Philological Aspects of the Study of Medieval Religious Works: An Academic Workshop at the Institute of Linguistic Research (Saint Petersburg)

Abstract

The paper gives a detailed review of recent results in the philological study of West European medieval religious manuscript tradition. The workshop, hosted by Dr. N.A. Bondarko at the Institute of Linguistic Research (Saint Petersburg) in June 2009, was devoted to the discussion of new methods and recently discovered sources and gathered prominent scholars of the field. The guest talk was made by Prof. H. Löser (Augsburg, Germany) who analyzed reconstructive textological methods and the possibilities of rediscovering the real Meister Eckhart. The paper presents new research made by Russian scholars of philological aspects of the study of German medieval religious authors: Meister Eckhart (M.L. Khorkov), David of Augsburg (N.A. Bondarko), and Mechthild of Magdeburg (N.A. Ganina and E.R. Squires). The paper points out the significance of newly discovered text sources. For example, the manuscript of Mechthilds famous work Das Fließende Licht der Gottheit, which was recently discovered by Ganina and Squires in Moscow and had its first public presentation at the workshop, allowed new solutions for a number of problems of the Mechthildian tradition. M.G. Logutova discusses the text and language variation in the prayer-type Adoro te in cruce pendentem. Problems of text reconstruction were also raised by E.A. Parina and W. Mahon, who approached them in aspects of the Celtic written tradition.