Notes critiques à propos d’une édition récente de Philippe de Mézières

Abstract

Cédric Giraud: Critical notes on a recent edition of Philippe de Mézieres.
Late in the year 1389 the former knight Philippe de Mézieres wrote an Oratiotragedica, a long work on the Passion of Christ, during his retirement among the Célestins in Paris. The text, composed of a long prologue and six parts, of which the last is lost, proposes a spiritual exercise based on prayer, meditation and autobiography. It is the editio princeps of this text that is examined here. To measure its reliability we have followed the three successive stages on which it was built, namely the establishment of the critical text, the identification of the sources, and the translation. A simple reading of the text easily convinces one that the proposed edition is burdened at every stage with numerous errors. In a constructive spirit, it seemed useful to provide corrections for certain passages and render them usable to readers.

Keywords: Critical edition, Philippe de Mézieres, Latin devotional literature