Abstract

This near-paleographic edition of La vida las costunbres delos viejos filosofos uses as its base text that of El Escorial codex h.III.1, an early fifteenth-century vernacular translation of the De vita et moribus philosophorum written in the first half of the fourteenth century by the English scholar Walter Burley. ;The work is modeled on Diogenes Laertius' Vitae philosophorum. It describes the lives, sayings, and writings of famous men of Classical antiquity in one hundred twenty-six chapters of various lengths. It begins with Thales of Miletus and, in the Spanish version, ends with Porphyrius . Though the first chapters, on the Seven Sages of Greece, follow Diogenes' text, Burley ultimately cites over thirty different sources. Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum historiale and Speculum doctrinale and John of Wales' Breviloquium and Compendiloquium, unmentioned by the author, also constitute important sources. ;In its Latin form, the De vita enjoyed immense popularity. Over two hundred manuscripts and numerous incunabula still exist. Their dates extend from the latter half of the fourteenth century to near mid-sixteenth century, and their original distribution ranged from northern Italy and Spain through southern France, Switzerland, southern Germany, and Bohemia. The only known Latin manuscript in Spain is from the fourteenth century. ;By 1435, a Spanish vernacular version of this work had appeared. The manuscript in codex h.III.1 probably dates from around 1450. As a historical-biographical-florilegial work, it must have fit perfectly the cultural milieu of fifteenth-century Spain. Evidence is strong that it inspired the Marques de Santillana's philosophical poem Bias contra Fortuna. ;Unfortunately, this manuscript text suffers from numerous errors of translation and transmission, particularly of proper names of antiquity. Because it lacks the literary artistry of other wisdom literature of this period, its value is primarily as an artifact for linguistic research. ;An 1886 Latin-Spanish edition of this manuscript by Hermann Knust , while meticulous, is heavily edited and not useful for philological investigation, as is this near-paleographic edition, which makes available orthographic and paleographic data lost in editing