''Mammotrectus super Bibliam'' ("nourisher on the Bible") of John Marchesinus is a guide to understanding the text of the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...

. It is one of the most important

Franciscan , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

school texts of the later Middle Ages and was written for the education of clerics.Franout-
Marchesinus de Regio Lepidi (Marchesio da Reggio/Johannes Marchesinus/Marchesino da Reggio, fl. later 13thcent)
/ref> The ''Mammotrectus'' was written in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

by the Franciscan John Marchesinus, at Regio, near Modena, at the end of the 13th century. It was the most important work of Marchesinus. He based his work mainly on '' Expositiones vocabulorum biblie'' of the Franciscan William Brito, written between 1250 and 1270.Textmanuscripts
/ref>Samuel Berger

Paris, 1879, pp. 15-28. The ''Mammotrectus'' contains about 1,300 articles and is divided into three parts: 1) explanations for difficult biblical words and passages; 2) a series of digressions on orthography, the accents of Latin words, the seven feasts of the Old Testament Law, the clothing of priests, the principles of exegesis and translation, the names of God, the qualities and properties of Scripture, and a treatise on the four main

ecumenical council An ecumenical council, also called general council, is a meeting of bishops and other church authorities to consider and rule on questions of Christian doctrine, administration, discipline, and other matters in which those entitled to vote ar ...

s; 3) liturgical pieces and some related materials (the hymns, legends of saints, sermons and homilies). The author was aware that his book was imperfect and he wrote in the preface: "Let any imperfections in the book be attributed to me: and if there is anything good, let it be thought to have come from God." Variants on the title are known. Marchesinus names it "Mammotrectus" or "Mammetractus", which he explains as "led by a pedagogue"; but another contemporary form of the name was "Mammothreptus", which was interpreted as "brought up by one's grandmother". The first printed edition was published in Mainz by

Peter Schöffer Peter Schöffer or Petrus Schoeffer (c. 1425 – c. 1503) was an early German printer, who studied in Paris and worked as a manuscript copyist in 1451 before apprenticing with Johannes Gutenberg and joining Johann Fust, a goldsmith, lawyer, and m ...

in 1470. The book was popular in the 15th century, but its popularity declined in the 16th century. Henri Bebel criticized it in 1508 (''Commentaria deabusione linguae latinae apud Germanos'', Pforzheim).

Desiderius Erasmus Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' wa ...

criticized in 1515 – in one of the symposiums ''Synodus grammaticorum'' – those priests who still read the ''Mammotrectus''. The book was also criticized by François Rabelais (in ''

Gargantua and Pantagruel ''The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel'' (french: La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, telling the adventures of two giants, Gargantua ( , ) and his son Pantagruel ...

'') and

Martin Luther Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation and the namesake of Lutherani ...

(1524). Protestants rejected the book completely and it was quickly forgotten. Frans van Liere called the work "tools for fools" in 2003.“Tools for Fools: Marchesinus of Reggio and his 'Mammotrectus'”, ''Medieval Perspectives'' 18 (2003), 246-262 In 1879 Samuel Berger listed fifteen manuscripts of the ''Mammotrectus'', all in continental European libraries, and further manuscripts of the text were identified in the 20th century. Most of the early printed editions of the ''Mammotrectus'' differ from the earliest manuscripts and for this reason, according to one source, "the ''Mammotrectus'' urgently needs a modern scholarly edition."

References

External links

Textmanuscripts

MARCHESINUS, Johannes (b. ca. 1300). ''Mammotrectus super Bibliam''. [Strassburg: Printer of Henricus Ariminensis type 1 (Heinrich Eggestein?), ca. 1474

MARCHESINUS, Joannes. ''Mammotrectus super Bibliam''. Venezia: Nicolaus Jenson, 1479.

{{Authority control 13th-century Christian texts

References

Further reading

External links