Pains and Pleasures of Interpreting and Appropriating Obscurity: The Versus maligni angeli in the Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries

Abstract

The study addresses the subject of methods and character of medieval text transmission and interpretation through a case study of a brief obscure poem sometimes entitled Versus maligni angeli. While its origin is not known, it provoked four different detailed interpretations. All the commentators explain its meaning as Christian one but radically differ in the specific interpretations. They also justify the supposed devil’s authorship of the poem in very different ways. They apply traditional strategies of Biblical exegesis to this idiosyncratic source. Although it is a mere opuscule, this case shows medieval exegetical flexibility as well as curiosity inherent in perceiving the created world. List of surviving manuscript copies of the verses as well as editions of two of the glossed versions are provided in appendices.

Keywords

• medieval manuscript culture
• medieval obscurity
• medieval latin
• textual transmission
• medieval interpretation
• medieval literature