Articles

Virgil in scholastic hands: transnational and local, textual and material

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Abstract

This article seeks to explain why a set of “fabulous” stories about Virgil were adopted as part of a learned Latinate tradition in the twelfth and early thirteenth century. It suggests that the answer lies in the distinctive politics of southern Italy in this period. Scholars and administrators (many of them trained in cathedral schools of northern Europe) arrived in southern Italy and encountered local legends about Virgil’s magical protection of the city and its inhabitants. These men were already primed to be interested in the classical poet. But they also recorded, adjusted, and preserved these legends as a source of important historical information for their own masters—the kings and emperors who aspired to rule the region and whose hold on power was often unsteady. This was a decisive step, for it meant that the Virgil of the classical curriculum and liberal arts tradition became tied to a particular southern Italian landscape and series of monuments. This, in turn, paved the way for fourteenth-century “humanist” visitors to the region, including Petrarch, who were particularly keen to exploring the sites of Virgil’s life. However, as this article argues, interest in the physical and material “remains” of the poet, and the relationship between ancient texts and contemporary topography, was a twelfth-century entanglement, not an early modern one.

Keywords: Virgil, Naples, Twelfth Century, Thirteenth Century, Accessus ad auctores, Italy, Petrarch, translatio studii

How to Cite:

Byrne, P., (2026) “Virgil in scholastic hands: transnational and local, textual and material”, Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures 12. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/jolcel.90217