Number

pt.019

Title

Vida de Santa Tarsis

Vida de Santa Tais

Original Latin source

Vita Sanctae Thaisis (lt.019)

Textual localization  

It belongs to a manuscript with about twenty different texts entitled Colecção Mystica de Fr. Hylario da Lourinhãa, Monge Cisterciense de Alcobaça, o qual transcreveo o seguinte no idioma Portuguez (Códice Alcobacense 266), standing between folios 66r and 67v.

Language

Old Portuguese

Translator

At the beginning of the Códice Alcobacense 266 it is stated that the translator of the texts  was Frei Hilário (of which almost nothing is known, except that he came from Lourinhã and was a monk at the Monastery of Alcobaça - Castro et alii, 1982-83: 5), but this information does not seem reliable.  In fact, although paleographically the manuscript is dated to the fifteenth century, some of its texts have an older language and there are signs of at least three different scribes. According to Castro et alii (1982/83: 6), it is possible that the three have worked in the scriptorium of Alcobaça during the time D. Estêvão de Aguiar was the abbot of the Monastery (between 1431 and 1446) and that Frei Hilário had the responsibility to compile the texts and copy or translate some. As this specific text is a copy of a previous translation, it has been copied and not translated into this manuscript.

Translation’s contextualization  

Witness 1 belongs to the Códice Alcobacense 266, a manuscript from the fifteenth century, is a collection of lives of saints known by its eighteenth century title: Colecção Mystica de Fr. Hylario da Lourinhãa, Monge Cisterciense de Alcobaça, o qual transcreveo o seguinte no idioma Portuguez.

The life of Thais occupies folios 66r-67v and it is the third story of the manuscript.

Date

The dating of the Códice Alcobacense 266 is controversial, because there are significant differences in terms of the dates for which the researchers point out. Recent studies indicate that the dating of the codex is between 1431 and 1446. This does not mean, however, that this specific text has been produced at that time, although some researchers argue that the codex was the result of a unitary project and that, therefore, all texts were produced on the same period (see Sobral 1993: 673).

Place  

The text has been translated/copied probably in the scriptorium of the Monastery of Alcobaça, where the codex was made.

Changes to the original work

Hagiographic text about the life of Thais, with whom a lot of men fell in love. Between them there was an Abbot called Paphnuce. After talking to him, Thais decided to change her life with the help of the Abbot. He put her in seclusion and taught her to pray. After three years, a sign from God indicated Thais had been forgiven. She died two weeks later.

There are no known textual interferences from other sources.

List of manuscript witnesses

There is one Portuguese translation of the Latin text, inserted between folios 66r and 67v of the manuscript with the reference ALC. 462 that comes from the Monastery of Alcobaça (Códice Alcobacense 266) and today belongs to the National Library of Portugal. There is a microfilm of the manuscript at the Torre do Tombo (Mf 185), its previous owner.

List of old editions

In Portuguese, there is a shortened old edition from text entitled 'Santa Thais', in the book Historial das vidas e feitos heroicos, e obras dos santos, of Frei Diogo do Rosário (1567).

Witnesses’ contextualization 

In addition to the witness held in the National Library of Portugal (manuscript with the reference ALC. 462, coming from the Alcobaça Monastery), there is another translation of the text that apparently derive not from the Latin text, but from a Portuguese copy. This witness belongs to a Portuguese version of Flos Sanctorum that is in the Central Library of the University of Brasilia (see Notes). According to Machado Filho (2001), this latter translation is the oldest one and probably dates back to the fourteenth century.

The two witnesses have several similarities, but the translation from the Flos Sanctorum is more detailed and more extensive.

Other data

The Códice Alcobacense 266, now in the National Library of Portugal (ALC. 462) is a manuscript on parchment and it is written in Gothic characters from the late fourteenth century or beginning of the fifteenth century in a single column of 30 lines. The initials are colored and decorated with filigree. The leaves have the size of 263 × 180 mm. The previous owners were Torre do Tombo and the Monastery of Alcobaça.

Editions

CASTRO, Ivo t Alii (1982-83), Vidas de Santos de um Manuscrito Alcobacense: Vida de Tarsis, Vida de uma Monja, Vida de Santa Pelágia, Morte de São Jerónimo, Visão de Túndalo, Revista Lusitana. Nova Série 4, 20-29

FUNDAÇÃO CALOUSTE GULBENKIAN (1997), Vida de Tarsis. In História e Antologia da Literatura Portuguesa – Séculos XIII-XIV, nº 03. Lisboa: FCG, 70.

MACHADO FILHO, A. V. L. (2001), Aquisse começa huũ exẽplo perque pode homẽ entẽder algũas diferenças antre dous manuscritos que de conssuũ tratam da uida de Tassis molher que foy muy pecador, In Programa para a História da Língua Portuguesa. Salvador, Bahia, Brasil: Universidade Federal da Bahia.

NUNES, J. J. (1908), Textos antigos portugueses III. [Vida de Tarsis], Revista Lusitana 11, 211-212.

Online databases:

TITUS - Old Portuguese Corpus: Vida de Tarsis

Corpus Informatizado do Português Medieval: Vidas de Santos de um Manuscrito Alcobacense - Séc. XIII/XIV, VS1

Studies

Online database:

Philobiblon - BITAGAP:

Texid 1084; Manid 1143; CNum 1072; Manid 1153; CNum 10856; Manid 1946; CNum 11106

References:

ASKINS, Arthur L-F. (1995), The MS 'Flos Sanctorum' of the Universidade de Brasília: an early reflex in Portuguese of the hagiographic compilation of Valerio del Bierzo. In SANTOS, João Camilo dos e WILLIAMS, Frederick G. (ed.) O Amor das Letras e das Gentes. In honor of Maria de Lourdes Belchior Pontes. Santa Barbara : University of California, Santa Barbara - Center for Portuguese Studies, 49-50.

CEPEDA, Isabel Vilares (1995), Bibliografia da Prosa Medieval em Língua Portuguesa. Lisboa: Instituto da Biblioteca Nacional e do Livro, 223-224.

COSTA, Sara Figueiredo (2003), A construção dos tempos do ‘passado' em alguns textos do século XV - Sete Vidas de Santos do Códice Alconbacense 266, Actas do XVIII Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, 267-273.

DUARTE, L. F. (1993), Vida de Santa Tarsis. In LANCIANI, Giulia e TAVANI, Giuseppe (dir.), Dicionário da Literatura Medieval Galega e Portuguesa. Lisboa: Caminho, 675.

MACHADO FILHO (2000), Edição paleográfico interpretativa da "Vida de Tassis" de um Flos Sanctorum do século XIV. Salvador: Instituto de Letras da Universidade Federal da Bahia.

MACHADO FILHO, A. V. L. (2001), Aquisse começa huũ exẽplo perque pode homẽ entẽder algũas diferenças antre dous manuscritos que de conssuũ tratam da uida de Tassis molher que foy muy pecador, In Programa para a História da Língua Portuguesa. Salvador, Bahia, Brasil: Universidade Federal da Bahia.

MACHADO FILHO, Américo, V. L. (2003), Um ‘Flos Sanctorum' do século XIV: edições, glossário e estudo lingüístico. Salvador: Universidade Federal da Bahia.

MACHADO, Ana Maria (2011), Desocultações da Intimidade nas Vidas dos Padres do Deserto, Romance Philology 65.1, 107-120.

MARTINS, Ana Maria (1986), Aspectos da pontuação num manuscrito medieval português. In Critique et Édition de Textes. Actes du XVII^e Congrès International de Linguistique et Philologie Romanes 9. Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 255-266

Notes

There is another translation of the text that apparently derive not from the Latin text, but from a Portuguese copy, belonging a Portuguese version of Flos Sanctorum that is in the Central Library of the University of Brasilia (Divisão de Coleções Especiais: 182 - Olim; Cofre [sem cota]). This book has about three dozen texts (lives of saints and small moral treatises) and is a fourteenth or fifteenth century copy probably from an unknown Portuguese witness (Silva et al., 2009: 199; Machado Filho, 2009: 22). It records saint Thais’ life (written between 1376 and 1425) between folios 63v and 64v. This book has 82 folios in parchment with leaves with the size of 330 x 223 mm with two columns of 36 lines, and is written in Gothic. The manuscript belonged to Jorge de Faria and Serafim da Silva Neto and was acquired in 1964. In the National Library of Portugal there is a modern copy of this manuscript (Mss 211, n. 1, page 249-252).