Medieval glosses and commentaries on Terence: an hypothesis on the formation of the "Commentum Monacense" and on the history of the Terentian exegesis

Abstract

The Commentum Monacense, named after the manuscript München, BSB, Clm 14420 (ff. 79-144), is one of the main early medieval commentaries on Terence.As many other exegetical products, it is presumably composed ofmaterial fromdifferent origin and, in fact, the scholia of the Commentum are related in diverse ways to the sets of annotations transmitted by other mediaeval manuscripts. The analysis of the content of the manuscripts that previous studies have connected with the Commentum leads us to the hypothesis that threemain strata could have been involved in the formation of this commentary: the so-called α and β strata could help, among others, to understand its relation with the Commentum Brunsianum and to reconstruct some unknown aspects of the previous Terentian exegesis; the so-called γ stratum, for its part, would reflect a later intervention and, thus, it would permit to identify the manuscripts whose content is most closely related to the work transmited by the Municher manuscript.