How the Devil Attempted to Persuade Christ Not to Save Humankind (An Edition of a Medieval Dialogue)
Abstract
The study presents an editio princeps of a Medieval Latin dialogue between Christ and the Devil over the salvation of humankind. The text is entitled Argumenta, que fecit diabolus Christo pendenti in cruce ad probandum, quod non debebat redimere genus humanum [The reasons the Devil offered Christ, while he was on the cross, to prove that he should not redeem humankind], and has so far only been known in a single manuscript (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat.
Lat. 10499, fol. 37r-39r). This edition includes two newly discovered manuscript witnesses: ms.
Olomouc, Vědecká knihovna, M I 358, formerly owned by the Carthusains in Olomouc, and ms. Praha, Národní knihovna, I E 37, fol. 13r-14r, copied by an active scribe and collector Crux of Telč (1434-1504), probably in the late 1460s while he was a preacher in Plzeň (Pilsen).
The latter manuscript provides a note to preachers - an important proof of the use of the text in sermons, which is further confirmed by yet another version preserved in ms. Firenze, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ricc. 308, fol. 33r-33v, which also includes a version of the text among sermons.
It is closer to the Prague manuscript, but orders and phrases some of the arguments rather differently and had already been made available through a published transcription, so it is not included in the present edition.