Reflections on the Circulation of Wisdom Literature in Late Medieval Aragon and Castile

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article studies three stages in the circulation of wisdom literature in Aragon and Castile in the later Middle Ages: 1) Origins: wisdom texts in romance were preceded by texts in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin. By the time these romance texts appeared there was a highly developed (in terms of aids for the reader) of florilegia in Latin which, often dependent on other florilegia, preserved a wide range of authors, both familiar and rare. 2) Manuscript context: a conspectus of the manuscripts in which the vernacular texts are found suggests that scribes (or perhaps rather editors) had a sense of what defined wisdom as a genre. 3) Consumption: the article concludes with the use which romance authors made of the Latin florilegia and testifies to the function of these florilegia as a network of knowledge