Prolegomena to an Edition of a Twelfth-century Commentary on the Georgics Attributed to Hilarius of Orléans

Abstract Modern scholarship has over the past few decades been reaping the rewards of studying medieval literature through the lens of medieval commentaries on ancient texts, and new editions of such commentaries have been appearing with some regularity. To be counted – both codicologically and genetically – among a group of commentaries which have individually received considerable scholarly attention is a twelfth-century lecture course on Vergil’s Georgics . The product of Orléans, but containing hints of an earlier origin in Laon, the text provides privileged insights into both oral and written cathedral school traditions, as well as the reception of Latin classical literature throughout the early university period. In this article, the authors discuss the scholastic environment that informed this medieval commentary and to which it bears witness. They discuss the nature of oral education ( traditio ) in the medieval cathedral schools and the traces of orality present in Latin manuscripts from that milieu . They then characterize this Georgics commentary on its own terms, paying attention to its diverse set of glosses and its shifting authorial voice. These observations are brought to bear on an argument in favor of specific editorial choices when dealing with this text and continuous-lemmatic commentaries more broadly, and the article closes with a specimen criticum of an in-progress edition. It is our hope that this contribution will stimulate debates about the proper editing of medieval Latin commentaries, while also furthering the study of high-medieval school traditions and the reception of classical literature more broadly.