg refers instead to the monastery of Saint Saba near Jerusalem, which is mentioned in several Barlaam manuscripts. He assumes that a member of the monastery named John composed the Greek Barlaam in the early seventh century.

The Greek and Georgian versions are seen as independent compositions, both descended from a lost Christian prototype. Ernst W.A. Kuhn confirms this stemma in his bibliographical study. He suggests further that the Christian prototype was written in Syrian.

Zotenberg`s hypothesis of a seventh-century Greek original was challenged dramatically by P. Peeters in 1931. In his study,"La premiere traduction latine de `Barlaam et Joasaph` et son original grec," Peeters argues that the Georgian and Greek versions were not independent compositions.

The story was instead translated from Georgian into Greek by the Georgian monk Euthymius. While rejecting Zotenberg`s theory of a seventhcentury Greek version, Peeters dates the translation of Euthymius to the late tenth or early eleventh century.

He assumes that the story was translated into Greek sometime before the year 1048, the year of the first Latin version. Peeters suggests further that the prototype of the Georgian version was not written in Syrian. On the basis of linguistic evidence, he finds an Arabic prototype to be more probable. In support of Peeters`s thesis, D.M. Lang discusses both the Georgian versions and their possible Arabic sources.
Contents8
Introduction10
mgf 1259 Description21
Linguistic Analysis39
Tendencies of the Prose Revisions49
Editorial Principles52
Berlin Prose Barlaam und Josaphat53
Apparatus135
Commentary150
Bibliography215