The ten essays that make up this collection join the tradition of studies on the Manipulus florum inaugurated by Richard and Mary Rouse with their Preachers, Florilegia and Sermons, published by the Institute in 1979, and include close analyses of specific lemmata as well as broader studies that should appeal to students and scholars in various fields.
The study of Latin florilegia has gathered considerable momentum in recent years driven, in part, by the "New Philology," a theoretical approach to manuscript scholarship that regards textual variants not as corruptions of the original text, but as "authentic witnesses" in their own right. This growing emphasis on textual traditions is directly relevant to medieval florilegia, handy reference works that were widely employed prior to the twentieth century by writers of both vernacular and Latin texts to find eloquent, authoritative quotations from venerable authors. Although these collections of classical, patristic, and medieval quotations are by their nature derivative, they are increasingly recognized as valuable witnesses to historical mentalites. The selection and organization of these textual fragments not only reflects the intellectual milieux of their compilers, but also influenced later intellectual contexts. No example of the genre perhaps better demonstrates these claims than the Manipulus florum of Thomas of Ireland. Composed in 1306, this florilegium comprises nearly six thousand excerpts, organized under 266 alphabetically ordered lemmata, from dozens of authors, including doctors and fathers of the Latin and Greek churches, medieval writers, and classical authors. One of the most prominent works of reference from its creation until the seventeenth century, it remains of interest to philologists, philosophers, and historians not only of the medieval world, but also, given its wide diffusion and reception, of the Renaissance and of humanism.