The Latin Manuscripts of The Mirror of Simple Souls

Abstract

The Latin tradition of The Mirror of Simple Souls (Speculum Simplicium Animarum) is a vast and still mostly untapped source of information on the history of the Mirror's post-condemnation circulation. The surviving manuscripts reveal a lively, multi-faceted reception of the Latin Mirror amongst later medieval readers. On the one hand, it was immensely popular and successful; on the other, it was plagued by controversy and re-condemnation, and ruffled the feathers of many a fifteenthcentury churchman. Though we have yet to fully discover the people behind the Latin tradition-its original translator, its copiers, its specific readers-the available evidence reveals a diverse circulation of manuscripts, both in terms of its audience and reception as well as its various physical manuscript forms. This chapter examines key aspects and issues in this varied tradition, discussing the characteristics of the surviving Latin manuscripts, the manuscript evidence revealing a negative reception of the Mirror, the potential origins of the Latin translation, its modes of dissemination, and the controversy it sparked amongst several religious circles in its fifteenth-century circulation in Northern Italy. 2 1 I would like to thank Robert Stauffer and Wendy Terry for inviting me to contribute to this volume. Thanks also to Zan Kocher and Robert Lerner for their many useful criticisms and comments which helped to greatly improve this piece.2 Late medieval opposition to the Latin Mirror tradition formed the subject of my doctoral thesis,