Citas bíblicas en el prólogo del <i>Libro de buen amor</i>: observaciones críticas y literarias

Abstract This paper examines some Biblical quotations found in the preface to Archprest of Hita’s Libro de buen amor (fourteenth century). This short prose text is transmitted in an early fifteenth-century codex unicus : Salamanca, Univ. Library, 2663. As for critical issues, I argue that redis (Ps 61, 13) and equs (Ps 31, 9) should not be corrected to read reddes and equus , as has been customary among almost all editors. Besides, in Ecclo 15, 1 the manuscript does not read Dominum , but Deum , which should be kept as well. On the contrary, illi (Ps 21, 31), viam (Ps 118, 30), probably also juxta (Ps 61, 13), as well as the restoration of Job 14, 1 are right conjectures. After or within quotations in Latin, the Tironian et should be transcribed as et, not e[t] . As for literary matters, certain Biblical quotations allow us to identify new Latin sources which were used by the Archprest, including Hildebert of Lavardin († 1133) and Bernard of Clairvaux († 1153). They also suggest that at least certain Biblical verses were not directly quoted by the Archprest from the Vulgate: he rather borrowed them from Patristic and Medieval Latin authors. This indirect procedure clarifies the striking confusion between the books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus: the error was probably inherited from an intermediate source.