Between Scylla and Charybdis. The De tribus punctis christianae religionis (1316) by Thomas Hibernicus and its heyday in late medieval Bohemia
Abstract
Thomas Hibernicus (fl. 1295-1338) was a secular cleric active at the Sorbonne. Besides his famous and much widespread handbook for preachers, Manipulus florum, he authored three opuscula.
Two of them had limited circulation (De tribus hierarchiis survives in three and De tribus sensibus sacrae scripturae in eight manuscripts), but the third, De tribus punctis christianae religionis (1316), which is the focus of this paper, is witnessed in over 130 manuscripts. It is a brief handbook providing instruction on the very basics of moral education to be mastered by every Christian in later Middle Ages: the Confession of Faith, the Ten Commandments, and the seven vices.
The text includes several features recurring in medieval "books of knowledge": the author applied clear and concise structure, used simple and distinct vocabulary and mnemonic verses, appealed to the readers and asked for their corrections, and explicitly noted he had attempted to navigate between Scylla of brevity and Charybdis of obscurity (that is, tried to be brief without becoming unclear). This paper will survey the transmission of the text in late medieval Bohemia where it reached a true heyday thanks to the fact that Earnest of Pardubice, the archbishop of Prague, attached it to his synodal statutes of 1349, and promoted it as the minimum Christian knowledge.
In addition to a great number of manuscripts where the De tribus punctis is copied immediately after the statutes, there are many others, where its reception is more curious and surprising.